The Guardian

If the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility hasn’t got a risk policy yet, how can it be considering a $1bn loan for the Adani project?

We don’t yet know whether the $5bn Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) will be – as was alleged in parliament this week – a “slush fund” used to pursue the government’s “pro-coal agenda”.

But we do know some government ministers are absolutely determined to promote coal mining and generation – in particular the Indian conglomerate Adani’s $21bn Carmichael coalmine in Queensland – without a thought for how it will contribute to the global warming that is bleaching the Great Barrier Reef up and down the Queensland coastline and increasing the intensity of cyclones.

Alice Kohler shares photos and thoughts on her time in the Xingu river basin in the Brazilian Amazon

Alice Kohler is a Brazilian photographer who has visited over 20 countries during her career. In Brazil in particular she has travelled into some of the remotest parts of the Amazon basin and spent time with many of the country’s indigenous peoples, including the Araweté, Asurini, Guarani, Kamaiura, Karajá, Kayapo, Kuikuro, Parakanã, Pareci, Xavante and Yawalapiti.

An exhibition of Kohler’s photographs of the Araweté opens in Cusco in neighbouring Peru today, held at a newly-opened Amazon-themed gallery run by Peruvian company Xapiri. Kohler and Xapiri are holding the exhibition out of concern for the impacts on the Araweté and many others of the Belo Monte dam complex - arguably the world’s most well-known hydroelectric power project because of the opposition it has generated - as well as plans by a Canadian-headquartered company, Belo Sun Mining, to develop what would reportedly be Brazil’s biggest open sky gold mine.

Researchers at Utah University have captured video of an American badger burying a calf carcass in Utah’s Grassy Mountains. The images show the badger digging around the cow’s body, which then sinks into the tunnels below, before covering it with earth. It then returned to feed on it over the coming weeks. This behaviour has never before been caught on camera

• Can you dig it? Badger captured on camera burying cow
  

In an astonishing display of digging prowess, an American badger has been seen completely burying a calf carcass several times bigger than itself

An American badger has been captured burying the carcass of a cow – a previously unrecorded behaviour – in an astonishing display of the creature’s digging prowess.

The images were taken by camera traps set up by researchers who had left seven calf carcasses in Utah’s Grassy Mountains in January last year in an attempt to study which scavengers descended on the animals.

The birth of Britain’s first crowned sifaka, a type of rare lemur, has been filmed by staff at the Cotswold Wildlife Park. Yousstwo, a male pup, was born to parents Bafana and Tahina in December. The sifaka lemur is critically endangered in Madagascar, so the birth has extra significance

Orcas on the attack, bioluminescent mushrooms and a giant Australian cuttlefish are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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

A new study found people were less likely to want to become friends with those who confronted climate sceptics. How can we overcome these attitudes?

When does a social attitude become morally unacceptable enough that it is OK to challenge and confront it?

That is the question that motivated a new study conducted at the University of Exeter in which participants were given descriptions of people being confronted after expressing certain views. When the views expressed a disregard for racial equality, the confrontations were approved of. But challenging – even politely – a disregard for climate change was seen as carrying a social cost by the students taking part in the experiment.

Scott Pruitt denies basic science that we’ve understood for over a century

The current head of the US Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt does not believe or understand long-known principles of climate science and basic physics. Recently he claimed on CNBC that carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to global warming:

I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So, no, I would not agree that’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we don’t know that yet. We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.

Seen from a drone’s eye view, the enormous earthmoving trucks, buses and tractors criss-crossing this corner of Somerset look like toy town models. The vehicles are dwarfed by their surroundings at Hinkley Point, where new footage has revealed the full scale of the site being prepared for Britain’s first new nuclear power station in a generation.

• UN asks UK to suspend work on Hinkley Point
  

Whaling fleet returns to port after slaughtering hundreds of minke whales, in defiance of moratorium on hunting and global criticism

A Japanese whaling fleet returned to port on Friday after an annual Antarctic hunt that killed more than 300 of the mammals, as Tokyo pursues the programme in defiance of global criticism.

The fleet set sail for the Southern Ocean in November, with plans to slaughter 333 minke whales, flouting a worldwide moratorium and opposition led by Australia and New Zealand.

Shrill carder bee and chequered skipper butterfly are among 20 endangered bugs, bees, butterflies and plants to benefit from £4.6m in lottery funding

Efforts to save some of England’s rarest species, including the shrill carder bee and the chequered skipper butterfly, from extinction are being backed by £4.6m in lottery funding.

Researchers creating virtual maps of coral reefs to precisely model how structure altered by environmental change

Scientists are using 3D printing technology to create prosthetic coral that could be used to help the Great Barrier Reef recover from bleaching and storms.

Researchers at the University of Sydney are creating virtual 3D maps of coral reefs to precisely model how their structure is altering as a result of environmental change.

Airedale, West Yorkshire The chiffchaffs are already here with their chiming two-step jingle, now we wait for the blackcaps

It’s a time of year for waiting and listening. The chiffchaffs are already here; they turned up mid-March, tumbling in off the Africa-Yorkshire flyway and filling the leafless beech tops with their chiming two-step jingle.

Now I’m waiting for the blackcaps. The bird writer Edward Grey wrote of being “ears a-tiptoe for the first note of a blackcap” in early spring. But it’s not time yet. The blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) that bred and sang and chacked here last year won’t be back from north Africa or the Med until the first weeks of April.

Lennon Bartlett uses a boat to row to his parents’ house next door in central Lismore after the Wilsons river breached its banks early on Friday morning, flooding the northern New South Wales city. Flood waters caused by the remnants of Cyclone Debbie are still rising and are expected to peak in the early afternoon

• Ex-cyclone Debbie: deaths feared in Lismore – live updates

Mass migration of species to cooler climes has profound implications for society, pushing disease-carrying insects, crop pests and crucial pollinators into new areas, says international team of scientists

Global warming is reshuffling the ranges of animals and plants around the world with profound consequences for humanity, according to a major new analysis.

Rising temperatures on land and sea are increasingly forcing species to migrate to cooler climes, pushing disease-carrying insects into new areas, moving the pests that attack crops and shifting the pollinators that fertilise many of them, an international team of scientists has said.

The word climate does not appear once in the letter triggering the UK’s departure from Europe. But it’s not just in London that the issue seems to be slipping from the political stage

The word climate does not appear once in the letter triggering the UK’s departure from Europe. Despite the world experiencing a second, successive, record annual rise in carbon dioxide concentrations, on one level the omission is hardly surprising.

When the environment minister, George Eustice, revealed that the government had commissioned no research at all on the likely impact of Brexit on environmental policy it reflected how low green issues had fallen on the political agenda. Just how far is revealed by the fact that more than 1,100 EU environmental safeguards will need translating into UK law.

Elephant conservationists hopeful that demand for ivory in China is falling amid government clampdown on ivory sellers, but experts remain wary of poaching

The wholesale price of raw legal ivory has dropped by almost two thirds since China, the world’s largest ivory importer and trader, announced plans to close down its domestic market, according to new research.

Researchers working for the conservation organisation Save the Elephants visited Beijing and Shanghai, as well as six cities whose markets had never been surveyed before: Changzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shenyang, Suzhou and Tianjin. The researchers, Lucy Vigne and Esmond Martin, concluded that the legal trade in ivory is dying.

System will include 3.4m solar panels and 1.1m batteries, with operations set to begin by end of 2017

A huge $1bn solar farm and battery project will be built and ready to operate in South Australia’s Riverland region by the end of the year.

Related: Elon Musk, meet Port Augusta: four renewable energy projects ready to go

Free reusables, 25p charge on disposables and green slogans in cafes could cut some of 2.5bn cups thrown away each year, finds study

Incentives such as a tax on disposable coffee cups or free reuseable replacements could help cut the number thrown away in the UK every year by between 50m and 300m, according to new research.

An estimated 2.5bn throwaway coffee cups are used in the UK every year by consumers buying coffee from chains and cafes, creating approximately 25,000 tonnes of waste.