The Guardian

A campaign by locals and farming businesses to halt a large opencast mine highlights a far wider conflict over South Africa’s continued addiction to coal

On the horizon are the mountains, verdant rainforest on their well-watered, shaded southern slopes and arid scrub on the dry reverse slopes. Then there is the plain, studded with baobab trees and outcrops. Finally there is the river Limpopo. Beyond is another country: troubled, restive Zimbabwe.

But here in the far north-east of South Africa, there is tension, too. In the Soutpansberg range and on the flat lands beyond, an improbable coalition of local farmers, villagers, big agricultural businessmen and activists are fighting to halt the development of a large opencast mine which, they say, would cause massive harm to the region.

Sandy, Bedfordshire Nothing seemed to have changed here in months. The stubble of skeleton stems appeared not so much dormant as dead

On one side of a straight farm track, winter held about 2.5m plants in a state of suspense. The land had been tilled and drilled in November, and vestigial warmth in the soil had tempted the first narrow leaves to rise 10cm high in a matter of days. Two months – and numerous visits– later, there was still a green baize, but the leaves stood no taller.

My Scots-Irish ancestor was a coulter, a maker of plough blades. He might have marvelled at the idea of winter wheat. Here was a crop that sprouted in autumn, then needed months in the outdoor fridge to trigger further growth. And it would have its heads up even before spring arrived. I had paced out the length and breadth of this field to estimate this colossal number of plants. Surely here was a miracle – a plant that could grow, slow, then throw out ears of corn under the warming sun of spring?

Wilderness Society has funds to launch SkyScout craft in Queensland and NSW – and wants a third for Western Australia

Conservationists are raising funds to launch a drone program across three Australian states, aiming to catch farmers conducting broadscale clearing and to share the images with the world.

Rupture of 138,600 gallons is ‘not a major disaster’ but environmental advocates say it highlights their fears about the Keystone XL and Dakota Access projects

Just a day after Donald Trump signed executive orders to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects, a pipeline rupture spilled 138,600 gallons of diesel fuel in northern Iowa.

Magellan Midstream Partners, an Oklahoma company with more than 10,000 miles of oil and ammonium pipeline, acknowledged that the spill began Wednesday morning in Worth County, Iowa, and said it was “unsure of the cause of the incident at this time”.

Square Mile teams up with Network Rail, coffee chains and employers in effort to prevent 5m cups a year ending up in landfill

A scheme to boost disposable coffee cup recycling has been launched in the City of London in an attempt to prevent 5m cups a year from the Square Mile ending up in landfill.

The City of London Corporation, in conjunction with Network Rail, coffee chains and some employers, are introducing dedicated coffee cup recycling facilities in offices, shops and streets.

Review extended to content on agency’s website, including details of scientific evidence of climate change and that manmade carbon emissions are to blame

The Trump administration is mandating that any studies or data from scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency undergo review by political appointees before they can be released to the public.

The communications director for Donald Trump’s transition team at the EPA, Doug Ericksen, said on Wednesday the review also extends to content on the federal agency’s website, including details of scientific evidence showing that the Earth’s climate is warming and manmade carbon emissions are to blame.

A day after three climate-related tweets sent out by Badlands National Park were deleted, other park accounts have sent out tweets that appear to defy Trump

The National Park Service employees’ Twitter campaign against Donald Trump spread to other parks on Wednesday, with tweets on climate change and a reminder that Japanese Americans were forcibly interned in camps and parks during the second world war.

A day after three climate-related tweets sent out by Badlands National Park were deleted, other park accounts have sent out tweets that appear to defy Trump. One, by Redwood national park in California, notes that redwood groves are nature’s number one carbon sink, which capture greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

Greenpeace activists scale a crane in Washington on Wednesday and unveil a banner which reads ‘Resist’. The protest comes a day after president Donald Trump signed executive orders to allow the construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines

• Greenpeace activists hang giant ‘Resist’ banner over White House

In today’s pass notes: the Twitter feed of the South Dakota park defied the Trump administration by posting facts about global warming. Was it an ex-employee or a rogue one?

Name: Badlands national park.

Location: South Dakota, United States.

Wenlock Edge The weather has carded the bits of sheep wool into swags and the mizzle fills them full of treasure

Wisps of sheep’s fleece snagged on barbed wire are full of pearls and crystal. The wool has lost its mattress-stuffing quality and, now wet, its lanolin makes the moisture from drizzle and damp stand out in droplets. These gleam with what little light is left, giving the fleece effulgence, as if it were a living substance like fungal threads or root hairs feeding on the fog.

The wire fence is strung between the lane and the field; it passes under looming hulks of sycamore and ash, but today there is nothing to keep in or out. The field is empty but for a dreaminess of winter trees and the occasional wing-clap of wood pigeons; the sky empty but for sepia murk with rubbed-out edges. The land feels mesmerised, hiding from itself in a trance.

Company says it’s cheaper to pay the penalty, but the move is branded as ‘undermining of the objectives’ of the renewable energy target

The Clean Energy Regulator has castigated a major electricity company for choosing to pay a $123m penalty rather than build or contract new wind or solar power.

It said the move was “hugely disappointing” and customers would rightly be outraged to know the company wasn’t using money collected for investing in renewables in the proper way.

A female Nile hippo calf – born early and so underweight that it cannot feed by itself – receives critical care from staff at Cincinnati Zoo

Europe and northern hemisphere are warming at faster pace than the global average and ‘multiple climatic hazards’ are expected, says study

Europe’s Atlantic-facing countries will suffer heavier rainfalls, greater flood risk, more severe storm damage and an increase in “multiple climatic hazards”, according to the most comprehensive study of Europe’s vulnerability to climate change yet.

Temperatures in mountain ranges such as the Alps and the Pyrenees are predicted to soar to glacier-melting levels, while the Mediterranean faces a “drastic” increase in heat extremes, droughts, crop failure and forest fires.

Donald Trump signed a number of executive orders Tuesday that will allow construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines to move forward. Both projects had been blocked by Barack Obama due in part to environmental concerns, but Trump hailed the thousands of construction jobs that he said would be created. He also signed an order ensuring the pipes themselves would be made within the US

• Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines to be revived by Trump administration

Contrary to all evidence, the new US president will ignore climate change science and proceed with aggressive pro-oil and gas policies

If there were any lingering doubts over Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for shoving the US back into the smoggy embrace of fossil fuels, his decision to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines banishes them utterly.

Trump has thrown down the most provocative gauntlet possible to the environmental movement, which now sees its worst fears crystalizing within a few days of the inauguration. Those Trump Tower chats with Al Gore about climate change – and Ivanka Trump’s apparent concern over the issue – now vanish over the horizon. This will be an aggressively pro-oil and gas administration, even if that means boiling the planet.

At first glance the quiet town of Live Oak seems an unlikely venue for a stand against Big Energy. But in recent weeks it’s become a centre of opposition

A north Florida river that attracted the state’s first tourists a century before Walt Disney’s famous cartoon mouse is emerging at the centre of a fight against a contentious 515-mile natural gas pipeline that many are calling America’s next Standing Rock.

One section of the so-called Sabal Trail pipeline is being laid beneath the crystal waters of the Suwannee river, whose pure mineral springs were once fabled to cure anything from marital strife to gout.

In our current “post-truth” climate, inoculation may provide the key to making facts matter again

It’s fitting that as Donald Trump continues to flirt with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, inoculation may provide the key to effectively debunking this sort of misinformation.

That’s the finding of a new study published in Global Challenges by Sander van der Linden, Anthony Leiserowitz, Seth Rosenthal, and Edward Maibach. The paper tested what’s known as “inoculation theory,” explained in the video below by John Cook, who’s also published research on the subject. The video is a lecture from the Denial101x free online course, which itself is structured based on inoculation theory:

Writer and professor, Ashley Dawson, argues in his new book that capitalism is behind our current mass extinction crisis. But installing universal guaranteed income in biodiversity hotspots may be one remedy.

Human nature isn’t driving mass extinction – as some have argued – but our acceptance of capitalism is, according to English Professor Ashley Dawson with the City University of New York.

In his recent, slim, eye-opening book, Extinction: A Radical History, Dawson lays out the case that our current global economic system is pushing the Earth ever closer to a mass extinction event – one not seen since a rogue comet ended the reign of the dinosaurs. But he also argues there are potential solutions, including giving a universal guaranteed income to populations living in or near biodiversity hotspots to counter poaching, deforestation, and other harmful activities.

Tyne Green, Hexham: Through binoculars, it feels as if I’m watching a wildlife documentary in this country park, minutes from town

The sun comes out as I near Tyne Green, saturating everything in olive-gold light; the trees on the bank, the arches under Hexham Bridge, the billowing plumes of steam from the chipboard factory. As I slow down, I become aware of Sunday morning sounds. Bells are being rung in the abbey on the hill. A women’s eight slices upriver with a rhythmical dipping of oars. Chattering mallards are grouped hopefully by the waterside steps. A double note from a train, traffic on the dual carriageway, the muffled flow of the weir.

Minutes from town, this linear park is busy with dog walkers, runners and golfers thwacking balls among undulating grassy tumps. On the river alongside, parallel lives are lived on the safety of the water or within its thick fringe of willows. A goosander scratches its cheek with an orange-red foot, before taking off, straight as an arrow to skim the surface. A cormorant holds its head up, watchful as a cobra. A shaggily white-chested heron stands motionless by a the calm of an inlet.

Monash University’s Sustainable Development Institute aims to ensure water access for urban poor

An Australian project that aims to revolutionise water delivery and sanitation in urban slums has been awarded $27m in funding.

Prof Rebekah Brown, the director of the Sustainable Development Institute at Melbourne’s Monash University, has been awarded a $14m research grant by the Wellcome Trust’s Our Planet Our Health awards in the UK. A further $13m from the Asian Development Bank would cover infrastructure and construction costs.