The Guardian

Group rallies outside Parliament House after being told they needed to have a prearranged meeting organised

High school students from across Australia calling for emergency action on climate change have travelled to Canberra to confront the prime minister after he criticised them for skipping school to stage national strikes.

Students from Scott Morrison’s southern Sydney electorate of Cook – as well as Townsville, Melbourne and Brisbane – arrived at Parliament House on Wednesday morning to meet with him.

Sediment cores drilled from Swiss lake reveal it took 300 years to bounce back after Romans departed

All over the world lakes are in trouble. An excess of nutrients – from fertilisers, detergents and sewage – is upsetting the balance of life, leading to algal blooms and bottom-water dead-zones. Many places are now trying to clean up their act, but how long does it take for a lake to recover?

Sediment cores drilled from a Swiss lake reveal how long it took for the lake to bounce back after the Romans departed, and indicate we might have to wait centuries for today’s polluted lakes to become properly fresh again.

Defeat by gilets jaunes will make others think twice before taking similar steps to cut emissions

Emmanuel Macron’s defeat by the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement over a proposed eco-tax rise is likely to come as a painful lesson for environmental policymakers at this week’s UN climate talks in Katowice.

After the most violent protests in Paris for half a century, the French president has been forced to postpone a planned eco-tax rise on fuel, showing how ecological measures can have explosive consequences if there is any suggestion they are being used to “greenwash” austerity.

Shortage of female swift parrots caused by sugar gliders wreaking ‘havoc’ on mating

Tasmania’s critically endangered swift parrots are facing a new threat to survival – polyamory.

A study by researchers at the Australian National University, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, has found that a chronic shortage of female swift parrots caused by intensive predation by sugar gliders has wreaked havoc on the bird’s usually monogamous breeding habits and lowered the survival rate for young hatchlings.

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez emphasized need to ‘transform our energy system’ but did not discuss how to pursue it

A star-studded progressive town hall on climate change drew thousands of viewers online and hundreds in person – but offered little insight into how the US left might overcome Republican opposition and lay the groundwork to limit rising temperatures.

Related: David Attenborough: collapse of civilisation is on the horizon

Greta Thunberg, 15, told UN summit that students are acting in absence of global leadership

Action to fight global warming is coming whether world leaders like it or not, school student Greta Thunberg has told the UN climate change summit, accusing them of behaving like irresponsible children.

Thunberg began a solo climate protest by striking from school in Sweden in August. But more than 20,000 students around the world have now joined her. The school strikes have spread to at least 270 towns and cities in countries across the world, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the US and Japan.

The BES photography contest features images by ecologists and students and captures rare flora and fauna from around the world. The overall winning picture, by Chris Oosthuizen, shows an adult king penguin surrounded by chicks on Marion Island

Melissa Price made an error of law in assessing pipeline plan, Australian Conservation Foundation will argue

The Australian Conservation Foundation has launched a federal court challenge to the environment minister Melissa Price’s decision not to apply the water trigger in assessing water infrastructure for Adani’s Carmichael coalmine.

The court action, lodged on Tuesday, relates to the federal government’s assessment of Adani’s north Galilee water scheme, which would see a 100km pipeline constructed to transport 12.5bn litres of water a year from the Suttor River and Burdekin basin. The project would also expand an existing 2.2bn-litre dam to 10bn litres.

With long nights and wet weather we’d like to hear how you stop yourself from going stir-crazy when you’re stuck at home

From Almaty to Zagreb, from London (England) to London (Ontario), the days are getting colder, the nights are getting longer and the clouds are getting lower.

How do you cope when you can’t face the gloom, the rain, the wind or the snow, yet have already spent far too many hours at home? What stops you going stir-crazy? Do you put on your wooliest jumper and an Abba CD, or leaf through Nigella and bake a cake? Do you gather the family for a game of Twister? Perhaps there’s a film you turn to because of the dreams it inspires or the lover you first watched it with. Do you reach for your guitar? A skipping rope? The knitting needles?

I moved with my husband and kids to rural Kent to try to grow our own food to alleviate even the harshest crisis next year. Unfortunately, crops are as complicated as the latest withdrawal agreement

In January 2017, my husband, Jared, and I moved our family from a semi in Ramsgate to a ramshackle house in rural Kent that came with two acres of mud. Our desire for change was born of the political, social and environmental turmoil. There was certainly a naive pursuit of the good life, but we were also reeling from the outcome of the Brexit referendum and feeling sick about Trump’s presidency. We needed a personal survival plan.

In the face of a world shifting in a direction we could no longer understand, predict or rely on (and despite having no practical skills or experience), we sought a shared vocation that was less tied to systems and structures that appeared to be wobbling. We planned to grow and raise some of our own food and – as wildfires, floods and landslides hinted at the impact of climate change – move towards a more sustainable way of life. It felt like a personal resistance that would be good for our family life and physical and mental health, as well as teaching us new skills.

Naturalist tells leaders at UN climate summit that fate of world is in their hands

The collapse of civilisation and the natural world is on the horizon, Sir David Attenborough has told the UN climate change summit in Poland.

The naturalist was chosen to represent the world’s people in addressing delegates of almost 200 nations who are in Katowice to negotiate how to turn pledges made in the 2015 Paris climate deal into reality.

Sum available for 2021-25 represents doubling of current five-year plan

The World Bank is to make about $200bn (£157bn) available to fund action on climate change from 2021-25, helping countries adapt to the effects of warming and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The sum represents a doubling of the five-year investment plan put in place after the landmark Paris agreement of 2015.

Volunteers catch and tag migratory waders as the birds arrive to spend winter on the East Anglian coast

There was an exodus of climate experts from the White House after the 2016 election – but they still turn up to UN talks

In a hallway beneath the UN climate change headquarters in Bonn, Germany, Sue Biniaz leans on a table, scribbling some thoughts on a piece of paper.

It’s May 2018, three years after representatives from nearly 200 countries convened in France in an extraordinary display of international unity and agreed to keep global warming below 2C and to pursue a tougher target of 1.5C.

European firms are making faster progress in refusing to insure polluting firms, says campaign group Unfriend Coal

UK and US insurers are lagging far behind European firms when it comes to divesting from coal-heavy businesses and refusing to insure them, campaigners have warned.

At least 19 major insurers holding more than $6tn in assets – a fifth of the industry’s global assets – have now divested from coal, according to a report from the Unfriend Coal campaign, which represents a coalition of a dozen environmental groups including Greenpeace, 350.org and the Sierra Club.

Buybacks also recommended for those affected by PFAS contamination from defence bases across Australia

A group of MPs from across the political divide has urged the commonwealth to consider compensation and property buybacks for people affected by contamination from toxic firefighting chemicals which leached off defence bases and into soil and waterways across Australia.

On Monday a joint parliamentary committee, which for months has been investigating the defence department’s firefighting foam contamination scandal, handed down its long-awaited report, recommending the government “assist property owners and businesses in affected areas for demonstrated, quantifiable financial losses associated with PFAS contamination that has emanated from defence bases”.

Indian mining giant Adani has announced  it will scale back its proposed Carmichael mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin, but begin construction 'imminently', using its own funds. But the company still faces numerous obstacles including groundwater approval and native title. Most of all, it has its eyes on the impending federal election and the uncertain position of a potential incoming Labor government on the mine. Ben Smee breaks down the state of play

Big cuts in carbon emissions and a rise in protection from extreme weather urgently needed

The UN climate change summit begins on Monday with a warning that today’s generation is the last that can prevent catastrophic global warming, as well as the first to be suffering its impacts.

Almost 200 nations were set to meet in Poland for two weeks, aiming to hammer out a vital agreement to turn the carbon-cutting vision set in Paris in 2015 into reality. Moves to rapidly ramp up action would be another key goal, with current pledges leaving the world on track for a disastrous 3C of warming.

Environment secretary launches consultation into ‘biodiversity net gain’ requirement

Developers could be obliged to enhance wildlife habitats when building houses or commercial property, under new government proposals.

A mandatory “biodiversity net gain” requirement could be put in place, meaning developers would have to leave habitats better off for wildlife than before any construction work.

Five cygnets and their parents were shot, wrapped in plastic bags and thrown down bank of a stream

A family of swans has been shot and killed in what has been called a “senseless” airgun attack.

The bodies of five cygnets and both of their parents were found wrapped in plastic bags after they were thrown down the bank of a stream in the village of Benenden, in Kent.