Labour mayoral candidate says if elected he will cut the capital’s carbon emissions, after similar green pledges are made by other major citiesThe Labour mayoral candidate, Sadiq Khan, has pledged to put London on course to be run entirely on clean energy by 2050 if he is elected next May, amid criticism that the capital is falling behind its emissions targets.The promise puts the capital on an equal footing with promises made in Britain’s other major cities, after the leaders of 50 Labour-run councils – including those in Edinburgh, Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Nottingham and Glasgow – also made a 100% clean energy pledge on Monday.

Willie Walsh criticises Airport Commission’s £17.6bn cost estimate for third runway and calls for new ways to pay for improved road and rail linksToll roads should be introduced around Heathrow to help pay for the costs of building a third runway, according to the boss of British Airways’ owner, IAG.

Sensors should signal if there is any contamination of the water supply at the summit that begins 30 November, with up to 45,000 people attendingFrance is to protect water systems from attack during the global climate summit that begins in Paris on 30 November with up to 45,000 people attending, including 138 heads of state, just over two weeks after Islamist militants struck in the French capital.“A terrorist could very well take advantage of this gathering to strike,” said Jean-Louis Fiamenghi, head of security for French water and waste company Veolia. Continue reading...

A friend’s encounter with a mysterious feline creature shows how unpredictable and thrilling the countryside could be with a little rewildingLast Wednesday, at dusk, a good friend of mine went to close his curtains overlooking the Norfolk countryside. About 100 metres away an animal stood, motionless, in a field. At first my friend, a farmer and wildlife-lover, assumed it was a deer, but then it moved.Related: Tiger schmiger – big cat sightings simply play on our will to believe | George Monbiot Continue reading...

Wildlife film-maker whose series such as Fragile Earth educated audiences about conservationThroughout the golden age of wildlife film-making, during the last quarter of the 20th century, a handful of visionary pioneers created the memorable TV nature programmes that millions watched and enjoyed. Many of them stuck to the tried and trusted formula of showing spectacular scenes of animal behaviour. But a few – including Michael Rosenberg, who has died aged 71 – focused on the urgent message of conservation. His approach achieved stunning results: Rosenberg won more of the prestigious Wildscreen Golden Panda awards – the Oscars of the wildlife world – than any other film-maker.Through series such as Fragile Earth, which appeared on Channel 4 from 1982 until 1993, Rosenberg and his colleagues brought audiences vitally important, yet always entertaining, stories about the plight of the world’s wildlife. For more than two decades, his independent company, Partridge Films, attracted some of the brightest and best talents in the industry. Partridge provided a much-needed foil to the BBC natural history unit’s output at the time, which sometimes ignored conservation stories on the grounds that viewers would switch off. Continue reading...

Leaders of more than 50 Labour-run councils sign pledge to eradicate carbon emissions ahead of Paris climate talksMost of Britain’s major cities will be run entirely on green energy by 2050, after the leaders of more than 50 Labour-run councils made pledges to eradicate carbon emissions in their areas.In a highly significant move, council leaders in Edinburgh, Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Nottingham, Glasgow and many others signed up to the promise ahead of the crucial international climate talks that will take place next month in Paris. Labour said this would cut the UK’s carbon footprint by 10%. Continue reading...

Floods and heatwaves frequency almost double in two decades, but scientists say ‘jury is out’ on how much is due to climate changeWeather-related disasters such as floods and heatwaves have occurred almost daily in the past decade, almost twice as often as two decades ago, with Asia being the hardest hit region, a UN report said on Monday.

Linguist Noam Chomsky and historian Naomi Oreskes among signatories of open letter urging leaders to limit warming to 1.5C, rather than current 2C target, at Paris climate talksMore than 2,000 academics from over 80 countries – including linguist Noam Chomsky, climate scientist Michael E Mann, philosopher Peter Singer, and historian Naomi Oreskes – have called on world leaders to do more to limit global warming to a 1.5C rise.In an open letter, they write that leaders meeting in Paris at a crunch UN climate summit next week should “be mustering planet-wide mobilisation, at all societal levels” and call for citizens around the world to hold their leaders to account on the issue. Continue reading...

Pastoralists long accustomed to a harsh environment are reeling as drought and cyclones lay waste to their herds and leave families weak from thirst and hungerIf you drive north from the Somaliland village of Gargara – where women speak of their heartache at losing goats in this year’s drought – and ford the fractured beds of dry rivers, passing the sun-bleached bones of dead animals, you eventually arrive in Lughaya, where open-mouthed fish lie on the white sands by the Red Sea after a wave “like a mountain” smashed into the coast this month.This is what a changing climate looks like. Continue reading...

As world leaders prepare for climate talks in Paris, Republicans are under fresh scrutiny for their refusal to acknowledge the science. Here, from the extreme to the merely contrary, is a sample of some of their statementsTweeted in November 2012: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.” Continue reading...

In an interview with Sky News, Prince Charles says climate change may have been a cause of the civil war in Syria. The prince links the drought in the country to the conflict which has seen the rise of Islamic State and the creation of millions of refugees

President of Lima climate summit says he’s optimistic as developed countries and emerging economies are in agreement to take action on carbon emissionsPolitical will for a climate change deal at international negotiations in Paris next month is unprecedented, according to the president of last year’s climate summit.Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, environment minister Peru, which hosted the UN climate talks in Lima, said that he was optimistic for a deal in Paris. Continue reading...

Safari park said Nola, 41, had arthritis and a bacterial infection linked to an abscess in her hip, leaving just three elderly animals in KenyaOne of only four northern white rhinos believed left in the world has died at the San Diego zoo safari park.Nola, a 41-year-old female who has been at the park since 1989, was put down on Sunday after her health worsened, a statement from the zoo said. Continue reading...

Canadian province and tar sands heartland addresses criticism of inaction on climate change by announcing carbon tax and coal power phase-out

East African plant is completed in less than a year – creating jobs and setting the country on the path to providing half its population with electricity by 2017

Placing an economic value on ‘natural capital’ forces companies to conserve nature rather than destroy it“Nature is priceless”; “you can’t but a price on nature”; “economic valuations are a neo-liberal conspiracy”: these are the sorts of claims levelled at the natural capital approach to the environment. At best they represent a category mistake, and at worst they condemn the environment to yet more degradation.Related: Can you put a price on the beauty of the natural world? | George Monbiot Continue reading...

The heir to the throne linked drought in the Middle East to the conflict that has created a refugee crisis and spawned Islamic StatePrince Charles has said that climate change may have been one of the causes of the civil war in Syria.The heir to the throne has long been a passionate campaigner on environmental issues and linked drought in the Middle Eastern nation with the conflict which has left hundreds of thousands dead, created millions of refugees and seen the rise of Islamic State. Continue reading...

Henstridge, South Somerset Slow worms like to lie close to the headstones and were vulnerable to predators in the short grass, but now the grass is allowed to grow long, offering shelter and encouraging the growth of wildflowersI went through the lych-gate at the church of St Nicholas on a damp day with wet leaves thick underfoot. The grass alongside the churchyard wall to the left, where generations of folk taking a short cut from the village have beaten an unofficial footpath, had just had its annual cut. The cut is only annual, rather than more frequent, because this is territory favoured by a protected species, the slow worm.Slow worms like to lie close to the headstones and were previously highly visible, and vulnerable to predators in the short grass, but now this section of the churchyard is managed by South Somerset district council under the Living Churchyard scheme, so as to become a sanctuary for them. Residents have become used to the fact that, instead of a closely mown sward, they now see grass allowed to grow long, offering shelter and encouraging the growth of wildflowers. Continue reading...

Scientists amazed by isolated group of koalas in New South Wales that have developed a taste for the bark, as well as leaves, of eucalyptus tree speciesAn isolated group of koalas has baffled Australian ecologists by developing a taste for the bark, as well as leaves, of a particular species of gum tree.The behaviour is widespread among several hundred koalas found in New South Wales – but is limited to the brittle gum, Eucalyptus mannifera, and only some individual trees. Continue reading...

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 24 November 1915Farmers are urged to plough more land and increase our supply of home-grown corn, but some people who are well acquainted with the conditions under which farmers work doubt whether this is the right course to take. Favourable though the autumn was for outdoor work in most places, a part of the oat crop is still to gather in Aberdeenshire, and both in Scotland and parts of Wales there is still corn to harvest. This is to a great extent owing to the scarcity of labour. This difficulty, as we know well in this district, is rapidly making it impossible for any farmer to lay out work for the coming season which will entail men’s labour.Many women are coming forward to the aid of the farmer, and it is well that they are. Only a few days ago, when many farm servants were away at the statute fair, a squire’s wife (the squire is away at the front) was told of a farmer friend who had many cows to milk and a quite inadequate staff to undertake the work. She at once saddled her horse, rode over to the farm, and did her share of the work quickly and well. This lady not long ago took her horse to the smithy, and, finding the smith away, selected a shoe, shod her horse, placed the money on the anvil, and rode away. I mention these incidents because there are things in rural life that women can do that many seem afraid to try. Continue reading...

It’s hard to imagine a bird that weighs less than a two pence coin travelling all the way from Siberia to end up near my home in Somerset. But that’s exactly what the tiny creature making its way through the dense foliage of ivy and sycamores in front of me had just done.Pallas’s warbler is one of the smallest of all British birds – just nine centimetres long and weighing a mere seven grams. So it’s difficult to believe that it can migrate at all, let alone fly several thousand miles from the forests of northern Russia all the way to Britain. Continue reading...

Grateful thanks to Christine Smith for writing such a lyrical account of a late afternoon on the seashore in South Uist (Country diary, 20 November). It was a very necessary and comforting antidote to all the appalling happenings of recent days, and a cogent reminder of what we are likely to lose through global warming.

George Monbiot (There’s a population crisis all right. But probably not the one you’re thinking of, 20 November) is right to point out the devastating impacts of expanding livestock operations around the world. Yet, in dismissing the relationship between human population and climate, he contravenes the IPCC’s November 2014 report for policymakers, which states “Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever.”Monbiot presents an outdated “either-or” approach to sustainability, where wiser dietary choices must supersede slowing down and stopping rapid human population growth as an environmental priority. This is a needless and false choice. Meat production is intricately tied to global population – in fact, the industry’s justification for increasing the number of livestock on the planet is to feed the growing number of people. Continue reading...

Conservationists and engineers battle to reduce the ecological fallout as mud and iron-ore residue from the BHP Billiton-Vale dam collapse flows down the Rio Doce to the AtlanticSeven years ago, Luciana Cunha paid her first visit to the fishing village of Regência, in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo, to surf the famous waves near the mouth of the Rio Doce.She fell in love twice – with the place and her husband, Fabio Gama – and together they set up an eco-tourism business, renting out kayaks by day and offering guided tours to the nesting sites of marine turtles at night. Continue reading...

US president seeks to shore up attendance at COP21 climate summit by saying world leaders had to show murderers ‘that we’re not afraid’Barack Obama has moved to ensure that the Paris attacks do not sabotage a crucial climate change summit in the city next week, urging his fellow leaders to attend and strike a new deal on global warming.

Earth’s temperature is heading towards its highest for three million years. We must move to zero emissions – and it can be done without closing down our economy“The deal’s dead.” These were the words of my chief negotiator, approximately six years ago, in the middle of the night in the final hours of the sleep-deprived Copenhagen summit. I was standing in my bedroom as I took his call, about to go to bed for the first time in 36 hours. Thanks to the efforts of a number of countries into the night and the next day, it turned out the deal wasn’t quite dead, and something did survive.Related: Ed Miliband urges UK to enshrine zero carbon emissions target in law Continue reading...

Officials hope Texan birds of prey will scare off migratory flocks, as bird droppings make roads slippery and ruin landmarksIn one of the most adrenaline-fuelled moments of Spectre, the new James Bond movie, 007 races along the banks of Rome’s Tiber river and makes a dramatic escape from his would-be assassin.But if the high-speed chase was recreated today, Bond’s Aston Martin would almost certainly skid on the droppings of countless migrating starlings that have come to roost in the trees lining the river. His suit almost certainly would not survive unstained. Continue reading...

Ahead of a major urban design conference, the architect says we must plan for a more sustainable lifestyle – and discusses his disappointment at the likely rejection of his Thames Hub airport“Do you believe in infrastructure?” asks Norman Foster, with challenge in his voice. He does. Infrastructure, he says, is about “investing not to solve the problems of today but to anticipate the issues of future generations”. He cites his hero, Joseph Bazalgette, who, in solving Victorian London’s sewage problems, “thought holistically to integrate drains with below-ground public transportation and above-ground civic virtue”.Foster is delighted that Britain now has an infrastructure commission, chaired by Andrew Adonis, which he says gives the opportunity to plan in 30-year cycles and remove the politics from infrastructure. He will expound these views this week at the Urban Age 10th anniversary Global Debates, Urban Age being the LSE’s Deutsche Bank-sponsored series of conferences in which high-powered and highly powerful people travel the world exchanging views on city building. Continue reading...

On the eve of the 2009 Copenhagen summit, we reported on families threatened by climate change around the world. Now, as the Paris summit nears, many of their worst fears are being realisedThey are humanity’s hope for tomorrow, but each faces a future that looks increasing bleak and uncertain. Born in four different parts of the globe, these children came into the world in the weeks leading up to the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009.At the time, the Observer described the lives of these young people as their families struggled to cope with the impact of climate change. Continue reading...

Residents of Ballina in New South Wales are baffled by a sudden spike in shark attacks along the coast – and searching for hi-tech, ecofriendly ways to stop themDarren Rogers’s living room is full of surfboards, but it is all he can do to get back in the water. The first time he tried, he looked down at his submerged legs and had a flashback of fellow surfer Tadashi Nakahara’s horrific injuries.Rogers is haunted by his final moments with the man he tried to keep alive after a catastrophic encounter with a great white shark. It severed both of Nakahara’s legs, the kind of injury that Rogers knew could only be inflicted by the ocean’s apex predator, “as big as your car, weighing almost as much … I do have vivid images of his injuries but because I was so close to his face, his eyes are the things that get me … just wishing I could make him alive again”, he says. Continue reading...

The Great Pacific garbage patch is one of the world’s least talked about environmental disasters. At Kamilo beach in Hawaii, Sophie Thomas from the Royal Society of Arts has documented pieces from the patch washed up on land, including discarded bottles, toothbrushes and toys

Up to 57% of tree species – including Brazil nut and açai fruit – would qualify as endangered if current trends continue, researchers saySouth America’s vast Amazon region harbors one of the world’s most diverse collection of tree species, but more than half may be at risk for extinction due to ongoing deforestation to clear land for farming, ranching and other purposes, scientists say.Researchers said on Friday that if recent trends continued, between 36 and 57% of the estimated 15,000 Amazonian tree species likely would qualify as threatened with extinction under criteria used by the group that makes such determinations, the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Continue reading...

If deforestation continues at current rate, 57% of the 15,000 tree species will be in danger, including Brazil nut, cacao and açaiMore than half the myriad tree species in the Amazon could be heading for extinction, according to a study that makes the first comprehensive estimate of threatened species in the world’s largest rainforest. Among the species expected to suffer significant falls in numbers are the Brazil nut, and wild cacao and açai trees, all important food sources.The world’s most diverse forest has endured decades of deforestation, with loggers, farmers and miners responsible for the removal of 12% of its area. If that continues in the decades ahead, 57% of the 15,000 tree species will be in danger, according to the researchers. Continue reading...

By banning protest at COP21, Hollande is silencing those facing the worst impacts of climate change and its monstrous violenceWhose security gets protected by any means necessary? Whose security is casually sacrificed, despite the means to do so much better? Those are the questions at the heart of the climate crisis, and the answers are the reason climate summits so often end in acrimony and tears.The French government’s decision to ban protests, marches and other “outdoor activities” during the Paris climate summit is disturbing on many levels. The one that preoccupies me most has to do with the way it reflects the fundamental inequity of the climate crisis itself – and that core question of whose security is ultimately valued in our lopsided world. Continue reading...

A balletic hippo, vervet monkey and rarely seen dancing lizards are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

The EU’s professed commitment to sustainable development is not reflected in its proposed text for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment PartnershipLast week, the EU made public its initial proposal for legal text on trade and sustainable development in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The EU has a longstanding commitment to policy coherence for development, making sure its trade and other policies don’t have a negative impact on international development goals. Yet the EU’s proposal for TTIP says virtually nothing about ensuring that the world’s biggest trade deal does not have a negative impact on developing countries.Clearly, the EU doesn’t believe that a chapter on sustainable development need make more than passing reference to international development. Just one sentence is allocated to the implications for developing countries of a trade deal that both the EU and US want to use as a blueprint for future multilateral deals. Continue reading...

While we here at the Guardian love to keep it in the ground, that is not how we feel about trash. Landfills are collectively one of the biggest emitters of methane gas, which is far more potent at trapping heat in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide. As the trash problem and landfills on our planet all grow, here are some postcards from landfills you’d never want to receive. Continue reading...

Weakened draft regulations omit a new law that would have obliged countries to reduce waste by 30% by 2025The EU has dropped a plan to pressure countries into cutting food waste and marine litter by nearly a third, documents seen by the Guardian show.The law would have obliged countries to reduce food waste 30% by 2025 with national strategies for their retail, distribution, manufacturing and hospitality and household sectors. Continue reading...

As UN climate negotiations resume in Bonn, we look at why the crunch Paris climate conference from 30 November to 11 December is so importantThe governments of more than 190 nations will gather in Paris to discuss a possible new global agreement on climate change, aimed at reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and thus avoiding the threat of dangerous climate change. Continue reading...