Environment | The Guardian

Environment Agency says Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, and North and West Yorkshire most at riskThe Environment Agency has sent water pumps to Cumbria and issued flood warnings for areas in northern England this weekend as heavy rain is expected to fall on already saturated ground.

It’s easy to switch off when you hear another report of rising sea levels. But unless individuals act, we’re heading for a global catastropheIt’s the existential threat to our species, and it bores us to tears. Admit it. You think the consequences of human-driven climate change are terrifying, but it seems too abstract, too technical and too long term. A recent poll in the US found that, while most Americans accepted that the climate was indeed changing, less than a quarter admitted to be either extremely or very worried about it.Related: Collapsing Greenland glacier could raise sea levels by half a metre, say scientists Continue reading...

Real life trials of a groundbreaking array designed to clean up the vast plastic island in the Pacific are due to begin next year after successful tests of a prototype in the NetherlandsA crowdfunded 100km-long boom to clean up a vast expanse of plastic rubbish in the Pacific is one step closer to reality after successful tests of a scaled-down prototype in the Netherlands last week.Further trials off the Dutch and Japanese coasts are now slated to begin in the new year. If they are successful, the world’s largest ever ocean cleanup operation will go live in 2020, using a gigantic V-shaped array, the like of which has never been seen before. Continue reading...

French energy firm should halt expensive UK project in which it has has nothing to gain and everything to lose, says association of employee-shareholdersEDF’s £18bn project to build two nuclear reactors in Hinkley Point, Britain, is so expensive and so risky that it puts the survival of the French utility at risk, an association of employee-shareholders said on Thursday.EDF Actionnariat salarié (EAS) said in a statement that the interests of EDF are gravely threatened by the Hinkley Point project, which it calls “a financial catastrophy foretold” in which EDF has nothing to gain and everything to lose. Continue reading...

The new prime minister’s only encumbrances are those he was lumped with, like Abbott’s ‘make the poorest worse-off’ mindset and a dud climate policyBaggage. Tony Abbott remarked this week – somewhat pointedly – that Malcolm Turnbull wasn’t weighed down by much of his own.

Australian prime minister touches down in Berlin for a day focused on climate, business links and the influx of asylum seekers from Syria into EuropeMalcolm Turnbull has touched down in Berlin for a day of meetings with the German chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of the G20 summit in Turkey.Related: Market forces help Turnbull to build warmer relations with Indonesia Continue reading...

Alberto Kalach explains why the solution to the capital’s future growth may lie with the pre-Hispanic civilisations who built with respect for the environment“For the largest commissions, our government only trusts architects who speak English,” says Alberto Kalach, sitting in the verdant roof garden above his office, Taller de Arquitectura X. “And as you can see, mine is very bad.”

La ambiciosa visión de restaurar los antiguos lagos para la regeneración urbana puede que nunca suceda, pero el arquitecto sigue creyendo que los planes enfocados a las necesidades ecológicas también generan beneficios sociales“Para los proyectos más grandes, nuestro gobierno sólo confía en arquitectos que hablen inglés,” dice Alberto Kalach, sentado en el frondoso jardín de techo de su oficina, el Taller de Arquitectura X. “Y como podrás notar, el mío es muy malo.”

In an online discussion experts debated the farmer’s changing role and how ‘ag-tech’ might make farming sexier and better-paying

Criminal gangs who employ slave labour are often involved in deforestation or pollution. Fighting slavery will also protect our natural resourcesIn many poor countries, environmental destruction is the tipping point that pushes vulnerable families into slavery. Unseasonal droughts, encroaching deserts, extreme flooding, the death of livestock, or illegal deforestation have a devastating impact on families already living on the brink. As their fragile livelihoods become unsustainable, such families may start to gamble with their liberty.Desperate parents accept offers from unscrupulous “recruiters” to employ their daughters in hotels, often suspecting that the offers are too good to be true, but hoping against hope that their daughters won’t end up in the sex trade, or that sons who are offered “light work” and access to schooling won’t be forced to work double shifts in embroidery factories or road building. Sadly, and all too often, however, that is the outcome. Continue reading...

Briddlesford Woods, Isle of Wight Like a magician drawing a rabbit from a hat, Ian’s hand emerges gently grasping a ball of furA confetti of leaves swirl down from the canopy, crunching underfoot as Ian White, dormouse officer of People’s Trust for Endangered Species, leads us along the woodland rides. As creatures of woodland edge and understorey, dormice are among our most threatened mammals, thanks to the decline of traditional woodland management.They are also tiny, nocturnal and predominantly arboreal, only going to ground to hibernate, so the best chance of encountering one is by joining an organised box check led by a licensed handler. Continue reading...

President Dilma Rousseff announced the penalties for co-owners BHP and Vale, after last week’s dam burst coated two states in mud and wasteShares in mining giant BHP Billiton have fallen to new 10-year lows after Brazil imposed an initial fines of 250m reais ($66.2m) on its co-owned operation where two dams burst, killing at least seven people and coating a two-state area with mud and mine waste.

Federal government nominates three sites in South Australia and one each in NSW, Queensland and the Northern TerritoryThe federal government has released a shortlist of six sites in the running to become Australia’s first permanent nuclear waste dump for low-level and intermediate waste.The sites were chosen from 28 voluntarily nominated sites around Australia. Continue reading...

Amber Rudd admits the UK doesn’t have the right policies to meet the UK’s renewable energy targets (Rudd criticised after leak reveals renewables failure, 10 November), but she is clutching at straws to try to transfer the burden on to transport and renewable heat, while sacrificing a popular grassroots movement that could bring about a real transition to a low-carbon economy, under the guise of protecting taxpayers. Hundreds of small volunteer groups that engage communities in combating the causes of climate change by creating their own sustainable energy social enterprises are threatened. If heat is to replicate the success story of solar power, this sector needs more support rather than less.In defending the support given to EDF and its Chinese backers, Ms Rudd may be saving a few pounds of taxpayers’ money now, but she is leaving a legacy of huge increases in electricity bills over the next 45 years. Soaring electricity bills will add urgency to developments in battery technology, already incentivised by the electrifying of road transport, which are key to making the variable output of renewable energy systems viable as an alternative to expensive nuclear power. As storage-based renewable technologies become more competitive we will see communities developing their own micro-grid solutions and going off-grid, rather than paying the high cost of nuclear power. Ms Rudd needs a strategy, not political rhetoric.

The death penalty was abolished 50 years ago this week on 9 November 1965. The murder of Becky Watts was a distressing and disturbing event (Report, 12 November), but it is not a reason to bring back hanging. As Roy Jenkins, central to the campaign for abolition, would no doubt have noted, not taking a life for a life is one marker of a civilised society and that remains the case five decades on.

Jeyakumar Janakaraj, who would head the controversial Carmichael mine project, allegedly worked at a copper mine that leaked toxic water into a riverThe chief executive of the Australian arm of Adani has been linked to a mining pollution case in Africa, prompting renewed questions about the Indian company’s suitability to run this country’s largest proposed coalmine.Related: Coal from Carmichael mine 'will create more annual emissions than New York' Continue reading...

The French photographer’s project Still Life took memento mori of cheap, plastic goods (from Slinkys to soldier dolls) to expose grotesque excessFrench photographer Valérie Belin, who lives and works in Paris, has won the Prix Pictet. The SFr100,000 award – presented at a ceremony in her home city – showcases “leading photographers’ contributions to the debate about the most pressing social and environmental challenges of today” and this year’s theme was Disorder.Related: Prix Pictet prize 2015: shortlist captures theme of disorder – in pictures Continue reading...

Infrastructure and education in poor mining regions among targets of funding, as well as repurposing of lands and power plant sites for other industriesHillary Clinton on Thursday unveiled a $30bn plan to help America’s coal communities adjust to a climate agenda increasingly driven by renewable energy sources.

More than 90% of experts polled by GlobeScan and SustainAbility said they expected the UN’s upcoming Climate Change Conference would result in a worldwide agreement – but just a third believed the pact would have binding power to cause real changeBusinesses can add another item to their corporate bucket lists: taking the lead in tackling climate change where governments have fallen short. In a survey of sustainability experts released Thursday, 90% of respondents said that companies would need to play as big of a role as national governments in combating climate change to prevent environmental disaster.The 2015 Climate Survey, by research consultancy GlobeScan and thinktank SustainAbility, asked 624 sustainability experts from 69 countries about their expectations ahead of the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference (COP21) taking place in Paris in December. Continue reading...

Our friend and colleague Mick Carroll, who has died of cancer aged 68, was a conservationist who worked tirelessly, often at the expense of his health, to protect birds of prey from the depredations of the game shooting industry.Mick founded the South Ryedale and East Yorkshire Raptor Group, dedicated to monitoring and protecting birds of prey in that area – in particular the hen harrier and the Montagu’s harrier. Just before his death he made a special plea, via the Northern England Raptor Forum, for the government to uphold the law to ensure a safer future for all raptors and owls, arguing that “continued and serious threats from the game shooting industry should have been confined to history long ago”. Continue reading...

Environment minister says improved working conditions will help stop poaching in Hwange national park

US warned that any agreement in Paris will be enshrined in law after secretary of state said it would ‘definitively’ not be a treatyThe EU has warned the Obama administration that a global climate deal at the Paris summit must be legally binding, after the US secretary of state John Kerry said that it “definitively” would not be a treaty.“The Paris agreement must be an international legally binding agreement,” a spokeswoman for the EU’s climate commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete , told the Guardian. “The title of the agreement is yet to be decided but it will not affect its legally binding form.” Continue reading...

Ahead of the Paris climate talks, Mancera says countries should change direction and look to cities for inspiration – while revealing plans for a new water fund to address his city’s major shortagesOnce notorious for air pollution, Mexico City’s ability to clean its skies has shown it can also be a leader in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, according to the city’s mayor, Miguel Angel Mancera.

With the rise of platforms that allow dinner party hosts to connect with chefs, debates around regulation are surfacing

Coal mining company denies issuing misleading statements but agrees to amend future risk reports, following eight-year investigation, reports Business GreenCoal giant Peabody Energy has agreed to change the way it reports the risks posed to investors by climate change, ending an eight-year investigation by the New York attorney general.Peabody and attorney general Eric Schneiderman confirmed they had reached an agreement on Monday, after the company was accused of issuing misleading statements on the risks it could face from tightening climate change laws. Continue reading...

National Grid is adamant there will be no blackouts this winter, but the safety cushion between supply and demand is increasingly threadbareAnyone of a nervous disposition should mark 11 January in their calendar as the moment to have torches, candles or paraffin lamps at the ready.That is the day when, according to National Grid’s forecast, the gap between Britain’s energy needs and its power supply will be at its wafer-thinnest.

France’s foreign minister says US secretary of state John Kerry must be ‘confused’ after he questioned whether any COP21 accord would be legally bindingAny global climate change deal reached in Paris next month will be legally binding and have a concrete impact, France’s foreign minister said on Thursday, reacting to US comments that questioned the status of the accord.The US secretary of state, John Kerry, was quoted as telling Wednesday’s Financial Times that December’s agreement was “definitively not going to be a treaty”. Continue reading...

Fourteen apes flown back to Jakarta, as Bangkok government tries to shed country’s image as hub of illicit wildlife tradingFourteen orangutans that were smuggled out of Indonesia and believed to have been put to work at tourist attractions in Thailand have been sent home.Indonesia’s air force sent a C-130 plane to transport the apes, each in a metal cage, for the five-hour trip from Bangkok to Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, on Thursday. Continue reading...

Contrary to what Matt Ridley and the Tory commentariat would have us believe, last week’s grid problems were caused not by a lack of wind but an over-reliance on a small number of fossil fuel suppliersOur green obsession with windmills is bringing Britain’s electricity system to its knees, if Tory press commentators writing about last week’s grid problems are to be believed. In the Times, Matt Ridley demanded an electricity policy “rethink”, blaming the “emergency” on investment in renewables and the fact that “the wind was not blowing on a mild autumn day”.

La trayectoria de cada gota que pasa por la Ciudad de México expresa una historia heroica, trágica, inacabada, de crecimiento urbano y desarrollo humano. A lo largo de una semana, The Guardian siguió esta trayectoriaCuando una tormenta se abate sobre la Ciudad de México, la lluvia no sólo cae, sino que insiste. Comienza a media tarde como un ligero golpeteo sobre ventanas y parabrisas, después arrecia con una precipitación vespertina que convierte los salpicones en charcos, hasta que finalmente –mediante un clímax nocturno de truenos y relámpagos que caen desde los distantes volcanes– el aluvión borbotea por el desagüe y las hondonadas, hasta convertir el goteo sobre los riachuelos en torrentes bajo los túneles. Las inundaciones sirven para recordar el orden natural de las cosas: el agua es oriunda de aquí.

Each drop of water that passes through the Mexican capital tells a heroic, tragic, unfinished story of urban growth and human development. Over the course of a week, the Guardian follows this complex, costly trailWhen a tormenta sweeps in to Mexico City, the rain does not just fall, it insists. Gently at first with a mid-afternoon patter on windows and windscreens, then more urgently with an evening downpour that turns splashes into puddles, until finally – with a nighttime climax of thunder and lightning rolling down from the distant volcanos – the deluge gushes through gutters and gullies, transforming trickles in runnels into torrents in tunnels. The floods are a reminder of the natural order of things: water belongs here.

Los baños públicos de la ciudad son un buen ejemplo de la cultura popular, dice Kurt Hollander, quien comenzó a fotografiarlos hace más de una décadaComencé a fotografiar baños en la Ciudad de México hace más de una década, cuando tuve un caso grave de salmonela que degeneró en colitis ulcerosa crónica. Durante muchos años en que fui testigo de cómo la vida se me escurría por la parte posterior sin poder hacer nada, visité más baños públicos que cualquier otra persona en la Ciudad de México. Ir corriendo al baño por toda la ciudad cambió de manera fundamental mi percepción de esta.

National Trust says central and local governments should plan ahead for increasing coastal erosion rather than talk of ‘holding the line’Britain must abandon “Churchillian rhetoric” and claims it can “hold the line” against rising seas, and instead plan ahead for increasing coastal erosion, according to the National Trust.

From plant-based menus in California to vegetarianism in Letchworth, many schools are adopting sustainable food policies – with varying results

Second round of auctions under Direct Action scheme means government has spent almost half the $2.55bn emissions reduction fundThe Turnbull government has bought another 45m tonnes of carbon abatement for $557m, but analysts say its Direct Action policy cannot reduce Australia’s greenhouse emissions or meet the promised long-term targets.The government has now spent almost half its $2.55bn emissions reduction fund to buy less than half of the greenhouse reductions needed to meet its 2020 target. Continue reading...

Low rainfall in river’s catchment area and possible climate change factors could mean current situation remains or worsens, say expertsThe Rhine has been hit by its longest period of low water in 40 years, Dutch officials said on Wednesday, raising inland shipping costs and fears of collisions on one of Europe’s busiest rivers.

Butterflies are full of surprises and this year they have saved their biggest until last: in the midst of an awful November, subtropical butterflies have been spotted on England’s south coast. The remarkable appearance of the long-tailed blue, a butterfly happiest in the heat of Africa or Australia, raises a mystery: will these insects simply die this winter?Until recently, the long-tailed blue, or Lampides boeticus, very occasionally arrived in hot summers: notably in 1945, and 1990 when it pitched up in Gillespie Park, north London. In 2013, however, there was an unprecedented invasion. Summer arrivals laid eggs on everlasting peas (ironically a garden plant gone wild, imported from Italy) and in October offspring emerged: 109 were counted. This year it’s happened again. But the emergence of a British born generation has been delayed by the gloomy autumn. If it stays mild and the rain stops, more could yet hatch. Continue reading...

In recent, soon to be published work, we show that the coral reefs of the Egyptian Sinai are the most valuable in the world, generating fine sand beaches, calm water and fabulous opportunities for world-class snorkelling and diving, all within a short flight from Europe.The tragedy of recent events (Report, 11 November) is complex and manifold. Of course there is the loss of innocent life. And there is also the loss of critical foreign exchange to Egypt, and of employment and income locally. Continue reading...

Australia Institute calculations show average annual emissions from burning coal from Adani’s proposed mine would be more than many countries and big citiesCoal from Adani’s proposed $16bn Carmichael project will create annual emissions similar to those from countries like Malaysia and Austria and more than New York City, according to calculations designed to highlight the scale of the mine’s environmental impacts.Related: Conservation group challenges approval of Carmichael coalmine as ‘illegal’ Continue reading...

To thrive, the threatened beast needs more holes in our back gardens. Let’s make it our national symbol, and start digging for a prickly victoryLast night the MP for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, Oliver Colvile, stood up in parliament and made an impassioned speech in defence of the hedgehog. He suggested that in order to protect it, we should make it the national symbol of the UK.The speech was met with some wonderful responses, including a quote that was new to me, the Pashtun saying that “in every happy home is a hedgehog”, along with more predictable references to Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and William Shakespeare. This is the first discussion in parliament to take place since 1566 – and it is the first time I have been given a mention in Hansard – though being labelled as eccentric might take some living down. Continue reading...

E.ON and SSE endorse planning by National Grid as UK heads into potentially tough winter which could challenge stability of gas and power suppliesEnergy companies E.ON and SSE have given their support to the National Grid, after it pledged to secure sufficient power supply to avoid blackouts over what some forecasters predict will be one of the most severe winters ever recorded.“We’ll continue to diversify our investment in new and existing plant as we firmly believe that it’s important to have a broad range of generation assets as we move to lower carbon technologies. Our efforts are helping the UK to maintain the necessary generation mix so that the country can have secure energy, affordable energy and sustainable energy in the long term,” E.ON’s UK chief executive, Tony Cocker, said. Continue reading...

As SeaWorld announces an end to its killer whale shows in San Diego, here is an overview of its recent troubled history, following trainer deaths, a critical documentary and social media action24 February 2010

The fires devastating Indonesia have been called a ‘crime against humanity’. How did they start, what damage are they causing and who’s to blame?As satellite data of the fire hotspots shows, forest fires have affected the length and breadth of Indonesia. Among the worst hit areas are southern Kalimantan (Borneo) and western Sumatra. The fires have been raging since July, with efforts to extinguish them hampered by seasonal dry conditions exacerbated by the El Nino effect. As well as Indonesia, the acrid haze from the fires is engulfing neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore and has reached as far as southern Thailand. Continue reading...

My beautiful country is suffering the effects of climate change. To avoid catastrophe, leaders need to act urgently at the UN Paris conferenceThe roof of the world. That is what Tibet has long been known as. The phrase conjures up images of summits, with their mountain peaks, glaciers, permafrost and the nomads who live on the land.But a roof is also symbolic of a home, and is the structure that protects those who live there. And, as we all know, if the roof is structurally compromised, then so is the home. Continue reading...