The Guardian

Kazakhstan is rich with oil, gas and coal but Nursultan Nazarbayev, its president for life, has committed the country to a dramatic shift from fossil fuels to green energy. Is this huge nation, which is beset by rural poverty, major infrastructure challenges and environmental crises, able to realise his vision? Phoebe Greenwood travels to  the Kazakh capital, Astana, and the Aral Sea region

Many thanks to Kunzberg spatial communications for the use of music from the Future Astana Expo installation

‘The two things I love most are novels and birds, and they’re both in trouble,’ says The Corrections author, one of the world’s most famous birdwatchers

Birdwatching was once an activity that elicited a sense of mild shame in Jonathan Franzen. The author stalked New York parks with binoculars in hand, rather than on a strap, carefully hiding from view the word “birds” on his field guide. Debonair friends in London recoiled in horror when told of his pastime. Franzen was furtive, almost embarrassed. Now, he is one of the most famous birdwatchers in the world.

“I totally let my freak flag fly now,” Franzen says as he scans for birds at a community garden near his home in Santa Cruz, California. His phone has an app that deciphers bird sounds. He travels the world to see recondite species. He has written about birds in essays, op-eds and novels.

“I was so socially unsuccessful in my youth and such a pariah in junior high that I really didn’t want to look like a dork,” says Franzen, the 59-year-old author whose best known works include The Corrections and Freedom. “I got over that. The success started to make me think: ‘Hey, it’s not me who’s got the problem.’”

Trees grow thicker bark and animals burrow for protection. We can use similar techniques to save human lives

California wildfires rarely killed civilians in the 20th century. The Griffith Park fire killed 29 in 1933, while 25 died in Oakland in 1991. Now, for the fourth time in just over a year, California wildfires have become deadly. Within the span of 13 months, nearly 100 civilians have died in wildfires in California, and that devastating number is likely to grow based on the missing persons tally from the town of Paradise.

The increasing number of fatalities is occurring globally in so-called Mediterranean climates – regions with mild, wet winters and warm, dry summers. Portugal, Spain, Greece, Chile, Australia, and South Africa have all seen civilian wildfire fatalities in recent years, and communities globally are asking themselves the same question: what can we do? How do we stem the soaring number of wildfire fatalities?

Welfare improvements are harder on large, intensive farms, concludes a Europe-wide investigation into animal welfare

Farm animal abuses are widespread in the European Union, with pig tail docking, long-distance transport and slaughterhouse stunning all areas of immediate concern, according to a report out this week.

Intensive farms are particularly problematic, the report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) reveals, with economic interests often trumping welfare rules. “Our audit and other reports show it’s difficult to introduce improvements on intensive farms and enforce laws,” Janusz Wojciechowski, the ECA member responsible for the report, told the Guardian.

Coal, oil and gas subsidies risking rise in global temperatures to 3.2C, well beyond agreed Paris goal

Climate action is way off course in all but one of the world’s 20 biggest economies, according to a report that shows politicians are paying more heed to the fossil fuel industry than to advice from scientists.

Among the G20 nations 15 reported a rise in emissions last year, according to the most comprehensive stock-take to date of progress towards the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

‘By the time the science is proven, it will be too late to act,’ chief Peter Coleman says

Woodside Petroleum chief executive, Peter Coleman, has joined mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto in calling for a price on carbon to help with emissions reduction targets and the transition to renewable energy.

But the energy minister, Angus Taylor, has claimed Australia doesn’t need a carbon price as emissions levels are coming down – a position at odds with the government’s official emissions data and independent modelling.

Efforts to protect native fauna and flora ‘lack purpose, direction and coordination’

Queensland has systematically failed the state’s growing list of threatened species, delaying declarations by up to seven years and botching its conservation management responsibilities, a scathing report by the state’s auditor general has found.

Related: Australia's east coast named as 'deforestation front' in WWF Living Planet report

Carbon emissions from nation’s largest LNG development were meant to be captured. More than two years on, the storage still hasn’t started

Half of the increase in Australia’s annual carbon dioxide emissions can be linked to a single issue: the failure to bury greenhouse gases underground at the country’s largest liquefied natural gas development.

Chevron’s Gorgon LNG development in the Pilbara is considered a landmark development in carbon capture and storage, a long-promised technology to limit emissions from fossil fuels.

Trend in US regions where once-brutal winters are now mild raises new concerns over climate change

Warmer winters are linked to increased crime rates in parts of the United States, a new study has found.

Researchers found that violent crime is almost always more prevalent when temperatures are warmer in the winter months. The trend was especially strong when winters were mild in regions that usually have fierce winters, like the north-east and midwest.

EPA to start writing rule requiring new trucks produce less nitrogen oxide, one of its first moves to regulate industry

Donald Trump’s administration plans to cut air pollution from heavy-duty trucks, marking one of its first moves to regulate US industry rather than roll back environmental standards.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will start writing a rule to require new trucks produce less nitrogen oxide, which contributes to smog and particulate matter pollution that causes breathing problems, asthma attacks and early deaths.

The president blamed ‘poor forest management’ for the state’s crisis. But much of the area burning isn’t forest

You cannot possibly understand what it means to live with the risk of wildfire until you have to do so.

I’m a fire scientist and have spent most of my adult life in the flammable south-west. At the start of the fire season, you pack up the things in your house you cannot replace and stage them so they are ready to be thrown into the car. You make a plan for your family and your pets. You identify escape routes and put together a bag with clothing and you spend the summer alert to smoke, radio reports and evacuation notices.

Ambitious scheme also aims to fully decarbonise country’s economy shortly after

Spain has launched an ambitious plan to switch its electricity system entirely to renewable sources by 2050 and completely decarbonise its economy soon after.

By mid-century greenhouse gas emissions would be slashed by 90% from 1990 levels under Spain’s draft climate change and energy transition law.

Study of beetles could explain global decline – and also be a warning to humankind

Heatwaves severely damage the fertility of male beetles and consecutive hot spells leave them virtually sterilised, according to research.

Global warming is making heatwaves more common and wildlife is being annihilated, and the study may reveal a way in which these two trends are linked. The scientists behind the findings said there could also be some relevance for humans: the sperm counts of western men have halved in the last 40 years.

Decades after it became part of the fabric of our lives, a worldwide revolt against plastic is underway. By Stephen Buranyi

Plastic is everywhere, and suddenly we have decided that is a very bad thing. Until recently, plastic enjoyed a sort of anonymity in ubiquity: we were so thoroughly surrounded that we hardly noticed it. You might be surprised to learn, for instance, that today’s cars and planes are, by volume, about 50% plastic. More clothing is made out of polyester and nylon, both plastics, than cotton or wool. Plastic is also used in minute quantities as an adhesive to seal the vast majority of the 60bn teabags used in Britain each year.

Add this to the more obvious expanse of toys, household bric-a-brac and consumer packaging, and the extent of plastic’s empire becomes clear. It is the colourful yet banal background material of modern life. Each year, the world produces around 340m tonnes of the stuff, enough to fill every skyscraper in New York City. Humankind has produced unfathomable quantities of plastic for decades, first passing the 100m tonne mark in the early 1990s. But for some reason it is only very recently that people have really begun to care.

Ancient, flightless, nocturnal birds have been absent from Wellington for more than a century

Wellington could soon have kiwis nesting beside Parliament House thanks to an ambitious conservation project that aims to reintroduce the country’s iconic national bird to the capital city within the next decade.

There are 68,000 kiwi left in New Zealand but the number of birds are declining at a rate of 2% per year. A century ago, there were millions but attacks by by dogs, cats, possums, stoats and rats have led to huge population decline.

The grass is already fuelling regular and intense fires in the Northern Territory

African gamba grass could invade up to 38m hectares of tropical savanna in northern Australia, causing “grave concerns” for fire management, a report has found.

In the Northern Territory, gamba grass has already taken hold and is fuelling regular and intense grass fires between the town of Batchelor and the Darwin rural area. The report, released on Tuesday by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Environment Centre NT, said firefighting costs in that area had increased 30-fold in a decade.

Environmental protesters have daubed the windows of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in London in an attempt to provoke their arrests. One protester climbed above the revolving doors of the department on Victoria Street, Westminster, and wrote ‘frack off’ in black spray paint. The vandalism came as police started to remove protesters who had superglued themselves to card entry gates inside the staff entrance to the building as part of an anti-fracking protest. The protest is intended to be the first in a series continuing throughout the week and culminating with a mass civil disobedience action on Saturday, which activists are calling ‘rebellion day’.

Project will trace tortoiseshell products in shops back to where they were poached

Researchers will use DNA technology to try to stop the illegal poaching of hawsksbill turtles for use in tortoiseshell products.

The population of the critically endangered species has declined by more than 75% in the Pacific Ocean in the past century and a key threat to the species’ survival is illegal trade.

LNG is often touted as a good alternative to coal but the increase in production means increased emissions that will cancel out any recent savings

Australia’s carbon footprint has expanded for the last three years straight – and the coal industry is not to blame. The biggest driver has been liquefied natural gas, known as LNG.

Science and policy institute Climate Analytics found that between 2015 and 2020 the emissions growth from LNG will effectively wipe out the carbon pollution avoided through the 23% renewable energy target.

Desperate efforts to save the whales – and the Chinook salmon on which they depend – risk fishing communities losing a way of life

Days before the start of the summer fishing season, when guides and outfitters on Canada’s west coast gamble their financial prospects for the year, fishing lodge owner Ryan Chamberland received devastating news.

The coastal waters of Vancouver Island, which he and four generations of his family had fished for salmon, would be out of bounds. The unexpected closure was part of a desperate effort by the Canadian government to save an endangered population of killer whales.