November is upon us and the northern hemisphere is slipping further towards the winter months, while the southern hemisphere is enjoying the last few weeks of spring. We’d like to see your photos of the November wildlife near youAll of a sudden it’s November, and the northern hemisphere is bracing itself for sparser sunshine and early darkness as winter is just a few more weeks away. The southern hemisphere on the other hand is soaking up the last moments of spring ahead of the summer. So what sort of wildlife will we all discover on our doorsteps? We’d like to see your photos of the November wildlife near you.Share your photos and videos with us and we’ll feature our favourites on the Guardian site. Continue reading...

As rains finally clear the skies over south-east Asia, dramatic Greenpeace photos show people and wildlife coping with the haze in one of the worst hit areas of Central Kalimantan on Borneo island

La plus grande centrale solaire du monde, alimentée par le soleil du Sahara, doit permettre de fournir des énergies renouvelables pour couvrir près de la moitié de l’énergie du pays d’ici 2020

Hywind Scotland project will see deployment of five floating turbines off coast of Peterhead, capable of powering 20,000 homes, reports edie.netThe Scottish government has granted consent for the world’s largest floating offshore windfarm to be developed off the coast of Peterhead.Oil and gas giant Statoil will build a 30MW pilot park consisting of five floating 6MW turbines, which could power nearly 20,000 homes. The project will be the UK’s first ever floating windfarm development, with construction set to start next year. Continue reading...

Congress launches initiative to boost renewable energy from current 1% of energy mix, with a 20% target agreed for 2020, reports La NaciónRenewable energy is making inroads in Argentina. Last week, after much negotiation, the chamber of deputies approved a new law decreeing that, by 2017, the country must generate 8% of its electricity from wind, solar or small-scale hydro power, among other energy sources. The bill also calls for this percentage to increase to 20% by 2020. Developing these kinds of energy sources is one of the most efficient mitigation methods in the fight against climate change.

Jade Scott is the co-founder of Fore Adventure, a food-focused outdoor adventure company based in Dorset, England. Here we go on a tour of her “kitchen”. Continue reading...

Tackling inequality is essential for a sustainable economy. As Living Wage Week begins, it is a reminder that decent pay for all is a first step towards narrowing the gap between rich and poorWhen we are in the midst of economic strife, as we saw in 2008, the health of our environment often gets shunted down the priority list by tough-talking governments. Environmental problems are often characterised as oppositional to raising living standards.

François Hollande meeting Chinese president as France tries to get China’s approval of mechanism to make countries ratchet up their emissions cutsFrench president François Hollande hopes to use a state visit to China to boost difficult climate negotiations, a month before a UN conference in Paris aimed at slowing global warming.China, the most populous country and the biggest emitter of climate-warming greenhouse gases in the world, has promised it will try to cap its rising emissions before 2030 as part of its national pledge ahead of the Paris conference. Continue reading...

In the run-up to the Paris climate talks, two books argue for drastic action to be taken to avoid a global calamityIn a few weeks, world leaders will gather in Paris in an attempt to reach a deal that will have critical implications for our species. At the COP21 climate talks, they will try to find a formula for reducing the world’s carbon emissions and give humanity an evens chance of holding global warming to a 2C rise above pre-industrial levels.Past efforts to negotiate such deals have been riddled with frustration and failures, in particular the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, which ended in disarray. However, there is a sense of guarded optimism in the air these days. Australian and Canadian premiers Tony Abbott and Stephen Harper – who led two of the planet’s worst fossil-fuel burning administrations – have recently been replaced by leaders who seem to understand our current plight. President Obama has begun to show some enthusiasm for the cause of climate-change action, while China and India, scheduled to become vast carbon emitters in coming decades, have made some promising pledges. Continue reading...

The region’s largest economic power should push hard for a deal to help the Pacific islands at the summit beginning on 30 November, says Peter O’NeillPapua New Guinea’s prime minister Peter O’Neill has urged Australia to be an advocate for the Pacific in pushing for a strong agreement at this month’s worldwide climate change talks in Paris.

The plan to ship 18 elephants from Africa to zoos in the USA makes me wild. Zoos are no place for elephantsUS wildlife officials are considering an application for a permit to import 18 elephants from the southern African nation of Swaziland to three American zoos.

The creation of the Parque Patagonia conservation area – the brainchild of a billionaire US couple – is a step to creating one of the world’s largest national parks. But what’s the hiking like?“Pain?” asks Jorge Molina, my hiking guide. Yes, there is a little pain, but it’s too late for cold feet. Or, more accurately, it’s too late not to get cold feet, because we’re already shin-deep in a swift icy river.Related: Guide to Patagonia: what to do, how to do it, and where to stay Continue reading...

Llangattock Escarpment, Powys It seems remarkable how quickly nature equalises archaeology; it wouldn’t take a huge leap of imagination to see these industrial spoilheaps as neolithic cairnsDelicate light touches the tops of the Black Mountains, and papery ash leaves littering the narrow road outside Llangattock form swirling eddies in the vortex dragged by a passing car. It is good to be back in border country. I feel my body unclench, the autumn atmosphere a potent tonic.The Llangattock Escarpment is a three-mile-long outcropping of the limestone which buffers the red sandstone of the agricultural Black Mountains from the coal measures of the (post-) industrial South Wales Valleys. The cultures corresponding to each are close physically but worlds apart politically. It is a striking study in geopolitics, in how culture grows from the ground, as affected as crops by the bedrock beneath; as if socialism and strikes thrive in certain soils. Continue reading...

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 8 November 1915Oxfordshire

‘Unless the world acts decisively in coming weeks, the Pacific as we know it is doomed,’ says Fijian prime minister Frank BainimaramaAmid the rustling palm trees, blissed newlyweds and colourful attire of a tropical island resort, Pacific leaders have been getting blunt with wealthy nations about the unfolding calamity of climate change that is gradually gnawing away their remote idylls.

City considers new measures against those who use more water than they should, including publicly naming and shaming perpetratorsDrought-stricken Los Angeles is weighing new ways to crack down on residents who use more than their fair share of dwindling water supplies. For the first time in many years, such water hogs could be publicly named in an official version of the increasingly familiar and social-media-driven phenomenon of “drought shaming”.

Farmer who fought to save rare breeds and educate the public about the importance of maintaining animal diversityDuring the 1960s and 1970s most farmers were going headlong down the route of intensive agriculture. But Joe Henson, who has died aged 82, stood out from the crowd. His passionate championing of rare breeds – initially as a lone voice, but later at the head of a thriving national movement – helped to save some famous varieties of farm animals that might otherwise have vanished.For more than four decades, his farm near Cheltenham, was a haven for unusual breeds of pigs, sheep, goats, cattle, horses, ponies and poultry that helped educate generations of visiting families and schoolchildren about the importance of maintaining diversity among farm animals. Continue reading...

Teams with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and SeaWorld combine forces to rid animal of most of fishing lineRescuers on Saturday managed to free a humpback whale that was entangled in hundreds of feet of fishing line, and it swam away southwards.Related: Rescuers work to free humpback whale from fishing line off California Continue reading...

Climate change impact on Pacific nations is a focus for government and opposition ahead of COP21 where 190 nations will discuss a global climate accordAustralia should “tell the story of the Pacific to the world” when global leaders sit down to climate change talks in Paris at the end of this month, Labor has said.

Simon Winchester argues that our destiny will be dictated by the Pacific’s vast expansesWill the Pacific save us? In his biography of an ocean, Simon Winchester finds an optimistic note among all the doom we humans trail in our wake. This enormous body of water, which covers roughly a third of the planet’s surface, has become a cistern for our western sins. We have raided its indigenous peoples and animals; our world wars and nuclear tests have contaminated its islands and seas. How does it repay us? By absorbing the heat caused by our excessive burning of fossil fuels, acting as a “gigantic safety valve” to global warming. Archipelagos may be overwhelmed and coral reefs die, but in the end, Winchester intimates, the Earth will survive because of “the dominant entity on the planet” – all 64 million square miles of it.As a companion to his magisterial Atlantic, Winchester’s Pacific is an equally digressive book, worthy of Herman Melville, and full of wondrous anecdotes that would fuel an entire series of QI. Sikh guards were employed by the British to guard their colonial armouries because their religion forbade smoking. Newly discovered deep-sea vents, where life itself may have begun, recycle all of the planet’s oceanic water every 10 years. All of the continents could fit into this one ocean. Continue reading...

Turnbull government ministers say farmers’ right to determine what happens on their land should not be trumped by laws that give companies accessThe Coalition government is asking miners and coal seam gas companies to recognise that the “moral right” of farmers to determine what happens on their land overrides companies’ legal right to explore or mine.

The adult animal, seen off Newport Beach, was struggling to escape a potentially deadly situation as line was tangled in its mouthMarine experts were on Saturday trying to save a humpback whale that was struggling off the coast of California, with a length of commercial fishing line tangled in its mouth.

An international team of biologists has made the first-ever field observations of one of the least known species of whales in the world - Omura’s whales - off the coast of Madagascar. With footage shot by Salvatore Cerchio of the New England Aquarium and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the whales are so rare that scientists don’t know how many there are in the world Continue reading...

Photographs from the Eyewitness series Continue reading...

Europe’s refugee crisis, the Day of the Dead in Mexico, the continuing violence in Syria – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week Continue reading...

Slaughter Hill, Haslington, Cheshire Slaughter Hill may be a corruption of “Sloe Tree Hill”, as blackthorns grow here – trees of ill omen, cantankerous crones“The trees are undressing,” as Thomas Hardy wrote in his poem Last Week of October. Today, burnt-toffee and russet leaves litter open farmland, one moment absinthe-green, the next treacle-dark as deep shadows pass over wet grass and the sun is switched on, off, on, off. A dog barks. Rooks kaah, kaah. There is the low moo of cattle from the farm. The scent is sour-apple-sweet with a hit of wood smoke.I pass through the kissing gate festooned with spiders’ webs, and stop to watch a murder of crows in an oak tree open their tatty-cloak wings and scatter in different directions. Continue reading...

Fund is seen as critical to the success of December’s climate summit in Paris, which aims to reach an agreement on global emissions reductions after 2020Foreign minister Julie Bishop has launched a bid to co-chair the Green Climate Fund once dubbed by Tony Abbott as the “Bob Brown bank”.Related: Countries pledge $9.3bn for Green Climate Fund Continue reading...

Former party president, Shane Stone, and head of the Coalition’s Northern Australian advisory group likened the revenue sharing arrangement to provisions under the Aboriginal Land Rights ActFormer Liberal party president Shane Stone has suggested a radical overhaul of land use in which states and mining companies would share revenue streams with landholders to overcome the conflict between farming and mining.As head of the Coalition’s Northern Australian advisory group, Stone said a partnership between landholders and miners could be negotiated so farmers shared revenue “not dissimilar to what can be obtained under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976”. Continue reading...

Thw municipality was fined $61,000, making it the only community not located in a desert singled out for penaltiesUpscale Beverly Hills is among four California cities where water utilities have been fined for not forcing residents to conserve enough water during California’s unrelenting four-year drought, officials said on Friday.Related: California city sends its water wasters back to school as drought deepens Continue reading...

Finalists in the Food Systems Design Challenge are creating cutting edge agriculture systems using some of the world’s oldest designsFrom lab-grown burgers to farms monitored by sensors and drones, technology lies at the heart of many of today’s sustainable food solutions. Now, the Biomimicry Institute, a Montana-based nonprofit, is taking the trend a step further with its new Food Systems Design Challenge, encouraging a cadre of entrepreneurs to improve the food production system by emulating techniques and processes found in nature.At the SXSW Eco conference earlier this month, the institute announced the eight finalists in the challenge. “We want to help foster bringing more biomimetic designs to market … to show that biomimicry is a viable and essential design methodology to create a more regenerative and sustainable world,” said Megan Schuknect, the institute’s director of design challenges. Continue reading...

Volkswagen expects to ride out the emissions scandal but what does the future hold for others caught in the fallout?For the first time in 15 years, Volkswagen’s quarterly accounts have landed in the red. Results published by the German car giant on Wednesday showed a loss of €3.5bn (£2.5bn) for the three months until 30 September – the month when the emissions scandal erupted. VW set aside €6.7bn to deal with the fallout from the 11m vehicles worldwide whose diesel engines were secretly programmed to cheat tests and mask the pollution they caused, although the final bill could run into tens of billions.

An Ohio startup is disrupting the clean cookstove industry with the introduction of a solar powered cookstove - but not everyone is convincedSince Hillary Clinton announced the creation of a Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves in 2010, the public-private partnership has helped raise more than $400m for cleaner stoves and cooking fuels, enlisted more than 1,300 partners and, by its own accounting, helped drive about 28m cookstoves into the world’s poorest countries.The vast majority of those cleaner cooking devices are powered by biomass – wood, charcoal, dung and agricultural waste. Millions more are powered by cleaner fuels like liquid propane gas (LPG), ethanol and electricity. At most, the alliance reported, 2% of the stoves distributed in 2013 relied on solar power, the cleanest fuel of all. Continue reading...

In call for attorney general to investigate, top activists say company acted deceptively despite knowing about climate change ‘as early as the 1970s’Leading US environmental campaigners have joined a diverse line-up of pressure groups to demand a federal investigation into allegations that the oil giant ExxonMobil illegally covered up the truth about climate change.

The Atacama desert is experiencing a rare springtime bloom of flowers after El Niño brought the heaviest rainfall in two decades earlier this year. The desert is usually one of the driest places on Earth. Flowers normally bloom every five to seven years but this year’s showing has been one of the most spectacular Continue reading...

City links: The MillionTreesNYC campaign has hit its target two years early, cash machines that dispense stories and the youngest cities in England and Wales feature in this week’s best city storiesThe best city stories we’ve spotted around the web this week celebrate the tree-planting efforts of New York City, discover how Grenoble is bringing short stories to its streets and reveal which cities in England and Wales have the youngest populations. We’d love to hear your responses to these stories: just share your thoughts in the comments below. Continue reading...

On this I agree with the president – fiction is what makes us comfortable with a complicated world. So why do so many of us go off it in the end?Consider the puffin. I was reading an article the other day about them being added to the endangered species list due to climate change. Apparently they’re Britain’s most popular sea bird, though I don’t know how many people have ever laid eyes on one. Heavy rain on the Farne Islands off the coast of Northumberland has flooded their breeding burrows and cut the number of fledged chicks in half. Eighty-five per cent of French puffins were killed by oil from the Torrey Canyon when the tanker ran aground in 1967. My eye snagged on the French puffins. It was early in the morning and my dozy mind conjured up an image of a puffin in a beret, smoking a Gauloise with a copy of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness tucked under its wing.The article was full of fascinating information about climate change, but I couldn’t get away from the French puffin and its existential crisis. This is, you might say, because I have an over-active imagination, or because my brain has gone soft from reading too many novels. I am all for the puffin now, which appeared in profile on the spine of so many of my children’s books. I am in empathy with puffins. Continue reading...

Michael Meacher’s achievement in winning greater freedom to roam on open country in England and Wales was not a foregone conclusion, despite the inclusion of the legislation in the 1997 Labour party manifesto.Tony Blair undertook a procrastinating consultation on whether freedom to roam could be achieved by voluntary means. Meacher faced down Blair and, nearly two years after Labour’s victory, on 8 March 1999, as minister of state for the environment, was able to announce to parliament that the government would legislate for mandatory rights: “Glorious parts of our heritage are still the preserve of the few, not the delight of the many.” Continue reading...

A rare electric blue gecko, Fennec pups and Chile’s desert blooms feature in this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

Officials say ever-increasing DIY cairns are ruining mountains in Highlands, as well as potentially misdirecting other walkersBuilding “mini cairns” on Scottish mountains has become a popular way for walkers to leave a memorial, create a photo opportunity, or hide their rubbish. However, the ever-increasing piles of rocks are ruining Ben Nevis and other mountains in the Highlands, officials have warned.Large navigational cairns are already in place on many Scottish mountains, built especially to stick above the snow and guide walkers along the right path to the summit. Continue reading...

A huge fire that has been burning for two months engulfs a swath of Brazilian forest, threatening the existence of remote indigenous tribes. According to Greenpeace, the fire is suspected to have been started by illegal loggers invading the territory. The local government has declared a state of emergencyRead: Vast Amazon wildfire destroys forest in Brazil and threatens uncontacted tribePhotograph: AFP/Getty Images Continue reading...

Firm pleads guilty to two separate incidents, including five tonnes of oil entering the Manchester ship canal, reports the Ends ReportAn oil company has been fined nearly half a million pounds for two pollution incidents in Cheshire.Essar Oil (UK) Ltd, which is headquartered in India and operates Stanlow oil refinery in Ellesmere Port, pleading guilty to breaching the conditions of its environmental permit at Chester crown court. Continue reading...

Controversial €100m hydropower project likely to lose funding after Bern Convention warns of ‘decisive negative impact’ on the critically endangered lynxA controversial €100m (£71m) dam project in a Macedonian national park is expected to be scrapped after independent experts called for a halt to all funding and construction work because of risks to critically endangered species, including the Balkan lynx.A Bern Convention mission to the Mavrovo national park reported that the planned hydropower dam there was “not compatible” with protection of the park’s status, ecosystems or species. Continue reading...

Could those who theorize that climate change is a conspiracy actually have it right? The Guardian teamed up with CollegeHumor to bring you the real and frightening truth behind the conspiracy led by Al Gore, and its plans to use climate change fears to gain profit, power and world domination. Happy Halloween! Continue reading...