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Allocations of free carbon allowances to new and expanding companies in the EU ETS plodded along in the second half of 2018, with some two-thirds of the reserve remaining unneeded.

Five frogs found on Bolivian expedition funded through lonely hearts profile

For 10 years, Romeo, the last known Sehuencas water frog on the planet, led a solitary life in a conservation centre in Bolivia. Now scientists have found him a Juliet.

The adult female was among five frogs found on an expedition into Bolivia’s cloud forest. The $25,000 search was funded by donations gathered after Romeo’s keepers posted a lonely hearts profile on the dating website Match.com on Valentine’s Day last year.

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All discussion of Brexit or any other issue should be in the context of the need for government to enter emergency mode, writes Caro New, campaigns co-ordinator of the Green party

The Guardian is the only newspaper to recognise the seriousness of the threat we face from accelerating climate breakdown. Yet you, like Labour, still treat it as an “add-on” – as a separate subject, not something that, in Naomi Klein’s words, changes everything. Thus Jonathan Haidt and Pamela Paresky (Opinion, 10 January) write about the mental effects of childhood stress, never mentioning how terrifying it is for children to live in an environment of existential threat coupled with denial. Thus Owen Jones (Opinion, 10 January) discusses Labour’s Brexit choices and the need to reverse austerity, with no recognition that redistribution must now be within an economy focused on reducing emissions to net zero by 2030, not on “good” growth. All discussion of Brexit or any other policy issue should now be in the context of the need for central and local government to enter emergency mode.
Caro New
Green party of England and Wales campaigns coordinator (jobshare)

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

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Study for European parliament ‘explains why EU assessors brushed off warnings of pesticide’s dangers’, says MEP

EU regulators based a decision to relicense the controversial weedkiller glyphosate on an assessment plagiarised from industry reports, according to a report for the European parliament.

A crossparty group of MEPs commissioned an investigation into claims, revealed by the Guardian, that Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) copy-and-pasted tracts from Monsanto studies.

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New Hampshire’s state legislature released a bill Tuesday morning that would install the post-2020 RGGI Model Rule in the northeast US state.

The northeast US RGGI programme will offer nearly 12.9 million carbon allowances for sale on Mar. 13 in the market’s first quarterly auction of 2019, the regulator said on Tuesday.

Carbon trading and project development firm ALLCOT has hired a new boss for its Colombian operations as the existing director departs for a high-level ministry role.

Scientists say it may still technically be possible to limit warming to 1.5C if drastic action is taken now

Climate change could be kept in check if a phaseout of all fossil fuel infrastructure were to begin immediately, according to research.

It shows that meeting the internationally agreed aspiration of keeping global warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is still possible. The scientists say it is therefore the choices being made by global society, not physics, which is the obstacle to meeting the goal.

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Quebec compliance entities received 14.1 million free V19 allowances during the first partial distribution of 2019, according to data released by the provincial government on Monday.

The world's loneliest frog, known as Romeo, finds friends (and a possible date) after water frogs found in the wild.

Scientists find a Juliet for water frog, Romeo, once thought to be the last of his kind in the world.

The Future Circular Collider could be Europe's £20bn successor to the existing Large Hadron Collider.

The seeds, inside a sealed container, are the first plants ever grown on the Moon's surface.

Tuna fishery gains first MSC gold standard after nation’s huge push to boost stocks, protect livelihoods and ban foreign vessels

Indonesia, the world’s largest tuna fishing nation, has pulled out all the stops in recent years to transform the health of an industry blighted by depleted stocks and illegal poaching.

Measures by the government – which have even included the bombing of foreign vessels fishing illegally in Indonesian waters – have helped fish stocks more than double in the last five years.

But now the industry has reached another important milestone: one of Indonesia’s tuna fisheries has become the first in the country – and second in south-east Asia – to achieve the gold standard for sustainable practices.

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Wearers of any brand of soft lens can now have them collected or drop them off at recycling bins

The UK’s first free national recycling scheme for plastic contact lenses – worn by an estimated 3.7 million people – is being rolled out this week.

Wearers of any brand of soft lens will have the option of either having their discarded items and packaging collected or dropping them off at a network of recycling bins at Boots Opticians and selected independent stores.

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Bird-watchers flock to Werribee treatment plant, near Melbourne, to see Eurasia native

The Werribee sewage ponds are one of the most popular bird-watching locations in Australia. On a good day, says Birdlife Australia’s Sean Dooley, you may see as many as five or six other cars there.

That was before the tufted duck arrived.

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Scientist Brad Lister returned to Puerto Rican rainforest after 35 years to find 98% of ground insects had vanished

“We knew that something was amiss in the first couple days,” said Brad Lister. “We were driving into the forest and at the same time both Andres and I said: ‘Where are all the birds?’ There was nothing.”

His return to the Luquillo rainforest in Puerto Rico after 35 years was to reveal an appalling discovery. The insect population that once provided plentiful food for birds throughout the mountainous national park had collapsed. On the ground, 98% had gone. Up in the leafy canopy, 80% had vanished. The most likely culprit by far is global warming.

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Proposed revised rules include a change that would allow oil companies to select third party companies to evaluate the safety of their equipment

The Trump administration is expected to give BP and other big oil companies more power to self-regulate their offshore drilling operations, years after investigators found that lax regulatory oversight was one of the leading culprits behind the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, the worst environmental catastrophe in US history.

The move to relax new rules that were put in place by the Obama administration after the BP disaster, which killed 11 workers, spewed 4m barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and cost BP $65bn, comes as the White House is seeking to open offshore oil and gas drilling to the vast majority of US coastal waters, including in the Arctic.

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Australia's record-breaking solar uptake, and the "duck curve" effect it is having on the NEM, will cause the “next major inflection” in the energy market, Morgan Stanley warns, and likely sooner than investors and industry players are expecting.

The post Duck! Solar charge puts energy market transition on the fast-track appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Citizens are urging governments to more clearly communicate how they are both imposing carbon pricing and spending the resulting revenues, as rising emissions costs begin to test public resolve.