The Guardian

President François Hollande calls on other European countries to follow France’s lead by the end of the year

President François Hollande on Wednesday finalised ratification of the Paris climate accord reached in December 2015, making France the first industrialised country to do so.

“Signing is good, ratifying is better,” Hollande quipped at the Élysée Palace ceremony, flanked by environment minister Ségolène Royal, foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and other top officials.

Ineos company emails reveal huge amounts of treated wastewater are likely to be disposed of in the sea

A UK shale gas company is considering dumping waste water from fracking in the sea, emails from the company show.

Ineos, which owns the Grangemouth refinery and holds 21 shale licences, many in the north-west, North Yorkshire and the east Midlands, has said it wants to become the biggest player in the UK’s nascent shale gas industry.

New sediment data suggests the dinosaurs were rapidly done in, strengthening asteroid impact theory

Boring is beautiful when you’re studying a calamity, especially one as spectacular as the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. That’s because exciting sediments, full of variations and gaps, make it hard to disentangle the extinction signal from the noise of natural variability.

So you could say that James Witts, of the University of Leeds in the UK, lucked-out with an especially boring batch of sediments in Seymour Island on the Antarctic Peninsula (the part on the map that points up to South America). His study, recently published in the journal Nature Communications, catches the extinction of marine life in one of the most detailed records ever published for the end-Cretaceous. As Witts describes it:

Green groups warn of UK’s opposition to EU bans on harmful pesticides and promises by the Leave campaign to cut nature protection laws

Brexit would be bad for Britain’s bees, according to campaigners, who point to the UK government’s opposition to EU bans on harmful pesticides and the desire of figures in the Leave camp to cut nature protections.

Bees and other pollinators are vital to producing food but have been harmed by loss of habitat, disease and pesticides. The EU banned three neonicotinoid pesticides in 2013 in the face of strong opposition from UK ministers.

Parliament approves radical proposal of accelerated emissions cuts and carbon offsetting to achieve climate goal 20 years earlier than planned

Norway’s parliament has approved a radical goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2030, two decades earlier than planned.

On Tuesday night MPs voted for an accelerated programme of CO2 cuts and carbon trading to offset emissions from sectors such as Norway’s oil and gas industries, which are unlikely to be phased out in the near future.

Deception is everywhere in nature, as plants and animals turn trickster in the hope of eating or avoiding being eaten. The evolutionary biologist Martin Stevens introduces some subtle strategies in the game of life

Exceptionally high numbers of the diamondback moth, that attacks crops such as cabbages and cauliflowers, have been recorded arriving in the UK

Experts have warned of a potential explosion in numbers of an invasive “super-pest” moth that attacks crops such as cabbages and cauliflowers.

Rothamsted Research, in Hertfordshire, issued a warning that exceptionally high numbers of the diamondback moth are arriving in the UK, after reports from a network of moth traps around the country.

Renowned biologist E.O. Wilson wants to set aside half of the planet as protected areas for nature. But is this possible? And, if so, how would it work?

As of today, the only place in the universe where we are certain life exists is on our little home, the third planet from the sun. But also as of today, species on Earth are winking out at rates likely not seen since the demise of the dinosaurs. If we don’t change our ways, we will witness a mass extinction event that will not only leave our world a far more boring and lonely place, but will undercut the very survival of our species .

So, what do we do?

The 2016 Great British Bee Count has reached the halfway point with more than 189,000 bees recorded so far. The annual count, which runs until 30 June, aims to help people learn more about bees, a key pollinator species that faces multiple threats. Here are some of the species spotted so far

• Download the free app to help monitor the British bee population and get tips for bee-friendly planting.
  

Modelling shows Australian RET of 50% by 2030, rather than current trajectory of 34%, would almost double number of jobs created

Boosting renewable energy in Australia from the current trajectory of 34% of total energy by 2030 to 50% would double the number of new jobs created, according to modelling by Ernst & Young and the Climate Council.

The results come following a similar report from The Australia Institute this week comparing the employment implications of renewable energy policies of the three main parties, showing Labor and Greens policies would cause job growth in the sector, while Coalition policies would see a decline.

Sangduen Chailert, the founder of Chiang Mai’s Elephant Nature Park (ENP), sings lullabies to the elephants under her care. She first discovered the technique six years ago when trying to relax a difficult elephant calf and the technique was so successful she maintained the practice. The ENP is a 280-acre park that looks after rescue elephants that have suffered abuse. For more about the sanctuary see the ENP’s website

Wildlife experts say the seven eggs laid by two spoon-billed sandpipers at WWT Slimbridge gives new hope for the species’ tiny wild population

One of the world’s rarest birds has laid eggs in captivity for the first time, in what wildlife experts say provides new hope for the species’ tiny wild population.

Only around 200 breeding pairs of critically endangered spoon-billed sandpipers remain in the wild, where they make an annual 10,000 mile round-trip between their Russian Arctic breeding grounds and wintering grounds in south-east Asia.

The troubled trajectory of the capital’s backstreet bike routes has repercussions for cycling policy across the country

It has arrived with less fuss than the segregated superhighways, but as of this week London has the first in its new generation of officially designated cycling “quietways”.

Quietway 1 runs for just over five miles from Greenwich to Waterloo in south-east London, eschewing main roads for a combination of back streets, traffic-free paths and cyclist-only contraflows. The quietway programme, led by Transport for London, is meant to provide seven of these routes by this time next year, intended in part for less experienced or gung-ho riders who prefer to go at a more leisurely pace.

May was the fifth record warm month this year, upping the odds that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, reports Climate Central

The streak continues: May was record warm for the globe, according to NASA data released Monday.

It’s now even more likely that 2016 will be the hottest year ever recorded, despite the demise of one of the strongest El Niños on record.

At least 200,000 of the nearly 2m trophies collected from animal hunts were endangered species, according to report revealing the scale of the industry

Around 1.7m animal “trophies” have been exported across borders by hunters in the last decade, with at least 200,000 of them endangered species, according to a new report.

US hunters are by far the largest killers of trophy animals, including half of all the 11,000 lions shot in the last decade, the report found. The issue came to global attention in July 2015, after a US dentist paid more than $50,000 to kill a lion called Cecil, who was being tracked by conservation scientists.

2020 target of 42% cut reached earlier than expected, but climate campaigners sceptical about government’s role

Scotland’s climate emissions have broken through a landmark reductions target six years early after a warm winter helped drive down energy use.

The Scottish climate change secretary, Roseanna Cunningham, said she was delighted that the country’s emissions had fallen by nearly 46% between 1990 and 2014, surpassing the government’s 2020 target of a 42% cut far earlier than expected.

Environment minister George Eustice tells MPs’ committee that the government supports a ban on polluting plastic microbeads in cosmetics

The UK government now fully backs a legal ban on polluting plastic microbeads in cosmetics and toiletries, environment minister George Eustice said on Tuesday.

A ban across the EU could be passed as early as 2017, he said, to stop the tiny particles entering the seas and harming wildlife.

BP’s call for a ‘meaningful carbon price’ is the latest example of wrongly trying to apply economic theories and tools to the environment

BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy is a standard industry reference document. It’s a useful indicator of trends, if occasionally the victim of politics.

Campaigners accuse the government of sitting on a potentially explosive report from its official advisers on the impact of fracking for shale gas

Pressure is growing on the UK government to release a report into the impacts of shale gas fracking, which campaigners have accused ministers of suppressing.

The Committee on Climate Change, which advises parliament on meeting the UK’s carbon targets, submitted the report in March. It covers the expected impact of exploiting the UK’s onshore oil and gas resources on nationally set greenhouse gas targets.

RSPB campaign urges gardeners to do one thing to help wildlife this summer after survey reveals rise and fall of familiar species

Gardeners are being urged to do more to help hedgehogs this summer after new figures showed that fewer people than ever are seeing the once-familiar species.

Results from the from the RSPB’s citizen science survey showed that only 25% of people see hedgehogs in their garden at least once a month, around three percentage points less than last year and than in 2014.