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Low-cost US airline JetBlue announced Monday that it will purchase carbon credits to offset emissions from all its domestic flights beginning in July, while also expanding its sustainable aviation fuel usage.

Regulations would limit projects that require environmental review and no longer require agencies to weigh climate impacts

The Trump administration is set to unveil new regulations which would limit the types of projects like highways and pipelines that require environmental review and no longer require federal agencies to weigh their climate impacts, sources familiar with the plan said.

The proposed overhaul will update how federal agencies implement the bedrock National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa), a law meant to ensure the government protects the environment when reviewing or making decisions about major projects, from building roads and bridges, cutting forests, expanding broadband to approving interstate pipelines such as the Keystone XL.

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Shift to gas saved more than 300m tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide as nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide levels dropped

The human toll from coal-fired pollution in America has been laid bare by a study that has found more than 26,000 lives were saved in the US in just a decade due to the shift from coal to gas for electricity generation.

Related: The Guardian view on the bushfires: Australia needs a government with the right priorities | Editorial

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Phasing out synthetic pesticides and fertilisers and aggressive emission reductions among series of solutions outlined by scientists

The world must eradicate pesticide use, prioritise nature-based farming methods and urgently reduce water, light and noise pollution to save plummeting insect populations, according to a new “roadmap to insect recovery” compiled by experts.

The call to action by more than 70 scientists from across the planet advocates immediate action on human stress factors to insects which include habitat loss and fragmentation, the climate crisis, pollution, over-harvesting and invasive species.

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Massachusetts’ December auction for its Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) carbon market settled above the programme’s first sale, but stayed within recent price levels for the in-state power sector ETS, a market source said.

Almost as rare as the plants he protects, 24-year-old Josh Styles is not your average botanist. In 2017 he founded the North West Rare Plant Initiative, a conservation project in his local region. His aim is to resurrect 44 plant species that are extinct or threatened with extinction in the area, aiding biodiversity and battling the climate crisis. Richard Sprenger went to meet him in his natural habitat – the sand dunes and peat bogs of north-west England – to see the impact his work is having and find out why, when the Amazon rainforest is on fire, it still matters

• We are supporting four charities this year that are harnessing the power of nature of the climate crisis, just like Josh in this video. Click here to donate

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Norway’s state-owned oil and gas major Equinor will cut greenhouse gas emissions from its Norwegian operations 40% by 2030, 70% by 2040, and reach near-zero emissions by mid-century, it announced Monday.

South Korean carbon prices have dropped nearly 20% over the past two weeks amid rumours of government intervention, with market participants saying the decrease has come against bearish market fundamentals.

The president of the Esperance Dive Club was attacked off Cull Island, in an area notorious for shark attacks

An experienced scuba diver killed by a white shark off Western Australia’s southern coast was at home in the ocean and believed if he ever was attacked he would be unlucky, his grieving wife says.

Gary Johnson had just entered the water when he was attacked about 1pm on Sunday near Cull Island, close to West Beach in Esperance.

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Surge in processing industry will increase Ireland’s already too high carbon emissions

Inside Digital Realty’s Dublin data centre, racks of shiny black servers throb and whirr as unseen fans cool machines that steadily process unending data.

It operates 24 hours a day from the business park, sited on a former orchard, and the data joins a digital torrent in an underground fibre ring network that sweeps around the Irish capital and connects to undersea cables – the physical backbones of the digital world.

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Relatively little has changed since the Black Saturday tragedy. It is as though Australia suffers amnesia when it comes to bushfire preparedness. Rod Keenan, Professor, University of Melbourne Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

A Hungarian voluntary carbon offset vendor has been accused of reselling previously retired credits and of listing some units on its online registry without authorisation.

Shareable online images of chimpanzees, elephants and other animals are threatening their conservation and welfare. Zara Bending, Associate, Centre for Environmental Law, Macquarie University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

• New England Aquarium partners with local firm
• Project could help work to save endangered right whales

An aquarium and an engineering firm in Massachusetts are working on a project to better protect whales – by monitoring them from space.

The New England Aquarium, based in Boston, and Draper, a firm based in nearby Cambridge, say new and higher-tech solutions are needed in order to protect whales from extinction. So they are using data from sources such as satellites, sonar and radar to keep a closer eye on how many whales are in the ocean.

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Electric cars and consumer electronics use mineral mined in exploitative conditions in Congo

Followers of Elon Musk are used to big claims on Twitter. The social media habits of the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire have landed him in legal hot water on multiple occasions. But for the battery industry one boast stands out: a tweeted pledge to remove an obscure mineral mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo from the next generation of Tesla’s electric cars.

Batteries are the key component in the electric car revolution that Tesla kickstarted, and each one contains cobalt. Yet concerns about human rights abuses and child labour have prompted a dual effort to cut the amount of cobalt used in batteries and to clean up complex global supply chains.

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Japan aims to power region, scene of 2011 meltdown, with 100% renewable energy by 2040

Fukushima is planning to transform itself into a renewable energy hub, almost nine years after it became the scene of the world’s worst nuclear accident for a quarter of a century.

The prefecture in north-east Japan will forever be associated with the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on 11 March 2011, but in an ambitious project the local government has vowed to power the region with 100% renewable energy by 2040, compared with 40% today.

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Research for Oxfam shows inequality between footprints of people in UK and in countries including Rwanda, Ethiopia and Malawi

The average British person will have emitted more carbon dioxide in the first two weeks of this year than a citizen of any one of seven African nations does in an entire year.

This is the key finding of an Oxfam project, published on Sunday, which discovered that someone in the UK will take just five days to emit the same carbon as someone in Rwanda does in a year.

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Walkers are paying a hidden price for the green revolution, say critics, with cables across pavements and inaudible engines

They are symbols of environmental friendliness, but electric cars could be making environments increasingly unfriendly to pedestrians. Inaudible engines and obstructive charging systems are putting people with disabilities or pushchairs at risk, according to road safety campaigners who say that pedestrians are paying a hidden price for the green revolution.

Dave Taylor, a resident in the London Borough of Ealing, contacted the Observer after reading an article on charging electric vehicles. “My photo of the car with the charging cable across the pavement highlights a very real issue that is not being addressed,” he says.

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