Paul Bodnar believes US president has ability to hamper progress towards a lower carbon economy – but that market forces will ultimately stop himDonald Trump could slow down US progress towards a lower carbon economy, but he will be unable to halt it because businesses and local governments have committed to a low-carbon path, a former climate negotiator for the US has said.Through measures such as slapping import tariffs on solar products, scrapping incentives to renewable energy and promoting coal power, the US president could try to alter the economics of pursuing low-carbon energy. Continue reading...

Researcher in remote Chagos Islands says he saw crabs, previously thought to be scavengers, hunting and killing seabirdA large, land-dwelling crustacean known as a coconut or robber crab has been seen hunting and killing a seabird, the first time such behaviour has been observed in the species.The phenomenon was witnessed by a researcher, Mark Laidre of Dartmouth College, while he was studying the giant crabs in the remote Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, New Scientist reported. Continue reading...

With political agreement making slow progress and direct action becoming more dangerous, we must find alternativesIn the medieval legend made famous by the brothers Grimm, the German town of Hamelin is besieged by a plague of rats, until the mysterious pied piper appears and agrees, for a fee, to rid them of the infestation. The mayor then reneges on payment and the piper exacts a savage revenge on the town’s ingrates by luring away their children, who are never seen again.The tale could also be an allegory for today’s grim intergenerational smash-and-grab – the global economy. As environmentalist Paul Hawken put it: “We have an economy where we steal the future, sell it in the present, and call it GDP.” Continue reading...

Waltham Forest’s new zero-emissions delivery service aims to replace polluting trucks for local deliveries of food, online purchases and moreEach morning Oscar Godoy unlocks a door in a railway arch in north London, organises the day’s deliveries, and assigns jobs to his cargo bike riders. They manoeuvre the hefty bikes from the narrow lane out on to the road, past assorted vehicles from the MOT garage, the car wash and vehicle repair outfits at either end.In the afternoons Godoy does the deliveries himself. Two weeks after the scheme’s launch he heads out, on an electric trike with a large white metal box across its rear axle, filled with the day’s first consignment from a local organic vegetable box scheme. Continue reading...

Australian Museum teams up with IBM to monitor the country’s native frog population by having their calls recordedThe Australian Museum has teamed up with IBM to count the country’s native frog population via a world-first app that records their calls and sends them to experts for identification.App FrogID will give the public the chance to carry out Australia’s first such national count, which begins on Friday and is intended to support researchers’ efforts to save endangered native species. Australia has 240 named native species of frog, but the museum wants to identify what it believes are dozens more still ribbiting under the radar. Continue reading...

Marsupial’s body found on Hopkins Point Road at Warrnambool in Victoria’s south-west on MondayA koala has been found dead with its ears cut off in Victoria’s south-west as police investigate a spate of animal mutilations in the area.The koala’s body was found about two kilometres east of Hopkins bridge on Hopkins Point Road at Warrnambool on Monday by an SES worker. Continue reading...

At COP 23 talks in Bonn, Fiji has called on developed nations to help the world’s most vulnerable build resilience to climate changeTo prepare for the rising temperatures, strengthening storms and higher sea levels in the coming decades, Fiji must spend an amount equivalent to its entire yearly gross domestic product over the next 10 years, according to the first comprehensive assessment of the small island nation’s vulnerability to climate change, compiled by its government with the assistance of the World Bank.Released half-way through the COP23 in Bonn, which Fiji is presiding over, the report highlights five major interventions and 125 further actions that it says are necessary to achieve Fiji’s development objectives, while facing the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. Combined those actions would cost about US$4.5bn over the next decade. Continue reading...

David Carpenter and Ralph Hanna point out that the 1217 Charter of the Forest wasn’t a great emancipation for ordinary people, while Kevin May sings the praises of modern-day Kielder Forest in NorthumberlandFelicity Lawrence (For a fairer share of our resources, turn to the 13th century, 8 November) states that the 1217 Charter of the Forest “asserted the rights of ordinary people to access from ‘the commons’ the means for a livelihood and shelter”. It thus “represented an early constitutional victory for ordinary people over a wealthy elite”. Alas, this view needs considerable qualification. The key concessions in the charter were granted to “free men”, and thus deliberately excluded the unfree, who formed a large proportion of the population. Far from being a victory of the ordinary people over a wealthy elite, the charter was, in some ways, exactly the reverse.

London’s proposed ultra-low emissions zone will do nothing to address the capital’s problem with polluting vehicles, writes Felix LeachThe mayor of London’s proposed ultra-low emission zone, to come into effect from 8 April 2019 (Report, 24 October), risks perpetuating the problem. The discourse currently focuses on NOx emissions, specifically those from diesel engines, but this is hardly the only pollutant. By insisting on Euro 4 (2005) standards for petrol cars and the significantly cleaner Euro 6 (2014) standards for diesel, petrol cars in London will be able to emit double the carbon monoxide of diesels and particulate emissions from petrol vehicles will still be unregulated (whereas diesel will have strict limits). Given that PM2.5 levels are more than double the WHO limit in London (Report, 5 October), allowing petrol cars to continue to emit unlimited levels of particulates in London is mad.Perverse government incentives, such as when there was a focus on CO at the expense of other emissions from vehicles in the 2000s, are exactly what caused today’s situation. All vehicles, even electric ones, emit something – until we have legislation that applies to them all equally, we will just push the problem around. A start would be to insist on Euro 6 for all vehicles in London from 2019.

The nation’s bees welcomed the news that Britain backing a Europe-wide ban on insect-harming pesticides

Donald Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris accord – but other Americans are standing with the world to help fight the ‘existential crisis’ of global warmingDeep schisms in the US over climate change are on show at the UN climate talks in Bonn – where two sharply different visions of America’s role in addressing dangerous global warming have been put forward to the world.Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement has created a vacuum into which dozens of state, city and business leaders have leapt, with the aim of convincing other countries at the international summit that the administration is out of kilter with the American people. Continue reading...

Subsidy-free plant would cover 900 acres of farmland near Great Expectations marshes at Faversham, dwarfing output of UK’s current largest solar siteAn enormous solar power station is planned for the north Kent coast that would be the UK’s biggest and dwarf existing solar farms, providing a significant boost to an industry that has stalled since ministers halted subsidies 18 months ago.Cleve Hill, a mile from the historic town of Faversham, would have five times the capacity of the UK’s current largest solar farm and provide enough power for around 110,000 households if it comes online in 2020 as proposed. Continue reading...

Michael Gove, the environment secretary, has said the UK will ban insect-harming pesticides, so we want to see your photos of bees

Ecologists expect Aberdeenshire sand dunes to lose conservation protection because of president’s golf courseThe spectacular dunes habitat in Aberdeenshire used by Donald Trump for his £1bn golf resort is likely to lose its legal protection because his golf course has ruined the site, conservationists say.Expert ecologists, including one who backed the US president’s original plans for the course of 10 years ago, believe the sand dunes will be stripped of their status as a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) by the government’s conservation agency, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). Continue reading...

From snakes to spiders, wasps to scorpions, the Natural History Museum’s new Venom exhibition promises to unnerve and entice, as it explores one of nature’s deadliest forces and its power to both kill and cure Continue reading...

Exclusive: Billionaire’s campaign has seen half of US coal plants close in six years. Now he is targeting Europe and beyond to fight climate change and air pollutionThe battle to end coal-burning, backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, is expanding out of the US and around the world in its bid to reduce the global warming threat posed by the most polluting fossil fuel.

Exclusive: Research leads environment secretary to overturn government’s previous opposition, making total EU ban much more likelyThe UK will back a total ban on insect-harming pesticides in fields across Europe, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, has revealed.The decision reverses the government’s previous position and is justified by recent new evidence showing neonicotinoids have contaminated the whole landscape and cause damage to colonies of bees. It also follows the revelation that 75% of all flying insects have disappeared in Germany and probably much further afield, a discovery Gove said had shocked him. Continue reading...

With more and more evidence emerging that these pesticides harm bees and other insects, it would be irresponsible not to restrict their use, writes the environment secretary, Michael GoveTwo principles guide this government’s approach to the natural world. We want not just to protect but to enhance the environment. And we want our decisions to be informed at all times by rigorous scientific evidence.Which is why when the science shows that our environment is in increasing danger we have to act. Like many others, I was deeply concerned by a recently published German study into the health of some insect populations. The Guardian covered the report in depth, not least because the statistics were so stark. Data gathered over 25 years appeared to indicate a 75% fall in the numbers of flying insects within those sites. Continue reading...

LNP leader Tim Nicholls says the advertising plan is to ‘overcome misleading green activist scare campaigns’A Liberal National party plan to spend $4m on a Great Barrier Reef marketing campaign if it takes power in Queensland has drawn fire as an attempt at “greenwashing” in a void of climate policy.The LNP leader, Tim Nicholls, said the advertising was to “overcome the misleading green activist scare campaigns which have talked down our greatest natural wonder”. Continue reading...

Booming of male bitterns reveals presence of at least 164 of the heron-like waders living in British wetlands, says charityPopulations of the bittern, a wetland bird that was facing extinction in the UK in the late 1990s, are at a record high, conservationists report.Resident numbers of “Britain’s loudest bird” increased in 2017, and experts – using the foghorn-like booming call of the males to survey the species – have counted at least 164 birds at 71 sites. Continue reading...

Dolphin first spotted nine days ago was undernourished and probably relatively aged, tests showA two-metre-long dolphin believed to have been spotted nine days ago in London after swimming its way up the river Thames has died.

Decline in seasons | Closure of Seer Green post office | Boris Johnson journalism fund | Government by dirty old menI’ve not seen any wasps either, now that you mention it (Letters, 4 November). What I have seen are the first daffodils of the spring – in November, when autumn hasn’t properly happened yet. Oaks and ashes are still holding their green leaves. I expect winter-flowering cherry, winter camellias, winter iris and daffs “January” and “February Gold” to make early appearances (and to be reported on the letters page as prodigious), but along the grass verges of the North Circular Road, seeded with spring bulbs, dainty, yellow and orange narcissi bobbed in the slipstream of the traffic on 3 November. Is there now a worrying decline in seasons?

Funds invested in by the universities include a joint venture to develop oil exploration and deep-sea drillingThe universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and nearly half of all Oxbridge colleges, have secretly invested tens of millions of pounds in offshore funds, including in a joint venture to develop oil exploration and deep-sea drilling, leaked documents from the Paradise Papers reveal.The files show that both universities have committed significant funds to multibillion-dollar private equity partnerships based in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven popular with American and British hedge funds. Continue reading...

Payment to owner of Loy Yang B – one of country’s dirtiest plants – was compensation for short-lived carbon taxThe owner of one of Australia’s dirtiest coal-fired power plants quietly moved $1bn offshore within days of pocketing $117m from taxpayers in compensation for Labor’s now-defunct carbon tax.The revelation, contained in the Paradise Papers, has prompted renewed criticism of the “chronic failure” of Australian climate policy and warnings against future cash handouts to multinational polluters.

New proposals to limit CO2 from passenger cars and vans by 2030 would meet climate goals, but campaigners say regulations fall shortThe European commission has unveiled new proposals for limits on carbon dioxide emissions from passenger cars and vans, which would compel manufacturers to cut emissions from their vehicles by nearly a third from 2030.But the proposals will not require manufacturers to make a fixed quota of their fleet run on electricity, as some campaigners had hoped. Continue reading...

Angus Emmott calls for Annastacia Palaszczuk to cancel the free water licence given to Adani’s Carmichael coalmineA Queensland farmer has raised enough money to air an advertisement during prime-time television in the state’s regional areas calling on the government to cancel the free and unlimited water licence given to Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine for 60 years.Angus Emmott, who previously attracted almost 100,000 signatures to a petition fighting the same cause, has raised just over $25,000, allowing his group Farmers for Climate Action to buy ad space on television. Continue reading...

The world’s nations are meeting in Bonn, Germany, for the 23rd annual “conference of the parties” (COP) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which aims to prevent dangerous global warming. This year, Fiji plays president and meeting the Paris climate goals are top of the agenda

We are binning nearly half of the fresh spuds we buy. But stashing some in the freezer can save time and make for extra-crunchy roasties

Not far from the UN climate talks taking place in Bonn, activists frustrated with slow progress by governments are turning up the heat at the Hambach opencast mine, highlighting Germany’s failure to live up to its green pledgesA giant black mark on Germany’s environmental record is scarred on the land an hour’s drive from the venue of this year’s UN climate talks in Bonn.Stretching 85 kilometres wide and 400 metres deep, the opencast coalmine near Hambach forest is the biggest hole in Europe and one of the biggest single sources of carbon on the continent. Continue reading...

Irreplaceable cultural resources in New Mexico are among those areas targeted for expedited drilling – and conservationists say it’s ‘like losing pages and chapters of that history book’In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, it is still possible to wander the maze of rooms of an ancestral Puebloan village erected roughly 1,000 years ago.Visitors use the same staircases and duck through the same T-shaped doorways as residents did at the time. A jigsaw puzzle of rocks form walls that stand several feet thick and multiple stories tall. Where rooftops are gone, windows now let in glimpses of sky. It’s a simultaneous experience of vast space and marvelous connection. Continue reading...

Darmstadt police detained 19-year-old after a drunken row with another man and said they saw ‘significant bulge in his trousers’A man detained by police during a drunken argument in Germany may have violated animal welfare laws after being found to be carrying a baby python in his pants.Police in Darmstadt, in the west of the country, said he was held on Tuesday night after a loud row with another man disturbed residents. They said he was searched and officers noticed “a significant bulge in his trousers”. Continue reading...

Decision to drop key issues welcomed by other negotiating parties but criticised by some supportersGermany’s Green party has agreed to compromise on key environmental issues in talks between parties hoping to form a coalition government by the end of the year.

Until recently the battle to avert catastrophic climate change – floods, droughts, famine, mass migrations – seemed to be lost. But with the tipping point just years away, the tide is finally turning, thanks to innovations ranging from cheap renewables to lab-grown meat and electric airplanes‘Everybody gets paralysed by bad news because they feel helpless,” says Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief who delivered the landmark Paris climate change agreement. “It is so in our personal lives, in our national lives and in our planetary life.”But it is becoming increasingly clear that it does not need to be all bad news: a series of fast-moving global megatrends, spurred by trillion-dollar investments, indicates that humanity might be able to avert the worst impacts of global warming. From trends already at full steam, including renewable energy, to those just now hitting the big time, such as mass-market electric cars, to those just emerging, such as plant-based alternatives to meat, these trends show that greenhouse gas emissions can be halted. Continue reading...

Expert says analysis shows need for more orderly transition from fossil fuels, with more notice of closure of coal plantsSouth Australia’s renewables-heavy electricity market has been turned upside down, moving from importing power to exporting it, and from having some the most expensive wholesale prices in the country to having some of the cheapest.

Figures show nearly 3 million potatoes a day are wasted, at a cost of £230m a yearNearly half of the edible fresh potatoes bought by UK householders each day are thrown away - nearly 2.7 million of them per day, and at a “staggering” annual cost of £230m, figures show.The humble spud is the second most wasted food in the UK, behind bread, according to new official figures released on Wednesday. The new research was offered in support of a government campaign to encourage consumers to reduce their domestic food waste. Continue reading...

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire This gently rotting place, soggy with last night’s rain and morning fog, muddies itself into winterA pair of doves settles on the stones, white as pacifist poppies. Perhaps they escaped from a loft or dovecote; perhaps they turned up separately and found the strangeness of each other in a place full of jackdaws. They have been around for a couple of years pecking crumbs outside the market, cooing from precarious roosts inside the bed-of-nails pigeon guards on roof eaves, displaying randy shenanigans on the church tower.Shameless and symbolic, these birds are reclaiming territory on the artificial cliffs of buildings left when rock doves were changed into pigeons. There are those who see them as pests and maybe that’s because those people find something a bit unsettling about the whiteness of doves, as if it’s a gap in the reality of the world that could be filled with something else, something subversive. Continue reading...

Plans by the governments of Ghana and Ivory Coast drawn up after Guardian investigation revealed links between the cocoa industry and rainforest lossThe governments of Ghana and the Ivory Coast are formulating plans to immediately put a stop to all new deforestation after a Guardian investigation found that the cocoa industry was destroying their rainforests.

Monthly rate of fixes of vehicles with defeat devices has fallen to 2% from a previous high of 10% earlier in the yearA third of cars manufactured by Volkswagen with devices to cheat emissions tests remain unfixed, two years after the scandal erupted.In what was coined the “diesel dupe”, VW equipped their vehicles with defeat devices designed to realise when they were being tested so they could appear to be much less polluting than in reality. Continue reading...

Warmer and more acid seas cause huge blooms of jellyfish, but scientists are working on ways to convert them into something usefulThe combination of climate change and overfishing is causing a population explosion in jellyfish. Since there are fewer fish to eat them, they appear off the British coast in vast swarms. This is a threat to nuclear power stations – because they can block the intake of cooling water – and to fish farms, where thousands get caught in the netting, sometimes killing hundreds of salmon by depriving them of oxygen.Some species are poisonous, and so caution is required when jellyfish float next to you in the sea or are stranded on beaches. Their sting can be powerful. Continue reading...

Ministers accused of ‘stubborn failure’ to tackle widespread and illegal levels of air pollution, which cause 40,000 early deaths every yearThe UK government is being sued for a third time over the widespread illegal levels of air pollution, which cause 40,000 early deaths every year.Environmental lawyers ClientEarth have already defeated ministers twice in court, forcing a new pollution plan to be drawn up in July. But ClientEarth believes even the latest strategy does not meet the legal requirement of banishing toxic air in the “shortest possible time”, as EU law requires. Continue reading...

Syria’s decision means America will be the only country outside the landmark deal if it follows through with Donald Trump’s vow to leaveSyria has decided to sign the Paris agreement on climate change, the world’s final functioning state to do so. The surprise decision, taken amid a brutal civil war in the country, will leave the US as the only country outside the agreement if it follows through on President Donald Trump’s vow to leave.Syria’s decision brings to 197 the number of nations signed up to the landmark 2015 pact on global warming, the first in more than 20 years of UN negotiations to bind both developed and developing countries to a clear limit on temperature rises. Continue reading...

Photograph taken in eastern India, titled ‘Hell is here’, shows crowd hurling flaming tar balls at animalsAn arresting image showing an adult elephant and its calf fleeing a mob attack has won a top Asian wildlife photography prize.It shows the two animals running among a crowd that has hurled flaming tar balls and crackers at them, reportedly to ward the elephants away from human settlements.

Exclusive: Miner separates itself from call for environmental groups to be restricted to using 10% of funding for advocacyBHP has said it will not support the Minerals Council’s bid to strip environmental groups of their ability to advocate for policy change.The surprising move comes amid increasing pressure on Australia’s biggest miner to distance itself from the Minerals Council, which has taken a hardline position against any form of credible action on climate change. The government will soon table a bill aimed at limiting the ability of any charity to use donations raised from overseas on advocacy in Australia. Continue reading...

Overuse of antibiotics in animals is contributing to growing drug resistance in humans with serious health implications, says global health bodyFarmers must be prevented from using powerful antibiotics on animals reared for food, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned, because of the serious risks to human health that result.New guidelines from the global body suggest farmers should stop using any antibiotics routinely to promote growth and prevent disease in animals that are otherwise healthy, a common practice in some parts of the world, including Asia and the US. Such routine use is banned in Europe, though campaigners fear the rules are sometimes flouted. Continue reading...

Donald Trump is presiding over the most withering, devastating, and trenchant attack on the American administrative state this nation has ever knownThere is no shortage of adjectives to describe the Trump presidency. Venal. Shameless. Bigoted. Impulsive. Feckless. Amid the never-ending stream of scandals and outrages, it is easy to lose sight of just what this administration is doing well – and where it is proving to be spectacularly disciplined, calculating and effective.Donald Trump is presiding over the most withering, devastating, and trenchant attack on the American administrative state this nation has ever known. Continue reading...

Levels of airborne pollutants are off the scale in parts of India’s capital with effects likened to smoking 50 cigarettes a dayA public health emergency has been declared by doctors in Delhi as air quality in the world’s most polluted capital city plunged to levels likened to smoking at least 50 cigarettes in a single day.Slow winds and colder temperatures have been blamed for a surge in airborne pollutants beyond what instruments in the city could measure with some recording an Air Quality Index (AQI) maximum of 999. Continue reading...

Plans to pedestrianise one of the capital’s busiest cycling roads send the troubling message that cyclists and pedestrians can’t co-exist in an 80ft-wide streetSadiq Khan’s proposal to ban cyclists from Oxford Street, published on Monday, is an unqualified disaster for cycling in London, perhaps the single biggest blow it has suffered in years. And he’s sending an even more dangerous signal to the rest of the country.More than 2,000 cyclists a day, according to Department for Transport figures, use the first section proposed for pedestrianisation next year, between Selfridges and Oxford Circus. More than 5,000 a day use the section between Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road, which is proposed to be pedestrianised in 2019.

Daniel Trim’s airport-roosting pied wagtail has won the 2017 competition, which celebrates the work of amateur and professional photographers and the beauty and diversity of British wildlife. Winning images are chosen from thousands of entries, including film and junior categories.More than 100 images are on show at the Mall Galleries in London, before touring nationally, and a book of the images is also available Continue reading...

Anglican clergy, including five bishops, broadcaster Richard Coles and Olivia Graham, call on the church to support the aims of the Paris climate agreement by divesting from fossil fuel companiesAs Church of England clergy, we have a strong interest in the ethics of investments made by the Church Commissioners and the Church of England Pensions Board on our behalf.This week, governments from around the world will meet in Bonn for the next round of UN climate talks. The Paris climate change agreement, which was signed by 195 countries in December 2015, included a commitment to hold the increase in the global average temperature to “well below 2C … and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels”. Continue reading...

Group says church should show ‘moral leadership’ in light of claims that the oil giant misled the public over the risks of global warmingThe Church of England should “show moral leadership” and immediately sell its investments in the oil giant ExxonMobil, according to a group of bishops and other clergy.