The Guardian

Closure of Cottam plant in Nottinghamshire likely to lead to more than 150 job cuts

One of the UK’s last seven coal power stations will close this year after half a century of generating electricity, as the polluting fuel continues its rapid decline in the energy mix.

EDF Energy said more than 150 jobs were likely to be cut due to the closure of the Cottam plant in north Nottinghamshire on 30 September.

Blueprint for a carbon-neutral economy has been embraced by prominent Democrats and evokes FDR’s famous legacy

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is releasing a broad outline of a vision for the Green New Deal, a plan to battle economic and racial injustice while also fighting climate change.

The new congresswoman’s blueprint, to be made public today, does not set a date for phasing out fossil fuels. But it does aim to develop a carbon-neutral economy in 10 years, which would require huge strides in reducing the US’s reliance on oil and gas and coal. Specifically, the resolution says it is the duty of the federal government to craft a Green New Deal “to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”. That includes getting all power from “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources”.

Cuadrilla and Ineos say strict regulations around earthquakes hinder their work

The government has rejected pleas by fracking companies to review strict rules around earthquakes caused by their operations, in a major blow that could spell the end for Britain’s nascent shale industry.

Cuadrilla complained on Wednesday that it had only been able to frack a tiny section of its well near Blackpool last autumn because of the limits, and warned it would not be able to undertake commercial fracking if the regulations are not reviewed.

Dieter Helm says withdrawal from common agricultural policy could safeguard natural world

Britain’s withdrawal from the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) provides one of the few bright spots of Brexit, and if replaced with new legislation could help to restore some of the country’s degraded natural environment, one of the government’s leading economic advisers has said.

Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University, told the Guardian: “If there was any reason to be optimistic about Brexit, it is that it is the end of the CAP. It is hard to think how you could be anything other than better off if you had control of how you spend [the sums currently allocated in farming subsidies].”

On a tiny urban smallholding in Kenya, the Huruma Town Youth Group tend goats and chickens and grow vegetables – sharing their bounty with the community’s most vulnerable

In a space of less than an eighth of an acre in Huruma, a small informal settlement in north-east Nairobi, is a tiny farm housing 19 goats and 286 birds – chickens, doves and guineafowl.

Pens and cages have been cobbled together with discarded wood and corrugated iron. Goats hop from a pen curious to see their new visitors, passing day-old chicks who squeak from inside a cage. There’s a goat skin drying out in the sun as a bunch of flies swarm above it.

Electronic waste hazardous due to toxic parts was tracked to developing countries

The UK is the worst offender in Europe for illegally exporting toxic electronic waste to developing countries, according to a two-year investigation that tracked shipments from 10 European countries.

The investigation by the environmental watchdog the Basel Action Network (BAN) put GPS trackers on 314 units of computers, LCD monitors and printers placed in recycling facilities in 10 countries. Researchers mapped what they said was the export of 11 items to Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, Thailand and Ukraine.

In episode two of Guardian Australia’s Look at Me podcast, we head to the south-western grasslands of Australia – home to one of the rarest birds in the world, the plains-wanderer. Its habitat has been decimated by agriculture, but now some farmers are putting the bird’s survival before profit and becoming key figures in its conservation

Disintegration of rapidly melting Thwaites ice mass could threaten coastal communities worldwide

Scientists have discovered a giant cavity at the bottom of a disintegrating glacier in Antarctica, sparking concerns that the ice sheet is melting more rapidly than expected.

Researchers working as part of a Nasa-led study found the cavern, which they said was 300 metres tall and two-thirds the size of Manhattan, at the bottom of the massive Thwaites glacier.

Study says honeybees can learn to carry out exact numerical calculations

Honeybees can learn to add and subtract, according to research showing that while the insects have tiny brains, they are still surprisingly clever.

Researchers behind the study have previously found that honeybees can apparently understand the concept of zero, and learn to correctly indicate which of two groups of objects is the smaller.

Scottish ecologist, conservationist and mountaineer who was a leading authority on the Cairngorms

Adam Watson, who has died aged 88, honed his exemplary skills as a field scientist and conservationist on the snowy and windswept tops of the Cairngorms, in the eastern Highlands of Scotland.

Obsessive, authoritative, energetic and compelling in his approach, he spent decades in scholarly observations on nature and natural phenomena in mountain environments. Studying birds and mammals, soil erosion and snow patches, and developing unrivalled datasets on longterm changes in nature, Adam amassed a treasure trove of vital information on the impacts of climate change and human land use.

• World 1.5F hotter than average set between 1951 and 1980
• Current five-year stretch the warmest since records began

Global temperatures in 2018 were the fourth warmest on record, US government scientists have confirmed, adding to a stretch of five years that are now collectively the hottest period since modern measurements began.

The world in 2018 was 1.5F (0.83C) warmer than the average set between 1951 and 1980, said Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). This means 2018’s average global temperatures were the fourth warmest since 1880, placing it behind 2016, 2017 and 2015.

Lowest Paris agreement target may temporarily be surpassed for first time between now and 2023

Global warming could temporarily hit 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time between now and 2023, according to a long-term forecast by the Met Office.

Meteorologists said there was a 10% chance of a year in which the average temperature rise exceeds 1.5C, which is the lowest of the two Paris agreement targets set for the end of the century.

Top scientists condemn State of the Union address and say future presidents must confront climate change as urgent priority

A climate scientist and a former government expert in the audience for Donald Trump’s annual address to Congress said this will probably be the last administration that can forego talking about climate change in the State of the Union speech.

Trump did not mention rising temperatures or extreme weather, although he did tout the country’s status as the top producer of oil and gas and boast about how quickly his officials have moved to cut regulations.

Only 5% of shale gas company’s Blackpool well is fracked and it seeks lighter regulation

The shale gas firm Cuadrilla has expressed frustration that it was only able to frack a tiny section of its gas well near Blackpool because of the UK’s rules on minor earthquakes, suggesting it will only be able to resume fracking if the regulations are relaxed.

The company became the first to frack in the UK for years when it started operations last October at its Preston New Road site but was repeatedly forced to pause work because of the seismicity rules.

As a group of animal rights protesters roast a very realistic-looking fake dog on the streets of Sydney, butchers in France are attacked and campaigners in the UK hold noisy protests in supermarkets and restaurants, we look at whether vegan protests have become too extreme

Warren Entsch demands investigation after German convicted kidnapper boasts about new shipment

A government MP has said it “beggars belief” that more endangered Australian birds have been exported to a German organisation headed by a convicted kidnapper and extortionist, after a Guardian investigation revealed there had been multiple warnings that the birds could be sold to collectors at a huge profit.

Warren Entsch repeated calls for an independent investigation into how the Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots was able to receive hundreds of rare and endangered birds from Australia, after its founder, Martin Guth, used a social media post to say more endangered species had arrived at its facilities in January.

Heat, rainfall, droughts, cyclones and bushfires are all on the rise, Climate Council warns

Extreme weather events linked to climate change have the potential to disrupt Australia’s summer sports obsession at elite and grassroots level, the Climate Council warns.

Its latest report – Weather Gone Wild, released on Wednesday – says climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of events such as extreme heat, intense rainfall, droughts, tropical cyclones and bushfires.

World Health Organization official comments on row about safe levels of nitrogen dioxide

The World Health Organization says it has seen no evidence to support a German backlash against tough EU air pollution limits.

The country’s transport minister, Andreas Scheuer, sent a letter to the European commission last week calling for a review of the EU’s nitrogen dioxide (NO2) limits, despite signs of a government split over the issue.

Child health experts say public needs to be better informed about scale of crisis

• ‘It is so scary’: how the UK’s filthy air is taking children to A&E
  

Child health experts have said families and parents are worryingly unaware of the severe damage air pollution is doing to young people in the UK.

In a survey of leading health professionals, nine in 10 said air pollution was harming children in their areas, and a similar proportion (92%) said the public needed to be better informed about the issue.

Young patients with respiratory problems are a regular sight for doctors due to air pollution crisis

• Parents ‘worryingly unaware’ of damage from air pollution
  

Sixteen-month-old Madalena grins and throws her flashing ball across the consulting room, oblivious to the conversation going on around her.

Her mother, Patricia Correia, is explaining to the doctor that the family is thinking of returning to Portugal after a series of “wheezing episodes” that have forced the toddler to be rushed to A&E five times in the past six months. Once she was so ill, she was kept in for four days.