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Forget the three minute shower. Food production takes the lions share of our water so you might have to rethink chocolate, and other foods, which take so much water to produce.

Thinking about the water needed to produce the food on your plate and laws to enforce sustainable fishing.

As a wealthy, warm country, the US would benefit from implementing a carbon tax to slow global warming

The social cost of carbon is a measure of the economic damages caused (via climate change) by each ton of carbon pollution that we produce today.  It’s difficult to estimate because of physical, economic, and ethical uncertainties.  For example, it’s difficult to predict exactly when various climate tipping points will be triggered, how much their damages will cost, and there’s also a question about how much we value the welfare of future generations (which is incorporated in the choice of ‘discount rate’).

In 2013, the Obama administration set the federal social cost of carbon estimate at $37 per ton of carbon dioxide (up from the previous estimate of $22).  That was a conservative estimate – in recent years, research has pegged the value closer to $200 because recent research has shown that global warming slows economic growth, which makes it quite expensive.  A majority of economists in a 2015 survey believed the federal estimate was too low, but Republicans have recently been trying to dramatically lower it anyway.

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Cern removes "highly offensive" slides from website from a talk on women in particle physics

Carnegie replaces CEO after 10 years following share price fall, project delays and losses on solar and storage micro-grid play.

The post Carnegie CEO exits after 10 years following write-downs, share falls appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator has set an annual emissions cap for Shell’s Prelude project under the Safeguard Mechanism, but the world’s second-biggest floating LNG platform will still bump up the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 3 MtCO2e annually.

PM says he and Mathias Cormann were responsible for awarding the money to foundation in one year

Scott Morrison has said he and the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, were responsible for the government’s decision to give $444m to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation in one year.

At a doorstop in Perth on Monday the prime minister said that the pair, as the Coalition’s economic team before the 2018 budget, had worked out “the best way to do [the grant] financially”, and argued it was the right decision because it helped the reef without “blowing the budget”.

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New hi-tech abattoir to be powered by 78MW solar farm and solar-fuelled hydrogen facility to lock in low renewable energy costs.

The post New Queensland abattoir to be powered by solar and hydrogen storage appeared first on RenewEconomy.

With sows producing 23 piglets a year on average, intensive farming is called into question over rise in animals suffering prolapse

Death rates for female pigs in the US are rising fast, sending alarm bells ringing throughout the farming industry.

The mortality rate rose from 5.8% to 10.2% on farms owning more than 125 sows between 2013-2016, according to one organisation that collects data across 800 companies.

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Not everyone is happy with a missing detail in a new film about the 1969 Moon landing.

Scientists meet in Korea to discuss a report aimed at keeping global temperature rise under 1.5C this century.

This year's recycling crisis has prompted the federal government to pledge a move towards an economy in which materials are kept in use for as long as possible. But it still has a long way to go. Jenni Downes, Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Are our extremes moving past historical precendent into uncharted territory, or is this life as usual on a changeable continent? Madeleine De Gabriele, Deputy Editor: Energy + Environment Wes Mountain, Deputy Multimedia Editor Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Readers respond to George Monbiot’s request to start a conversation about the links between climate breakdown and consumerism

If George Monbiot really wants to get people talking about the connection between climate change and the economy, he’d do better to find a different question to “how do we stop growth?” (While growth continues we’ll never kick our fossil fuel habit, 26 September).

The elephant in the room is the assumption that nature’s resources and capabilities are so large that they can be considered infinite and so excluded from the economic cost of production. This has the unintended consequence of rewarding destruction. Hence the German situation in Hambacher: the lignite has value because it can be sold to be burned, the 12,000-year-old forest has none unless the trees are cut down for economic use. And, in an infinite world, there are always more 12,000-year-old forests.

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Ministers under pressure to fund new generation of small-scale nuclear power stations

Backers of mini nuclear power stations have asked for billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to build their first UK projects, according to an official document.

Advocates for small modular reactors (SMRs) argue they are more affordable and less risky than conventional large-scale nuclear plants, and therefore able to compete with the falling costs of windfarms and solar power.

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‘Brutal slaughter’ will cost £1,000 per animal, claim campaigners, as government defends battle to beat bovine TB

Trapped in a cage and shot at close range, the badger takes almost a minute to die. Covert footage published online by the Observer, the first to be shared publicly, shows the main method of dispatching Britain’s largest indigenous carnivore as part of a controversial cull now being expanded by the environment secretary, Michael Gove, which farmers insist is vital to curb the spread of TB in cattle.

Taken in Cumbria by the Hunt Investigation Team, it has been released by animal rights groups for maximum political effect ahead of the Conservative party conference, as Gove considers a key report on the government’s TB eradication strategy. Animal rights activists said the footage raised questions about how the cull works.

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Father asks why politicians are not acting on child health crisis caused by illegal toxin levels

For David Smith, the final straw came as he was standing at the bus stop near his home in south London with his two-year-old son Ely.

He had become increasingly aware of the damage pollution was doing to young people’s health since the birth of his two youngest children. And when the gridlocked traffic edged forward and a lorry pulled up a metre from Ely, something snapped.

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• 13-year-old bitten on first day of spiny lobster season
• Encinitas lifeguard says injuries traumatic but not fatal

A teenager was seriously injured in a shark attack off a beach in southern California on Saturday.

Related: The Cape Cod shark attack is a terrible reminder of our fragility – and that of the sea | Philip Hoare

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The European Commission will not push to raise the EU’s 2030 emission reduction goal next month, German press agency DPA reported, dropping the drive amid reluctance from Germany and others.

Seventeen entities opened Compliance Instrument Tracking Service System (CITSS) accounts during the third quarter, bringing the total number to 673, according to Air Resources Board (ARB) data.