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The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, told agency staff on Tuesday that the US should not have to choose between the economy and the environment. ‘I believe that we as a nation can be both pro-energy and jobs, and pro-environment. We don’t have to choose between the two,’ Pruitt said in his first speech to EPA workers since he was confirmed as administrator last week

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You probably don't have one in your backroom cupboard or garage, but the Prime Minister does and so too some other early adopters—batteries are the new boom for power storage.

An Australian company is planning to build the biggest solar storage plant in the world in South Australia.

It's time to get serious about reducing deaths from air pollution: DEA

In some political circles, hostility to climate policy has become a way of showing off one’s conservative credentials. But a suggestion for pricing carbon, grounded in classic conservative principles, has now emerged in the United States.

It has come not from the populist Trump administration, but from an eminent group of Republicans with impeccable conservative credentials, several of whom served as cabinet secretaries in previous Republican administrations.

Last week they published a manifesto entitled The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends. In a nutshell, the proposal is for a carbon tax – yes, a tax – with the proceeds to be returned to all citizens as a “carbon dividend”, every quarter. More details in a moment.

The group accepts that climate change is real and that, regardless of whether it is human-induced, a human response is urgently needed. Moreover, they say:

Now that the Republican Party controls the White House and Congress, it has the opportunity and responsibility to promote a climate plan that showcases the full power of enduring conservative convictions.

Tax and dividend

The plan envisages a tax on fossil fuels at the point at which they leave the refinery or coal mine and enter the economy. It would start at US$40 a tonne and increase over time. This would force up the price of many commodities – most obviously petrol – and might be expected to anger consumers, were it not for the dividend strategy.

The dividend would be paid to all Americans, via the social security system. A family of four might expect a dividend of US$2,000 in the first year, rising over time in line with the tax.

The manifesto’s authors include eminent establishment Republicans, including James Baker, Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State for George H. W. Bush; and George Shultz, Secretary of State in the Reagan administration and a former member of Richard Nixon’s cabinet. They are certainly sensitive to the political unpopularity of new taxes.

Their response is that this is not a tax that will accrue to the government, because it will be “revenue-neutral”: all of the money will go back to citizens. The carbon-pricing scheme introduced in Australia under former prime minister Julia Gillard was also revenue-neutral but returned money to consumers partly through income tax relief, which is less visible than a direct dividend.

The high visibility of a carbon dividend to the consumer arguably makes this a more politically palatable policy. For this reason the manifesto’s authors call their proposal a carbon dividend rather than a carbon tax. They calculate that the dividend would leave 70% of the population financially better off, particularly among working-class taxpayers. As they put it:

…carbon dividends would increase the disposable income of the majority of Americans while disproportionately helping those struggling to make ends meet.

The group argues that this proposal is consistent with conservative principles in various ways.

First, it is a market-based solution to the problem of climate change which maximises freedom to consumers and producers. Second, it will facilitate the rollback of Obama-era regulations such as the Clean Power Plan, which conservatives regard as the epitome of heavy-handed regulation. As the Congress has discovered with relation to Obamacare, it cannot simply repeal unwanted Obama legislation without replacing it with something widely seen as better.

Finally, they argue that the repeal of heavily bureaucratic regulations would eliminate the need for a bureaucracy to enforce them. This would facilitate smaller government, one of the abiding aspirations of conservatives.

Apart from these matters of principle, the group points to several other political advantages – not least the chance to bring the Republican Party back into the mainstream on climate change:

For too long, many Republicans have looked the other way, forfeiting the policy initiative to those who favor growth-inhibiting command-and-control regulations, and fostering a needless climate divide between the GOP and the scientific, business, military, religious, civic and international mainstream.

The manifesto’s authors point out that climate change concern is greatest among under-35s, as well as Asians and Hispanics - the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic groups. A carbon dividend policy would enhance the appeal of the Republican Party to all of these groups.

They acknowledge that it may be an uphill battle to win over the anti-establishment Trump White House. But, they say:

…this is an opportunity to demonstrate the power of the conservative canon by offering a more effective, equitable and popular climate policy based on free markets, smaller government and dividends for all Americans.

Back in Australia, many conservative politicians such as Senator Cory Bernardi – who this month defected from the government so as to promote more freely his conservative principles – still decry carbon pricing. Bernardi described the idea of returning to carbon trading as “one of the dumbest things I have ever heard”. This is hardly a conservative response given the ramifications for our climate.

Conservatives like Bernardi continue to equate carbon pricing with socialism. Yet for these establishment US Republicans, taxing carbon is entirely consistent with their conservative principles. Bernardi and his like-minded colleagues in Australia would do well to consider the possibility that there is indeed a conservative case for a carbon tax.

Former Republican congressman Bob Inglis will speak about the conservative response to climate change at Australia’s National Press Club on February 22.

Andrew Hopkins is affiliated with The Australia Institute

NFU president says food will ‘rot in the fields’ unless government guarantees access to workforce

Farmers have warned that food will “rot in the fields” and Britain will be unable to produce what it eats if the government cannot guarantee that growers will continue to have access to tens of thousands of EU workers after Brexit.

Meurig Raymond, president of the National Farmers’ Union, told the body’s annual conference in Birmingham that farmers and food processors, particularly in horticulture and poultry, were already having difficulty recruiting.

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Seven new species of night frog have been discovered in India, including four miniature forms.

Camera -trap footage shows a giant anteater going toe-to-toe with a jaguar in the Gurupi Biological Reserve in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. The video was filmed by the Brazilian National Research Centre for Carnivore Conservation in September 2016 as part of a survey on jaguars

• ‘Insane’ camera trap video captures rare battle in the Amazon
  

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Professor Lewis’s analysis of ways to tackle air pollution (10 ways to beat air pollution: how effective are they?, theguardian.com, 15 February) is disappointingly dismissive of technology that can work in bus shelters or other pollution hotspots. While these solutions can’t clean an entire atmosphere, there are places where they can make a huge difference and it would be shortsighted to sweep them aside.

Tests at King’s College London have independently verified that our technology can clean the air of dangerous and pervasive nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter in pollution hotspots. It can reduce exposure to pollution in bus shelters, tube stations, and potentially hospitals or schools, by up to 80%. The mixing of the atmosphere does not therefore “completely outweigh the benefits” as Professor Lewis claims.

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Up to 16% of hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells spill liquids each year, according to new data.

A method that can identify individual lemurs could improve the way the endangered species is tracked.

Cincinnati Zoo's premature baby hippo Fiona needed urgent treatment for dehydration.

Campaigners chain themselves to a vehicle, blocking motorway tunnel leading to airport and causing lengthy delays

Climate activists protesting against Heathrow’s planned third runway caused lengthy delays on the M4 by blocking a tunnel leading to the airport.

Campaigners for Rising Up used three cars to close the tunnel leading from the motorway to Heathrow Terminals 1, 2 and 3 at about 8.25am on Tuesday. Three protesters chained themselves to one of the vehicles, which had a banner reading: “No new runways”.

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How Brexit might create complications for the way food in the UK is labelled.

Without camera traps we would never be privy to two endangered species sparring in the remote Amazon rainforest.

As darkness descended over the Peruvian Amazon in 2006, my wife and I listened spellbound while our guide told us the grisly story of the jaguar and giant anteater.

Eyewitnesses, our guide insisted, had found the two foes dead together, embracing like lovers but in mutual destruction – the jaguar’s jaw still drooped around the anteater’s neck where it had pierced its prey’s artery and the anteater’s ten-centimeter-long claws still embedded in the big cat’s flanks. Later, after the spell – and liquor – wore off, I thought it was probably a tall tale, something to tell tourists after the sun sets over the world’s greatest jungle and you’ve all had a few too many. But an incredible new camera trap video proves I may have been wrong to doubt.

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High profile elders of the ALP calling for Australia to recognise the state of Palestine have been criticised for the timing of their remarks.

Blackwater Carr, Norfolk Once you are attuned to this avian tree propagation, it becomes a pleasure to find other instances

Although I am in my 50s I still take a child’s pleasure in climbing trees. This particular ascent, however, had purpose, because a hawthorn formerly trapped under a sallow thicket has been steadily freed by felling operations. One last large willow branch had to be severed before my overtopped bush could move into the sunlit uplands of the open glade that I have created around it.

There are four hawthorns and one small holly honoured in this fashion. They receive preferential treatment partly because they are rare on my patch, but also because I cherish the idea that they are bird sown. I like to imagine the scenario that explains their presence in a sallow jungle: the fruit-filled blackbird, perhaps, that returned night after night to roost and deposited the undigested hawthorn and holly seeds that it had eaten during the day. Out of its shower of creative manure there eventually arose my new bushes.

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A state by state guide on electricity prices.

The Princeton atomic physicist is no climate scientist – and he’s pushing the same old denier myths

William Happer is a physicist at Princeton University – one of those US academic institutions with brand recognition for academic excellence that travels the globe.

Happer is well known for his contrarian views (that’s the polite term) on human-caused climate change.

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ANU report shows that average electricity bills have increased less in renewables rich SA over last 10 years than in eastern coal states.