This year could be worst ever for melt as data shows average sea ice extent for last month was more than half a million square kilometres smaller than the previous record of May 2012Arctic sea ice fell to its lowest ever May extent, prompting fears that this year could beat 2012 for the record of worst ever summer sea ice melt.Data published by the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) this week showed average sea ice extent for last month was more than 500,000 sq km (193,000 sq miles) smaller than May 2012. Continue reading...

He may have lost his campaign, but Sanders achieved major wins, making his rival promise more on green policies and climate change, reports GristHillary Clinton is her party’s presumptive nominee. Whether Sanders drops out tomorrow or the day he loses the roll-call vote at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, his campaign is over.But if ever there were a losing campaign that achieved some major wins, it’s Sanders’. Not only did he force Clinton to talk more about economic inequality, he pushed her to promise stronger action to fight climate change and rein in fossil fuel companies. If Hillary Clinton becomes president and keeps some of her more recent promises to restrict oil drilling and fracking, Sanders will deserve a share of the credit. Continue reading...

Readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsI can’t help noticing that trees have so many different shaped leaves, yet according to Darwin’s theories, surely the single best shape should be able to out-compete the others. So, why in similar conditions, are there so many different shapes?Peter Hughes, Harrow Continue reading...

Move towards renewable energy and away from coal power helped stall emissions growth last year but slowdown may be temporary, says oil giantCarbon emissions stopped growing in 2015 for the first time in 10 years as the world turned its back on coal and embraced energy efficiency and renewable power with increased vigour, according to a new set of statistics.

The Atlas of Ocean Wealth, published ahead of World Oceans Day, brings together data from thousands of sources – from governments to Flickr photos – to provide insight into the economic and social value of our marine life. It is being used to pinpoint areas where even small-scale interventions can make a big difference to benefit local people and improve sustainability Continue reading...

Euro-MPs criticise G7-led food security programme, saying it pushes agribusiness and GM to the detriment of biodiversity and small-scale farmersFor a large majority of Euro-MPs, the G7’s decision to base its programme for food security in Africa on intensive agriculture is a mistake. The European parliament took its first official stance on the subject with the adoption of a report on the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NAFSN) on Tuesday.“We have already made the mistake of intensive agriculture in Europe. We should not replicate it in Africa because this model destroys family farming and reduces biodiversity,” said Mara Heubuch, a German Green MEP and rapporteur on the new alliance. Continue reading...

Companies should come clean on the harm plastic microbeads in their products is causing to marine life, says environment committee chairThe UK’s biggest beauty brands have been accused by an influential MP of showing contempt for their customers by refusing to appear in parliament to answer questions on the impact that their products are having on the oceans.MPs on the environmental audit committee will hear on Wednesday from the UK and European cosmetics trade bodies on the harm caused by plastic ‘microbeads’ in cosmetics, which are mistaken for food by marine life. Continue reading...

Environmentalists are sceptical that plans to quadruple maximum jail terms from five to 20 years will be effective.Indonesia plans to quadruple maximum jail terms for animal poachers and traffickers in a major overhaul of wildlife crime laws, but environmentalists expressed scepticism on Wednesday that the changes would be effective.

The microbead pollution contaminating our marine life does not respect borders. As UK ministers meet on World Oceans Day they must look to find solutions by working with our neighbours and partners in EuropeFrom the shallowest coastal waters to the depths of the oceanic trenches some 10,000 meters beneath the sea, our oceans are home to a vast amount of life on earth. Covering over two-thirds of the world’s surface, they provide food and support tourism and leisure in every part of the world.Our oceans are under pressure from warming and acidification, and on World Oceans Day, the environmental audit committee, which I chair, will be hearing about microplastic pollution. Continue reading...

40% of Americans don’t understand the risks posed by climate change or a President Donald TrumpCurrently, about 40% of Americans support Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and about 40% of Americans are not worried about global warming. While short of a majority, this is a substantial fraction of the American public failing to grasp the risks associated with a Donald Trump presidency and potentially catastrophic climate change impacts.In Business Insider, Josh Barro recently wrote about the former: Continue reading...

Asylum seekers, marriage equality and climate change top of issues those surveyed wanted addressedA survey of thousands of young Australians has found they are more interested in social and environmental issues than economic concerns, heading into the election.The Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth (ARACY), and a group called Youth Action, conducted a national survey of 3369 Australians aged between 12 and 25, between 4 April and 2 May. Continue reading...

The deputy prime minister rejects suggestion by constitutional expert George Williams that section 51 could be used to halt mine on environmental groundsBarnaby Joyce has rejected outright the use of an export power in the constitution to stop the Shenhua Watermark mine, saying it would be “economically and socially disastrous”.

As the vaquita – the world’s smallest porpoise – plunges toward extinction, scientists have a tough decision ahead of them: to attempt a super risky captive breeding programme or not?

Nathan McLaren, an electrician, captured the moment a 3.3m long shark breached out of the water behind a surfer on the east coast of AustraliaA once-in-a-lifetime photograph has caught the moment a great white shark breached its entire body out of the water behind an oblivious surfer.The photograph was taken by Nathan McLaren on Tuesday as he watched surfers off Swansea Heads, just south of Newcastle in New South Wales. Continue reading...

Heavy rain hits the capital on Tuesday, leaving cars submerged in flood waters in Wallington, south London. Three people became trapped in their cars. One was rescued by the London Fire Brigade and the two others managed to escape from their vehicles before the firefighters arrived. Almost a month’s rainfall fell in one hour

Image met with accusations of fearmongering, but after two fatal shark attacks in five days, Brett McCarthy says risk of mauling is ‘now clearly a public safety issue’The editor of the West Australian newspaper has defended the paper’s controversial front page, which featured a photoshopped image of children being chased out of the surf by a shark under the headline “Will it take this?”It followed calls from the paper for the government to restart its controversial shark cull policy after two fatal shark attacks in five days. Continue reading...

Meet the small businesses that rely on rubbish – trading unwanted apples in exchange for cider, or turning fishing nets into swimming costumesThe small businesses using rubbish as a revenue stream aren’t always on the lookout for waste. For Simon Wright, founder of independent drinks company Hawkes, the rubbish found him.With his successful line of ginger beer already turning a profit, the entrepreneur saw an opportunity. “When I found out about a load of apples that weren’t being used from community orchards around London, I came up with the idea for Urban Orchard cider.”

Wenlock Edge The blackbird’s wings have the flutter of panic as he tries to navigate through the house to find an escapeThe unmistakable fan-snap of feathers announces the arrival of a visitor. A dark blur up the stairs, a spike of electric current. There is a palpable disturbance to the order of things when there’s a bird in the house; perhaps that’s why it’s associated with ill omen. The blackbird hops through the back door following a trail of breakfast cereal.We have become familiar to each other. We share the same space in the backyard where he forages, and we leave crumbs and titbits. It could be that he was born in the garden and has known us all his life, as did his parents. Now he has a nest and a brood of chicks to feed, we listen to him sing; we live in parallel and have retreated to our separate worlds, until now. Continue reading...

Webs of tens of thousands of arachnids combine to form thick netting above trees in north-western Tasmania in ‘mass ballooning event’Deluged homeowners in Tasmania’s north-west are not the only residents of the waterlogged area to seek higher ground.Vast translucent covers have formed above trees in towns such as Westbury in the wake of storms and the state’s worst floods in 40 years. Continue reading...

The force behind Antony and the Johnsons joins more than 100 activists and traditional owners in walk through east Pilbara in Western Australia to raise awareness of threat posed by proposed Kintyre mineRight now, walking across the remote east Pilbara in the Western Australian desert, is a wagon train of more than 100 artists, activists and traditional owners.Along the way, stories are told about the land: where water is sourced, where the animals and the plants are, where traditional burial and hunting grounds may be, and why mining on this land must not go ahead. Continue reading...

Video message part of Remember the Reef campaign launched to coincide with release of Finding DoryEllen DeGeneres has joined the fight to save the Great Barrier Reef with a video message urging Australians to take action on “saving this amazing place”.The video message is part of a “Remember the Reef” campaign launched to coincide with the release of her latest film, Finding Dory, in which she plays a reef-dwelling blue tang fish with short-term memory loss, and coincides with a Guardian special report on the future of the reef and what can be done to save it. Continue reading...

In a message for Australia, the actor and chatshow host says she’s a big fan of ‘your beautiful, great, wonderful Great Barrier Reef, which is home to my favourite fish, Dory’. The video is part of the Remember the Reef campaign that coincides with the release of her latest film, Finding Dory. DeGeneres provides the voice of Dory in the sequel to 2003’s critically acclaimed Finding Nemo. Disney will work with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and the Great Barrier Reef marine park authority to help raise awareness of the reef’s decline. For more information visit rememberthereef.com Continue reading...

The Australian government has appointed Ian the Climate Denialist Potato to explain to the world what is really happening to the Great Barrier Reef

Party promise to compensate displaced fisheries and invest in shark research to assist in their conservation and protect humans from interactions with themMillions of hectares of pristine marine wilderness around Australia would be protected immediately, supertrawlers would be banned and millions of dollars would be invested in shark research under a new set of marine policies released by the Greens on Wednesday.“Australia is incredibly proud of our unique marine ecosystems, yet they are at risk from climate change, overfishing, oil and gas production and other challenges,” the Greens senator Rachel Siewert said. Continue reading...

Experts have said this election is the last chance to save the reef. We ask the three biggest parties about their policies to do soAs Australia goes to the polls on 2 July, the Great Barrier Reef will be reeling from its worst environmental crisis in recorded history and experts have said this election cycle is the last chance to save it. Both climate change and water quality need to be tackled quickly and aggressively.We asked the three parties a series of questions about their positions on the Great Barrier Reef. Continue reading...

Over time I’ve become painfully aware that decisions being made outside my community are defining not only my business, but the entire reef tourism industryIn the late 1970s, I literally underwent a sea change. After spending time as a deckhand on a mate’s boat I decided commercial fishing was the life for me. All my energy went into fishing so I could fund a carefree life of adventure – snorkelling and diving on the Great Barrier Reef.Life and work was good, but I figured out a way to make it even better. I spent a year building a fishing boat with long-range capability that was large enough to house myself, my wife and our first daughter. We could now spend months out at sea, eliminating the time and expense of a daily commute to fishing spots, as well as our living costs. Continue reading...

Many of the politicians fighting Australia’s election campaign talk about the economy and immigration but the world is listening for what they say about the impact of climate change

The US senator just can’t win – because the billionaire presidential candidate just can’t lose: whether he triumphs in the race for the White House or notIt occurred to me only recently that it’s never going to happen. Even if Donald Trump loses the race in November, he’ll act as if he’s won. He’ll repeatedly explain how, by many different measures, he was the true victor. He’ll blame others for whatever went wrong and insist that the outcome suits him perfectly anyway, because he’s a billionaire and therefore immune to dissatisfaction or regret. The bit where he loses and feels bad about himself, that’s never coming. And, of course, he might actually win.Instead it’s the Republican party that’s going to lose and feel bad about itself, whether Trump is victorious or not. It’s not yet clear precisely how this disaster will pan out, but here’s a telling example of what’s already happening. John McCain is a widely respected Republican senator. He may have lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, but he held his Arizona senate seat two years later with 59% of the vote. He’s also a former prisoner of war, and when Trump implied that McCain didn’t qualify as a war hero because he’d been captured (this was back in July last year) it seemed like one of those sufficiently stupid moments. It wasn’t. Continue reading...

Christopher Abbott says orderly evacuation seen during Japan’s Fukushima incident would not work as well in western societiesWestern societies would not respond well to a Fukushima-style nuclear disaster due to a lack of public information, a leading disaster expert has warned.Christopher Abbott said he firmly believed that the public ought to be better educated over the hazards and risks they may face. Continue reading...

Janet Russell asks the right question (Letters, May 30). What has happened to the report on shale gas by the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC)? When Professor Cowern and I gave evidence in February, we were assured that the report would be published no later than May. We have also been told unofficially that the CCC has accepted our data on fugitive emissions of methane and that shale gas is two times worse than coal from a climate change perspective. We also submitted a further paper towards the end of March, indicating that over half of the rise in atmospheric levels of methane seen globally since 2007 is due to oil and gas, notably shale extraction in the US, and that this is obscuring the rise in methane emissions from the Arctic. I suppose it would be highly embarrassing for the government if its “dash for gas” was found to be incompatible with our climate change commitments, agreed by the UN but implemented via EU legislation. Embarrassing unless the government accepted the scientific case and announced it was going to abandon fracking and invest in renewables.

Longer days helped solar panels generate 50% more electricity than coal across the whole of May, analysis showsSolar power in the UK produced more electricity than coal across the whole of May, the first ever month to pass the milestone, according to research by analysts at Carbon Brief. Solar panels generated 50% more electricity than the fossil fuel across the month, as days lengthened and coal use fell. Solar generated an estimated 1,336 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity in May, compared to 893GWh output from coal.Coal was once the mainstay of the nation’s power system but the rapid rise of solar panels and of climate change concerns has seen its use plummet, leading to a series of milestones in recent weeks. Continue reading...

My lifelong friend and colleague Mike Croxford, who has died aged 71, was a pioneer of recycling in his native Wales. The Welsh government’s current recycling performance – at 60% it is fourth in Europe – owes much to Mike, who was a founder member of the Zero Waste movement worldwide and of the Zero Waste International Trust.His interest in recycling began in 1980, while running the Augusta Street youth project in Cardiff. The young people started collecting newspapers to improve their standing among local people and to fundraise to run events for the community. The project turned into the Community Support Anti-Waste Scheme (CSAWS) that in 1986 initiated the first citywide collection scheme in the UK. Continue reading...

Lizzie Carr catalogued vast amount of plastic junk clogging 400 miles of waterways as she paddled through during her 22-day journeyA woman who paddled 400 miles up the length of England’s waterways found them choked with thousands of plastic items, from bottles and bags to toys and dummies.Lizzie Carr completed the 22-day challenge on Sunday with swollen knuckles and more than 2,000 photos of plastic junk she found in canals and rivers from Godalming in Surrey to Kendal in Cumbria. Continue reading...

Former Unilever and Nestlé supplier says it now aims to comply with the RSPO’s highest level of accreditation by the end of the yearOne of the world’s largest producers of palm oil has dropped a lawsuit against the sustainability body that revoked its accreditation.IOI Group was suspended from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) scheme in April in the face of allegations it was not doing enough to prevent deforestation in Indonesia. Continue reading...

Sitting at a table with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of noxious silver cleaner is the worst – and it’s not even eco-friendly. Here’s a better methodWhen I was a child, one of my jobs was to polish the silverware. Saying this makes my family sound far more posh than we were. Our house was chronically filled with chaos and noise, and the shoes, toys and general detritus of the six children, dog and several guinea pigs who called it home. The silverware represented the only shred of civility my beleaguered parents had left, and they clutched it with all their might. Hauling the utensils out on special occasions meant they hadn’t completely capitulated to the army of small children they had created, so haul it out they did. And when they did, it was my job to polish it.This particular chore was one of my most hated. It meant sitting at the kitchen table with a roll of paper towel and a bottle of noxious silver cleaner, meticulously polishing each fork and spoon, trying to work the polish into each crevice without first passing out from the fumes. It was long, laborious, and always gave me a headache. Continue reading...

Morocco’s ‘gold’ is providing jobs for hundreds of women in a thriving network of co-operatives, and helping to reduce desertification amid climate change

Despite a backlash by some cyclists at the motoring organisation’s Cyclist’s Highway Code, the AA’s new book on cycling isn’t as bad as you might thinkWhen the AA, the UK’s largest motoring organisation, published a Cyclist’s Highway Code on Monday, I thought it seemed like a bizarre but effective way to wind up passionate cyclists such as myself.I already don’t like the official Highway Code for telling me I “should” wear a helmet and fluorescent clothing to ride around in daylight when studies have concluded neither will make cycling safer for me or the community in which I cycle. Continue reading...

Closing coal plants by 2023 rather than 2025 will cut carbon emissions and air pollution, and boost clean energy projects, Tory thinktank tells governmentThe UK should close all its coal-fired power stations two years earlier than the government’s pledge of 2025, according to green Conservatives including former energy minister Lord Greg Barker.The move would not cause the lights to go out, would cut both carbon emissions and air pollution and would boost cleaner energy projects, according to a report from Bright Blue, a thinktank of Tory modernisers. Continue reading...