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

The most oil-rich and fracking-friendly of states has found itself with the improbable status of being a national leader in a wind energy boomLiving in New York and Washington, Greg Wortham heard all the grand talk about green energy from liberal politicians. Then he returned to the place where he grew up, a small town that embraced wind power so warmly that within a couple of years of the first turbine turning, it had some of the biggest farms on the planet.Yet Wortham is not from California, Oregon or New England, but a deeply conservative sector of Texas on the edge of the Permian Basin, one of the most bountiful oil and gas patches in the world. Continue reading...

Coalition plan for more efficient coal plants could well increase emissions in a sector that is the second most polluting in the developed worldThe government has indicated it will act to allow the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to finance new coal-fired power plants on the basis that these coal plants have lower emissions than existing coal power plants.While such power plants may have lower emissions than Australia’s ageing and extremely inefficient existing coal plants, they would most likely increase Australia’s emissions rather than decrease them. And this is in a context where Australia’s electricity supply is the second most polluting in the developed world (beaten only by Estonia). Continue reading...

Campaigns in the UK and Australia point to grassroots backlash against plastics-to-fuel sector that could be worth £1.5bn by 2024“A rural residential community is not the right site to be testing this technology,” says Naomi Joyce, a solicitor from Appley Bridge, Lancashire. Born and raised in the village, Joyce helped to lead its fight against a proposed waste-to-fuel plant, which had hoped to convert up to 6,000 tonnes of plastic rubbish into diesel, gasoline and other products each year.Worried that harmful fumes would pollute their valley, locals rallied against the proposal – signing petitions, writing to the council and protesting in the street. In January last year, the project was shelved. Continue reading...

West Dartmoor To have chanced across this night-roamer, lolloping calmly across the muddy lane, was a rare privilege indeed.Hemmed in on either side by tall hedgerows, this narrow Dartmoor lane skirts the flank of higher ground and scores a deep furrow between fields so that after dark you feel you are tunnelling through the terrain, headlights tracing a leaden seam of asphalt. There is little traffic here to trouble nocturnal wildlife. Over the years I have come across badgers, heads striped like road markings, furtive-looking foxes and occasionally a barn owl, achingly white in the full beams.This winter’s night, an unexpected wanderer took shape among the blanched fishbone stems of dead weeds, as if created by the action of light on darkness. Long ears held high, hindquarters arched over rangy rear legs, large eyes that brought me to a halt. A hare! Continue reading...

Prime minister agrees his personal 14.5kW system on the roof of his Sydney home, with battery storage, is a ‘large array’Malcolm Turnbull has hit back at suggestions that his house’s large personal rooftop solar and battery system sends a message contrary to the government’s endorsement of “clean coal”.He rejected the idea that he had ever been critical of the renewables sector and dismissed his treasurer’s brandishing of a lump of coal in question time as “theatrics”. Continue reading...

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 20 February 1917On Saturday a grey crow was perched on the topmost rotten branch of an oak beside the river, and was as communicative as usual. Perhaps it enjoyed watching the ice sheets floating past and hearing them scrunch as they piled together at the bend. Yesterday there were three paddling on the sloppy ice of the mere, still talking as they cleaned up the various bird remains. I thought the note was always repeated three times in quick succession, but as often as not four caws follow one another rapidly after each pause of a few seconds’ duration. The grey crow’s call is shriller than the carrion’s but deeper than the rook’s.The thaw livened up the thrushes and starlings and started the dunnocks afresh: everywhere these little hedge-frequenters are shuffling their wings and trilling vigorously. The blackbirds, silent since last summer, immediately tuned up; I heard my first on Saturday, and to-day many are in excellent mellow voice. Herring gulls have not yet left the mere; they have been about for several weeks, for the first appeared long before the waters were ice-bound; they raised a joyous chorus yesterday, their full, clear calls sounding quite vernal. Like the crows, they consorted with the living blackheads and fed upon the dead ones. Near the bank a three-foot eel was embedded in the ice, and crow or gull had got through a weak spot, and reached a few inches of the fish, picking it to the bone. Continue reading...

In the Selous Game Reserve you can see seven different bee-eaters. Each one sports impossibly beautiful coloursBee-eaters are the supermodels of the bird world: slim, glamorous – and hopelessly out of reach for us mere mortals. But in the Selous Game Reserve, in southern Tanzania, you can see seven different species of bee-eater hawking for insects under sun-filled skies. Each one sports impossibly beautiful colours, outcompeting even the half-a-dozen species of kingfisher we saw here. On a game drive from Selous Impala Camp, in the heart of Africa’s largest wildlife reserve, we went in search of the “magnificent seven”.The two commonest species, white-fronted and white-throated, may have similar names, but they are very different in appearance. The white-throated is, by bee-eater standards, almost austere: a plain, foliage green body topped with a black-and-white head. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Coral bleaching found near Palm Island as unusually warm waters are expected off eastern Australia, with areas hit in last year’s event in mortal dangerThe embattled Great Barrier Reef could face yet more severe coral bleaching in the coming month, with areas badly hit by last year’s event at risk of death.Images taken by local divers last week and shared exclusively with the Guardian by the Australian Marine Conservation Society show newly bleached corals discovered near Palm Island. Continue reading...

Damian Carrington is half right (The war against air pollution has begun – and it will be fought in cities, 13 February) in that cities bear a terrible burden from air pollution and municipal action is critical to address it. However, city governments cannot succeed alone. Much of urban pollution stems from outside city limits and significant progress will only be achieved with policies that also require national, regional and even international commitment.A significant part of city air pollution drifts in from regional sources like wood-burning rural households, coal-fired power plants, industries and the open burning of agricultural waste and rubbish. Commuters driving in from car-centric suburbs and transport between cities contribute to urban congestion and pollution too, stymying smart city initiatives like investments in public transportation and safer streets for walking and cycling. Continue reading...

Retailers say demand is at its highest for a decade with popularity spreading from fruit and vegetables to other groceriesDemand for organic food is at its highest for more than a decade, according to major retailers.That’s good news for an industry that was hit hard by the economic downturn but now seems to be returning to rude health as more shoppers say organic food is worth paying the premium for. This week the Soil Association will release its annual report on the state of the organic food market, which is expected to show that it has grown for the fourth consecutive year. Continue reading...

Josh Frydenberg says rules could allow CEFC to invest in projects that do not reduce emissions by 50% or moreThe Coalition is considering changing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation rules to fund new coal-powered plants.One week after the CEFC chief executive, Oliver Yates, told a Senate committee that investment in new coal plants were a very risky proposition for taxpayers, the energy and environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, said the change was an option because “it’s called the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, not the renewable energy corporation”. Continue reading...

In Sydney’s baking suburbs, fans have sold out – and fears about the effects of climate change are mountingNahid is resting on a bench outside a Target clothing store, her groceries beside her. A cheery, middle-aged woman with a soft Egyptian accent, she is eating a cone of bubblegum ice-cream as though it contains the secret of life. When I ask her if she’s enjoying her ice-cream, it takes her 30 seconds to stop laughing.“On the weekend I was sick! Sick from the heat! It was like a virus,” she exclaims. “My nephew, he was throwing up from the heat! He couldn’t even take water, he was so sick. Continue reading...

Audits carried out at more than 300 abattoirs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland find major hygiene failings in more than a quarter of meat plantsOne in four slaughterhouses are failing to take basic hygiene precautions to stop contaminated meat reaching high street butchers and supermarkets.An analysis of government audits carried out at more than 300 abattoirs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland identified major hygiene failings in more than a quarter of the meat plants. The failings could expose consumers to serious food poisoning illnesses such as E coli, salmonella or campylobacter. Continue reading...

RSPCA believes baby chickens came from commercial producer but were dumped by a third partyAbout 1,000 day-old chicks have been abandoned in a field. RSPCA inspectors said members of the public made the discovery of the newly hatched chickens in a field in Crowland, near Peterborough, in Cambridgeshire on Friday.Many of the chicks are believed to be in good health, although some had died while others had to be put down due to their injuries, the animal welfare charity said. Continue reading...

A new $53m BRT (bus rapid transit) system has the power to reduce Hanoi’s dreadful air pollution. Persuading residents of Vietnam’s rapidly expanding capital to ditch their motorbikes and private cars, however, will be another storyFrom his high-rise office building in Hanoi, Tran Dung can barely see his city’s skyline behind the thick layer of smog. Before leaving work, the 25-year-old executive assistant checks the pollution reading on his AirVisual app, which provides real-time measurements of PM2.5 – the tiny particles found in smog that can damage your throat and lungs.Hanoi’s PM2.5 levels typically range from 100 to 200 micrograms per cubic metre – regularly within the globally acknowledged “unhealthy” category. But on 19 December last year, they hit “hazardous levels” at 343μg/m, which was higher than Beijing. Continue reading...

Slufters Inclosure, New Forest This hardy specimen of butterfly has found an ideal basking site among still damp grasses in a bed of fernOn a bright, cold morning, sandwiched between days of rain and nights of frost, we explore Slufters Inclosure, an area first separated in 1862, when it was planted with Scots pine. It is 6C (43F) when we leave home but the southerly slopes here are harvesting the heat of the sun, and the temperature gradually lifts (just) into double figures. It’s enough to bring liveliness to a dormant scene and makes us wonder from a distance what we will find.Hardly are we in when a dark shape shoots into the sky, does a looping circle around some upper branches and drops to the bankside. This battered red admiral is taking the opportunity offered by a brief change in the weather to soak up some warmth, and transfer it into energy that powers these airborne whorls, and may help to carry the butterfly through the chill days yet to come. A little further down the ride, we spot another, almost immaculate, Vanessa atalanta that has found its ideal basking site among still damp grasses in a bed of hard fern, Blechnum spicant. Continue reading...