Green news roundup: Uranium mining, badger baiting and pandas

Environment news • Oil sands pipeline battle turns ugly • Grand Canyon uranium mining to be banned for 20 years • China to release six giant pandas into wild • Fracking company chief to face critics in south-east England • 'Barbaric' gang jailed for badger baiting • Japan to release Australian activists who boarded whaling ship On the blogs • Biofuels become a victim of own success - but not for long • The Eco Audit with Leo Hickman: Are wind turbines increasing carbon emissions? • George Monbiot: Why libertarians must deny climate change, in one short take • Damian Carrington: Words matter but Zac Goldsmith is wrong to castigate green critics • Share your photos of 'signs of winter' Multimedia • Satellite eye on Earth: December 2011 • In pictures: Week in wildlife • Winter wetlands: your Green Shoots photographs • Panda cubs take first steps to independence in China - video Features • Free book: The Rough Guide to Community Energy • The waste mountain engulfing Mexico City • Greg Barker MP: Solar energy industry may be on threshold of an exciting era • A challenge to Christopher Booker: try Decc's future energy calculator properly Best of the web • EurActiv: Airlines could net £1.6bn windfall from EU carbon trading scheme, report says • ChinaDialogue: How children in China's urban jungle are reconnecting with nature • Yale Environment 360: Fukushima nuclear cleanup could create its own environmental disaster • BusinessGreen: Electric cars step up a gear for 2012 For more of the best environment comment and news from around the web, visit the Guardian Environment Network . ...And finally • Marks & Spencer breaks mould with packaging for 'longer-living' fruit Supermarket vows age-defying fruit thanks to new packaging that will also help cut food waste