The Guardian

More than 2,000 farmers and agriculture leaders express concern proposed Carmichael coalmine could affect groundwater, biodiversity and climate change

A group of Australian farmers have joined the large coalition of groups fighting against Adani’s giant Carmichael coalmine, after they became concerned about the affects the mine would have on groundwater, biodiversity, rural communities and climate change.

Farmers for Climate Action – a group of more than 2,000 farmers and agriculture leaders concerned about climate change – became the newest group to join the Stop Adani alliance last week, at the same time as one of its members attracted more than 30,000 signatures to a petition calling on the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, to rescind her commitment to give Adani unlimited free access to groundwater used by farmers in the region.

Conservationists say threatened seabird is vulnerable to the environmental effects of rising air temperatures and warming oceans caused by climate change

Tasmanian scientists will trial a new tactic this spring to help the shy albatross fight extinction: constructing artificial nests.

Conservationists hope the nests will boost the population of the threatened seabird, which they believe is vulnerable to the environmental effects of climate change.

The world’s largest ever field trial demonstrates widely used insecticides harm both honeybees and wild bees, increasing calls for a ban

Widely used insecticides damage the survival of honeybee colonies, the world’s largest ever field trial has shown for the first time, as well as harming wild bees.

The farm-based research, along with a second new study, also suggests widespread contamination of entire landscapes and a toxic “cocktail effect” from multiple pesticides.

New research shows that by 2100 the economic loss from warming temperatures will be on par with the Great Recession, with states in the south most affected

Climate change is likely to worsen existing inequalities in the US, with the poorest areas of the country poised to lose as much as 20% of their income by the end of the century if greenhouse gases are not significantly reduced.

Related: A third of the world now faces deadly heatwaves as result of climate change

Kit Harington describes a ‘very sad irony’ as the HBO show films in locations where ice is shrinking, even as his character fears the approaching winter

His character Jon Snow may fret about the arrival of winter, but Game of Thrones actor Kit Harington has said he was instead confronted by “terrifying” evidence of global warming while filming the HBO show.

Harington said it was a “very sad irony” to film in locations with diminishing ice for scenes where the arrival of winter, and the frosty undead from beyond the Wall, is feared by his character.

Governments must end incentives that see plastic waste shipped abroad, where it is often buried or burned, rather than being turned back into bottles at home, say industry leaders

Governments must stop exporting so much plastic waste to countries such as China and keep more in-country to be recycled into bottles to tackle the waste crisis, industry insiders say.

A day after the Guardian revealed that a million plastic bottles are bought every minute across the world, experts aiming to provide a closed loop in which each bottle is used to make a new one, say their industry faces multiple hurdles.

Court orders 20 residents to leave the community garden set up on derelict site to protest against airport expansion

A community project set up to protest against a third runway at Heathrow has been given 14 days to leave its home by the high court.

Grow Heathrow took over a derelict garden centre in Sipson in 2010 and turned it into a community garden as part of action in protest against the plans for the runway. About 20 people live at the site and from their base they have become an integral part of the community activity against the building of a third runway at the airport.

A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and despite the rise in recycling culture over the past few decades, just 7% of those collected last year were turned into new bottles. Most end up in landfill or in the ocean and by 2050 plastic waste is estimated to outweigh all the fish in the sea

Modelling shows that ocean currents can concentrate slow-degrading debris in certain parts of the world’s oceans, leading to so-called ‘garbage patches’

It is estimated that between four and 12m metric tonnes of plastic makes its way into the ocean each year. This figure is only likely to rise, and a 2016 report predicted that by 2050 the amount of plastic in the sea will outweigh the amount of fish.

A normal plastic bottle takes about 450 years to break down completely, so the components of a bottle dropped in the ocean today could still be polluting the waters for our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren.

Deposit return schemes for plastic bottles have been shown to cut litter and increase recycling in many countries – but not everyone agrees they’re a good idea

More than 4m plastic bottles a week could be prevented from littering streets and marine environments in Britain if authorities adopted the kind of deposit-return schemes that operate in at least a dozen other countries, according to new evidence.

A report for the last parliament that was never published suggests there could be a dramatic reduction in the number of bottles littered if people paid a deposit that would be refunded if they returned used bottles.

International climate task force says companies should disclose all of their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions

Banks should disclose lending to companies with carbon-related risks, according to recommendations in a new report by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.

The TCFD report – part of a G20 initiative led by governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney and former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg – outlines how companies should disclose climate-related information in their financial filings, with the aim of allowing economies to properly value climate-related risks.

The government has rejected advice to approve the new regulations that ensure homes, hospitals and schools do not overheat as the number of deadly heatwaves rises with climate change

The government must reverse its opposition to new building regulations that ensure homes, hospitals and schools do not overheat as the number of deadly heatwaves rises, according to its official climate change advisers.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) recommended the new regulations in 2015 but ministers rejected the advice, citing a commitment to “reduce net regulation on homebuilders”. Without action, the number of people dying as a result of heat is expected to more than triple to 7,000 a year by 2040, the CCC warns in its annual report on the UK’s progress on tackling global warming.

Our dependence on plastic has to end as we contribute to an estimated 12m tonnes entering our oceans, polluting marine life, every year

Staying hydrated is good for our health. But contributing to the ever growing mound of waste plastic is not only bad for the planet, but for our wellbeing too.

The global demand for plastic bottles, spurred on by the drinks industry, is wreaking havoc on the environment. Every year, about half a trillion new bottles are produced, and many billions end up in landfill, the sea or the environment.

The Go-Go Gang are a bunch of dancing militants on a mission to save the planet through kidnappings – and killer moves. Find out more in this taste of Murder a Go-Go, photographer Matt Henry’s fictional mashup of eco-action and 1960s exploitation cinema

Natalie Fee left a job in television to focus on reducing plastic pollution. Her latest project, Refill, aims to make reusing a plastic bottle simpler than buying a new one and it’s catching on in cities from Bath to Bonn

Scrambling down the muddy riverbank, Natalie Fee frowns as she looks out across the River Avon. Three weeks earlier she had spent a day with other volunteers collecting hundreds of plastic bottles that were littering the river as it made its way to the sea. Now a new tide of plastic has returned.

“In a sense it is dispiriting,” says Fee as she starts to gather up the bottles strewn along the bank. “In another way, it just highlights how important it is we keep pushing ahead with the work we are doing.”

Goat Island, East Devon After trotting through coastal scrub, the path abruptly writhes and plunges into dark shadow

A hot day on the South West Coast Path between Axmouth and Lyme Regis. The quivering air smells warmly of bracken. Gorse pods snap sharply, flinging their seeds into the tangled undergrowth.

After trotting easily through coastal scrub, the path abruptly writhes and plunges into the dark shadow of the chasm. This is the undercliff, a wooded no-man’s land between clifftop and shoreline, formed by a continuous cycle of landslips.

Researchers have captured footage of cockatoos in North Queensland, Australia, playing drum solos with little sticks and pods in an attempt to attract the opposite sex

Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres among signatories of letter warning that the next three years will be crucial to stopping the worst effects of global warming

Avoiding dangerous levels of climate change is still just about possible, but will require unprecedented effort and coordination from governments, businesses, citizens and scientists in the next three years, a group of prominent experts has warned.

Warnings over global warming have picked up pace in recent months, even as the political environment has grown chilly with Donald Trump’s formal announcement of the US’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement. This year’s weather has beaten high temperature records in some regions, and 2014, 2015 and 2016 were the hottest years on record.

The city is not just restricting sales but working to ensure people have access to safe high-quality tap water

Americans drink enough bottled water each week to circle the globe two times around. That was one of the many alarming facts that motivated politicians in San Francisco to pursue a progressive environmental regulation no other major US city had dared – a ban on bottled water.

The liberal California city had previously led the way on banning plastic shopping bags, but the 2014 proposal to restrict bottled water was more modest. Although the board of supervisors voted unanimously to phase out the sale of single-use plastic water bottles, the rule only applied to city property.

On the seabed, where the water is as dark as ink, lies a vast treasure of untouched resources. Nautilus Minerals will use remote-controlled robots to steamroll the bottom of the Bismarck Sea off the coast of Papua New Guinea – but this emerging technology could forever scar the landscape of the sea