The Guardian

Latest Cedex report says October had the biggest proportion of renewables of any month since data made available

Australia’s renewable energy sector hit a record in October, with 21.7% of electricity in the national electricity market coming from renewables, according to the latest Cedex report.

That represents the biggest proportion of any month since the data was made available by the Australian Energy Market Operator in 2005, according to the report from the engineering consultants Pitt&Sherry and the Australia Institute.

Caistor St Edmund, Norfolk Today, however, I cannot be a hermit. There are stick-swinging children, scurrying woodlice and cross-looking treecreepers

When modern life seems too much, I dream of living in the woods. I’ll be a mad, feral woman eating hazelnuts and tending a fire obsessively. It’s this specific wood where I would go, with its deciduous mix of ash, oak and chestnut, its sandy badger sett, wild garlic, bluebells in spring, and the clear, fast-flowing water of the gravel-bottomed stream. Known as Fox’s Grove, it’s just a few miles from the centre of Norwich.

Today, I am not a hermit. I have a troop of children for company, who are enthusiastically den-building and stick swinging. They’ve collected plenty of dead wood and a wigwam shape is emerging from their collective imagination. I am happily redundant, sitting under a large beech tree, on a comfortably curved root. My fingers are drawn to the mulchy earth, into leaves and soil, as I inhale that musty, fungus scent.

Hospitality operators are realising sun, wind and water can do more than just attract tourists – they can power the resorts themselves

When it comes to the carbon impact of holidays, the focus has long been on the journey, not the destination.

Yet a growing stable of accommodation providers in Australia are on a mission to change that, switching over en masse to renewable energy in a bid to attract eco-conscious holidaymakers.

Former staff members face up to five years in prison if convicted of lapses at Queensland coal gasification site

Five former Linc Energy executives have been charged by the Queensland government with breaching environmental law over the operation of its underground coal gasification site in Chinchilla.

In September the former chief executive Peter Bond was charged with three indictable offences and last week was summonsed on two additional charges of failing to ensure the company complied with the state’s Environmental Protection Act.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 17 November 1916

The bracken is past its best, withered to a dull, uninteresting brown; its crippled stems, stiff and splintering, prick painfully as we wade through the wood where so short a time ago the fronds were breast-high. The ferns vary in autumn beauty according to their kind, some remaining dark green when their tips are curled and dead, grey or almost black; the osmunda, however, rightly named royal, increases in beauty as it ages. It is now a splendid golden orange, a wonderful colour when the sun’s rays, somewhat rarely, light it up.

Amongst the beeches the dappled fallow deer, rustling through the leaf-drifts, slowly approach the carriage-drive through the park, but immediately they reach the gravel bound rapidly across. The bucks, full-antlered, call the does, as if urging haste; their voices are a strange mixture of bleat and grunt. These bucks are still excited by recent nuptial contests, but the successful ones have collected and retain their harems. After racing over the road the herd at once slows down to a walk on feeling grass beneath the feet, and the bucks and does alike pass on with a light, elastic gait. It is curious that semi-domestic animals should be so nervous when crossing a man-trodden pathway, for they pay little attention to passers-by when they are feeding a few yards away.

Host of Brave Wilderness YouTube channel travels around world trying to get animals and insects to bite him – and give viewers a ‘vicarious experience’

One of Coyote Peterson’s most popular YouTube videos shows him writhing around in agony on the ground. He’s just been stung by a tarantula hawk, a giant wasp that is considered to have the second most painful sting of any insect.

For the first 15 seconds Peterson is unable to speak. He just screams and grabs at the dirt.

The absence of climate change as a leading topic in the election was a failure of the media – and it’s now their responsibility to get Americans talking about it

Imagine the world was facing upheaval on a scale not seen during modern civilization, a change that would imperil the world’s great cities by the rising seas and snuff out species at at the fastest rate since the dinosaurs disappeared. Then imagine you were a journalist, had repeated chances to ask the next president of the United States about this and decided to not do so.

The apparent failure of the media during the presidential election has been multifaceted and fiercely debated. But the absence of climate change as a leading topic in the election of Donald Trump is perhaps the single greatest rebuke to the idea that power should be held to account for the benefit of this and future generations.

Airedale, West Yorkshire Far from being robust birds, these visitors from Scandinavia can suffer terribly when the temperature drops

The little grebes have changed into their smart off-season outfits – smoky-brown, with a dark cap worn low on the brow – and moved upriver, westward, to winter with us. The quickening of the current has brought a dipper down from the river’s higher reaches. In a hawthorn that overhangs the water, redwings gorge on the dull red fruit.

These aren’t the first redwings I’ve seen this season: since the turn of October they’ve been skipping through high overhead in threes and fours and fives, calling seep, seep. The warden, hunkered in the adjoining meadow on autumn “vismigging” (visible migrant) duty, pointed out to me their distinctively irregular wingbeats.

As news of Donald Trump’s victory reached Marrakech on Wednesday, the many thousands of diplomats, activists, youth and business groups gathered in the city for the UN’s annual climate conference were left in shock and disbelief that the US could elect a climate-change denier as president.

Some of the younger activists were in tears. “My heart is absolutely broken at the election of Trump,” said Becky Chung, a delegate for youth advocacy group SustainUS from California.

EU concerns are growing that some oil-rich nations that have not yet ratified the deal could now try and slow action on reducing emissions

Concerns are mounting that Donald Trump’s victory could embolden some fossil fuel-rich countries to try unpicking the historic Paris climate agreement, which came into force last week.

Saudi Arabia has tried to obstruct informal meetings at the UN climate summit in Marrakech this week, and worries are rife that states which have not yet ratified the agreement could seek to slow action on carbon emissions. Trump has called global warming a hoax and promised to withdraw the US from the Paris accord.

Government divisions over approach to climate change plan are bridged, but targets will be reviewed in 2018 to consider their impact on industry

Germany’s coalition government has reached an agreement on a climate change action plan which involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 95% by 2050, a spokesperson said on Friday.

The plan, which will require German industry to reduce its CO2 emission by a fifth by 2030, and Germany’s energy sector to reduce emissions by almost a half, will be reviewed in 2018 with a view to its impact on jobs and society.

Donald Trump’s win could be catastrophic for the world’s climate, as well as international diplomacy, as American leadership is transformed

This November is likely to have profound implications for climate change – but not in the way that was anticipated just a week ago. The Paris climate deal came into force on 4 November but Tuesday’s election of Donald Trump as US president casts an ominous shadow over the agreement and the chances of avoiding dangerous global warming.

Trump is a highly erratic figure, so predicting his actions can be problematic. But we do know that he wants to withdraw the US from the Paris accord, which aims to keep the global temperature increase below a 2C threshold, that he believes climate change to be a “hoax” and that Barack Obama’s warning that global warming is a threat on a par with terrorism was “one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard in politics.”

Italy’s hedgehog hospital, starlings in flight and a comical fox are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Leading scientists warn the climate denier’s victory could mean ‘game over for the climate’ and any hope of warding off dangerous global warming

The ripples from a new American president are far-reaching, but never before has the arrival of a White House administration placed the livability of Earth at stake. Beyond his bluster and crude taunts, Donald Trump’s climate denialism could prove to be the lasting imprint of his unexpected presidency.

“A Trump presidency might be game over for the climate,” said Michael Mann, a prominent climate researcher. “It might make it impossible to stabilize planetary warming below dangerous levels.”

Levels of pollution reached record highs this week across India. In Delhi the government declared the poor air quality an ‘emergency situation’

From Hong Kong’s tiny subdivided flats to the migrant crisis, this year’s photography and sustainability award shortlist explores the theme of space from all perspectives

• The winners will be announced at an exhibition in London in May 2017. See last year’s winners here
  

Langstone, Hampshire The newly attached, unfed, arachnids were red-brown and as tiny as sesame seeds, the fully engorged ones like glossy grey pearls

Hedgehogs that have had a hind leg amputation can struggle to groom themselves, so are more likely to harbour ectoparasites. I had noticed that Sweetpea, my resident hedgehog, had been flailing her shortened leg as she tried to scratch using her phantom limb. But it was still a shock to spot her emerging from her nest with one side of her body studded with ticks. They clustered in the folds of her right ear and along her right flank, where the coarse skirt of fur met the quill line.

Related: Specieswatch: Ixodes ricinus (tick)

That the government is now at last being forced to do more to reduce the dangerous levels of nitrogen dioxide air pollution is welcome news (Court defeat for government on air pollution, 3 November). More than a year on from the “dieselgate” revelations, ministers should have been in no doubt about the dishonest and illegal methods used by some manufacturers to cheat emissions tests. Not only has the government failed to update its pollution modelling based on realistic emissions figures, it has also done nothing to support the 1.2 million UK diesel vehicle owners caught up in this scandal.

If anything, the government seems to be going out of its way to protect manufacturers. Cars fitted with the defeat device software are still able to pass MOT emissions tests, so the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency seems to have turned a blind eye to this.

Scientists believe the animals have been infected with the disfiguring disease for centuries and pose little risk to humans today

Leprosy has been found in red squirrels across the British Isles and scientists believe they have been infected with the disfiguring disease for centuries.

The endangered animals carry the same bacteria that cause the human disease, research has revealed. This results in lesions on their muzzles, ears and paws, adding to the sharp decline in their numbers caused by invading grey squirrels, which appear immune to the disease.

Farming in Devon national park, and sheep and cattle welfare, jeopardised by climbers, cyclists and campers, says livestock society

Adventure seekers who visit one of Britain’s great wild places are making life more difficult for farmers and putting cattle and sheep in danger, a livestock welfare charity claims.

The chair of the Dartmoor Livestock Protection Society, which was formed in 1963, says the “idle amusement” of millions of visitors is threatening to squeeze out hill farmers.