Around The Web

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

The energy used in producing food which is wasted in the US is enough to power countries such as Sweden or Switzerland.

California’s Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee (IEMAC) should focus its attention on the WCI programme's allowance oversupply and provide concrete remedies if a problem if determined, along with examining the state's current forestry offset protocol, a legislator said Friday.

California regulator ARB is proposing to establish a “firm maximum” price for Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) credits and an advance crediting mechanism to bolster the programme’s existing cost containment provisions, officials said at a workshop on Friday.

With natural disasters like Cyclone Idai increasing in frequency and intensity across Africa, how can governments better mitigate against the risks of these events?

A US appeals court on Friday threw out parts of a 2016 EPA regulation limiting the use of HFCs, coming nearly two years after the same court overturned another Obama-era regulation governing the high global warming potential gases.

This week, how do we reduce plastic use without causing extra food waste; and how one dairy business has changed how it operates to stay strong in business.

This week's surge in EUA prices slowed on Friday, though strong gains in key energy contracts and more speculative buying still helped push carbon to a new 2.5-year high to leave it with a 14% weekly gain.

A bilby dreaming story guides a mother with a sick child to an outback town. Decades later, the child returns to repay the favour and look after the bilby.

Teaching union to debate call for schools to oppose fossil fuel giant’s backing of school fitness event

The UK’s biggest teaching union is to decide whether to object to fossil fuel giant Ineos sponsoring the school Daily Mile initiative over allegations the company is using the event to greenwash its image.

Campaigners accuse Ineos, owned by the UK’s richest man, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, of endangering the wellbeing of future generations through its fracking activities and plastics production.

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A three-toed skink’s unusual birth, a dead whale full of plastic and young elephants stuck in the mud

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Gavin Weightman responds to a column by Adrian Chiles about buddleia

So Adrian Chiles (G2, 4 April) has noticed buddleia bushes growing out of derelict buildings and judges them to signify industrial neglect. He suggests the plant does not grow so much in London because land is too expensive. In fact buddleia grows everywhere in London, sprouting from the tops of many buildings that are not abandoned and forming great thickets along railway lines. It is also a prized garden plant, attracting a great variety of insects, and is commonly called “the butterfly bush”. And though it is from China and was brought to Europe by a Frenchman, Linnaeus named it after the Rev Adam Buddle of Hadleigh rectory, Essex, in honour of observations he had made of local plants. Buddle never saw the butterfly bush, as he died more than a century before it was introduced in the last decade of Victoria’s reign.
Gavin Weightman
London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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Emitter buying in Germany’s weekly EUA auctions fell to a nine-month low in February, a report released Friday showed.

As CO2 levels climb, the carbon count is a daily reminder we must tackle climate change now

The simplest measure of how the mass burning of fossil fuels is disrupting the stable climate in which human civilisation developed is the number of carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere.

Today, the CO2 level is the highest it has been for several million years. Back then, temperatures were 3-4C hotter, sea level was 15-20 metres higher and trees grew at the south pole. Worse, billions of tonnes of carbon pollution continues to pour into the air every year and at a rate 10 times faster than for 66m years.

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Researchers from the University of Nottingham first spotted the tree in a Malaysian rainforest last August.

Experts say even nations that got rich on fossil fuels are seeing the future is green

Norway’s $1tn oil fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, is to plunge billions of dollars into wind and solar power projects. The decision follows Saudi Arabia’s oil fund selling off its last oil and gas assets.

Other national funds built up from oil profits are also thought to be ramping up their investments in renewables. The moves show that countries that got rich on fossil fuels are diversifying their investments and seeking future profits in the clean energy needed to combat climate change. Analysts say the investments are likely to power faster growth of green energy.

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Some developers are reviewing their policies after protests from environmentalists

A grassroots uprising is forcing builders and councils to remove netting over trees and hedgerows installed to prevent birds nesting and hindering their developments.

Environmentalists have condemned the practice and say it has exploded in scale this spring. The use of netting to prevent birds nesting in hedgerows and trees allows developers to get around the law that prevents the removal and damage of birds nests, and avoid delays to development caused by the nesting season.

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He taught himself to read from newspapers but went on to win a Nobel Prize.

The California tide soon washes away work by Andres Amador – but for the artist, that is part of the point

With a bundle of three-pronged tools and hand-assembled rakes cast over one shoulder, the artist Andres Amador quietly descends the steep, crumbling dunes arching over a San Francisco shoreline to the beach below.

Scanning the horizon, stopping every so often to smile and pick up smooth stones, he walks until it seems right – until he finds a wide enough stretch of wet sand to serve as his canvas. Soon, it will come to life, etched with the large-scale angles and arches that form his captivating, signature style of Earthscape art.

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The Queensland government has allocated A$1 million ($710,000) under its Land Restoration Fund to six pilot projects designed to help develop the Australian state’s carbon offset market.