The Guardian

Mikah Meyer is making a record-breaking attempt in a battered Hyundai his father left him when he died, hoping to highlight parks for gays and millennials

There was the night when something big was sloshing around ominously in the river next to his tent and he was too terrified to look out, but knew wolves and moose were at large.

Then there was the sweaty night when he thought he would bake to death in his van but was too scared to open the windows because he was parked in a sketchy neighborhood in Ohio.

Senate Democrats vow to fight Trump’s nominee to lead the EPA, a climate denier who has sued the agency multiple times as attorney general of Oklahoma

Democrats have promised to stage a last-ditch effort to thwart the appointment of Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, amid fears within the agency that he will trigger an “unprecedented disaster” for America’s environment and public health.

Donald Trump has nominated Pruitt to lead an agency he has sued multiple times in his role as attorney general of Oklahoma. Pruitt has vowed to dismantle serried environmental rules and is currently involved in a legal effort by 27 states to overturn Barack Obama’s clean power plan, the president’s centerpiece policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I have just scoured eight pages of your Climate Change supplement (7 December). I found not a single reference to one of the key drivers of climate change, the relentless increase of population, now scheduled to be 11.5 billion by 2100. Whatever action we take to reduce emissions, those efforts will be negated by the births of 4 billion more people who, even in the old “third world”, will want to be consumers.
Nigel Reynolds
Mirfield, West Yorkshire

• Theresa May is right to dislike acronyms (Report, 8 December) but it’s time she considered her cliches. I suggest she takes a blue pencil to her sentence “I’m talking about ordinary working people for whom life is a bit of struggle …”. There are people who are too old or otherwise unable to work for whom life is a struggle. And who are ordinary people? I would hope they are those who do not have to struggle to make ends meet.
Peter Le Mare
Allithwaite, Cumbria

Government says it will not support highly polluting method of releasing gas from coal seams

A highly polluting method of extracting gas has been effectively killed off in the UK after the government said it would not support the technology.

Underground coal gasification, which involves injecting oxygen and steam underground to release gas from coal seams, would massively increase UK carbon emissions if exploited, according to a government-commissioned report.

The giraffe is at risk of extinction after a large decline in numbers over the past 30 years, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which released its latest ‘red list’ of threatened species on Thursday. The eastern gorilla and whale shark are also deemed at high risk

• Giraffe facing extinction after devastating decline, experts warn
  

Germany and Spain among those accused of failing to set up penalty systems to deter violations of emissions law

The European commission has started legal action against the UK and six other EU states for failing to act against car emissions cheating in the wake of the “dieselgate” scandal.

VW was forced to recall nearly half a million cars from the US market last year after it was revealed that the company had used sophisticated “defeat devices” to game emissions tests. Other manufacturers have also used techniques to give lower emissions readings in lab tests than in real world driving.

A new article helps scientists communicate how humans are intensifying extreme weather clearly and accurately

Climate scientists have done a great job winning the scientific arguments about climate change. To be clear about what I mean, we have done a very good job investigating whether or not the Earth’s climate is changing (it is), what is causing the change (humans), how much will it change in the future, and what will be the impacts.

There are no longer any reputable scientists who disagree with the principle view of that human emissions will cause climate change that will lead to societal and human losses (they already are). So, I use the term “win” here not to indicate it was a battle of “us” versus “them”. Rather, I mean “win” in that we have faithfully followed the scientific method, explored alternative hypotheses, checked and rechecked our work, and have come to a truth that is unassailable. We’ve done our job.

Experts argue whether electric cars are worse for the environment than gas guzzlers once the manufacturing process and batteries are taken into account

Jorge Cruz has just finished his overnight shift stacking shelves at Whole Foods in Los Altos, California, and is waiting at the bus stop outside. Like much of Silicon Valley, there’s a regular flow of Tesla, BMW, Nissan and Google electric cars that cruise past from their nearby headquarters, and Cruz rather likes them.

“I really wouldn’t mind having an electric car,” he says, though his first choice is probably a Honda or an Acura. Regardless, for now, he rides the bus. “I need to save up for a car,” he explains.

Ancient water channels in Morocco, declining Arctic sea ice and the US-Mexico border were among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last month

A bank of clouds covers East Java to the west, with a bright sun overhead casting shadows from the clouds along the ocean surface. Sunglint, an optical effect caused by the reflection of sunlight off the water surface directly back at the satellite sensor, exposes the waves created by the movement of currents in the ocean water. Internal waves are generated when the interface between layers is disturbed, such as when tidal flow passes over rough ocean floors, ridges, or other obstacles. The Lombok Strait, a relatively narrow passageway between Bali (west) and Lombok (east), allows flow of water from the Pacific Ocean into the Indian Ocean. The bottom of the strait is complex and rough, consisting of two main channels, one shallow and one deep. Because of the variation in water movement due to the complexity of the channels and ocean interface, the tides in the strait have a complex rhythm but tend to combine about every 14 days to create an exceptionally strong tidal flow. It is the combination of rough topography, strong tidal currents, and stratified water from the ocean exchange that makes the Lombok Strait famous for the generation of intensive internal waves.

Independent review shared with agriculture ministers in May calls for an urgent $38m eradication of invasive insects

Aggressive, venomous red fire ants have the potential to be a threat in even Australia’s biggest cities and require a multimillion-dollar, 10-year program to wipe them out before it’s too late, agriculture ministers were warned in May.

An independent review into the ant, which is of South American extraction, prepared for a meeting of federal state and territory agriculture ministers in May but made public this week through the Senate, calls for a doubling of funding to $38m a year for 10 years to eliminate the scourge for good.

Latest update to the red list of threatened species shows world’s tallest animal is on the brink, but some good news for Madgascan freshwater fish

The world’s tallest animal is at risk of extinction after suffering a devastating decline in numbers, with 40% of giraffes lost in the last 30 years, according to the latest “red list” analysis.

The authoritative list, compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has also added over 700 newly recognised bird species, but 13 of these are already extinct.

Sandy, Bedfordshire The birds’ summer song has become a spit of rage, broken chirrups rendered to our ears as “get lost!”

The skylark’s summer song is reduced in winter to spits of rage, each broken chirrup rendered to human ears as “get lost!” or something far ruder. Such angry chatter broke the stillness of a recent frost-becalmed morning in the fields. The strident cries told of an aerial dogfight.

Related: David Adam on the decline of Britain's skylarks and other bird species

Exclusive: Report warns investment in electricity has stalled, and existing policies won’t allow Australia to meet its Paris target

Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel, has said investment in the electricity sector has stalled because of “policy instability and uncertainty” – and he’s warned that current federal climate policy settings will not allow Australia to meet its emissions reduction targets under the Paris agreement.

In a 58-page report that has been circulated before Friday’s Council of Australian Governments meeting between the prime minister and the premiers, Finkel has also given implicit endorsement to an emissions intensity trading scheme for the electricity industry to help manage the transition to lower-emissions energy sources.

Adelaide zoo is hoping to support 34-year-old orangutan Karta through her pregnancy as she has lost six infants in the past

A Sumatran orangutan at Adelaide zoo has fallen pregnant, despite being on contraceptives.

Karta the 34-year-old orangutan is due early in 2017. Jodie Ellen, a senior primate keeper, announced the “exciting but nerve-wracking” news on the zoo’s Facebook page. “It wasn’t a planned pregnancy,” she said. “Mother Nature actually intervened.”

Two-thirds of those polled in the state seat of Dalrymple think the government should not lend to the Indian mining giant

Two-thirds of voters in the Queensland region that would host Adani’s Carmichael mine think the miner should not be eligible for commonwealth funding, according a new poll.

The ReachTel poll of 544 voters in the state seat of Dalrymple found 66% were against the idea of “an Indian mining company worth over $12bn being eligible for this taxpayer funding towards their Galilee Basin project”.

EU president abandons plan to overhaul flagship birds and habitats directives following a huge public campaign

The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has been forced to abandon an overhaul of flagship nature laws after an unprecedented campaign that mobilised over half a million people in protest.

The popular birds and habitats directives protect almost a fifth of Europe’s landmass, about 200 wetlands, meadows and marine habitats, and more than a thousand animal and plant species.

Supermarkets say they are pulling out all the stops to ensure there are no empty shelves in the run-up to Christmas

Love them or loathe them, they are a staple part of the Christmas dinner. However, consumers shopping for sprouts this year could have less choice than usual after some British-grown crops were ravaged by “super-pest” moths during the summer.

Supermarkets said they were pulling out all the stops to ensure there were no empty shelves in the run-up to the crucial festive season, although some may be unable to supply some lines such as popular “sprout stalks” or loose sprouts and may relax their usual specifications to allow smaller or imperfect items.

Cuts made to workforce at home and overseas despite ministers saying climate diplomacy should be a top priority

The UK has cut the number of Foreign Office staff working on climate change, despite ministers arguing the issue should be a top foreign policy priority.

The Liberal Democrats said it was “appalling” and sent “the wrong signals” to the world, after a minister revealed the figures in a recent parliamentary answer.

Campaigners hail announcement that funding for air quality measures will rise to £875m over the next five years

Campaigners, health charities and and neighbourhood groups have welcomed plans by the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, to more than double funding to clean up the capital’s dirty air.

London is one of the most polluted of dozens of cities in the UK that breach EU standards on nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a toxic gas caused by diesel vehicles. Air pollution has been linked to nearly 9,500 premature deaths in the city each year.

Extreme weather is driving up uninsured losses and insurers must use investments to fund global warming resilience, says study

The ability of the global insurance industry to manage society’s risks is being threatened by climate change, according to a new report.

The report finds that more frequent extreme weather events are driving up uninsured losses and making some assets uninsurable.