Deputy prime minister says Australia has a ‘moral responsibility’ to provide the world with energy from exported fossil fuelsBarnaby Joyce has told a clean energy summit that coal is crucial to Australia’s energy policy, saying the government has “a moral responsibility” to provide the world with the energy from exported fossil fuels.Speaking in Sydney on Tuesday, the Nationals leader met Bill Shorten’s offer of bipartisanship around a clean energy target with his own call for compromise. Continue reading...

Air pollution is ‘the tobacco of the 21st century’ says report, which calls on government to introduce radical measures to improve air qualityDangerous levels of air pollution in towns and cities across the north of England are threatening the health of hundreds of thousands of people and stifling economic growth, according to a new report.

More than 140 products including crisps and popcorn put in smaller, redesigned packets with reduced air pocket, but same amount of foodA major UK supermarket has slashed the amount of packaging used for its popular snacks such as crisps and popcorn by reducing the pocket of air at the top of the bag.

Blackwater, Norfolk Pollinated flowers means more plants next year – and more thistles means more beesAfter explaining to a visitor the lengths to which I go to encourage marsh and spear thistles on my fen, I was amused to hear her describe the troubles she takes to keep them from her garden. I know they’re prickly customers, but why do people dislike them?What I cherish most is the sheer architectural grandeur of the summer plant. Each fully open flowerhead has a kind of declarative beauty – a blend of spine-fringed awkwardness and inner sensuous velvet. No wonder nations have hitched their wagons to the thistle’s star-like bloom. Even in autumn, when they are desiccated and devoid of seed floss, and possibly enwrapped in old spider’s web, they retain an aura of dignity. Continue reading...

South and east England, Midlands and Wales to be hit by storms on Tuesday, with north of England affected on WednesdayThunderstorms and potential flooding have been forecast for large parts of the UK on Tuesday, prompting weather warnings from the Met Office.

Swan upping, a five-day event to count the swans on the river Thames, began as a ritual to check supplies for feasts but is now more about conservationThe annual count of swans belonging to Queen Elizabeth II has begun on the river Thames.

Resources minister tells Q&A audience Adani’s Queensland mine would not stop Australia meeting its Paris climate change commitments because the coal is burned overseasThe federal minister Matthew Canavan has defended government support for Adani’s Carmichael mine by saying coal burned overseas will not stop Australia meeting its Paris climate commitments.Canavan also denied the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had politicised the defence force by using a backdrop of masked soldiers to announce plans to enable military handling of domestic terrorist threats, telling the ABC’s Q&A program it wasn’t a “campaign announcement”. Continue reading...

We produce 300m tonnes of plastic a year – 5m tonnes of which ends up in the oceans. How easy is it to ditch the excess packaging and learn to love shampoo in solid bars?It’s in shampoo bottles, toothbrushes, clothes and biros. It’s even in teabags. Plastic is everywhere.In some cases this brings clear benefits – plastic has brought advances including domestic pipes, composite materials for lighter aircraft and wind-turbines, as well as blood bags – but, for consumers, it is largely cosmetic: a cheap signifier of hygiene and a mainstay of convenience. Continue reading...

Labor leader says opposition will back clean energy target ‘if the economic and environmental case stacks up’Bill Shorten says Labor is prepared to pass legislation giving effect to the Finkel review this year, and has called for the Turnbull government to sit down with the opposition to craft a bipartisan solution.The Labor leader will use a speech to a clean energy summit in Sydney to make a pitch for a “sensible centre” in climate policy, arguing that Australia cannot afford to lose another decade “to brawling and name-calling”. Continue reading...

Deputy premier says the state’s coal-fired power stations will be among the last to close in the nation, despite 2050 zero emissions targetQueensland’s plan to slash carbon pollution would generate “ongoing discussion” about shutting coal-fired power stations, despite expert advice that the need for closures was more than a decade away, the deputy premier, Jackie Trad, has said.While the Palaszczuk government was determined to drive Queensland’s transformation from Australia’s biggest carbon polluter to a zero net emitter by 2050, it would rely for now on the economics of renewable energy and the “goodwill and leadership of industry” where national political leaders had failed, she said. Continue reading...

An ambush by local rebel forces led to five deaths in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, while another ranger died in VirungaFour Congolese park rangers and one porter have been killed in an ambush in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

En Guatemala está uno de los mayores depósitos de plata del mundo; a sus dueños canadienses les proporciona millones de dólares, pero para los campesinos locales pone en peligro sus tierras y, a veces, sus vidasLean esta historia en inglés A grandes profundidades, enterrado en las exuberantes colinas del sur de Guatemala, se encuentra un verdadero tesoro: toneladas de plata que forman uno de los mayores depósitos del mundo.Sin embargo, lo verdaderamente peligroso sucede en la superficie. En una carretera polvorienta, aproximadamente 50 campesinos rezan en círculo, una especie de barricada para que no pasen los camiones que se dirigen a la mina. La policía ya los ha dispersado por la fuerza con gases lacrimógenos. Ahora tienen miedo de que llegue el ejército. Continue reading...

Stop obsessing with how personally green you live – and start collectively taking on corporate powerWould you advise someone to flap towels in a burning house? To bring a flyswatter to a gunfight? Yet the counsel we hear on climate change could scarcely be more out of sync with the nature of the crisis.The email in my inbox last week offered thirty suggestions to green my office space: use reusable pens, redecorate with light colours, stop using the elevator. Continue reading...

Each shed here contains 42,000 chickens. The conditions are all in line with government regulations, but there are around 17 birds per square metreIn a valley in rural Herefordshire, near the village of Kington, four industrial sheds lie partly covered in trees, with an apple orchard on the approach. From the top of the hill there is no odour, but nearer to the sheds – 100m long by 20m wide, with 42,000 chickens in each – the sweetish, sickly smell is overpowering. The broiler chickens, grown for meat, are stocked at around 17 birds per square metre. Birds are packed as far as the eye can see within the buildings, making it impossible to see the floor.

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Exclusive: US-style intensive factory farming of poultry, pigs and cattle is sweeping across the British countryside – raising concerns over animal cruelty

I propose that people take indefensible positions like climate denial and Trump support simply out of fear

The Havasupai are attempting to fight back against the operation of a uranium mine that they say could contaminate their sole water sourceEd Tilousi knelt down next to the crystal-clear turquoise creek. The only sounds were the gurgling of the current and the sawing of cicadas in a pecan nut tree as the hot sun made the red rock canyon walls towering above him glow. Continue reading...

Sandsend, North Yorkshire It’s not a jellyfish but a ctenophore, one of a group thought to be more than 500m years oldClose to dead calm on the Yorkshire hem of the North Sea today. The waves are barely 10cm high and the water is so clear that, standing knee-deep between each half-hearted surge, I can see sand grains shifting on the bottom.

A rare sighting of a red-backed shrike, notorious for its habit of impaling its victims in a grisly larderThe first sign of autumn appeared the moment we arrived. A spotted redshank, resplendent in its dusky breeding plumage, stopping off on my Somerset coastal patch as it headed south from its Arctic nesting grounds.But the start of July is far too early for any songbird migrants. So along with my companion Daniel, whom I met on our very first day at grammar school, almost half a century ago, I simply enjoyed the fine weather, and its associated marbled white and meadow brown butterflies. Continue reading...

A Victorian garden sensation has become a sensational invasive nuisance. Contact with its toxic sap causes burns and blisters that can take months to healIt’s a monster towering up to 20ft tall, leaves spreading out like giant hands and flowers arranged in clusters the size of dinner plates. This is the giant hogweed, and the tabloids have been running alarming headlines recently, claiming an explosion in numbers of “Britain’s most dangerous plant” is creating havoc as it spreads in the hot weather this summer.In reality, the plant only spreads by seed, each plant producing up to 50,000 seeds released from late August onwards and cast into the wind or water. But the giant hogweed is undoubtedly a dangerous plant, armed with highly toxic sap and just brushing past it with bare skin is enough to cause painful skin burns, which blister when exposed to ultraviolet rays in daylight, and can take months to heal. Even years afterwards the skin remains sensitive to sunlight. Continue reading...

Report suggests surface water and groundwater should not be used in some instances and warns against fracking during wet seasonResidents, environmentalists and pastoralists have welcomed a “balanced” report on fracking in the Northern Territory, which identified a number of risks associated with the industry and a loss of community trust.The NT government enacted a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the NT when it took office in August, establishing an inquiry to examine if it could be done safely, following concerted campaigning by Indigenous land owners, pastoralists and environmentalists. Continue reading...

Inside the Lancashire protest camp aiming to disrupt new Cuadrilla wells with direct action tacticsIt is a battle that has gone on for years, pitting tireless local residents and environmentalists against a major gas exploration company hoping to get rich – and solve a future energy crisis – by fracking under the Fylde coast.Last October the government overruled Lancashire county council and gave Cuadrilla the green light to begin drilling, but anti-fracking activists have refused to give up their fight. Continue reading...

The UK’s first commercial geothermal plant could come online as soon as 2020 – research suggests the technology generate a fifth of the nation’s powerA pioneering project to produce power from hot rocks several kilometres under the ground in Cornwall will begin drilling early next year, if a multimillion-pound fundraising drive succeeds.Abundance, a crowdfunding platform overseen by the main City regulator, will this week launch a bond to raise £5m for the UK’s first commercial geothermal power station, located near Redruth. Continue reading...

Around Yellowstone national park, mining companies anticipate the end of the Obama-era moratorium, but local businesses are fighting back

The Founder and chair of the Virgin Group speaks during a panel discussion in New York on Friday and says the threat of climate change actually offers ‘one of the great opportunities for this world’. Branson urges the business sector to step forward and ‘fill certain gaps that some governments are leaving behind’ in tackling the problem

Britain is an international leader in animal welfare and now, fortunately, the message is beginning to spread – importantly to ChinaAnimal welfare is one of the UK’s most successful exports. When the late Peter Roberts, a Hampshire dairy farmer, founded the charity Compassion in World Farming (ciwf.org.uk) 50 years ago, he rightly feared that industrialised farming would wreak havoc on animals and the planet. Even he couldn’t have envisaged today’s numbers: 70 billion animals are reared globally for meat, milk and eggs each year and two thirds of farm animals are reared intensively. We call it factory farming. The mission of CIWF is to bring it to a halt.The concept of animal welfare didn’t have an equivalent in Mandarin or Cantonese. Continue reading...

Exotic tropical species being mis-sold to British customers who can’t tell their mackerel from their herring, research showsSushi bars and shops are regularly mis-selling exotic species of fish to unwitting British customers, according to new research.In cases cited in the report, customers thought they were buying a fish from the Atlantic when it was really a tropical variety, while many fish were sold under a generic name that revealed little about where they came from. Some of the species were endangered, while others were so rare that little was known about their population size. The findings suggest that an increasingly complex and globalised food supply chain is open to abuse, putting exotic species at risk. Continue reading...

Simultaneous harvest failures in key regions would bring global famine, says the Met OfficeGovernments may be seriously underestimating the risks of crop disasters occurring in major farming regions around the world, a study by British researchers has found.The newly published research, by Met Office scientists, used advanced climate modelling to show that extreme weather events could devastate food production if they occurred in several key areas at the same time. Such an outcome could trigger widespread famine. Continue reading...

Readers document the rising environmental crisis of plastic waste, as the planet struggles to cope with a million plastic bottles being sold every minute

Bratley View, New Forest The distinct click had been a seed pod twisting and firing its tiny black seeds into the distanceClick. The sound is distinct. A black speck flashes across my vision. I straighten up and think about the two. There can be no doubt what they were, but I am sensorially confused. Which had I actually experienced first? The click, or the speck?At that moment, I had been adjusting the settings on my camera to try to catch the pink of the clump of common centaury that was looking radiant at the edge of an parched path. I give up on that for the time being, and linger by the gorse bushes in the hope that there will be a repeat performance, and I will solve the puzzle. Though I wait, and later walk some distance through an extensive gorse brake following a route marked out by the ponies, the plants refuse an encore.

Prime minister says those who think coal has no future are delusional, as Barnaby Joyce calls on party members to get behind TurnbullThe prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, says his government has done more in this past year than the Coalition did in the previous three under the leadership of Tony Abbott.He has also mounted a defence of coal-powered electricity, saying those who think the resource does not have a future are “delusional”. Continue reading...

New reporting rules seem to represent a big win for the campaign by the mining sector and conservative politicians to stifle environmental advocacyThe environment department has recently begun sending letters to conservation groups registered as eligible for tax deductible donations, as they do every year. But this year the correspondence is different, in a disturbing way.

Letter writers share their stories of picking up litter and offer suggestions how others might be encouraged to follow their leadIn our village, we have seen both the potential and the limitations of people-led efforts to tackle litter (Letters, 13 July). The parish council and the local transition village group have worked together to both inform people about the wider environmental problems of litter, especially plastic, and to develop a network of individuals who have undertaken to keep specific roads or areas free of litter. Volunteers were provided with good-quality litter pickers (available from the Keep Britain Tidy campaign) and gloves, and a map was put up in the parish office showing the areas covered.The results have been fantastic: lots of volunteers mean that most of the village is litter-free most of the time. I am sure that Wendy Harvey’s hope that the sight of people picking up litter raises awareness and discourages (but doesn’t stop) others from dropping litter. A campaign at the local secondary school, has undoubtedly contributed as well. Continue reading...

Across the world, environmental protesters, like those in Lancashire, are putting their bodies on the line. In the future we will remember them as heroes

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox Continue reading...

If you’ve spotted a butterfly in the UK, and have been lucky enough to take a photograph of it, we’d like you to share your experience with usMore than three quarters of the UK’s butterflies have declined in the last 40 years, but some reports say this is an unusually good year for butterflies.

Eurasian wolf cubs, a wreathed hornbill and an elephant crossing the road are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

Cada semana muere por causas violentas una media de cuatro ecologistas, guardas forestales y dirigentes indígenas, y en todo el mundo crece la sensación de que “cualquiera puede matar a los defensores del medio ambiente sin sufrir las consecuencias”Lean esta historia en inglésEl año pasado fue el más peligroso de la historia para las personas que defienden las tierras de su comunidad, los recursos naturales y la fauna; las últimas investigaciones revelan que cada semana mueren asesinados casi cuatro defensores del medio ambiente en todo el mundo.En 2016 murieron 200 ecologistas, guardas forestales y dirigentes indígenas que intentaban defender sus tierras, según el grupo de vigilancia Global Witness, más del doble de los asesinados hace cinco años. Continue reading...

Solving our ecological crises means diluting the power of global corporations – not propping them upThe circular economy’s June jamboree in Finland, attended by around 1,500 experts and policymakers, showed just how much momentum the concept has gained in recent years.Little wonder. The circular economy model – which aims to use closed-loop production to keep resources in play for as long as possible – is presented as a pragmatic, win-win solution; an almost magical fix for our environmental woes.

Three states and ACT to ask Australian Energy Markets Commission to do further work on implementing central plank of Finkel reviewQueensland, Victoria, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory have taken the first step towards proceeding unilaterally with a new clean energy target, but the federal energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, insists the federal government will not be rushed.

Move comes after Gabriel Resources sues government for $4.4bn over failed bid to establish goldmine in Apuseni mountains

Annual Big Butterfly Count urges wildlife lovers to help assess whether the insects are really returning to gardens this summerClouds of butterflies have been sighted in southern Britain this summer but wildlife lovers are being urged to help scientifically assess whether our insects are really bouncing back by joining the world’s largest butterfly survey. Continue reading...

Australia’s two largest supermarket chains say they will stop using lightweight plastic bags and will offer reusable bags insteadSingle-use plastic bags will phased out from Woolworths and Coles stores across Australia.Woolworth Group announced on Friday morning that stores Australia-wide would phased out the use of plastic bags by July 2018. Continue reading...

Ventnor Botanic Garden, Isle of Wight A balmy microclimate and a scrubland habitat support Britain’s oldest colony of wall lizardsIn mainland Britain the common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis) is considered an alien species, and concerns have been raised that competition from this robust and agile continental reptile may be hastening the decline of our rare native sand lizard (Lacerta agilis).The Isle of Wight colony is the longest established population of wall lizards in Britain and a celebrated part of the island’s fauna, though its origin is hotly debated. It is believed that in the 1920s there were deliberate releases of the reptile, though local legend has it that they are descendants of survivors from a shipwreck off Bonchurch. Continue reading...

Victoria and South Australia have suggested a states-led initiative if the federal government continues to stall on a clean energy target. Could it work?Australian states exasperated by federal government inaction on the key Finkel review recommendation of a clean energy target have indicated they might band together and go it alone if the federal Coalition does not provide the required leadership.Before Friday’s meeting of energy ministers, for which the federal government refused to put a CET on the agenda, Labor-led Victoria and South Australia called for consideration of a linked-up state-based scheme, and urged Coalition-led NSW to join up. Given recent comments by the NSW energy minister, Don Harwin, who indicated support for the CET, such a move seems plausible. Continue reading...

Royal Academy of Engineering report backs increased use of biofuels but says more should come from waste rather than food cropsBiofuel use needs to increase to help fight climate change as liquid fuels will be needed by aircraft and ships for many decades to come, finds a new report requested by the UK government.The Royal Academy of Engineering report says, however, that some biofuels, such as diesel made from food crops, have led to more emissions than those produced by the fossil fuels they were meant to replace. Instead, the report says, rising biofuel production should make more use of waste, such as used cooking oil and timber. Continue reading...

Italian company plans to drill four exploration wells in the Arctic, which some say will endanger polar bears, bowhead whales and other marine mammalsAn Italian multinational oil and gas company has received permission to move ahead with drilling plans in federal waters off Alaska which environmental campaigners say will endanger polar bears, bowhead whales and other marine mammals.Late on Wednesday, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced conditional approval of an exploratory drilling plan submitted by a US susbsidiary of the company, Eni. Continue reading...

US and French presidents appear to want to put aside differences on climate change and cooperate on Syria and terrorismDonald Trump has made a gushing show of friendship to the French leader, Emmanuel Macron, saying the two countries had an “unbreakable bond” , pledging to draw up a road map for post-conflict Syria, and asserting that the two leaders could work together despite clear differences on climate change.