Many Australians hoped the new PM would drag the Coalition back to the sensible centre on climate change – but he has swallowed Abbott’s Direct Action hook, line and sinkerOver recent days and bit by bit, Australians have been coming to understand the price that Malcolm Turnbull was willing to pay to achieve his long-held personal ambition of becoming prime minister. Australians are beginning to understand the extent to which he was willing to discard so many long-held beliefs to satisfy that ambition.

A powerful movement in Canada, animated by a compelling and positive vision for the climate and economy, can force the hand of whichever government comes to powerEvery political class considers themselves inclusive, diverse, open-minded. But present ideas that stray outside the boundaries of sanctioned debate, imposed by power and a patrolling press, and watch how quickly they stoop to bullying.Consider the response to the Leap Manifesto, a declaration released this week by an unprecedented coalition of Canadian authors, artists, national leaders and activists in the midst of a federal election. It lays out a vision – bolder than anything on offer from political parties – to transition the country off fossil fuels while simultaneously improving the lives of most Canadians. Climate change is presented not just as an existential crisis but an opportunity – indeed, imperative – to make the political and economic system more just and fair. Continue reading...

A contemplative picture of a shaggy-haired grizzly bear, silhouetted against a mountain-lined horizon has been chosen as the Adult Judges’ Choice in the ZSL animal photography prize 2015. Attracting more than 450 entries from around the world, the winners are selected by a panel of expert judges including ZSL honorary conservation fellow and television presenter Kate Humble, and renowned ornithologist Bill Oddie Continue reading...

For the second time in two years, a female yellow-bellied water snake in Missouri reproduced on her own, a rare occurence called parthenogenesisFor the second time in two years, a captive snake in south-east Missouri has given birth without any interaction with a member of the opposite sex.Officials at the Missouri department of conservation’s Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center say a female yellow-bellied water snake reproduced on her own in 2014 and again this summer. The snake has been living in captivity, without a male companion, for nearly eight years. An intern who cares for the snake found the freshly laid membranes in July. Continue reading...

The world has experienced record-breaking warmth every month so far this year, and Noaa scientists say global warming and El Niño are the causeThe world has experienced record-breaking warmth every month so far in 2015, making this year virtually guaranteed to be the hottest on record, according to a US science agency.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said that 2015 was 97% likely to be the hottest year so far, eclipsing 2014, the current warmest year. Continue reading...

Solar power at Yellowstone’s Lamar Buffalo Ranch field campus is stored in used hybrid batteries recovered from Toyota dealers. Here’s how it happened

Too many wines labelled organic taste no different from conventional wines, but some are well worth seeking outMight I be doing anything about organic wine for Organic September, a reader asked the other day. Hmmm, well, possibly, but to be honest, I’m not totally convinced. Too many wines labelled organic taste no different from conventional wines, which shouldn’t really come as a surprise, because the certification relates only to what goes on in the vineyard. It doesn’t stop winemakers using identikit commercial yeasts or adding significant amounts of sulphur, tartaric acid, enzymes, tannin or any of the other bags of tricks available to them. No wonder many producers don’t feel it’s an advantage to register as organic.Still, I do realise there’s a demand for organic wines (I don’t want to pour unnecessary chemicals down my throat, either), so where do you go to find them, especially when even specialists such as Vintage Roots don’t always have the interesting wines you might expect? I really want to like Wild Thing Sauvignon Blanc (£7.85; 12% abv), from La Mancha, for example, not least because a donation from the sale price goes to the Born Free Foundation to aid conservation, but it’s just a bit, well, dull. The subtle, soave-ish Lugana Catulliano 2014 (12% abv) at £11.50 is much more appealing; or, for those keen to avoid added sulphur, try Jean Claude Mas’s Cuvée Secrète (£9.75; 14% abv), a lush, full-bodied blend of merlot and cabernet franc from the Languedoc. Continue reading...

How can we keep the issue of global freshwater shortage on policymakers agendas? Our expert panel had these suggestionsThere is a need for a grassroots movement to strenghten the case for water in the climate debate. This grassroots movement for water exists, but could be stronger. In many countries local NGOs, water committees and youth associations have worked on raising awareness. In France, local water parliaments work together to tackle water and climate change issues. These initiatives could be further shown in other countries. Heloise Chicou, deputy director and climate program officer, French Water Partnership, Paris. Continue reading...

Bush, London

At least 10 House Republicans sign on to resolution in mini-rebellion seemingly designed to put pressure on presidential candidates and party leadersNearly a dozen Republican members of Congress will break ranks with leaders of their party on Thursday, and call for action against climate change.The mini-rebellion a week before the pope visits Congress appears timed to ratchet up the pressure on Republican presidential candidates and congressional leaders to soften a party line of casting doubt – or simply denying – the existence of climate change. Continue reading...

Mucho antes de que el Papa Francisco instara a los fieles a trabajar por la justicia medioambiental, el agua y las sequías ya eran aspectos que preocupaban en el oeste de Estados Unidos, por lo que los creyentes podrían intensificar sus acciones más que nunca

James Shaw releases a plan for significantly reducing New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions at a public lecture in Wellington, reports StuffThe Greens of New Zealand have outlined a plan to fight global warming - but softened their stance on making farmers pay a controversial carbon tax.Related: New Zealand first to levy carbon tax Continue reading...

Rubio says economy must come first as candidates address issue on CNN, as Christie rejects ‘wild leftwing idea’ that we can fix the climate aloneIn an exchange that would have been all but unthinkable even four years ago, moderator Jake Tapper posed a question to Florida senator Marco Rubio and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie that quoted Reagan secretary of state George Schultz: “Why not take out our insurance policy and approach climate change the Reagan way?”But despite the token question well into the third hour of CNN’s GOP debate, no candidate was willing to endorse any possible solution. Continue reading...

Crowdfunding drive launched to buy and train two maremma dogs to scare off foxes which constantly attack penguins on island off WarrnamboolTwo new guard dogs are being urgently sought to help protect one of the last colonies of little penguins on Australia’s coastline.A coalition of conservationists, academics and Warrnambool city council are crowdfunding to raise money to buy and train two maremma dogs to guard a group of penguins that are under constant threat from foxes. Continue reading...

As China races to extend its military reach, it is turning pristine habitats into permanent islands. Satellite images of the South China Sea show rapid destruction of some of the most biodiverse coral reefs in the world. The reclamation of land in the contested Spratly archipelago to build runways, military outposts and even small towns is endangering ecosystems that are key to maintaining world fish stocks and biodiversitySouth China Sea Images reveal impact on coral of Beijing’s military bases Continue reading...

Green campaigners say recent removal of 500-year-old virgin forest is an ecological disaster and dismiss officials’ ‘patronising’ offer to restore habitatCampaigners in South Korea have accused organisers of the 2018 winter Olympics of destroying a “sacred” forest to make room for a ski slope, and dismissed official assurances that the site will be restored to its original state after the Games.

Waterton Canyon park closes to the public with blog noting that visitors get ‘sometimes within 10 feet of wild bears’ while taking pictures with the animalsA recreation and hiking area in Denver has been closed to the public after one too many hikers tried to take the perfect selfie with a bear.

Eco-activists, who call themselves Diggers, had lost a court battle to remain on land owned by property developers Orchid RunnymedeEco-activists who lost a court battle to use ancient land rights to remain in their woodland village squat near where Magna Carta was sealed 800 years ago have been forced to leave the area by bailiffs who dismantled the three-year-old site.The hand-built homes of 30 people, including a family with young children, are being dismantled with chainsaws, local people said. Continue reading...

More than 3 million people die prematurely each year from outdoor pollution and without action deaths will double by 2050More than 3 million people a year are killed prematurely by outdoor air pollution, according to a landmark new study, more than malaria and HIV/Aids combined.Wood and coal burning for heating homes and cooking is the biggest cause, especially in Asia, but the research reveals a remarkably heavy toll from farming emissions in Europe and the US, where it is the leading cause of deaths. Continue reading...

UN climate chief and UK government sources say carbon cuts pledged by countries will see temperatures rise 2.5-3C, but could be ratcheted up laterThe greenhouse gas emission cuts being pledged by the world’s nations will fall short of restricting global warming to 2C, the UN’s climate chief and UK government sources have warned.A rise beyond 2C, the internationally agreed safety limit, may push the climate beyond tipping points and into dangerous instability. The expected pledges are likely to limit temperature rises to about 3C. Continue reading...

Wildlife magazine’s photographers remain guarded over Rupert Murdoch’s influence but insist partnership will replenish funds needed to pursue projectsWhen news broke that 21st Century Fox expanded its partnership with National Geographic Society to form a for-profit joint venture, many people exploded with vitriol over Rupert Murdoch’s potential influence over a scientific institution largely held sacred.Related: Conservation will be key in the takeover of National Geographic Continue reading...

Polar region’s sea ice continues long term decline since satellite monitoring began in the 1970s, driven by warming temperatures in atmosphere and oceanIce coverage in the Arctic this year shrunk to its fourth lowest extent on record, US scientists have announced.The National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, said the ice reached a low of 4.41m sq km (1.70m sq miles) on 11 September in what experts said was a clear indicator of climate change. Continue reading...

In December, the UN’s conference on climate change gathers in Paris but the issue of fresh water is absent from the agenda. How can policymakers be brought onside?Around the world, fresh water supplies are drying up: California in the US and São Paulo in Brazil are enduring historic droughts, groundwater sources have been plundered in south Asia, and globally more than 750 million people lack access to safe drinking water. The global fresh water shortage is one of the world’s most pressing challenges, yet the issue is not scheduled to be discussed at Cop21 – the UN’s climate change conference – in Paris this December. Continue reading...

Campaigners say challenge lies in diverting church leaders from preoccupation with gay marriage in order to take up public cause the pope is seeking to igniteWhen the US supreme court legalised same-sex marriage in June, the leader of America’s Catholics erupted in white-hot fury, condemning the historic decision as “a tragic error”.When a week or so earlier, it fell to Archbishop Joseph Kurtz as leader of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to deliver the official welcome to Pope Francis as he issued his sweeping indictment of the global economic order and its effects on the poor and the environment, the response was several degrees cooler.

Ending subsidies, that amount to almost a quarter of the sale price in some cases, would hugely reduce carbon emissions, new research revealsCoal subsidies are costing US and Australian taxpayers billions of dollars a year, according to a new report.

Vessels will no longer be allowed to pass their catch to ‘motherships’, an operation the Pacific island says is a major threat to its domestic industryThe Nauru government has banned transhipments – a controversial practice linked to chronic overfishing at sea – after what it said was an “illegal operation” by a Taiwanese ship caught near its waters by Greenpeace last week.The crackdown on vessels unloading their catch to “motherships” at sea, enabling them to stay and plunder ocean fishing grounds for years at a time, would help “end the laundering of fish” by high seas “pirates”, the Nauru Fisheries and Marine Resources Authority (NFMRA) said. Continue reading...

Two kayakers outside the harbour of Moss Landing in California have a narrow escape on Monday after a large humpback whale launches out of the water and lands on them. Fortunately neither of the people on the kayak was hurt and the video from Sanctuary Cruses shows stills of the (fairly surprised) pair after the event Continue reading...

Sir David Attenborough declares his support for an Apollo-style clean energy research programme. The Global Apollo Program intends to make clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels by emulating the 1969 moon landing. Attenborough is one of a large group of scientists, business executives and politicians backing a 10-year public research and development plan to bring about affordable, clean energy. Scientists estimate that about 80% of fossil fuel reserves must remain buried if global warming is to be limited to 2C, a rise seen as the safety limitWatch the full Global Apollo Program video Continue reading...

Queensland snake catcher charms two pythons out of Townsville bathrooms after one found coiled in a toilet bowl and the other lodged in a U-bendThirsty snakes are moving into north Queensland homes with two pythons recently found in toilets.

Scientists describe the highly camouflaged Kimberley death adder, native to Western Australia, as one of the world’s most venomous snakesRelated: Snakebite treatment 'will run out next year'Ophidiophobics should fret not, but Australia has a new species of snake. Scientists have identified a new type of death adder in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Misunderstanding the Holocaust has made us too certain we are ethically superior to the Europeans of the 1940s. Faced with a new catastrophe – such as devastating climate change – could we become mass killers again?It was 20 years after I chose to become a historian that I first saw a photograph of the woman who made my career possible. In the small photograph that my doctoral supervisor, her son, showed me in his Warsaw apartment, Wanda J radiates self-possession, a quality that stood her in good stead during the Nazi occupation. She was a Jewish mother who protected herself and her two sons from the German campaign of mass murder that killed almost all of her fellow Warsaw Jews. When her family was summoned to the ghetto, she refused to go. She moved her children from place to place, relying upon the help of friends, acquaintances and strangers. When first the ghetto and then the rest of the city of Warsaw were burned to the ground, what counted, she thought, was the “faultless moral instinct” of the people who chose to help Jews.Most of us would like to think that we possess a “moral instinct”. Perhaps we imagine that we would be rescuers in some future catastrophe. Yet if states were destroyed, local institutions corrupted and economic incentives directed towards murder, few of us would behave well. There is little reason to think that we are ethically superior to the Europeans of the 1930s and 1940s, or for that matter less vulnerable to the kind of ideas that Hitler so successfully promulgated and realised. A historian must be grateful to Wanda J for her courage and for the trace of herself that she left behind. But a historian must also consider why rescuers were so few. It is all too easy to fantasise that we, too, would have aided Wanda J. Separated from National Socialism by time and luck, we can dismiss Nazi ideas without contemplating how they functioned. It is our very forgetfulness of the circumstances of the Holocaust that convinces us that we are different from Nazis and shrouds the ways that we are the same. We share Hitler’s planet and some of his preoccupations; we have perhaps changed less than we think. Continue reading...

EY report says Conservative government has sentenced renewable energy sector to death by a thousand cuts and left investors puzzled at policy changesThe UK has dropped out of the top ten of a respected international league table on renewable energy for the first time since it began 12 years ago.In its quarterly report published on Wednesday, EY said the new Conservative government had sentenced the renewable energy industry to “death by a thousand cuts” and investor confidence in the sector had collapsed because of policy changes over the summer. Continue reading...

Crackington Haven, Cornwall: Ferns thrive in the undergrowth and blackthorns are loaded with sloesDownhill from the chapel and beyond garden hedges of orange montbretia, red valerian and fuchsia, the stark headland of Pencannow Point dominates the view seawards. Dark folded rocks tower above the haven with its cafe and hotel and the narrow bridge, rebuilt in 2004 after damage from the torrential rain that rushed down converging streams.Coastal vessels used to be run up on to the beach to offload limestone and coal, burnt in a kiln to produce agricultural lime. Sand, seaweed and stone were also gathered from here and carted inland, but plans for a railway to link this rudimentary harbour with Launceston were never implemented. Now, tourists park in the ticketed car park or pause here for refreshment along the coastal path. Continue reading...

Controversial technology approved as way to meet climate change targets in short term – but green campaigners dismissive of report funded by industryFracking for shale gas in the UK should be pursued as an alternative to the use of coal, a taskforce on the controversial technology has concluded, in order to provide a bridge to a low-carbon future.But shale gas should not receive public subsidy or tax breaks, and the tax revenues arising from its exploitation should be redeployed to develop renewable energy and other low-carbon innovations, according to the chairman of the taskforce, former Labour cabinet minister Lord Smith. Continue reading...

Numbers fell by almost three-quarters over the last 40 years risking loss of the species, says WWF reportTuna and mackerel populations have suffered a “catastrophic” decline of nearly three quarters in the last 40% years, according to new research.WWF and the Zoological Society of London found that numbers of the scombridae family of fish, which also includes bonito, fell by 74% between 1970 and 2012, outstripping a decline of 49% for 1,234 ocean species over the same period. Continue reading...

Spearheaded by Naomi Klein, campaign proposing plan for fully sustainable energy economy over next 20 years is backed by over 100 prominent CanadiansIn the middle of a national election campaign, Canadian artists and activists are calling for shift in the country’s economy to a sustainable system weaned off fossil fuels.The Leap Manifesto – a wide-ranging document signed by more than 100 prominent progressive Canadians – lays out an ambitious plan to end fossil fuel subsidies, increase income taxes on corporations and the wealthy, cut military spending and implement a progressive carbon tax.

Are spiders scared of conkers, peppermint or the colour blue? As a £2,000 anti-spider shed goes on sale, we investigate creepy-crawly deterrents – and whether we really need themWith autumn’s mists and mellow fruitfulness come a prevalence of spiders, mainly of the male variety, searching for a female to mate with. While the eight-legged creatures are an awe-inspiring part of nature to many, they are a detestable pest to some – which is where a new shed comes in.The world’s first “spider-proof” shed is designed by a company called Tiger Sheds. With airtight windows and draft-sealed doors, it offers owners a “10-year anti-spider-infestation guarantee” for £2,000. The shed comes in light blue, a colour “scientifically proven” to repel the creatures. As an optional extra, insecticides, peppermint and citrus can be impregnated into the wood, while a “No spiders allowed” sign is supplied as standard, just in case any spiders can read. Continue reading...