California water officials said they drained enough of the lake behind it so that emergency spillway won’t be needed to handle runoff from approaching stormAuthorities lifted an evacuation order on Tuesday for nearly 200,000 California residents after declaring that the risk of catastrophic collapse of a damaged spillway for Oroville dam had been significantly reduced.The Butte County sheriff, Kory Honea, said residents could return home immediately. Continue reading...

An unusual amount of rain, climate change and unexpected erosion of an emergency spillway created a perfect storm at Lake Oroville in CaliforniaIt was only two years ago that the receding waters of Lake Oroville – California’s second largest reservoir, located about 70 miles north of Sacramento – became the defining image of the state’s historic drought.“It was so low you couldn’t take your boat out on it,” said Joe Pederson, a 52-year-old resident of Oroville. “There are fish but you can’t get to them. It was so low you could walk along sections of the lake.” Continue reading...

Data contradicts climate change sceptics, who have pointed to earlier increases in areas of sea ice to support their viewsSea ice around Antarctica has shrunk to the smallest annual extent on record after years of resisting a trend of manmade global warming, preliminary US satellite data has shown.Ice floating around the frozen continent usually melts to its smallest for the year towards the end of February, the southern hemisphere summer, before expanding again as the autumn chill sets in. Continue reading...

Experts at emergency meeting of 16 countries say pest has invaded fields of maize, a staple crop throughout the regionAn invasion of armyworms is stripping southern Africa of key food crops and could spread to other parts of the continent, experts have warned at an emergency meeting of 16 African countries.South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia are among the countries where the fall armyworm has invaded fields of maize, a staple crop throughout the region. Continue reading...

Caroline Lucas MP rightly points to “a cocktail of threats” to the environment from leaving the EU (A ‘green guarantee’ could stop Brexit ruining our environment, theguardian.com, 13 February). She neglects to mention her own role in bringing on these threats: the vote she cast to hold the EU referendum in the first place. In her statement to the Commons on 9 June 2015, when the EU referendum bill was under review, she pointed to the EU’s many environmental protections; called nonetheless for its “radical reform”; noted that achieving this “by walking away from the EU makes no sense at all”; and then, along with hundreds of other pro-remain MPs, invited the voters to walk away. It was a classic muddle of cross-purposes all too familiar from the left on Europe.At the time, Lucas could have demanded, or at least suggested, that the likely environmental and other costs be specified and advertised to the public ahead of any Brexit vote. Instead she agreed to a simple in/out vote with no further conditions. So perhaps she means to say that the “real fight starts now”?

Fresh concern about future of planned Moorside power station in Cumbria as Toshiba’s financial woes deepenUnions are urging the government to take back control of its nuclear strategy after Toshiba’s deepening financial crisis cast fresh doubt about its involvement in the planned Moorside power station in Cumbria.Justin Bowden, GMB’s national secretary for energy, described the situation as a “fiasco” after Japan’s Toshiba, the lead party behind Moorside, revealed a $6.3bn writedown in its US Westinghouse business and confirmed it was scaling back investment in new overseas nuclear projects. Continue reading...

In California’s Central Valley emissions from oil refineries and agriculture make Bakersfield America’s most air-polluted city. Activists fear the Trump administration could undo small but steady improvementsThe bluffs on Panorama Road offer a wide view of the northern half of Bakersfield, which is one of the few major population centres in California’s Central Valley – perhaps the US’ leading agricultural motherlode.It’s a rare bird’s eye vantage point of this low-slung farm city of roughly 375,000 people, nestled in a bowl created by the Sierra Nevada mountains to the east and part of the California Coast Ranges to the west. On a clear day, the state’s dominant topographical features put the landscape, and one’s place in it, in sobering perspective. Continue reading...

Conservationists hope second group of 14 scimitar-horned oryx bred in captivity will help repopulate original habitat in ChadA group of scimitar-horned oryx, an antelope declared extinct in the wild, have been reintroduced to their original home on the edge of the Sahara desert.Fourteen captive-bred animals were released in a remote area of Chad and joined a first group reintroduced in August 2016, conservationists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) said. Continue reading...

French photographer Gabriel Barathieu has been named this year’s winner for his ‘balletic, malevolent’ dancing octopus, while British winner Nick Blake captured a lone diver among the otherworldly sunbeams of a Mexican cave Continue reading...

Shares plunge 8% after Japanese giant says it is ‘not ready’ to release details about US nuclear subsidiary WestinghouseToshiba has unexpectedly delayed the release of a key earnings report and details of its rumoured withdrawal from overseas nuclear projects – including one in the UK – amid reports that it could suffer net losses of 500 billion yen ($4.4bn).The delay sent shares in the Japanese conglomerate down by 8% in Tokyo, and added to speculation that its financial problems could become an existential crisis.

Owner of proposed Carmichael coalmine say they’ll take ‘all steps available’ if supporters of Galilee Blockade obtain confidential information from companyAdani has threatened legal action against an activist group that is encouraging its supporters to infiltrate the miner by signing up for jobs with its proposed Queensland mining project.A law firm acting for Adani wrote to the Galilee Blockade on Tuesday to signal it would take “all steps available to it” should the activists obtain confidential information from employees. Continue reading...

South Downs, West Sussex The buzzard raises its wings and lifts its talons up towards the kite, which responds and the two clashDark shadows tumble across the hillside. The clouds are being hurried along by the wind, and the rain is subsiding. A chattering flock of linnets bounces from hedge to hedge, across the shining, wet chalk track in front of me. In the middle of the field is a brown shape, like a large mound of mud. It shifts its position every few minutes. Looking through binoculars, I see it’s a brown hare, hunkered down in the ground, its long ears flat against its head and over its back, munching the grass. It shifts its position again, still chewing, but always scanning the horizon.A buzzard swoops in and lands a few metres from the hare. It struggles, flapping hard, as if trying to hold on to the ground in the wind, and then it lowers its wings. It has caught something – a small mammal, presumably – but I can’t see what it’s mantling in the grass. It begins to eat, snatching at the prey with its bill. The hare sits up, still chewing, and watches the buzzard. Continue reading...

Local residents express a mix of frustration and stoicism as emergency crews race to stem flooding from America’s tallest damA fleet of cars, pickup trucks and motor homes crept its way north in twilight, past rivers swollen with brown, muddy water, and away from America’s tallest dam, where state officials desperately fought to keep the frothing waters from breaking through bulwarks and flooding into towns.That was the dramatic scene on Sunday night. By late Monday afternoon, tens of thousands of people had relocated from the at-risk zone in northern California, 60 miles north of the state capital of Sacramento. Continue reading...

‘They are going to get a surprise and I am worried about them,’ says Catherine Tanna, joining push for transition to renewablesThe boss of one of Australia’s largest energy suppliers says she is worried about customers’ power bills after the latest heatwave in the country’s south-east.Energy Australia’s managing director, Catherine Tanna, has joined the push for a transition to newer forms of energy, saying bipartisanship is needed to draw up a national energy policy. The company operates sites including the Yallourn plant in the Latrobe valley, a brown-coal power station in Victoria that supplies nearly a quarter of the state’s electricity. Continue reading...

In a blow to plans for a new UK power station, the Japanese firm’s expected announcement comes after review of overseas investmentsToshiba is expected to confirm that it is withdrawing from new nuclear projects outside Japan, dealing a blow to plans for a new power station in the UK.

Presence of manmade chemicals in most remote place on planet shows nowhere is safe from human impact, say scientistsScientists have discovered “extraordinary” levels of toxic pollution in the most remote and inaccessible place on the planet – the 10km deep Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean.Small crustaceans that live in the pitch-black waters of the trench, captured by a robotic submarine, were contaminated with 50 times more toxic chemicals than crabs that survive in heavily polluted rivers in China. Continue reading...

Tribes lost a challenge of the president’s decision to speed approvals for the last stretch of the $3.7bn pipeline under the Missouri river in North DakotaA federal judge has rejected a request from indigenous tribes to block drilling of the Dakota Access pipeline, the latest blow to the Standing Rock Sioux after Donald Trump fast-tracked final permits for the last phase of construction.Related: Army veterans return to Standing Rock to form a human shield against police Continue reading...

To kick off a Guardian Cities week investigating air pollution, our reporters followed the sun from Sydney to Lagos to Los Angeles – taking readings, talking to locals and giving a snapshot of our choking cities

Climate change, poaching, competition for food and water … elephants have never faced such threats. Here are more than 50 ways to give them a helping hand. Can you add to the list?There is so much being done to help stop elephants being wiped out in the wild. We’ve identified more than 50 campaigns and organisations around the world, from well-known charities like the World Wide Fund for Nature to grassroots groups like Elephanatics in Canada and Laos-based ElefantAsia. If you think we’ve missed anyone or anything, let us know at elephant.conservation@theguardian.com. We’ll update the list with your suggestions. Continue reading...

In an unprecedented legal case, a group of Chinese lawyers have charged the governments of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei with failing to protect their citizens from air pollution, which is linked to a third of all deaths in the country

We’ve broken down the data on dangerous PM2.5 particles, and listed them region by region – to reveal the cities with the worst air in Europe, the US, Africa, Asia and more

Journalists try to get facts right. Tabloid propagandists try to advance an agendaWikipedia editors recently voted to ban the Daily Mail tabloid as a source for their website after deeming it “generally unreliable.” To put the severity of this decision in context, Wikipedia still allows references to Russia Today and Fox News, both of which display a clear bias toward the ruling parties of their respective countries.It thus may seem like a remarkable decision for Wikipedia to ban the Daily Mail, but fake news stories by David Rose in two consecutive editions of the Mail on Sunday – which echoed throughout the international conservative media – provide perfect examples of why the decision was justified and wise. Continue reading...

A number of creative technologies aim to increase access to clean water in developing countries. We asked two experts to assess some of themThe global water crisis has many causes, requiring many different solutions. As 1.2 billion people live in areas of water scarcity, these solutions must span policy, technology, and behaviour change to make a real difference.

Labor has denied it wanted a preference deal with One Nation after Pauline Hanson tells parliament the Queensland state Labor secretary approached the party. Follow it live...

In at least 15 cities, air pollution has now become so bad that the danger to health of just 30 minutes of cycling each way outweighs the benefits of exercise altogether, according to new research

Glenridding, Lake District Warned off by the fell top assessor, ill-prepared ramblers hurry out of the mist away from England’s third-highest mountainI’m early for my appointment in the Helvellyn youth hostel car park, and the only sign of life is a raven croaking prukk-prukk as it dives from Edmund’s Castle crag, its black wings turning a sheeny purple. I pull down my beanie hat and zip up my jacket collar.Rather than the crisp panorama to be expected on so chilly a day, banners of cloud wreathe me. Treading the path from Red Tarn, I cannot see the mountain above, though I know it’s shaped like an armchair, flanked by Striding Edge as one arm rest and Swirral Edge the other; the lumbar support being Helvellyn’s 950 metres. Cupped in between is Red Tarn, formed by ice age moraine damming water.

Documents show prime minister knew the failure of Torrens Island plant affected efforts to restart power before he made comments about renewablesOfficials told Malcolm Turnbull a major gas plant shut down during the freak storm that plunged South Australia into blackout last September, with the malfunction caused by a lightning strike or an “automatic shutdown to protect generation assets”.

2GB radio host Ray Hadley praises Scott Morrison’s brandishing of a lump of coal at the opposition during question time last week as a ‘great stunt’. The treasurer defends the Coalition’s energy policies and says: ‘I was actually making quite a serious point. The look on the Labor party members’ faces, particularly those whose own constituents dug that coal up ... they’re all there demonising what role coal should continue to play as part of a secure energy future and they’re working against their own constituents’ jobs.’• Scott Morrison and Ray Hadley laugh about coal prop: ‘Great stunt’

Radio host tells treasurer he is a fan of stunts as Morrison explains he was trying to make a point about energy policy by holding up a lump of coalScott Morrison and Ray Hadley shared a laugh on Sydney radio as the shock jock praised the federal treasurer’s “great stunt” on Friday when he brandished a lump of coal at the opposition during question time on Thursday.Morrison relayed to the 2GB presenter how he had urged Labor “don’t be afraid, don’t be scared” of the rock, and the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, had juggled with it in question time. Continue reading...

Green MP says 1,100 pieces of environmental law need to be moved on to UK statute books before Britain leaves EUBritain is hugely unprepared for the potential impact of Brexit on environmental protection, with more than 1,100 pieces of EU green legislation needing to be moved into UK law for safeguards to be maintained, according to a report by the Green MP Caroline Lucas.Lucas, who spent 11 years as an MEP before being elected to parliament, said environmental protections faced “a cocktail of threats from Brexit”. Continue reading...

Coalition statements blaming the blackouts that hit South Australia last year on wind power were made despite official advice that storms were the causeMalcolm Turnbull’s decision to link last year’s blackout in South Australia to the state’s high renewable energy target was made directly against confidential public service advice.Freedom-of-information documents reveal a senior bureaucrat at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet was so concerned about the spreading of misinformation in the immediate aftermath of last September’s SA storm that she emailed officials in the Departments of Environment and Agriculture asking for help. Continue reading...

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 17 February 1917Surrey

January’s smog broke recent records, but while glib comparisons with Beijing can result in action, they are also misleadingNewspaper headlines in January told us that London’s air pollution was worse than Beijing. BBC journalist Joseph D’Urso likened this to the heatwave weather stories each summer that say Brighton is hotter than Barcelona. Brighton is not normally as warm as Barcelona. Comparing particle pollution, London was worse than Beijing for four smoggy days, from 20 to 23 January, but over the whole month London’s particle pollution was around a quarter of that in the Chinese capital.Related: Paris tries something different in the fight against smog Continue reading...

This is the great age of cartography, says Lois Parshley’s timely reminder of the importance of understanding landscapes (The long read, 7 February), and mapping everything from sediment-laden ocean floors to patterns of disease outbreaks in earthquake-hit locations.Related: Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O Wilson – review Continue reading...

Joint statement says years of finger-pointing have destroyed investor confidence in Australia’s energy sectorA coalition of business, energy, investor, climate and welfare groups has issued a sharply worded wake-up call on the energy debate, declaring “finger pointing” and 10 years of partisan politics have destroyed investor confidence in Australia’s energy sector, “worsening reliability risks”.

Two German inventors created a laundry bag to prevent shedding microfibers ending up in oceans. Now, Patagonia will start selling it to customersFor the past three years, Alexander Nolte and Oliver Spies, surfing buddies and co-owners of Langbrett, a German retailer with four stores that sells surf gear and outdoor apparel, have been haunted by news reports connecting many of the products they sell to an emerging but serious environmental threat: microfiber pollution. Synthetic textiles, such as fleece jackets, send tiny plastic fibers into wastewater after washing. These bits eventually make their way into rivers, lakes and our oceans, where they pose health threats to plants and animals. The two men knew they had to act.Related: How your clothes are poisoning our oceans and food supply Continue reading...

RenewableUK chief says windfarms could offer cheaper prices than rates government agreed with new nuclear power stationsOffshore windfarms could provide cheaper power than Britain’s new wave of nuclear power stations, a leading figure in the wind industry has claimed.Speaking to the the Guardian, Hugh McNeal, the chief executive of trade body RenewableUK, said he expected that offshore windfarms would secure a deal with the government lower than the £92.50 per megawatt hour agreed with EDF for £18bn Hinkley Point C. Continue reading...

London mayor says £500m plan could help tackle growing crisis over poor air quality in the capitalLondon’s air is so polluted that motorists should be given up to £3,500 to persuade them to scrap their old diesel cars and vans and replace them with cleaner vehicles, according to the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan.The nitrogen dioxide emitted by diesel cars is a key contributor to London’s poor air quality, which is so bad that City Hall now advises the public to avoid going out unnecessarily on the worst-affected days. Continue reading...

Researchers behind ‘Anthropocene equation’ say impact of people’s intense activity on Earth far exceeds that of natural events spread across millenniaFor the first time, researchers have developed a mathematical equation to describe the impact of human activity on the earth, finding people are causing the climate to change 170 times faster than natural forces.The equation was developed in conjunction with Professor Will Steffen, a climate change expert and researcher at the Australian National University, and was published in the journal The Anthropocene Review. Continue reading...

Natural lighting or at least LEDs will improve your mood, and there are other positive steps to take to make the office a more world-friendly environmentIf you’re dreading the start of the working week tomorrow can I just check it’s not the lighting? A 1990s study showed plentiful natural light to be a top determinant of job satisfaction.If you can’t get near a window at least press for LEDs (they have a life of up to 60,000 hours in comparison to 6,000 hours for a fluorescent tube). They also improve your mood, productivity and energy efficiency. Continue reading...

About 650 pilot whales beached themselves at top of South Island, with 350 dying but others either swimming away or refloated by volunteersRescuers working to save hundreds of beached whales in New Zealand finally had some good news when more than 200 swam back out to sea on Sunday.

Slashed budgets risk the nation’s 27,000 parks becoming no-go areas, with negative effects on park-goers’ health and the environment

There’s a long list of blame and shame for Australia’s threadbare climate and energy policy, but Turnbull’s party takes the cakeWatching politics builds a high tolerance for hypocrisy and humbug, but even I am aghast at the Coalition’s antics this week – fondling a lump of coal in parliament while accusing the opposition of an “ideological approach to energy” and negligence in policy planning.Seriously. There’s a long list of blame and shame for Australia’s threadbare climate and energy policy, and the failure to plan for an energy market crisis that experts have warned about for years. But Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition takes out first place. Continue reading...

Analysis shows spike in fossil fuel-dominated state’s wholesale spot price this year far eclipses that in SA in July 2016 which sparked calls for a national inquiry into renewable energyExtreme price spikes in Queensland’s fossil fuel-dominated electricity market this year have far eclipsed those seen in South Australia last July, which sparked calls of a national inquiry into renewable energy and led the federal Coalition to call for a halt to state-based renewable energy targets.

Order for 60-day pause on regulations not yet implemented includes protection for endangered rusty patched bumblebee, which experts say is near extinctionDonald Trump has been accused of targeting Muslims, media outlets and even department stores in his first month in the White House. Now, the US president may have doomed a threatened bumblebee.

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...

A tiger family drinking at the watering hole, a nightingale and a snake that plays dead are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

As records tumble on east coast, politicians debate the energy mix they need to combat climate change and ensure supplyA long, hot summer in Australia is smashing weather records, with about a fifth of the country predicted to swelter in temperatures of more than 40C on Saturday.The hottest days yet this summer are forecast for parts of New South Wales and Queensland, which have taken the brunt of a series of heatwaves in recent months. Continue reading...