George Monbiot: "Each generation is normalising the erosion of our environment, and the devastating losses to fragile ecosystems mount up."

The speculation about bats and the evolution of moths has erroneous dates. According to Wikipedia, the oldest known fossil bat lived 52 million years ago, and wasn't capable of echolocation. Meanwhile, the oldest butterfly fossil dates from 56 million years ago. So it is possible that bats did affect the success of butterflies, albeit more recently than the article says.

Even in Britain, drug companies sometimes demand prices so high that the medical system refuses to buy them.

It's much worse in the US where Congress, corrupted by the drug companies, tied the government's hands about negotiating prices with the drug companies.

The main reason drugs are so expensive is patent law, imposed by the WTO. This is one of many reasons we need to make big changes in the WTO or else get rid of it. However, the concentration of the drug industry, through many mergers, has given the drug companies greater clout (as has occurred in many other areas of business), and this contributes to the problem. We need to make big companies split up. My tax proposal would be one way to do that.

The supermarket Marks & Spencer now publishes information about use of antibiotics in raising the meat it sells.

This is important as a nucleus for public pressure to eliminate the practice of regularly giving antibiotics to farm animals.

Joinul Islam, refugee on Manus Island, was attacked with a machete for the second time by someone unknown.

It is not safe for the refugees to be in the town of Lorengau where they have all been forced to go.

We no longer have an Environmental Protection Agency; the bully has converted it into the Environmental Poisoning Agency.

The EPA tried to support the coal industry with a program to encourage disposal of coal ash as dirt wherever dirt was needed. It had not checked whether coal ask pollution would do damage, and was made to stop.

Now that coal ash has been verified to have poisoned land and drinking water, Saboteur Pruitt wants to start spreading it again.

Saboteur Pruitt is also replacing the Clean Power Plan with a scheme designed not to change much.

He has put the brakes on a plan to ban three toxic solvents.

The EPA is considering an application for spraying a neonicotinoid pesticide. Merely soaking seeds in it is poisoning bees and birds; spraying it could wipe them out.