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Sea otters, an African forest elephant and endangered Francois’ langurs are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Hedgehog lovers are worried that a rat trap, licensed by the government in England, could harm their spiky friends.

Emissions covered under the EU ETS rose by 0.3% in 2017, the European Commission said Friday, confirming the small increase both reported in preliminary data released last month and predicted by analysts.

Three undergraduates are embarking on the direct action as part of an ongoing campaign to stop the university investing in fossil fuels

Three students at the Cambridge University have gone on hunger strike as part of an increasingly bitter campaign to stop the university investing in fossil fuel companies.

The move by the three undergraduates is part of an ongoing divestment campaign at the university that has been supported by hundreds of academics and scientists – including Sir David King, until recently the UK’s permanent special representative for climate change, Thomas Blundell, the former president of the UK Science Council and the author Robert Macfarlane.

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The EU’s highest court has ruled that chemicals firm Evonik is not entitled to additional free carbon allowances because its method of producing gases does not fall within a defined benchmark.

When Douglas Coupland saw debris from the Japanese earthquake washing up in Canada, he became fascinated by the centrality of plastic in our lives – and began to pick it up

In 1999, I was in a Tokyo department store walking down a household cleaning products aisle and had what you might call an ecstatic moment when the pastel-tinted plastic bottles on both sides of the aisle temporarily froze my reptile cortex: pink, yellow, baby blue, turquoise — so many cute-looking bottles filled with so many toxic substances, all labeled with bold katakana lettering.

I bought 125 bottles and took them back to my hotel room where I emptied them down the toilet. Yes, I can hear you judging me as an ecological criminal, but then let me ask you this: if I’d added some dead skin flakes or some shit to these chemicals, would that then have made it OK to deliver them into the Tokyo harbour?

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Industry insiders and local environmentalists fear agricultural development has become untenable, threatening the valley’s future

The rise of Napa began with an upset. Warren Winiarski would know – his wine, a cabernet sauvignon, was a firm underdog at a legendary 1976 blind tasting in Paris, which pitted the best of France against the little-known California region.

His winery, Stag’s Leap, shocked the wine world by taking top honors. “It broke the glass ceiling that France had imposed on everyone,” he recalls. “People’s aspirations were liberated.”

Today Winiarski, 89, is speaking not of liberation, but of limits. A growing coalition of industry veterans and longtime residents fear that Napa has become a victim of its own success, pointing to the ecological transformation of the valley floor from dense oak woodland to a sea of vine-wrapped trellises. And they are posing a thorny question: has a unique agricultural region reached a tipping point at which agriculture itself becomes the threat?

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Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator this week issued 244,000 carbon credits, taking the total number of offsets issued since the programme started in Dec. 2012 past 50 million, although the majority of the units have been snapped up by the government itself.

In choosing not to ban the live export trade even in the hottest northern months, the federal government is allowing animals to be put in conditions where they cannot possibly escape suffering. Peter Singer, Professor of Ethical Issues in Biotechnology, Justice and the Human Good, University of Melbourne Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Major UK producer of plastic bottles for drinks and oils is aiming to hit new target within four months

A major producer of plastic bottles in the UK is to increase its recycled content to more than 50% within four months.

Princes, which produces 7% of plastic bottles used in the UK, says it has started the process to increase the amount of recycled plastic in all its bottles and will finish by September.

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BMW offers first glimpse of "new technology flagship" – a pure electric car incorporating all the "major strategic areas of innovation in a road-ready vehicle."

Langstone Harbour, Hampshire: As they break down rubbish on the strandline, the tiny crustaceans may however be contributing to the spread of secondary microplastics

With my back to the sea, I paced out a five-metre-wide transect and began methodically surveying the shore, working my way up the exposed shingle towards the high-tide mark. I was taking part in the Big Seaweed Search – a citizen science project that aims to investigate whether sea temperature rise, ocean acidification and the spread of non-native species is affecting the distribution and abundance of 14 indicator seaweeds.

The seaweed was growing in an uninterrupted three-metre-wide band that arced around the bay. Long skeins of pea-green gutweed were interwoven with flattened, tawny-coloured fronds of bladderwrack and spiralwrack, and an unfamiliar species that had tiny, spherical air bladders clustered along its wiry branches. According to my field guide, it was Japanese wireweed, an invasive alien.

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The only zero-emissions race car to complete the Dakar Rally is in Australia to compete in the annual Finke Desert Race.

France government incentive to trade in old petrol and diesel cars for new EVs proves unexpected success.

Automaker behind world's best selling EV unveils Nissan Energy Solar – a home solar, storage, and smart control package, including 2nd-hand EV batteries.

Alan Jones and Josh Frydenberg traded barbs on radio on Thursday. And beneath the bravado was an insight into how far to the right the debate around Australia’s climate and energy politics has shifted.

Wind, solar PV and Nuclear have gained electricity market share in China, but because of another downturn in hydro, coal generation continues to grow.

What is it about AI that unnerves us? Alan Finkel suspects it’s a combination of things.

Australia faces many security issues driven by climate change, including more international migration and an increase in defence personnel being sent on disaster relief missions, a Senate inquiry has found. Matt McDonald, Associate Professor of International Relations, The University of Queensland Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

How an Australian town found itself at the vanguard of a global solar revolution.