From the prescient lyrics of Jackson Browne to Michael Jackson getting angry about humans destroying the Earth, here are the tunes that made this week’s playlist

Oscar winner cooks up cake-themed sortie on land leased by energy firm Cuadrilla – sparking a farmer’s retaliatory dirty protest of his ownEmma Thompson has broken a court injunction – and come uncomfortably close to a manure-spreading tractor – to film a Great British Bake Off spoof on land leased for fracking.Related: Emma Thompson: UK would be 'mad not to' stay in EU Continue reading...

Major UN report warns heat stress suffered by factory and field workers will devastate health and reduce productivityWorkers in fields and factories face an epidemic of heat-related injuries that will devastate their health, income and productivity as climate change takes hold, a major UN report has warned.Productivity losses alone could rise above $2tn by 2030, as outdoor employees in many regions slow their pace, take longer breaks and shift their work to cooler dusk and dawn hours. Continue reading...

Evolution and climate science denial are predominant on the political right; there is no equivalent on the left

Refuge cities In a city where more than 60% of journeys are made by bike, a local community group is using cycling as a tool to integrate people from immigrant backgrounds into their new nation. Peter Walker pays a visitNaima gingerly pedals her bike round a corner of the car park and comes to a slightly wobbly halt. Feet safely back on tarmac she explains why, 27 years after coming to the Netherlands from Morocco, she has finally begun to learn that most Dutch of skills.

It’s hard to avoid a little rain in Britain but with the right kit, attitude and skills you can stay safe and still enjoy your rideWe’d all rather ride in warm and dry weather but sometimes that isn’t an option. Don’t let bad weather put you off, though – with the right kit, attitude and skills and you can stay safe and still enjoy your ride. Continue reading...

Domestic products that eliminate the need for water could mean you’ll never have to get wet in the bath or boil an egg again

Several major operators refuse to take Greens’ senators to bleached reefs as a backdrop for policy announcements, fearing potential impact on tourismNorth Queensland tourism operators are routinely refusing to take media and politicians to see coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef for fear the attention will trigger a collapse in visitor numbers, it has been claimed.Related: Great Barrier Reef: Greens call for new tax on mining to pay for damage Continue reading...

Greens leader Richard di Natale says Australia needs to plan for a future without coal, not a future without the reefThe Greens want coal companies to start paying “for the damage they are doing” to the Great Barrier Reef, announcing a new plan to tax miners heavily and use the money to revitalise the reef and to invest in clean energy projects and jobs.Related: Great Barrier Reef: aerial survey reveals extent of coral bleaching Continue reading...

The government’s ‘one-stop-shop’ devolution of approval for the project lowers environmental standards and reduces transparency, senators toldRisky deepwater drilling for oil in the Great Australian Bight is being assessed under a weak and secretive regulatory regime, the Senate has heard. Senators were also told the project would have a much smaller economic benefit than the industry had suggested.BP, the company responsible for the world’s biggest oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is seeking approval to drill for oil in the bight after its initial application was knocked back last year. Continue reading...

Sandy, Bedfordshire A beak full of moss showed the female bird was at the soft furnishing stage of nestingAll through this spring I have stood at the kitchen sink, waited for the kettle to boil, and looked idly out of the window at fragments of a life. She was there again early in the evening. Perched on a post, this blackbird was evidently nervous, flicking her wings as if she was trying to row through sand, lifting her tail to say go, dropping it to say no, not yet.Related: Cats killing huge numbers of British birds, Sir David Attenborough warns Continue reading...

Report blames governments and mining companies, citing regulatory failure, industry indifference, poor dust control and irregular health monitoringA “perfect storm” of regulatory failure, indifference from the mining industry, poor dust control and patchy health monitoring is responsible for the re-emergence of black lung disease among Queensland coalminers.An interim report from a Senate select committee on health has placed the blame for the re-emergence of the disease – which was all but eradicated 30 years ago – at the feet of governments and miners. Continue reading...

Announcing a feasibility study, PM says time has come to consider second link after challenge of breakage of existing Basslink interconnectorThe federal government has launched a feasibility study into a second electricity connector between Tasmania and the mainland, which Malcolm Turnbull has said is “very likely” to prove its commercial viability.Speaking in Tasmania on Thursday, the prime minister said he and Tasmania’s premier, Will Hodgman, believed the time had come to consider the second link because the state had “faced a very severe challenge in terms of energy supply with the breakage” in the Basslink interconnector, which is being repaired. Continue reading...

Farmers signing up for the carbon emissions reduction fund have to meet strict guidelines but there is significant profit and energy savings to be madeThis week the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) will hold the third emissions reduction fund auction and farmers across Australia will move to the forefront of efforts to rescue a “clapped-out” country.Australian farmers have long bought and sold their wares at auction. Sale yards were the hub of country towns and the din of a moleskin-clad auctioneer shouting over the bleating and mooing of fattened livestock has long been a familiar rural backdrop. Continue reading...

The oceanographic explorer and son of Jacques Cousteau has indirectly challenged embattled marine park’s claims that no orca has survived releaseOceanographic explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau has called on SeaWorld to release its captive orcas.Cousteau’s intervention comes just one month after the embattled theme park company announced it would stop its program of orca breeding in captivity, but would not completely release the animals. Continue reading...

Energy secretary Amber Rudd (Letters, 21 April) clearly has the gift of clairvoyance. She says that no liabilities would fall to the UK taxpayer or consumer should Hinkley Point C be cancelled. Who, pray, would foot the bill to complete the project should EDF withdraw after a few years of construction when cost and time overruns became apparent, as they have with other projects in France and Finland?And assuming the plant ever began generating its costly electricity, who would be responsible for the waste management costs, the size of which can only be estimated since the location, depth, technical details about cladding, inventory, or even if there will ever be a repository, remain stubbornly vague and could yet result in indefinite storage on site? Spent nuclear fuel from Hinkley C or Sizewell C would be on their respective sites for an estimated 160 years. Who will take title to hundreds of tonnes of spent nuclear fuel if, as is likely, within that time period, EDF disappears? Continue reading...

Martial law in the occupied territories | Pheasant not so shy | Fat-shaming | Letters to the GuardianThe Guardian’s reporting of the recent case of 12-year-old Dima al-Wawi’s conviction under Israeli martial law (Palestinian girl, 12, freed from Israeli jail, 26 April) failed to point out that such a law is, in fact, entirely British. On 7 June 1967, the commander of the IDF in the West Bank, Chaim Herzog, issued Security Provisions Order Proclamation No 3 which imposed such a system of military justice on the occupied territories, which was nothing other than the 1945 Defence (Emergency) Regulations instituted by the British mandatory government in its struggle to defeat Jewish terrorism. This British law has never been revoked or reformed, and still applies in the occupied territories today.

The US president will go to the Michigan city currently battling a toxic water crisis, after Mari Copeny wrote saying a visit ‘would really lift people’s spirits’Barack Obama will visit Flint, Michigan for the first time next week, to be briefed on efforts to tackle the toxic water crisis that has plagued the city.

Scheme offering Indonesian villages that stop illegal logging large discounts on medical care is saving lives as well as the rainforestAs a dental surgeon, a successful career in conservation was not something Dr Hotlin Ompusunggu ever imagined.

The bison will join the bald eagle, the national emblem since 1782, as America’s symbolic animal, in an effort to prevent it from going extinctThe bison, an animal once hunted to the brink of extinction in America, is set to become the first national mammal of the US, putting it on a par with the bald eagle as a symbol of the nation.

Dong, biggest single investor in UK offshore wind, says profits from its renewables overtaking oil and gas receiptsBooming profits from British windfarms have more than made up for declining oil and gas revenues at Dong Energy, a state-owned Danish utility which says it is transforming itself from a high to low-carbon power producer.Dong, the biggest single investor in UK offshore wind projects, including the huge London Array windfarm off Kent, reported first-quarter profits of Kr 8bn (£836m), a sum that was up 35% on the same period last year. Continue reading...

Europe’s food safety watchdog warns the latest ‘superfood’ contains a compound that is converted to cyanide in the body at harmful levelsThey have been billed as a new “superfood”, bursting with vitamins, with potential cancer-fighting properties, and a vital ingredient in detoxes. They even appear in wholesome jams made by Delia Smith.But apricot kernels could be a hidden health hazard, Europe’s food safety watchdog said on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Customary land users care for roughly 50% of the earth’s land, but only about 10% is officially recognised as belonging to these communitiesWhen Edward Loure, one of the co-authors of this piece, was a boy, his family was evicted from its home in east Africa in order to expand the boundaries of Tarangire National Park, one of Tanzania’s most popular wildlife reserves. Similar evictions had earlier taken place in the Serengeti in the late 1950s.Related: African land grabs; we cannot expect companies and financiers to regulate themselves Continue reading...

Readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsIf we humans are top of the food chain, which creature is second?

Co-founder of the People party, later to evolve into the Green partyWhen the Coventry solicitor Tony Whittaker was handed a copy of Playboy magazine by his wife, Lesley, in a Warwickshire pub in the summer of 1972, he could not have envisaged that it would lead to the couple co-founding one the world’s first Green parties. The magazine had an interview with the US biologist Paul R Ehrlich, who predicted famine and environmental collapse if governments ignored nature, and population continued to grow unchecked.For the Whittakers and their drinking friends in the Bridge Inn at Napton, the local businessman Michael Benfield and his colleague and later wife, Freda Sanders, the conversation was the catalyst to form a new kind of party to challenge the UK political establishment and reflect mounting awareness of global environmental limits. The “Gang of Four”, as they became known, called a public meeting in the Whittakers’ legal offices and the 43 people who turned up in February 1973 founded People, which was renamed the Ecology party at its second national conference in 1975, and then the Green party in 1984. Continue reading...

EU laws currently protect British animals from cruel farming practices. With these removed their lives would be incalculably worseWith so many loud voices clamouring to be heard in the Brexit debate, there is a risk we will fail to consider those that cannot speak at all – animals. But voting to leave the European Union could have a profound effect on their welfare. Britain has a reputation as a nation of animal lovers, but over the past decade our lawmakers have lagged behind Europe’s in protecting them from harm.Related: Handing animal welfare to the farming industry is a big backward step | Philip Lymbery Continue reading...

Whether it is falling dairy prices, land costs or the pressures of paperwork, we asked British farmers which area of their industry they are most worried about‘I find it hard to understand the lack of rationality in the industry’Emma King lives on a farm in Dorset that has been in her husband’s family for generations. “I had never really seen a cow until I was 30. I was living in Windsor working as a retirement consultant for an actuarial firm. Then I met my husband and gave it all up to be a farmer’s wife on a family farm where three generations currently live. It has been a huge learning curve, but one without regret.” Continue reading...

Air purifying technology may be a sticking plaster for China’s pollution but is it better than nothing for the country’s chronic problem?Behind a red wooden door, down a Beijing alley, lies what is allegedly the cleanest air spot in the smog-sodden city. Numerous air purifiers gently whir in the Breathing Space Courtyard, in the Chinese capital’s Beixinqiao area.Dotted around the courtyard’s main building, which houses the headquarters of Beijing startup Origins Technology, are small, sleek alarm clock-like monitors showing air quality index (AQI) readings. Called Laser Eggs, these 499 yuan (£53) monitors display flicking numbers that seldom go above 10, showing officially “excellent” air quality levels, according to the scale recognised by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection. Continue reading...

A disused office in The Hague has been revamped as a sprawling rooftop greenhouse, with a fish farm operating on the floor below. Are we entering a new age of urban agriculture?At the top of an empty 1950s office block that once belonged to the Dutch telecommunications powerhouse Philips, above an abandoned reception desk and six floors of vacant office space, is a shock of green. Here, on a concrete building in The Hague, is a modern experiment: Europe’s largest urban farm.Tomatoes, vegetables and trendy “microgreens” are sprouting in a sprawling 1,200 sq m rooftop greenhouse. Below, on the fishy-smelling sixth floor, is a huge fish farm. Continue reading...

State environmental analyst in a 2008 email asked a technician collecting samples of a water system in Fenton to collect more to avert a ‘lead public notice’A Michigan environmental official suggested a technician collecting samples for a suburban Detroit private water system “bump ... out” a test result that found very high levels of lead by testing more homes, according to a 2008 email reviewed by the Guardian. Doing so could avert a “lead public notice”, the email reasoned, which would alert residents of dangerously high levels in their water.“Oh my gosh, I’ve never heard [it] more black and white,” said Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech professor and lead expert who helped uncover the Flint water crisis. “In the Flint emails, if you recall, it was a little bit implied … this is like telling the strategy, which is: ‘You failed, but if you go out and get a whole bunch more samples that are low, then you can game it lower.’ Continue reading...

An anonymous $50,000 check marked the start of the notoriously private star’s donations to climate change and clean energy causes, reports GristIn the outpouring of media coverage after Prince’s death at the age of 57 last week, fans around the globe began to learn more about the notoriously private star – including that he gave away a lot of money. Van Jones – the activist, author, former Obama administration official, and current CNN commentator – revealed that Prince had secretly funded causes from public radio to Black Lives Matter to the Harlem Children’s Zone. He also conceived of #YesWeCode, an initiative to train black kids for work in tech. And he supported Green For All, a group working to fight climate change and bring green jobs to underprivileged populations. Jones is in the leadership of the latter two organizations.“I was an Oakland activist giving speeches about the need for green jobs,” Jones told me over the phone, recalling how he first came into contact with the musician 10 years ago. “Prince heard me in the media and sent a $50,000 check to support the work I was doing. But he did all his giving completely anonymously, so I sent the check back. You never know when someone is trying to set you up – it could have been from Chevron or from a drug dealer or whatever. So then he sent the check back and I sent it back again, and then he sent it back and then I sent it back, until finally a representative called and said, ‘Will you please accept this check? I won’t tell you who it is from, but the guy’s favorite color is purple.’ I said, ‘Well, now you have a different problem: I’m not gonna cash this check, I’m gonna frame it.’” Continue reading...

With an eye on the election, the Greens leader uses his National Press Club speech to tackle climate change, tax, the wealthy and the ‘old parties’ of the establishmentIt is “inconceivable” that the Greens would form a minority government with the Coalition if the election came to that, given their views on global warming, asylum seekers and renewable energy, says the party’s leader, Richard Di Natale.But they may consider an agreement with Labor because that would provide an opportunity to pursue serious Greens initiatives at the federal level, he said. Continue reading...

Conservationists claim the state government failed to ensure the planned Carmichael mine was ecologically sustainableAdani’s plan for Australia’s largest coalmine faces yet another snag, with a conservation group mounting what is now the eighth legal challenge to the contentious project.The group, Land Services of Coast and Country, filed an appeal for a judicial review of the Queensland government’s environmental approval of the Carmichael mine in the supreme court on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Environment minister Greg Hunt says he thinks Australians will come up with a better option than the UK vote winnerA public competition will be held to name the government’s new Antarctic icebreaker – and environment minister Greg Hunt is optimistic it will throw up a better alternative than Boaty McBoatFace.Related: From the Bell End to Boaty McBoatface: the trouble with letting the public name things Continue reading...

A revised edition of the harrowing monologues from survivors of the disaster brought together by the Nobel prize-winnerI think it can be safely said that for the majority of Russians, over the greater part of recorded history, to have been born in that country has not been to draw one of the winning tickets in the lottery of life. A true history of its people need be no more than the howls of despair of millions of voices, punctuated by moments of incredible tenderness, courage and grim humour.Which is more or less the Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich’s technique: her books are collections of hundreds of interviews with people who have been rolled over by the various incarnations of the Russian state. In Chernobyl Prayer each interview is usually a few pages long, and reads as a monologue – which is how they are described in the contents pages. “Monologue on how easy it is to return to dust”; “Monologue on how some completely unknown thing can worm its way into you”, and so on. Continue reading...

Committee says UK ‘cannot afford further delays’ in setting fifth carbon budget in the wake of the signing of the Paris agreement on climate changeThe government should approve the UK’s 2030s carbon target in the wake of the signing of the Paris agreement on climate change, an influential committee of MPs has urged.

Malcolm Turnbull is attempting to discredit Labor’s new emissions plan. Here are six reasons the government’s campaign is wrong1. The prime minister says that by promising to cut emissions by 45% by 2030, rather than 26% to 28% (as the government has pledged) Labor is “doubling the burden” on Australians. But modelling commissioned by the Coalition from leading economist and former Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin showed that a 45% cut would shave between 0.5% and 0.7% from gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030, whereas a 26% cut would shave between 0.2 and 0.3%. In other words the difference in the economic cost of the Coalition’s target and Labor’s target is about 0.3% of GDP in 2030. That’s 0.3% of an estimated GDP of over $3.5 trillion. It’s not hard to work out that is not doubling an economic burden.Related: Labor proposes two emissions trading schemes costing $355.9m Continue reading...

Wenlock Edge Hawthorns push their little cheesy shuttlecocks, oaks are in their bronzeCuckoo pint, lords and ladies, Jack-in-the-pulpit – these names are medieval nudges and winks about genitalia and sex. They belong to wild arum, a trick flower that jumps out of the earth with a bawdy country humour that mocks the righteous and revels instead in the rude phwoar! of April. The cruellest month, according to T S Eliot, and maybe we’ll pay for these few glorious sunny days, but we’ll make the most of them until then.It’s getting steamy in the hedgerow. For months, trees stood in companionable silence throughout a blowy winter that leaked into a dour early spring; now they fizz with a green static as buds pop and a million leaves inflate. Hawthorns push their little cheesy shuttlecocks, oaks are in their bronze; blackthorn has been snowing for weeks, and the purple dangles of ash are out. Small birds, skirmishing through disputed branches, travel in song between trees in the neutral air. Continue reading...

Surprise praise from business lobby group centres on ALP climate policy’s potential to become bipartisan, despite Coalition criticismLabor’s climate policy has won unexpected praise from the Business Council of Australia’s chief executive, Jennifer Westacott, who said the plan could provide a platform for bipartisanship and “build a bridge” for an emission trading scheme.Related: Turnbull warns Labor's emissions trading schemes will destroy jobs Continue reading...

To be truly sustainable, companies must reconcile the different marketing messages they use around the worldYou might not realise it when you walk along the aisles of your local supermarket, but you are surrounded by marketing messages. These differ in every country. Buying milk in the UK? You’ll probably see messages about climate change and the environment. Go to China and the packaging is more likely to emphasise its origins and address consumer concern about food safety.These simple but fundamental differences, with in this case milk, illustrate how businesses adapt their marketing strategies depending on the market. They use whatever elements of sustainability consumers care most about in a given market. Continue reading...

Parts of India are being parched by a drought that means farmers are unable to irrigate their fields, with some areas even running out of drinking waterNo one in the slum of Murtinagar wants to play with Temri and Chinna. The brother and sister don’t speak the local Hindi or Marathi languages – they came here, to Mumbai, India’s financial capital, 10 days ago from their village, Andhra, and grew up speaking the regional language of Telegu. Jaya Kummari, their mother, brought Chinna and Temri to Mumbai because of a drought that has left Andhra without water.In the corner of the one-bedroom apartment that their parents are renting for 4,000 rupees (£40) a month, Temri and Chinna play board games. “We miss our friends,” Chinna says. Continue reading...

Cross-party committee of MPs says the government needs to do much more to tackle the crisis, including a scrappage scheme for dirty old diesel carsAir pollution in the UK is a “public health emergency”, according to a cross-party committee of MPs, who say the government needs to do much more including introducing a scrappage scheme for old, dirty diesel vehicles.The government’s own data shows air pollution causes 40,000-50,000 early deaths a year and ministers were forced to produce a new action plan after losing a supreme court case in 2015. Continue reading...

Environment select committee said plans allowing London and five other cities to charge fees should be available to more councilsLocal authorities across England should be given enhanced powers to charge the worst polluting vehicles entering towns and cities in a bid to improve air quality, MPs have urged.

LED lighting could play a key role in decarbonising the global economy because of its energy savingsAn Australian semiconductor company believes it is finally getting closer to “pay day”, more than a quarter of a century after its breakthrough technology first began taking shape at Sydney’s Macquarie University.Related: Mushrooms, whales and hurricanes: how bio-inspiration boosts energy efficiency Continue reading...

Opposition maintains ambitious targets but aims to minimise cost to households and defers details until after electionLabor is proposing two emissions trading schemes – one for big industrial polluters and an electricity industry model similar to one once backed by Malcolm Turnbull – in a climate policy that trumps the Coalition’s ambition but minimises the hit on household power bills and leaves important detail to be determined post-election.Related: Climate change plan: thinktank suggests policy both sides of politics can embrace Continue reading...

Thirty years on from the tragedy of Chernobyl (theguardian.com, 26 April), the potential of nuclear power to provide cheap, safe, decarbonised energy is not diminished. While we pause to reflect on this worst imaginable accident, we must not let misplaced perceptions of risk mean we overlook reality. Nuclear power is our safest option for the supply of baseload, low-carbon electricity. Coal power has killed more than a thousand times more people per unit of energy produced than nuclear power, including both UN confirmed deaths from reported incidents and epidemiological evidence. All new nuclear build has passive redundant safety systems and must be able to withstand the worst-case disaster, no matter how unlikely. The UK also has a clear programme in place to deal with all our nuclear waste, including the reduced volumes generated by new-build reactor designs compared to current reactors.The planned generation of nuclear technologies offer the UK security of supply and low-carbon solutions to our power needs. There is also a significant economic opportunity, including highly skilled jobs in construction and operation, provided the government holds firm on a minimum percentage commitment to the British supply chain for all new nuclear projects. We must keep nuclear fears in proportion and our minds open in order to keep the lights on.

SciDev.Net: The ongoing civil war and the need to protect the bee industry make it difficult to use insecticidesYemen is bracing itself for a “locust plague” that scientists are unable to stop due to fears that any intervention would also kill bees that are vital to its economy.The country’s Desert Locust Control Centre issued a warning on 18 April that many desert locusts in the country had reached their flying adult phase, while the remaining juveniles could do likewise in a matter of weeks. Continue reading...

Crowds have gathered in Ukraine, Russia and beyond to remember the victims of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The nuclear fallout forced tens of thousands of people from their homes, with many killed at the time and in subsequent years as a result of the radiation Continue reading...

Company chiefs summoned to address committee after French minister says final decison could be put back until SeptemberEDF executives have been called back to parliament to explain why they have further delayed making an investment decision on a planned £18bn nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset.MPs on the energy and climate change committee want to hear from EDF chiefs after the French economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, said the final decision could be delayed until September – four months later than expected. Continue reading...

When it feels like the door’s shutting on your face because you can’t afford organic food, it’s a hard sell to want to identify with a movementA photo made the rounds recently, inciting the ire of the internet in the way only a simple photo can. It showed pre-peeled oranges neatly packaged in clear plastic boxes, sitting on a shelf at a Whole Foods store.I’ll admit I joined in on the mockery, too. I glanced at the picture when it popped up on my feed and I remember rolling my eyes. I remember being momentarily disheartened by our laziness. And typically, this would have been the extent of my interaction – a brief two-second downvote for humanity. Continue reading...