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Which would win*: humans or volcanoes? (*In a fight over carbon emissions)

CEFC makes first financing of smart meter technology – an integral part of Australia's energy transformation, particularly for consumers.

How do you get a truly energy-efficient home, and can smart home technologies help or make things worse?

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

Companies are increasingly looking to carbon ‘insetting’ to blend corporate-set climate targets with an attention to resiliency and co-benefits, according to two European-based entities speaking at a webinar on Monday.

The weather system was captured at Lake Superior, Michigan, in the US.

EU carbon allowances crawled back above €15 on Monday, helped higher by a bullish auction result, as wider European energy prices flirted with new multi-year highs.

Simon Hodgson of Forest Enterprise England says broadleaved trees, including oak, are still seen as a strong part of the country’s homegrown timber supply

Re your article (‘There’s no oak left in England, just no more’, 28 June), the Forestry Commission in England over the past eight years has planted almost 1.7m oak trees (on top of those that we encourage to grow naturally from self-set acorns), the vast majority with the aim to supply high-quality timber and all in places expertly selected by our professional foresters to see them thrive. We see broadleaved trees, including oak, as a strong part of our homegrown timber supply and last year we saw record prices paid for our hardwoods. Yes, there will always be a greater emphasis on conifer trees for timber supply, but to say almost nothing is happening for oak is unfair. This is a country that cares about, and is committed to, expanding resilient forests.
Simon Hodgson
Chief executive, Forest Enterprise England, Forestry Commission

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The strain is different to that found in humans, but a genome study hopes to provide clues to fight the infection.

Astronomers have directly imaged a recently formed planet in a distant solar system.

French artist Marina Rees has formed a "whale choir" to launch her new exhibition

Scientists fail to find a koala cuteness gene but DNA may lead to a vaccine for chlamydia in the iconic marsupial.

The Drawdown Research Fellowship fosters the development of a new cohort of climate leadership working on pragmatic solutions to reverse global warming. We offer a small number of fellowships to exceptional Master’s and PhD students, faculty and scholars, as well as seasoned professionals from around the world.

Environmental campaigners appear in London’s high court to oppose UK Oil and Gas’s attempt to ban protests at three UK sites

Six environmental campaigners have taken legal action to overturn a broad injunction which is being sought by an energy firm against protesters.

The group went to the high court in London on Monday to oppose the injunction which is being sought by UK Oil and Gas (UKOG).

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More than 130 trout and salmon are saved after river levels plummet.

Colin Salter’s new book is a selection of extraordinary electron microscopic images of the plant world around us, including seeds, pollen, fruiting bodies, trees and leaves, flowers, vegetables and fruit

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Hot weather saw solar briefly take over from gas as the number one energy source

Britain’s heatwave has helped break several solar power-generation records, and over the weekend the renewable energy source briefly eclipsed gas power stations as the UK’s top source of electricity.

While new solar installations have virtually flatlined over the past year, a run of largely cloudless days has seen a series of highs for power generation by the sector.

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Turning the 4,000 live-aboard yachts around the world into a research fleet.

Like opposing civil rights and gay marriage, climate denial will drive voters away from the GOP

The Republican Party is rotting away. The problem is that GOP policies just aren’t popular. Most Americans unsurprisingly oppose climate denial, tax cuts for the wealthy, and putting children (including toddlers) in concentration camps, for example.

The Republican Party has thus far managed to continue winning elections by creating “a coalition between racists and plutocrats,” as Paul Krugman put it. The party’s economic policies are aimed at benefitting wealthy individuals and corporations, but that’s a slim segment of the American electorate. The plutocrats can fund political campaigns, but to capture enough votes to win elections, the GOP has resorted to identity politics. Research has consistently shown that Trump won because of racial resentment among white voters.

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Both cities are seeking ways to transport expanding populations without impacting their historic centres, yet the simplest solution is staring them in the face

Sometimes politics really does overlook the obvious, and there’s a fine example just now in those two great centres of clear thinking and clogged traffic, Oxford and Cambridge. Here is the problem. The country wants, and badly needs, to build on these cities’ success in tech, bioscience and other industries: 129,000 new jobs and 135,000 new homes are planned in and around them over the next decade or so. But first you have to plan how to transport all the new people, and none of the usual answers works.

Even if new roadbuilding were an answer in any city, it can’t be in these two. Their historic centres are inviolable, their electorates implacable. Gone, thank God, are the days when plans could be drawn up for a new highway through Christ Church Meadow. More buses? Both cities’ centres are already choked with them. Metros? Vastly expensive and disruptive, years to build, and couldn’t hope to serve most of the journeys people will need to make.

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