The Guardian

Thanks to the great western commons, which the Bundys and their legislative champions would like to dismantle, all Americans still enjoy the freedom to roam on some of the most spectacular lands on the planet

It goes without saying that in a democracy, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions. The trouble starts when people think they are also entitled to their own facts.

Away out west, on the hundreds of millions of acres of public lands that most Americans take for granted (if they are aware of them at all), the trouble is deep, widespread, and won’t soon go away. Last winter’s armed takeover and 41-day occupation of Malheur national wildlife refuge in south-eastern Oregon is a case in point. It was carried out by people who, if they hadn’t been white and dressed as cowboys, might have been called “terrorists” and treated as such. Their interpretation of the history of western lands and of the judicial basis for federal land ownership – or at least that of their leaders, since they weren’t exactly a band of intellectuals – was only loosely linked to reality.

The ability to cooperate and coordinate will mean the difference between looking forward with hope to the future or facing catastrophic climate change

In 1972 the law was passed that allowed the UK to join what was then called the European Economic Community (EEC). Despite Europe’s current crises, it’s unchanging, fundamental challenge was expressed that year by Sicco Mansholt, then president of the European commission, probably better than by any of the current voices in the referendum campaign, whether for or against UK remaining in.

Zero emission milestone reached as country is powered by just wind, solar and hydro-generated electricity for 107 hours

Portugal kept its lights on with renewable energy alone for four consecutive days last week in a clean energy milestone revealed by data analysis of national energy network figures.

Electricity consumption in the country was fully covered by solar, wind and hydro power in an extraordinary 107-hour run that lasted from 6.45am on Saturday 7 May until 5.45pm the following Wednesday, the analysis says.

Government plans to fell Poland’s Białowieża forest have divided families, led to death threats against green campaigners and allegations of an ‘environmental coup’ by government and state timber interests

Europe’s last primeval forest is facing what campaigners call its last stand as loggers prepare to start clear-cutting trees, following the dismissal of dozens of scientists and conservation experts opposed to the plan.

Poland’s new far right government says logging is needed because more than 10% of spruce trees in the Unesco world heritage site of Białowieża are suffering from a bark beetle outbreak. But nearly half the logging will be of other species, according to its only published inventory.

More than 30 green groups sign statement after damning report says extending regional forestry agreements ‘would constitute an irrational decision on environmental, economic and social grounds’

More than 30 environmental groups have signed a statement demanding that agreements allowing the logging of Australian native forests not be renewed.

Australia’s 10 regional forestry agreements (RFAs) were signed between 1997 and 2001, each running for 20 years, with the first two expiring in 2017.

The fossil fuel industry, fee-hungry lawyers, banks and those that stay silent are profiting from the reef’s destruction. It’s time for them to say no more

It’s the worst crisis ever to hit the Great Barrier Reef and the extent of the devastation is only just coming to light. The reef is in the middle of the worst bleaching event ever seen, with unusually warm water killing as much as half the corals in the northern sections, with the trend set to continue for the next 20 years.

Who’s to blame for this destruction? And which businesses are profiting from the activities that are causing this havoc?

Refugees are forced to flee conflict zones. They have no other choice unlike most migrants who leave their homes voluntarily to improve living conditions

She spent endless days and nights fleeing a warzone as a tiny child, first on foot through the darkness and then by boat after they shut the borders in her native Sierra Leone.

But when Yarrie Bangurra saw the camp she was supposed to be staying in, she couldn’t understand what it was her family had come to.

Chairman of UN’s joint meeting on pesticide residues co-runs scientific institute which received donation from Monsanto, which uses glyphosate

A UN panel that on Tuesday ruled that glyphosate was probably not carcinogenic to humans has now become embroiled in a bitter row about potential conflicts of interests. It has emerged that an institute co-run by the chairman of the UN’s joint meeting on pesticide residues (JMPR) received a six-figure donation from Monsanto, which uses the substance as a core ingredient in its bestselling Roundup weedkiller.

Professor Alan Boobis, who chaired the UN’s joint FAO/WHO meeting on glyphosate, also works as the vice-president of the International Life Science Institute (ILSI) Europe. The co-chair of the sessions was Professor Angelo Moretto, a board member of ILSI’s Health and Environmental Services Institute, and of its Risk21 steering group too, which Boobis also co-chairs.

Thai authorities have closed the celebrated scuba-diving destination to visitors – but it’s not the first ‘honeypot’ site to take such action

Related: Thailand closes 'overcrowded' Koh Tachai island to tourists

The trouble for Koh Tachai was that its beaches were just a little too white, its coral reef too colourful, its marine life too dazzling. Now you can’t go there, because Thai authorities have shut it to tourists – the latest and most drastic response to a booming and increasingly itinerant global population.

More cycling, better public transport and car bans - cities from Delhi to Zurich are using a range of initiatives to lower traffic pollution and improve health

Paris

Paris bans cars in many historic central districts at weekends, imposes odd-even bans on vehicles, makes public transport free during major pollution events and encourages car- and bike-sharing programmes. A long section of the Right Bank of the river Seine is now car-free and and a monthly ban on cars has come into force along the Champs-Elysées.

2017 finance bill will set price at €30 a tonne in a bid to stir European action to cut emissions and drive forward the Paris climate agreement

France will set a carbon price floor of about €30 ($33.95) a tonne in its 2017 finance bill as the government seeks to kickstart broader European action to cut emissions and drive forward last year’s landmark international climate accord.

The French government said last month that it would unilaterally set a carbon price floor in the absence of a broader European initiative to strengthen carbon pricing, hoping the move will spur other countries to act. It did not, however, give an indication on pricing.

Report’s author says City Hall publicised positive conclusions but held back the finding that deprived schools were disproportionately affected by toxic air

The author of a report on how London’s illegal air pollution disproportionately affects deprived schools has said City Hall under Boris Johnson held back the study’s negative findings, while publicising the positive ones.

The Guardian revealed an unpublished Greater London authority (GLA) report on Monday that showed how deprived schools in the capital were disproportionately affected by toxic air, leading the new mayor, Sadiq Khan, to accuse Johnson of burying the report.

More than 100 of the world’s poorest and most poorly governed countries have no or limited monitoring of the polluted air their citizens are breathing

More than 1 billion people live in countries that do not monitor the air they breathe, according to data released by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Guardian analysis has revealed a great air pollution blindspot stretching the length of Africa, across large parts of the former Soviet Union, south-east Asia and the Caribbean. In 92 countries the monitoring equipment and staff needed to measure one of the world’s most deadly pollutants - particulate matter (PM) - are simply not available.

Some 40 Bruny Island households are to be transformed into ‘mini-power stations’ as they trial Reposit Power’s software and solar storage

There are more than 1.5m households in Australia with rooftop solar. And in a few months time, 40 Tasmanian homeswill be acting as mini power stations – not just producing energy for their own consumption and to export back into the grid, but actively trading and profiting from the power they generate.

Much has been written about rooftop solar and the impending boom in battery storage but the key ingredient to turning homes into mini-power stations is the software that links the hardware of these technologies. Now the Canberra-based startup Reposit Power is helping to change the way households and energy companies think about solar and storage.

Chemical used in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller ‘unlikely to pose carcinogenic risk from exposure through diet’

Glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller brand, has been given a clean bill of health by the UN’s joint meeting on pesticides residues (JMPR), two days before a crunch EU vote on whether to relicense it.

The co-analysis by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Health Organisation found that the chemical was “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet”.

Unpublished report found four-fifths of the 433 London primary schools in areas breaching EU limits for NO2 were deprived

An air quality report that was not published by Boris Johnson while he was mayor of London demonstrates that 433 schools in the capital are located in areas that exceed EU limits for nitrogen dioxide pollution – and that four-fifths of those are in deprived areas.

The report, Analysing Air Pollution Exposure in London, said that in 2010, 433 of the city’s 1,777 primary schools were in areas where pollution breached the EU limits for NO2. Of those, 83% were considered deprived schools, with more than 40% of pupils on free school meals.

Ornithologists hope for glimpse of species reported to have been seen in Wales and west country

A spectacular bearded vulture, believed to be the first recorded in the UK, has been spotted soaring over the Severn estuary and moorland in Devon.

If it is confirmed that the vulture, also known as the lammergeier or ossifrage, is a wild bird, it will be the first of its species to be found in Britain and the sightings have already caused ornithologists to rush to the west country hoping for a glimpse.

Statoil granted seabed lease to develop floating windfarm 15 miles off the coast of Peterhead that is expected to be operational by the end of 2017

The world’s largest floating windfarm is set to be built off the coast of Scotland after its developers were granted a seabed lease on Monday.

Statoil, the Norwegian energy company, expects to have five 6MW turbines bobbing in the North Sea and generating electricity by the end of 2017. The company has already operated a single turbine off Norway.

Smart leak detection and reusing stormwater to reduce urban heat are discussed at this year’s OzWater as cities prepare for climate change

For the international water industry delegates descending upon Melbourne last week, in the leadup to OzWater 16, it must have seemed they had arrived in the wrong place.

The torrential rain and flash floods inundating the city appeared at odds with Australia’s billing as the driest inhabited continent in the world, and certainly made for an unlikely setting to host a conference focusing on sustainability in a future of increasingly scarce water supplies.

Frustrated by simplistic portrayals of poaching, photographer Benjamin Rutherford has documented the complex and violent trade in his new project, Nyama