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A telegram obtained by Greenpeace shows that Greg Hands met a Brazilian minister to discuss relaxation of tax and environmental regulation

Britain successfully lobbied Brazil on behalf of BP and Shell to address the oil giants’ concerns over Brazilian taxation, environmental regulation and rules on using local firms, government documents reveal.

The UK’s trade minister travelled to Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and São Paulo in March for a visit with a “heavy focus” on hydrocarbons, to help British energy, mining and water companies win business in Brazil.

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New Finkel report says energy storage important, and represents a huge opportunity for Australia, but there is no reason to panic. Even at 50% wind and solar the need for storage is modest, and much could come from households.

It was great news for fish and chips fans when North Sea cod was certified sustainable. Steady on though, there are still things to worry about at sea

Here’s a food truth: most Britons are happy to say “cod and chips, please” without even thinking about the sustainability impact of our favourite Friday night supper. Our love of white flaky fish has been a nightmare for fish campaigners. North Sea cod stocks plummeted from 270,000 tonnes in the 1970s to 44,000 tonnes in the early 2000s.

North Sea cod stocks plummeted from 270,000 tonnes in the 1970s to 44,000 tonnes in the early 2000s

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The Balkan country has the world's second highest death rate caused by air pollution.

Floods have been a deadly staple of 2017. But can you protect yourself against the natural disaster?

Crocodiles have entered the fray in the Queensland election campaign with fear of crocodile attacks being blamed for a drop in membership numbers at Surf Life Saving Clubs in Far North Queensland.

Remote Willis Island, in the middle of the Coral Sea, is home to colonies of seabirds, green sea turtle nests and four staff from the the Bureau of Meteorology

The plant in the US state of California stores enough energy to power 20,000 homes for four hours.

Milkham Inclosure, New Forest In the wartime effort of 1917 timber from this woodland fell to axes and became the battlefield planks trodden perhaps by the forest dwellers themselves

Today we wander through Milkham’s pines in an atmosphere of autumnal tranquillity. During the first world war the scene would have been very different. The ring of axes would have cut through the air as still more trees needed for the war effort were taken down. A few mother trees were spared to provide seedlings for regeneration.

One hundred years ago last week, after appalling cost, the Third Battle of Ypres, Passchendaele, ended. Pictures taken at the time show Australian gunners walking on duckboards across seas of mud, heading for the frontline through stick-like trees. They could have been treading on planks cut from pines that once grew in Milkham. A sombre thought.

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UN climate talks finish with progress on technical issues but with questions on carbon cuts unresolved.

The US president's move comes a day after US hunters were told they could import elephant trophies.

A Nasa oceanographer explains how the US space agency successfully captured 20 years of changing seasons to form a striking new global map. The projection of the Earth and its biosphere is derived from two decades of satellite data from September 1997 to September 2017

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Altering the gene which codes for production of a key enzyme could reduce the toad’s effect on wildlife.

As the UN climate change conference ends, BBC Science's David Shukman takes a look at melting ice caps.

Chancellor to announce call for evidence on possible measures to cut use of plastics such as takeaway cartons and packaging

The chancellor, Philip Hammond, will announce in next week’s budget a “call for evidence” on how taxes or other charges on single-use plastics such as takeaway cartons and packaging could reduce the impact of discarded waste on marine and bird life, the Treasury has said.

The commitment was welcomed by environmental and wildlife groups, though they stressed that any eventual measures would need to be ambitious and coordinated.

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How green building is moving from niche to normal.

This week why big data is farmers' best friend; regional tourist hotspots prepare for the 'pink wedding dollar' and a journey through an Afghan supermarket.

Indigenous women hand paint religious crosses for sale around the world; endangered rock wallabies make a comeback in APY lands; we go in search of rock lobsters; and cook a carrot cake.

If Brexit goes ahead, Britain will need to shape a green politics with devolution and social justice at its core. And make sure that politicians cannot renege on our international obligations

The tragedy of climate change, as the governor of the Bank of England has put it, is one of the horizon. The catastrophic impacts of altering the atmosphere impose an enormous cost on future generations that the current generation creates but has no incentive to fix. To focus the minds of today’s decision-makers the 2015 Paris agreement sent a clear signal that the era of fossil-fuel-powered growth was coming to an end. The signatories agreed to limit global warming to no more than a two-degree celsius rise, the threshold of safety, beyond which climate change is likely to become irreversible. The real genius of Paris is not that it is rooted in science but its timing and its structure. While the 2C target was binding, the national targets agreed by each nation were not. Those non-binding targets do not add up to a 2C world – they would, if followed to the letter, lead us to a 3C one, unthinkable in terms of the devastation it would cause. So upping them was part of the point of this year’s UN climate meeting in Bonn, which closed on Friday, and will be the main issue at next year’s, and the year after next.

The US under Donald Trump reneged on the deal before this year’s talks began. There is some solace in the fact that Washington cannot formally withdraw until 4 November 2020, the day after the next presidential election. The rest of the world, rightly, is moving on. Given what is at stake, it is worth pausing to consider where – and how quickly – the globe is going. Backwards – if one considers that China will almost single-handedly cause global emissions of carbon dioxide to grow in 2017. Canada and Britain, meanwhile, began a new 19-nation alliance in Bonn aimed at phasing out the use of coal power by 2030. This sounds like an important move until one realises that members of the “powering past coal alliance” account for less than 3% of coal use worldwide. Germany, which is not a member, held the climate talks an hour’s drive from a village that is being demolished to make way for a coalmine. These green talks, which are fundamentally about ethical concerns, are nevertheless becoming more like discussions about trade. In the case of climate change these involve transitions from one way of producing, distributing and consuming energy to another, cleaner way of doing so. It would be good if this could be seen only as a process of mutual support. However, as the talks in Bonn show, they are also hard-nosed negotiations which revolve around the exchange of concessions.

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The last 15 years have seen the almost total disappearance of insects and the birds that rely on them for food from reader David Marjot’s garden

When I moved here 15 years ago, greenfly, dragonflies, hoverflies, bumblebees, honeybees and butterflies among others were common in the garden. There were swallows and martins in the sky in the summer. We had a colony of swifts in the church tower. The swifts, swallows and martins seem to have disappeared. I saw one swallow over the Thames but very few mayflies. I felt that an additional observation might be of interest. In doing a bit of housework, I realised that I’d not had to sweep for cobwebs for a long time and I found none, even after a search. The magpies, crows and jackdaws seem to be thriving, as do the foxes, so there seems to have been a specific change to spiders and insects and the birds that depend on them for food. I’ve no idea if neonicotinoids are responsible (Letters, 16 November) but something seems to be happening.
David Marjot
Weybridge, Surrey

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