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If you go down to the woods today... you might find a school, a photographer’s studio, or a carpenter’s workshop. Britain’s forests are getting a new lease of life

In the stillness of autumn, the only sound on the old Saxon road is the gentle tapping of beech nuts falling on a carpet of terracotta-coloured leaves. “You must meet Robert Cunningham – he’s tremendous,” says Kathy Harris, pausing to touch the huge trunk of a venerable beech tree. Harris knows all the ancient trees in this 25-acre wood as individuals. There is also a decaying ash called Cecelia and a beech with two trunks: one has thrown out a limb to fuse with the other, like twins holding hands. There are badgers, rare bats, otters and water rails. A bonfire crackles with burning holly and, as dusk falls, a tawny owl hoots.

Harris is one of a growing number of small woodland owners in Britain – a market for resellers, who buy big forests and subdivide them into “affordable” four- or five-acre plots. One, woodlands.co.uk, has sold more than 625 plots in the past four years. Prices range from £39,000 for six acres in Wales to £95,000 for a similar plot in Hampshire. The reasons for becoming a woodlander are varied and often idealistic, but the Mark Twain quote “Buy land – they’re not making it any more” usually lurks somewhere in the background. Large forests may be the preserve of tax-dodging multimillionaires (if a wood is managed commercially, harvesting timber, it is exempt from inheritance tax), but most woodlanders are a long way from being able to run a commercial operation.

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Blashford Lakes, Hampshire Dead trees don’t get much of a press. For each one remembered, a million will be forgotten

On a dry, dull-grey day, we have come to this popular local nature reserve for a gentle recuperative ramble and some birdwatching. The info board states that we may see bittern, water rail, great egret, and widgeon aplenty. It says nothing about the host of visitors like us who have congested the Blashford Lakes car park, and with whom we exchange pleasantries as our paths cross.

We stop beside a group studying the top of a high tree. We can’t see the bird either, and move on. A chance to sit down in Ivy South Hide and watch from there would be a welcome break, but all the benches are occupied, and others are waiting. We press on across the boardwalk, and find ourselves on a path devoid of people.

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Local and global effects have combined to produce a marked change in the climate of south western Australia. Reduced rainfall has impacted on agricultural output and the people of Perth now rely on desalination plants. Bill Bunbury reports.

As the new president settles in, much of the world reaffirms its commitment to the Paris agreement.

The migratory birds have flown about 10,000kms all the way to the arctic for food, sex, and to hatch the next generation of flying machines.

Climate change | Definite articles | So… | Weetabix concoctions | Playground rhymes

Chris Goodall’s list of 15 things you can do to help save the world (G2, 19 January) misses what is surely the most important thing: have fewer children. Without controlling population growth we have to run ever faster to stay in the same place as far as climate change is concerned.
Catherine Goundry
Retford, Nottinghamshire

• In an item regarding Gambia, the country was referred to as “the Gambia” (Report, 19 January). I remember from my youth many countries referred to in this way and am interested as to the reason. There was the Argentine, the Levant, the Lebanon etc. Does anyone know why they were prefaced with “the”?
Tony Burson
Campinas, Brazil

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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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Hugging deer, feeding green turtles and a Konik foal are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Ex-US Vice President Al Gore, who has made a new climate change film, says he thinks campaigners will "win" the debate.

We asked the world’s climate leaders for their messages to Trump ahead of his inauguration as the 45th US president

To fulfil his campaign slogan of “make America great again”, Donald Trump must back the boom in green technology – that was the message from the leading climate figures ahead of his inauguration as president on Friday.

Unleashing US innovation on the trillion-dollar clean technology market will create good US jobs, stimulate its economy, maintain the US’s political leadership around the globe and, not least, make the world a safer place by tackling climate change, the experts told the Guardian.

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MPs and council leaders to face questions about their plans for local parks and green spaces amid concern about cuts

Thousands of people are expected to take part in a crowdsourced investigation to find out how many of England’s parks and green spaces are at risk.

The campaign group 38 degrees is asking its members to contact local council leaders to ask about their plans for parks, and will help them send follow-up questions in freedom of information requests.

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Baslow, Derbyshire Inside this pleasing medieval church is a strange relic of a long redundant rural occupation

I came down the hill to Baslow in a stinging wind that was driving thin broken cloud over the white moor-tops. In the fields below, sheep pushed their faces through the snow to excavate tufts of grass buried in last night’s fall. From Bubnell, I crossed the Derwent on Baslow’s old bridge, an elegant three-arched structure with a pocket-sized tollbooth from the early 1600s. Before the river was tamed for industry, a wilder Derwent regularly swept bridges away: but not this one. In the low winter light, the stream was a sheet of rippled bronze.

On the east bank, overlooking the river, stood St Anne’s, among the most pleasing churches in this part of Derbyshire, with its eccentrically offset medieval tower, skirted with trees and a jumble of gravestones. Offering a silent prayer, I tried the door with my raw pink hand; it opened. I stepped gratefully out of the wind and stood defrosting in the nave, absorbing the building’s complex architecture; it feels organic, more accretion than lofty concept. But even empty the church felt vibrant.

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When Malcolm Turnbull deposed Tony Abbott as prime minister, serious action on global warming was hoped for – but almost nothing has changed

Australia’s January news has been full of official reports of record-breaking extreme weather devastating our ecosystems on land and in the sea and government ministers suggesting we build new coal-fired power stations, provide billion-dollar subsidised loans to rail lines for new coal mega-mines, increase coal exports to reduce temperature rises and reduce our ambitions for renewable power.

The disconnect is glaring but perhaps dimmed in the eyes of some readers because Australian politicians have been dissembling on climate change for decades, pretending it will be possible to do what we must without any impact on our position as the world’s largest coal exporter or our domestic reliance on brown coal-fired power, or without incurring any costs.

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How Australia’s widespread adoption of Energy Scores holds important lessons for the U.S. residential housing market.

The Coalition's attack on renewables is being undone by the soaring electricity prices in fossil-fuel dependent Queensland. What is it that the general public appears knows about renewables and electricity prices that so many in the conservative side of politics, including federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg, do not?

The social cost of carbon estimates the damage caused by a tonne of carbon dioxide. Coal image from www.shutterstock.com

One of the key measures President Barack Obama used to develop climate policy could be under threat under President Donald Trump. The “social cost of carbon”, a dollar measure of how much damage is inflicted by a tonne of carbon dioxide, underpins many US and other energy-related regulations (and in the UK too, for example).

The latest estimates from William Nordhaus, one of the best-known economists dealing with climate change issues (together with Nicholas Stern), put the social cost of carbon in 2015 at a baseline of US$31.20. This rises over time as the impacts of climate change worsen.

Conversely, the social cost of carbon is also the “government’s best estimate of how much society gains over the long haul” by reducing CO₂ emissions.

Nordhaus uses an economic model known as the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (or DICE) model, which he developed in the 1990s. I understand it’s one of the leading models for examining the effects of climate change on the economy. Other researchers have adapted and modified DICE to examine issues associated with the economics of climate change.

Social costs of carbon estimates have been – and remain – helpful for assessing the climate impacts of carbon dioxide emission changes, but perhaps not for the incoming Trump administration in the US.

‘More bad news than good news’

First, though, let’s consider the update to Nordhaus’ DICE model. He finds that the results strengthen earlier ones, which indicate “the high likelihood of rapid warming and major damages if policies continue along the unrestrained path” – his view of current policy settings. He revises upwards his estimate of the social cost of carbon by about 50% on the last modelling.

Further, Nordhaus argues that the 2°C “safe” limit set under the Paris Agreement seems to be “infeasible” even with reasonably accessible technologies. This is because of the inertia of the climate system, rapid projected economic growth in the near term, and revisions to the model.

His view is that a 2.5°C limit is “technically feasible” but that “extreme virtually universal global policy measures” would be required. By implication, such measures could refer to geo-engineering and, in particular, removing CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Nordhaus also notes:

Of the six largest countries or regions, only the EU has implemented national climate policies, and the policies of the EU today are very modest. Moreover, from the perspective of political economy in different countries as of December 2016, the prospects of strong policy measures appear to be dimming rather than brightening.

As a result of the DICE modelling, Nordhaus states that there is more bad news than good news and that the need for effective climate change policies is “more and not less pressing”.

His results relate to a world without climate policies, which, as he says, “is reasonably accurate for virtually the entire globe today. The results show rapidly rising accumulation of CO₂, temperatures changes, and damages.”

An end to the use of the social cost of carbon?

As well as the definition earlier of that cost, it could also be described as a government’s best estimate “of how much society gains over the long haul by cutting each tonne” of CO₂ emissions.

While the Obama administration relied on the DICE model (and others) in arriving at a social cost of carbon – such cost is already important in the formation of 79 federal regulations – it appears that the incoming Trump administration might modify or end this use.

It has been argued – by Harvard’s Cass Sunstein and the University of Chicago’s Michael Greenstone – that such action would defy law, science and economics. It is probably unlikely that use of the social cost of carbon would be done away with completely (lowering the operative number might be more likely), although Greenstone and Sunstein do contemplate it.

Sunstein and Greenstone conclude that, without it, federal regulations would have no quantifiable benefits. And that would have implications for emission reductions and assessing progress on dealing with climate change.

And Nordhaus concludes:

The future is highly uncertain for virtually all variables, particularly economic variables such as future emissions, damages, and the social cost of carbon.

That’s definitely the case for climate change policy and action in the US following the election of Donald Trump. For President Trump’s supporters, it appears that “turning back the clock is the most important thing the president-elect can do to help businesses succeed”.

And the president may well do that. He has argued for an increase in coal use and suggested that, under his administration, the US would withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement.

David Hodgkinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Not a day goes by that I don’t stand in awe at under-resourced and vulnerable farmers committed to moving mountains despite the odds against them

For those standing on the precipice of life the impacts of climate change are an ever present reality. The rural poor in Southeast Asia are some of the most vulnerable to climate extremes and seasonal vagaries. For these farmers, many who live at subsistence level and survive on less that $1US a day, life is a high-wire act with no safety net.

One stroke of bad luck – a drought, flood or pest outbreak – and they tumble further into hardship. Yet, here in Cambodia I work at an agricultural research centre with the most humbling and inspiring people. Not a day goes by that I don’t stand in awe at an under-resourced team committed to moving mountains despite the odds lined up against them.

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The crack in Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf that looks set to spawn a giant iceberg has spread a further 10km.

Connor speaks to Guardian environment reporter Michael Slezak about the successes and failures of the climate movement, the future of the Paris agreement during a Trump presidency and how Australia can be pushed to take climate change seriously. Connor cautions the environment movement not to walk away from engaging in domestic politics and says informed, engaged citizens can exert a positive influence on the debate

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