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Exclusive: ALP’s internal advocacy group wants sweeping reforms to protect natural heritage to be adopted as policy at next conference

Bill Shorten is facing rising internal pressure to make the environment central to Labor’s election pitch after 250 ALP branches passed a motion calling for strong new national laws and an independent agency akin to a “Reserve Bank for environmental management”.

Branches from every state and territory have backed a campaign by the Labor environment action network (Lean), an internal advocacy group, for sweeping reforms to protect natural heritage to be adopted as policy at this year’s ALP conference.

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UK and eight other states will need to take drastic measures on illegal air pollution to avoid court referrals next week, says EU

The EU has given Britain and eight other states until next Friday to show how they will comply with EU air pollution laws or face the European Court of Justice.

The ultimatum came as London reached its legal air pollution limit for 2018 in just the year’s first month, and could lead to heavy fines being imposed on the UK even after Brexit.

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Further indication that oil firms are planning for growth of battery-powered vehicle market

BP will add rapid charging points for electric cars at its UK petrol stations within the next two months, in the latest sign of an oil giant adapting to the rapid growth of battery-powered cars.

The British oil firm’s venture arm has invested $5m (£3.5m) in the US firm Freewire Technologies, which will provide motorbike-sized charging units at forecourts to top up cars in half an hour.

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Burning wood and coal in people's homes will come under scrutiny as part of a government drive to improve air pollution.

UK environment secretary urged to set out proposals by Dutch counterpart

The Dutch government has called on Michael Gove to provide a clear vision for the European fishing industry for when the UK leaves the EU’s common fisheries policy, amid growing insecurity in communities on both sides of the Channel.

Carola Schouten, the Netherlands’ fisheries minister, said her country’s fleet, one of the largest in the EU, needed certainty about the future, but that she had yet to see any template from the British environment secretary for how a new arrangement would work.

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The IPCC is taking guidance on how to communicate its crucial findings beyond speciality scientific and policy circles

The remit of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of the more complicated jigsaw puzzles in the world.

Since 1988, it has overseen thousands of scientists pulling together tens of thousands of academic papers on atmospheric physics, meteorology, geography, marine science, economics, land-use and much more. A multi-layered process of expert assessment takes place every six or seven years where a set of carefully worded statements is approved by representatives of 120 of the world’s governments, specifying what we know about the defining challenge of the 21st century: climate change.

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Researchers have made remarkable finds at sites such as Grand Staircase-Escalante, which the administration has shrunk

The paleontologist Rob Gay wasn’t expecting to find anything significant that day. He and a few of his students were scouting in the southeast Utah badlands in summer 2016 when they came across a hillside littered with hundreds of bones. Scattered haphazardly and protruding from the earth, they were the remains of of prehistoric reptiles that lived 220m years ago, at the same time as the earliest dinosaurs.

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How do we strip back our lives, smell the roses, embrace frugality and simplicity?

Australian states with bans in place see rise in consumers and retailers resorting to thicker bags to escape the rule

Shoppers in states that have banned single-use shopping bags are reportedly buying reusable plastic bags then throwing them away.

The Australian Capital Territory requested an investigation into the use of thicker plastic bags last month, after reports that retailers and consumers had simply switched their plastic bag consumption to thicker bags to escape the ban.

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Schools will receive an alert every time air pollution is high enough to pose an acute health risk, under new plans announced by Sadiq Khan

Schools in London will receive an alert every time air pollution in the capital is set to pose an acute risk to health as part of a renewed push to highlight the scale of the capital’s toxic pollution crisis.

Air pollution causes 40,000-50,000 early deaths a year in the UK – more than 9,000 in London – and the young are particularly vulnerable.

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On this small, densely populated island, clashes between elephants and humans are rapidly increasing. Rangers and villagers are working to find ways to avoid the conflict and the devastating, at times deadly, impacts on both sides

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Blended fuel powers 15-hour Boeing Dreamliner 787-9 flight between LA and Melbourne, reducing carbon emissions by 7%

A Qantas plane powered partly by mustard seeds has become the world’s first biofuel flight between Australia and the United States, after landing in Melbourne on Tuesday.

The 15-hour flight used a blended fuel that was 10% derived from the brassica carinata, an industrial type of mustard seed that functions as a fallow crop – meaning it can be grown by farmers in between regular crop cycles.

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30 January 1959: Conditions described as “very grim” by the AA, with visibility in south-east London varying between nil and ten yards

Fog stretched last night from the Home Counties westwards into Devon and South Wales and northwards through the Midlands and East Anglia up to Yorkshire. It is expected to persist to-day.

Related: How the Guardian reported on London's Great Smog of 1952

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Reaction to Victoria outages emphasise two points: One is that despite spending tens of billions, and inflating everyone's power bills, networks are still the biggest cause of blackouts. And two, the tolerance of such outages is close to zero.

Tens of thousands of Victorians were left without power over the long weekend as the distribution network struggled with blistering temperatures, reigniting fears about the stability of our energy system.

The Tesla big battery now has a widget to show its ground-breaking activities - rapid charge and discharge - on Australian energy market.

Report warns Australia must act quickly to take advantage of its leading position in the global lithium resources market, or risk missing out on what could be a $2 trillion value supply chain.

Security-of supply justifications are seen in Spain as just political schemes to support the status quo. Hello Australia.

Remember the predictions that the solar market would consolidate from 4000 businesses to four or forty major solar companies serving the Australian market? The opposite happened.

The Climate Council’s Cities Power Partnership, Australia’s fastest-growing national climate program for local government, today welcomed 35 new councils to the fight against climate change.