The Michigan city has declared a state of emergency over contaminated water, affecting the entire city of 100,000 residents and those who commute thereThe city of Flint, Michigan, has declared a state of emergency over contaminated water supplies amid calls for a criminal investigation, the resignation of the state governor and a class action lawsuit that could top $1bn.The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) sent 28,000 bottles of water to the city on Monday just hours before the mayor declared: “The city of Flint has experienced a manmade disaster.” Continue reading...

The Western Australian government wants to close down the town linked to deadly mesothelioma risk, but a few still cling to their ‘beautiful’ placeWestern Australia is threatening to pass legislation to evict the last six residents refusing to leave the mining town of Wittenoom, infamous for a deadly asbestos mine that has been connected to a toll of more than 2,000 cancer deaths.The town, about 300km south-east of Karratha, was founded to house the workforce for two blue asbestos or crocidolite mines, which were shut down in 1966, four years after Australia’s first case of mesothelioma was diagnosed in one of the mine workers. The state government began to “phase down” the town in 1978 and has made repeated attempts to encourage the final few residents to move on, most recently in 2013. Continue reading...

Winter clothing sales are taking a hit from record high temperatures in the US, according to industry reports – a stark contrast from last year’s outerwear frenzyDown is down: warm winter weather has cost retailers scores of millions of dollars as sales of everything from winter coats to snow boots have failed to take off, according to multiple reports across the clothing industry.November was the planet’s warmest month on record, in addition to an unusually strong El Niño effect heating up the US and Europe, and the change has carved a chunk out of retailers who rely on the weather for clothing sales. Continue reading...

Latest Noaa report reveals 2015 temperatures were in some cases 3C above long-term average and 70% of ice pack in March was made of first-year iceThe Arctic experienced record air temperatures and a new low in peak ice extent during 2015, with scientists warning that climate change is having “profound effects” on the entire marine ecosystem and the indigenous communities that rely upon it.

Zoe Williams misses the point about Cameron’s negotiations with EU member states (There is no master plan. On the EU, Cameron is flailing, 14 December). Restricting benefits to EU migrants may or may not be a sensible, legal or logical way to meet the concerns of people, be they “Ukip-minded” or not. But once our PM had to ask permission to do so, the issue was completely transformed. It is no longer one of EU migrants’ access to benefits, but the far more fundamental question of who decides how British taxpayers’ money is spent. It became a question of national sovereignty. That’s why organisations such Trade Unionists Against the EU are not awaiting the outcome of “negotiations” and are campaigning to get the UK out. The issue is as simple as it is clear: if the British people take a democratic decision to do something – in this case change the benefit system – they should be able to do so without having the prime minister scuttering around Europe asking permission. This will continue to be the case while the UK remains a member of the EU.

In her review of Cymbeline (12 December), Lyn Gardner refers to the heroine as Innogen, and states that the more common use of Imogen is a misspelling. This theory is based on a 1611 diary entry after a performance attended by Simon Forman, who died four days later in his 59th year. The only source we have for the text is the 1623 First Folio, where “Imogen” is printed 38 times and the editors, Heminge and Condell, would have been around at the time of that performance. So either we accept their inside knowledge, or one old man’s hearing and possibly shaky handwriting. I know which I prefer.

Around 4,000 shepherds, some dressed in floor-length sheepskins, travelled from rural parts of Romania on Tuesday for a protest in Bucharest. They are angry about a law that will limit the number of dogs that can guard their sheep, as well as a ban on grazing from December to April. Police fired teargas at the shepherds as they attempted to charge the parliament building Continue reading...

The astonishing drop in violence between human beings needs to be matched by an end to violence against the natural worldThis is humanity’s great paradox: we are the only animal capable of sustained empathy and altruism towards unrelated beings – and we are the only animal that murders so many of its own kind, and lays waste to the planet it inhabits.Related: Cameron must make a climate U-turn immediately if he isn’t to betray Paris | Craig Bennett Continue reading...

Will the deal agreed in Paris be enough to save the planet? Emissions cuts and investment are promised, but legal responsibilities are thin on the ground1 If temperatures can be held to a rise of 1.5C, catastrophe may be averted Continue reading...

Two weather systems keep 2015 on track to be hottest year ever, with current El Niño phenomenon likely to be one of three strongest in half centuryMeteorologists have blamed El Niño and the polar vortex for record-breaking warm temperatures across the US this week, saying the pair of weather systems will likely keep 2015 warm enough to be the hottest year on record.This year’s El Niño, a recurring weather pattern caused by unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean, is particularly strong and reaching its peak. The high pressure system, now east of Hawaii, sends warm air along the jet stream over the northern Pacific and into the northern and central US. Continue reading...

From climate change to police violence and the refugee crisis, ​this was the year ​when ordinary people stood up to declare an emergency, writes the author and activist in an extract from the foreword of The Bedside Guardian 2015​What do we do when our political leaders treat profound moral crises as if they are nothing extraordinary? Nothing to see here, move along?What if a supposedly ho-hum phenomenon is actually an existential threat to our species? How do we wrench the script away from those in power and sound the alarm? Continue reading...

Cutting your carbon footprint is good, political engagement is even better. Don’t let climate cringe stop you – we have too much to loseI interviewed the American climate activist and writer Bill McKibben five years ago. I liked the essays he wrote in the New York Review of Books, and persuaded an editor that his books about environmental science and politics merited a profile. I had been a candidate for the Green party in local elections in London earlier that year, and with hindsight I think I was wondering, what next? McKibben knew far more about green issues than I did (his first book about climate change, The End of Nature, came out in 1989). So I asked him: if a person is really worried about global warming, what should they do?I may also have mentioned lightbulbs. As in: should this worried person change all the lightbulbs in their home to energy-saving ones first, or give up flying? I left the question out of the published article, though I admitted feeling inspired by McKibben in a paragraph that now makes me cringe. I’ll come back to that cringe, but what he said, very clearly, is that a mass movement of people is the only way to beat “the raw power of the fossil fuel industry”. Continue reading...

The head of Europe’s coal lobbying association says his industry will be vilified following the landmark Paris climate deal to cap CO2 emissionsThe head of Europe’s coal lobby has said that his industry will be “hated and vilified in the same way that slave-traders were once hated and vilified” as a result of the Paris climate deal, in an extraordinary diatribe sent to his members and press outlets.Last weekend, the world’s governments agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions in a momentous pact aiming at holding global warming to 2C. Continue reading...

Owner Jaguar Land Rover say electric vehicles will play a key role in its future car portfolioJaguar Land Rover is to enter a team into the Formula E racing championship as the luxury carmaker steps up its investment in electric vehicles.The company will enter a Jaguar team into the FIA Formula E championship from next year and will use it to develop new electric technologies that could eventually be installed in road cars. Continue reading...

Fires cloaking south-east Asia in haze have cost Indonesia $16bn in 2015, more than double the sum spent on rebuilding Aceh after the 2004 tsunamiIndonesia’s economy took a $16bn hit this year from forest fires that cloaked south-east Asia in haze, more than double the sum spent on rebuilding Aceh after the 2004 tsunami, according to the World Bank.

The French yachtsman is pioneering the use of kite technology to produce clean power for cargo shipsThe only souvenir Yves Parlier has kept from his long career sailing the seven seas is the skeleton of a mahi-mahi, or common dolphinfish, almost one metre long. In February 2001, somewhere near the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, he caught this fish with a hook made from a broken aerial. It saved him from dying of hunger. Even now Parlier licks his lips at the thought of the feast that followed. “I started by devouring the offal, then I stripped the fillets and put them out to dry,” he says. “After that I sucked the bones and ate the skin. I had enough food to reach the finish.”Parlier made this miraculous catch while he was competing in his third and final Vendée Globe single-handed around-the-world race, sailed non-stop and without assistance, a contest he never managed to win. Dispirited and desperately hungry, he had spent the previous 10 days mixing packets of dehydrated food with platefuls of seaweed and krill, seasoned with the spices from oriental soup packets. Continue reading...

Government caps number of projects that can be carried out in a year under the environmental program, to achieve savings of nearly $318mThe government has nearly halved the budget of one of its core environmental programs, the “green army”, by capping the number of projects it can undertake to 500 a year.Related: Myefo: budget banks on 'unrealistic' $13.9bn savings blocked by Senate Continue reading...

Claxton, Norfolk The two lines of poplars by the lane were suddenly filled with 2,000 jackdaws from the roostEven as I stepped out, the rain was rattling at the back of my coat. Yet I still needed to release my ears from the noisy tunnel of the hood in order to hear it clearly.Immediately I could pick out a difference between the even fizz of drops on grass and the messier drumbeat under the trees, where water dripping off branches or twigs created its own counter rhythm to the downpour’s wider patter. Continue reading...

Environment, food and rural affairs committee warns plan to raise £600m from ‘external contributions’ for flood defences has only brought in £250m so farGovernment spending cuts must not be allowed to affect vital flood defence work, MPs warned on Tuesday.The Commons environment, food and rural affairs committee said that with more than 5.5m properties in England and Wales at risk of flooding, it was essential that spending on defences was prioritised. Continue reading...

Wednesday’s vote will show whether the European commission upholds the interests of its citizens, or sides with large corporations, says Corbyn advisorOn Wednesday, the European commission will vote on a series of demands made by the EU parliament on corporate tax transparency.This is important: no parliament has done more to promote tax justice issues than the European parliament. Its demands represent important steps towards ensuring large companies pay the right amount of tax, in the right place and at the right time. Continue reading...

After the excitement of UN talks in Paris fades, are business leaders ready to meet their pledges to reduce climate emissions?

Land court finds mining leases should be granted for Carmichael mine but with tightened environmental conditionsQueensland’s land court has dismissed a challenge by conservationists to Adani’s Carmichael mine, Australia’s largest proposed coal project.The land court president, Carmel MacDonald, recommended the state government approve the mine but with extra conditions around monitoring the impact on waterways and a local threatened species, the black-throated finch. Continue reading...

Evgenios Hamboullas, a member of the national parliament’s environment committee, posted a picture on Facebook showing the dish made of the birdsA Cypriot MP has stirred controversy online after posting a picture of himself at a table serving a dish of songbirds whose poaching is banned on the Mediterranean island.

The Bill Leak cartoon showing Indians attempting to eat solar panels was labelled ‘unequivocally racist’, but newspaper claims critics didn’t get jokeThe Australian newspaper has defended the publication of Bill Leak’s cartoon depicting starving Indians eating solar panels on the grounds of “freedom of speech”.The cartoon, labelled “unequivocally racist” by Macquarie university sociology professor Amanda Wise, ran in the newspaper on Monday after the global deal in Paris to reduce carbon emissions. It showed Indians attempting to eat solar panels sent to the developing nation in a box labelled with United Nations insignia in an attempt to curb carbon emissions. Continue reading...

Report on Guatemalan mine accuses the government and company running it, Tahoe Resources, of a military response to oppositionA Guatemalan investigative journalist named Luis Solano was in Canada last month to launch a report about a Canadian-owned silver mine in south-east Guatemala. The mine, Escobal, began operating last year and is run by Minera San Rafael (MSR), a subsidiary of the British Columbia-incorporated Tahoe Resources.The 27-page report, titled Under Siege: Peaceful Resistance to Tahoe Resources and Militarization in Guatemala, was commissioned by the International Platform Against Impunity in Central America and MiningWatch Canada, which published it in November. Based on the experience of several years research and interviews with local inhabitants conducted in mid-2015, one of the key allegations is that 1000s of people living in the region have voted against the mine and further expansion plans, with numerous plebiscites and peaceful marches held. Continue reading...

Of 88,000 actions assessed by the Fish and Wildlife Service, only two triggered more significant action in past seven years, new study findsThe US government has not halted a single project out of the 88,000 actions and developments considered potentially harmful to the nation’s endangered species over the past seven years, a new study has found.

The agreement reached at the COP21 Paris climate change talks is certainly a great improvement on anything that has gone before (One paragraph at a time: how the deal was done to save the planet, 14 December). Whether it is enough to save the planet (to be more precise, save the human race from catastrophe; the planet will look after itself) is questionable. Apart from the question of actual implementation of even the agreed measures (themselves expected to achieve only a 2.7C limit) there are many factors not taken into account. Barack Obama says the deal will create “more jobs and economic growth”. But growth, even “green growth”, is precisely the problem. We live on a finite planet with finite resources which we are already exploiting to the limit and beyond. The aim must be to achieve a steady-state economy, with resources fairly shared, but that is incompatible with capitalism’s growth imperative.A glaring omission is the effect of the many armed conflicts currently ongoing, The money allocated to tackling climate change is still dwarfed by that devoted to the means of death and destruction, currently $1.75tn annually. These conflicts themselves contribute to climate change: the US military is the biggest single corporate user of fossil fuels, a large proportion by high-flying jets, where the warming effect is variously estimated as from 1.7 to 4.0 times that at ground level. They inhibit attempts to deal with people’s real problems, the effects of global warming among many others. Mass migration, from a variety of causes including conflict and climate change, is another major problem that is ignored in the Paris agreement. There is still a very long way to go to ensure the future of the human race.

COP21 agreement excludes poor and fails to put humanity’s interests above short-term goals, say environmentalists and financial expertsLeaders from around the world have hailed the agreement struck in Paris on climate change, but some analysts and environmentalists are less sure about its impact.Bloomberg New Energy Finance, an independent analysis group, delivered a downbeat appraisal of the outcome, saying it was not the breakthrough many had claimed. Continue reading...

The prime minister hit the right notes with his speech at the climate change summit. But that message is at odds with his government’s policiesThe prime minister is right. He concluded his speech at the start of the Paris climate change summit by saying: “Instead of making excuses tomorrow to our children and grandchildren, we should be taking action against climate change today.” Friends of the Earth could not agree more.So why is it that almost everything Cameron’s government has done on climate and energy since being elected in May has moved us in the wrong direction, towards pitiful excuse-making when we come to look our children in the eye, let alone our grandchildren? Continue reading...

Indian official says while country has huge plans for solar, there are limitations to clean energy and coal will remain most efficient energy source for decadesIndia still plans to double coal output by 2020 and rely on the resource for decades afterwards, a senior official said on Monday, days after rich and poor countries agreed in Paris to curb carbon emissions that cause global warming.India, the world’s third-largest carbon emitter, is dependent on coal for about two-thirds of its energy needs and has pledged to mine more of the fuel to power its resource-hungry economy while also promising to increase clean energy generation. Continue reading...

EU climate chief says that aspirational 1.5C target was put into Paris climate deal at insistence of ‘most exposed countries’ and will require new strategiesThe EU has admitted it has not yet looked into the polices needed to hold global warming to 1.5C, as agreed at the landmark Paris agreement, and will instead ask a UN climate science panel for advice involving ‘negative emissions’ technology.The bloc’s negotiators had gone to Paris with a mandate for a 2C target but were forced to accommodate more ambitious demands from “the most exposed countries”, the bloc’s climate chief, Miguel Arias Cañete, said. Continue reading...

Teenager’s economics project noticed flaws in accounting a year before solar and wind power firm tries to avoid becoming Spain’s biggest bankruptcyAs Spanish engineering and renewable energy giant Abengoa struggles to avoid becoming the country’s biggest bankruptcy, it has emerged that a 17-year-old schoolboy predicted its collapse a year ago, spotting accounting discrepancies apparently overlooked by both Deloitte and Standard & Poor’s.Pepe Baltá, a secondary school student in Barcelona, chose Abengoa as his economics project and noticed flaws in its accounting. “If it does not act soon, there is a strong risk Abengoa will go into bankruptcy,” Baltá wrote last year in his 18-page paper, titled Analytical report on Abengoa, 2012 and 2013. Continue reading...

Ce documentaire personnel et méditatif raconte la mission d’un scientifique novateur à la recherche des preuves du changement climatique dans les glaces de l’Antarctique

El expresidente de México afirma que los intereses de los países en desarrollo son marcadamente divergentes a menudo

Laurent Fabius, the Paris climate deal overseer, is exactly the sort of politician 6 million French voters turned away fromIf you want to understand why 6 million disaffected French voters gave their support to Marine Le Pen’s Front National candidates in the regional elections (and will do so again when they get the chance), you could do worse than contemplate the career of Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister who chaired the 10-day summit on climate change in Paris.Climate change campaigners, who worry most about the existential threat of global warming (I do myself), heaved a collective sigh of relief that leaders of 196 countries pulled off a cliffhanger agreement on Saturday night. Sceptics point out that key clauses are more aspirational than substantial; wishful hot air, we might say. Even supporters are wary. Continue reading...

Provisions to increase transparency in supply chains will push forced labour up the corporate agenda, but there are concerns it does not go far enoughWhat do nail bars, the fishing industry, the London house of two medical professionals and cannabis farms have in common? They have all recently been implicated in modern slavery.This year the UK government passed the Modern Slavery Act, the first piece of UK legislation focusing on the prevention and prosecution of modern slavery and the protection of victims. After much debate, the government included a provision on transparency in supply chains, which came into force in October. Continue reading...

Armed forces around the world - including US military - will no longer be automatically excluded from including their carbon emissions under national reductions targetsThe US military and armed forces of countries around the world will no longer be automatically exempted from emissions-cutting obligations under the UN Paris climate deal, the Guardian has learned.Although the US never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, it won an opt-out from having to fully report or act on its armed forces’ greenhouse gas emissions, which was then double-locked by a House national defence authorisation bill in 1999. Continue reading...

Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop praises the historic deal signed by nearly 200 countries at the end of the Paris climate talks on Saturday. The agreement sets ambitious goals to limit temperature rise and hold governments to account for reaching targets

With all 196 nations having a say, the UN climate deal, with all its frustrations and drama, has proven that compromise works for the planetIn the final meeting of the Paris talks on climate change on Saturday night, the debating chamber was full and the atmosphere tense. Ministers from 196 countries sat behind their country nameplates, aides flocking them, with observers packed into the overflowing hall.Related: World leaders hail Paris climate deal as ‘major leap for mankind’ Continue reading...

A Play Streets scheme that closes roads to cars opened Clare Rogers’ eyes to the idea of roads for recreation. Now she’s part of a grassroots campaign to revolutionise cycling in Enfield – but the battle isn’t overMy sister Sally started it when she sent me a video about Playing Out – the seminal Bristol project which closes residential roads to traffic so children can play freely – adding: “Shame you couldn’t do this on your street.” Nothing goads like a sibling, and two years later our Palmers Green rat-run was an official London Play Street. Each month traffic is blocked off for three hours and the children play out with bikes, scooters, balls and chalk. Our girls, aged five and eight when it started, love it. It was a revelation seeing the tarmac used for something other than cars, and we got to know our neighbours in a way that was not possible when we only used the street to park on.The other revelation was the attitude of those neighbours who hated the idea. They organised a petition against the play street, and quotes from the time include: “Roads are for cars, not kids”, “We’ll be a magnet for paedophiles” and “Who’s going to pay when my car gets scratched?” Now these same neighbours have either approved the renewed play street order, or take part as stewards. I guess they just needed to see it up and running. Continue reading...