The Guardian

Norway’s geography is ideal for hydro power. But clean energy schemes have cut reindeer grazing habitats by up to 40%

It’s cold. Minus 10, 12 perhaps, and getting dark; the butter-fingers of a rising moon evident on the eastern horizon. Ill-equipped (the forecasts were for minus five), my ears start to hurt, and I pull in my hood. By the time you read this it will be colder still. And there are still no reindeer to be seen.

Olav hands me his binoculars and tells me to focus on a hillside about three miles away across the snowy vastness of Norway’s Forollhogna National Park, a tract of ancient, ice-scoured mountains and mire, three hours’ drive inland from Trondheim.

Former New York City mayor charged with helping companies gauge exposure to global warming costs

Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, is to head a new global taskforce aimed at highlighting the financial exposure of companies to the risk of climate change.

Investors, insurers, banks and consumers will be provided with more information under plans for a voluntary industry-led code announced by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the G20 body that monitors and makes recommendations about the financial system, at the COP21 Paris climate change conference on Friday.

Puffins and kittiwakes on Unesco world heritage site are at risk from warming seas, National Trust for Scotland findings show

The survival of seabirds including puffins and kittiwakes on St Kilda – the island archipelago home to one of the world’s most important seabird populations – is being threatened by climate change, striking new evidence shows.

Naturalists have discovered that the kittiwake, a small migratory gull with ink-black wing tips, is on the brink of disappearing from St Kilda. The remote cluster of Scottish islands in the eastern Atlantic is the UK’s only place with two Unesco world heritage site listings – for its culture and natural history – and one of only 24 sites with a dual listing worldwide.

The real issue – global warming caused by aircraft emissions – calls on us to act. But focusing on ‘chemtrails’ absolves people of the responsibility to do so

You spend years trying to get people to take an interest in aircraft emissions. Then at last the issue gets picked up – but in the most perverse way possible.

The pollutants spread by planes are a major issue. They make a significant contribution to global warming, yet they are excluded from international negotiations, such as the conference taking place in Paris. As a result, aviation’s expansion is unchecked by concerns about climate change.

US federal prosecutors have ended the government’s pursuit of criminal charges over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 which resulted in 11 deaths

US federal prosecutors have dropped manslaughter charges against two BP employees connected to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, making it highly unlikely that anyone will ever serve prison time over the far-reaching calamity.

Related: Louisiana five years after BP oil spill: 'It's not going back to normal no time soon'

In less than 10 years the country has slashed its carbon footprint and lowered electricity costs, without government subsidies. Delegates at the Paris summit can learn much from its success

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As the world gathers in Paris for the daunting task of switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy, one small country on the other side of the Atlantic is making that transition look childishly simple and affordable.

In less than 10 years, Uruguay has slashed its carbon footprint without government subsidies or higher consumer costs, according to the country’s head of climate change policy, Ramón Méndez.

Licences for more than half of the Kgalagadi transfrontier park, one of Africa’s largest conservation areas, have been granted to drill for shale gas

The Botswana government has quietly sold the rights to frack for shale gas in one of Africa’s largest protected conservation areas, it has emerged.

The Kgalagadi transfrontier park, which spans the border with South Africa, is an immense 36,000 sq km wilderness, home to gemsbok desert antelope, black-maned Kalahari lions and pygmy falcons. But conservationists and top park officials – who were not informed of the fracking rights sale – are now worried about the impact of drilling on wildlife.

Liberate Tate are the artists’ collective who for five years have campaigned against BP’s sponsorship of the Tate. In this performance at Tate Britain in London, held two days before the opening of the Paris summit on climate change, 35 protesters take part in a project called Birthmark. Protestors tattoo each other with a number that represents the parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the year of each person’s birth

Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, was spotted at mating ground on Midway Atoll after a year’s absence and is expected to grow her brood, estimated at 36 chicks

The world’s oldest living tracked bird has returned to US soil to lay an egg at the sprightly age of 64.

Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, was spotted at the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge with a mate, following a year’s absence. It’s expected that Wisdom will use the world’s largest nesting albatross colony, located north-west of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, to raise another chick.

Fleet to leave on Tuesday to carry out ‘lethal research’ despite UN court ruling that the hunts are a cover for commercial whaling and have no scientific merit

Japan’s whaling fleet will set sail for the Antarctic on Tuesday despite international pressure to end its annual hunts, as Australia said it was considering sending a vessel to track the fleet in waters which Canberra considers a whale sanctuary.

Related: Japan under fire over decision to resume whaling

Behaviour could be one cause of the unusual drownings of the birds in large groups in England and Wales

Starlings have been consistently drowning in large groups in a phenomenon yet to be fully explained by scientists, according to new research led by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

In 12 separate incidents recorded between 1993 and 2013 in England and Wales, starlings were found drowned in groups of two to 80. In 10 cases, at least 10 starlings were found drowned at a time, the research published in the journal Scientific Reports on Wednesday shows.

Earth has these ‘natural occurrences’ that devastate homes and villages. But are they really natural occurrences? Sounds more like outbursts of a maniac

If this planet exploded tomorrow I wouldn’t shed a tear.

Environmentalists say evil mankind is destroying a beautiful God-given place. Really? Mudslides, earthquakes and twisters kill millions (thousands) of people every year. Innocent planet? I judge by deeds not words. Yes, pollutants kill. But so do rockslides. If you talk to the average resident of a natural disaster location, they will be glad to tell you the planet has done as much evil as the average multinational in terms of lives taken in their local community.

Australian environmental group asks court in Sydney to find Japanese whalers in contempt of a 2008 ruling banning fleet from the Southern Ocean

Environmental campaigners are launching a last-ditch legal attempt to prevent Japan from slaughtering whales in the Antarctic this winter, after Tokyo indicated it would ignore a ban on its “scientific” expeditions.

The Australian branch of Humane Society International (HSI) will on Wednesday ask the federal court in Sydney to find Kyodo Senpaku, the Japanese company that organises the hunts, in contempt of a 2008 ruling that banned the whaling fleet from hunting in an area of the Southern Ocean that Australia recognises as a whale sanctuary.

The banning of fishing in a newly created Pacific marine sanctuary will help stocks recover and attract high-end tourist dollars as a replacement source of income

The recent decision by the Pacific island nation of Palau to end fishing in a California-sized swath of tuna-rich ocean comes at a time of record overfishing and will help the populations of bigeye and yellowfin to recover, scientists say.

Officials hope that the new reserve will boost sustainable tourism revenues as well as fish populations, as ordinary divers and even snorkelers will be able to experience the difference that protection measures can make.

Analysis of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation health charity, and 13 other major funds, reveals moving investments out of coal, oil and gas and into green companies would have generated billions in higher returns

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would have had $1.9bn (£1.3bn) more to spend on its lifesaving health projects if it had divested from fossil fuels and instead invested in greener companies, according to a new analysis.

The Canadian research company Corporate Knights examined the stock holdings of 14 funds, worth a combined $1tn, and calculated how they would have performed if they had dumped shares in oil, coal and gas companies three years ago.

The sparkles from fireworks last a few seconds but the air pollution can linger in our cities for hours.

Firework smoke is rich in tiny metal particles making it very different to normal urban air pollution. These metals are used to make firework colours in much the same way as Victorian scientists identified chemicals by burning them in a Bunsen flame; red from strontium or lithium, blue from copper and bright green or white from barium compounds.

As the world prepares for the UN Paris climate summit, the world is at a tipping point. But a political and scientific revolution could yet save it

We Homo sapiens got lucky. Very lucky. Back in the 1920s, when looking for a “safe” gas to use in refrigerators, chlorine was the element of choice in a new family of manmade chemical compounds – chlorofluorocarbons. In the 1970s, Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland discovered that while it was safe in our fridges, it was destroying the ozone layer, which is essential to protect all life on land.

Luck struck twice. Nasa scientists measuring ozone above Antarctica in the 1980s never saw the ozone hole in their data. Their computers were programmed to ignore any figures deemed “impossible”. Luckily, the British Antarctic Survey had no such technology and sounded the alarm. In 1987, nations signed the Montreal Protocol outlawing CFCs.

Tesco’s ‘fast-frozen’ de-stoned and peeled avocado packs could help to cut down on the 54,000 tonnes of stone fruit wasted in Britain each year, say experts

Too slow to ripen or too squidgy and brown inside, avocados often end up contributing to the UK’s food waste mountain. But Tesco believes it has the answer to our avocado woes: frozen ones, de-stoned, peeled and ripe when they thaw out.

On sale from this weekend, in what is believed to be a first for a UK supermarket, the frozen avocados will also be cheaper than the fresh fruit at £2.50 for nine halves.

Foreign secretary Philip Hammond tells US free-marketeers that climate action boosts economies, while at home George Osborne undermines the green economy

Perhaps it’s being forced to think about global matters and the dangers they pose, but the UK’s foreign secretary Philip Hammond, like his Conservative predecessor, both understands the risks of climate change and the urgent need to act.

In a powerful speechthis week, he said: “Taking action to combat climate change is the right thing to do - the conservative thing to do.” Hammond had deliberately picked a tough crowd: the American Enterprise Institute, the free-marketeers who have for years have turned ExxonMobil and Koch dollars into climate change denial.

Real life trials of a groundbreaking array designed to clean up the vast plastic island in the Pacific are due to begin next year after successful tests of a prototype in the Netherlands

A crowdfunded 100km-long boom to clean up a vast expanse of plastic rubbish in the Pacific is one step closer to reality after successful tests of a scaled-down prototype in the Netherlands last week.

Further trials off the Dutch and Japanese coasts are now slated to begin in the new year. If they are successful, the world’s largest ever ocean cleanup operation will go live in 2020, using a gigantic V-shaped array, the like of which has never been seen before.