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A sinister bird arrows into the river

Teifi Marshes, Pembrokeshire Bilidowcar the cormorant’s called in Welsh – Billy the Ducker

Bound for hides in the Teifi Marshes reserve, I paused to lean against railings on the riverside path and a cormorant arrowed into view, threw up its broad, webbed feet to brake, and touched down on the water.

Seeing it reminded me of a morning 20 years ago in a fishing boat careening into Roonagh in County Mayo on green combers that were the aftermath of an Easter storm. A cormorant had kept us close, wave-skimming company. I asked the skipper, Jack Heanue, what the folk of Inishturk – an English-speaking island – thought of these weirdly beautiful birds.

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Source: Guardian Climate Change

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Michael Bloomberg: US states and businesses will still meet Paris targets

Former New York mayor, now UN cities and climate ambassador, says Trump may have withdrawn from Paris accord but American people haven’t

The United States will meet its Paris accord greenhouse gas targets despite Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has said.

A decision by President Trump to pull the US out of Parisand seek renegotiated terms “fair” to America has drawn widespread international condemnation.

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Source: Guardian Climate Change

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Great Barrier Reef: Australia must act urgently on water quality, says Unesco

Draft decision says Australia would not, at this rate, meet interim or long-term targets in the Reef 2050 report

Unesco has expressed “serious concern” about the impact of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef and warned Australia it will not meet the targets of the Reef 2050 report without considerable work to improve water quality.

The criticism was contained in a draft decision published as part of the agenda for the upcoming world heritage committee meeting (pdf), which will take place in Krakow, Poland, in the first two weeks of July.

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Source: Guardian Climate Change

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It's way past time to speak truth to climate arguments this stupid | Lenore Taylor

It’s clearer than ever the economic interests Trump claims to defend can only be served by acting on global warming

For precious decades experts have explained, over and over, that the science of climate change is incontrovertible, the consequences of blindly sticking with fossil fuels catastrophic and the costs of inaction far higher than switching to a low-emissions economy.

But these facts had no impact on the sceptics, who cling to a worldview where they find “alternative facts”, where fossil fuel power is the only path to prosperity and mounting environmental and economic evidence to the contrary is some kind of dastardly leftwing plot.

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Source: Guardian Climate Change

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US has nothing to apologize for on climate change, says defiant EPA chief

  • Scott Pruitt insists America retains a seat at the negotiating table
  • Pruitt refuses to say whether Trump believes climate change is real

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency has said America has nothing to apologise for on climate change and retains a seat at the negotiating table, claiming: “After all, we’re the United States.”

Related: ‘Outmoded, irrelevant vision’: Pittsburghers reject Trump’s pledge

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Source: Guardian Climate Change

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Late-night hosts on Trump’s climate decision: ‘Even North Korea agreed to this’ – video

Talkshow hosts address Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement. On Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Trevor Noah describes Trump’s choice to make the announcement in the Rose Garden of the White House ‘a pretty gangster move’, while Jimmy Kimmel points out that the only other countries to shun the deal are Nicaragua and Syria, ‘and they’re doing great’

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Source: Guardian Climate Change

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General election: Theresa May 'weak and feeble and spineless' over climate change, says Ed Miliband – live

All the day’s campaign news, as Brexit secretary appears to contradict Theresa May’s ambition to cut net migration to under 100,000 by 2022

4.46pm BST

The Political Studies Association has been surveying experts to find out what they think the election result will be and today they have published a report with their findings (pdf). Some 335 people submitted forecasts (280 politics academics, and the rest journalists, pollsters or “other”) and generally they were forecasting a virtual Conservative landslide.

Being academics, they produced two figures for the average Conservative majority forecast: 92 was the mean figure, but 110 was the median (the halfway point).

Just as with vote shares, the headline figures for our expert predictions concerning seats in parliament also suggest a big win for the Conservatives, although some 12% of respondents expected a net loss of seats for the Tories. On average they expected a majority of 92 but most, 59% of respondents, expected a Tory majority of 100 or more. Labour were expected to sink to their lowest number of seats since 1935, with an average prediction of 186 seats. Just 6% of our respondents expected Labour to match or increase their 2015 seat tally.

4.15pm BST

This is quite fun. It’s from Sam Freedman, who now works at Teach First but who used to be a civil servant at the Department for Education.

Just had a message from a panicky civil servant who was supposed to be working on a plan to implement Labour’s policies.

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Source: Guardian Climate Change

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Need climate hope? Imagine the promise of green left-wing victories in Canada | Martin Lukacs

A NDP-Green coalition in BC, a $15 minimum wage in Ontario, and a surging Quebec Solidaire point toward a winning agenda in the age of climate crisis

For progressive-minded people in Canada, the last few days have presented a rare, strange scenario: almost too much to celebrate.

Months might pass without victories, but this week has given us three. In British Columbia, a coalition struck by the Greens and New Democratic Party is set to replace a Liberal government that has mismanaged the province for a generation. In Quebec, the election of a young ex-student leader has galvanized the Quebec Solidaire party and begun a left-ward shift in popular opinion. And in Ontario, a grassroots campaign has won a $15 minimum wage that will vastly improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of families.

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Source: Guardian Climate Change

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