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We have all seen the damage plastic waste is doing around the world – but sales of bottled water have continued to grow

For all the innovation and choice that define the food and drink industries, if you want to make money, you could do a lot worse than bung some water in a bottle and flog it. A litre of tap water, the stuff we have ingeniously piped into our homes, costs less than half a penny. A litre of bottled water can cost well over a pound, especially for something fancy that has been sucked through a mountain.

Yet the bottled water market is more buoyant than ever, defying the plastics backlash inspired by stricken albatrosses on the BBC’s Blue Planet, and a broader, growing sense that something has to change.

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Scientists say technology can do the work of 100 trees using the surface area of one

The news on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is rarely good. Scientists and campaigners have warned repeatedly that governments are doing too little to bring us back from the brink and that, even if we are seeing reductions, they are nowhere near the levels required to reverse climate change.

But scientists have been working on what they say is the world’s first “biosolar leaf”, which they claim can mop up carbon dioxide and discharge oxygen into the atmosphere more efficiently than a typical tree.

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New transmission line that could unlock major wind and solar resources in remote Queensland takes a big step forward.

The post CopperString is back, with plan to unlock outback wind and solar appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Natascha Engel says the government's approach to fracking has created a de facto ban on it.

Critical scientific assessment of humanity's impact on nature to be released after Paris negotiations.

Natascha Engel says developing the industry would be ‘an impossible task’

The government’s fracking tsar has quit the post after just six months, claiming policy relating to the controversial process means there is “no purpose” to her job.

Natascha Engel told the business secretary, Greg Clark, that developing the industry would be “an impossible task” despite its “enormous potential”. In her resignation letter, she said environmental activists had been “highly successful” in encouraging the government to curb fracking.

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We must draw on our history to find a way through the environmental crisis that faces us

Where I grew up, visits to Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum were a staple rainy-day activity. I remember the clanking of the huge, iron waterwheel and being amazed by its power. It was the plentiful rain, I was told, and the ingenuity of those behind the technology that powered the mills that ushered in the first industrial revolution, bringing Manchester and Salford into existence.

I remember thinking: if this is how far we’ve come in 200 years, what’s the future going to look like?

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Fred Pearce’s book Fallout is a fascinating insight into a few of the disastrous episodes which took place during the hasty and ill-informed projects of the nuclear age, Dr Helen Caldicott says.

Labour will attempt to force Commons vote as it is revealed that the government has failed to spend anti-pollution cash

Labour will this week force a vote in parliament to declare a national environmental and climate change emergency as confidential documents show the government has spent only a fraction of a £100m fund allocated in 2015 to support clean air projects.

Jeremy Corbyn’s party will demand on Wednesday that the country wakes up to the threat and acts with urgency to avoid more than 1.5°C of warming, which will require global emissions to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching “net zero” before 2050.

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Action by 12 protesters in Colne Valley highlights damage they say is being done by rail project

Twelve Extinction rebellion activists have scaled trees in the Colne Valley nature reserve in west London to prevent HS2 operatives from chopping them down.

The activists have joined forces with Stop HS2 and Green party campaigners, along with local residents, to raise concerns about the destruction they claim the HS2 development is causing to the environment.

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

With grain stores ruined and many fields still under water from last month’s extreme weather, producers are facing devastating losses

Five weeks after historic flooding in the midwest, waters still cover pasturelands, corn and soybean fields. Much of the water has receded, but rivers still run high and washed out roads force people to take long detours. Residents in Missouri are putting their ruined possessions on the street and corn stalks heaped by floodwaters look like snowdrifts in the fields.

In March, more than 450,000 hectares (1.1m acres) of cropland and 34,000 hectares of pastureland flooded, according to an analysis of government and satellite data, prompting governors from Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota to declare states of emergency.

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Tim O’Hara trawled the deep-sea floor and shows his catch to Matt Smith.

Its brain occupies just 1% of its brain case. John Long suggests development of the brain is arrested to allow growth of the rostral organ which is the basis of the animal sensing its food.

As sea level rises, economic impacts are being felt. A carpark in the tourist area of Annapolis floods more now at high tide. Visitor numbers are down. And turnover is drifting lower.

California Carbon Allowance (CCA) prices continued to surge despite transacted volume dipping amid an industry event this week, while RGGI Allowance (RGA) saw little activity after Virginia officials finalised their cap-and-trade emissions.

Cameco did not have to show if WA mine would lead to extinction of tiny fauna before its approval on 10 April

A multinational uranium miner persuaded the federal government to drop a requirement forcing it to show that a mine in outback Western Australia would not make any species extinct before it could go ahead.

Canadian-based Cameco argued in November 2017 the condition proposed by the government for the Yeelirrie uranium mine, in goldfields north of Kalgoorlie, would be too difficult to meet.

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California Carbon Allowance (CCA) prices need to quadruple to help support more ambitious carbon reduction policies, a state senator said Friday.

A Canadian government official on Friday revealed more details about Ottawa's development of a federal offset programme under its ‘backstop’ output-based pricing system (OBPS) for large emitters, though a change in government this fall could impact its future roll-out.

Questions raised over $80 million of water buybacks in 2017; The National Farmers Federation has joined forces with the red meat industry to launch advice for primary producers if they encounter trespassers; crop insurance hits a snag.