Political and religious leaders urge Pakistanis to donate to flood victims instead of holding lavish parties to mark end of Ramadan

In a normal year Pakistanis would be scurrying home tomorrow night for a weekend of gluttony-tinged indulgence marking Eid al-Fitr, the end of the fasting month of Ramadan and Islam's near equivalent of Christmas. But this is no normal year.

With 21 million people – almost one-eighth of the population – affected by the worst floods in living memory, and broad swaths of the country still under water, many have no homes to go to, and no mosques to attend.

The traditional Eid present is a new set of clothes. But in Charsadda, a flood-ravaged area near Peshawar, Hakim Khan stood among the crushed masonry of his collapsed home and plucked a bundle of damp, mud-streaked shirts from the rubble. "These are our Eid clothes," he said bitterly.

Away from the flood-ravaged areas, in the main cities, sparkling Eid lights still drape the streets. But inside homes a new austerity has curtailed the festive spirit. Traders report disastrous pre-holiday sales while engaged couples have scaled back plans for extravagant nuptials during the autumn wedding season.

"There's a feeling of helplessness, people want to reach out," said filmmaker Samar Minallah.

A prominent Muslim preacher has offered ideas on how to do that. Tahir-ul-Qadri has bought television ads urging people to forgo new clothes in favour of flood donations. "I have a message for the nation: mark Eid in a very plain manner," he says.

Many are taking that message to heart. Shahzad Liaqat, a 29-year-old optometrist from Islamabad, recently drove to Nowshera, one of the worst-hit towns, in a truck laden with wheat, medicine and secondhand clothes. His family will be wearing old clothes this holiday. "When you see these people on the television, you can't celebrate anything," he said.

Business at Liaqat's glittering shop, which sells designer sunglasses, has plunged to the worst level in years. Some of this was flood-related austerity, he felt, but it was also a product of shrinking wallets. Pakistan's economy suffers galloping inflation and has become reliant on international financial bailouts.

In Charsadda the flood waters have receded, allowing foreign and local aid to flow in. Irfan Nawaz Raja, a Punjabi businessman, drove a truck filled with second-hand clothes and food packets donated by family and friends into a camp filled with white tents. He had been motivated to act by the images of human suffering on television. "It made us cry," he said.

Like many private donors, Raja said he wanted to bring his aid directly to the people, because he was suspicious about corruption in government channels. But such ad-hoc aid cannot meet the immense needs of flood-ravaged areas.

Next door to Hakim Khan, a wizened 85-year-old man sat quietly under a hastily-erected straw lean-to, watching over a small hill of bricks – the remains of his home – that he guarded with his walking cane. "If I leave, people will steal them," he said.

A few yards away Muhammad Iqbal, a 25-year-old rickshaw driver, wept as he described how he would spend Eid: sitting in his unpleasantly warm mould-covered tent, eating food handouts. His wife, eight months pregnant, stood quietly by as he wiped tears from his eyes; his five-year-old daughter chewed on a sweet, wearing a donated orange dress.

The black mood has been heightened by Pakistan's recent national traumas. On Wednesday at Lahore airport enraged cricket fans shouted "shame!" at Ejaz Butt, chairman of the country's troubled cricket board. One fan threw a shoe in his direction. Like much of the cricketers' batting during recent matches with England, it failed to connect.

A steady drumbeat of Taliban and US violence continues apace. This week, suicide bombers attacked three police stations across the north-west; yesterday a US drone fired a missile into a house in the tribal belt, killing five people – the fourth such strike in less than 24 hours. On the political front, the combination of crises has taken a toll on President Asif Ali Zardari who is widely disparaged as "Mr Ten Per Cent" — a nickname that once applied to alleged corruption but which, if current trends continue, could refer to his poll ratings instead.

Perhaps as a result of public scepticism, Pakistan's leaders are conspicuously flaunting their piety. The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, has promised to spend the holiday with flood victims; the leaders of the main opposition parties are urging their parliamentarians to do the same.

But, while most Pakistanis will treat the coming days as a welcome breather, the holiday could also be marred by disturbances.

Security services are bracing for a violent reaction to the planned burning of 200 copies of the Qur'an by a preacher in Florida on Saturday, the eve of the anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

"It could be rough," said one western diplomat in Islamabad.

• Pakistan
• Flooding
• Islam
• Religion
• Natural disasters and extreme weather

Europe is installing more wind power capacity than any other form of energy, and wind is leading the way to making the continent's electricity generation 100% renewable by 2050

Today, only five percent of Europe's electricity comes from wind. But that will not be the case for long. For the past two years, 40 percent of all new electricity generating capacity in Europe came from wind turbines. From Spain to Sweden, so many new turbines are being erected that Europe is on target to produce 15 percent of its electricity from wind by 2020. By 2050, half of Europe's electricity is expected to come from wind.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360 senior editor Fen Montaigne, Christian Kjaer — CEO of the European Wind Energy Association, an industry group — describes the combination of government policies, entrepreneurial vision, and public support that have enabled wind to become Europe's leading form of green energy. The 27-member European Union has passed a host of progressive policies — including tax credits, financial incentives, and priority access for renewable energy to the electricity grid — that have encouraged the growth of wind, solar, and other forms of green energy. But the EU also wields a stick, requiring member states to set renewable energy targets and retaining the right to sue those countries that fall short.

Increasingly, says Kjaer, as old power plants fired by coal and natural gas reach the end of their lives, they are being replaced by wind and solar power. The economic benefits of this transition, says Kjaer, are indisputable, with nearly 200,000 people currently employed in the European wind power sector. By 2020, Kjaer estimates 450,000 Europeans will have jobs in the wind power industry.

Kjaer is confident that, as green energy competition from Asian nations intensifies, Europe can retain its edge, thanks to its high-quality manufacturing sector and strong government support. "The winners of tomorrow's energy wars," he says, "are going to be those who understand how to develop new technology, deploy new technology and get the benefits of exporting that technology to the rest of the world."

Yale Environment 360: I was wondering if you could paint a picture of the state of the European wind industry and describe what kind of growth you've been experiencing in recent years.

Christian Kjaer: For the past two years, the 27 member states of the European Union, taken as one, have installed more wind power capacity than any other power-generating capacity. So wind energy is currently meeting 5 percent of the electricity demand in the European Union. But in terms of new power plants, new capacity — which of course also is an indication of new jobs and economic activity in the power plant manufacturing business — 40 percent of all new capacity last year was wind. And if you add other renewables — and this is primarily PV, solar photovoltaics — 63 percent of all new capacity installed last year was from renewables. So I think that's the most significant.

It's even more telling that more than 75 percent of the [wind] installations last year were in five countries: Spain, Germany, Italy, France, and the U.K. We're installing 40 percent [of new capacity], and we're actually doing that not even looking at all the member states that have the potential to install wind energy.

In terms of the overall status of the power market, we need the European Union to install new capacity between now and the next 10, 15 years equal to about 50 percent of currently installed capacity. We need to replace existing power plants that are getting old, but also to meet expected increases in demand in the future. We believe it's a great opportunity to make a real change in the way we supply our energy. Because we need to do investment in new power plants anyway, so we might as well invest in technologies that are compatible with the very strong and changed political agenda on renewables and on reducing carbon emissions.

e360: When you talk about the 50 percent installed capacity, are you talking about new wind generation meeting that requirement, or all renewables?

Kjaer: The European Union adopted last year legislation which mandates that each member state has a specific target for its share of renewable energy in the energy mix by 2020. And what that means collectively is that we need to increase the share of renewables in electricity from currently about 15 percent — that includes 10 percent for large hydro and about 5 percent wind energy — to 35 percent by 2020. Our large hydro can't increase much more, because it's already utilized. So that means if you take large hydro out, you need to increase non-large hydro renewables from currently 5 percent to about 25 percent. And of course wind energy will be one of the big contributors to that.

e360: Can you briefly sketch out how you think, in the wind sector, those very ambitious goals can be met?

Kjaer: We believe that we will reach about 230 gigawatts of wind by the end of 2020, and that's up from approximately 80 gigawatts today. That will produce somewhere between 14 and 17 percent of our electricity, depending on the electricity demand. We need to install approximately 9.5 gigawatts of new wind capacity each year between now and 2020. Now, given that we installed more than 10 gigawatts last year, technically this is not a big challenge. If we just do what we've been doing the last two years in terms of new installation, then we will have 15 percent of our electricity coming from wind energy in 2020.

Now we believe that you can reach a higher level, and the European Commission has also indicated that it believes that wind energy could contribute 20 percent of European electricity in 2020. But then we really need to make a serious effort in terms of changing the way we operate our grids. Also, we would need to be a bit faster in developing an offshore grid for utilizing the offshore wind energy. That will require some additional efforts from politicians mainly, related to optimizing and expanding our grid infrastructure to accommodate a larger amount of variable wind power in the system, and also other renewables.

e360: Why is it that wind has taken off at such a respectable rate, ahead of solar?

Kjaer: The reason wind will be the main contributor to reaching these targets is that onshore wind is the cheapest of the new renewables. So the majority of this will be met by wind turbines on land. Offshore is still more expensive, but we do expect that to play an increasing role as well. But in terms of wind versus photovolyaics, we're still significantly lower in terms of producing a kilowatt-hour of electricity.

e360: Can you say a few words about this proposed North Sea supergrid and how important that might be?

Kjaer: There's a very strong [desire] to develop offshore wind energy. So one main element of the North Sea supergrid is that we need to accommodate a large expansion of one of our biggest future energy sources in order to avoid increasing our [oil] imports from unstable regions of the world.

One of the main reasons for the strong political support for a supergrid is also that we want to create an internal [European] market for electricity, which of course, in the end, should give consumers the most affordable electricity. That's the whole idea about the internal market, is that it would create the free movement over borders of goods, services, and in this case electricity at the lowest cost. And in order to create an internal market for electricity you need the infrastructure, just as you need roads to move goods around the European Union.

The European Union and the United States are very similar here. In the United States you have the same challenge, that electricity is governed mainly at the state level. And it's the same problem we have in the European Union, getting the member states to cooperate on cross-border issues, the same as between the states in the United States.

What is really needed is for member states to have much stronger collaboration, and what we have seen also recently is that a group of ten countries surrounding the North Sea, and also countries that are a bit further away from the North Sea which have an interest in it as well, have formed a group discussing, at the government level, how should we create a North Sea grid and how should we integrate offshore wind energy into that grid?

e360: When you look at the five countries that you listed that are really leading the way in wind so far, why is it that they have become the leaders? And, secondly, what government policies are necessary to have a robust wind industry?

Kjaer: Of the five countries I mentioned, there are two main groups. Germany and Spain — and we can add Denmark there, as well — started early. Spain and Germany are still large contributors to wind energy installations in the European Union. Spain was 24 percent of the market last year and Germany was 19 percent of all installed capacity in Europe last year. Denmark is not because it's a small country, but they already get more than 20 percent of their electricity from wind energy. So there's also a size element in this. But Germany, Spain and Denmark are leading because they started early, starting with Denmark back in the '80s and then also Spain and Germany in the '90s. They are now reaping the commercial benefits of starting early. And this is also where you see the majority of wind turbine manufacturers, but also further down the supply chain, with German, Spanish, and Danish companies dominating.

And the second group of countries — the U.K., France, and Italy — each installed approximately 10 percent of the European market last year. Of course, they are there also because their countries are very big compared to many of the other European Union countries. Both Italy and France installed about a thousand megawatts the last couple of years, and it could go much, much faster. Those countries that are really growing fast are countries like Portugal. It installed 7 percent of all [EU] capacity last year, but that's quite a lot for a country the size of Portugal, and it's one of the countries getting the largest share of electricity from wind energy in the European Union.

e360: In terms of the policies that need to be in place for a robust wind industry, what would you say are the top three or four, keeping in mind lessons the U.S. might take from what Europe has done in wind so far?

Kjaer: I think if there were one word to communicate to U.S. policymakers, it is that you need stability. I'm saying that because the U.S. framework for investing in renewables is very unstable — I mean, it cannot be predicted more than one or two years ahead. And that also means that the United States is not reaping the job creation benefits of wind energy, because a lot of components, a lot of manufacturing is imported because no one's going to invest in a factory in the United States if they don't know how the market looks beyond the next two years. So a long-term stable framework is what is most desperately needed in the United States. What has given rise to those [EU] markets is that you have stable frameworks and they have been long-term. The problem in the U.S. is that the framework expires every year or every second year.

e360: In terms of tax credits?

Kjaer: Tax credit, yes. Tax credit is a major source of uncertainty in the U.S. The second element of any effective legislation should be access to the grid. And what European legislation does, it mandated all 27 member states to give priority access to wind energy, which means that if you have a wind farm and a gas plant, and they're planned projects, the wind energy should be connected first. And also, if you have plants operating on the system, electricity from the renewables plant gets fed into the grid first. And the third element is administrative procedures, building permits, et cetera. We have examples in some European countries where you need 50 different institutions to agree on approving a wind farm. So what we are promoting is one-stop shops, that you can send in an application somewhere, that there's a deadline for how fast this application should be processed rather than having it tied up for years.

So those are the three elements: the financial predictability, the grid access, and the administrative procedures, combined with an overall target. In the case of the European Union, the national targets are mandatory, meaning that if a member state falls short of its target, it can be taken to the European Court of Justice. The European Commission can sue a member state that doesn't meet a target, and that was one of the strongest elements of the directive that was passed.

e360: Do you feel that the European wind industry has lived up to the promise of creating new jobs?

Kjaer: There are about 190,000 people employed in the European wind energy sector. This is the employment that can be attributed to the manufacture of the turbines installed in Europe, plus the maintenance of those turbines. So, for instance, the world's largest wind energy company is a Danish company called Vestas. This doesn't include jobs created in Europe from wind turbines put up in the United States. So the turbines put up in the 27 member states of the EU, that's about 190,000 jobs. The majority of those are in onshore, of course. In the past five years we have created approximately thirty new jobs every day of the year. So that's the level of employment we're talking about. We expect with the 2020 targets — if we're meeting those targets, we would be employing about 450,000 people in the European Union. And almost 300,000 of those would be in onshore and the rest in offshore.

e360: So this element of green energy that President Obama's been trying to sell, that it can be an engine of job creation, you feel has been shown in Europe.

Kjaer: There's no doubt that it's an engine of job creation. And if you go to Germany or to Denmark or to Spain, wind turbine manufacturing and all the follow-ons from that is an enormous part of their economies — certainly in Denmark, which is a small country. The United States, the European Union, and the vast majority of countries in the world are importing energy. And the share of imports is increasing. In Europe we import more than 50 percent of our energy. I think it's getting clearer to many people in the world that rather sending the citizens' money abroad to pay for imported fuels, it makes much more sense to put the money to work at home, and then export technology.

And I think this is what we will see, which will be the big difference between the last century and this century. In the last century, those who won the energy wars were those who either had the resources or controlled them in some way, and the winners of tomorrow's energy wars are going to be those who understand how to develop new technology, deploy new technology and get the benefits of exporting that technology to the rest of the world. They're going to need it very soon, because the fuels are not going to last forever and no one knows what the cost of those fuels will be 5, 10, 15 years from now.

e360: Do you feel that European companies are well-positioned to compete against Chinese wind turbine manufacturers?

Kjaer: It's important to say that there's a lot of talk about Chinese manufacturers, but it's not only about increased competition from China. Japan — Mitsubishi has been in this for a long time. South Korea is moving, India has one of the largest wind companies in the world. So there are challenges to the European leadership position. That competition makes us all stronger. And we need that competition in order to beat the real competition, which is fossil fuel and nuclear and other ways of producing electricity.

E360: As the wind industry grows onshore and offshore in Europe, how big of a problem is it that, with the spread of turbines on the landscape and the seascape, the public may become more opposed to the expansion of turbines in many areas?

Kjaer: It is an issue. In some countries it's a significant issue, and the problem is related to NIMBYism, or "not in my back yard." When you take overall polls on people's attitudes towards different energy sources, solar always comes first [in popularity], wind comes second, and then all the others afterwards. So, in general, when we see the opinion polls in the European Union, it's always between 75 and 85 percent that think this is a very, very good idea.

Now, the problem comes when you start down at the project level. There have been many polls suggesting that you poll people prior to the turbines being built and after they were built, acceptance actually increases dramatically after the turbines are built. And this is because people are concerned about the unknown. That's just a part of human nature. In some countries it's a bigger problem than in other countries. Onshore, in the U.K., is very difficult because of local opposition.

But it's my feeling that the concern from locals is biggest in the beginning of a new market taking off. So the first thousand megawatts are much more difficult to install than the next thousand megawatts. Because people get used to them, they understand that they don't make noise anymore — the turbines twenty years ago made quite a lot of noise, today you can't hear them, almost, if you're more than two hundred meters away. So it is an issue, and we have a responsibility as a sector to inform people [and] maintain the dialogue with local communities.

e360: My final question is, what is your industry's goal for 2050 in terms of what percentage of electricity production would come from wind? And given what you've seen so far and given the 2050 goal, has this given you a hope that it is possible for our societies to move off of fossil fuels?

Kjaer: Yes. We believe we can meet 50 percent of Europe's electricity demand by 2050 with wind energy. Denmark is currently at 20 percent — they have an aspiration to reach 50 percent in Denmark by 2020 or 2025. Can we power our economy solely on renewables? I certainly believe so, and this goes back to something I said at the beginning of this interview. Almost two-thirds of our new capacity is from renewables. That figure was about 20 percent in the year 2000. So in nine years we've gone from 20 percent to 62 — by 2020 of course we can get to 100 percent of new capacity. And if we can get in 2020 to a situation where all new capacity is renewables, then we will, by definition almost, have 100 percent renewable electricity by 2050 because all the other power plants will be taken off [line].

So I'm quite confident that it can be done, but it would require a major change in our infrastructure. The infrastructure here is the absolute key to this — we need to build an infrastructure that is different. But, again, our infrastructure in Europe is aging — we haven't been building power lines since the '60s or '70s. It needs to be replaced anyway. So we need to make sure that the infrastructure is changed in a way that it accommodates 100 percent renewable electricity by 2050.

• Wind power
• Energy
• Renewable energy

BP's report into the Deepwater Horizon oil well disaster contains a detailed timeline of events. Find out how the data shows what happened when
• Get the data

BP's report into the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion has exposed deep failings in the company's operation, categorising eight key failings.

BP admitted today its managers on the Deepwater Horizon missed key warning signs in the hours before the explosion aboard the oil rig, but an internal investigation put much of the blame on other companies involved in the well.

A 234-page report described eight main causes for the blast, which killed 11 men and created an environmental disaster. But BP was accused of attempting to pass on the blame for its conclusion that Transocean, the rig owner, and Halliburton, which carried out cement work, shared much of the responsibility.

But the full report also contained - within the detailed analysis of the operation - a comprehensive, minute-by-minute timeline of every event, as it happened. BP have also produced a graphic video animation.

The report contains a lot of data, including:

• Dates
• Times
• Pressure readings
• Events

It's a fascinating insight into the events on the rig - you can find the key moments before the explosion - in which 11 crew members died - at around 21:49 on April 20.

We've visualised this in today's Guardian already - and there's an interactive version too.

What can you do with the information?

• DATA: download the full spreadsheet

• Search the world's government with our gateway

Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk

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• BP oil spill
• BP
• Oil
• Oil
• United States
• Pollution

A new study suggests that planes cause more warming than cars, while ships are cooling enough to counteract them both

We hear much about the environmental costs of air travel. As our recent Q&A explained, the problem is not just that planes burn a lot of fuel and therefore kick out plenty of CO2 per passenger. Just as important are a host of other high-altitude impacts, including vapour trails and ozone production, that are usually estimated to cause as much warming as the CO2 itself.

Hence we often hear that although air travel accounts for only a small fraction of global emissions (relatively few people can afford to fly), one transatlantic flight can add as much to your carbon footprint as a typical year's worth of driving.

Surely it couldn't get any worse, could it? Unfortunately for green-minded air travellers, it just did. Kind of.

The wrinkle, always vaguely understood by climate geeks but finally explored in depth in a recent scientific paper, is that the relative impact of different types of travel depends not just on practical factors such as engine efficiency and occupancy rates, but also on something altogether more abstract: the time frame you care about.

The reason this is so crucial is that the effects of different greenhouse gases play out in the atmosphere at a different speeds. CO2, released by all fuel-burning vehicles, can remain in the air for centuries, causing a gentle warming effect. By contrast, most other gases and impacts – such as the vapour trails and tropospheric ozone produced by planes at altitude – cause much more potent but shorter-lived bursts of warming.

If you'll forgive an extension to the "frying the planet" metaphor, generating global warming with CO2 is equivalent to slow-cooking the earth in a cast-iron skillet, whereas cooking the planet with vapour trails would be more like flash-frying it in an extra-hot wok.

In order to tot up these differently paced warming impacts into a single carbon footprint number for a flight or any other activity, it's necessary to decide what time frame you're talking about. Conventional wisdom is to add up the total warming impact of all the different greenhouse gases over the period of a century to create a nice, round but ultimately arbitrary number.

If, by contrast, we shifted the focus to a much shorter time period – which arguably would make more sense, given that the next decade or so could turn out to be make-or-break in terms of avoiding climate tipping points – then the impact of vapour trails and other short-lived impacts look massively more significant.

At risk of over-stretching the frying-pans analogy, the flash-fry wok may be more likely to cause a disastrous kitchen fire than the slow-cook skillet, even if they both use the same amount of heat overall.

The new paper, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, finally pins some numbers on all this theory by examining the impact over different time periods of various different modes of transport. The results are illuminating.

According to the paper, if we focus just on the impact over the next five years, then planes currently account for more global warming than all the cars on the world's roads – a stark reversal of the usual comparison. Per passenger mile, things are even more marked: flying turns out to be on average 50 times worse than driving in terms of a five-year warming impact.

If we shift to a 20-year time frame, things look completely different. The short-term impacts have largely died down and the plane looks considerably better – helped along by a quirk of atmospheric chemistry which sees nitrous oxide pollution from the aircraft engines causing cooling during this period by destroying methane in the air. The paper even suggests that for any time frame longer than 20 years, flying is typically greener per kilometre than driving (although when I phoned to check this, one of the authors of the report confirmed my suspicion that this isn't true in Europe, where fuel-efficient cars are more popular).

Of the various forms of transport examined by the researchers, shipping is the other one most markedly affected by short-term climate impacts. Here, however, everything is in reverse because the major short-term effect of shipping is sulfate aerosol pollution. While they remain in the air, these aerosol particles bounce sunlight away from the earth and therefore cause cooling rather than warming. The extent of this effect is amazing: if I'm understanding the numbers correctly, over a five-year time frame the world's ships cause enough cooling to offset the total warming caused by every car, plane and bus combined.

Even over a 20-year time frame, shipping pollution still contributes an overall cooling effect – as do electric trains, due to the aerosol pollution kicked out from coal-fired power stations. This throws up a tricky issue for policy makers and industry. If we clean up some kinds of air pollution for the benefit of environmental and human health, then we stand to significantly accelerate global warming in the near-term.

However the world deals with that particular conundrum, the new paper is a useful reminder that carbon footprints are more multi-dimensional than is usually understood. If we want to buy ourselves as much time as possible to avoid climate-tipping points, it may not just be how much warming something generates that matters, but when that warmth kicks in.

This issue isn't limited to transport, of course. Any activity that generates lots of methane, nitrous oxide or other non-CO2 greenhouse gases will have a much faster warming effect than its carbon footprint, as traditionally expressed, might suggest. That would include meat and rice farming, landfill sites and fridge production, for example.

All of which is – for carbon geeks such as myself, at least – very interesting. What I'd like to know next is how much work has been done on analysing how near-term rates of global warming fit with the risk of overstepping climate-tipping points. Any pointers?

• Carbon emissions
• Carbon footprints
• Climate change
• Travel and transport
• Transport policy

Forum for the future's founder director Sara Parkin on why she believes population control is a personal responsibility, as well as a global ecological dilemma

Thwarting death – and particularly child mortality – has been one of the greatest human achievements of the last 200 years. Average life expectancy across the world has risen from 47 to 68 in the last 60 years alone. Growing old remains a privilege, though. Citizens of richer countries still live around ten years longer than those in poorer ones.

Unfortunately, lowering birth rates is not so prestigious and attracts significantly less investment. Although family size has dropped from a global average of over five children in 1950 to just 2.6 today, we are still on course for a world population of 10.5 billion by 2050. According to many ecologists, it would be impossible for the earth to sustain so many. Already, at 6.8 million, we are over-consuming and over-polluting to a dangerous degree.

There are plenty of incentives for politicians to hasten an 'ecological demographic transition' – in which birth rates come down to equal death rates, and populations stabilise at a lower level. As solutions to climate change and resource shortages go, this is one of the easiest and cheapest available – and would bring many additional benefits to women, children and economies.

When rich countries discuss population control, a commonly voiced fear is the cost of an ageing population. But, as Adair Turner, former Chair of the UK Pensions Commission, has calculated, raising children represents a far greater cost to families and to the state than caring for the frail and dying.

Globally, up to 40% of pregnancies are unplanned, revealing a huge unmet need for contraception and family planning services. Just by filling this gap, we would have a chance of bringing world population down to the lower UN projection of 8 billion by 2050.

In the poorest countries, where the average family size is over four children, women need the most help to plan their families and be confident that the children they do have will thrive. Improved access to contraceptives and advice in Iran, Thailand and Rwanda, for example, has been welcomed greatly by women – and has proved very successful at reducing growth rates. For determined governments, distance is no obstacle to making effective interventions. In remote upland regions of Mexico, contraceptives arrive in the villages in panniers carried by donkeys – with medical supplies in the same load.

Yet in the UK, where over a third of pregnancies are unplanned, Primary Care Trusts are failing to provide adequate services.

Currently, rich countries are alone in showing a rise in average family size. With a disproportionate impact on the environment, this puts them on fragile ecological, moral and diplomatic territory. A child born in Europe accounts for 11 times more greenhouse gas emissions than one born in Africa; for North America, the figure is 24 times. (These do not include 'offshore' emissions embedded in imports.)

Ultimately, it is clear that, with increasing pressure on key resources, such as land, food and water, everywhere, planning our family is a personal responsibility, as well as a global dilemma.

• Forum for the Future's new report, Growing Pains, warns that the UK will struggle to meet the needs of a population officially projected to reach 70 million by 2030, and calls on politicians to start planning now.

• Carbon emissions
• Water
• Food

Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series

With entrants on penny farthings, hobby horses, bone shakers, this was British eccentricity at its best

• In pictures: Knutsford's penny farthing race

Cycling's answer to the Goodwood Festival of Speed was held in a small, quiet town south of Manchester on Sunday.

The fourth Knutsford Great Race attracted entrants on penny farthings, hobby horses and bone shakers to a 1km track laid out around the town's heath.

These hopelessly obsolete and slightly dangerous machines, most over a century old, were raced hard all afternoon while 5,000 came out to watch.

It was a chance to see the very genesis of modern bicycles by their dozen, not behind glass in a museum, but hurtling past at 20mph.

If all this sounds like good fun, then I'm sorry to disappoint: it is held just once a decade.

John Tomlinson has competed in every one since it was founded in 1980, usually on penny farthings, but this time on a French-made Michaux-designed bone shaker dating from around 1870.

"I had three minutes practice last week. I'd never ridden one before," he said.

"Fortunately I managed to get around safely. I managed to catch two of the riders."

The day attracted 87 riders from around the UK and further afield, including participants from the US, New Zealand and Canada. One team from the Czech Republic rode all the way from Prague on penny farthings.

Gary Sanderson, from New Jersey, rode a reproduction penny farthing in the main three-hour endurance event.

"I love to ride the high wheel bike, so its a chance to be part of it, part of something interesting and historically important.

"You see the world differently than you do from down on the ground," he said, but warned: "They are dangerous machines, in fact that was one of their problems."

Some riders wore fancy dress; dinner suits, pith helmets, a Dennis the Menace outfit. This was British eccentricity at its best, and a superb day out.

Watching them scoot along with their feet before climbing atop their high saddles was a nervous affair though. Even experts looked like they were about to take a tumble at first, but once they get up to speed they suddenly became quite graceful.

The crowd were particularly taken with one man who rode at a leisurely pace but showed off with little tricks, while some Lycra-clad folks aiming for course records become the tongue-in-cheek villains of the piece.

After three hours the overall winner, Jim Brailsford, who also came first in 2000, had clocked up a staggering 107 laps – more than 66 miles, at an average of 22mph.

I sincerely hope that it is held again in 2020. I would love to compete, but I have a lot of practice to do. John Malseed very kindly let me ride his immaculate, nickel-plated, 1888 penny farthing after the race – and I crashed it.

• Cycling

Entrants on penny farthings, hobby horses and bone shakers raced around a 1km track laid out around the town's heath

Sotheby's to auction Audubon's Birds of America and Shakespeare's First Folio from estate of late Lord Hesketh

By any standards they form part of a truly extraordinary library: a rare copy of the world's most expensive book, perhaps the most important book in English literature, a fascinating cache of letters from Elizabeth I to the jailor of Mary Queen of Scots, and more besides.

Sotheby's will today announce it is to sell items from the collection of the late Lord Hesketh, including a stunning copy of John James Audubon's Birds of America, a book that grabbed the world-record auction price of $8.8m 10 years ago.

David Goldthorpe, a senior specialist in Sotheby's books and manuscripts department, said: "To have all these items in one sale is remarkable; it's certainly never happened in my time, 15 years, and people who've been here longer can't recall it."

Frederick Fermor-Hesketh, 2nd Baron Hesketh, belonged to a family that had collected books from the 19th century onwards and was an obsessive. He was an example of what is known as "high spot collecting" in that he did not specialise but needed to have the very best of the best and, with a big splurge of collecting in the early 1950s, he achieved it. Now, 55 years after his death, trustees of his will are selling books, manuscripts and letters with an estimated total worth of £8m to £10m.

One of the highlights is a copy of Birds of America valued at £4m to £6m. The book is bound on a huge scale – a "double elephant" folio – because Haiti-born Audubon wanted to paint the birds life size. He would travel across America, shooting the birds before carefully hanging them on bits of wire to paint them.

Not only was Audubon a skilled artist, he was also a persuasive seller, travelling to Britain to print the volumes and then offering Birds of America to the very rich as a prestige product. The copy being sold was first bought by an early paleobotanist, Henry Witham, "subscriber number 11", after an apparently very boozy dinner. Audubon writes in his ledger: "I determined in an instant that this gentleman was a gentleman indeed … We all talked much, for I believe the good wine of Mr Witham had a most direct effect."

Only 119 complete copies of Birds of America are known to exist today and 108 of those are owned by museums, libraries and universities.

A copy of Shakespeare's First Folio included in the sale is almost as rare and has been valued at £1m to £1.5m. The volume of 36 of Shakespeare's plays was published in 1623, and, of the 750 that were probably printed, 219 are known to exist today, most in institutions and most in America. Goldthorpe said there were very few good copies in private hands and only two other textually complete copies with such an early binding. "To have it in this state of preservation is really quite extraordinary," he said.

The Elizabethan letters date from 1584-85 and were all written to Ralph Sadler – a name familiar to readers of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall – who was being asked to take over from a fed-up Lord Shrewsbury as jailor of Mary Queen of Scots. "It was a completely thankless job, to be honest," said Sotheby's specialist Gabriel Heaton.

The letters give detailed instructions, such as where guards should be placed, how many women she could have, the circumstances in which she was allowed outside, and so on.

They are signed by Elizabeth – with her recognisably grand, flourishing signature – but are otherwise mostly in the hand of scribes. One letter does contain a handwritten message from the Queen, to "use but old trust and new diligence".

Other letters – about 180 pages, which could fetch £150,000-£200,000 – include some written by her chief minister, Lord Burghley, and her spymaster, Francis Walsingham. "As far as we know, this cache of letters has not been studied by historians," said Heaton. "It is really quite exceptional to get a group of letters like this."

Further highlights of the sale on 7 December include a copy of William Caxton's Polychronicon, a stunningly illustrated copy of Plutarch's Lives of Romulus and Cato the Younger, and many original drawings from Pierre-Joseph Redouté's Les Roses.

• Art markets
• History and history of art
• Birds

BP's report into the Deepwater disaster realises all our worst fears about the oil industry

The explosion of the Deepwater oil rig this April killed 11 people, injured 17 more, led to the spilling of 5m gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, caused massive environmental pollution and caused yet another faultline in US-UK relations. It also forced the exit of Tony Hayward as boss of BP, and prompted the oil giant to set up a £13bn compensation fund. This was the biggest offshore oil spill in history and its repercussions are not over yet – not by a long way.

Evidence of that came yesterday with BP's publication of its report into the causes of the disaster. At over 190 pages (not including appendices), it is certainly thorough and serious – but it should not be treated as a dispassionate examination of a terrible industrial failure. This is BP's attempt to write the second draft of history – one in which as little blame as possible is apportioned to BP itself. An example: of the report's eight key findings on the cause of the explosion, five read as though they are really the subcontractor's responsibility rather than BP's. Another example: appendix F is devoted to listing the "major parties involved", which include seven other entities working either for or alongside Mr Hayward's company. This does not mean that lines such as "Transocean was solely responsible for operation of the drilling rig and for operations safety. It was required to … use all reasonable means to … prevent fire and blowouts" are wrong. But they are surely meant to impress on the reader that BP alone should not carry the can for this disaster. No wonder that Transocean immediately blasted the report and pointed out that "BP made a series of cost-saving decisions that increased risk – in some cases, severely".

The curious effect of all this blame-shifting is that it provides the reader with a rare peek into the workings of the offshore-drilling industry – and a very ugly sight it is too. Oil multinationals working so far from the coastline are not normally subject to this much scrutiny; and yet over the course of the report, it becomes clear how many things went wrong with the establishment and operation of the Deepwater rig. BP and the companies working for it are among the best in the business: just imagine how the cowboy outfits behave.

As this report suggests, throughout the life of the Macondo oil well, optimism and best-case scenarios were usually preferred over rigorous tests and evaluation of results. Yet BP's report will not be the last, and it surely will not be the harshest. It is merely the first in a series expected over the next few months, from the US Coast Guard and other government agencies. What is needed is not the application of corporate standards, but the more demanding benchmark of what is in the public good.

• Oil
• Oil
• Energy
• Fossil fuels
• Oil and gas companies
• Energy industry
• United States

The combination of long lying snow and prolonged periods of very low temperatures devastated many shrubs in our garden last winter. One group were the buddleias, and in the spring we searched garden centres for replacements with butterflies in mind.

Names such as Black Knight and Blue Chip may have been enticing, but we were more interested in the size and height of the shrubs and the timing of their flowering. The size means that some of the smaller ones could be raised in large pots that could be moved around to get the sunshine and shelter which the butterflies would need. The flowering time was important as it would give a nectar source in late spring through until the autumn.

The main attraction, we hoped, would be the "aristocrats", so called by early entomologists because they were among the largest and most colourful butterflies. Some even had grand names such as red admiral and painted lady, while others included the peacock and small tortoiseshells. By the summer the stage was set with superb masses of blossoms, mainly blue or dark blue. We waited and waited in eager anticipation, and we are still waiting as the butterflies have not arrived.

Reports give similar results in other parts of the Highlands: the numbers have not appeared and even in the wider countryside only one or two have been seen. After the mass immigration of millions of painted ladies last year it has seemed strange not to have a single specimen in the garden this year.

The absence is still a mystery but there was some compensation, as in general in the garden there were more small coppers and speckled woods while the Scotch argus was up on its numbers of last year. This time last year we counted at least 15 mixed aristocrats on just one small buddleia bush, with more peacocks than the small tortoiseshells and red admirals.

• Butterflies
• Wildlife
• Insects

The blowout on the Deepwater Horizon rig undermined Big Oil's 'safety first' mantra – BP's report demolishes it

It is not often we are given a very public – and highly critical – insight into an industry as private as oil. This is a sector that is used to secrecy, and one before which many governments, never mind members of the public, are forced to bend the knee.

Big Oil is used to waving away questions about the way it operates with the assuring mantra that "safety always comes first", but the blowout on board the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig last April blew away some of the mystique.

The report by BP's investigation team published today takes this demolition job a stage further by itemising a host of human and mechanical failures that it believes were responsible for the accident.

Critics of BP – and that now includes its rig operator Transocean – see this as an attempt to spread the blame among its partners, but whoever is responsible for each mistake, no one is questioning the basic narrative: a catalogue of chaos.

What is doubly disturbing about the problems, be they "human judgments, engineering design, operational implementation" as the investigating team points out, is that they were produced by the industry's finest. BP is the largest operator in the US Gulf; Transocean is the biggest rig operator in the world; and Halliburton, targeted by the report for its "cement" work on the stricken well, used to be led by former US vice president Dick Cheney. They are the industry aristocracy. One shudders to imagine what might be happening at less financially secure and worse-managed companies.

Neil Atkinson, energy industry research director at Datamonitor, said all the companies involved were "world class" but in this case "slipshod". The most common private reaction of the oil industry to the Gulf spill was "there but for the Grace of God go I," said Atkinson, who believed it showed an accident like this could happen any day, any place.

The BP investigation team makes 25 recommendations covering everything from blowout preventers, well control, emergency systems, cement testing, rig audit and personnel testing.

The company said it expected its finding "to be considered relevant to the oil industry more generally and for some of the recommendations to be widely adopted."

This will add to growing concerns among environmentalists, trade unions and the wider public that the oil industry desperately needs reining in.

They will give muscle to senior political figures such as Günther Oettinger, the European energy commissioner, who has already prosed a ban on some offshore drilling until all the lessons are learned from the Gulf blowout.

It also comes at a time when the oil industry is trying to move into more and more environmentally sensitive areas: Greenland and the Arctic region for example – as easily accessible reserves run out.

For Britain the report arrives just as the Health and Safety Executive has reported an alarming escalation in the number of offshore accidents.

The Guardian reported earlier this week that Transocean had come under scrutiny from the HSE after the safety regulator reported allegations of bullying and intimidation on some of its North Sea rigs.

The BP report is far from the final word on the Deepwater Horizon with further reports due from more obviously independent bodies such as the US coast guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

There will also be concerns that at a time when the industry should be working closely together to improve safety measures, there are signs of dispute and non-cooperation between the parties.

Transocean immediately rejected the BP report as "self-serving", while the oil company complained that its investigation team could not complete all of its work because of the "unavailability of Halliburton cement additives and products". BP goes on to say that that the team was also "unable to obtain access for testing of a representative Cameron blow out preventer" as well as the same safety device off the damaged Deepwater Horizon rig.

This is an industry at war with itself. That's not such a bad thing if it produces higher safety standards, more transparency – and a bit more humility.

• BP oil spill
• BP
• Oil
• Oil spills
• United States
• Pollution

We are to blame – but so are Transocean and Halliburton, concludes oil firm's report on Deepwater Horizon rig explosion

BP admitted today its managers on the Deepwater Horizon missed key warning signs in the hours before the explosion aboard the oil rig, but an internal investigation put much of the blame on other companies involved in the well.

A 234-page report described eight main causes for the blast, which killed 11 men and created an environmental disaster. But BP was accused of attempting to pass on the blame for its conclusion that Transocean, the rig owner, and Halliburton, which carried out cement work, shared much of the responsibility.

Mark Bly, the oil company's head of safety and the leader of the investigation, admitted that BP onsite managers could have prevented the catastrophe had they picked up warning signs of a breach of the cement seal at the bottom of the well, as well as unusual pressure test readings, only moments before the explosion.

He told reporters in Washington: "Given everything that came before, there probably should have been more risk assessment. They probably should have been more careful."

The report was widely seen as a possible preview of BP's legal strategy. The oil company was accused of trying to reduce the chances of being charged with gross negligence, which would expose it to possible criminal proceedings and billions of dollars in damage.

Within hours of its release, Transocean and Halliburton accused BP of attempting to shift attention from its own mistakes of bad well design and disregard of safety procedures. Members of Congress and environmentalists also dismissed it.

Transocean said: "This is a self-serving report that attempts to conceal the critical factor that set the stage for the Macondo incident: BP's fatally flawed well design."

Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who has been investigating the spill in Congress, said the report was more about protecting BP's interests than getting to the cause of the disaster. "BP is happy to slice up blame, as long as they get the smallest piece," he said.

Environmental organisations were more scathing. "BPs investigation doesn't pass the smell test ," said Kieran Suckling, the director of the Centre for Biological Diversity. "This report is more concerned with calming BP shareholders than taking responsibility for its actions."

There were similar sentiments in the Gulf. Alfred Sunseri, whose family-owned oyster company faces ruin after the spill, said: "When BP shows me a report of how exactly they will deal with those people most impacted by this tragedy – ie those in the fisheries-related businesses – I'll believe they are not just using their talents in public relations to dispel their liability."

Bly acknowledged the report fails to address the key charges raised in Congress and elsewhere against the oil company: that it allowed a culture of recklessness to flourish, and that it was so anxious to finish work on a project that was 43 days over time and $20m (£13m) over budget that it omitted standard industry safeguards.

The report does recognise there were gaping lapses in oversight on the Deepwater Horizon, going on to make 25 recommendations for tighter scrutiny by well owners – such as BP –of rig operations.

But Bly rejected the idea that cost-cutting had dictated BP's decisions on the rig, saying: "What we see instead is, where there were errors made they were based on poor decision-making process or using wrong information."

Oil companies could be facing tougher regulation anyway: the White House said it was asking for more funds from Congress to step up oil rig inspections.

The report is narrowly focused on the final days before the explosion rather than on earlier decisions about well design and safety procedures. It is also closely focused on the rig itself. No BP officials have been sacked for their role in the explosion, and Bly said there was no indication of any blame beyond the well-site managers.

The investigation identifies eight main causes of the explosion, putting particular blame on well integrity. It says Halliburton's choice of foam cement for the area around the well casing failed to produce a strong enough seal.

Tony Hayward, who was BP's chief executive at the time of the explosion, said in a statement: "To put it simply, there was a bad cement job."

Halliburton said it had carried out its work to BP specifications.

The report also said the blowout preventer, the last line of defence once there is a breach, had failed. There, BP pointed at Transocean noting that the battery pack on the blowout preventer had been allowed to run low.

But Bly said the disaster may have been prevented had work crews – BP's as well as Transocean's – spotted the crucial warning signs in a series of anomalous pressure test readings in the run-up to the explosion. "A fundamental to well control is early detection," he said. The pressure test readings should have alerted crews to the escape of oil and gas from the well reservoir, he said.

The report is far from the final word on the explosion and the subsequent oil spill, with Transocean, Congress and the federal government carrying out investigations.

But Robert Gordon, a lawyer for businesses affected by the spill, said it was unlikely to carry much weight in the months ahead. "BP blaming others for the Gulf oil disaster is like Bernie Madoff blaming his accountant," he said.

• BP oil spill
• Oil spills
• Oil
• Pollution
• United States
• BP

The silence from Osborne and Cable is ominous. The next few weeks are crucial to keep the low-carbon economy on track

This would be "the greenest government ever", David Cameron declared in May – easy words in the first flush of office. The difficult thing is making them true. In the next few weeks the coalition will confront a series of decisions that will tell us if the heady rhetoric of spring is to be fulfilled – or regretted.

At the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Lib Dem minister, Chris Huhne, has made a good start. He has committed to a strong European emissions target, published an important roadmap of Britain's low-carbon energy choices, and made a foray into international climate diplomacy.

But elsewhere it's been ominously silent: no speeches from Cameron or Nick Clegg on climate or the low-carbon economy; and, more significantly, none from George Osborne or Vince Cable, the business secretary. This is important, because the paradox of climate change policy is that it is not the DECC that really matters. As six years in government made clear to me, it is the Treasury – and to a lesser extent the Department for Business – that counts. (Luckily, I was in the Treasury for three of those years.) Climate policy is part of economic policy, which is the fiefdom of these two departments. And the word in Whitehall is that both have reverted to their traditional, sceptical policy stance.

A significant feature of Gordon Brown's period at No 10 was the way some of the orthodoxies of Treasury economic policy were overturned: public spending was given a Keynesian stimulus; an industrial strategy was put in place, with interventions in key sectors; new taxes were imposed; and all these contributed to a radical new approach in the field of energy and climate change.

But strengthened by the coalition's overriding priority to slash the deficit, Treasury officials are reasserting departmental orthodoxy: sceptical of economic intervention, resistant to new taxation and opposed to new public spending commitments. At Business Labour's low-carbon industrial strategy has been quietly abandoned, illustrated by the much criticised decision to cancel a loan to Sheffield Forgemasters.

These reassertions of traditional positions are critical, because they risk leaving action on climate change as the sole responsibility of the DECC. The experience of the Labour government is that radical policy change needs cross-governmental priority. And that only happens when ministers are willing to override the institutional instincts of their officials.

This was how Labour in the end implemented a far-reaching climate and energy policy. Under Tony Blair, the record was pretty feeble. He was instrumental in putting climate on the international agenda, but never regarded it as an important domestic or economic issue. Only when David Miliband took over as secretary of state for the environment in 2006 and introduced the climate change bill was a major part of the government's programme. And it really took off when Gordon Brown created a new Department of Energy and Climate Change, with Ed Miliband its first secretary of state.

A slew of radical policies followed, from a "low-carbon transition plan" – which gave every department a carbon budget – to the banning of new unabated coal-fired power stations; from incentives to achieve 15% renewable energy to a "low-carbon industrial strategy" supporting green businesses.

The key was not just a dynamic energy and climate change minister. It was having the support of the whole cabinet, from the PM downwards. It was when Brown made a low-carbon economy part of Labour's governing narrative, its central purpose and message, that Treasury orthodoxy was tamed. (It is not generally known that the Stern review on the economics of climate change, which has influenced governments all over the world, was conceived merely as a way of persuading Treasury officials that there was an economic rationale for strong climate action.) Once his civil servants knew that the chancellor supported strong action, they fell into line. In Business, Peter Mandelson pushed his officials into developing an active industrial strategy.

The coalition has, almost without exception, accepted Labour's climate and energy policies. But to make good those commitments, it too will have to ensure the active support of Treasury and business ministers. With neither Osborne nor Cable known for an interest in green issues, the test will come with three decisions in the next few weeks .

The first is on the Green Investment Bank. This is the innovative proposal, accepted by all main parties, for an independent institution to help finance investment in renewables and home energy efficiency. The last Labour budget not only committed to setting up such a bank, but pledged to fund it with £1bn from the sale of public assets – a move explicitly proposed by Alistair Darling, overriding the view of Treasury officials that there was no evidence that public financing was needed.

But under the coalition that commitment has been withdrawn, and a major argument between the DECC and the Treasury is under way on whether the bank will have any significant public funding – without which the bank will be stillborn, as the Tories' own commission on the subject has argued. Its whole point is to leverage private sector finance through public investment, so it will be critical that Huhne can persuade Osborne and Cable to back such funds.

Second, the government must decide on the development of carbon capture and storage technology. Looking to promote a new British industry with the promise of thousands of jobs, Labour committed to provide both public funding for a first demonstration project and the introduction of a small levy on electricity consumers to finance three more. The DECC insists that both are on track. But Whitehall rumour is that the Treasury is seeking both to close down the competition and abandon or delay the levy.

A third plank of the last government's low-carbon industrial strategy is also up for decision: the push to stimulate a British wind-turbine manufacturing sector, with four global firms announcing plans to invest in the UK. These were dependent on improving the facilities of east coast ports where the companies want to site their factories. So the government announced a £60m port development scheme. The coalition has yet to confirm whether this will go ahead; a decision is set for the comprehensive spending review next month.

These tests matter, not just because of the government's green rhetoric, but because its economic strategy is at stake. Investment in low-carbon energy and green businesses will lie at the heart of Britain's economic recovery: reducing the deficit in ways that undermine sustainable growth is simply self-defeating.

The last government knew this. We will soon find out whether Cameron and Clegg do too.

• George Osborne
• Vince Cable
• Climate change
• Liberal-Conservative coalition
• Economic policy
• Gordon Brown
• Green jobs
• Green economy

Even if BP's finding of 'multiple causes' of the Gulf of Mexico disaster is accepted, it is still unclear whether the company will be found grossly negligent

"It's not our accident," Tony Hayward said soon after the disastrous explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig. It was – almost – the most foolish thing BP's chief executive said in the wake of the tragedy, since few hard facts were available at the time. The line was quickly dropped. Today, almost five months later, the company has given its considered opinion over 192 pages containing much dense technical detail: it was a shared accident.

The report detailed eight causes, including "a bad cement job", as Hayward put it. Halliburton mixed and installed the cement, so there is one partner to share the blame. Transocean's crew on the rig failed to act quickly enough, according to the report, so there's another. And BP put up its own hand on various scores.

Those contractors have their own versions of the story to present and will inevitably dispute large chunks of these findings. The biggest area of contention is the design of the well. Transocean says that it was "fatally flawed". BP says that it wasn't. In the end, though, the only report that matters is the one produced by the official inquiry. But even if BP's finding of "multiple causes" is accepted, that does not tell us whether the company will be found grossly negligent or merely negligent.

Should BP have taken greater care in supervising the work of the contractors it appointed? That is a critical question. Halliburton and Transocean are massive corporations, with years of experience in deepwater oil production, but neither held the licence to the Macondo well. BP did.

Anyone who disagrees, and thinks today's report provides greater clues to the negligence/gross negligence question, is free to speculate. The difference in cost to BP could be $30bn, a figure big enough to move the share price substantially. It's hard to know what outcome is currently priced in, of course, but the shares themselves barely budged today – they rose 1%. The market's snap reaction was clear enough: the report is welcome, fascinating and necessary, but does not provide all the answers.

• BP oil spill
• BP
• Oil spills
• Pollution

BP report highlights failures leading to biggest offshore oil spill in history

Eight big things went wrong on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico - and BP's report is spreading the blame

Here's my take on the blame game: who the BP report on the Deepwater oil spill points the finger at for the astonishing catalogue of errors and failures that caused the Deepwater disaster. BP owned the well lease. Transocean were contracted by BP and operated the rig and blow out preventer - they have already condemned the BP report as "self-serving". Halliburton did the cementing, but has not yet responded in detail to BP's report.

The eight big things that went wrong are, engineers tell me, a logical and plausible explanation. But who's fault were they, according to BP?

My explanations are below, but to cut to the chase, the BP report appears to pin 4.5 of the eight problems on Transocean, one on Halliburton and 1.5 on BP, with one undecided.

1. The cement that was supposed to stop the oil and gas shooting up the well pipe didn't work

The report says: "Improved engineering rigor, cement testing and communication of risk by Halliburton could have identified the low probability of the cement to achieve zonal isolation. Improved technical assurance, risk management and management of change by the BP Macondo well team could have raised awareness of the challenges of achieving zonal isolation and led to additional mitigation steps."

BP's verdict: Halliburton and BP to blame

2. Further barriers at the bottom of the drill pipe failed to stop the hydrocarbons bursting into the well pipe

The report says: "The "shoe track" cement and the float collar must have failed to prevent this" influx of oil and gas.

BP's verdict: As with 1, Halliburton and BP to blame

3. A key pressure test performed to see if the well was under control was accepted despite the readings showing it was not

The report says the well site leaders - that's BP - and the rig crew - that's Transocean - formed and maintained this incorrect view despite the contradictory information.

BP's verdict: Transocean and BP to blame

4. It took 40 minutes to realise gas and oil was shooting up the well

The report says: "Analysis indicates that the first indications of flow from the well could be seen in the real-time data after 20:58 hours. The rig crew and mudloggers either did not observe or did not recognize indications of flow until after hydrocarbons entered the riser at approximately 21:38 hours. The Transocean Well Control Handbook stated that the well was to be monitored at all times."

BP's verdict: Transocean to blame

5. The surging hydrocarbons were not diverted "overboard" but brought onto the rig

The report says: Transocean's shut-in protocols did not fully address how to respond in high flow emergency situations after well control has been lost. Well control actions taken prior to the explosion suggest the rig crew was not sufficiently prepared to manage an escalating well control situation."

BP's verdict: Transocean to blame

6. Diversion of the oil and gas was "vented directly onto the rig"

The report says: "The investigation team concludes that ... the rig crew diverted the flow of hydrocarbons ... [to] a low-pressure system, and its design limits would have been exceeded."

BP's verdict: Transocean to blame

7. The fire and gas system did not prevent the explosions

The report says: "Because of the low probability of hydrocarbons being present before a well produces, only a small area of Deepwater Horizon was electrically classified [against sparking]."

BP's verdict: Unclear

8. The blowout preventer (BOP), the ultimate failsafe, failed

The report says: "The BOP maintenance records were not accurately reported in the maintenance management system. The condition of critical components in the yellow and blue [control] pods and the use of a non-[original] part, which were discovered after the pods were recovered, suggest the lack of a robust Transocean maintenance management system."

BP's verdict: Transocean to blame

• BP oil spill
• Oil spills
• Oil
• BP
• Oil and gas companies

Proposed legislation would allow state-owned Scottish Water to use vast landbank and pipe network for renewable energy projects

The state-owned utility Scottish Water is to be given new powers to build windfarms, hydro schemes and "green" power stations in partnership and competition with established energy companies.

The company, one of the country's last remaining state-owned firms, could generate £300m or more in extra revenues by using its 80,000 acres of land and vast pipe network for renewable energy projects.

The proposal was unveiled by Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister and leader of the Scottish National Party, in his government's last legislative programme before next May's Scottish elections. He claimed it would turn Scotland into "the world's first hydro-economy – wisely exploiting our water to help drive our economy".

Salmond is resisting pressure to convert Scottish Water into a mutualised company under public ownership, similar to Welsh Water, to generate much-needed revenue and offset cuts of up to £3.7bn expected in next month's spending review.

The Conservatives and Salmond's own economic advisers believe mutualisation would immediately raise up to £3bn for the Treasury, with £1bn going to the Scottish government, and save the taxpayer £140m a year in loans.

Salmond, an enthusiast for renewable energy investment, said that the company would remain entirely in public ownership, while having much greater freedom to exploit commercial opportunities that would eventually allow it to become self-financing and self-sufficient.

"They have identified potential for new economic activity in other business areas of some hundreds of millions in the medium term," he told the Scottish parliament. "If we give Scottish Water room to grow, then we have the makings of a great Scottish company, in public ownership."

Scottish Water, which has annual revenues of about £1bn and assets worth £5.5bn, is the UK's fourth-largest water company. It owns about 80,000 acres, including high ground with great potential value for onshore wind and hydro schemes.

The company hopes the legislation proposed by Salmond will allow its fledgling commercial services division, called Harmony, to drive its new energy projects. The Tories hope to amend the water bill with Labour support, forcing the SNP to mutualise the company.

The utility is also in talks about joint projects with some of the largest players in renewables and potential competitors, which are thought to include Scottish and Southern Energy and ScottishPower.

Richard Ackroyd, the company's chief executive, said: "Our success in reducing our carbon footprint and expanding our work into renewables and recycling is helping to put Scottish Water in a position where it can make a real contribution to the environmental challenges facing Scotland."

Scottish and Southern Energy, the UK's largest hydro-electricity producer, would not comment directly on Scottish Water's entry into the energy market. "There are other people who are becoming players in the market all the time; we wouldn't have any comment to make on Scottish Water becoming part of that," a spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for ScottishPower's renewables arm welcomed Scottish Water's involvement, saying: "Scotland has a wealth of renewable energy opportunities and we are keen to see the country fulfil its renewables potential. Investment from both the public and private sector will be critical in achieving this."

• Renewable energy
• Wind power
• Energy
• Alex Salmond
• Scottish politics
• Utilities
• Energy industry
• Scotland

Numbers of fish hit record highs thanks to improved habitats and action to clean polluted waterways

The quantities of sea trout and salmon found in some English rivers have hit record highs this year, figures showed today.

The Environment Agency (EA) said fish and other wildlife had recovered well, thanks to efforts to clean up polluted rivers and improve their habitats.

More than 15,000 salmon and sea trout have already been recorded migrating this year up the river Tyne – a waterway in which no salmon and trout were seen 50 years ago. The figure is the highest since records began.

And record numbers of sea trout have been recorded in the Thames, a river declared biologically dead in the 1950s.

The river Mersey, once said to be the most polluted river in Europe, is the cleanest it has been for a century, according to the EA.

The agency said river water quality in England improved for the 20th consecutive year, with 70% of rivers graded "very good" or "good" under the organisation's general quality assessment classification.

Information on how rivers are doing under higher EU standards, which include measures of wildlife found in waterways as well as water quality, will be published later this year.

Last year, the government watchdog admitted more than three quarters of English and Welsh rivers were expected to fail the European standards.

But Paul Leinster, chief executive of the EA, said: "Rivers are at their cleanest for over a century, and the Environment Agency is working hard to ensure this trend continues."

According to the EA, the improvements in water quality were achieved through investment by water companies, tougher action against polluters, reducing discharges from industry into waterways and changing farming practices.

Thousands of local projects – such as building fish and eel passes and creating shallows which shelter fish from predators along rivers – have also helped improve conditions for wildlife, the EA said.

• Conservation
• Wildlife
• Water
• Pollution
• Fishing
• Animals

Rig operator hits back with claim of 'fatally flawed well design'

A war of words broke out today between BP and Transocean after a long-awaited report by the oil company into the worst crude spill in US history placed much of the blame on the US rig operator.

The investigation team working for BP avoided making many references by name to Transocean in its summary but claimed that "multiple companies" and mistakes were at the heart of the Deepwater Horizon blowout.

It went on to list eight key findings related to the causes of the accident and at least five of them appeared to come under the area of responsibility that could be attributed to Transocean rather than BP.

The British oil company has taken the bulk of public and political criticism since the Macondo well blowout on 20 April and has dismissed chief executive Tony Hayward in an attempt to recover ground.

It has always believed that the accident was the responsibility of a wider group of companies and the investigators have backed up its claims, concluding that there was no single action or inaction that caused the accident.

Instead they claim in the report that "a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, operational implementation and team interfaces came together to allow the initiation and escalation of the accident. Multiple companies, work teams and circumstances were involved over time."

Transocean was immediately on the attack, issuing a statement that accused BP of producing a "self-serving report that attempts to conceal the critical factor that set the stage for the Macondo incident: BP's fatally flawed well design. In both its design and construction, BP made a series of cost-saving decisions that increased risk – in some cases, severely."

The BP report also points the finger of blame at Halliburton, the huge contracting firm that used to be led by former US vice-president Dick Cheney, and Cameron, an American firm that provided a "blowout preventer" meant to stop the well exploding.

Hayward made clear that he felt the report partly exonerated his own company. "The investigation report provides critical new information on the causes of this terrible accident. It is evident that a series of complex events, rather than a single mistake or failure, led to the tragedy. Multiple parties, including BP, Halliburton and Transocean, were involved," he said.

• BP oil spill
• Oil
• Oil spills
• United States
• Pollution