Two dozen people have called the Milwaukee police department in the last three days to report that they have seen a lion stalking the city’s streetsPolice in Milwaukee are preparing to slaughter a lion that may or may not be on the loose.

Flagship scheme to insulate homes to end as government blames low take-up and stops funding of company set up to issue home improvement loansThe UK government has effectively killed its flagship scheme to insulate homes because it says take-up has been too low, but has admitted it has nothing to replace the programme with.The green deal was hailed as “transformational” and the “biggest home improvement programme since the second world war” by ministers when it was launched in 2013. Continue reading...

Notes for Labor leader’s opening address to party conference include a vow not to succumb to ‘ridiculous scare campaigns’ and declare that an ETS is not a taxBill Shorten was due to recommit to an emissions trading scheme in his first speech to Labor’s national conference as party leader, vowing not to succumb to “ridiculous scare campaigns” by Tony Abbott’s “society of flat earthers”.The Labor leader intended to stare down the prime minister’s warnings about a return to the Gillard government’s carbon tax by declaring emphatically that “an ETS is not a tax” and Australia must not be a laggard on climate policy. Continue reading...

Four babies have survived so far to push the population off Washington state to 81, up from 78 in 2014 – but it is still low and the babies ‘are not in the clear yet’The annual July tally of endangered Puget Sound orcas is complete, and researchers have counted 81 whales, including four babies born since last winter.Researchers tracking the southern resident killer whales have photo confirmation of each whale and nobody is missing, said Ken Balcomb, a senior scientist with the Center for Whale Research who keeps the official census of Puget Sound killer whales for the federal government. “They’re all here.” Continue reading...

Environment Agency says it lacks necessary expertise and resources to investigate oil firm over 2006 toxic waste dump in Ivory Coast

Because African-Americans are more likely to live near pollution-causing power plants, racial justice must include environmental justiceThanks to people’s movements like Black Lives Matter and the Fight For 15, the call for racial and economic justice is getting louder and stronger. But while we are out on the streets fighting for equality, our kids are being poisoned by the air they breathe. Environmental injustices are taking black lives – that’s why our fight for equality has to include climate and environmental justice too.African-Americans are more likely to live near environmental hazards like power plants and be exposed to hazardous air pollution, including higher levels of nitrogen oxides, ozone, particulate matter and carbon dioxide than their white counterparts. The presence of these pollutants increases rates of asthma, respiratory illness and cardiovascular disease. It puts newborn babies at risk. It causes missed days of work and school. We can’t afford this. Black kids already have the highest rate of asthma in the nation, and our infant mortality rate is nearly double the national rate. Continue reading...

Farmers allowed to use two neonicotinoid pesticides on their crop for 120 days despite concerns over serious risk to bees and other pollinators

Yvo de Boer, who headed the UN framework convention on climate change, says ‘we must respect that each shoulder is not able to shoulder the same amount’Australians’ biggest fear in tackling climate change is that they are doing the “lifting” while other countries do the “leaning”, the former head of the United Nations agency tasked with leading the global response to climate change has said.

China lodges diplomatic protest after court issues harsh punishments in crackdown on illegal timber trade along borderChina has lodged a diplomatic protest with Burma after a court sentenced 153 Chinese nationals to life imprisonment for illegal logging.China’s voracious demand for raw materials has fuelled resentment in Burma towards its giant northern neighbour. Continue reading...

The government is funding wild water buffalo conservation, but armed rebels overrun its habitat and much work needs to be done to protect the speciesPrakash Javadekar, minister of environment and forests, announced Indian rupees 200m (£2m) for the conservation of five endangered species, including the water buffalo, on 8 July 2015. This effort is the latest to aid the recovery of the bovine species.

Mayor Boris Johnson urged to act as over half of the largest 100 companies listed on London Stock Exchange are found to have no plans to deal with climate risks

Sandy, Bedfordshire A swallow cut across me, slicing past my chest with the smoothest of flight deviations, as if it were water running over a stoneOur paths crossed in the copse, on a grassy track so narrow that politeness dictated that one of us would have to give way. In physical terms, there was no contest: it was me confronting a creature with a brain the size of a pinhead. But the insect seemed reluctant to yield. It hovered at eye level, dropped to waist height, shiny-shelled in the sun, then rose to head height again. A military drone came to mind, an aerial spy and information-gatherer, assessing the opponent’s capabilities. Such a thought association was not random, for this was indeed a dronefly. A thick-abdomened species of hoverfly, it more closely resembles a male honeybee that has spent too long on the nectar – hence the name.I found myself stopping, partly to admire and puzzle over the dronefly’s bold behaviour, and partly feeling that strange stomach-warming glow that another animal should deign to interact with me. But I had a gate to reach and the creature had other things to do. Somehow, we allowed each other to pass. Continue reading...

Controversial decision from Interior Department is conditional on availability of spill-response equipment, which is currently en route to Oregon for repairsBarack Obama has removed one of the last obstacles to oil drilling in Arctic waters, granting Shell permission to bore two new exploratory wells.

Should you go ahead with an installation, and what if you’ve already got panels?Tory ministers have said they want big cuts to the subsidies that have encouraged the installation of solar panels. Does this spell the end for those want to put panels on their roofs?What’s the big announcement?

Recent verbal and policy assaults on wind energy by the Australian prime minister undermine the potential of the country’s renewable energy industry, reports The AgeIn the not too distant past Tony Abbott hopped on his bike and set off for a ride around Rottnest Island. His path took him right under the West Australian island’s sole wind turbine, and according to the prime minister this helped him form the view that windfarms were visually awful, noisy and potentially a health risk.

Greenpeace co-founder and Sea Shepherd president, Paul Watson, condems pilot whale hunt as two of his volunteers face up to two years in jail if found guilty of obstructing the cullTwo international volunteers with the Sea Shepherd conservation society face prison if found guilty on Thursday of interfering with a hunt for pilot whales in the Faroe islands.Susan Larsen of San Francisco and Tom Strearth of Bremen, Germany, were arrested by the Danish navy earlier this week after following a flotilla of small Faroese boats thought to be heading for a “grindadráp” - a traditional Faroese hunt where dozens of migrating pilot whales are herded into a bay where they are then slaughtered by hand. Continue reading...

Storms gathering over the Pacific Ocean, the Great Barrier Reef from the space and the sleeping volcanoes of Sahara are among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last monthOn 26 May Wolf Volcano on Isabela Island in the Galapagos Islands erupted for the first time in 33 years. Lava flows from the summit were accompanied by ash and smoke rising 6 miles into the air. The lava flows are highlighted in red. The image covers an area of 18.4 by 29 miles.

The government has laid its cuts to green subsidies on the table. What do they mean for the UK’s solar industry and how much will they really save households on their energy bills?The UK solar industry is reeling after the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) hit it with a one-two punch of subsidy cuts that could make the industry more reliant on government help, not less.As she announced the cuts today, energy secretary Amber Rudd said: “We need to keep bills as low as possible for hardworking families and businesses while reducing our emissions in the most cost-effective way.”

Kuwait City, Karachi and the Iranian city of Ahvaz all experience some of the highest temperatures in the world. Such extreme heat, combined with poor air quality and planning, can have grave effects, especially for their poorest residentsOn Thursday afternoon, the temperature in Kuwait City hit 50C. That’s very hot, but not any kind of record – the record for the city, set last summer, is over 52C. Between June and August, the average daily high is about 44C. During these searing-hot summer months, most Kuwaitis take refuge from the heat in air-conditioned offices and houses, leaving them only to drive to air-conditioned shopping malls in air-conditioned cars. In a city virtually devoid of shaded outdoor spaces, the mall is the only public space people go to walk around.Sharifa Alshalfan, an architect based in Kuwait City, explains that Kuwaitis spend all of their time indoors. “It’s almost as if the outdoors doesn’t exist,” she says. “That’s the mindset of people here.” Continue reading...

The one-time employee with Shell says her legal team will offer its expertise to Australian climate activists and that the country needs to do its fair shareThe campaigner who helped bring landmark legal action to force the Netherlands to change its climate change policies says the Australian government is “far worse”.Marjan Minnesma, who is in Australia meeting with legal groups that are investigating the possibility of running similar actions, has called on corporate and political leaders to re-examine their “highly immoral” adherence to a coal-based energy sector. Continue reading...

Wipro, Unilever and other India-based businesses are tapping into the younger generation to promote sustainability. Does it matter that the end aim is to increase sales?As the UN finalises the new sustainable development goals to replace the millennium development goals, India is a living example of the importance of ensuring that growth is sustainable.India ranked 155th out of 178 countries in a recent survey on environmental quality and came almost last in air pollution exposure. Thirteen of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India, according to a WHO survey. Continue reading...

Every hour, enough sunlight blasts the earth to power humanity for a year. By 2050, across the entire world, solar energy could power our computers, phones, lights, hot water – anything we use electricity for today. There would be no need to pollute the planet with oil, coal or gas. Plus, solar panels are cheap at the moment. What better way to save a heating planet? Continue reading...

The world’s third-largest Catholic country is plagued by natural disasters and church leaders say they will mobilise believers to join Pope Francis’s campaignAsia’s largest Catholic country has mobilised after the pope’s warning to tackle climate change, promising to gather 10m signatures for a petition that will be handed to world leaders at a Paris climate summit in November.

Zoo staff hope exhibition of hundreds of cockroaches will combat the insect’s ‘bad image’ and prove they have an important roleA Japanese zoo is trying to improve the reputation of cockroaches through an exhibition on one of the world’s most hated insects.Staff at Shunanshi Tokuyama Zoo in Yamaguchi, western Japan say cockroaches perform an important role and do not deserve the loathing they often incite. Continue reading...

Wenlock Edge In that moment, bird and fly are immune to the forces of gravity and exist in a time and space around which everything else spinsThe spotted flycatcher pauses to consider approaching figures for a second before looping through the air between fence posts. The bird pauses mid-flight to snip an insect also in flight. In that moment, bird and fly are immune to the forces of gravity and exist in a time and space around which everything else spins. Like TS Eliot’s “still point of the turning world” (Burnt Norton), the spotted flycatcher is a blur of brown light: a smudge of wings, striated breast, pencil-point beak and eye shiny beetle black – stilled. The bird is poised, as is the gnat it plucks, dancing in a sunbeam between trees and the open field.Both creatures were anonymous flecks in the stuff of landscape lush with summer rain, setting seed, warming clammily in a July afternoon, until now. This one moment when bird snatches insect – an act repeated by this and millions of other birds, and a fate that befalls a zillion flies – feels auspicious as the magnitude of it escapes into the surrounding world. Continue reading...

As parliamentary inquiry into ramifications of drilling gets under way, farmers fear state’s moratorium on coal seam gas may be lifted

New Labor policy would bring Australia’s renewable energy goal into line with those in Denmark and California, but ‘there won’t be a carbon tax’Labor will use its upcoming national conference to announce a new climate policy goal of having half of Australia’s large-scale energy production generated from renewable sources by 2030.The announcement establishes a stark point of policy difference between Labor and the Coalition. Continue reading...

Eggs submerged under seawater are less likely to hatch, study at world’s largest green turtle nesting site on the Great Barrier Reef showsRising sea levels could decimate sea turtle nesting sites around the world, scientists have warned, with the largest rookery site for green turtles increasingly at risk from being swamped by seawater.Related: Scientists predict huge sea level rise even if we limit climate change Continue reading...

Pontiff follows encyclical on fossil fuels with environmental summit of mayors and links climate change to migration, slavery and ‘uncurtailed growth of cities’Pope Francis said he had “great hopes” that a fundamental agreement to tackle climate change would be reached in Paris later this year and he believed the United Nations needed to play a central role in the fight against global warming.“The UN really needs to take a very strong position on this issue, particularly the trafficking of human beings … [a problem] that has been created by climate change,” the pope said. Continue reading...

The real ‘struggle of our generation’ is not terrorism – in fact, that’s way down on the listSir Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square should be removed to a museum. All busts and portraits of the great man in parliament and the prime minister’s residence should be taken down and placed in storage. Why? To discourage his successors from slipping their tiny feet into his shoes.Churchill was right when he claimed, in June 1940, that: “Upon this battle depends the survival of ... our own British life.” Those who have borrowed the sentiment are in most cases wrong. The Taliban, al-Qaida, Saddam Hussein, Isis, Islamic extremism: none of these were, or are, existential threats to the life of this country. But all are inflated until they appear to be so, invested with almost supernatural power by prime ministers hoping to be cast in bronze. This inflation, as we discovered in Iraq, has consequences. Continue reading...

Terminator star calls global warming a ‘battle in the real world’ that’s bigger than any movie, at the first summit of conscience for the climate in ParisArnold Schwarzenegger has been chosen by the French government to join Nobel prizewinners, philosophers, UN secretary generals, spiritual leaders and theologians to make the moral case for the world to act urgently on climate change.Talking at the world’s first summit of conscience for the climate on Tuesday – ahead of the crucial UN climate change meeting in the city in December – the Terminator star and former California governor declared the science debate over, saying planetary catastrophe could only be avoided with ethical action: Continue reading...

Where does our food come from? Often, big food brands don’t really know, and that can be a problemThe US Department of Agriculture announced two major recalls last week – by Aspen Foods and Barber Foods – due to possible salmonella contamination. Together, the recalls affected nearly 4m pounds of chicken sold in the US.Sadly, this is just the latest in a series of food crises, and it points to a larger issue in the food retail industry: a lack of supply chain transparency. While many brands and food retailers like Chipotle and Panera have adopted new transparency practices in recent years to improve consumer safety, compliance and supply chain efficiencies, there’s still much work to be done. Continue reading...

It may well be able to – but it can’t do it alone. Museums around the world must stop dumbing down science and put education before entertainmentCan a museum help to save the planet? Is it possible to promote solutions to the human-caused warming of global climates through interactive displays, 3D movies, a gift shop and all the other methods of the modern museum?That’s what the Climate Museum Launch Project hopes. This week, the Board of Regents of New York State gave it a five-year provisional charter to create a climate museum in New York City. Soon, tourists could be supplementing trips to Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum with a troubling, or perhaps inspiring, visit to a museum full of climate-related exhibits. The plan is to focus on “solutions”, reports the New York Times. A design for the building has even been proposed by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Continue reading...

Environmentalists are wrong to say that excess sheep are ruining the Lake District. Generations of families like mine have worked to maintain a delicate ecosystemMy family have been farming in Cumbria for at least 500 years. I stayed on my uncle’s hill farm in the school holidays as a child, helping out with lambing time and feeding the calves. Six years ago my husband and I bought a small hill farm in the Rusland Valley, a quiet area of the Lake District between Coniston Water and Windermere, and it is from here that I now breed rough fell sheep, a breed native to Cumbria, along with fell ponies and dexter cattle, and some rare breed sheep such as North Ronaldsay, Ouesssant and Hebridean.The work I do on the farm depends upon the season, but every day I walk around all of my animals to check they are doing well. My son and I are building up a flock of rough fell sheep, one we can show with pride at agricultural shows, and produce high-quality stock that we can sell for breeding. My son’s involvement is crucial, as breeding such a flock is more than a one-generation project. In the past six years we haven’t been able to pay ourselves any wages, but have covered our animal costs. If the price of lamb doesn’t pick up this year, we are unlikely to make enough money to pay for feed and medication for our ewes over the winter. Continue reading...

Hormone disrupting chemicals found in imported clothing pose ‘unacceptable risk’ to environment, reports ENDS EuropeEU member states have agreed to ban a toxic substance widely found in clothing because it poses an “unacceptable risk” to the environment.

Until we address the problem of many organic farms being all too similar to their conventional counterparts, they won’t help prevent climate change

Leader of country’s biggest province condemns Stephen Harper ahead of elections: ‘There isn’t a collaborative process around any of this’The leader of Canada’s biggest province has escalated her feud with the country’s prime minister, accusing Stephen Harper of obstructing efforts to fight climate change and calling on Canadians to make global warming a decisive issue in the coming elections. Continue reading...

Claxton, Norfolk Bear in mind that their prey is one-gram’s worth of lightning strike on wings – then you start to appreciate the elan of a hunting hobbyIn The Making of the English Landscape, WG Hoskins quotes WH Hudson as saying that 18 May is the crown of the British summer. For me, the season has to have a hairline fracture of rot running through its real heart, and I’d locate it at least a couple of months later. Perhaps a day like today, when the sky was all December and our thermometer read 25C.On the horizon, low cloud hung like a deep bog on the canopy and soaked those Buckenham woods, no doubt, in its heavy mothering heat. And the rooks, their wings tattered now with moult, rowed across that sky like black paddles through water. Continue reading...

Surfer says it may be months before he goes back in the ocean after the terror of escaping a shark while competing in South AfricaSurfer Mick Fanning says it could be months before he gets over the shark attack in South Africa, but says he will return to the water.A shaken Fanning appeared at a media conference of about 150 journalists in Sydney on Tuesday afternoon to recount fighting off a shark while competing at the J-Bay Open in South Africa. Continue reading...