Actor campaigns against the ‘selfishness and greed’ of Shell’s bid for Arctic oil as part of a week-long demonstration in LondonA bus-sized polar bear and Emma Thompson have joined a week-long protest against Arctic drilling at Shell’s headquarters in London.The British actor visited the Arctic last year and said that she had got out of bed at 4am on Wednesday to take part in the protest because of the risk of climate change to her grandchildren and the threat posed to the polar region’s fragile environment by drilling. Continue reading...

US President Barack Obama has visited the shrinking Exit glacier to highlight human-induced climate change while on a visit to Alaska. Obama says the glacier has shrunk rapidly over the past few decades, leading to sea level rises as well being a strong visual marker of a warming climate. On Monday he also visited an Anchorage coffee shop where he bought all of the cinnamon rolls on sale Continue reading...

Palm oil plantations are devouring forests rapidly worldwide, with west Africa becoming the new hot spot for tree lossTrees covering an area twice the size of Portugal were lost worldwide in 2014, according to an analysis which shows west Africa is becoming a new hotspot for tree cover loss.Demand for palm oil, used in everything from margarine to shampoo, is blamed for four west African states featuring in a list of 10 countries where the rate of tree loss has accelerated fastest since the millennium. Continue reading...

The British singer says the plan, which the government says will save endangered native animals, ‘is taking idiocy just too far’British singer Morrissey is a seasoned animal rights advocate and, heaven knows, he’s now miserable about Australia’s plan to slaughter 2 million cats.

Billionaire philanthropist puts focus on protecting small farmers saying they are likely to suffer the most from climate changeBill Gates called for more funds to help the world’s poorest farmers deal with climate change on Tuesday, in an appeal that could help pry open the coffers of industrialised countries.The call from the tech billionaire and world’s biggest philanthropist to focus on the poor could spur more finance from industrialised countries to small-scale farmers during negotiations for a global deal to fight climate change in Paris at the end of the year. Continue reading...

US president’s call for action on climate change is at odds with letting Shell drill for oil in the Arctic, says Bill McKibbenBarrack Obama has fatally undermined the message of his visit to the Arctic to highlight the dangers of climate change because his administration allowed Shell to drill there, a leading US environmentalist has said.Bill McKibben, winner of the Right Livelihood prize in 2014, sometimes referred to as an alternative Nobel, and founder of 350.org, said that Obama’s actions were a “bad contradiction”. Continue reading...

The start of September sees the northern hemisphere reluctantly saying goodbye to summer while the southern hemisphere looks ahead to the spring. We’d like to see your photos of the September wildlife near you

The thawing of Dachstein Massif show how climate change is precipitating the melting of glaciers, reports Der StandardThe view is breathtaking. Sheer cliff faces extend beneath the gondola as it glides from the Styrian town of Ramsau to the southern part of the Dachstein Massif, home to three glaciers.Upon arrival, visitors to the mountain are greeted by a green model dinosaur. The figure is meant to amuse children, but it has taken on a symbolic role too: glaciers belong to a dying breed. All three of the Dachstein’s glaciers – the Gosau, the Hallstätter and the Schladminger – have shrunk this year.

Plans for agro-industry expansion puts the livelihoods of thousands of women harvesting rare palm fruit at riskWhat, you might ask, is a “babassu breaker”? That’s my translation of “quebradeira de coco babaçu”, a term used by an estimated several hundred thousand women in Brazil who gather and break open the fruit - no easy task - from a species of palm called babassu.Many quebradeiras’ aim is to use the entire fruit: the seed kernels for oil or milk, the mesocarp - the middle layer - for flour, and the husk for charcoal. The income generated from babassu-derived products is crucial to thousands of families’ survival, while other parts of the palm find their way into roofs, fences and compost.

Environment minister says Netherlands will contest court ruling ordering it to cut emissions steeper, but government will begin complying in the meantimeThe Dutch government will appeal against a district court ruling ordering it to cut emissions of greenhouse gases faster than currently planned, in a politically sensitive case that is being closely watched by policy-makers abroad.

Shallow and warm waters of the Persian Gulf, where cyclones have never been recorded, might generate future storms that threaten cities such as DubaiClimate change is bringing small risks that tropical cyclones will form in the Persian Gulf for the first time, in a threat to cities such as Dubai or Doha which are unprepared for big storm surges, a US study said on Monday.

Many landowners regard footpaths as an unfortunate relic from pre-enclosure days, when peasants swarmed unimpeded across the countrysideWhen the Ramblers Association recently launched its Big Pathwatch, urging walkers to upload pictures of overgrown footpaths, I considered it a bit silly. Poor hard-pressed councils tasked with footpath maintenance – can’t walkers stamp down a few stray nettles? After a stinging wade along the bridleways of Buckinghamshire, however, I’m all for app tale-telling.It wasn’t just fast-growing nettles and brambles but teasels, thistles, young oaks and hogweed as high as a horse. And this 35 miles from London, in the Tory shires, where keen trampers take to the lanes in battalions and steel swing gates have been installed in memory of members of the local U3A group. Continue reading...

The US president has urged world leaders to agree to cut carbon emissions at a UN summit in Paris later this year. Speaking in Alaska, Barack Obama said the US recognises its role in creating climate change and will ‘embrace’ attempts to solve it. ‘The fact is that climate is changing faster than our efforts to address it. That, ladies and gentlemen must, change,’ Obama said Continue reading...

Official forecast for 2015-16 bushfire season identifies most of Victoria and NSW as under heightened risk as El Niño dries areas outVast areas of eastern, southern and western Australia are set to experience worse than normal bushfire conditions this summer, with the developing El Niño expected to significantly exacerbate fire-prone weather.An official forecast of the 2015-16 bushfire season, compiled by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, has identified almost all of Victoria and New South Wales, including Sydney and Melbourne, as having “above normal” bushfire conditions. Continue reading...

Claxton, Norfolk The bat, micro-second by micro-second, sculpted the entire space of that room through bouncing ultra-sonic calls off all the objects presentIt is perhaps the strangest wildlife alarm ever to be heard in our house. It began when our daughter at 3am, outside our bedroom door and shrouded in her duvet (to stop it getting tangled in her hair, she later revealed), announced that there was a bat in her room.Sure enough, there was the improbable and rather forlorn vision of a medium-sized species, perhaps a brown long-eared or a Daubenton’s bat, circling the lamp-lit rectangle of space just above her bed. Its flight path was necessarily short and repetitive. In fact, it reminded me of one of those black ragged props, popular in low-budget vampire movies from the 1950s, that used to circle on wires before the victim’s blood was to be spilt. Continue reading...

President says massive areas of ice disappearing every year are not some far-off problem but ‘a leading indicator of what the entire planet faces’Shrinking Alaskan glaciers served as a vivid backdrop for Barack Obama’s latest push for action on climate change in Anchorage on Monday night as he warned that the equivalent of 75 blocks of ice the size of the national mall in Washington were melting from the state every year.

Writer Tom Switzer has attacked climate change activists as ‘watermelons’ who conceal their socialist agendas under their ‘green skin’. Appearing on the ABC’s Q&A program, Canadian author Naomi Klein said rightwingers needs to be more ‘scientifically honest’. Klein also said the world view of denialists would collapse if the science of human-induced climate change is true Continue reading...

Treatment of those held is ‘tantamount to torture … I find that more shocking than they fact they were going to check papers on the streets of Melbourne’Australians should take to the streets to protest over the treatment of refugees in Nauru that is “tantamount to torture” rather than just focus on the activities of the border force in Melbourne, Canadian author Naomi Klein has said.Related: All children should be removed from Nauru detention, Senate inquiry finds Continue reading...

An antidote to the recent rain is the August edition of Drought News from the European Commission. This details the continuous high temperatures that parts of Europe have been experiencing, along with up to 60% less rainfall.France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Hungary, the Czech Republic, northern Italy and northern Spain experienced exceptional conditions. Temperatures topped 30C for 30 days in these countries and 40 days in Spain. This combined with lack of rain had a serious effect on vegetation and river flows. Continue reading...

The president will trek across melting glaciers and visit threatened coastal communities but critics decry decision to allow Shell to drill for oil in ArcticBarack Obama will use a trek across Alaska’s melting glaciers and permafrost to showcase the fight against climate change during a three-day visit to the state starting on Monday. Continue reading...

Ahead of his trip to the Arctic, President Obama said ‘alarm bells are ringing’ about climate change. Here in Alaska, sirens have been sounding for decadesHow can we say no to drilling in the Arctic when we use oil every day? We use it for heating our houses, fueling our four-wheelers and cooking our meals. But saying no to oil does not mean we have to go back to old times.When I grew up in Point Hope, 50 years ago, we used dog sleds for transportation, seal oil for warmth, whale bones and sod for shelter. All these energy sources came from our land and our ocean through the animals to us.

The latest cull is not honest, scientific or even effective at containing bovine TB. It is simply a political move to appease countryside votersJoin me, dear urban dwelling, bunny-hugging Guardian reader, in setting aside your ethical and environmental concerns about killing our biggest surviving carnivorous wild animal, and follow this, the most rational case that can be made in favour of England’s badger cull.Small dairy farmers are struggling. Bovine TB is a genuine problem in West Country hotspots and although farmers receive compensation for slaughtered cattle, it doesn’t cover their costs. Cattle and badgers transmit the disease to each other, with the latter being just one “wildlife reservoir” of a poorly understood disease that is spread by everything from pigs to deer. An eight-year scientific study estimated that a rigorous badger cull could reduce the rate of increase in cattle TB by 12-16% over nine years. Continue reading...

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 4 September 1915The luxuriance of early autumn is seen in the open wood not less than in the orchard. Leaves of the horse chestnut and the sycamore litter the ground, but the beech and the oak are beautifully green. There is a great show of acorns this year; they will be very useful for the cottagers and young porkers. Most of the gleanings, or leasings, as some country folk call them, will probably be used for mixing with the strong bitter fruit of the oak. Of old they used, after gathering the corn, a long and slow process, to take aprons full across to a watermill worked by a stream - where the fishing is as good as ever; but the mill has gone, steam and steel have captured all: the millstone stands upright against a worn beam of the wall, and the water-rat comes up to stroke his whiskers on its edges. Bread from leased corn always had a fuller, sweeter flavour than you get now from the finely dressed flour. Only “pollard” for the June calf and “sharps” for the trough were taken out of the ground corn, then, worked up with barm, baked and kept on a dairy shelf, it cut as ripe and sweet as a russet apple. Now we rub or beat the grain out for the fowls, and they enjoy it finely until the more masterful ducks come up and simply hustle them about the yard. Geese and ducks have no respect for the proper amenities of farmyard life. Continue reading...

As Lock the Gate prepares to challenge approval to expand the Darling Downs project, campaigners say they are doing the government’s dirty workThe Queensland government is relying on “meanie greenies” to take the heat for standing up to a controversial coalmine expansion, according to a veteran activist.Lock the Gate will help fund a state land court challenge to the New Acland coal project, which has received draft environmental approval from the Palaszczuk Labor government despite its previously expressed reservations about a project run by a major Liberal party donor. Continue reading...

Fernando Funes Monzote’s theories of ‘agroecology’ bear fruit as he aims to inspire others to make the most of their landLike all homestead stories, Fernando Funes Monzote’s starts with an epic battle against harsh elements and long odds. Funes, a university-trained agronomist, settled on a badly eroded, brushy hillside outside Havana four years ago and began digging a well into the rocky soil. The other farmers nearby thought he was crazy, or worse – a dilettante with a fancy PhD whose talk of “agroecology” would soon crash into the realities of Cuban farming.Funes had no drill, so he and a helper had to break through layers of rock with picks and hand tools. Seven months later and 15 metres down, they struck a gushing spring of cool, clear water. “To me, it was a metaphor for agroecology,” said Funes, 44, referring to the environmentally minded farm management techniques he studied here and in the Netherlands. “A lot of hard work by hand, and persistence, but a result that is worth the effort.” Continue reading...

Helvellyn, Lake District This fresh running drinking water is always available, whether there has been rain or drought; it is an elixir from Mother Nature’s cooler, with or without ice (in winter)Of all the places in Lakeland where you can be guaranteed to find fresh running drinking water, Brownrigg Well is the highest. It graces Helvellyn (950m) 100m or so below the summit and has long assuaged the thirsts of shepherds and fell runners. Knowing its location means there is less need to carry bottled water uphill. Although called a “well”, this is not a place to retrieve water in a bucket, but a spring that flows from the hillside. Always available, whether there has been rain, as in recent weeks, or drought, it is an elixir from Mother Nature’s cooler, with or without ice (in winter). I can testify to this after tasting a bottle of the stuff brought down by friends.The late Ernie Brownrigg, who was the shepherd for Manchester Waterworks, once took me to task for suggesting the well was named after him. “Don’t listen to the ‘lees’ that folk tell you,” he said, twanging his galuses (braces) while playing dominoes in the King’s Head Inn at Thirlspot by the A591. “Don’t claim I was that Brownrigg. I don’t ken who it was.” Continue reading...

Authorities seek to widen a road that would cut wildlife corridors and put the future sustainability of three tiger reserves at risk

Vancouver is normally one of the world’s cleanest cities but this July its air resembled that in Beijing due to smoke and ash from forest fires over 200 kilometres away. Further fires along the western side of the US and Canada have caused numerous health warnings especially at night when smoke settled on valley communities. During August hot weather across southern Europe also led to forest fires in Spain, Portugal and Greece.Related: Pollutionwatch: The world's dirtiest cities Continue reading...

Officials close Morro Strand state beach for 72 hours after great white shark swims under Elinor Dempsey and bites 35cm hole in surfboardA surfer has escaped injury after a great white shark bit her board, off California’s central coast.Elinor Dempsey, 54, said she was surfing at Morro Strand state beach, just north of Morro Bay, at about 10am when a shark swam under her board and bit it, leaving a35cm-wide bite mark. Dempsey pushed her board towards the shark as she jumped off. Continue reading...

Industry minister, Miao Wei, says local government and companies involved would have to subsidise plans made to help improve pollution levelsLocal governments in China have submitted plans to relocate or upgrade almost 1,000 chemical plants in the wake of the massive explosions in Tianjin earlier this month that killed 147 people.The blast at a warehouse storing toxic chemicals was China’s worst industrial accident in recent years. There has been criticism it was located too close to densely populated residential areas. Continue reading...

A sensational and shocking film provides the first direct evidence linking ivory trafficking to terrorismWarlords of Ivory shows the results of a year-long investigation by National Geographic reporter Bryan Christy. It documents atrocities committed against people and wildlife, on an almost unimaginable scale, by an ivory trafficking network coordinated by two of Africa’s most notorious war criminals.

A Europe-wide project asks iPhone users to help monitor levels of pollution in major citiesTurn off Tinder and exit Instagram – scientists want you to turn your iPhones to research. Launching on Tuesday, the iSpex-EU project aims to recruit people from major cities across Europe, including Manchester and London, to take part in an initiative to monitor levels of air pollution.Run during the International Year of Light, a worldwide celebration of light and light-based technologies this year, the project aims to raise awareness of air pollution and contribute to scientific research by encouraging people to use their mobile phones to record levels of airborne particles and droplets known as atmospheric aerosols. Continue reading...

People love Bromptons: not just suited commuters but maître d’s and cinema ushers. What’s the big deal?Brompton M3L

Be wary of where your charcoal comes from – it may be produced under ‘dismal standards’ and with dwindling resourcesGas barbecues are cleaner than charcoal. But for those determined to stick with old-school pit mastery, the central message is: check your fuel.This edict is inspired by a recent report from forestry NGO Fern.org. It’s not the cheeriest summer reading title: “Playing with Fire: Human Misery, Environmental Destruction and Summer BBQs”. But it’s eye-opening. Small-scale charcoal production has the potential to be a lifeline in rural economies all over the world. Sadly that’s not happening. Continue reading...