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California's SpaceX company expects to make a piece of history later when it re-flies a Falcon rocket.

British gardens also saw a ‘waxwing winter’ in this winter’s Big Garden Birdwatch, conservationists say

The number of robins visiting gardens hit a 20-year high in this winter’s Big Garden Birdwatch, conservationists said.

Average numbers of the robin seen in gardens were up to their highest levels since 1986, making it the seventh most commonly seen bird in the citizen science survey in January.

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In the latest in our series on Australian green energy projects, we find out how the ACT is transitioning to 100% renewable energy, aided by the country’s largest community-owned solar farm

• How the ‘nonna effect’ got Darebin’s pensioners signing up to solar
• How Daylesford’s windfarm took back the power

As Australia remains mired in a broken debate about the supposed dangers of renewable energy, some states and territories are ignoring the controversy and steaming ahead.

While Australia is far from the renewable capital of the world, the Australian Capital Territory may soon be among the world’s top renewable energy regions. And as it transitions, the ACT is demonstrating the benefits of the renewables boom to the rest of the country.

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Helped by the country’s largest community-owned solar farm, Australia’s capital is making plans to provide all its energy from renewables. Wind turbines now being built around Canberra and the 1.2MW community-owned solar farm will ensure the ACT meets its 2020 goal. About 600 locals have a share in the scheme

• Renewables roadshow: how Canberra took lead in renewable energy race

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The roar of the furnaces, the rattle of the conveyors, and the occasional whoop of a siren marked out both day and night at Hazelwood. The pungent smell of brown coal permeates the air, and the fine particles would work their way into your clothes, hair and shoes.

On quiet evenings you could hear it all the way over in the nearby town of Churchill, seven kilometres away. That distant hum has been a comforting one as the station produced power in all weathers, day and night, for more than five decades. For many in Churchill and the other coal towns of Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, the noise also represented continuity of employment for more than 450 workers.

Those old certainties are now disappeared. The eight units that make up the 1,600 megawatt power station were progressively decommissioned this week, all now shut off ahead of Hazelwood’s official closure on March 31. While some 250 workers will remain, the distant hum has settled to a whisper.

When the brand new Hazelwood power station was officially opened on March 12, 1971, it represented a new and confident future for the Latrobe Valley region and the state of Victoria. Plans for this major infrastructure project were first made in 1956 and the first contracts signed in 1959. Victorian Premier Sir Henry Bolte spoke of the Latrobe Valley as the “Ruhr of Australia”.

The first six generating units were constructed between 1964 and 1967, and the plant was eventually expanded to include another two. All eight were operational by the time of the official opening in 1971. The station was fed by the Morwell open cut brown coal mine, and was built right next door to the mine’s open-cast pit. The Morwell mine eventually grew to such mammoth proportions that the nearby Morwell River had to be diverted three times. Each day, the mine fed more than 55,000 tonnes of brown coal into Hazelwood’s eight furnaces.

The Hazelwood station was planned, built and operated by the State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SECV). This government-owned body was formed in 1921 and had overseen the development of the power generation network in the Latrobe Valley. The first power station at Yallourn (now decommissioned) began providing Victoria with power in 1924, and was followed by further expansion at Yallourn with newer units that still operate today. The Morwell power station and briquette factory were completed in 1959 (and shut down in 2014), and the nearby Hazelwood completed the picture by 1971.

A postwar coal community

These power stations, along with the Morwell and Yallourn coal mines, defined the industrial heart of the Latrobe Valley as part of a postwar push to create entire communities in the region, centred on the coal industry. The SECV and then the state government had a meticulously planned vision, deciding on the location of new developments and entire new towns. By 1981 electricity generation and mining employed more than 10,000 workers in an overwhelmingly male-dominated workforce.

It had not all been plain sailing. Completion of the Morwell power station was delayed by financial constraints and then technical problems. Coal from the Morwell mine proved to be unsuitable for briquette manufacture and so the SECV reverted to using Yallourn coal in the briquette furnaces. The SECV also met with considerable local criticism over its decision to close the planned township of Yallourn so as to dig out the coal underneath it. Polluted though it was, many Yallourn residents had no desire to leave their tree-lined community.

The new town of Churchill, built to house the industrial workforce and their families, would accompany the Hazelwood development. Churchill was a model town located to avoid the prevailing winds from existing power stations, perched on a hill with views across the Latrobe valley, the distant Baw Baw ranges, and newly created lakes of Hazelwood Pondage. Churchill joined other new public housing developments in nearby Moe and Morwell to house the expanding workforce.

Yet life in the coal heartland came with its own problems. Issues with air quality began to become evident as early as the 1970s, while the privatisation of Hazelwood and the other power stations from 1996 led to 8,000 job losses. A 2004 WWF report named Hazelwood as the dirtiest power station in Australia, producing the most greenhouse emissions per megawatt of energy.

Hazelwood became a powerful political symbol and rallying cry for those concerned about the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on global warming. It has been credited with producing 5% of the nation’s power and 3% of its carbon dioxide emissions.

The media image of Hazelwood today, its eight stacks standing as a visual image of greenhouse emissions and industrial pollution, was forged in the decade since the WWF report. Worse was to come when it became the site of a coalmine fire that blazed for 45 days in February-March 2014, showering Morwell with smoke and ash and creating a major public health disaster.

The confident, modernist image of 1970s Hazelwood went up in smoke, but this image has not been forgotten by many in the Latrobe Valley who lived through it.

Federation University, through the Centre for Gippsland Studies, is planning to take part in a project to record the memories and experiences of Hazelwood workers. The author thanks Engie, who approved a site visit to research this article, and Mark Richards, a Hazelwood worker and CFMEU delegate who acted as a tour guide.

Erik Eklund does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Mars Inc, Staples, The Gap and others speak out against Trump’s sweeping executive order that begins to dismantle Obama’s Clean Power Plan

In 2015, when Barack Obama signed the nation’s clean power plan, more than 300 companies came out in support, calling the guidelines “critical for moving our country toward a clean energy economy”. Now, as Donald Trump moves to strip those laws away, Mars Inc, Staples and The Gap are just a few of those US corporations who are challenging the new president’s reversal on climate policy.

Related: Trump's order signals end of US dominance in climate change battle

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Study shows extent to which US and western European demand for clothes, toys and mobile phones contributes to air pollution in developing countries

Western consumers who buy cheap imported toys, clothes and mobile phones are indirectly contributing to tens of thousands of pollution-related deaths in the countries where the goods are produced, according to a landmark study.

Nearly 3.5 million people die prematurely each year due to air pollution, the research estimates, and about 22% of these deaths are associated with goods and services that were produced in one region for consumption in another.

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Country Diarist who adopted the wilds of Scotland as his home and inspiration

Ray Collier, who has died aged 79, was devoted to the wildlife and landscape of Scotland, and used his years of experience, depth of knowledge and lively writing to kindle a similar love in others. A longstanding member of the Guardian’s band of Country Diarists, he also wrote for a sheaf of Highland newspapers, took eagerly to blogging when the world went online and was the author of two respected books.

Born in Gloucestershire, he adopted the magnificent wilds of Scotland as his home and inspiration when his work for the Nature Conservancy took him north in the 1960s. When he retired in 2002, he was the chief warden for Scottish Natural Heritage, and so absorbed in his patch that he let his passport lapse and never renewed it. The scenery and wildlife on his doorstep were more than ample, especially as the doorstep extended from his porch in Strathnairn, near Inverness, to the Western Isles, Cape Wrath and the English border.

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A 30-metre layer of salt discovered beneath Dead Sea reveals drought worse than any in human history – and it could happen again

Far below the Dead Sea, between Israel, Jordan and Palestinian territories, researchers have found evidence of a drought that has no precedent in human experience.

From depths of 300 metres below the landlocked basin, drillers brought to the surface a core that contained 30 metres of thick, crystalline salt: evidence that 120,000 years ago, and again about 10,000 years ago, rainfall had been only about one fifth of modern levels.

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The Australian state of Queensland is assessing the extent of the damage caused by the major storm.

Eleven Asian elephants manage to drag themselves clear of a muddy hole in Cambodia.

Critically endangered Indochinese tigers are captured on sensor-triggered cameras throughout 2016, set up in Thailand’s Eastern Forest Complex by the Forest Department and wildlife NGOs Freeland and Panthera. Conservationists say it gives hope for the survival of an animal whose total population is estimated at 221, spread across Myanmar and Thailand

• Footage courtesy of the Freeland foundation
• Nearly extinct tigers found breeding in Thai jungle

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Lower cull targets are easier to achieve but risk increasing instances of TB in cattle rather than reducing them, warns expert

The government’s killing targets for the controversial badger cull in England are “deliberately being biased down”, according to a leading animal population expert.

The badger cull, now rolled out to seven counties in England, is part of efforts to reduce the scourge of tuberculosis in cattle but has been heavily criticised by scientists.

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Models suggest solar geoengineering could reduce climate change and our independently assessed studies are vital to understanding its full potential

Even if the world were to cut emissions to zero tomorrow, global temperatures and sea levels would rise for decades. If our roll of the climate dice is unlucky, they could rise for centuries. It is in this context that some climate researchers have begun to reluctantly take seriously ideas first proposed in the 1960s: the possibility of using solar geoengineering to help restore the world’s climate, alongside aggressive actions to reduce greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions to zero and below.

Fear of solar geoengineering is entirely healthy. Its mere prospect might be hyped by fossil fuel interests to thwart emissions cuts. It could be used by one or a few nations in a way that’s harmful to many. There might be some yet undiscovered risk making the technology much less effective in reality than the largely positive story told by computer models.

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EU membership has given Britain vital environmental laws. Any changes to legislation must be done with full public scrutiny to protect us from exploitation

When Theresa May fires the Brexit starting gun by triggering article 50, she will start a process that could dramatically reshape almost every aspect of British life – from our economy, laws, and place in the world to our natural environment. The difficult choices our politicians make in just a few years could change the face of Britain for generations to come.

Even before the tough bargaining with the EU and other countries start in earnest, another, more domestic negotiation process will get underway – the constitutional power struggle between parliament and government over who will have the final say on the momentous Brexit decisions. A lot will ride on the outcome of this tug of war, and that includes the fate of many vital environmental safeguards we take for granted.

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Critically endangered Indochinese tigers are captured on sensor-triggered cameras throughout 2016, set up in Thailand’s Eastern Forest Complex by the Forest Department and wildlife NGOs Freeland and Panthera. Conservationists say it gives hope for the survival of an animal whose total population is estimated at 221, spread across Myanmar and Thailand

• Footage courtesy of the Freeland foundation
• Nearly extinct tigers found breeding in Thai jungle
  

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US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to repeal the climate change efforts of his predecessor Barack Obama.

US President Donald Trump has followed through on his promise to undo Barack Obama’s climate policies, signing an executive order to review his predecessor’s Clean Power Plan and any other regulations that “burden the development or use of domestically produced energy resources”. The move potentially paves the way for the United States to walk away from its commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement.

America’s leadership on climate change has been patchy at best, yet under Obama the country made an important diplomatic shift – one that now looks to be fundamentally unravelling. Trump’s executive order, released on Tuesday, aims to dismantle the network of institutions and laws that regulate greenhouse emissions, and those that conduct globally important research to track climate change. The consequences, both at home and abroad, will be severe.

The order comes as little surprise. Trump, after all, has previously claimed that climate change is a conspiracy perpetrated by the Chinese government to gain economic advantage at America’s expense, and made a campaign promise to undo the Paris deal. His administration has deep ties to the oil and gas industry, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a former chief executive of ExxonMobil. Trump also greenlit the controversial Dakota Access pipeline.

Trump’s appointment of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) caused alarm among environmental activists and EPA staff alike. Pruitt has a history of suing the EPA during his time as Attorney General of Oklahoma, and hundreds of recently released emails attest to his close relationship with the oil and gas industry.

The new executive order signals that Trump does not want climate research to be carried out by government agencies such as the EPA, NASA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In a speech to Congress earlier this month, he outlined plans to slash the EPA’s budget. He has also pledged to reinvigorate the coal industry, and the Republican-controlled House has already rolled back an Obama-era regulation that prevented coal companies dumping their waste in rivers.

China leading the climate race

The irony is that while Trump may believe that the emissions targets agreed upon in Paris would weaken the US economy, particularly against China, the reverse is actually closer to the truth.

As my colleague Ben Habib recently argued, China now leads the world in renewable energy investment, a trend that will see it dominate the market in the decades to come. The Paris targets are one way that other countries can similarly encourage clean energy investment.

Meanwhile, China’s plans to move away from its heavy use of coal-fired electricity generation means the price of coal will continue to fall, making America’s cherished coal industry less profitable and exacerbating the economic and social costs to coal mining communities. With many analysts warning of a potential “carbon bubble”, Trump is in danger of backing the wrong horse.

The Chinese government’s desire to move away from fossil fuels is driven partly by serious domestic pollution and health issues. Instead of cutting research funds, the US should pay similar attention to the health of its own citizens.

America’s huge size and geographical diversity means it is likely to experience many different climate impacts, from coastal flooding and severe storms to drought and wildfires.

Global impacts

The Pentagon has repeatedly warned that climate change is a threat to global security that will make existing challenges even harder to deal with.

Competition over scarce resources such as food and water have already contributed to the civil war in Syria, and increasingly violent conflicts over food and farmland in the Horn of Africa. These conflicts have contributed to a growing mass migration crisis, and longer droughts and irregular rainfall in agricultural regions will impact global food prices.

People in the Pacific Islands will likely lose their homes to sea level rise, potentially adding further to the migration of refugees from around the world. Some of the poorest countries in the world, including the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand, will also face the impacts of sea-level rise, yet lack the resources to adapt to the changing environment. More frequent and intense storms and extreme weather events such as cyclones will create humanitarian crises that will require an international response.

Many of these crises will require an American response, whether through the provision of disaster relief and support, or through managing increased migration. When it comes to violent conflict as a result of climate-related tensions, it is likely that America would face immense global pressure to intervene.

It is clear that Trump has less appetite for international intervention than his predecessors. But nor does the White House appear to place any value on managing America’s own vulnerability to climate change.

If Trump’s climate policy takedown is successful, he may well find himself presiding over a country that is weakened economically, socially and politically, both at home and abroad.

Kumuda Simpson is affiliated with the NTEU Climate Action Network.

Better infrastructure for transporting people by bike is great. But cycle freight could free up roads and transform cities and towns too

The plastic bike basket I bought online was billed as “large”, but even so I was amazed when it arrived. This was a behemoth – a cavernous, black box into which you could as easily fit a decent-sized dog as a bag of shopping.

Fitted to my new commuter bike, the initial effect was comical. But such worries were soon forgotten given how astonishingly useful it proved.

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While observing sperm whale off the Sri Lankan coast, Philip Hoare came face to face with eight hunting orcas who had no fear of the 100-strong sperm whale pod

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