Department of Industry responds to Australia Institute report warning of risks, saying strict conditions are imposedThe New South Wales government has rejected criticisms of its handling of disused mine sites, saying rehabilitation bonds and strict regulations gave it a high degree of confidence that taxpayers would not be lumped with clean-up costs.The Australia Institute released a report on Wednesday on disused mine sites across the state. Continue reading...

Architect who was a pioneer in design for energy conservationRichard Burton, who has died aged 83, was a third of the architectural partnership of Ahrends, Burton & Koralek (ABK), alongside Peter Ahrends and Paul Koralek. It is not particularly rare that three architects should meet as students and go on to practise together, but most unusual that all three should be involved in design and should remain lifelong friends. The partnership survived controversy when its competition-winning extension to the National Gallery in London was dubbed a “monstrous carbuncle” by the Prince of Wales in 1984 and cancelled, and it became one of the few practices founded in the early 1960s to span the gulf between the public and private sectors.Of the partners, Burton was perhaps the least affected by the prince’s diatribe, for he had already forged an independent path in the design of low-rise housing, hospitals and energy efficiency, in the last of which he was a pioneer; he and the prince should have got on. Burton subsequently took charge of the firm’s design of the British embassy in Moscow, completed in 2000, after building a house for himself and his wife, Mireille, in Kentish Town, north London, which he opened to the public on Open House weekends. Continue reading...

Knowing the rate at which the oceans absorb carbon pollution is a key to understanding how fast climate change will occur

Pristine Amazon rainforest and conservation areas are being rapidly opened up to dams, gold mining and soya plantations in Brazil’s least developed stateRead more: Amazon’s final frontier under threat from oil and soya Continue reading...

Premature births across 183 countries may be associated with fine particulate matter, a common air pollutant, with Africa and Asia especially affected

Pesticides, paving and higher temperatures have put huge strain on butterflies in cities over past two decades, finds studyButterflies have vanished from towns and cities more rapidly than from the countryside over the past two decades, according to a new study.Industrial agriculture has long been viewed as the scourge of butterflies and other insects but city life is worse – urban butterfly abundance fell by 69% compared to a 45% decline in rural areas over 20 years from 1995. Continue reading...

Egglestone, Teesdale Near the hart’s tongues, mosses clinging to the rock were becoming fossilised, encased in tufaThis section of moist, shady, wooded bank above the footpath, extending for perhaps 150 metres, is covered with the largest concentration of hart’s tongue ferns I have ever seen. This fern, Phyllitis scolopendrium, dominates because it thrives in calcareous woodland soils over limestone and the conditions here are perfect.This morning, as I approached, hundreds of long, undulating, emerald-green tongues wagged in the breeze: if these plants needed a collective name “a gossip” of hart’s tongues would do nicely. Continue reading...

One of the more frustrating aspects of energy policy is that it begins and ends with electricity prices and the over-arching issue of climate change is a side issueThe government has clearly decided that electricity prices is its key message for the next three years – and as a result the prime minister has ensured the policy debate will be biased towards climate change denial and will continue to treat Australians as idiots.When the prime minister let fly against Bill Shorten in parliament last week, amid the personal attacks, the only policy areas he broached were company tax and energy prices. Pointedly, energy price was the first issue that came to him after he told his jokes about Shorten dining with Dick Pratt. Continue reading...

Plan for pumped hydro project co-located with a large-scale solar farm demonstrates government’s ‘strong commitment to energy security’, PM saysThe Turnbull government has given a $54m loan from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to a large-scale solar development which it says has the potential for pumped hydro storage.Malcolm Turnbull and the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, have announced the government had directed the CEFC and Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) to fund large-scale storage and other flexible capacity projects including pumped hydro. Continue reading...

UK is one of five countries persistently contravening legal nitrogen dioxide levels with pollution from factories and vehiclesBritain has been sent a final warning to comply with EU air pollution limits for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) or face a case at the European court of justice.If the UK does not show Brussels how it intends to comply with EU law within two months, a court hearing with the power to impose heavy fines could begin later this year, as the Guardian revealed last week. Continue reading...

Richard Higgins (Letters, 15 February) writes: “Farming is about maintaining the land in such a way as to support the animals and people who live upon it”. The late Tony King, professor of politics at Essex University, argued that all successful popular revolutions, good and bad, were accompanied by land reform and redistribution. One criticism of the EU levelled historically by the progressive, internationalist wing of the Labour party has been that the common agricultural policy encourages wasteful use of our common agricultural wealth. Max Weber, more than 100 years ago, showed that there was a relationship between the existence of large, capital-intensive farming estates and reliance on seasonal, immigrant labour.When the inevitable leftwing reaction to this rightwing Brexit comes we would do well to consider how to reframe agriculture to involve a greater portion of the population and to ensure that a greater portion of our basic needs can be met at a local level rather than, as we seem to do at the moment, relying entirely on production for export and thus throwing ourselves open to the tempestuous nature of global commodity markets in the hope we can be saved by financial calculus alone.

My mother, Mary Welsh, who has died aged 88, inspired thousands of people to walk the wilds of Scotland and northern England and appreciate their flora and fauna, through her numerous books and published articles. While Alfred Wainwright guided walkers up high fells, Mary described walks that explored less visited lower slopes, moorlands and valleys, often covering three or four different habitats in one circular route and providing views of famed peaks from little-known vantage points.Mary’s first book, A Country Journal: The Diary of a Cumbrian Naturalist (1982), chronicled her wonder as she settled into the Lake District village of Broughton-in-Furness, to which she had moved from Islington, north London, a few years before. Her last, Walking Fife: The Ochils, Tayside and the Forth Valley, was published in 2012. She wrote 38 books and 12 substantial booklets, which together sold more than 200,000 copies. Continue reading...

Two groups unite to oppose proposal to plant thousands of trees saying it could threaten the country’s ‘dramatic open views and vistas’Scotland’s mountaineers and gamekeepers have rarely seen eye to eye. But now they have put their differences behind them to oppose an apparently innocuous plan that both say threatens the country’s landscape: a proposal to plant thousands of new trees.The Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) and Mountaineering Scotland admit they are unlikely bedfellows, having historically disagreed over access to land for walkers and issues of wildlife preservation. But they are united in their concerns over proposals that are part of the government’s Draft Climate Change Plan, which they say could threaten the country’s “dramatic open views and vistas”. Continue reading...

PM says Tories ‘committed to nuclear’ but fails to confirm funding for a new Cumbrian plant after losses are reported by one of its backersThe prime minister has been accused of ducking the issue of whether the government supports a new nuclear power station in west Cumbria on a visit to Copeland ahead of the constituency’s byelection.

Just under half of requests for exceptions to the neonicotinoids ban were filed by industry not farmers, legal analysis showsThe EU has been criticised after a new legal analysis showed it had allowed scores of “emergency authorisations” of banned pesticides that threaten bee colonies.The research emerged as the European court of justice began hearing a case by Syngenta and Bayer to overturn the pesticides ban. A ruling is expected shortly. Continue reading...

Descendant’s visit served as painful reminder for some Native Americans that historical traumas are closely linked to present-day battles with US governmentFloris White Bull couldn’t believe what she was hearing. On the same day the US government granted permission for the Dakota Access pipeline to drill under the Missouri river, a descendant of General George Armstrong Custer had arrived at Standing Rock.Alisha Custer – whose lineage traces back to the US army commander who led the 19th-century wars against Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors – had traveled from Wichita, Kansas, to Cannon Ball, North Dakota, and was ready to speak to Standing Rock members. Continue reading...

Document obtained by the Guardian states existing quotas will remain despite promises made by leave campaignersThe hopes of British fishermen that the UK can win its “waters back” after Brexit are expected to be dashed by the European parliament, despite the campaign promises of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, a leaked EU document reveals.MEPs have drafted seven provisions to be included in Britain’s “exit agreement”, including the stipulation that there will be “no increase to the UK’s share of fishing opportunities for jointly fished stocks [maintaining the existing quota distribution in UK and EU waters]”. Continue reading...

It remains a mystery as to where most of Scotland’s bats hibernate. Anne Youngman, Scottish officer for the Bat Conservation Trust, and the ecologist John Haddow conduct a survey in a disused quarry tunnel and at Doune Castle Continue reading...

Marylebone Road has the odd distinction of being the world’s most studied road in terms of air pollution – yet remains a chief culprit in London’s ‘shameful’ air quality. Now it’s home to a series of new experimentsDaybreak in the capital and on the pavement opposite Great Portland Street underground station runners cut virtuous paths through a crisp, cold winter’s morning. To one side of them lies Regent’s Park, deep green beneath a perfect frost. On the other roars a source of contamination so severe that the health of these runners might have been better served staying indoors.Marylebone Road, one of London’s main east-west streets, illustrates with filthy glamour why the city suffers from stubbornly poor air quality – with recent record-breaking pollution levels having caused particular concern.

Report says mine sites may not be able to be successfully rehabilitated and warns of ‘big liabilities’A scarcity of information about disused mine sites is leaving the public in the dark on the clean-up costs from New South Wales’ mining boom, a new report has found.The report, released by the Australia Institute on Wednesday, attempted to analyse what was happening to operating, suspended, closed, rehabilitated, or abandoned mine sites across the state. Continue reading...

Australian Energy Market Operator report says demand was higher than forecast, wind generation lower and thermal generators unable to step inA blackout in South Australia that has intensified a political brawl over energy policy was caused by three factors: demand for power was higher than forecast, wind generation was lower than forecast and several thermal generators were unable to step into the breach, according to the energy market operator.As the partisan conflict about energy continued in Canberra on Wednesday, the Australian Energy Market Operator issued a report detailing the sequence that led to the blackout in South Australia last week – the third such outage in recent months. Continue reading...

Use of solar panels by the side of tracks to provide power to electric trains could make sense given match-up between peak generation and demandHow can we connect solar photovoltaics (PV) directly to railways to power electric trains? That’s the question my charity 10:10 and researchers at Imperial College’s Energy Futures Lab are trying to answer.Electric trains are by far the best long distance transport mode when it comes to carbon emissions – at least when their electricity comes from renewable sources like solar or wind. Continue reading...

Bere Ferrers, Devon On sheltered riverside land, toppled fruit trees encrusted in lichen remain from once productive orchardsNear to Bere Ferrers rail station a muddy way crosses poached and splashy pastures towards Thorn Point, where a causeway, submerged at high tide, used to be the landing place for horticultural produce ferried from Cargreen in Cornwall.Spring flowers and summer strawberries would have been unloaded here, destined for London and upcountry markets via the railway, a mile across the hill. These days yachts moor out in midstream and the expanse of choppy water downstream is spanned by power lines, by Brunel’s Royal Albert and the Tamar road bridges. Continue reading...

Labor’s goal is to have 50% of electricity from renewables by 2030, but asked about the cost, he replies ‘there is a cost in not acting’Bill Shorten has declined to be specific about the cost of Labor’s goal to have 50% of Australia’s electricity generated from renewable sources by 2030.

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...