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Revealed: emails show Trump and appointees tried to craft a narrative that forest protection efforts are responsible for wildfires

Political appointees at the interior department have sought to play up climate pollution from California wildfires while downplaying emissions from fossil fuels as a way of promoting more logging in the nation’s forests, internal emails obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The messaging plan was crafted in support of Donald Trump’s pro-industry arguments for harvesting more timber in California, which he says would thin forests and prevent fires – a point experts refute.

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People from across Britain will join TV host to discuss ways to cut emissions to zero by 2050

Sir David Attenborough will address members of the public who are taking part in the UK’s first climate assembly this weekend.

The TV presenter and naturalist will appear in Birmingham, where the 110 members are meeting to address how to reduce emissions to zero by 2050, to thank them for taking part.

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Nitrogen oxide emissions from Bluestar bus, trialled in Southampton, are less than a diesel car

An air-filtering bus which removes pollutants from city streets while it operates is to be rolled out into six regions of the UK following a successful trial.

The bus, trialled since 2018 in Southampton, is fitted with fans on the roof that draw in air at a rate of one cubic metre per second and filter out ultra-fine particulate pollution.

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Report reveals total has fallen 7% in last three years, but says much more still needs to be done

Total food waste in the UK has fallen by the equivalent of 7% per person over the past three years, but individual households should still be doing more to reduce the 4.5m tonnes of food waste, the government’s waste advisory body has warned.

The volume of food waste generated in the retail supply chain, the hospitality sector, and in homes stood at 9.5m tonnes in 2018, down from 10m tonnes in 2015 and 11.2m in 2007, according to a detailed study from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP).

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Abbeydale, South Yorkshire: A much-loved tree may have gone, but dozens of small holes drilled up its trunk make me think a new chapter is about to begin

When Jim died, we decided, having talked it through with the neighbours, to leave him where he was in the garden. Our friend had been good to us in life and there was no reason to assume that would change. Jim was a tree, a common alder, although given that alders are monoecious, or hermaphroditic, not the most appropriate moniker. He, or she, was named by our daughter Rosa, who often spent afternoons after school in Jim’s boughs, hugging the fissured grey trunk, as rough as an elephant. But despite being a similar age, with a similar lifespan, the alder didn’t long survive Rosa leaving home. Over several springs, its leaves became increasingly sparse and failed to unfurl properly. An orange stain appeared in cracks at the base of the trunk. Small branches began dying off, then larger ones. Last year Jim gave up the ghost altogether, a victim to alder dieback, the Phytophthora mould infection that is ravaging alders up and down the country.

Related: Country diary: a chainsaw massacre in the alder woods

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Exclusive: Almost 80 species across Australia have lost more than a third of their habitat in the catastrophic fires, preliminary data suggests

The superb lyrebird, famous for its ability to mimic almost any sound, may have plunged from being a common to a threatened species after its three varieties lost between a third and more than half of their known habitat in the bushfire crisis.

A preliminary analysis by Birdlife Australia found that both the central and northern superb lyrebirds, located in NSW and southern Queensland, were likely to have had more than 50% of their habitat affected by fire. The southern superb lyrebird, from Victoria and southern NSW, is estimated to have had 34% of where it lives burned.

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New Tasmania Premier Peter Gutwein appoints himself minister for climate change, marking the first time the state's Liberal Party has created a separate portfolio for climate.

The post Tasmania’s new Liberal premier appoints himself as climate minister appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australian bushfires to drive global greenhouse gas concentrations to new records, as more than half of Australians report experiencing bushfire impacts.

The post Australian bushfires drive up global emissions as economic costs mount appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Curtin University research that aims to develop a new way of producing, storing and exporting green hydrogen from Australian resources has been awarded more than $580,000 by the Federal Government

The post Curtin green hydrogen research supported with ARC funding appeared first on RenewEconomy.

"Doomsday Clock" moved to 100 seconds to midnight as Morrison government is slammed for "mendacious" climate denial.

The post Australia singled out for climate denial as “Doomsday Clock” ticks closer to midnight appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Regulator approval for new transmission line boosts South Australia's push towards 100 per cent renewables, and unlocks up to 5,000MW of wind and solar.

The post South Australia on track to 100 pct renewables, as regulator comes to party appeared first on RenewEconomy.

All variants of Tesla Model Y available in next few months, with Performance variant deliveries to start in February, Tesla staff have told Canadian customer.

The post Tesla staff says Model Y will be available in all variants by September appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Solar research agency Solliance have taken a critical step forward for the highly efficient solar technology as it moves towards commercial delivery and application.

The post Scaled perovskite solar modules pass three critical tests appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A new study has shown that the global solar PV, battery storage, and wind power sectors will serve as the major job creating technologies by 2050.

The post Solar, storage, and wind tipped as top energy job generators appeared first on RenewEconomy.

India’s renewable energy capacity increased to 86GW in 2019, according to new figures from JMK Research & Analytics.

The post India installed 7.5GW of solar and 2.4GW of wind in 2019 appeared first on RenewEconomy.

How can a bushfire be described as "under control" if it's still burning? Here's an explanation of what the terms mean. Thomas Duff, Postdoctoral Fellow, Forest and Ecosystem Science, University of Melbourne Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

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Campaigners welcome common-sense move but say companies need to be bolder

• Tesco to stop sale of plastic-wrapped multipacks in stores

Tesco is to remove 67m pieces of plastic from its shelves from March by doing away with the plastic wraps commonplace on multibuy packs of tins. It sounds like a huge amount, but is still only a small proportion of the 1bn pieces of plastic that the chain has pledged to remove this year.

Campaigners hailed the move as “simple logic” and “common sense”, asking why retailers had not done this sooner. Part of the answer is that they were not sure consumers would continue to respond to multibuy offers if the tins were not physically bound together, but trials appear to have produced positive results.

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The Policy Analyst, under the supervision of the ‘Head of LDC Support Team’ and the CAEP project leads is to assist the ongoing work in Nepal under the CAEP project to help in the revision of Nepal’s NDC.

Australia's bushfire crisis underscores urgent need to decentralise Australia's electricity grid. Building up networks of solar batteries is the quickest, easiest, cheapest answer.

The post Bushfire crisis: The answer to future energy security lies on our rooftops appeared first on RenewEconomy.