The Guardian

These stunning aerial photos capture the extraordinary colours and painterly flows of Kati Thanda – aka Lake Eyre – in central Australia. The images by Adam Williams, Luke Austin, Ignacio Palacios and Paul Hoelen of the Light Collective depict a remote and pristine landscape few will ever see. They were taken for a new book and exhibition, which opens on Thursday at the Depot Gallery in Sydney

Climate Council questions Australia’s ability to meet Paris Agreement pledge and predicts it will face pressure from world leaders at meeting next week

Australia is lagging behind other countries on tackling climate change after signing the historic Paris Agreement last year, a new report shows.

The Climate Council’s new report, “Towards Morocco: tracking global climate progress since Paris,” questions Australia’s ability to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target.

Ministers now bound to implement new measures to cut toxic air quickly after high court ruling that current plans are so poor they are illegal

Drivers of polluting diesel vehicles could soon be charged to enter many city centres across Britain, after the government accepted in the high court on Wednesday that its current plans to tackle the nation’s air pollution crisis were so poor they broke the law.

The humiliating legal defeat is the second in 18 months and ends years of inadequate action and delays to tackle the problem which causes 50,000 early deaths every year.

In 1992, when the first submarine armed with Trident nuclear missiles arrived on the Clyde near Glasgow, John Ainslie was in a canoe. Along with a flotilla of other protesters, he was buzzing the huge dark boat as it cut through the cold water. He had just been appointed as the coordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND), and he was arrested by the Ministry of Defence police.

John, who has died of cancer aged 62, was the quiet, unassuming heart of the peace movement in Scotland for the last 25 years. As well as putting himself on the line, he became an authoritative and internationally respected nuclear researcher. He was the author of 20 reports on aspects of nuclear policy, starting in 1992 with Cracking Under Pressure, about defects in nuclear submarine reactors.

Data points to unprecedented decline of two-thirds this year due to doubling of carbon tax and low gas price

The amount of electricity generated from UK coal power stations is on track to fall by two-thirds this year, a decline which analysts said was so steep and fast it was unprecedented globally.

Climate change thinktank Sandbag said the drop was due to a doubling in the price of a carbon tax and the lower price of gas. The group has written to the chancellor, Philip Hammond, urging him not to water down the carbon floor price in this month’s autumn statement, which the steel industry has been lobbying the government to do.

Leaving forests in communal hands cuts carbon emissions from deforestation, helps communities and offers long-term economic benefits: ‘Everyone wins’

The world’s indigenous communities need to be given a bigger role in climate stabilisation, according to a new study that shows at least a quarter of forest carbon is stored on communal land, particularly in Brazil.

The research by a group of academic institutions and environmental NGOs is the most comprehensive effort yet to quantify the contribution of traditional forest guardians to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

Expansion plans for the Irish capital’s successful scheme have been placed on hold while organisers seek new ways to cover basic operating costs

When Dublin launched its first bike-share scheme in 2009, sceptics said every last pair of wheels would end up stolen or floating in the river Liffey.

Instead, Dublinbikes was embraced with such fervor that subscriptions immediately surpassed expectations, usage rates topped international rankings and the no-nonsense bikes – three gears with a basket on the front - became a fixture in the Irish capital, whizzing alongside traffic in the congested core.

A look back over last eight years shows that a president really does matter

My how far we’ve come in less than eight years. We have seen happen what those of us in the climate and energy fields knew could happen. The US has become a world leader on climate change, dramatically increased our production of clean and renewable fuels, reduced our emissions of greenhouse gases, signed major international agreements to continue progress into the future, and have done so without cost increases or power disruptions that the denial community proclaimed would occur.

As we in the United States get ready to elect a new president, it is helpful to think about the impact a president can have. Particularly since we transitioned from the worst climate president ever (Bush) to the best (Obama). I am going to detail what I think are Obama’s signature accomplishments.

Court rules for second time in 18 months that the government is not doing enough to combat the national air pollution crisis

The government’s plan for tackling the UK’s air pollution crisis has been judged illegally poor at the high court, marking the second time in 18 months that ministers have lost in court on the issue.

The defeat is a humiliation for ministers who by law must cut the illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide suffered by dozens of towns and cities in the “shortest possible time”.

Report also criticises government’s plans and funding and calls for Environment Agency to be stripped of responsibility for flooding

Natural ways of stopping floods, such as tree planting and putting logs in rivers to slow water flow must be a key part of protecting the nation as climate change intensifies rain storms, according to a report from MPs.

The cross-party committee criticised the government for its limited plans and insufficient funding, and called for the Environment Agency to be stripped of its responsibility for flooding and replaced by a dedicated floods authority and a national flood commissioner, as is the case in the Netherlands.

IPPR study on delivering clean air in the capital comes as the high court is due to rule on the UK government’s air quality plan

Ridding inner London of virtually all diesel vehicles would solve the capital’s air pollution crisis, according to research published as the high court is due to rule on the government’s air quality plan.

Illegal levels of air pollution cause about 9,500 early deaths a year in London and a new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) sets out a series of measures to solve the problem.

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire Used to control crop pests, this beetle also has a frightening appetite for other ladybirds and the eggs of butterflies

Tricked out in Halloween orange and black, a harlequin moves awkwardly through a micro woodland of moss on the concrete as if it were wandering through an alien world, which in some respects it is. This is Harmonia axyridis succinea, a beetle that began its global travels somewhere in eastern Asia between Kazakhstan and Japan.

Because its larva has an insatiable appetite for aphids and other small insects it was taken to America in the 1980s for the biological control of crop pests. It was so successful that it has been transported into European agriculture, too. To show its appreciation the beetle, called the Halloween ladybug in the US and the harlequin ladybird in Europe, has had a population explosion.

Long Beach quake of 1933 in which up to 120 people died is among several possibly linked with early extraction methods

Several damaging Los Angeles-area earthquakes of the 1920s and 1930s, including the deadliest ever in southern California, may have been brought on by oil production during the region’s drilling boom of that era, US government scientists have reported.

The findings of a possible link between oil extraction and seismic events in the LA basin do not apply to modern industry practices but suggest the natural rate of quake occurrences in the region may be lower than previously calculated, the scientists said.

Report estimates continent is losing out on £25m in tourism spending each year due to the illegal wildlife trade that is killing elephants for their ivory

The poaching crisis wiping out Africa’s elephants is costing the continent’s economies millions in lost tourism revenue, according to a new study.

Researchers looked at visitor and elephant data across 25 countries, and modelled financial losses from fewer visitors in protected areas due to the illegal wildlife trade, which has caused elephant numbers to plummet by more than 100,000 in the last decade. They concluded that Africa was most likely losing $25m in tourism revenue a year.

Industry concern after confidential impact assessment models scenarios for paring back the ‘priority dispatch’ system for clean energy

Windfarms and solar power could soon lose the privilege of getting priority over other energy sources on European electricity grids, leaked documents show.

Paring back the “priority dispatch” system could increase carbon emissions by up to 10%, according to a confidential EU impact assessment seen by the Guardian. But the document goes on to model four scenarios for doing just that, in a bid to make Europe’s energy generators more flexible and cost-competitive.

China leads the charge for emissions efficiency, but faster progress is needed to meet the Paris climate goals, reports Climate Change News

The amount of carbon needed to power the global economy fell to record lows in 2015, as coal consumption in major economies plummeted.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) annual Low Carbon Economy Index report has found that the global carbon intensity (emissions per unit of GDP) fell by 2.8%.

In a rare comment on a foreign election, veteran climate chief says a wise political leader should make policy in line with global trends

China on Tuesday rejected a plan by US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to back out of a global climate change pact, saying a wise political leader should make policy in line with global trends, a rare comment on a foreign election.

The world is moving towards balancing environmental protection and economic growth, China’s top climate change negotiator told reporters, in response to a query on how China would work with a Trump administration on climate change.“If they resist this trend, I don’t think they’ll win the support of their people, and their country’s economic and social progress will also be affected,” Xie Zhenhua said.

Claxton, Norfolk Supporters of development seem to see nature as an abstract idea, a theoretical resource, which can withstand any amount of imposition

I was amused recently by a neighbour who described her love-affair with a robin called “Robbie” – a decade-long passion that’s probably three times the average robin’s life. Since both robin sexes sing and cannot always tell each other apart, my neighbour may actually have loved many Robbies over the years. Yet no matter, her love is true.

It’s interesting to compare my neighbour’s engagement with nature to the public responses at Lough Beg in County Derry, Northern Ireland, which I visited recently. Lough Beg is part of “Seamus Heaney Country”, the landscape central to the Nobel laureate’s magnificent poetry. A proposed four-lane highway would violate Heaney’s heartland and wildlife areas protected by numerous international designations. Yet, in the absence of protest from more mainstream NGOs (such as the RSPB and Ulster Wildlife Trust), a friend is fighting a lone legal battle, supported by his own money and crowd sourcing.

Despite the government’s protests, it’s not possible to save the Great Barrier Reef without tackling global warming first

At the core of the Australian government’s failure to protect our Great Barrier Reef is the big lie.

Through its actions and inaction, rhetoric, funding priorities and policy decisions, the Australian government has implicitly pursued the line that it is possible to turn things around for the reef without tackling global warming.

Three hundred million children live in areas with extreme air pollution, Unicef research shows. A new photo collection shows the scale of the problem in highly polluted countries in Africa and Asia