Valley fire incinerates 95 square miles in just two days, while 10,000 people flee a second blaze, the Butte fire about 200 miles away in the Sierra Nevada

Related: By the numbers: a look at the California wildfires so far

Two explosive wildfires have displaced 23,000 people in northern California and threaten to wreak more devastation in rural communities, which have lost hundreds of homes.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Road test reveals cars emit seven times the legal limit of exhaust emissions under the new Euro 6 standards

Nine out of 10 new diesel cars break new EU pollution limits when tested on roads rather than test tracks, according to a new report.

On average, the cars emit seven times the permitted level of NOx gasses, with the worst car producing 22 times the legal limit. Models from every major motor manufacturer breached the limit when they were evaluated in real-world conditions.

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Source: Guardian Environment

A new certification framework developed by a group of African nations now makes it easier for companies to weed out conflict minerals from their supply chain

A group of African nations have developed a framework that will make it easier for companies to keep conflict minerals out of their supply chains.

The new certification framework, known as the Regional Certification Mechanism, was developed by the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), an intergovernmental organization of 12 African countries, and released in August. It includes multiple steps and a system of checks and balances that experts say will make it easier for companies to clean up their supply chains.

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Source: Guardian Environment

They’ve moved beyond pure domestic policy obstruction to sabotaging international negotiations

As Politico recently reported in a news story that seems better suited for bad a Hollywood movie script, Republican Party leaders are actively trying to sabotage the critical international climate negotiations that will happen in Paris at the end of this year.

Top Republican lawmakers are planning a wide-ranging offensive — including outreach to foreign officials by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office — to undermine President Barack Obama’s hopes of reaching an international climate change agreement that would cement his environmental legacy.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Unexposed to cinema, the Arhuacos are captivated by their first ever screening of a film that shows them the unexplored, wild Colombia, reports El Pais

A prison guard opens the grey metal door to free four detainees. In Nabusimake, an indigenous Arhuaco village of circular mud huts with straw roofs and stone floors near the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in northern Colombia, prisoners are not made to suffer. Imprisonment is synonymous with reflection and change. It is not associated with punishment. The prisoner remains in custody for several days or months, until his body and mind are ready to return to the community of 8,000 people who live in Nabusimake or, as locals call it, “the heart of the world.”

The four prisoners – who have been jailed for offences that vary from stealing food to trying to seduce another’s wife – are crossing that grey door towards freedom not because their meditation time is over, but because they and the rest of the village are going to sit in front of a movie screen for the first time. For a community accustomed to living by daylight and moonlight, the arrival of a giant luminous screen is shattering their reality. They have been hearing about this event for months and finally here it was right before their eyes this Sunday: Colombia: Wild Magic, a film about the remotest parts of the country that is receiving its premiere here with the help of Ambulante, an NGO that organises documentary screenings across Colombia.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Brazil’s dark side is exposed in this exhaustive study of Nem, a very unlikely gang lord

In 1992, I went on my honeymoon to Brazil. Our first stop was Copacabana, its famous beaches and its glitzy hotel, made famous by Brigitte Bardot, Orson Welles and many an A-list scandal. It is also only a few miles from Rocinha, one of the largest shanties in the world. Rio is the epicentre of global inequality, where extraordinary wealth and angry poverty are rarely more than a few streets away.

That year happened to be one of the most violent in the city’s recent history. This was a period of hyperinflation and the arrival of cocaine. Drug traffickers became paramilitary forces, transforming their capacity for violence into political power. The curiosity is that – apart from the odd shoot out or car chase – for most of the time the wealthy residents of the South Zone of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon, and the tourists, are blissfully unaware of the struggles to survive taking place almost on their doorsteps.

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Source: Guardian Environment

An image of gannets on a Shetland Island clifftop leads this year’s stunning selection of winning photographs that capture the diversity of British wildlife. Over 100 images and videos, including winning and commended entries, will be exhibited across the UK starting in London on 14 September

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Source: Guardian Environment

Next two years likely to be hottest recorded as the world’s climate reaches major turning point – but UK summers may be cooler, report predicts

The world’s climate has reached a major turning point and is set to deliver record-breaking global temperatures in 2015 and 2016, according to a new report from the UK Met Office.

Natural climate cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are reversing and will amplify the strong manmade-driven global warming, the report concludes. This will change weather patterns around the world including more heatwaves, but it is possible that the UK will actually have cooler summers.

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Source: Guardian Environment