The Guardian

A new analysis shows these bizarre creatures have much smaller distributions than previously thought, making them more vulnerable to human pressures such as fishing and climate change. The findings could spark greater protections

‘We will make China a beautiful country with blue sky, green vegetation and clear rivers,’ vowed President Xi Jinping in September. But these haunting photographs by the award-winning Canadian photojournalist Kevin Frayer, who travelled to Inner Mongolia to witness the activities of unauthorised steel mills, underline the scale of Beijing’s challenge to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels

UK’s two largest supermarket chains will replace the plastic stems with paper ones in all own-brand products by the end of 2017

The UK’s two largest supermarket chains have committed to end the sale of cotton buds with plastic stems, which are the most common litter from toilets flushed on to the country’s beaches.

Both Tesco and Sainsbury’s will replace the plastic stick with paper by the end of 2017 in their own-brand products.

Barack Obama has been called the first ‘climate president’ for acknowledging the real threat of global warming. But work by Columbia University and the Guardian shows that Obama’s climate record has been badly tarnished by investments made in dirty fuels around the world

• How Obama’s climate change legacy is weakened by US investment in dirty fuel

Exclusive: an agency inside the Obama administration poured billions into fossil fuel projects that will lead to global carbon emissions of a damaging scale

President Barack Obama has staked his legacy on the environment, positioning his administration as the most progressive on climate change in US history.

However, an obscure agency within his own administration has quietly spoiled his record by helping fund a steady outpouring of new overseas fossil fuel emissions – effectively erasing gains expected from his headline clean power plan or fuel efficiency standards.

Plan to cut energy use by 30% before 2030 forms centrepiece of package to help EU meet its Paris climate commitments

Europe will phase out coal subsidies and cut its energy use by 30% before the end of the next decade, under a major clean energy package announced in Brussels on Wednesday.

The 1,000 page blueprint to help the EU meet its Paris climate commitments also pencils in measures to cut electricity bills, boost renewable energies and limit use of unsustainable bioenergies.

While Trump claims to be open-minded on climate, there are ominous signs that Republicans will try to slash climate research

Last week, Donald Trump’s space policy advisor Bob Walker made headlines by suggesting that the incoming administration might slash Nasa’s climate and earth science research to focus the agency on deep space exploration. This caused great concern in the scientific community, because Nasa does some of the best climate research in the world, and its Earth science program does much more. Walker suggested the earth science research could be shifted to other agencies, but climate scientist Michael Mann explained what would result:

It’s difficult enough for us to build and maintain the platforms that are necessary for measuring how the oceans are changing, how the atmosphere is changing, with the infrastructure that we have when we total up the contributions from all of the agencies ... we [could] lose forever the possibility of the continuous records that we need so that we can monitor this planet.

Gunnislake, Tamar Valley Barges that carried coal, corn, manure, granite, bricks and lime had to be hauled manually upstream against the current

From the hilltop railway station, rain clouds veil sight of Dartmoor and, in nearby Stony Lane, run-off flows between shoals of sodden beech leaves. Down this sunken way towards the river, ferns, mosses and pennywort show green under the tangle of fading bramble, yellow-leafed hazel and bare sycamore; the enclosing hedge-banks frame occasional glimpses across the valley where steep woodland engulfs river-cliffs and pinnacles like Chimney Rock.

Sound of water roaring over the weir carries uphill and becomes even louder below Hatches Green, where tennis court and football pitch in King George’s Field are overlooked by the orange and dark green deciduous and coniferous woods opposite – once part of the Duke of Bedford’s estate.

In Kenya 1.3 million people are facing serious food insecurity and loss of livelihoods as a result of poor rainfall. As the next dry season approaches, one insurance scheme is using satellite data to support some of east Africa’s most vulnerable. Photographs by ILRI.

Many state schools struggling to help disadvantaged pupils (Report, 22 November) are facing a further demand on their shrinking budgets. Prudent schools that have invested in solar panels to reduce their electricity bills now face a retrospective six- to eight-fold hike in their tax rates, if the government gets its way. This would be socially divisive, as it will apply to state schools but not to the private schools that have charitable status. The higher rates will also apply to businesses and other organisations that use solar electricity internally. This is yet another blow to the solar industry, already reeling from four separate subsidy cuts since May 2015. UK solar had been expanding exponentially, creating many new jobs and reducing both the wholesale price of electricity and our carbon emissions.
Emeritus Professor Keith Barnham
London

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Exclusive: ‘Confidential’ draft acknowledges coral bleaching but does not make any attempt to address climate change

The Australian government’s official “response plan” to the worst ever bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef commits it to no new action, pledges no new money and does not make any attempt to address climate change, according to a draft seen by the Guardian.

The Northern Great Barrier Reef Response Plan, marked “draft” and “confidential”, begins by describing the bleaching event as “the worst ever coral bleaching” and attributes its cause to climate change.

Queenstown, on the remote west coast of Tasmania, is known for two things: copper mining and the harsh gravel oval that is home to the local Australian rules football team. A series of deaths at the Mount Lyell mine brought operations to a standstill and put the future of the town in doubt. Thomas Hyland’s evocative film, shown here after screenings at the Unconformity festival, tracks the story of the town, the people and their football team through shock, grief and change
• Devastation and beauty collide in Tasmanian mining town

Timelapse footage shows the construction of a steel shelter designed to prevent radiation leaks from the site of reactor No 4 at Chernobyl. The series of videos captures the shelter’s progression over several years up to its placement on Tuesday. High radiation levels near the reactor meant parts had to be assembled several hundred metres away and then slid slowly into place

• Chernobyl disaster site enclosed by shelter to prevent radiation leaks

It isn’t a great surprise to learn that a director of Greece’s Public Power Corporation believes in exemptions for lignite – an especially polluting type of coal burnt at Greek power plants (Letters, theguardian.com, 24 November). However, the claim that Greece is “among the best performers in emission reductions” must not go unchallenged.

In a recent report, Lifting Europe’s Dark Cloud: How cutting coal saves lives, we revealed how Greek lignite plants, responsible for hundreds of premature deaths and thousands of cases of respiratory illness every year, have in fact been granted special exemptions to EU limits set in the industrial emissions directive. As a result, when it comes to emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrous oxides (NOx), dust and mercury, Greek plants are undoubtedly among the worst performers in Europe.

In the week Britain exports electricity to France for first time in four years, Gérard Magnin says renewable power will match Hinkley Point C on cost

The French nuclear industry is in its “worst situation ever” because of a spate of plant closures in France and the complexities it faces with the reactor design for the UK’s Hinkley Point C power station, according to a former Électricité de France director.

Gérard Magnin, who called Hinkley “very risky” when he resigned as a board member over the project in July, argued that the situation for the state-owned EDF had deteriorated since he stepped down, with more than a dozen French reactors closed over safety checks and routine maintenance.

Urgent climate action must be taken and communities are willing to participate in their own electricity production – if the incentives are right

The challenge of climate change is global and it demands action on an international scale, such as the Paris Agreement. But a large part of the solution will be local, involving all of us in the way energy is produced and consumed.

The potential for citizen involvement in electricity production is considerable. A recent study showed that by 2050 half of all Europeans could produce their own electricity either at home, as part of a cooperative, or in their small business. Counting generation from wind and solar power alone, these small actors could meet almost half of Europe’s total electricity needs.

High-carbon infrastructures lock planet into irreversible greenhouse gas emissions, says campaign group

By the end of this decade it may be too late to limit global warming to scientifically guided limits, if the infrastructure built in the next four years is constructed along the same lines as currently planned.

Building high-carbon infrastructure – from transport systems predicated on motor car use, to new coal-fired power plants, and buildings that leak energy – effectively “locks in” a future of greenhouse gas emissions that are likely to far exceed the planet’s capacity to absorb carbon.

An extract from Liberatum’s documentary In this Climate, in which a range of cultural and environmental figures including Noam Chomsky, David Attenborough and Mark Ruffalo respond to the threat of climate change and to the deniers. The full-length film is scheduled for release before the World Economic Forum in January 2017

封闭式野生大象保护区承受着生态系统失衡的风险，如何打破保护区壁垒？威尔·琼斯给出了他的答案。(翻译：翻译/chinadialogue)

Related: 《卫报》为何要用中文报道大象的生存危机？

我刚刚从肯尼亚东北省回来。有一天晚上我们在一个干燥的河堤上露营，只用了一个简单的蚊帐当遮盖。夜色之中，我好像感到一群庞然大物静悄悄地出现在了我附近，定睛一看，原来是一群大象。

Anti-Adani faction among Wangan and Jagalingou people argue supporters of huge Carmichael mine should not be recognised as representatives

Traditional owners who took discreet payments of $4,000 each to meet Adani and revive a land use deal for the Carmichael mine should be axed as representatives of their group, it will be argued in the federal court.

The case stems from a split within the Indigenous group whose consent is crucial for the planned $16bn mine in Queensland’s Galilee basin to go ahead.