The Guardian

Biffa convicted of exporting filthy rubbish marked as waste paper for recycling in India and Indonesia in breach of ban

The UK’s largest waste company, Biffa, has been fined £1.5m after exporting filthy rubbish marked as waste paper for recycling in India and Indonesia, in actions a judge called “reckless, bordering on deliberate”.

Last week, the company was convicted of sending more than 1,000 tonnes of household waste to India and Indonesia, in breach of a ban on sending such waste to developing countries after a two-week trial at Wood Green crown court .

• Data shows ice sheet lost 8.5bn tons of surface mass on Tuesday
• All-time record temperature of 19.8C in region on Wednesday

Greenland’s vast ice sheet is undergoing a surge in melting, with the amount of ice vanishing in a single day this week enough to cover the whole of Florida in two inches of water, researchers have found.

The deluge of melting has reached deep into Greenland’s enormous icy interior, with data from the Danish government showing that the ice sheet lost 8.5bn tons of surface mass on Tuesday alone. A further 8.4bn tons was lost on Thursday, the Polar Portal monitoring website reported.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a released frog, rescued kestrel chicks and frisky sharks

Most urban areas were laid out many decades ago, but projects worldwide show change is possible

Around the globe many cities are redesigning themselves for the 21st century, but will the UK be left behind?

Pressures on the UK’s urban environments are likely to increase, according to a report from the Environment Agency. Eight out of 10 people call these areas home and urban populations are expected to be 18% greater by 2036 than they were in 2011. Although the air that we breathe in our towns and cities has improved hugely since the 1950s, progress on particle pollution has stalled in recent years. In 2019, three-quarters of the UK’s reporting zones still failed legal limits for nitrogen dioxide that were set in 1999.

In the city, they fly along routes that mirror roads

Every evening in Sydney, clouds of bats move across the sky. They time their trip so that there is just too little light to make out anything more than a silhouette – which is just enough light so that you can see, very clearly, the outlines of their legs and feet knocking together – an entrechat – as they flap their wings.

I’m not sure that I will ever stop having the exact same thought about this: “Oh my God, you can see their feet knocking together. Oh my God.”

Foundation has received $400,000 in total pandemic support despite being awarded $443m government grant three years ago

Labor has asked the Morrison government to explain why a Great Barrier Reef-focused charity received jobkeeper despite still having hundreds of millions of dollars remaining from a nearly $500m grant it received three years ago.

The Great Barrier Reef Foundation, which expanded from six to 38 full-time staff after accepting a $443m grant that it did not request from the Turnbull government in 2018, confirmed it received about $351,000 in jobkeeper payments in the 2019-20 financial year.

The study identifies each state’s most economically damaging species and warns costs could rise further without investment

Invasive plants, animals and diseases have cost Australia at least $390bn in damages and management costs over the past 60 years, according to research that has painted the most accurate picture yet of the economic burden of these invaders.

Feral cats are the costliest of the hundreds of individual species studied, accounting for just over $10bn in damages and management expenses. Rodents, pigs and rabbits came close behind.

People coming to the aid of the Wet’suwet’en nation to stop a pipeline are using direct action that is prompting terror charges

The night of 28 November, Samantha Brooks, 24, hunched over the railway tracks near Bellingham, Washington, about 32km (20 miles) south of the Canada-US border and installed a “shunt,” according to trial documents obtained by the Guardian.

Related: Dakota access pipeline: court strikes down permits in victory for Standing Rock Sioux

At Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border, the water line has dropped to a historic low, taking a heavy toll on the local industry

Chaos erupted at Bill West’s business in Page, Arizona, last week when he was forced to tell dozens of paid clients their summer vacations were either canceled or on hold – effective immediately.

Related: ‘I can see the industry disappearing’: US fishermen sound alarm at plans for offshore wind

The analysis draws on public health studies that conclude that for every 4,434 metric tons of CO2 produced, one person globally will die

The lifestyles of around three average Americans will create enough planet-heating emissions to kill one person, and the emissions from a single coal-fired power plant is likely to result in more than 900 deaths, according to the first analysis to calculate the mortal cost of carbon emissions.

The new research builds upon what is known as the “social cost of carbon”, a monetary figure placed upon the damage caused by each ton of carbon dioxide emissions, by assigning an expected death toll from the emissions that cause the climate crisis.

In the last month, devastating weather extremes have hit regions across the world. From flash floods in Belgium to deadly temperatures in the US, from wildfires in Siberia to landslides in India, it has been an unprecedented period of chaotic weather. Climate scientists have long predicted that human-caused climate disruption would lead to more flooding, heatwaves, droughts, storms and other forms of extreme weather, but even they have been shocked by the scale of these scenes

• Extreme weather will be the norm and UK is not prepared, report warns
• ‘Record-shattering’ heat becoming much more likely, says climate study

Volunteers use drones to capture headshots of the endangered mammal, of which there are under 300 in Australia’s south-east

Citizen scientists have captured spectacular footage of southern right whales and their calves swimming off the south coast of New South Wales.

Among the animals in the footage, taken near Jervis Bay, are a mother and calf that were recently spotted frolicking in the Hawkesbury River.

Billions to be spent over six years with significant sums for regions hit hard in recent years

The government will spend a record £5.2bn on reducing flooding in England over the next six years, as the climate crisis increases the risk to homes and businesses.

The Environment Agency will spend £860m next year to support more than 1,000 schemes, with significant funds for Yorkshire and the Humber and the north-west, regions that have been hit hard in recent years.

How many have died and why is a mystery – and we need your help to solve it

Over the past few weeks, we’ve received a flurry of emails from concerned people who’ve seen sick and dead frogs across eastern Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

One person wrote: “About a month ago, I noticed the Green Tree Frogs living around our home showing signs of lethargy & ill health. I was devastated to find about 7 of them dead.”

Scientists record fin-to-fin contact in gentle giants, most likely part of courtship, for first time

Fin-to-fin synchronised swimming, thought likely to be part of courtship, has been seen in groups of basking sharks for the first time. Video cameras attached temporarily to the sharks gave scientists an unprecedented view of their hitherto secret underwater world.

The gentle giants are usually solitary creatures and virtually nothing is known about their breeding behaviour. The researchers also recorded one shark shooting out above the water, the first time a full breaching has been captured from the shark’s point of view. This may also be part of wooing a mate, perhaps by showing off the fish’s size.

Experiment using caffeine concoction on bees’ nests may help farmers ensure crops are pollinated

The caffeine in the morning coffee that primes many humans for the day appears to inject bumblebees with a similar dose of purpose, helping them pollinate more effectively, a study has found.

The impact of the climate crisis, habitat loss and pesticide use has strained wild pollinator populations, including bees, moths, wasps, butterflies, beetles and birds. As a result, some fruit growers have resorted to relying on “managed pollinators” such as commercial bumblebee colonies to pollinate their crops.

Allegra Stratton, Boris Johnson’s former press secretary, responds to question on Tories’ ‘unambitious’ climate policies

Boris Johnson’s former press secretary, who is now his spokesperson for the Cop26 climate summit, has said people could join the Green party as a way of saving the planet – while also saying joining the Tories would help as well.

Allegra Stratton, who moved from Downing Street to the Cop26 team in April, after plans were axed for daily TV briefings which she had been expected to front, made her comments to the Independent.

This project would rapidly deforest large areas of the Amazon, which would wreak havoc on the planet

Despite increasing global concern, Jair Bolsonaro is determined to expand his exploitation of Brazil’s crucial natural resources. His latest project, one of the most destructive yet, would rapidly deforest large areas of the Amazon.

Bolsonaro’s plan? To construct a 1,000km railway system extending right into the heart of the Amazon rainforest – with trains passing within 500 metres of 726 official environmentally protected areas. The new railway, called Ferrogrão, would also entail construction within 10km of another 18 priority conservation areas established by the ministry of the environment.

We asked a panelist of experts on when we need to start changing our economies and ways of consuming and producing. Their answer: now

We have zero years before climate and ecological breakdown, because it’s already here. We have zero years left to procrastinate. The longer we wait to act, the worse the floods, fires, droughts, famines and heatwaves will get.