The Guardian

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.

Higher sea temperatures have led to the worst bleaching event on record, new study finds, with coral predicted to take up to 15 years to recover

A new study has found that higher water temperatures have ravaged the Great Barrier Reef, causing the worst coral bleaching recorded by scientists.

In the worst-affected area, 67% of a 700km swath in the north of the reef lost its shallow-water corals over the past eight to nine months, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies based at James Cook University study found.

The short answer is no (Is this a war on trees? Notebook, 22 November). As a several decades-long member of the Woodland Trust, I value mature trees and the recreation of ancient woodland, but in respect to Sheffield’s tree-culling, Patrick Barkham has given only a one-sided story, that of the “save all trees” fanatics who forced the council’s hand. In our leafy suburbs many of the trees are over 100 years old and, yes, they do add many benefits to the environment. However, many are huge, forest varieties, unsuitable for the streets in which they were planted. Thus some obstruct pavements and roadways, and their roots have caused ground upheavals of 20cm or more. Some are also reaching old age, with a consequent risk of falling branches.

Looking at the wider picture, it thus makes very good sense to cut these down and replant with more suitable varieties as part of the road and pavement renewal scheme, to avoid later more expensive replacement after they have damaged the new roads and pavements. I will be sad to see them go – it’s only a selected few – but very glad to get rid of the potholed roads and lumpy pavements with their tripping hazards. And my children will benefit from the new trees as they mature, as part of a planned tree-management scheme.
Michael Miller
Sheffield

Alongside her husband, Doug, Kris McDivitt Tompkins bought up vast swathes of Patagonia to save it from developers. Now, a year after Doug’s sudden death, she explains how their shared vision is close to reality

She was young, spirited and rich. It was the 1970s and Kris McDivitt seemed to come straight from California central casting; the glamorous ski-racing daughter of an oil-industry man who made her fortune as the first CEO of what was to become the billion-dollar outdoor clothing company Patagonia.

And then in 1993, aged 43, Kris McDivitt unexpectedly fell in love with Doug Tompkins, the adventure-junkie rock-climber and deep green environmentalist who had co-founded not one but two giant outdoor-clothing companies, North Face and Esprit.

Freshwater fish are out of sight and out of mind for most of the British public. And so are the dedicated band of fishery scientists who look after a resource that indicates the health of our rivers and lakes, and supports angling. Such an individual was my friend John Gregory, who has died aged 67, after a lifelong career in fisheries management.

John was born in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire. His father, Tom, was an engineer at Rolls-Royce in Derby and his mother, Jenny, worked in the local hospital. After graduating in biological sciences from the University of East Anglia, and getting married to Lynden Stratten in 1971, John spent two years as a fisheries officer in the Solomon Islands.

Leaked documents reveal EU pledge to carry out tests deleted from draft as governments come under pressure from carmakers

Plans for independent checks of how much pollution new cars emit are being killed off by EU member states, according to leaked documents seen by the Guardian.

After the Dieselgate scandal, the European commission proposed empowering its respected science wing, the Joint Research Centre, to inspect vehicles separately from national authorities, which are paid by the car manufacturers they regulate.