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Rising global emissions of some chemicals could slow the progress made in healing the ozone layer.

Government’s clean growth strategy unequivocally states that tackling climate change and a prosperous economy go hand in hand

The grownups have finally won and everyone in the UK, from those in cold homes to those on polluted streets and in flooded towns, will benefit. The most important aspect of the UK government’s new clean growth strategy is its unequivocal statement that tackling climate change and a prosperous economy are one and the same thing.

This has been clear to many for some time, including Philip Hammond, if not his predecessor George Osborne. There is no long-term, high-carbon economic strategy because the impacts of unchecked climate change destroy economies, as Lord Nicholas Stern puts it.

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Ministers publish long-delayed blueprint for hitting target of cutting emissions by 57% in next 15 years

The UK’s draughtiest homes will be insulated and upgraded by 2035 to save families as much as £300 a year on their energy bills, under the government’s climate change masterplan.

The long-delayed blueprint for how the UK will hit its binding target of cutting emissions by 57% by 2032 majors on support for everything from low-carbon power, energy savings and electric vehicles to keeping food waste out of landfill.

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The changes are part of the Clean Growth Plan to reduce the UK's greenhouse emissions.

Clownfish under threat from warming ocean waters, which are damaging the anemones that serve as its home

The clownfish, the colourful swimmer propelled to fame by the 2003 film Finding Nemo, is under threat from warming ocean waters wreaking havoc with sea anemones, the structures that serve as its home, a study has found.

Closely related to corals, sea anemones are invertebrate marine creatures that live in symbiosis with algae, which provide them with food, oxygen and colour.

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Activists claim the boar should be welcomed in Gloucestershire – and they are determined to sabotage marksmen targeting pigs roaming ancient woodland

Drew Pratten admits it can be a little unnerving to suddenly come upon a wild boar in the forest.

“They are very big. When they growl at you it’s primal. You get the sort of feeling deep in your stomach that you get when you hear a lion roar. But these animals don’t want to hurt anyone. If you slowly back away they are fine. We should all be living peacefully together.”

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Sandy, Bedfordshire The fly’s head tipped back a little, eyes the colour of a tired strawberry, its legs frozen, as if in ecstasy

Sitting down at the wheel of the car I found my view through the windscreen partially obscured by two large insects having sex. At least, this was how things looked from the driver’s seat. A solitary wasp had mounted its mate and wrapped its forelegs fondly around its neck. It had managed to anchor the both of them to the sloping glass with its rear feet.

This wasp was an angular Audrey Hepburn of insects, narrow-waisted with a pencil-point slender abdomen and an impeccable dress sense of yellow and black hoops and bars. It had pulled big time, for its “partner” was a whopper of a catch – a giant house fly, its coarse-haired, scabby, bulbous, abdomen flattened against the screen.

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Steven Pearce captures up to 10,000 birds swooping for a drink at an outback water hole in rare display he describes as a marvel of agility

A wildlife photographer has captured stunning images of budgerigars in a murmuration of up to 10,000 birds near a water hole outside Alice Springs.

Steven Pearce said the display was rare, unique and relatively short-lived – lasting for only about 10 minutes. Pearce was able to shoot dozens of photos displaying the birds’ agility and dazzling splashes of colour in the middle of the desert.

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Australian outfit Synergy Wind has proposed building a 34 turbine wind farm in Victoria's south-east.

Australian energy politics might have reached peak stupid, but Australia’s energy revolution – led by innovators and incumbents alike, all focused on delivering smarter, cheaper power – is just hitting its stride. And consumers are getting into it.

A field trial to develop highly efficient solar energy heliostats made from plastic has opened in South Australia.

Report reveals Adani needs to refinance $2bn of loans for Abbot Point coal terminal, which is more than it paid for it in 2011

Adani’s financing for its proposed Carmichael coalmine could face a further hurdle, with Westpac appearing to indicate it will not refinance its existing loan to Adani’s coal terminal at Abbot Point.

A recent report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (Ieefa) revealed Adani needed to refinance more than $2bn worth of loans for its Abbot Point coal terminal in the coming year – an amount that is more than it paid for the port in 2011. That means the company has negative equity on the facility – owing banks more than it is worth.

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Technology troglodytes in conservative media have collective meltdown over "demand response" – a new initiative to encourage consumers, particularly industry, to shift loads to help manage demand peaks and moderate prices.

The Clean Energy Council congratulates the winners of the 2017 Solar Design and Installation Awards, which were announced yesterday at the All-Energy Australia Exhibition and Conference in Melbourne.

Carnegie is pleased to announce the appointment to its Board of Directors of two new, non-executive directors

Coal, oil and gas finance from major development banks totalled $5bn in year after historic climate pact, according to estimates

Billions of dollars of public money was sunk in new fossil fuel projects by the world’s major development banks in the year after the Paris climate change deal was agreed, according to campaigners who are calling for the banks to halt their financing of coal, oil and gas.

The new analysis also reveals that some of the taxpayers’ money given to coal and gas projects was counted as “climate” finance.

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Queensland renewables and storage tender attracts proposals amounting to 9,000MW of wind, solar and biomass, and 6000MW of storage.

Australia's species, like this green python, are remarkable and need far better protection. Euan Ritchie, Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University Dale Nimmo, ARC DECRA Fellow, Charles Sturt University Don Driscoll, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, Deakin University Geoffrey Heard, Lecturer in Wildlife Ecology and Management, Charles Sturt University Megan C Evans, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Environmental Policy, The University of Queensland Tim Doherty, Research Fellow, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

For decades the national park’s stunning vistas have been compromised by poor air quality, and prospects of improvement were derailed by Trump Tuesday

Big Bend national park is Texas at its most cinematic, with soaring, jagged forest peaks looming over vast desert lowlands, at once haughty and humble, prickly and pretty. It is also among the most remote places in the state.

Even from Alpine, the town of 6,000 that is the main gateway to the park, it is more than an hour’s drive to one of the entrances.

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Scientists are discovering more and more about the internal lives of animals. But what does this mean for the way humans behave?

Last week footage of five young elephants being captured in Zimbabwe to sell to zoos travelled round the world. Parks officials used helicopters to find the elephant families, shot sedatives into the young ones, then hazed away family members who came to the aid of the drugged young ones as they fell.

The film, shared exclusively with the Guardian, showed the young captives being trussed up and dragged on to trucks. In the final moments of footage, two men repeatedly kick a small dazed elephant in the head.

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