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You don't have to be a climate science denier to join the Monash coal forum, but it helps | Graham Readfearn

The Coalition’s backbench group of coal fans have a history of attacking climate science

There seems to be three rules for membership of the Coalition’s new backbench Monash Forum that wants taxpayer subsidies for new coal fired power stations.

Firstly, you have to really love the life-giving and not-really-all-that-deadly rock from the late Permian and Carboniferous which, if they made it into a snack bar, you would totally want to eat it and then rub the bits left sticking to the wrapper all over your naked form.

have you read the retrograde #MonashManifesto? text reproduced here.i'm offering 12-to-1 odds (payable in wine) that there won't be a new coal fired power station operating in australia before 2030 (or ever).#auspol pic.twitter.com/CeV6AdruP2

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Shell threatened with legal action over climate change contributions

Friends of the Earth demands the oil firm move away from fossil fuels to comply with Paris deal

The global flurry of legal campaigns against “big oil” has widened, with Royal Dutch Shell being threatened with legal action unless it steps up efforts to comply with the Paris climate agreement.

Friends of the Earth Netherlands on Wednesday demanded the Anglo-Dutch company revise plans to invest only 5% in sustainable energy and 95% in greenhouse-gas emitting oil and gas.

Related: Can climate litigation save the world?

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Only revolutionary new laws can stop Brexit harming the environment | Michael Jacobs

Michael Gove has promised an independent watchdog but not what is required – legally enforceable targets

As the EU withdrawal bill inches its way through parliament, the environmental implications of Brexit are being revealed. Leaving the European Union could be the single most environmentally damaging act taken by government in the past half-century.

Almost all of the UK’s environmental policy derives from our membership of the EU. Across the full range of issues – air and water pollution, habitats and species protection, waste management and recycling, energy efficiency, carbon emissions and energy policy – it is EU regulation that has raised standards.

Related: Sadiq Khan accuses ministers of stalling over post-Brexit environment watchdog

The Climate Change Act should now become the model for the new environmental legislation we need after Brexit

Related: Call for post-Brexit trade deals to safeguard against invasive species

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Scientists examine threats to food security if we meet the Paris climate targets | John Abraham

Even with aggressive climate policies to limit global warming, food security in some areas will be threatened

We have delayed action for so long on handling climate change, we now can no longer can “will it happen?” Rather we have to ask “how bad will it be?” and “what can be done about it?” As our society thinks about what we should do to reduce our carbon pollution and the consequences of electing science-denying politicians, scientists are actively studying the pros and cons of various emission reductions.

Readers of this column have certainly heard about temperature targets such as 1.5°C or 2°C. These targets refer to allowable temperature increases over pre-industrial temperatures. If humans take action to hit a 1.5°C target, it means we are committed to keeping the human-caused global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Similarly for a 2°C target.

Food insecurity is affected by many factors, not just climate. Poverty, access to irrigation and transport networks are all crucial. But increased flooding or drought can impact food production and distribution, making food systems less secure.

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Underwater melting of Antarctic ice far greater than thought, study finds

The base of the ice around the south pole shrank by 1,463 square kilometres between 2010 and 2016

Hidden underwater melt-off in the Antarctic is doubling every 20 years and could soon overtake Greenland to become the biggest source of sea-level rise, according to the first complete underwater map of the world’s largest body of ice.

Warming waters have caused the base of ice near the ocean floor around the south pole to shrink by 1,463 square kilometres – an area the size of Greater London – between 2010 and 2016, according to the new study published in Nature Geoscience.

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On climate change, zero-sum thinking doesn't work | Joseph Robertson

There are win-win solutions to this problem.

Democracy is not a zero-sum game. Behaving as if it is degrades democratic process and our personal political sovereignty.

A zero-sum game is a contest for control of finite resources. Whatever one gains, another must lose. When two or more candidates compete for a single public office, only one can win, so many people view politics as bloodsport, applying “winner takes all” thinking to everything political. But elected officials are not conquerors; they are sworn servants to all their constituents.

• In 2017, the United States spent as much in disaster relief — for floods, wildfires, drought, and storms — as the total comparable spending from 1980 to 2010.

• We now have scalable clean power-generating technologies, cost-effective industrial-scale and in-home battery storage, and rapidly expanding clean finance.

• We are now witnessing the rise of high-efficiency climate-smart finance to drive new investment and innovation in many sectors.

• The mainstreaming of green bonds and application of smart carbon pricing policies will make the whole economy more efficient at building value for people, institutions, and enterprise.

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Country diary: a dissonant overlay of realities

Valley of Desolation, Wharfedale, Yorkshire Dales: The snow revives innocence, but it’s from this winter’s dramatic destabilisation of the polar vortex and a reminder of climate change

Spring is held in a sort of suspense. The sun’s growing confidence brings hope, but the blizzards are back again, shutting out the light, clogging the floor of Strid Wood with snow, smothering the first leaves of dog’s mercury and ramsons. Around this date in previous years I have heard drumming snipe on the moors or found breeding frogs in the ponds around here, but there will be few such mood-lifting discoveries today.

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The unstoppable rise of veganism: how a fringe movement went mainstream

Health, climate change, animal welfare... what’s driving more people and brands to embrace a plant-based lifestyle? We investigate, and, below, four vegans explain their choice

Late on a Thursday afternoon in early March, just off Brick Lane in the heart of London’s nightlife hotspot Shoreditch, 23-year-old Louisa Davidson is taking calls and co-ordinating cables and scaffolds, as shocking pink Vegan Nights banners are hung around the expansive courtyards of the Truman Brewery. There is a chill in the air, quickly warmed by a buzzing atmosphere more like a music festival than an ethical food fair, as BBC Radio 1Xtra and House of Camden DJs play records, cocktails are poured and entrepreneurs sell zines and street wear alongside the vegan sushi, patisserie and “filthy vegan junk food”.

Davidson had been running weekend markets at the venue when she noticed a sharp increase in the number of vegan food businesses and vegan menus on offer. So last September, with her colleagues, she decided to put on a one-off vegan night market, with music, drinks and food. “On the day there were queues around the corner,” she says. “We were not prepared for it at all! There was so much interest that by Christmas we decided to make it a monthly thing. It’s all happened very quickly.” Inspired by its success, and the traders she was working with, Davidson switched from vegetarian to a vegan diet in January.

350%

Whereas before, veganism may have been viewed like you were giving up something, now it’s been reframed as what you gain

One can become vegan in stages – there are no rules and you are only answerable to your own conscience

Related: Animal agriculture is choking the ​Earth and making us sick. We must act now | James Cameron and Suzy Amis Cameron

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