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This week's surge in EUA prices slowed on Friday, though strong gains in key energy contracts and more speculative buying still helped push carbon to a new 2.5-year high to leave it with a 14% weekly gain.

A bilby dreaming story guides a mother with a sick child to an outback town. Decades later, the child returns to repay the favour and look after the bilby.

Teaching union to debate call for schools to oppose fossil fuel giant’s backing of school fitness event

The UK’s biggest teaching union is to decide whether to object to fossil fuel giant Ineos sponsoring the school Daily Mile initiative over allegations the company is using the event to greenwash its image.

Campaigners accuse Ineos, owned by the UK’s richest man, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, of endangering the wellbeing of future generations through its fracking activities and plastics production.

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A three-toed skink’s unusual birth, a dead whale full of plastic and young elephants stuck in the mud

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Gavin Weightman responds to a column by Adrian Chiles about buddleia

So Adrian Chiles (G2, 4 April) has noticed buddleia bushes growing out of derelict buildings and judges them to signify industrial neglect. He suggests the plant does not grow so much in London because land is too expensive. In fact buddleia grows everywhere in London, sprouting from the tops of many buildings that are not abandoned and forming great thickets along railway lines. It is also a prized garden plant, attracting a great variety of insects, and is commonly called “the butterfly bush”. And though it is from China and was brought to Europe by a Frenchman, Linnaeus named it after the Rev Adam Buddle of Hadleigh rectory, Essex, in honour of observations he had made of local plants. Buddle never saw the butterfly bush, as he died more than a century before it was introduced in the last decade of Victoria’s reign.
Gavin Weightman
London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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Emitter buying in Germany’s weekly EUA auctions fell to a nine-month low in February, a report released Friday showed.

As CO2 levels climb, the carbon count is a daily reminder we must tackle climate change now

The simplest measure of how the mass burning of fossil fuels is disrupting the stable climate in which human civilisation developed is the number of carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere.

Today, the CO2 level is the highest it has been for several million years. Back then, temperatures were 3-4C hotter, sea level was 15-20 metres higher and trees grew at the south pole. Worse, billions of tonnes of carbon pollution continues to pour into the air every year and at a rate 10 times faster than for 66m years.

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Researchers from the University of Nottingham first spotted the tree in a Malaysian rainforest last August.

Experts say even nations that got rich on fossil fuels are seeing the future is green

Norway’s $1tn oil fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, is to plunge billions of dollars into wind and solar power projects. The decision follows Saudi Arabia’s oil fund selling off its last oil and gas assets.

Other national funds built up from oil profits are also thought to be ramping up their investments in renewables. The moves show that countries that got rich on fossil fuels are diversifying their investments and seeking future profits in the clean energy needed to combat climate change. Analysts say the investments are likely to power faster growth of green energy.

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Some developers are reviewing their policies after protests from environmentalists

A grassroots uprising is forcing builders and councils to remove netting over trees and hedgerows installed to prevent birds nesting and hindering their developments.

Environmentalists have condemned the practice and say it has exploded in scale this spring. The use of netting to prevent birds nesting in hedgerows and trees allows developers to get around the law that prevents the removal and damage of birds nests, and avoid delays to development caused by the nesting season.

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He taught himself to read from newspapers but went on to win a Nobel Prize.

The California tide soon washes away work by Andres Amador – but for the artist, that is part of the point

With a bundle of three-pronged tools and hand-assembled rakes cast over one shoulder, the artist Andres Amador quietly descends the steep, crumbling dunes arching over a San Francisco shoreline to the beach below.

Scanning the horizon, stopping every so often to smile and pick up smooth stones, he walks until it seems right – until he finds a wide enough stretch of wet sand to serve as his canvas. Soon, it will come to life, etched with the large-scale angles and arches that form his captivating, signature style of Earthscape art.

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The Queensland government has allocated A$1 million ($710,000) under its Land Restoration Fund to six pilot projects designed to help develop the Australian state’s carbon offset market.

Closing prices, ranges and volumes for China's regional pilot carbon markets this week.

Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator would likely come under pressure to cancel Emission Reductions Fund contracts under a new government, as Labor’s climate policy would push up secondary market ACCU prices, a legal expert has warned.

Government forced to play down ‘split’ amid reports of Queensland MPs pressuring Coalition over key approvals for Carmichael coalmine

Labor has warned the government against making any major decisions on the Adani coalmine before the election, while Scott Morrison and his environment minister Melissa Price face internal pressure from some Queensland MPs to take action.

While playing down reports of a “split”, government MPs from Queensland, including James McGrath and Matt Canavan have kept up pressure inside Morrison’s office and the party room for key approvals for the Carmichael coalmine, including the ground water plan, to be signed off on as soon as possible.

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Government modelling for climate policy cuts assumes an electric vehicle uptake of 25-50% of new car sales by 2030

Modelling for the Morrison government’s climate policy assumes electric vehicles will make up between 25% and 50% of new car sales by 2030, a similar figure to the target set by the Labor party, which the Coalition criticised this week.

Labor’s climate spokesman, Mark Butler, said “it shows how out of touch the Liberals are even with their own department” when it comes to cutting carbon pollution from transport.

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Big Garden Birdwatch finds fall in long-tailed tits and wrens after ‘beast from the east’

Almost 1.2 million house sparrows were spotted in British gardens during this winter’s Big Garden Birdwatch but smaller garden birds appear to have suffered from the previous winter’s cold weather.

Long-tailed tits decreased by more than 27% and wrens by 17% in 2019 after bumper years in 2018, according to the RSPB survey. Populations of both species are thought to have been affected by last year’s “beast from the east”: small birds are more susceptible to extreme chilly spells.

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Deadly flash floods in Iran kill dozens, and cause destruction across the country.

Electric vehicles and V2G technology will play a key role in helping consumers use their solar and batteries to make their grids more resilient.

The post How sharing solar, batteries and EVs will make energy system more resilient appeared first on RenewEconomy.