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The rhino found on a Norfolk beach dates back about 700,000 years.

Ellen MacArthur and the New Plastic Economy initiative are determined to make a real difference in tackling the terrible problem of our plastic-polluted oceans

Last summer Adidas released a good-looking trainer with uppers made using plastic recovered from the ocean. Everyone was very excited, but my response was: “That’s not the most efficient way of cleaning up the ocean.”

Small bits of plastic packaging such as lids, sachets and films pose the biggest nightmare

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Nasa releases a video of the ISS crew preparing to watch the Super Bowl from 250 miles above Earth.

Borth y Gest, Snowdonia I’ve seen glaucous gulls squabbling around rubbish-tips on Baffin Island, but never before in Wales

Recent winter storm-surges from the cold north brought with them surprising visitors. Walking the coast path westwards I looked up and studied a clamorous swarm of gulls, vivid against a gunmetal sky. One, singled out in my glass, was bulkier than its companions, translucent somehow in the subdued light, its long wings white-fringed – a glaucous gull, Larus hyperboreus.

I’ve seen these fine seabirds before, squabbling around rubbish-tips at Iqpiarjuk and Pangnirtung on Baffin Island; or bathing in turquoise pools atop icebergs in the Davis Strait; or following the boat in which I crossed Admiralty Inlet when bound for the Brodeur Peninsula in quest of narwhal. Until now I’d never had a clear sighting of one in Wales, though it’s merely uncommon rather than rare as a visitor here.

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Gustaaf Hallegraeff has embarked on a program collecting sediment cores from along the Australian east coast, including Tasmania. The information will help interpret the recent large changes to aquatic ecosystems.

How do you rid your gardens of those pesky creatures- the common garden snail?

If the US shifts course on climate change policy, what are the implications for the rest of the world?

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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An otter family, a diving kingfisher and the Amazon coral reef are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Prime minister Stefan Löfven calls the Trump administration’s approach worrying as he announces new law binding future governments to a goal of carbon neutrality by 2045

Sweden has criticised the Trump administration’s approach to climate policy as it announced legislation binding future governments to a goal of phasing out greenhouse gas emissions by 2045, among the most ambitious by any developed nation.

“The position we hear from the new [US] administration is worrying,” prime minister Stefan Löfven said after announcing an ambitious new climate law promising zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

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Charity calls for tougher legislation to prevent shooting, poisoning and trapping of birds such as peregrine falcons, red kites, buzzards and hen harriers

Almost 200 reports of shooting, trapping and destruction of birds of prey were received by the RSPB in 2015, the charity said.

Some 64 out of the 196 reports were confirmed, including the shooting or attempted shooting of 46 birds of prey, including 16 buzzards, 11 peregrines, three red kites, one red-footed falcon and one hen harrier, a new report from the RSPB said.

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Extraordinary readings pile pressure on operator Tepco in its efforts to decommission nuclear power station

Radiation levels inside a damaged reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station are at their highest since the plant suffered a triple meltdown almost six years ago.

The facility’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), said atmospheric readings as high as 530 sieverts an hour had been recorded inside the containment vessel of reactor No 2, one of three reactors that experienced a meltdown when the plant was crippled by a huge tsunami that struck the north-east coast of Japan in March 2011.

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Destructive seaweeds found in reefs worldwide will grow more poisonous and eventually take over in the fight for space

The destruction of coral reefs worldwide could accelerate as rising carbon emissions help coral-killing seaweeds grow more poisonous and take over, according to researchers.

A Griffith University study on the Great Barrier Reef has shown how rising CO2 emissions trigger more potency in chemicals from common “weed-like” algae that poison corals as they compete for space.

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Here in Perth, a battle is raging over a 5km stretch of road known as Roe 8. Work on the project, part of the proposed Perth Freight Link, began late in 2016 and as legal avenues to halt construction were exhausted, opponents resorted to non-violent direct action. Some protest “mass actions” have attracted more than 1,000 people from all walks of life and by the end of January, as bulldozers tore through the Coolbellup bushland under costly police protection, well over 100 had been arrested.

Clearing machinery arrives on site under heavy police protection, January 2017. Gnangarra

Proponents say the road is necessary to improve the safety and efficiency of freight traffic to and from the Port of Fremantle. Opponents point to freight alternatives that will avoid Roe 8’s destruction of Aboriginal heritage, endangered banksia woodland, and important wetlands. Critics have also decried the government’s lack of transparency and prudence in decision-making, and highlighted serious shortcomings in environmental policies and laws.

The state’s Labor opposition has promised to scrap the project if it wins government at the state election on March 11, yet to the shock and dismay of many, bulldozing continues.

How will the conflict end? While history provides no sure guide to the future, it does reveal that successful environmental campaigns have tended to share several key features that unsuccessful campaigns have lacked. What are they?

1. Elections

Some of the biggest environmentalist victories have been won at the ballot box. This was the case for the proposed Franklin River dam, which became a federal election issue and helped to bring Bob Hawke’s Labor government to power.

By-elections have also decided the fate of environmentally contentious developments. Wayne Goss’s proposed “Koala tollway” between Brisbane and the Gold Coast cost Labor nine seats in the 1995 state election; a by-election in February 1996 saw the end of both Goss’s majority and the toll road.

Similarly, the campaign against a proposal for agricultural development in Victoria’s Little Desert delivered a shock metropolitan by-election result that, along with sustained public pressure, quashed the proposal.

More recently, the East-West Link toll road in Melbourne was, like Roe 8, hurried into the construction phase before an election with no full business case available for public scrutiny. The campaign against the Link, which united public transport advocates and local councils, ran for more than a year and attracted A$1.6 million in policing costs. Labor promised to halt construction and following his electoral success in November 2015, the incoming premier Daniel Andrews tore up the contracts, setting what might turn out to be a crucial precedent for WA Labor’s Mark McGowan.

Even electoral failures can help environmental causes in the long run. Advocates for Lake Pedder in Tasmania didn’t attract political support for their cause from either major party, so they formed their own: the United Tasmania Group. It narrowly failed to win a seat at the 1972 state election, and Lake Pedder was lost.

But those who were galvanised by this failure were instrumental in the victory 10 years later over the Franklin dam, which transformed federal-state relations and launched the Australian Greens as a political force.

2. Unions

Many past environmental campaigns have succeeded only through union involvement. In the 1970s and ‘80s, almost 50% of the Australian workforce was unionised, giving the unions significant power to shut down contentious projects.

The 1970 campaign against oil drilling on the Great Barrier Reef claimed success when the Transport Workers Union and affiliates placed a black ban on drilling vessels in the region. The 1970s “Green bans”, led by Jack Mundey and the NSW Builders’ Labourers Federation, blocked a range of threats to heritage sites and bushland, including urban bushland at Kelly’s Bush on Sydney’s lower North Shore.

With union membership today at only around 15%, and the environment a low priority for some key unions, this opportunity for intervention has all but vanished.

3. Alternatives

Campaigns are more likely to be successful where environmentalists can point to viable alternatives for the projects they oppose. For example, opponents of woodchipping in East Gippsland in the 1980s produced a report showing how developing agriculture and tourism in parallel with a restructured and modernised timber industry would produce 450 extra jobs in the region.

This material was then used in political lobbying, as well as campaigning in marginal seats, leading to the declaration of the Errinundra Plateau and Rodger River National Parks in 1987. Logging continues, however, in adjacent areas.

Similarly, Citizens Against Route Twenty achieved success in 1990 with an intense media campaign that included an alternative vision for Brisbane’s urban transport.

Back to Roe 8

In sprawling suburban Perth, the track record of opposition to new roads does not inspire much hope for those campaigning against Roe 8. Previous protests against the Kwinana Freeway, the Graham Farmer Freeway and the Farrington Road extension were all more or less futile.

In each case the opponents were deemed to be “anti-progress”, with progress implicitly represented by the construction of new road infrastructure. Similar language pervades the current rhetoric around Roe 8, which is portrayed by supporters as a solution to all the traffic problems of Perth’s southern suburbs.

Sustainable transport advocates take a longer view; for instance, in the alternative plan laid out by Curtin University’s Peter Newman and Cole Hendrigan. This, however, has been rejected by the Barnett government in favour of the Roe Highway extension, which was originally planned for different purposes in the 1950s.

The protest against Roe 8 has two of the three key historical ingredients for success (an election, and a clearly outlined alternative plan). It has also harnessed the new power of social media and drone footage.

Opponents of Roe 8 at the end of an hour-long silent protest in Forrest Place, central Perth, January 2017.

Rarely has direct action clinched an environmental campaign, although there are precedents: protesters’ destruction of felled timber at Terania Creek in 1979 brought an end to logging. Tree-sitting and human barricades bought enough time for political change to halt the Cape Tribulation-Bloomfield Road in Queensland’s Wet Tropics. In Coolbellup numerous lock-ons and tree-sits have delayed works, but time is running out for the wetlands in the path of Roe 8.

After the March 11 election we will know whether the already bulldozed area will be restored, or whether the road will be built. Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain: pressure is building on resources and urban spaces, and the indicators of environmental health are continuing to decline.

This trend makes it ever more likely that our economic and political priorities will find themselves on a collision course with communities seeking to protect their local environments. It seems safe to say that we will see plenty more protests like this in coming years.

Andrea Gaynor is affiliated with The Beeliar Group: Professors for Environmental Responsibility.

Crewe Green, Cheshire No wonder the spines of this tiny mammal keep most predators away; it’s like touching surgical needles

Although the air is mild for the time of year, the sky is iron-blue, threatening another downpour. It is wet and muddy under foot, slippery too. Charcoal and murky-brown, dead leaves clot the woodland path. There is the breath of tannin; I can almost taste it. Two grey squirrels chase each other over rotten logs, then dash up a tree strangled by ivy. A blackbird skitters into some bushes. I call my jack russell, Roob, who is loitering behind, sniffing new scents; this isn’t our usual walk. She doesn’t appear.

I retrace my steps, calling again, scanning through perished bracken and withered nettles. I smell ghostly flowers and wizened rosehips. There are tangled brambles, bitter-black berries and bare trees. A gust of wind rattles their branches; they creak and moan in protest. Then I hear her, growling at something near a holly bush.

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Even the cleanest coal plants add millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere each year.

With the right mix, the grid can go fully renewable for the same cost and reliability as fossil fuels.

With Trump at the reins, China is poised to eat America’s lunch in the renewable energy sector.

Boutique retailer Urth Energy becomes latest "solar focused" market newcomer to fail within 12 months after administrators called in.

Minister says he’s not surprised that generators don’t want another big baseload power station to enter the market

Australia’s resources minister, Matt Canavan, has flagged subsidising a “clean” coal baseload power plant from the government’s $5bn northern Australia infrastructure fund, and says the government has already heard from an interested party.

Canavan on Friday suggested a potential investor in a new power station was eyeing off development in the Galilee Basin, the planned site of the Adani coal mine – and he said cheap power had been the key to opening up the Bowen basin in Queensland in the 1960’s.

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