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ESB briefing raises concerns about future of 5-minute rule, its description of wind and solar as a threat to the system, and the hiring of Frontier Economics to do its modeling.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 3 November 1917

Surrey, November 1
Unlike the bare ground at the foot of the beech, grass spreads almost up to the root-trunk of our oaks, and fallen leaves lie thick among the bents. Underneath them are acorns, a full crop this year. It takes but a little time to collect a full sack. They are so plentiful that a litter of young pigs throw small showers upward as they nose about while they scutter along the edge of the wood. A sudden loud whirr of wings is heard. A cock pheasant, all brown and gold, goes one way just above the yet green nut-boughs; three hens fly the other. There is passing companionship, but not much more, among these birds. Rooks now chatter together in the upper branches of elms, going from one to another as though to test which will best stand the coming winter gales. The old hedger, slicing off faggot wood with his bill-hook, “reckons them as almost overwise. If they could but speak they would tell us a good deal more than we’d know.”

The air is warm, bees in something like small swarms are out on the remaining autumn flowers. St.John’s wort is here and there open on the hedge bank, and in a corner of the cornfield which has not been ploughed a few poppies bloom, but they are dull, not scarlet as in summer. The campion has not all gone, but it is foliage and fruit which to-day complete the picture of the hedgerow. This week the robins sing longer and oftener. While one pipes another will accompany you along the lane, flitting from side to side, but never far away.

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Richard Denniss says it doesn't involve curbing economic growth or even abandoning materialism.

Would you be shocked by a supermarket without carrots, potatoes or broccoli, at any time of year? But harvesting in the off-season does serious damage to our soil. Bill Cotching, Soil scientist, University of Tasmania Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Queensland election means delay for major renewables and storage tender, but will also be major litmus test for future of industry in Australia.

Menstrual pads are hard to talk about, and also an eco disaster on our beaches – but we need to change our ways

This column nearly didn’t happen. When a manufacturer of eco friendly menstrual pads bounded up to me and asked me brightly in public: “Are you a flusher or a binner?” I stared at her in total horror. Menstrual products and their disposal represent one of the last great consumer taboos – odd in a society which cheerfully discusses the vajazzle. It’s a taboo that powers a huge environmental issue. In their 2016 beach clean-up, the Marine Conservation Society found 20 tampons and sanitary items per 100 metres of shoreline.

Why not embrace the rise of the reusables?

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Sir David Attenborough is returning to our screens and people are very excited about it.

The 50-year civil war is over but, in the Cauca Valley, indigenous communities are on frontline of fight against drug gangs, riot police and deforestation

A green-and-red flag flies over a cluster of bamboo and tarpaulin tents on the frontline of an increasingly deadly struggle for land and the environment in Colombia’s Cauca Valley.

It is the banner for what indigenous activists are calling the “liberation of Mother Earth”, a movement to reclaim ancestral land from sugar plantations, farms and tourist resorts that has gained momentum in the vacuum left by last year’s peace accord between the government and the paramilitaries who once dominated the region – ending, in turn, the world’s longest-running civil war.

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Though regarded as among the tastiest fish, 90% of the catch goes to Europe. Now a supermarket campaign aims to change that

At close to midnight, the crew of the Rachel Anne are surprisingly cheerful, given they have spent seven hours fruitlessly searching the English Channel for sardines. Scanning the screens in the wheelhouse, Richard Chamberlain, the skipper, suddenly spots a red blob on the echo-sounder which indicates a sizeable shoal is close by. “It’s looking good,” he shouts, checking its location and satisfied that it is a “tight” (and therefore plentiful) shoal, and not too deep. “Let’s shoot.”

The nocturnal silence off Cornwall is shattered as a huge circular net is catapulted or “shot” overboard by a hydraulic winch and – engine revving – the boat lurches ahead in a giant curve, the net unfurling behind.

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The Convention of Migratory Species includes chimpanzees, leopards and vultures on its list.

Scores of the sea creatures are witnessed crawling out of the water at a beach in Ceredigion.

While at university, self-taught gardener Emma Sibley often swapped houseplants and cuttings with friends. Now, her desire to combine nature with city life has led to Urban Botanics (Aurum Press £18), a book illustrated by Dutch artist Maaike Koster, guiding readers through 70 indoor plant varieties, their origins and upkeep. “Having plants in your home helps to purify the air. Living in a city, this is a welcome benefit,” says Sibley, who also runs the shop London Terrariums. While a houseplant isn’t a true substitute for being out in nature, she says, it can create a “calmer, greener environment that helps both productivity and relaxation”.

• To tie in with the book, Emma Sibley will demonstrate how to make a terrarium at Heals, London W1 on 2 November

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Animals have got stuck in mud after searching for relief from Brazil's prolonged drought.

Once it grew only sugar and was heavy handed with fertilizers and pesticides, now Cuba is in the grip of a small-scale organic farming revolution

In the town of Hershey, 40 miles east of Havana, you can see the past and the future of Cuban farming, side by side.

The abandoned hulk of the Camilo Cienfuegos sugar plant, shut along with 70 other cane refineries in 2002, towers over the town. But in the lush hills and grasslands around Hershey, fields of cassava, corn, beans, and vegetables are a sign that there is life after sugar.

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World-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking thrilled fans with a talk on black holes.

Caersws, Powys Afon Hafren meanders to the flood plain, a broad, stately, river in comfortable middle age

Long before the Romans built their two forts at Caersws, the ridge to the west of the town was dominated by the ramparts of Cefn Carnedd. In the low afternoon sunshine the defensive banks that still rise above the hillside woodland were picked out by deep shadows.

The iron-age fortress stands above a kempt farmed landscape drained by the afon Hafren (river Severn) as it meanders across the valley floor. Only a few miles from where it rises, gathering volume from the tributary streams funnelling in from the many side valleys, it has already changed from a lively moorland torrent to a broad, stately, river in comfortable middle age.

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The temperature of waters around Britain have increased by two degrees in just forty years. Kelp are slowing moving towards cooler waters with many now endangered.

Matt Canavan says his immediate priority is to get NAIF funding for the Adani coal mine and a new coal-fired generator in north Queensland.

Cambridge University say the online repository has "never seen numbers like this before".

It was thought that cane toads couldn't survive, and certainly couldn't breed as far south as Sydney. That thought was spectacularly wrong.