Member states approve changes, including €12bn innovation fund, to emissions plan for cleaner technology and pollution cutsAn overhaul of the EU’s flagship trading scheme for cutting carbon emissions by European industries has been approved by the member states.The agreement to reform the emissions trading system comes after almost two years’ of discussions but just two weeks after the European parliament voted in favour of a new directive. Continue reading...

Of course the unacceptable levels of air pollution in our cities is an issue that central and local government must urgently tackle (Report, 25 February). However, the elephant in the room is that millions of city dwellers routinely make unnecessary car journeys and they need to accept their responsibility and switch to alternative means of transport. Ironically, those children at London schools and nurseries you highlight are often being poisoned by their own parents’ vehicles and those of their classmates’ parents on the school run. I walk my children the mile to their school, while most of their friends are driven through the traffic-choked streets. It takes about the same time, but those families have contributed to the toxicity of the air and have done no exercise.

I am completely appalled to read that an organisation that is supposed to promote wildlife and nature in this country should be recruiting volunteers to kill the UK’s grey squirrels in the north (Thousands of volunteers wanted to save red squirrel, 24 February).This diminishes the ethos of the Wildlife Trusts. I do not believe that the culling process can ever be made humane and the idea of bludgeoning squirrels to death is barbaric. In addition I fear that the cull will need to be extended to all of the UK’s regions to prevent replenishment of culled areas by southern squirrels. The enhanced transmissibility of the squirrel pox virus among red squirrels suggests the solution should be to work to increase their resistance to this disease, rather than trying to eliminate it in its entirety by culling grey squirrels in case they harbour it. Continue reading...

RSPB, ClientEarth and FoE launch judicial review of Ministry of Justice’s change to costs cap already criticised by UN and peersLegal challenges to government air pollution standards or to the expansion of Heathrow airport have become too risky financially to pursue under new court regulations, environmental groups are warning.Changes to cost protection orders brought in by the Ministry of Justice from Tuesday will expose campaign groups to prohibitive costs running into potentially millions of pounds, and deter them from bringing important cases, it is claimed. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Plan also targets local air and noise pollution but critics say long-term solutions to environmental challenges are no closer to realityThe huge growth in flights from Heathrow’s planned new runway could be carbon neutral, according to an ambition revealed by the airport.

Boxes to carry sticker stating hens were kept in barns amid bird flu restrictions – though shoppers will still pay premium priceOn Shrove Tuesday, the biggest egg-buying day of the year, UK consumers are being warned that eggs branded as free range have actually been laid by housed hens because of emergency measures to combat the spread of bird flu.All free-range egg boxes will carry a sticker explaining that the box contains “eggs laid by hens temporarily housed in barns for their welfare”. Continue reading...

Critics say public information film shows Shell ‘understood the threat was dire, potentially existential for civilisation, more than a quarter of a century ago’• ‘Shell knew’: oil giant’s 1991 film warned of climate change dangerClimate change “at a rate faster than at any time since the end of the ice age – change too fast perhaps for life to adapt, without severe dislocation”. That was the startling warning issued by the oil giant Shell more than a quarter of a century ago.The company’s farsighted 1991 film, titled Climate of Concern, set out with crystal clarity how the world was warming and that serious consequences could well result. Continue reading...

Public information film unseen for years shows Shell had clear grasp of global warming 26 years ago but has not acted accordingly since, say critics

Exclusive: Milk will carry Pasture Promise logo indicating cows grazed for 180 days and nights and farmers were offered fair priceA supermarket chain is to be the first major UK retailer to sell “free range” milk – from cows that have been kept outside for at least six months of the year – after consumers said they wanted to be able to buy tasty milk that gives a better deal to farmers.Asda will from Wednesday exclusively sell the new milk, which will carry a Pasture Promise logo, indicating that it comes from animals grazed for at least 180 days and nights a year and also offers farmers a fair price. The label could eventually be extended to cheese and other dairy products made from free range milk. Continue reading...

European countries using deposit return schemes, such as Estonia, have recycling rates far better than the UKMore firms are expected to announce bottle deposit return services after Coca-Cola unexpectedly came out in favour of the idea.Pepsi, Nestlé, Unilever and M&S have already committed to producing more eco-friendly bottles by using plant-based materials or less plastic, and an uptick in that trend could now be on the cards. Continue reading...

Blanchland Moor, Northumberland Strutting and posturing, the grouse makes it clear that this is his territoryOn shallow puddles, delicate fans of ice dissolve under the morning sun as we follow the sandy track over Blanchland Moor. These heather uplands, now every tone of brown from straw to sepia, fill the eye with purple every August.

As the Great Barrier Reef faces the return of coral bleaching, why are Mantra, Accor and Marriott still silent on Adani?According to a blog post on the home page of the tourism giant Mantra Group, a “family holiday in Queensland would be incomplete without a visit to the beautiful Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef system in the world”.Which raises the question, why isn’t the Mantra Group – one of Australia’s largest hotel and resort operators, with more than $8bn in asset management including a string of resorts in north Queensland – vociferous in demanding action to save the reef? Continue reading...

Ai Group report warns steep price rises will become ‘the new normal’ based on declining coal-fired generation and gas production shortagesThe “staggering” increase in energy costs faced by households and businesses will continue thanks to rising gas prices, putting jobs in jeopardy, according to the Australian Industry Group.Warning that last year’s steep price rises are set to become “the new normal”, the Ai Group says in a report on Tuesday that the complexities of the gas market have combined with a decline in coal-fired power generation to produce a perfect storm for consumers. Continue reading...

Shoppers may be forced to forgo nut or pay more after warnings of second year of diminished cropThe price of brazil nuts could rise by more than a fifth after low rainfall hit production in Bolivia where more than half the global crop is grown.The wholesale price of the large curved nut, which is popular for snacking and in muesli, has already risen by more than a quarter to $4.80 a pound (£8.50 a kilogramme) since August after a poor harvest in 2016.

Rangers lost their lives in Kenya, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and IndiaEight wildlife rangers have lost their lives in four separate countries, in a week that highlighted the numerous hazards rangers face in protecting the world’s wild lands and species.

How worrying are the nitrogen dioxide levels at your child’s school?Tens of thousands of children at more than 800 schools, nurseries and colleges in London are being exposed to illegal levels of air pollution that risk causing lifelong health problems.

As with all such lists, the 300 ‘scientists’ badly lack climate expertise

British public support for ethical label lifts sales of Fairtrade goods for the first time since 2013Sales of Fairtrade goods have risen for the first time since 2013 as the increasing popularity of bananas and coffee sold under the ethical label offset falling sales of cocoa and sugar.Revenues from produce overseen by the Fairtrade Foundation body, which guarantees a minimum price to farmers and additional payments for use on social projects such as schools or clean water provision, rose 2% to £1.64bn in the UK last year. Continue reading...

As Pakistan seeks to address its power crisis by mining coal, villagers in the Thar desert are fighting to prevent state acquisition of their ancestral land

Clean Energy Finance Corporation says project would need to be indemnified against future risk of carbon price being introducedThe Clean Energy Finance Corporation was approached last Friday by proponents of a new $1.2bn coal-fired power station with carbon capture and storage technology – but officials have cast significant doubt about whether such a project could ultimately proceed.

Government bypasses independent nomination panel to announce Vanessa Guthrie for vacancyThe Coalition has handpicked Western Australian mining lobbyist Vanessa Guthrie to sit on the ABC board, bypassing the independent nomination panel.Guthrie is the chair of the Minerals Council of Australia and until December was managing director of uranium developer Toro Energy. Continue reading...

Fiskavaig, Skye This huge island is a complication of landscapes, and on its west coast you walk the divide between them allThe lady had drawn a map to direct me to the beach: there it was, easy enough, but where a road continued off the edge she’d inscribed an arrow, and the words “end of the world”. Curious, I follow the road off her map, past ancient rusting crofts on to a ribbon of singletrack, to where it stops. A knoll stands beyond a sheep gate and I climb it.

Heavy rain during usually dry summer months causes landslides and flooding, leaving three dead and 19 missingMillions of people are without water after heavy rains struck Chile over the weekend during the country’s usually dry summer months, leaving three people dead and at least 19 missing.The rains, which caused rivers to overflow their banks in mountain valleys near Chile’s capital, Santiago, had isolated 373 people, the Onemi emergency service said late on Sunday. Continue reading...

An integrated energy grid could monitor power shortfalls, predict demand and respond accordingly, according to experts, although data will need to be sharedFor South Australia, it was a cruelly ironic one-two punch – a burst of the extreme heat conditions that are so much more likely because of climate change, and a power cut linked to a simultaneous drop in wind that hobbled the renewable energy systems introduced to minimise global warming in the first place.

Originally published in the Guardian on 27 February 1967THE CAIRNGORMS: It didn’t seem at all strange to discover a bedraggled reindeer sheltering from the storm just inside the entrance to the chair-lift the other day, for the wind was like a knife and the ski-runs like tilted ice-rinks. Of course, he might have merely come in for the company – you could see his fellows higher up the snowbound hillside – or he might have been hoping for a chance of something more succulent than the frozen heather roots these creatures seem to live on. But he wasn’t very friendly, responding to a cautious stroking by an angry swing of the head, so I left him standing disconsolate near the ticket office and looking as if he’d lost both Father Christmas and his sledge. I suppose they’re harmless enough although a notice farther down the mountain warns “Beware of Reindeer,” but doesn’t explain why. These were the only wild life we saw in the hills during a wild week, except for the ptarmigan in their white winter plumage hurrying through the snow, and once a handsome pheasant strutting across the track through the Rothiemurchus pines. Indeed, there were days, so fierce the winds, when these popular slopes were even deserted by the humans who normally at this time of year swarm like ants, and one day, especially, when I seemed quite alone in the mountains. Ski-ing that day was out of the question – you needed ice-axe and crampons just to get across the runs – and the wind so strong on the plateau it took you all your time to avoid being blown over the edge. But down by Loch Morlich in the late afternoon the wind suddenly dropped for half an hour, and there was the quiet splendour of purpling hills and a foreground of silvered loch with the birches and pines showing black against a golden sunset like a Chinese painting. Continue reading...

If the third warmest January on record occurred during a La Niña event, scientists are asking what El Niño has in storeRight now south-eastern Australia is having an unbearable summer. Temperatures in Sydney have regularly been in the upper 30s in recent weeks, while inland areas have had several days in the mid-40s.January was the hottest month on record for Sydney since 1859, and the persistent warmth into February (with many places topping 35C day after day) may topple the New South Wales record of 50 hot days in a row. Continue reading...

More than 3.5m of the invasive rodents live in Britain, and their presence is harming the welfare of their native red cousins. Luckily, HRH has a cunning plan to reduce their numbers

Campaigners write to chancellor to urge him to end tax breaks and bring in scheme to encourage switch to greener carsMinisters are coming under growing pressure to remove tax incentives for diesel cars and offer compensation to motorists so they can swap to more environmentally friendly vehicles.A group of medical professionals, environmental campaigners and lawyers has written to the chancellor ahead of the budget to demand a change to the vehicle excise duty that they say subsidises diesel cars. Continue reading...

A cottage industry is growing around new technology for solar power developers to design, build and operate solar farms to help compete with fossil fuel power

South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner is urged to investigate ‘repressive’ arrests as CPS drops chargesSouth Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner has been urged to investigate the “repressive” arrests of campaigners in the battle against tree-felling in Sheffield.The call came after prosecutors dropped charges against two protesters who were arrested while trying to save a 100-year-old tree in November. Continue reading...

Complaints about ‘green crap’ have been a convenient excuse for governments unable or unwilling to intervene and cap suppliers’ pricesLast week, photographs of wind turbines were once again juxtaposed with headlines about rising energy prices. The cause on this occasion was no less pre-eminent a body than a Lords committee, comprising former chancellor Norman Lamont and other heavyweight peers.“To reduce carbon emissions, governments have subsidised renewables, passing on the cost to consumers in their electricity bills. The average domestic electricity bill was 58% higher in 2016 than it was in 2003,” the economic affairs committee said in its report on energy policy. Continue reading...

The salad shortage focused attention on the failures of our 24/7 dietary culture. But it also provides a chance to rethink the way we eat fresh fruit, veg and green leavesI’m afraid the lettuce shortage was just the tip of the iceberg. We may have run low on salad leaves but, more worryingly, we were low on empathy for poor southern Spain where flash floods followed by snow wrecked the crop. Our relentless consumer-rights focus meant that the emphasis was clearly on “weather-related supply challenges”, supermarket speak for “My God, we are running out of salad!” Sustaining a dietary culture of 24/7 access to all fresh fruit and veg in all seasons was never going to be easy.A packed salad uses at least 10 times more energy than a local lettuce Continue reading...

Fuel and the future – how coal can compete with oil There have been reports of late of increased activity in the coal trade. Those qualified to judge have rightly warned the public against facile optimism. The Continental orders are the result of the abnormal weather. They are not a sign that the old trade is coming back. It will never come back, because the conditions which created it have ceased to exist.But the last few days have also brought two items of news really suggestive of a turn of the tide. If coal is to compete with oil it must do one or both of two things. It must alter its form so that it may rival oil in convenience of handling, or it must alter its substance so as to yield up the oil which it contains. Both aims have been assiduously pursued by experiment, and the results are at last beginning to admit of commercial exploitation. Continue reading...

Head of the EPA told the conservative audience they would be ‘justified’ in believing the environmental regulator should be completely disbanded

Scientists at Vatican conference are searching for a solution to the manmade ‘major extinction event’One in five species on Earth now faces extinction, and that will rise to 50% by the end of the century unless urgent action is taken. That is the stark view of the world’s leading biologists, ecologists and economists who will gather on Monday to determine the social and economic changes needed to save the planet’s biosphere.“The living fabric of the world is slipping through our fingers without our showing much sign of caring,” say the organisers of the Biological Extinction conference held at the Vatican this week. Continue reading...

When Common Agricultural Policy payments come to an end, what will they be replaced with? And what should that be spent on?Compared to most industries subject to the ups and downs of global markets, farming is a cottage industry. Where mining has a few operators dominating the scene, agriculture involves thousands of producers in each country.That simple fact works against the high levels of investment agriculture minister Andrea Leadsom would like to see in the run-up to a hard Brexit. Continue reading...

Achvaneran, Highlands The tracks went straight down the garden, through the fence and over the burn with one leap. It knew where it was goingThe previous night’s snowfall had been just right for tracking: about 4cm at dusk, then no more until after light. So I was out early and picked up the first tracks under the beech tree at the bottom of the garden, a stoat. It had been quartering the ground, hunting, but did not make a kill until it reached the large pond. There the tracks suddenly veered; a leap sideways and a few specks of blood on the snow revealed where it had taken its prey, probably a mouse or vole.Related: Daylight encounter hungry pine marten Continue reading...

Transport secretary recommends low-emission cars after it emerges that thousands of children breathing toxic airDrivers should “think long and hard” before buying a diesel car and instead consider purchasing a low-emission vehicle, the transport secretary has said, as the government considers a strategy to tackle air pollution.Chris Grayling’s intervention took place as the Guardian revealed that tens of thousands of London’s children were attending schools in areas with levels of toxic air in breach of EU legal limits. The minister also said the government had a legal duty to cut emissions of nitrogen oxide from diesel cars, which account for four in 10 vehicles on British roads, after a high court ruling in November ordered the authorities to reduce levels of the toxic fume in the “shortest possible time”. Continue reading...

Treasury confirms companies would be able to claim tax deduction for expenses incurred from cleaning up pollutionAustralian taxpayers will be forced to subsidise the clean-up costs of oil spills in the Great Australian Bight thanks to the terms of the controversial petroleum resource rent tax.

Squirrel cull | Housebuilding | PPE and LSE | More leftovers | La La LandThe easiest way to protect the red squirrel (Report, 24 February) is for us to eat the grey ones. The latter are too plentiful and should be easy to trap. Many of us have no problem eating rabbits, so the greys could be a cheap addition to our diet. The bird population would also benefit from a cull of these pests. So, Delia, could we please have a recipe for écureuil à la bourguignonne?

A jaguar killing an anteater, a green tree python and the winner of the underwater photographer of the year are among this week’s images from the natural world Continue reading...

Exclusive: 802 schools, nurseries and colleges are in areas where levels of nitrogen dioxide breach EU legal limitsTens of thousands of children at more than 800 schools, nurseries and colleges in London are being exposed to illegal levels of air pollution that risk causing lifelong health problems, the Guardian can disclose.A study identifies 802 educational institutions where pupils as young as three are being exposed to levels of nitrogen dioxide that breach EU legal limits and which the government accepts are harmful to health. Continue reading...

Shortly before the close of voting the Brimmon oak, for which a bypass was relocated, is close behind a Polish oak and a Czech lime treeIt is old, squat, and bent a bypass. Now an ancient oak saved from being destroyed by a new road has become the first British tree with a cracking chance of winning the European Tree of the Year competition.The Brimmon oak led the contest in the early stages, polling more than 10,000 votes. Three days before the end of the voting period, the Welsh tree was in third place, just behind the hot favourite, an oak tree from Poland, and a lime tree in the Czech Republic. Continue reading...

Committee urges new energy commission that would prioritise low energy bills and security rather than low carbon emissionsMinisters should establish a new energy commission to spur on construction of power stations because successive governments have failed to encourage enough fresh power capacity in the UK, according to a House of Lords report.Subsidy-backed growth in renewable energy projects, such as windfarms, has deterred the construction of new conventional power plants, the economic affairs committee claimed. Continue reading...

The Oceans Melting Greenland project is taking important measurements to determine how fast sea levels will rise

National Employment Savings Trust to move investments into new climate change fund and scale back shares in firms such as Shell and ExxonMobil

Liberal MP calls for RET to be frozen and immigration to be explicitly linked to issue of housing affordabilityThe chairman of the Turnbull government’s backbench environment and energy committee has backed Tony Abbott’s call to wind back the renewable energy target, and cut the immigration rate to boost housing affordability.

Wildlife Trusts’ biggest-ever recruitment drive will see volunteers monitor populations, educate children – and bludgeon grey squirrels to deathAn army of 5,000 volunteers is being sought to save the red squirrel from extinction by monitoring populations, educating children – and bludgeoning grey squirrels to death.The Wildlife Trusts’ biggest-ever recruitment drive is focused on areas of northern England, north Wales and Northern Ireland where invasive grey squirrels first introduced by the Victorians are driving the retreating red squirrel population to extinction. Continue reading...