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Courts are a new front line of climate action with cases against governments and oil firms spiralling, and while victories have so far been rare the pressure for change is growing

Global moves to tackle climate change through lawsuits are poised to break new ground this week, as groups and individuals seek to hold governments and companies accountable for the damage they are causing.

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Claxton, Norfolk: A lone blackbird offers hope of spring in the snowstorm’s Arctic silence

Even now there are several roadside heaps of it where the snowdrifts had been so high that we were entirely cut off for three days. These vestiges hardly conjure the power of that extraordinary storm, but it has been fascinating to track the whole system as a single organism.

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22% of seagrass in Western Australia’s Shark Bay was lost after 2010-11 heatwave, causing release of up to 9m tonnes of carbon

A marine heatwave in Western Australia in 2010 set off a massive “carbon bomb”, damaging the world’s largest seagrass meadow, releasing millions of tonnes of carbon that had been collected for thousands of years below the surface.

Although Australia doesn’t currently count carbon released from damaged seagrass meadows in its official greenhouse gas emissions, if it did, the results mean those figures might need to be revised upwards by more than 20%.

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On top of the fact that it is astoundingly expensive, a number of cultural realities lie behind the problems being experienced by nuclear power.

AEMO says NEM is not fit for purpose any more, given changes to generation mix, uptake of solar and storage, and soaring temperatures that lessen reliability of conventional generation.

Uber puts self-driving trials on hold after a pedestrian was hit and killed by one of its cars in autonomous mode.

WA company gears up to commercialise its "world-first" clear glass solar windows, with listing on ASX.

In final installment of series, we consider improving efficient and productive use of electricity, and the effect this might have on national emissions.

The vision to set new standards for cost-competitive renewable heat and power production became a reality today with the official opening of a revolutionary green energy facility in Denmark.

Assumptions that South Australia's wholesale electricity prices are higher than other states, and that it relies more on imports are not true.

Australia's biggest brewer, CUB, signs deal with new 112MW solar farm near Mildura as part of its plans to go 100% renewables, saying it will lower and lock in electricity costs. The shift to renewables by Australia's manufacturing base is accelerating.

Twenty years ago the regional forest agreements were introduced to protect native forests and deliver 'ecologically sustainable forest management'. Now, with the RFAs set to be renewed, conservationists say ancient forests are being destroyed, while the timber industry says its operating under strict codes. It's the return of the forest wars

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Coral bleaching has struck the Northern Territory, adding urgency to the need for better national management strategies for our warming oceans. Selina Ward, Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Group of campaigners arrested after spray painting mayor’s offices as part of a series of direct action protests over of the capital’s illegal air pollution

Air pollution protesters say they are prepared to go to prison as they step up their campaign against the poisonous air that kills tens of thousands of people in the UK each year.

A group of campaigners including pensioners and young parents, were arrested on Monday after targeting the offices of London mayor Sadiq Khan, spraying slogans on the walls calling for tougher action on air pollution.

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RFAs were meant to protect forests and create a sustainable timber industry, but as renewals approach both sides are readying for battle

For more than 30 years Jill Redwood has fought to save the ancient old growth forests of East Gippsland in Victoria.

Living alone, isolated and self-sufficient on a small rural property in the Brodribb river valley alongside the Snowy river national park, Redwood, the coordinator of the East Gippsland Environment Centre, says there have been endless attempts to silence and frighten her. She’s undaunted.

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140m people in three regions expected to migrate before 2050 unless environment is improved

Climate change will result in a massive movement of people inside countries and across borders, creating “hotspots” where tens of millions pour into already crowded slums, according to the World Bank.

More than 140m people in just three regions of the developing world are likely to migrate within their native countries between now and 2050, the first report on the subject has found.

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Two patients have had pioneering stem cell therapy to restore their vision.

Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned by Novichok nerve agents, the PM says. So what are they?

The organisation keeping track of the deadly chemicals held by countries around the world.

Let fossil fuel-funded think tanks make their case, then ignore it

In 2007, the US Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant, which means that if it poses a threat to public health or welfare, the EPA must regulate it under the Clean Air Act. In 2009, the EPA completed its review of the climate science literature and correctly concluded in its Endangerment Finding that carbon pollution poses such a threat via climate change. That document is the foundation for all government climate policies, including the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. Climate deniers have thus long had their sights set on revoking the Endangerment Finding.

That’s a tall order, since the scientific literature is crystal clear on this question. House Republicans first tried to simply rewrite the Clean Air Act to state the greenhouse gases aren’t pollutants, but they failed to get nearly enough support to pass that legislation. Next they proposed setting up a ‘Red Team’ of climate deniers to debate the mainstream climate science ‘Blue Team.’ But Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly worried that having this prominent debate on the record would be a distraction and potentially expose the administration to litigation, so he killed the idea.

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