The Guardian

Conservative MP says drilling and pollution are ‘alarming prospect’ for communities

Zac Goldsmith has warned ministers that their plans to fast-track fracking risk turning whole regions of the country against the Conservatives and igniting a political backlash.

The Tory MP for Richmond said people had legitimate concerns about fracking and that government proposals to bypass local planning decisions on shale gas wells were a mistake.

Royal College of Nursing, British Medical Association and BMJ among those calling for shake-up to tackle toxic air crisis

The UK’s leading health professionals are calling on the government to implement the biggest shake-up of air quality legislation for 60 years in an effort to tackle the country’s growing air pollution crisis.

The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC) – representing major medical bodies including the Royal College of Nursing, the British Medical Association and the BMJ – is demanding ministers introduce a new clean air act amid growing concern about the devastating health impacts of the country’s toxic air.

The shallow seas around Britain absorb tens of million of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, scientists have discovered. This plays a critical role in stabilising the country’s ecology and in lessening the impact of carbon emissions.

But researchers warn that shelf seas are increasingly vulnerable to climate change and the impact is likely to worsen. In particular, rising temperatures and increased numbers of intense storms threaten to disrupt the coastal regions’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide. This could accelerate climate change, they state in Shelf Seas: The Engine of Productivity, published this week.

As air pollution fears rise, Cheltenham ‘put people before traffic’ and banned cars from part of its centre. But not everyone is happy

In the Regency spa town of Cheltenham, famous for its mineral springs and horse racing festival, an angry rebellion is gathering steam.

At its centre is a stone fountain supported by three cherubs. The landmark used to be on a roundabout, with cars, buses and trucks swirling around both it and pedestrians trying to cross the high street. Several decades ago the road layout changed to create a tiny plaza around the fountain, which became known as Boots Corner. But heavy traffic still rumbled by.

Tremor at Cuadrilla site in Little Plumpton is 18th since fracking restarted 12 days ago

A second tremor in a 24-hour period has been recorded at the UK’s only active fracking site near Blackpool.

Cuadrilla was forced to halt operations for 18 hours on Friday after a 0.8-magnitude tremor. Fracking restarted on Saturday morning before a second tremor was detected.

Exclusive: Simple act of breathing is killing 7 million people a year and harming billions more, but ‘a smog of complacency pervades the planet’, says Dr Tedros Adhanom

• Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: Air pollution is the new tobacco. Time to tackle this epidemic

Air pollution is the “new tobacco”, the head of the World Health Organization has warned, saying the simple act of breathing is killing 7 million people a year and harming billions more.

Over 90% of the world’s population suffers toxic air and research is increasingly revealing the profound impacts on the health of people, especially children.

In October 1903 a relentless series of Atlantic lows brought rain almost every day and many crops rotted in the ground

We in Britain are used to variations in our weather from month to month and year to year. But few periods in history were quite so variable as the period around the turn of the twentieth century, which saw both the driest month on record (February 1891), and the wettest (October 1903), since reliable rainfall records began in 1766.

In October 1903, across most of Britain, it rained almost every day. The cause was a relentless series of Atlantic lows, sweeping rapidly across the country from the west, and dumping their contents over the land.

Body of Julián Carrillo found with multiple bullet wounds in Chihuahua state on 24 October

Mexico is cementing its reputation as one of the deadliest places in the world for environmental and land defenders, human rights activists have warned after the latest murder of a prominent indigenous rights campaigner.

The body of Julián Carrillo, a member of the Alianza Sierra Madre organisation, was found with multiple bullet wounds in the mountains of Chihuahua state on the evening of 24 October.

Rowan Williams backs call for mass civil obedience ‘to bypass the government’s inaction and defend life itself’

• Letter: Facts about our ecological crisis are incontrovertible. We must take action

A new group of “concerned citizens” is planning a campaign of mass civil disobedience starting next month and promises it has hundreds of people – from teenagers to pensioners – ready to get arrested in an effort to draw attention to the unfolding climate emergency.

The group, called Extinction Rebellion, is today backed by almost 100 senior academics from across the UK, including the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Agreement with unions includes early retirement for miners, re-skilling and environmental restoration

Spain is to shut down most of its coal mines by the end of the year after government and unions struck a deal that will mean €250m (£221m) will be invested in mining regions over the next decade.

Pedro Sánchez’s new leftwing administration has moved quickly on environmental policy, abolishing a controversial “sunshine tax” on the solar industry, and announcing the launch of Spain’s long-delayed national climate plan next month.

Shale gas firm halts work near Blackpool after 17th quake is first over 0.5 magnitude limit

Cuadrilla has been forced to stop fracking after its operations at a well near Blackpool triggered an earthquake that breached the official threshold.

The company said it had paused work for 18 hours after the tremor on Friday morning. It was the 17th quake in the area since fracking began 11 days ago, but the first to be powerful enough to pass a regulatory threshold that requires fracking to stop.

Claire Perry failed to record meeting with Cuadrilla and others on transparency register

The government wants Britain to export its approach to fracking around the world, the energy minister Claire Perry has told the shale gas industry.

Details of Perry having a private meeting with fracking firms have emerged, as the 13th minor earthquake was recorded since the shale company Cuadrilla began fracking near Blackpool earlier this month.

Argentina’s Gran Chaco forest is being razed for soya, ending up in Europe as animal feed, and on our plates. It’s the backbone of Argentina’s fragile economy, but has come at a price for the indigenous people who live there

The extent of the destruction is painful to see. Flying over the area around the El Corralito indigenous community in a single-propeller plane, only thin strips of green are left between vast fields of pale, newly uncovered earth, pencilled in with parallel white lines of the ashes of bulldozed trees.

Only a few years ago, this stretch of land in Argentina’s northern province of Salta was still forest – home to the Wichí people, and part of the gigantic Gran Chaco forest that spreads across northern Argentina and its neighbouring countries Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. Second only to the Amazon in South America for its size and biodiversity, the Gran Chaco covers 250,000 sq miles of dry forest, which is being cut down faster than scientists can study it.

By rebating the revenue to households, disposable income rises, which can be a boon for the Canadian economy

Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Canada will implement a revenue-neutral carbon tax starting in 2019, fulfilling a campaign pledge he made in 2015.

Starting next spring, it’ll no longer be free to pollute in Canada. We’re putting a price on pollution in provinces that don’t yet have a plan to fight climate change. More on our plan to cut pollution, grow the economy & create jobs: https://t.co/VjCNOOKLVB
#EnvironmentEconomy pic.twitter.com/b4wFc17Qte

Third of coastline cannot be affordably protected, government climate change advisers say, with current plans ‘not fit for purpose’

Rising sea levels will claim homes, roads and fields around the coast of England, the government’s official advisers have warned, and many people are unaware of the risks they face.

The new report from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) said existing government plans to “hold the line” in many places – building defences to keep shores in their current position – were unaffordable for a third of the country’s coast. Instead, the CCC said, discussions about the “hard choices” needed must be started with communities that will have to move inland.

US oceanographic agency forecasts 60% chance of extreme heat stress and bleaching

Mass bleaching and coral death could be likely along the entire Great Barrier Reef this summer, according to a long-range forecast that coral experts say is “a wake-up call” for the Australian government.

The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) has forecast a 60% chance that the entire Great Barrier Reef will reach alert level one, which signals extreme heat stress and bleaching are likely.

First in network of chargers three times faster than current models installed near Paris

Shell has stepped up its move into electric vehicle infrastructure with the installation of its first ultrafast charging points in western Europe – but they are so powerful that no car currently on sale today would be able to fully exploit them.

The chargers at a motorway service station outside Paris are one of 80 European locations the Anglo-Dutch firm is planning for swift charging by 2020, including as many as eight in the UK.

Union’s president says bill’s current wording could lead to a lowering of standards

The National Farmers’ Union has told Theresa May she must treat the food industry as being of equal importance as the car sector, with special protections enshrined in new laws covering standards and production.

The NFU president, Minette Batters, said she had raised concerns in a phone call to the prime minister that food production was not at the heart of a new agriculture bill, the first major overhaul of legislation in the sector since the second world war.

New Caledonian crows have been filmed extracting a piece of food from a puzzle box by piecing together two separate rods. The birds were able to display highly flexible abilities to solve a complex problem without prior training. Until now, the ability to assemble different components had only been seen in great apes and humans

Burning coal is the single largest contributor to global climate breakdown. Human rights violations at the sites of fossil fuel extraction are often hidden.

The connections between County Clare, Ireland and La Guajira, Colombia may not be entirely obvious at first glance. Yet the regions are linked through a shared commodity: coal. Extracted in one region and burned in the other.

Coal extraction in La Guajira has a dirty secret, which I’ve witnessed first-hand: it is connected to a system of production entrenched in violence, bloodshed and environmental destruction.