Environment

Fighting horses, ghost caterpillar trees and the world's clearest lake are among the pick of this week's images from the natural world

A child and two women are rescued from a car stuck in fast-flowing floodwater in Worth County

EU legislation is fuelling a multibillion-dollar market. As landfill charges increase, it is often cheaper to send rubbish abroad

With the world's population and consumption increasing, the waste heap is growing. More than 4bn tonnes of waste (municipal, industrial and hazardous) is generated annually worldwide. Where does it all go?

There is a major challenge in describing and quantifying the global waste trade. A limited number of countries monitor and make public their imports and exports. Definitions and reporting discipline can vary greatly across countries. There is also a large (and growing) illegal trade in waste, which is even more difficult to monitor. The market for waste is now worth an estimated $443bn (£283bn) a year, and this figure is growing because of increasing export volumes and rising prices.

The top destination for waste is China, which in 2010 imported around 7.4m tonnes of discarded plastic, 28m tonnes of waste paper and 5.8m tonnes of steel scrap. Between 2000 and 2008, European exports of plastic waste increased by 250% – and about 87% of these exports ended up in China (including Hong Kong).

The trade is being driven by tough EU legislation forcing local authorities and businesses to recycle more, and increasing landfill charges, making it cheaper to send the waste abroad. More than a third of the waste paper and plastic collected by British local authorities, supermarkets and businesses for recycling is sent to China.

According to a report to the secretariat of the Basel Convention in 2003, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany were the highest exporters of waste, while Italy, France and, perhaps ironically, Germany, were the top waste importers.

Despite legislation banning the shipping of hazardous waste from the EU to non-OECD countries, an estimated 250,000 tonnes a year of used electrical products still flood to west Africa and Asia – hotspots are Ghana, Nigeria, India, Pakistan and China – under the guise of "used goods" or "charitable donations", allowing traders to elude these laws.

In these countries they may be dismantled by unprotected workers, often children, who remove small pieces of metal to be sold, and hard drives to extract personal information for fraudulent use. The remaining plastics and cables are often dumped or burned. More than 15 million people make money from waste-picking – almost all of them in developing countries.

Despite the difficulty in estimating the volume and value of the illegal waste trade, attempts by the UN Environment Programme and the Green Customs Initiative indicate that crime syndicates earn $20 to $30bn a year from waste crime. Inspections of 18 European seaports in 2005 found as much as 47% of waste destined for export was illegal.

According to an International Solid Waste Association report to be released in October, worldwide trade of recyclable plastics is estimated at a total of 12m tonnes a year, valued at $5bn. It flows mainly from affluent western and northern countries to Asia, especially China, which again enjoys the lion's share with about 70% of the global market. Europe is the major collective exporter with Hong Kong, the US, Japan, Germany and the UK representing the top five individual plastic scrap exporters.

• Waste
• Recycling
• China
• Africa
• European Union

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Two people found dead in a garage late Thursday as firefighters battle to a 'draw' with blaze near Colorado Springs

Two people were found dead in Colorado on Thursday as firefighters battled to a "draw" with a fast-moving fire that has become the most destructive in the state's history.

The El Paso County sheriff, Terry Maketa, said crews had found the remains of two people who appeared to be trying to flee the Black Forest residential area outside Colorado Springs.

The victims were found in a garage and apparently died in the first hours after the fire ignited on Tuesday afternoon.

"The car doors were open as if they were loading or grabbing last-minute things," Maketa said.

The fire was covering about 25 sq miles on Friday after crews were able to keep it from spreading despite swirling winds and bone-dry conditions, said Maketa.

Little more than 36 hours after it started in the Black Forest area north-east of Colorado Springs, the blaze had surpassed last June's Waldo Canyon fire as the most destructive in state history. That blaze burned 347 homes and killed two people.

Thursday began sombrely, with Maketa drawing audible gasps as he announced the number of homes lost. But by late that afternoon, a film of much-needed clouds stretched out overhead, as Maketa and other officials described determined efforts to keep the conflagration from spreading to more densely populated areas to the south and west.

In one instance, Maketa said, firefighters stood with their backs to the wall of a rural school building and successfully fought back the flames. "These guys just decided they were going to take a stand and save that building," he said.

Earlier on Thursday, residents were ordered to leave 1,000 homes in Colorado Springs – the first within the city limits. About 38,000 other people living across roughly 70 sq miles were already under orders to get out.

'Sometimes it's just nature'

Black Forest, where the blaze began, is described as the largest contiguous stretch of ponderosa pine in the US – a thick, wide carpet of vegetation rolling down from the Rampart range that thins out to the high grasslands of Colorado's eastern plains.

It offers a case study in the challenges of tamping down wildfires across the west, especially with growing populations, rising temperatures and a historic drought.

Once home to rural towns and summer cabins, Black Forest is dotted with million-dollar homes and gated communities – the result of the state's population boom over the past two decades. El Paso County saw double-digit population growth in the last decade and is now Colorado's largest county, with an economy driven by military and defence spending.

Nigel Thompson, a computer programmer who moved to a house on a 60-acre Black Forest lot in 1997, said he had cut down trees to form a firebreak and fitted fire-retardant roof tiles after taking in evacuees from a fire five years ago, but "it didn't make a damn difference at the end of the day". His home was incinerated on Tuesday.

"If you're surrounded by people who haven't done anything, it doesn't matter what you do," Thompson said. "It's interesting that you can have a house in a forest and the building code doesn't say anything about the roof design."

Homes built on windy mountain roads appeal to homebuyers seeking privacy but often hamper efforts to stamp out fire. The El Paso County commissioner, Darryl Glenn, who represents Black Forest, said the commission has tried to ensure that new developments have brush clearance and easy emergency access.

"Sometimes it's just nature," he said. "When you have a fire like this in a semi-arid environment, there's not a lot you can do."

Other fires burned in Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon and California.

In Canon City, 50 miles south-west of Black Forest, the 5 sq mile Royal Gorge fire was 20% contained on Thursday. It destroyed 20 structures, many at Royal Gorge Bridge and Park, and damaged wooden planks on a suspension bridge 955ft above the Arkansas river. An aerial tram was destroyed.

A lightning-sparked fire in Rocky Mountain national park was burning on about 300 acres, less than originally estimated.

• Colorado
• Wildfires
• United States

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Recent extreme temperatures that are commonly followed by floods can largely be attributed to climatic warming

Near-record temperatures in Pakistan have claimed hundreds of lives and devastated crops in the third major heatwave in four years. But as temperatures on Friday dipped to under 38C (100F), signalling the end of nearly four weeks of blistering heat, leading meteorologists warned that the country could expect longer, more intense and more frequent events in future.

Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, a vice-president of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and former director of Pakistan's Met Office, said the recent extreme summer temperatures that are commonly followed by massive floods could largely be attributed to climatic warming. "If we look at the frequency and the trend of the extreme weather events impacting Pakistan then it is easy to find its link with climate change," he said.

Chaudhry, who wrote Pakistan's climate change policy, authored a report in 2013 that showed the number of heatwaves in Pakistan had increased from 1980 to 2009 and that average temperature in the Indus delta was steadily rising.

In 2010, the May temperature in Mohenjo-daro, a semi-ruined city in Sindh province, reached 53.5C (128F), the fourth highest temperature ever recorded in the world and the highest ever in Asia.

Babar Hussain, who runs the Pakistan Weather Portal, said: "In 2013 the maximum was 51C/52C. The heatwave started on 12 May in Sindh province and gripped the entire country by 15 May. It lasted, with only a minor break, until 10 June. In that time, it reached 51/52C in Larkana, [a city of 2 million people in southern Sindh province] while Lahore, Punjab province's capital of about 15 million population, recorded 47C on 23 May, its hottest temperature since 1954."

The effect of the heatwaves on human life has been devastating. Newspapers in Pakistan have reported hundreds of deaths because of the heat since early May, but no official numbers have been released.

"With the coming of the monsoon rains this year, we have already begun to see an increase in cases of diarrhoea. This is because of contaminated drinking water," said Isaac Chikwanha, medical co-ordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières in Pakistan. "Heat strokes and dehydration are common among children and adults before the monsoon season when the temperature rises."

"The rise in vector-borne diseases including diarrhoea, cholera, gastroenteritis, typhoid and hepatitis is due to environmental factors and the effects of climate change," said Iqbal Memon, president of the Pakistan Paediatric Association. "The Indus River used to flow at full strength prior to the monsoon season and freshwater was abundantly available. Now there is no water in the Indus River. Ponds and riverines in Sindh have become contaminated, but people have no other option but to use that water for drinking and cooking. This lack of freshwater is purely due to environmental reasons," Memon told Dawn newspaper.

Farming has been badly affected, with cows giving less milk and not enough water for some crops. "The heat actually helped the cotton crop because it came when it was flowering and it quickly turned into fruit," said Mustafa Talpur of Oxfam in Islamabad. "But it badly hit the sugarcane, rice and chilli crops. The lack of irrigation water has affected the yield, but the exact impact wont be known until the harvest is over."

The heatwave may have affected people in cities more than in rural areas, partly because of the "heat island effect" which sees temperatures in urban areas 5-8C higher than in the countryside. Urban conditions were particularly bad because the heatwave led to power cuts which in turn led to violent protests. Many families were unable to pump water or run air conditioners. Officials at one point turned off the air conditioning in government offices.

Pakistan is, along with Bangladesh, highly vulnerable to natural disasters, and has experienced massive floods in the last three years, droughts and heatwaves.

• Climate change
• Natural disasters and extreme weather
• Natural resources and development
• Pakistan
• Flooding
• Drought
• Meteorology

John Vidal
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UK cities pay to send rubbish to Norwegian incinerators, but green campaigners warn of dangers

For a country blessed with bountiful oil supplies, it may appear incongruous. But Norway is importing as much rubbish as it can get its hands on, in an effort to generate more energy by burning waste in vast incinerators.

The Eurotrash business may sound like an unpromising enterprise, but it's one that is increasingly profitable. The UK paid to send 45,000 tonnes of household waste from Bristol and Leeds to Norway between October 2012 and April this year. "Waste has become a commodity," says Pål Spillum, head of waste recovery at the Climate and Pollution Agency in Norway. "There is a big European market for this, so much so that the Norwegians are accepting rubbish from other countries to feed the incinerator."

He refuses to divulge the sums involved, saying only that the market is growing. Spillum is "considering requests" to burn waste from other UK towns. "As a rule we generate about 50% of our income from the fee we receive to take the waste and about 50% from the sale of the energy we create," he says.

Norway is not alone. Waste to energy has become a preferred method of rubbish disposal in the EU, and there are now 420 plants in Europe equipped to provide heat and electricity to more than 20 million people. Germany ranks top in terms of importing rubbish, ahead of Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands. But it's Norway that boasts the largest share of waste to energy in district heat production, according to Danish government-funded State of Green.

Oslo's waste incinerator was built with extra capacity to cater for future growth. "With more and more countries in Europe moving away from using landfill, we assume that there will be growth in waste to energy," says Christoffer Back Vestli, communications adviser for the Oslo municipality. "At the moment, the city of Oslo can take 410,000 tonnes of waste a year and we import 45,000 tonnes from the UK. Europe as a whole currently dumps 150m tonnes of waste in landfills every year, so there is clearly great potential in using waste for energy."

Spillum adds: "It is cheaper [for some UK towns] to pay for us to take their waste than to pay landfill fees."

The incinerator only takes "clean trash" and the municipality is careful to filter out anything that could be hazardous. Norwegians are meticulous about their waste and divide household rubbish into three bags – blue for plastic to be recycled, green for food waste to make biogas and white for everything else that goes to the waste plant. But many are concerned that the rubbish being imported from the UK and Ireland may not be so carefully sorted. "We have no way of knowing whether the rubbish coming in from Bristol or Leeds or Ireland has been properly sorted or is 'clean'," says Henning Reinton, head of Greenpeace in Norway.

There are worries that burning rubbish may discourage recycling. Julian Kirby, of Friends of the Earth, says: "Waste for energy isn't as green as it's made out to be. We estimate that 80% of what's in the average waste stream is easily recyclable." Kirby argues that the incineration system creates confusion: "If you think your waste being burned is a good thing then you are more inclined to just chuck things away rather than recycling them."

Some Norwegians also view the waste-to-energy plant as a blot on the landscape. "People in the city find it quite ugly," says Reinton, who is campaigning against the use of incinerators to generate energy from waste. "The modern facilities are far less polluting and damaging to the environment than the older incinerators, but burning waste is just a shortcut. We need to think about longer-term strategies for minimising it."

But most residents seem comfortable with the idea of burning waste to create fuel, with 71% of the population supporting the renewable energy source. Ove Merg, an electrical engineer in Oslo, says: "We certainly think it's positive that we use an environmentally friendly energy source. It's great that waste can be useful, and that it actually heats our house."

Øistein Thomassen, a photographer from the city, adds: "We produce insane amounts of waste every day, so why not use waste as fuel for heat? As long as the benefits outweigh the risks, I think that using waste as an energy source is brilliant."

• Waste
• Energy
• Renewable energy
• Norway
• Europe

Helen Russell
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Holstein heifer Loh Nastygirl deemed 'a super cow from head to toe' in annual bovine beauty event in Oldenburg

German cow Loh Nastygirl has been crowned the country's most beautiful bovine after charming judges in the northern city of Oldenburg this week.

Nastygirl beat around 250 other candidates from Germany, Luxembourg and Austria to win the title of "Miss Germany" presented every two years by the German Holstein Association (DHV), an umbrella group representing 14 organisations dedicated to breeding the Holstein breed of cow.

"She's a super cow from head to toe," Egbert Feddersen, the manager of the DHV, told the Guardian of Loh Nastygirl. "Nothing was missing."

All the cows were primped and preened behind the scenes to make them look their best for the show, with 12 hairdressers brushing and drying, according to a DPA report.

Feddersen said while assessing the cows, judges looked in particular at the udder – the most important feature of the bovine.

"The farmer earns his money with it, so it is important that it is particularly well-developed and that it's big enough," said Feddersen.

"The next point is the legs and hooves. The cow has to walk around on its legs every day, therefore, they have to be healthy and the joints have to be healthy. The third criterion is the body, which has to have a large frame, as we call it, because it has to be able to eat enough to produce enough milk."

Feddersen said the three criteria had to "paint a nice picture" and, just as with people, "fit together in harmony", something, he said, Loh Nastygirl achieved.

• Germany
• Europe
• Animals
• Farming

Louise Osborne
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The Chinese Academy of Sciences translated a Heartland report, but endorses the climate change consensus

The Heartland Institute is a fossil fuel-funded think tank that gained notoriety in May 2012 for launching an ad campaign comparing those who agree that humans are causing global warming (that's 97% of climate scientists and the majority of the rest of us) to the Unabomber and Osama bin Laden.

Heartland also funds a report written by a group calling themselves the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which tries to be the contrarian response to the IPCC. The NIPCC report itself is BS (Bad Science), repeating numerous long-debunked climate myths and cherry picking data.

However, a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently decided to translate the NIPCC report. The Heartland Institute has triumphantly trumpeted this as evidence that the Chinese are becoming "skeptics" and the climate consensus is crumbling, claiming for example,

"The trend toward skepticism and away from alarmism is now unmistakable,"

"Publication of a Chinese translation of Climate Change Reconsidered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences indicates the country's leaders believe their [failure to sign a global climate treaty] is justified by science and not just economics."

However, Heartland's interpretation of these events does not jibe with the statements or actions of the translators, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, or the Chinese government. Here are relevant comments from the NIPCC translator's preface [PDF]:

"The most recent [IPCC] report ... found that most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (>90%) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, represents the consensus scientific opinions on international climate change studies. Yet, as with any academic topic, there are still differing viewpoints and debates on the causes, facts, impacts and trends in climate change."

"In order to help Chinese researchers to understand different opinions and positions in debates on climate change, at the end of 2011, we contact The Heartland Institute, the publisher of these two reports."

"The work of these translators, organizations and funders has been in the translation and the promotion of scientific dialogue, does not reflect that they agree with the views of NIPCC"

And here is the Chinese Academy of Sciences response to inquiries about the translation and Heartland's (mis)interpretation of its meaning:

"...this is only a book cooperation between the Lanzhou Branch of the National Science Library and Heartland Institute, and is limited only to copy right trading, with no academic research work involved.

A few CAS experts participated in the translation of the book, aiming to demonstrate different voices in the global scientific field to the Chinese science community, however, that does not mean that we CAS joined the research or agree with their view point; neither does it mean that CAS will decide "promote" the climate "skeptic" view or group."

These are not quite the ringing endorsements of the NIPCC report or the climate contrarian position that the Heartland comments imply. In fact, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has signed onto this joint statement along with 12 other Academies of Science, in which they endorse the IPCC consensus position on human-caused global warming and note,

"Responding to climate change requires both mitigation and adaptation to achieve a transition to a low carbon society and our global sustainability objectives."

In short, the Chinese Academy of Sciences endorses the IPCC consensus position that humans are causing global warming. They recognize that there are dissenting views (from the 2–3% minority in the scientific literature), and they offered to translate the NIPCC report as an opportunity for climate contrarians to make their case. However, the translators and Chinese Academy of Sciences explicitly note that this translation does not mean they agree with the contrarian position or the contents of the NIPCC report.

In fact, China has recently been taking a leading role in addressing climate change. They're testing out a carbon cap and trade system, are trying to ensure that their coal consumption has peaked, and have reached an agreement with the USA to reduce hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) emissions, which are potent greenhouse gases. China has also been diversifying towards more low-carbon energy sources. Does this sound like a country that denies that human greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change, as Heartland suggests?

As if Heartland's misrepresentation of China and its Academy of Sciences weren't bad enough, they also distorted the positions of the Russian and Polish Academy of Sciences, claiming the translation "follows strong statements by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Sciences dissenting from claims that global warming is either man-made or a crisis."

The claim about the Russian Academy of Sciences is based on a statement from a single scientist affiliated with the Academy. What does the Russian Academy of Science actually say about global warming? They signed the same joint statement as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, endorsing the IPCC consensus view that humans are causing global warming, and that we must "transition to a low-carbon society".

The claim about the Polish Academy of Sciences is based on a statement from the Academy's geologic science committee. Like its Chinese and Russian counterparts, the full Polish Academy of Sciences has signed statements endorsing the human-caused global warming consensus. For example in 2007 (Google English translation) and in 2010:

"It is widely agreed that human activities are changing Earth's climate beyond natural climatic fluctuations. The emission and accumulation of greenhouse gases associated with the burning of fossil fuels, along with other activities, such as land use change, are the principal causes of climate change."

So Heartland's claim about "the trend toward skepticism" (where "skepticism" actually means contrarianism) is pure fantasy. The reality is that the Chinese, Russian, and Polish Academies of Science all endorse the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.

Moreover, as our recent study found, that consensus position is growing in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. As Graham Readfearn recently documented, over the past two decades, fossil fuel interests have engaged in a number of campaigns to cast doubt on the existence of the consensus on human-caused global warming. Convincing the public that this settled science is still in dispute has long been a top priority for industry groups.

Heartland's misrepresentation of the positions of the Chinese, Russian, and Polish Academies of Science is the latest in this long line of efforts to cast doubt on the expert consensus on climate change. However, if the Bad Science in the NIPCC report represents the "differing viewpoints" the Chinese will be exposed to, I wouldn't bet on them reversing their endorsement of the human-caused global warming consensus anytime soon. Global temperatures will continue to rise, and the expert consensus on human-caused global warming will continue to grow along with them.

• Climate change
• Climate change scepticism
• Climate change
• Science and scepticism

Dana Nuccitelli
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NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism

Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA's Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic populations? Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis - or all three.

Just last month, unilateral changes to US military laws formally granted the Pentagon extraordinary powers to intervene in a domestic "emergency" or "civil disturbance":

"Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances."

Other documents show that the "extraordinary emergencies" the Pentagon is worried about include a range of environmental and related disasters.

In 2006, the US National Security Strategy warned that:

"Environmental destruction, whether caused by human behavior or cataclysmic mega-disasters such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, or tsunamis. Problems of this scope may overwhelm the capacity of local authorities to respond, and may even overtax national militaries, requiring a larger international response."

Two years later, the Department of Defense's (DoD) Army Modernisation Strategy described the arrival of a new "era of persistent conflict" due to competition for "depleting natural resources and overseas markets" fuelling "future resource wars over water, food and energy." The report predicted a resurgence of:

"... anti-government and radical ideologies that potentially threaten government stability."

In the same year, a report by the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute warned that a series of domestic crises could provoke large-scale civil unrest. The path to "disruptive domestic shock" could include traditional threats such as deployment of WMDs, alongside "catastrophic natural and human disasters" or "pervasive public health emergencies" coinciding with "unforeseen economic collapse." Such crises could lead to "loss of functioning political and legal order" leading to "purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency...

"DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance."

That year, the Pentagon had begun developing a 20,000 strong troop force who would be on-hand to respond to "domestic catastrophes" and civil unrest - the programme was reportedly based on a 2005 homeland security strategy which emphasised "preparing for multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents."

The following year, a US Army-funded RAND Corp study called for a US force presence specifically to deal with civil unrest.

Such fears were further solidified in a detailed 2010 study by the US Joint Forces Command - designed to inform "joint concept development and experimentation throughout the Department of Defense" - setting out the US military's definitive vision for future trends and potential global threats. Climate change, the study said, would lead to increased risk of:

"... tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural catastrophes... Furthermore, if such a catastrophe occurs within the United States itself - particularly when the nation's economy is in a fragile state or where US military bases or key civilian infrastructure are broadly affected - the damage to US security could be considerable."

The study also warned of a possible shortfall in global oil output by 2015:

"A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions."

That year the DoD's Quadrennial Defense Review seconded such concerns, while recognising that "climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked."

Also in 2010, the Pentagon ran war games to explore the implications of "large scale economic breakdown" in the US impacting on food supplies and other essential services, as well as how to maintain "domestic order amid civil unrest."

Speaking about the group's conclusions at giant US defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton's conference facility in Virginia, Lt Col. Mark Elfendahl - then chief of the Joint and Army Concepts Division - highlighted homeland operations as a way to legitimise the US military budget:

"An increased focus on domestic activities might be a way of justifying whatever Army force structure the country can still afford."

Two months earlier, Elfendahl explained in a DoD roundtable that future planning was needed:

"Because technology is changing so rapidly, because there's so much uncertainty in the world, both economically and politically, and because the threats are so adaptive and networked, because they live within the populations in many cases."

The 2010 exercises were part of the US Army's annual Unified Quest programme which more recently, based on expert input from across the Pentagon, has explored the prospect that "ecological disasters and a weak economy" (as the "recovery won't take root until 2020") will fuel migration to urban areas, ramping up social tensions in the US homeland as well as within and between "resource-starved nations."

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was a computer systems administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton, where he directly handled the NSA's IT systems, including the Prism surveillance system. According to Booz Allen's 2011 Annual Report, the corporation has overseen Unified Quest "for more than a decade" to help "military and civilian leaders envision the future."

The latest war games, the report reveals, focused on "detailed, realistic scenarios with hypothetical 'roads to crisis'", including "homeland operations" resulting from "a high-magnitude natural disaster" among other scenarios, in the context of:

"... converging global trends [which] may change the current security landscape and future operating environment... At the end of the two-day event, senior leaders were better prepared to understand new required capabilities and force design requirements to make homeland operations more effective."

It is therefore not surprising that the increasing privatisation of intelligence has coincided with the proliferation of domestic surveillance operations against political activists, particularly those linked to environmental and social justice protest groups.

Department of Homeland Security documents released in April prove a "systematic effort" by the agency "to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations" linked to Occupy Wall Street, according to the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).

Similarly, FBI documents confirmed "a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector" designed to produce intelligence on behalf of "the corporate security community." A PCJF spokesperson remarked that the documents show "federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

In particular, domestic surveillance has systematically targeted peaceful environment activists including anti-fracking activists across the US, such as the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, Rising Tide North America, the People's Oil & Gas Collaborative, and Greenpeace. Similar trends are at play in the UK, where the case of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy revealed the extent of the state's involvement in monitoring the environmental direct action movement.

A University of Bath study citing the Kennedy case, and based on confidential sources, found that a whole range of corporations - such as McDonald's, Nestle and the oil major Shell, "use covert methods to gather intelligence on activist groups, counter criticism of their strategies and practices, and evade accountability."

Indeed, Kennedy's case was just the tip of the iceberg - internal police documents obtained by the Guardian in 2009 revealed that environment activists had been routinely categorised as "domestic extremists" targeting "national infrastructure" as part of a wider strategy tracking protest groups and protestors.

Superintendent Steve Pearl, then head of the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (Nectu), confirmed at that time how his unit worked with thousands of companies in the private sector. Nectu, according to Pearl, was set up by the Home Office because it was "getting really pressured by big business - pharmaceuticals in particular, and the banks." He added that environmental protestors were being brought "more on the radar." The programme continues today, despite police acknowledgements that environmentalists have not been involved in "violent acts."

The Pentagon knows that environmental, economic and other crises could provoke widespread public anger toward government and corporations in coming years. The revelations on the NSA's global surveillance programmes are just the latest indication that as business as usual creates instability at home and abroad, and as disillusionment with the status quo escalates, Western publics are being increasingly viewed as potential enemies that must be policed by the state.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed

• Climate change
• Activism
• NSA
• Prism
• Energy

Nafeez Ahmed
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Pollution, poor diet and stress are causing health problems in world's most populous country despite health reforms and affordable healthcare

China is now facing similar health issues to higher income countries including the UK and US, according to new global health figures.

Poor diet and cancer are a growing concern in China compared to issues such as TB and measles just 20 years ago.

Since 1990, rapid improvements in health have led to fewer infectious diseases. Children under five are also much more likely to survive. In a snapshot taken in 1990, there were 1m child deaths, compared to 2010, where the number was down to 213,000. People are also living longer – from a life expectancy of 69.3 years in 1990 to 75.7 today.

But health problems from smoking and high blood pressure are increasingly a problem. Just over half of Chinese men smoke – one of the highest rates in the world. Chinese women are at the opposite end of the scale, with one of the lowest smoking rates, but the number of people exposed to passive smoking in China could be as high as 72%, according to figures published in The Lancet journal.

Stroke, cancer and poor diet

Stroke is now China's biggest killer, causing 1.7m deaths in 2010. Diseases such as diabetes and cancer are also up. Chinese women are a lot less likely to die from breast cancer – only South Korea and Saudi Arabia have a higher rate of survival – but five cancers, including lung, liver and stomach, are among the top 15 killers.

The changing health trend comes from figures compiled for the 'Global burden of diseases, injuries and risk factors', a collaborative study led by researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at Washington University.

The study compares China to other countries in the G20, a group of 20 of the world's major economies. Previous health figures released by the IHME showed the UK was lagging behind most other European countries when it came to deaths from preventable causes, such as smoking, unhealthy eating, alcohol and drugs.

While people in the UK are healthier and living longer, Britons suffer more from disabling conditions such as back and neck pain and depression.

The likelihood of dying early in China is now only slightly higher than the US. Comparisons between China and the G20 countries can be made using data visualisation tools, including the top 25 causes of people dying early.

"China has made significant improvements in health over the past 20 years," IMHE's Dr Haidong Wang said.

"Stroke is the leading cause of death and has increased by 35% since 1990. Blood pressure is second after dietary risks." Along with smoking, Wang said consuming high amounts of salt with not enough fruit and whole grains – even in rural areas – is a problem.

Women have fared better – mortality rates of women up to the age of 34 have dropped by a half.

"Communicable disease is down, too," Wang said. "So there is a lot of good news. But non-communicable diseases are increasing, especially cancer."

Changes to healthcare

While some change has been incremental – the study says the rise in non-infectious diseases and chronic disability has also been driven by urbanisation, rising incomes and ageing – the Chinese government is making healthcare changes that could also have an impact.

"In 2009, the government announced major health reforms," Wang said. "The public was unhappy about healthcare being unaffordable and the fact that people had unequal access to healthcare based on status and where they lived. In the next decade, the government plans to train a significant number of family physicians."

Twenty years ago, China had a health profile very similar to much of the developing world, including countries such as Vietnam or Iraq.

"The main thing other countries can learn from China is that rapid change to improve health is possible within a relatively short period of time, especially in reducing communicable disease," says Wang. "The transformation of health in China has happened in just 20 years."

More than 680 million people in China now live in cities – now more than half of the country's population – driven by the search for jobs and economic opportunity. But air pollution and other issues can lead to health problems.

"Urbanisation leads to lifestyle change such as reduced physical activities, added living and working pressure and unhealthy dietary change, all of which contribute to higher risks of having NCDs," says Dr Winnie Wang from the School of Geographical Sciences at Bristol University.

"More than 200m temporary migrants in cities have more limited access to health services. Increased pollution level in cities due to vehicles and industrial development have also put the urban population at a higher health risk than those in a rural population."

"China not only has the largest ageing population but also one of the fastest growing in the world. Ageing is considered as a driving force for NCDs as elderly people can be more vulnerable."

Dr Gonghuan Yang, professor at Peking Union Medical College and a joint lead author of the IMHE study, said "aggressive tobacco control measures" would need to be a part of any important public health strategy. Tackling the issue, Yang has said, would take significant political will and public engagement to counter strong opposition to tobacco control in China.

This piece was originally published on The Conversation website

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• Global health
• China
• Health
• Health & wellbeing
• Diets and dieting
• Pollution

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Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series

The company will pay £40m for a 25% stake in a shale gas field in Lancashire, giving the driller a presumed value of £160m

Speculation over the worth of the UK's shale gas industry has veered between the enormous – enough to fuel the entire country for decades to come according to estimates from the British Geological Survey – and the negligible: several big gas players, including BP, Shell and Centrica, have said the amount of shale gas likely to come from the UK was nowhere near enough to trouble investors.

That speculation has been turned on its head. Centrica has taken a 25% in Cuadrilla, the only company to have started shale gas fracking in the UK. But the amount the company has paid for its stake tells us more about the likely worth of the UK's shale gas industry than any of the wild pronouncements yet.

Centrica will pay £40m for a 25% stake in Cuadrilla's main shale gas field in Bowland, Lancashire, giving the shale gas driller a presumed value of £160m. There is also the small matter of £60m that Centrica will contribute to Cuadrilla's drilling to come.

Cuadrilla has already sunk more than £100m into drilling for shale gas in the UK, most of it in Lancashire's Bowland shale, with not a penny yet to show in gas production, and with many setbacks – it has been forced to cease drilling in Lancashire after two small earth tremors at one site and fears for wildlife at another. The company is also looking to drill in Sussex, where its preliminary drillers recently started work in Balcombe, but it faces strong local opposition.

The amount Centrica is prepared to pay reveals the appetite – or lack of it – for investors in the UK's putative shale gas fields. Lord Browne of Madingley, former chief executive of BP, and now chairman of Cuadrilla and a director of its venture capital backers, Riverstone Capital Partners, told the Guardian earlier in 2013 that he would ensure the company and its backers invested "whatever it takes" to make shale gas in this country a viable industry. It seems that Riverstone did not have enough enthusiasm, or capital, to do that alone.

Valuing Cuadrilla – which is the only company yet to have fracked in the UK, and the owner of the licences to frack most likely to bear early fruit – at only £160m in nominal terms is a severe blow for those who think the UK's energy future is homegrown gas. That low valuation should cause serious worry on the right wing of the Tory party, many of whom have been advocating a "dash for gas" as a cure for the UK's energy woes.

But fracking is no easy solution. As the International Energy Agency warned this week, the UK is not like the US, where extensive fracking in the last five years has sent the price of gas plummeting. Population density is much higher here, and the geology is much less propitious. Shale gas fracking involves blasting dense rocks apart under immense pressure, using water and chemicals, and regulations in the UK are much tighter than they are in the US.

Gas is not a low-carbon fuel, whatever its proponents may claim. It is a fossil fuel, and greenhouse gas emissions from fracking are higher than from conventional gas. If it is not carried out properly - ensuring no methane leaks out - they can even be higher than the emissions from burning coal.

Thursday's leap by Centrica into the shale gas market reveals what few in the fracking fraternity have been willing to admit – that the value of the UK's fracked gas market is low, and that the probability of the UK becoming a global centre for shale gas production is slight. The government should not be pinning its hopes on shale gas for the UK's homegrown energy future.

• Shale gas and fracking
• Energy
• Fossil fuels
• Gas
• Centrica
• Utilities

Fiona Harvey
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Meteorologists are debating our role in bizarre weather events. We have the technology for change, but not the political will

On Monday, Amory Lovins, physicist, environmentalist, and unassuming colossus of the green movement, appeared in London to talk about energy use. I mention this in the context of the Guardian's story that meteorologists are due to meet next week to discuss whether our bizarre weather is climate change-related (moreover, anthropogenic climate change-related) or just represents natural variation.

I have got into the habit of mentally and often literally shutting my eyes when I see a story like that; ditto, when I see the phrase "400 parts per million". What else do you do about a looming disaster that politics refuses to address? How is it possible to stay hopeful, when the G8 is meeting and climate change isn't even on its agenda? What's the point of international politics if not to address this?

But then I heard Lovins talk about his negawatt revolution, and it cheered me right up.

He said the solutions are already there; we know how to make cars out of materials that make them so much lighter they could be powered on hugely reduced fuel. We know how to build houses with solar bricks so that they don't need heating (he grows bananas in his house, while it's snowing outside and without heating it. This blew my mind). We also already know how to make renewable energy work: Austria gets a quarter of its inland energy consumption from renewables; Sweden a third; Latvia more than a third.

What we lack is not expertise, but will. We're living with politicians so feeble that they see wind energy as a local planning issue and they're afraid to talk about saving energy for fear that it might sound expensive. Faced with a scientific consensus on carbon use that is as close as humanity will ever get to unanimous, their response is to find more carbon.

The discoveries we need to make are not technological; they are human. How do we imbue the political cycle with some long-term thinking, some altruism, some care for future generations?

What this situation needs is actual bad weather, actual negative events, that we can all see, that we can agree on the significance of, to spur us into action. In the meantime the answers are sitting there, waiting to happen.

• Green politics
• Climate change
• Climate change

Zoe Williams
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Reuters photographer David Gray spent time documenting life in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati, a chain of 33 atolls and islands that stand just metres above sea level

Mee-Lai Stone

Shale gas drilling: 'I told you we'd shake up the market'

Simon Copland: If coal extraction developments are to go ahead in Queensland, we are dooming ourselves to a world no one wants to see

Simon Copland

Paula Matthewson: No matter how much Christine Milne claims otherwise, this election will not be about them or the independents. It will be a battle of giants

Paula Matthewson

Three arrested in environmental protests as Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper visits London

None of the companies operating in Canada's tar sands have met a commitment to clean up the vast and expanding sprawl of toxic waste ponds, an official report has found.

The report, from Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board, further challenges the Canadian government's claims to responsible mining of the tar sands.

Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, spoke to Parliament on Thursday. Three protesters were arrested during the visit.

The report focuses on the provincial government's promise to clean up and eventually eliminate a vast network of open ponds storing mining waste from the tar sands along the Athabasca river.

None of the seven companies operating in the tar sands met the original performance standard, set in 2009, during the last two years, the ECRB said in its report.

Only one of the companies met a revised and weakened standard.

The finding was quietly published last week, without a press release.

"Industry performance over the 2010/2012 reporting period has not met the original expectations," it concluded.

However, the board did not propose any penalties against the companies, suggesting instead that the clean-up targets may have been overly optimistic.

Mining waste from the tar sands, a mix of water, sand, silt, clay, contaminants, and hydrocarbons, is dumped in a system of open lakes, known as tailing ponds.

The ponds are hugely toxic to marine life, and some 7,000 ducks and geese die every year after mistakenly landing there.

The ponds currently occupy an area about 50% larger than the city of Vancouver, according to the Pembina Institute, an environmental research centre. By 2020, they are expected to expand to 250 square kms.

Alberta's government imposed the performance standards in 2009 to try to reduce the growing sprawl of liquid waste dumps. Under the standards, mining operators were to have reduced their waste by 50% by June 2013.

Alberta's premier, Alison Redford, promised during a trip to Washington in April that such waste ponds would disappear entirely by 2016.

Pembina Institute's Jennifer Grant argued the province should put further expansion of the tar sands on hold, until companies meet the performance standard. She also called for more rigorous enforcement action. " It is irresponsible to approve new oilsands expansion when mining operators are failing to meet tailings clean up rules," Grant wrote in an email. "Promises of responsible oilsands development ring hollow when the ERCB is not enforcing its own tailings rules."

• Canada
• United States
• London
• Stephen Harper
• Keystone XL pipeline
• Waste

Suzanne Goldenberg
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Fire near Colorado Springs destroys at least 360 properties as it surpasses destruction of 2012's Waldo Canyon fire

A wildfire in Colorado has destroyed at least 360 homes, as the most destructive blaze in the state's history burned out of control for a third day through miles of tinder-dry woods.

The destruction north-east of Colorado Springs on Thursday surpassed last June's Waldo Canyon fire, which burned down 347 homes, killed two people and caused $353m-worth of damage just 15 miles to the south-west. The heavy losses were blamed in part on explosive population growth in areas with a historically high fire risk.

"I never in my wildest dreams imagined we'd be dealing a year later with a very similar circumstance," said the El Paso County sheriff, Terry Maketa, who drew audible gasps as he announced the number of homes lost to the blaze in Black Forest.

Hours later, residents of 1,000 homes in Colorado Springs were ordered to leave. Thursday's evacuation was the first within the city limits. About 38,000 other people living across roughly 70 sq miles were already under orders to get out.

Colorado's second-largest city, with a population of 430,000, also asked residents of 2,000 more homes to be ready to evacuate. The streets became gridlocked with hundreds of cars while emergency vehicles raced by on shoulders.

Hot, gusty winds fanned the 23-sq mile wildfire, sending it into new areas and back into places that had previously been spared. Even investigators sent in to determine the cause of the fire were withdrawn for safety reasons.

No injuries or deaths have been reported. The Red Cross said more than 800 people stayed at shelters.

Black Forest, where the blaze began, offers a case study in the challenges of tamping down wildfires in Colorado and across the west, with growing populations, rising temperatures and a historic drought.

Developers describe Black Forest as the largest contiguous stretch of ponderosa pine in the US — a thick, wide carpet of vegetation rolling down from the Rampart range that thins out to the high grasslands of Colorado's eastern plains. Once home to rural towns and summer cabins, it is dotted with million-dollar homes and gated communities — the result of the state's population boom over the past two decades.

El Paso County, its economy driven largely by military and defence spending, saw double-digit growth in the last decade and is now Colorado's largest county, with more than 637,000 people.

"There's so many more people living here in the last 30 years. You couldn't believe it," said Bruce Buksar, who has lived in Black Forest since 1981.

Thousands of homes in Colorado's heavily populated Front range are at risk, said Gregory Simon, an assistant professor of geography who studies urban wildfires at the University of Colorado-Denver. Many are built on windy mountain roads or cul-de-sacs — appealing to homebuyers seeking privacy but often hampering efforts to stamp out fire. Residents in the outdoor-loving state are also attracted by the ability to hike from their backyards and have horses.

"Unfortunately, these environments give the appearance of being peaceful, tranquil and bucolic and natural. But they belie the reality that they are combustible, volatile and at times dangerous," Simon said.
Nigel Thompson was drawn to Black Forest by the rural feel, privacy, lack of crime and space to raise a family.

"A safe place for my kids to grow up, lots of room for them to run around," said Thompson, a computer programmer who moved to a house on a 60-acre lot in 1997.

Five years later, he took in evacuees from a devastating fire in the foothills to the northwest. That drove home the fact that his family was living in a tinderbox. Thompson cut down 20 pine trees to form a firebreak around his house, which he topped with fire retardant roof tiles. He diligently cleared away brush, downed branches and pine cones, like many here do in community cleanups every spring.

"It didn't make a damn difference at the end of the day," Thompson said on Thursday. His home was incinerated on Tuesday.

"If you're surrounded by people who haven't done anything, it doesn't matter what you do," Thompson said. "It's interesting that you can have a house in a forest and the building code doesn't say anything about the roof design."
That's what makes fire prevention so difficult, said Anne Walker of the Western Governors' Association.

"Local government has ultimate authority over where homes are placed," she said. "You need to look at local ordinances and where homes are placed and what they're made of."

The El Paso County commissioner, Darryl Glenn, who represents Black Forest, said the commission has tried to ensure that new developments have brush clearance and easy emergency access.

"Sometimes it's just nature," he said. "When you have a fire like this in a semi-arid environment, there's not a lot you can do."

Maketa said firefighters were hampered by a matted layer of pine needles and grass fuel on the forest floor – fuel called "duff". Spot fires below the trees can smolder for days and even weeks inside it, then blow up. Firefighters see dry matting, Maketa said, "and when you look 10 minutes later, it's full of flames."

The military pitched in, manning roadblocks with Humvees, providing firefighters, plowing fire lines with bulldozers and flying two C-130 cargo planes and several helicopters to drop slurry and water. The aid came from nearby Fort Carson, the air force academy, Peterson air force base, Cheyenne Mountain air force station, Buckley air force base and the Colorado National Guard.

Other fires burned in Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon and California.
In Canon City, 50 miles south-west of Black Forest, the 5 sq mile Royal Gorge fire was 20% contained. It destroyed 20 structures, many at Royal Gorge Bridge and Park, and damaged wooden planks on a suspension bridge 955ft above the Arkansas River. An aerial tram was destroyed.

A lightning-sparked fire in Rocky Mountain national park was burning on about 300 acres, less than originally estimated.

• Wildfires
• Colorado
• United States

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South Uist: A blackbird begins its song, melodic and complex … across the water, the song of a distant cuckoo

It is both warm and still in the little wood. Here and there, the late afternoon sun slants through the branches, illuminating patches of bluebells which form pools of bright blue in the green below. Scattered among the other trees are rowans, and the scent of their flowers is heavy in the air. Against a background drone of busy insects, a willow warbler is singing softly from deep in the tangle of branches. As it tails away into silence, a blackbird begins its own song. Melodic and complex, yet mellow and gentle, it is the very sound of summer.

At the edge of the wood, as the more mature trees give way to younger specimens, the path gradually emerges from the shade into brilliant sunshine and a breeze so gentle it barely ruffles the surface of the loch which stretches ahead to the open sea. Now fuschia, with its bell-like blooms, and broom, heavy with golden yellow flowers, line the way‚ the sharper scent of the latter spiking through the softer notes of the rowan.

Bees are busy at the broom flowers hovering, testing, working their way deep into a chosen flower and then emerging to move on immediately to the next. Butterflies – green veined whites – dance along the pathsides and out over the open slopes, while a single meadow brown alights on the path itself and, closing its wings, disappears, perfectly camouflaged against the parched soil and scattered stones.

Along the shore several groups of seals are hauled out, their dry coats pale against the darker rocks of the shore. They lie almost motionless, relaxed and idle in the summer warmth. Beyond them, on the far side of the sea loch, the hills that rise from the slopes of heather and bright new bracken are blued and hazy, all the fine detail of rock face and gully and scree and boulder flattened and made indistinct by the heat. And from somewhere across the water, soft yet far carrying in the quietness of the afternoon, comes the song of a distant cuckoo.

• Birds
• Rural affairs
• Scotland

Christine Smith
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