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Make-up artist Emmy Burbidge travels to Papua New Guinea to discover the truth about what’s in her make-up, and find out whether there’s a sustainable way of producing the oil used.

Charities write to Sajid Javid requesting increase of spending from £17bn to £42bn over next three years

Britain’s biggest environmental groups have warned the government that funding to tackle the climate emergency must be more than double next year to avoid an even greater cost from catastrophic ecological breakdown in the future.

Writing to the chancellor, Sajid Javid, as he prepares to announce on Wednesday his spending priorities for the year ahead, more than a dozen leading environment charities, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth as well as other leading organisations such as Oxfam and Christian Aid, said urgent action was required to raise spending.

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With official forecasts of another warm, dry Spring ahead for most of the country attention is turning to the plight of the Murray Darling river system.

Many Australians are unprepared for the worse-than-average bushfire season ahead - even those in high-risk areas. Richard Thornton, Chief Executive Officer, Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Exclusive: top Queensland farmers’ group supports controversial scientist Peter Ridd’s questioning of climate science

Queensland’s most influential farm lobby group, AgForce, has backed calls for a review of consensus science on the Great Barrier Reef, as the state’s agricultural sector intensifies its campaign against proposed water quality regulations.

On Friday the release of two key reports painted an alarming picture of the state of the reef. The Queensland-led water quality report – which rated the water quality at inner reefs as “poor” – highlighted the impact of land management practices that contribute to the degradation of the reef due to sediment and nutrient run-off.

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Readers respond to Stephen Buranyi’s long read on how air cooling systems burn electricity and fuel global heating

Kudos to Stephen Buranyi for drawing attention to the growth of air conditioning worldwide and the accompanying taste for cold in a time of global warming (Blowing cold and hot, The long read, 29 August). Having lived and worked in the American south, I can attest there are even more pernicious dimensions to this addiction to cold. Restaurants and bars are kept uncomfortably chilly, thus encouraging higher levels of consumption (heat dampens the desire to eat), fuelling not only profits but the obesity crisis.

Cold has become a mark of prestige: the fancier the establishment, be it office block or shopping mall, the colder it is likely to be. Anecdotally, moving between these absurd temperature extremes several times a day seems to increase the incidence of colds. When I requested that the AC in my workplace (a public university) be set to a warmer level, the response of the facilities staff was to provide a heater for my office. Here in New York, a hotel on my street keeps a roaring fire in the lobby – in August – while the ambient indoor temperature is freezing. All this amounts to what Richard Seymour has recently called “climate sadism” – a form of masochism outwardly and ostentatiously directed, consumptive and destructive madness. May we find ways not to get caught up in its drive.
Emanuela Bianchi
New York

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Investment in fracking denies proper support to cheaper renewables, says David Cragg-James; government policies are damaging the environment, says Michael Miller; and Charles Harris on the importance of voting to bring about change

Ian Duncan, the UK’s minister for climate change (Letters, 31 August), vaunts our achievements and “ambitions to become one of the cleanest and most innovative energy systems in the world”. He allows a generous 30 years before a “net-zero emissions economy is achieved”, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that real change must be evident in fewer than a dozen years.

How can he hope to realise his longer-term targets while pursuing fracking as a transitional fuel? Investment in the hugely expensive development of fracking denies proper support to cheaper renewables, and delaying the switch ties the operator and investor into the production of a fossil fuel until a return is achieved. That exposes communities to the harms already documented, and contributes – by combustion, extraction and transportation – to the climate change the government hopes to mitigate.

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Judge denies costs protection over injunction restricting protests at Lancashire site

An environmental group has been forced to withdraw its legal challenge to a wide-ranging injunction by the fracking firm Cuadrilla after being “priced out of court”.

Three fracking protesters are facing court action after the energy company obtained the injunction restricting protests at its shale gas exploration site in Lancashire.

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Swansea University scientists say the proliferation of weirs, dams and culverts is now creating a threat to wildlife

Near the mouth of the River Afan in Port Talbot, south Wales, a pair of seagulls were to be seen last week pecking in a leisurely way at a dead salmon lying on a gravel bank. It was an unusual sight. Salmon are rarely found in the Afan these days.

The scene may have been unexpected, but it nevertheless illustrates a growing problem, say researchers – one that already affects rivers across Europe and could pose even greater threats to habitats and wildlife in future. Increasing numbers of dams, weirs, sluices and other barriers built in rivers over the past 200 years are, they say, fragmenting waterways, isolating habitats and weakening wildlife populations.

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Worcester is putting LED lighting to innovative use to protect white-light-shy locals

Bats in Worcester are to get their own red-light area. LED bulbs that emit a red glow will provide bats with a 60-metre-wide crossing area on the A4440, near to Worcester’s Warndon Woodlands nature reserve.

Worcestershire county council said research had shown that some species of bat are light shy and will not cross roads lit by white lights, which can stop them finding food and water. Standard street lights also attract insects that bats feed on, reducing the supply available in their feeding areas.

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Meet a 12 year old scientist who's got a whole lot of questions...enough to take you to the moon and back.

One of the protest movement's founders says she was inspired after praying on a psychedelic retreat.

One-hundred years after the Forestry Commission was set up, a writer reflects on the creative power of trees.

In an often-muted bush landscape, the deep crimson of the waratah stands out like a shout. Jacob Krauss, Graduate Student, UNSW Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Geophysicists might expect to face earthquakes or volcanoes in their work. But Kate Selway has to factor hungry Polar bears into her research.

The reincarnated Aptera startup plans an all-electric vehicle with 1,600km range – but how will it achieve this?

The post Is an electric vehicle with 1600km possible? This startup thinks so appeared first on RenewEconomy.

University of the Sunshine Coast combines 2.1MW of rooftop solar with massive water tank “battery,” to power campus air-conditioning using complex thermal energy system.

The post Solar and giant “water battery” to slash university’s grid consumption by 40% appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A record number of countries voted to restrict fishing of mako sharks in an effort to protect the endangered species

A record number of countries have voted to protect the world’s fastest shark from extinction in a move welcomed by conservationists as a “wake up call” for fishing nations who have ignored the endangered species’ decline.

In Geneva this week, governments voted under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to regulate the international trade in both species of mako shark – long and short fin – in addition to 16 vulnerable species of sharks and rays.

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Unusual corals have been spotted on the sea floor below the Great Australian Bight - they live without light, up to 5km down.

The University of Tasmania's autonomous submarine had a productive summer, collecting ice melting data from under an Antarctic glacier.