NSW central coast schoolboy, aged 10, was given 12 vials of antivenom after he was bitten by a male spider hiding in a shoeA 10-year-old NSW central coast boy is lucky to be alive after a deadly funnel web spider bite necessitated what is believed to be the largest dose of antivenom administered in Australian history.Matthew Mitchell was rushed to Gosford hospital after he was bitten on the finger by the male funnel web, which was hiding inside a shoe, on Monday. Continue reading...

New report to UN world heritage committee criticises Australia’s lack of planning in dealing with effects of climate changeThe Great Barrier Reef faces an “elevated and imminent risk” of more widespread coral bleaching this year, the reef authority has warned the Queensland government.An alert from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says more of the reef is showing built-up heat stress than this time last year, just before its worst-ever bleaching event killed off a quarter of all coral. Continue reading...

The small island’s energy makeover took less than a decade and was spurred on by local commitment, providing a template for how regional Australia could transition to renewablesAnyone doubting the potential of renewable energy need look no further than the Danish island of Samsø. The 4,000-inhabitant island nestled in the Kattegat Sea has been energy-positive for the past decade, producing more energy from wind and biomass than it consumes.

Armed occupation brought an anticlimactic and forlorn end to the camp, which had been home to thousands of activists opposing the Dakota Access pipeline

Union tells Senate inquiry there must be plans in place to attract jobs before mines or power stations closeThe manufacturing union has called for governments to hand over land and tax concessions to industry to provide the support to save the sector in the transition from coal.Steve McCartney, the state secretary of the Australian Manufacturers Workers Union in Western Australia, called on the Senate environment and communications references committee to ensure governments have a plan for alternative industries.

UK academics say introduction of herpes virus could also cause ‘catastrophic ecosystem crashes’ in AustraliaScientists in Britain have raised concerns about Australia’s $15m plan to release a herpes virus in the nation’s largest river system to eradicate carp, saying it poses a serious risk to global food security, could cause “catastrophic ecosystem crashes” in Australia, and is unlikely to control carp numbers long term.In a letter published in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal this week, University of East Anglia researchers Dr Jackie Lighten and Prof Cock van Oosterhout say the “irreversible high-risk proposal” could have “serious ecological, environmental, and economic ramifications.” Continue reading...

It’s worth asking who exactly would benefit from Andrea Leadsom’s suggestion that farmers should replace workers with robots (Farmers deliver stark warning over access to EU seasonal workers, 22 February; Letters, 23 February). Not the farmers, who would lose the freedom to exploit their workers while any cost savings associated with the robots would be swallowed up by competition and the supermarkets’ hold over the supply chains. Not the workers, who would lose their jobs, with nothing similar to go to. Not consumers, who would remain at the mercy of the supermarkets’ cynical “price wars”. Ah, I’ve got it: it must be the bankers, who have lent the farmers the money to buy the robots. The secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs used to work in banking, I believe.

Bumblebees can learn how to manoeuvre a ball by watching others carry out the task, researchers from Queen Mary University of London have discovered. Bees have already been shown to be able to learn how to pull on strings, push caps and even rotate a lever to access food. The Queen Mary study shows that bees are better at problem-solving than was previously thought Continue reading...

Macquarie insists it is committed to renewable energy – but critics say it could invest in fossil fuels if its bid succeedsThe Australian investment bank on the verge of buying the UK’s publicly owned Green Investment Bank has launched a Westminster charm offensive after parliamentarians of all parties told Theresa May to halt the £2bn sale.Green party co-leader Caroline Lucas, the Lib Dems’ Vince Cable and former Tory minister Gregory Barker last month warned that a sale to Macquarie would put the bank’s green purpose at risk and its most valuable assets, such as large windfarms, could be sold off. Continue reading...

New study reveals negative impact of climate change, human activity, acidification and deoxygenation on ocean and its creaturesThe deep ocean and the creatures that live there are facing a desperate future due to food shortages and changing temperatures, according to research exploring the impact of climate change and human activity on the world’s seas.The deep ocean plays a critical role in sustaining our fishing and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as being home to a huge array of creatures. But the new study reveals that food supplies at the seafloor in the deepest regions of the ocean could fall by up to 55% by 2100, starving the animals and microbes that exist there, while changes in temperature, pH and oxygen levels are also predicted to take their toll on fragile ecosystems. Continue reading...

Sandy Bedfordshire In an aerial tussle one raptor attacked from above until its opponent dropped so low it was groundedBy lunchtime the skies over rural Bedfordshire had become an arrivals and departures board. Thin white slashes criss-crossing the blue trailed over the horizon towards Barcelona, Rome and Salzburg. The 11.25 to Katowice had dissipated into a wispy smudge. Then, an intense arrowhead, like a cursor on a computer screen, might have been the 12.20 from Barcelona entering our airspace.Birds of prey do not arrive; they simply appear in the sky, as if they had been lowered from heaven. So it was that three red kites came into view out of nowhere. Continue reading...

Market regulator urgently requested aluminium smelter reduce electricity use as demand surged alongside temperaturesGas-fired power plants failed during this month’s New South Wales heatwave, forcing authorities to urgently cut demand from the Tomago aluminium smelter to prevent outages.The record-breaking heat put enormous strain on NSW’s electricity supply on Friday, 10 February, when demand peaked at 4.30pm at 14,181MW.

MPs say ministers are not doing enough to demonstrate how third runway would meet obligations on noise and air qualityThe government is set to “water down” limits on aviation emissions and is shifting targets to meet its pledge to mitigate the environmental impact of expanding Heathrow, MPs have said.The cross-party environmental audit committee said ministers were not doing enough to demonstrate a third Heathrow runway could be built without breaching laws on air quality and carbon emissions. Continue reading...

Pilot program will allow homeowners to tap into a network of ‘virtual’ power stations made up of smart grids of rooftop solar and batteriesAustralian homeowners with solar panels and batteries could soon trade their electricity in a digital marketplace developed by a consortium of electricity providers, energy tech startups, energy retailers and energy agencies.The Distributed Energy Exchange – or deX – was launched on Thursday with the promise to “change the way energy is produced, traded and consumed at a local level in Australia”. Continue reading...

Rafael Behr (The ‘left behind’ cliche is an excuse for political failure, 22 February) needs to go beyond castigating the complacency of the major parties with regard to their “safe” constituencies and voters. Yes, we do need to listen – but to which voices? There is a cacophony of reasons why people voted Brexit: poor job opportunities, ever weakening health provision, unaffordable housing, loss of sovereignty; no single cluster of these represents “the” reason why Brexit received a narrow plus vote last June. However, the main cause of these issues – as well as of many misplaced concerns about immigration – is the overly commercial/economic approach to globalisation that has driven financial growth above social benefit. Since the 2008 financial crisis, absolute standards of living for many people around the world have declined, and the disparity of reward between ordinary working people and those at the top of the economic tree has grown exponentially; and this was a key factor why voters in the referendum did not play according to the “rules” of politics.But globalisation need not be solely about trade and profit for the few. The cultural benefits are vast and rarely spelt out: travel and a growth in knowledge about different parts of the world; intercultural communication and thus increased international understanding; access to new and stimulating ideas, beliefs, and practices; rapid movement of innovations. And above all, simply coming to know people from around the world, making more and more of the globe a source of friends rather than competition. Listening on its own is not enough – we need to make our global society more human-focused.

Opposition leader to dig in behind ETS and goal of sourcing 50% of electricity from renewables by 2030The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, will dig in behind his party’s goal of sourcing 50% of Australia’s electricity from renewables by 2030 and the party’s proposed emissions trading scheme, arguing they are vehicles to drive new investment in clean energy.Shorten will use a speech at Bloomberg in Sydney on Thursday to hit back against the prime minister’s recent intensification of the energy debate, declaring Malcolm Turnbull, through his partisan attacks, is generating renewed investment uncertainty in the electricity sector and, as a consequence, undermining jobs. Continue reading...

Several fires were lit at the Dakota Access pipeline protest campsite in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, early Wednesday ahead of a deadline from authorities to abandon the area. For months, hundreds of Native Americans and environmental activists have occupied the site as they protest the pipeline’s construction, but Donald Trump has signed an executive order clearing the way for construction to move ahead

Researchers will have to deal with attacks from a range of powerful foes in the coming years – and for many, it has already startedA little less than seven years ago, the climate scientist Michael Mann ambled into his office at Penn State University with a wedge of mail tucked under his arm. As he tore into one of the envelopes, which was hand-addressed to him, white powder tumbled from the folds of the letter. Mann recoiled from the grainy plume and rushed to the bathroom to scrub his hands.

Documents suggest former Oklahoma AG followed lobby group’s guidance on challenging environmental regulations, and put letterhead to oil firm complaints more than onceThe close relationship between Scott Pruitt, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and fossil fuel interests including the billionaire Koch brothers has been highlighted in more than 7,500 emails and other records released by the Oklahoma attorney general’s office on Wednesday.

A new group of companies is innovating on the problem of plastics recycling by tackling everything from styrofoam to Ziploc bagsThe world recycles just 14% of the plastic packaging it uses. Even worse: 8m tons of plastic, much of it packaging, ends up in the oceans each year, where sea life and birds die from eating it or getting entangled in it. Some of the plastics will also bind with industrial chemicals that have polluted oceans for decades, raising concerns that toxins can make their way into our food chain.Recycling the remaining 86% of used plastics could create $80bn-$120bn in revenues, says a recent report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. But those revenues will never be fully achieved without designing new ways to breakdown and reuse 30% (by weight) of the plastic packaging that isn’t recycled because the material is contaminated or too small for easy collection, has very low economic value or contains multiple materials that cannot be easily separated. Think of candy wrappers, take-out containers, single-serving coffee capsules and foil-lined boxes for soup and soymilk. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Leaked documents indicate that the European Union is now preparing a full ban of raw ivoryThe EU is set to ban raw ivory exports from 1 July as it struggles to deal with what was almost certainly another record year of ivory seizures across the continent in 2016.Europe sells more raw and carved ivory to the world than anywhere else, feeding a seemingly insatiable appetite for elephant tusks in China and east Asia.

Environmentalists hail ‘landmark moment’ as world’s biggest soft drinks company agrees to set up pilot scheme in ScotlandCoca-Cola has announced it supports testing a deposit return service for drinks cans and bottles, in a major coup for environment and anti-waste campaigners.Executives told an event in Edinburgh on Tuesday evening they agreed with campaigners who were pressing the Scottish government to set up a bottle-return pilot scheme to cut waste and pollution and boost recycling. Continue reading...

A sacred Tibetan lake, a crack in the Antarctic ice shelf and deforestation in Cambodia are among images captured by Nasa and the ESA this monthYamzho Yumco (Sacred Swan) Lake is one of the three largest sacred lakes in Tibet. It is surrounded by snow-capped mountains and is highly crenellated with many bays and inlets. The lake is home to the Samding monastery which is headed by a female reincarnation, Samding Dorje Phagmo. The image covers an area of 49.8km by 60km. Aster images map and monitor the changing surface of our planet, such as glacial advances and retreats; potentially active volcanoes; crop stress; cloud morphology and physical properties; wetlands evaluation; thermal pollution monitoring; coral reef degradation; surface temperature mapping of soils and geology; and measuring surface heat balance. Continue reading...

Donald Trump is a deal maker, and there’s a great deal to be made on climate change

From New York to Frankfurt, readers shared their experiences of renewable energy projects in cities around the world

A complex range of factors is shaping how and why cities adopt renewable energy, from costs to the need for stable power supplies

The president could spring a surprise with a carbon price, making renewables cheaper, US Republican warnsFossil fuel industries in Australia could be left behind by improvements in renewables and the possibility Donald Trump changes tack on a carbon tax, a former US Republican congressman has warned.In a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday, Bob Inglis, a conservative advocate for private sector action on climate change, called for the United States to take unilateral action by imposing a carbon tax with an import levy on goods made in countries without a carbon price.

Wenlock Edge In anonymous hedges and woods, snowdrops have become a kind of spontaneous festival all over the countrySnowdrops and mild weather – is this spring? Something disturbed a crow in the darkness. The bird flew from trees behind the abbey ruins, skirting copse and hedge down the lane to the edge of town with its going-to-work traffic and lights switching on under rooftops. The crow called out before first light, before even the robins stirred, intent on raising the alarm by itself. Caw, caw, caw.All right, crow, I’m awake. Now what? Snowdrops. Along the route, as the crow flies, the snowdrops are in full bloom, drifting along verges, tucked into corners of hedge banks, materialising from the mossy remains of walls in the wood. They are the footprints of old Welsh goddesses, the spilt milk no one cries over. They are something, at last, to cheer about. Every year they pop up from nowhere, grey-green leaf blades and little white lantern flowers glowing in gloom. Continue reading...

The activist film-makers behind Our Power and The Bentley Effect struggled for funding but hope to unite communitiesIt looks like something out of a Hollywood disaster movie. A blanket of smouldering fire stretches across hundreds of hectares, the landscape burning red and blood orange, showering acrid ash and smoke onto surrounding towns. This is what happens when a bushfire combines with a coal mine.

The shutdown is the latest employment blow for the state, following on from the closure of the Holden car factoryCoca-Cola Amatil has announced the closure of its South Australia factory in the latest employment blow to hit the state.Around 180 workers will lose their jobs when the bottling operation in the inner-city Adelaide suburb of Thebarton closes in 2019. Continue reading...

Santos says the proposed Narrabri gas project could supply up to 50% of New South Wales’ gas needsA group of New South Wales farmers fear that the federal and state governments are using the South Australian blackouts to push through a controversial 850-well coal seam gas project in the north-west of the state.The NSW government released the environmental impact statement (EIS) on Tuesday for the Narrabri coal seam gas project, weeks after Malcolm Turnbull raised the possibility of a domestic gas reserve where an exploration area could be set aside exclusively for domestic consumption. Continue reading...

The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, told agency staff on Tuesday that the US should not have to choose between the economy and the environment. ‘I believe that we as a nation can be both pro-energy and jobs, and pro-environment. We don’t have to choose between the two,’ Pruitt said in his first speech to EPA workers since he was confirmed as administrator last week Continue reading...

Head of Environmental Protection Agency tells staff he will ‘listen, learn, and lead’ as White House reportedly prepares orders to roll back green regulationsThe new head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, told agency staff on Tuesday that the US should not have to choose between the economy and the environment.As the White House reportedly prepares executive orders to roll back Obama-era green regulations, Pruitt struck a conciliatory tone in an address to agency staff, saying he would “listen, learn and lead”. Continue reading...

NFU president says food will ‘rot in the fields’ unless government guarantees access to workforceFarmers have warned that food will “rot in the fields” and Britain will be unable to produce what it eats if the government cannot guarantee that growers will continue to have access to tens of thousands of EU workers after Brexit.Meurig Raymond, president of the National Farmers’ Union, told the body’s annual conference in Birmingham that farmers and food processors, particularly in horticulture and poultry, were already having difficulty recruiting.

Crowd Cow works directly with ranchers across the US, cutting out the middleman and giving farmers an alternative to selling calves to factory farmsIf crowdsourcing makes you think of fundraising campaigns for smartwatches and wine coolers rather than sustainable food, you’re not alone. But a new Seattle-based startup called Crowd Cow is hoping to change that.Crowd Cow works like most crowdfunding campaigns. Every few days, the company hosts an “event” on its website featuring cows from one of the seven beef ranchers it works with on the west coast. There are photos and videos of the ranch itself, to give people a better understanding of the farmers and the cows on the ranch. Customers can then select cuts of beef they wish to buy from the ranch. Once enough beef has been purchased, the cow “tips” – and customers become “steakholders” in the cow. “Steakholders” then receive their beef (frozen in dry ice) in as little as a few days. If the cow doesn’t tip, there is no charge. But most Crowd Cow cows tip within one or two days. Continue reading...

Camera -trap footage shows a giant anteater going toe-to-toe with a jaguar in the Gurupi Biological Reserve in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. The video was filmed by the Brazilian National Research Centre for Carnivore Conservation in September 2016 as part of a survey on jaguars

Professor Lewis’s analysis of ways to tackle air pollution (10 ways to beat air pollution: how effective are they?, theguardian.com, 15 February) is disappointingly dismissive of technology that can work in bus shelters or other pollution hotspots. While these solutions can’t clean an entire atmosphere, there are places where they can make a huge difference and it would be shortsighted to sweep them aside.Tests at King’s College London have independently verified that our technology can clean the air of dangerous and pervasive nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter in pollution hotspots. It can reduce exposure to pollution in bus shelters, tube stations, and potentially hospitals or schools, by up to 80%. The mixing of the atmosphere does not therefore “completely outweigh the benefits” as Professor Lewis claims. Continue reading...

Campaigners chain themselves to a vehicle, blocking motorway tunnel leading to airportClimate activists protesting against Heathrow’s planned third runway caused lengthy delays on the M4 by blocking a tunnel leading to the airport for three hours.Campaigners for Rising Up used three cars to close the tunnel leading from the motorway to Heathrow Terminals 1, 2 and 3 at about 8.25am on Tuesday. Three protesters chained themselves to one of the vehicles, which had a banner reading: “No new runways”. Continue reading...

Without camera traps we would never be privy to two endangered species sparring in the remote Amazon rainforest.

Prolonged closure at Flamanville plant after fire damage piles further financial pressure on state-owned energy firmThe prolonged closure of a major French atomic reactor after an explosion this month probably costs EDF at least £1m a day, according to experts.The nuclear plant operator, which will spend £18bn building the UK’s first new nuclear power station in a generation, shut unit 1 at its Flamanville plant after a fire broke out in the turbine hall. Continue reading...

Blackwater Carr, Norfolk Once you are attuned to this avian tree propagation, it becomes a pleasure to find other instancesAlthough I am in my 50s I still take a child’s pleasure in climbing trees. This particular ascent, however, had purpose, because a hawthorn formerly trapped under a sallow thicket has been steadily freed by felling operations. One last large willow branch had to be severed before my overtopped bush could move into the sunlit uplands of the open glade that I have created around it.

Malcolm Turnbull says technology ‘mature and cost-effective’ as Australian Renewable Energy Agency grant announcedThe Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) has approved a $450,000 grant to EnergyAustralia to investigate a pumped hydro energy storage project off South Australia as the state’s energy mix continues to cause a political storm.

Francis echoes growing body of international law and standards on the right to ‘prior and informed consent’In the 15th century papal bulls promoted and provided legal justification for the conquest and theft of indigenous peoples’ lands and resources worldwide - the consequences of which are still being felt today. The right to conquest in one such bull, the Romanus Pontifex, issued in the 1450s when Nicholas V was the Pope, was granted in perpetuity.How times have changed. Last week, over 560 years later, Francis, the first Pope from Latin America, struck a rather different note - for indigenous peoples around the world, for land rights, for better environmental stewardship. He said publicly that indigenous peoples have the right to “prior and informed consent.” In other words, nothing should happen on - or impact - their land, territories and resources unless they agree to it. Continue reading...

The dirty and dumb antics and the anti-renewables rhetoric being amped up by our politicians is out of step with majority thinking on energyWhen Treasurer Scott Morrison clomped into parliament with his pet piece of coal after South Australia’s electricity network collapsed in the face of extreme weather he was indulging in more than a tacky piece of political theatre.As Barnaby Joyce fondled the fossil, the Turnbull government was signing up to the Coal Club’s most audacious attack on the march of renewables since, well, the last one. Continue reading...

When it comes to the weather, research suggests people often trust the evidence of their own eyes rather than expert opinionWhy do so many people remain sceptical about climate change when the evidence for it seems so obvious? One recent study may offer an interesting clue, because American scientists stood the argument on its head and looked at places across the globe that will probably enjoy more pleasant weather with climate change.For Britain, northern Europe and North America there will be more days of mild weather, defined as 18 to 30C, with low humidity and little rain – the sort of weather which by most people’s accounts would be most agreeable. Parts of southern England, for example, will get an extra 10 to 15 days of mild weather a year by the end of this century. It’s not entirely good news, because the mild days will tend to come in spring and autumn, while the summers will grow hotter and more humid. Continue reading...

The South Australian network operator says a software problem led to load shedding of 300MW instead of the 100MW requested by national marketSA Power Networks has said it knew a software glitch caused an additional 60,000 houses in South Australia to be out of power during load shedding this month.Yet the state’s network operator stayed quiet for a week and a half while the Turnbull government continued to criticise the South Australian government’s use of renewables.

Guardian Essential survey shows a clear majority supports Labor’s goal of sourcing 50% of energy from renewables by 2030More than 70% of voters think the Turnbull government is not doing enough to ensure affordable, reliable and clean energy for Australian households and businesses – and a clear majority also supports Labor’s goal of sourcing 50% of energy from renewable sources by 2030.

Woolly mammoths | Transport investment | Baby boomers | Flat cakes | WeetabixCan it be right to bring back the mammoth (Report, 17 February)? It disappeared at the beginning of this man-made age of extinction. For it to be returned towards its end, with declining populations of elephants and rhinos, is irony itself. It also highlights that technology is now so poorly controlled that the march of scientific ability will continue to outpace its ethics. Is a world of super-intelligent robots and their woolly mammoth pets really the direction to be going in?

Oxygen levels in oceans have fallen 2% in 50 years due to climate change, affecting marine habitat and large fish such as tuna and sharksThe depletion of oxygen in our oceans threatens future fish stocks and risks altering the habitat and behaviour of marine life, scientists have warned, after a new study found oceanic oxygen levels had fallen by 2% in 50 years.The study, carried out at Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Germany, was the most comprehensive of the subject to date. The fall in oxygen levels has been attributed to global warming and the authors warn that if it continues unchecked, the amount of oxygen lost could reach up to 7% by 2100. Very few marine organisms are able to adapt to low levels of oxygen. Continue reading...

Scientists predicted decades ago that climate change would add stress to water management systems like Oroville Dam