The Guardian

Guardian Australia runs live online Q&A as hundreds of school students plan to strike over environmental inaction

Young Australians are frustrated about inaction on climate change – more so when the older generations don’t appear to be doing much about it.

Related: Passing the baton: will young people take up the fight to save the planet?

A hiker camping in remote Stewart Island alerted authorities to the discovery

More than 140 pilot whales have died on a remote New Zealand beach, the latest in a recent string of whale strandings and deaths in the country.

On Saturday night the Department of Conservation [DoC] was informed of a mass whale stranding in Mason Bay on Stewart Island.

• Conservationists record unusually high number of strandings
• Many of turtles are critically endangered Kemp’s ridley species

An unusual number of sea turtles have washed ashore in New England in the recent cold snap, many dead and appearing to have been “flash-frozen”.

Related: Manatees in peril as toxic red tide tests Florida's resources for rescued animals

Democrats ramp up pressure to act in wake of most sobering government analysis yet

• Report: climate change ‘will inflict substantial damages on US lives’
  

The Trump administration attempted to downplay the stark findings of its own climate change assessment, as Democrats sought to pressure the White House to avert looming economic and public health disaster.

The US National Climate change assessment, the work of 300 scientists and 13 federal agencies, was released on Friday afternoon. It found that wildfires, storms and heatwaves are already taking a major toll on Americans’ wellbeing, with climate change set to “disrupt many areas of life” in the future.

Swedish minister Isabella Lövin found fame in a jibe aimed at the White House. Now she aims for change beyond Twitter

In February last year, a week after Donald Trump had signed an anti-abortion executive order surrounded by seven men, Isabella Lövin posted a photograph of herself on Twitter signing a climate change bill alongside seven other women.

Sweden’s then deputy prime minister remained enigmatic as the picture went viral and she was asked whether she had been “trolling” the US president. “It is up to the observer to interpret the photo,” she was quoted as saying. “We are a feminist government, which shows in this photo.”

Demonstration organised by Extinction Rebellion aims to highlight government failure on the environment

Dozens of environmental campaigners blocked the roads around Parliament Square to highlight concerns about the environment on Saturday.

About 50 activists from Extinction Rebellion, a direct action group that has been coordinating a campaign of civil disobedience which has brought areas of the capital to a standstill in recent weeks, risked arrest by standing defiantly in roads in front of queueing traffic.

Schools introduce walk-to-school initiatives and stock up on asthma medicine

Schools across the UK are taking ever more drastic steps in an effort to mitigate the effects of air pollution on their pupils’ health.

Amid growing concern about the long-term implications of toxic air on young people’s development, the Guardian has found one London school is raising money for face masks for its pupils, while a growing number are installing air purifiers in classrooms and thousands more are trying to deter parents from using their cars on the school run.

Nearly 8,000sq kms lost in the year to July amid alarm new president Jair Bolsonaro will make situation worse

Brazil has released its worst annual deforestation figures in a decade amid fears that the situation might worsen when the avowedly anti-environmentalist president-elect Jair Bolsonaro takes power.

Between August 2017 and July 2018, 7,900sq kms were deforested, according to preliminary figures from the environment ministry based on satellite monitoring – a 13.7% rise on the previous year and the biggest area of forest cleared since 2008. The area is equivalent to 987,000 football pitches.

Report points particularly to important habitats in Queensland and NSW where land clearing is prevalent

Australia is failing to meet international targets to protect nature in parts of the country where land clearing and habitat destruction are widespread, according to data in a major new United Nations report.

The UN report on protected areas, released at the Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties in Egypt, examines progress by countries to meet global conservation targets.

• ‘Impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country’
• Draft outlines claim current response to crisis is insufficient

Climate change is already harming Americans’ lives with “substantial damages” set to occur as global temperatures threaten to surge beyond internationally agreed limits, a major US government report is set to warn.

The influence of climate change is being felt across the US with increases in disastrous wildfires in the west, flooding on the east coast, soil loss in the midwest and coastal erosion in Alaska, a draft of the US national climate assessment states.

Prosecution based on secret footage obtained by rights charity Animal Equality at Fir Tree farm in Lincolnshire

Two men pleaded guilty today to charges of animal cruelty while employed at a pig farm, Fir Tree in Goxhill, Lincolnshire.

Artis Grogprkevs, 31, and Troy Wagstaff, 30, have appeared at Grimsby magistrates court charged with causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal between 2-27 April this year.

A family of roe deer and the bignose unicornfish are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Theresa May called on to commit to ambitious climate target

Fifty Conservative MPs have called on Theresa May to adopt an ambitious target of cutting carbon emissions to net zero before 2050, to show international leadership on climate change and protect British jobs.

Former ministers Damian Green, Oliver Letwin and Anna Soubry are among the signatories of the letter to the prime minister, which said that a stronger long-term goal would cut energy bills and improve air quality.

Record absence of ice after freak warm spells denies pregnant bears birthing dens and triggers ‘extirpation event’ warning

A record slow freeze of many regions of the Arctic this winter is making it harder for pregnant polar bears to find birthing dens.

The delayed formation of sea ice during autumn has worried biologists, who fear a first “extirpation event” – the local extinction of a species – may be approaching faster than forecast for the most affected populations.

Urgent planting of wildflowers will attract pollinators and boost farmers’ food crops, expert to tell UN

The collapse in bee populations can be reversed if countries adopt a new farmer-friendly strategy, the architect of a new masterplan for pollinators will tell the UN biodiversity conference this week.

Stefanie Christmann of the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas will present the results of a new study that shows substantial gains in income and biodiversity from devoting a quarter of cropland to flowering economic crops such as spices, oil seeds, medicinal and forage plants.

Some compare it to snooker, others to figure skating. But for those who have given their lives to competitive ploughing, it’s more than a sport, it’s a way of life. By Sophie Elmhirst

On 31 August, the night before the first day of the World Ploughing Championship, the bar of the Hotel Fortuna in the small German town of Reutlingen was crammed with the global ploughing elite. The scene resembled a low-key United Nations afterparty – Swiss, Kenyans, Australians, Latvians, Canadians and French, all slugging back long glasses of German beer. The top flight of international ploughing is a limited pool, the same faces recurring every year, and so the atmosphere was jovial, like a school reunion, 50-odd ploughmen and two ploughwomen (the sport has historically been dominated by men) hailing each other affectionately across the room. Much of the talk concerned the wild boar who had apparently dug up the field where the following day’s competition would take place. But there was something else in the air too, a bonhomie edged with rivalry. They were here to win.

The two English competitors, Mick Chappell and Ashley Boyles, stood to one side with their families. Chappell is 57, Boyles 35, but it was the younger man who bid everyone goodnight and went up to bed early. Boyles takes his ploughing very seriously. Chappell, a man more inclined to Freddie Flintoff-style bouts of prolonged revelry, leaned against a wall, finished a pint and readily accepted the offer of another. Earlier in the summer, he had told me he would prepare for the world championship by drinking five pints the night before. When asked if any other international athlete adopted a similar strategy ahead of a major competition, he disputed the terms: “I wouldn’t say athlete.”

Spreading particles in stratosphere to fight climate change may cost $2bn a year

Cooling the Earth by injecting sun-blocking particles into the stratosphere could be “remarkably inexpensive”, according to the most detailed engineering analysis to date.

The fear of a rogue nation or military force unilaterally taking control of the global climate is unfounded, the researchers added, as the many thousands of high-altitude flights needed to affect global temperatures could not escape detection.

National Audit Office says that with 39m meters still to be replaced, government has no chance of hitting 2020 deadline

Consumers face paying half a billion pounds more than expected for the rollout of smart meters and the programme has no chance of hitting its deadline, the UK’s spending watchdog has warned.

The National Audit Office said that with 39m old-fashioned meters yet to be replaced, there is “no realistic prospect” of meeting a goal of all homes and businesses being offered one by the end of 2020 as planned.

70 years ago a six-day fog enveloped London, but its message did not hit home

Air pollution history is littered with early warnings that were not heeded. November 2018 marks the 70th anniversary of one of these. On Friday 26 November 1948, a dense fog developed in London. It lasted six days. Football matches were cancelled and transport disrupted. Traffic convoys were formed to follow trams, each guided by a conductor with a torch. Initially, conductors walked alongside buses but this became impossible as they ran into lamp-posts. There were train accidents too, but the greatest death toll came from breathing the smog. Five weeks later the medical statistician William Logan reported an estimated 300 extra deaths.

The warning was ignored. Four years and one week later 12,000 Londoners died in the so-called great smog of 1952. The pattern of ignoring warnings continues. In 2000, researchers at London’s King’s and Imperial Colleges warned of difficulties in controlling nitrogen dioxide from traffic. The UK is still failing to meet legal limits for this pollutant. This month, 21 researchers published a nine-year study. It concluded that air pollution in London was stunting children’s lung growth and this may be storing up problems for their long-term health.

High court orders government to get prior community consent before granting mining rights in Pondoland

Environmental activists in South Africa have won a landmark legal victory after the high court ordered the government to get prior community consent before granting mining rights.

The judgment represents a major victory for campaigners in Xolobeni, a community in Pondoland, who have been involved in a protracted and sometimes violent struggle against a proposed titanium mine.