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An understaffed stretch of California coastline has new residents: nearly 100 elephant seals and their pups

During the US government shutdown, understaffed national parks were overrun by careless visitors. But at one spot in California, the absence of rangers meant a takeover by a horde of a different sort: a massive group of boisterous elephant seals.

Related: 'That income is gone': shutdown pain lingers for unpaid contract workers

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I was wilfully deluded until I began covering global warming, says David Wallace-Wells. But extreme heat could transform the planet by 2100

I have never been an environmentalist. I don’t even think of myself as a nature person. I’ve lived my whole life in cities, enjoying gadgets built by industrial supply chains I hardly think twice about. I’ve never gone camping, not willingly anyway, and while I always thought it was basically a good idea to keep streams clean and air clear, I also accepted the proposition that there was a trade-off between economic growth and cost to nature – and figured, well, in most cases I’d go for growth. I’m not about to personally slaughter a cow to eat a hamburger, but I’m also not about to go vegan. In these ways – many of them, at least – I am like every other American who has spent their life fatally complacent, and wilfully deluded, about climate change, which is not just the biggest threat human life on the planet has ever faced, but a threat of an entirely different category and scale. That is, the scale of human life itself.

A few years ago, I began collecting stories of climate change, many of them terrifying, gripping, uncanny narratives, with even the most small-scale sagas playing like fables: a group of Arctic scientists trapped when melting ice isolated their research centre on an island also populated by a group of polar bears; a Russian boy killed by anthrax released from a thawing reindeer carcass that had been trapped in permafrost for many decades. At first, it seemed the news was inventing a new genre of allegory. But of course climate change is not an allegory. Beginning in 2011, about a million Syrian refugees were unleashed on Europe by a civil war inflamed by climate change and drought; in a very real sense, much of the “populist moment” the west is passing through now is the result of panic produced by the shock of those migrants. The likely flooding of Bangladesh threatens to create 10 times as many, or more, received by a world that will be even further destabilised by climate chaos – and, one suspects, less receptive the browner those in need. And then there will be the refugees from sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the rest of south Asia – 140 million by 2050, the World Bank estimates, more than 10 times the Syrian crisis.

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The UN wants to cut down on food waste amid rising concerns about obesity. Here's how one hotel is helping out.

Extremes consistent with theories about how emissions could affect weather patterns

Hundreds of thousands of fish have choked during Australia’s hottest month since records began, swathes of the United States is colder than the north pole, new ruptures have been found in one of the Antarctic’s biggest glaciers and there are growing signs the Arctic is warming so fast that it could soon be just another stretch of the Atlantic.

And so the new year is carrying on where the old one left off, with growing signs climate disruption is accelerating at a more destructive rate than many scientists predicted.

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Len Fisher outlines the history of Antarctic governance and says politicians need to be aware of the continent’s importance, and the views of those passionate for Antarctica’s protection.

The UN wants to halve the amount of food we waste. Here's how one hotel in Norway is helping out.

Developed by a team at MIT, the robot uses AI and may be used in industrial automation in the future.

French rugby is currently under a shadow cast by the deaths of four players in the past eight months

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

Deficit generation under California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) receded during Q3 2018 on the back of stronger electric vehicle numbers, as the Oregon Clean Fuels Program (OCFP) recovered from the market’s first ever quarterly shortfall.

With only one in ten households reported to have direct access to safe water, and 98% of Gaza's water unfit for human consumption, the water situation in Palestine has reached a state of emergency.

Koalas displaced by housing development are finding a new home on a Queensland cattle station; production ramps up at a remote oyster farm off Arnhem Land; performers run away from the circus to become avocado farmers; and an urban farm does a roaring trade in farmgate produce.

Cattle deaths on Pilbara Station; NSW Water minister denies responsibility for second major fish kill; Drinking water delivered to drought-affected far-west NSW; Medical journal calls for food system overhaul to tackle major global issues.

Oregon state lawmakers published draft carbon market legislation on Thursday that would establish an ETS that could link to other North American programmes, with an enlarged Democratic majority potentially enabling the proposal to pass this year.

European carbon prices recovered from a three-week low Friday on the back of technical buying and short-covering, though EUAs still recorded a 8% weekly loss amid bearish pressures.

Oil major BP has bowed to investor pressure by agreeing to disclose more information about how it views the climate risk of its operations, though it rejected campaigner calls to set emission targets for its products.

Macaques adapt to city life, Andean condors are released back into the wild, and a lion catches a seal in this week’s gallery

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After secret footage of animals raises health fears across Europe, reporter says tip-offs suggest scandal was not isolated incident

The practice of smuggling sick cows into the meat chain is feared to be more widespread in Poland than previously believed, according to the investigative reporter who captured footage of ill cows being dragged to slaughter with a winch.

After Patryk Szczepaniak’s undercover footage aired, the EU’s rapid alert system for food and feed was triggered, and it has since been confirmed that meat from this particular abattoir was exported to 12 other EU countries (not including the UK).

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Many cruise ships use seawater to ‘wash’ dirty fuel to meet targets but dump washwater back in ocean

A boom in cruise liner holidays is raising concerns over the widespread use of “emissions dodging” by global shipping to meet tough new dirty fuel rules next year.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd revealed this week it had received record bookings for 2019, with the boom sparked in part by a rise in Chinese passengers.

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Closing prices, ranges and volumes for China's regional pilot carbon markets this week.