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We can’t address this until we’re prepared to use the word ‘tampon’ in discussing the problem, says Martha Silcott

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the record-breaking fatberg was discovered during a week of coordinated nationwide beach clean-ups, run by volunteers (Monster fatberg found inside London sewer, 13 September). Fatbergs like the “monster” found in Whitechapel could easily be avoided, but it’s time for an honest discussion about the causes. It’s not just cooking oil but a range of other items that we flush down our loos.

Tampons are widely believed to be flushable but swell up in sewers, combining with oil to create impenetrable blockages. Blocked sewers overflow into rivers, leading to the oceans, hence the huge clean-ups needed every year to rid our beaches of so-called sanitary waste. We can’t address this until we’re prepared to use the word “tampon” in discussing the problem. Five of the major UK water companies give out free FabLittleBag disposal bags to householders as a crucial preventative measure. We hope Thames Water will join them to save millions in costly repairs – which is passed on in our water bills – as well as to prevent the horrific aquatic pollution.
Martha Silcott
CEO, FabLittleBag

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Green Finance Taskforce, which will be led by investors and leading figures from the City, will find ways to aid the UK’s shift to a low-carbon economy

A new group led by investors and leading figures from the City of London has been brought together by the government to draw up measures to encourage “green finance” in the UK.

The Green Finance Taskforce will have six months to come up with proposals on how to increase investment in the low-carbon economy and will work with banks and other financial institutions. Chaired by Sir Roger Gifford, former lord mayor of London, the taskforce will look at measures to make the UK’s planned investments in infrastructure, for instance on energy and transport, more environmentally sustainable.

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Gary Cohn confirmed the US intends to withdraw from the agreement without a renegotiation, but declined to provide details

President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser said at the United Nations on Monday the US has not changed its plans to withdraw from the Paris climate pact without a renegotiation favorable to Washington, a step for which there is little appetite in the international community.

Related: Top Trump officials signal US could stay in Paris climate agreement

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Goal to limit warming to 1.5C to avoid the worst impacts of climate change was seen as unreachable, but updated research suggests it could be met if strong action is taken

The highly ambitious aim of limiting global warming to less than 1.5C remains in reach, a new scientific analysis shows.

The 1.5C target was set as an aspiration by the global Paris climate change deal in 2015 to limit the damage wreaked by extreme weather and sea level rise.

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The discovery of aquatic architecture has led scientists to compare the behaviour of cephalopods with humans – but octopus city life is no utopia

If animals are our other, there is nothing quite so other as the octopus. It is the alien with whom we share our planet, a coeval evolutionary life form whose slithery slipperiness and more than the requisite number of limbs (each of which contains its own “brain”) symbolise the dark mystery and fear of the deep.

Now comes news that octopuses have been building their own cities down there. In a story straight out of James Cameron’s The Abyss, scientists have discovered that the wonderfully named “gloomy octopus”, octopus tetricus, are not the loners we once thought them to be.

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Study finds excessive levels of the metal, which can seriously harm unborn children, in women from Alaska to Indonesia, due to gold mining, industrial pollution and fish-rich diets

Women of childbearing age from around the world have been found to have high levels of mercury, a potent neurotoxin which can seriously harm unborn children.

The new study, the largest to date, covered 25 of the countries with the highest risk and found excessive levels of the toxic metal in women from Alaska to Chile and Indonesia to Kenya. Women in the Pacific islands were the most pervasively contaminated. This results from their reliance on eating fish, which concentrate the mercury pollution found across the world’s oceans and much of which originates from coal burning.

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For centuries, humans have championed the democratic political system. But can it facilitate the radical change needed to stop the potentially annihilating effects of climate change?

Although individual action to protect the environment – consuming less, recycling more, reducing one’s carbon footprint – might be a contribution if enough people did it, the battle to minimise human-induced climate change has to be a worldwide endeavour among cooperating states. The outcome of the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference was one of the most optimistic and encouraging steps hitherto achieved in that battle – that is, until Donald Trump said he intended to withdraw the US, the biggest climate polluter in history, from the agreement. The Paris agreement and President Trump’s decision illustrate the two ends of the spectrum of effort and concern. Our planet cannot be protected from a warming atmosphere – with melting ice caps, rising sea levels, droughts, floods, famines and migrations of desperate populations – without vigorous joint effort by the world’s states.

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Climate models have an even better track record than the weather models that saved lives in Texas and Florida

The impacts of hurricanes Harvey and Irma were blunted because we saw them coming. Weather models accurately predicted the hurricane paths and anticipated their extreme intensities days in advance. This allowed millions of Floridians to evacuate the state, sparing countless lives.

Some contrarians have tried to downplay the rising costs of landfalling hurricanes by claiming they’re only more expensive because there are now more people living along the coasts with more expensive stuff vulnerable to hurricane damages. However, those arguments fail to account for our ability to predict hurricane tracks earlier and more accurately by using better and better scientific models. We’re able to prepare for hurricanes much better today than in the past because we have more warning.

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North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and climate change are all high on the agenda.

Meet Dr Matt Zeale who is leading a team of conservationists tracking the rare barbastrelle bat.

The Sphinx is the closest Britain comes to having a glacier. It has disappeared just six times in the last 300 years, but this year it is almost gone. Murdo MacLeod joins snow expert Iain Cameron to study the state of Scotland’s permanent snow

“It’s a very sorry sight,” says Iain Cameron. It is late August and we are standing in front of Scotland’s very own Sphinx. It never had claws, paws, nor a mysterious countenance, but if it once had they would have melted away, just as the rest is about to do. “Grim,” says Cameron with gravel in his tone. “It’s pretty much in its death throes.”

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Sunderland Point, Lancaster At the river’s edge, retinues of curlew, lapwing and redshank assembled and lifted again, landing in each other’s wake

Even as Margaret Owen pulled on her fishing “yallers”, we knew there was little chance of a salmon. I had been waiting for weeks to see Margaret in action, but the salmon simply haven’t returned to the river Lune this year, and the season was about to end.

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New analysis shows that governments would be better off supporting more rooftop solar and battery storage - rather than ageing coal generators - if they are serious about lowering prices and making the grid more reliable.

Rooftop solar meets 48 per cent of South Australia electricity demand, likely a world record, as the state's minimum demand hits a record low.

Rhino horn is being processed into bangles, beads and bracelets, a charity's investigation reveals.

Fish, which is endemic to Tasmania, was the first Australian marine animal to be listed as critically endangered

Scientists have begun a captive breeding program for the spotted handfish, 11 years after it became the first Australian marine animal to be listed as critically endangered.

Endemic to Tasmania, the spotted handfish or Brachionichthys hirsutus looks like a tadpole in the late stages of development, with a fin atop its head to lure unsuspecting prey and the sour expression of a British bulldog.

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Initial site preparation works are starting at the $225 million Ross River Solar Farm site, Townsville’s newest large scale solar plant.

Nikki Towell doesn't let her wheelchair stop her working as a wool classer; we grow Asian vegies at Boon Luck Farm; train wild brumbies in the NT; and climb trees in Tasmania.

The pangolin is a small peculiar scaled mammal and is the most trafficked creature on the planet — Vietnam.

Application for assessment under the EPBC Act – call for public comments open 18 September 2017 until 23 October 2017.