Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
UN climate summit focus is on net zero by 2050 but Australian PM says challenge ‘not just about climate change’
Scott Morrison has ducked questions about when his government will develop an emissions reduction strategy for 2050, despite signing on at the Pacific Islands Forum to a communique pledging to develop one next year.
Only a fifth of the companies will remain on track, according to analysis of their disclosures
More than four fifths of the world’s largest companies are unlikely to meet the targets set out in the Paris climate agreement by 2050, according to fresh analysis of their climate disclosures.
A study of almost 3,000 publicly listed companies found that just 18% have disclosed plans that are aligned with goals to limit rising temperatures to 1.5C of pre-industrialised levels by the middle of the century.
Thunberg, 16, says governments have betrayed young people
‘You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us’
Greta Thunberg has excoriated world leaders for their “betrayal” of young people through their inertia over the climate crisis at a United Nations summit that failed to deliver ambitious new commitments to address dangerous global heating.
United Nations hosts climate summit in New York on Monday
New data shows 2014-19 warmest five-year period on record
The world may have hit a hopeful “turning point” in the struggle to tackle the climate crisis despite escalating greenhouse gas emissions and the recalcitrance of major emitters Brazil and the US, according to the United Nations secretary general.
Glorious scenes in Edinburgh as thousands of children, parents, students and musicians gather at the Meadows for the Climate Strike.
“This is our Earth and our Future. We need to take care of it ,” said 11-year-old Leila Koita, pictures here with friends Eilidh Tedesco, Norah Turner, Tilly Torrie, Megan Berger and NaN Zhang.
Norah’s mum, Jo Spencely says she hasn’t been on a demo for decades but she is here to show support. “I’m massively concerned about their future. I almost can’t bear to read about the climate. It’s so scary.”
The march sets off at 11:30am and will pass through Edinburgh city centre and end with a rally in front of the Scottish Parliament. As in London, police have imposed restrictions, in this case by refusing permission for the marchers to walk down Princes Street.
As elsewhere, this is just the start of a week of climate action. On Saturday, activists will stage a “die in”, Monday will be a “day of disruption”, musicians will join a “Love the Planet Festival” on Wednesday, and there’ll be another rally outside parliament the following day.
Even Emmeline Pankhurst has joined in the protests in Manchester. A statue of the suffragette hero has donned a bright orange lifejacket and a placard that asks: “Ready for rising sea levels to reach this height?”
The stunt was the idea of Katie Bradshaw and Ryan Griffiths, both 31, who described themselves as first-protestors who felt the need to act today.
“Emmeline still carries that Mancunian spirit of standing up for what she believes in and great causes,” said Griffiths. “Climate change is so important and we think it’s something herself would be an issue she would be at the forefront of if she were around today.”
Bradshaw added: “We’ve got to do our bit and even if it’s just putting some signs up and making people realise we need to look after our planet. If she was around today she’d be supporting it.”
Film by Swedish activist and Guardian journalist George Monbiot says nature must be used to repair broken climate
The protection and restoration of living ecosystems such as forests, mangroves and seagrass meadows can repair the planet’s broken climate but are being overlooked, Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot have warned in a new short film.
Natural climate solutions could remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as plants grow. But these methods receive only 2% of the funding spent on cutting emissions, say the climate activists.
Emissions rose 20-30% in Paris when temperatures topped 30C, raising urgent questions as the climate gets hotter
Emissions from diesel cars – even newer and supposedly cleaner models – increase on hot days, a new study has found, raising questions over how cities suffering from air pollution can deal with urban heat islands and the climate crisis.
Research in Paris by The Real Urban Emissions (True) initiative found that diesel car emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) rose by 20% to 30% when temperatures topped 30C – a common event this summer.
Plume from unprecedented blazes forecast to reach Alaska as fires rage for third month
A cloud of smoke and soot bigger than the European Union is billowing across Siberia as wildfires in the Arctic Circle rage into an unprecedented third month.
The normally frozen region, which is a crucial part of the planet’s cooling system, is spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and worsening the manmade climate disruption that created the tinderbox conditions.
Minister says archipelago in grave situation through no fault of its own as he unveils plan for net zero emissions and village relocation
Fiji will introduce one of the world’s most ambitious legislative programs to tackle the climate crisis, and has labelled the global community’s decision to set aside the call for global heating to be capped at 1.5C “grossly irresponsible and selfish”.
In a speech to the Fijian parliament on Wednesday morning announcing the upcoming climate change act, Fiji’s attorney general and minister for economy and climate change, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, called global heating “a fight for our lives and our livelihoods”.
It’s neat, easy – and a staggering £2bn global market. But as plastic grass takes over our cities, some say that it’s green only in colour
If your attention during the Women’s World Cup was on the pitch rather than the players, you might have noticed that the matches were all played on real grass. That was a hard-won change, made after the US team complained to Fifa that they sustained more injuries on artificial turf.
In private gardens, however, the opposite trend is happening: British gardens are being dug up and replaced with plastic grass. But this isn’t the flaky, fading stuff on which oranges were once displayed at the greengrocer. Today’s artificial grass is nearly identical to the real thing.
From walking the dog at midnight to a dip in the canal, I tested the heatwave plan as the city reached 42.6C. Here’s how it went
Last week, as Paris faced down its hottest day since records began, the city authorities declared their readiness. Since the notorious heatwave of 2003 that killed thousands across France, the capital has put in place a heat strategy: cooling areas, a checking system for vulnerable people, shady parks kept open all night.
Could these strategies actually work against a predicted record temperature of 42C (107.6F)? A study released this week shows that the world has never warmed faster than now. By 2050, the average temperature in the hottest month in Paris will rise by six degrees. This heatwave might be the new normal.
In a combative question time the energy minister suggests the Coalition has an ‘open mind’ on nuclear power
Angus Taylor has flagged the Morrison government has an “open mind” about pursuing nuclear power during a combative question time where the energy minister was pursued about rising emissions and his meetings with officials about the protection of grassland in the south-eastern highlands.
Taylor, who is the minister for energy and emissions reduction, was asked repeatedly by Labor on Tuesday whether emissions had risen in recent years, whether he supported calls by government backbenchers to establish a nuclear industry, and whether he had declared any relevant conflicts when meeting departmental officials.
Plaque marking Okjökull, the first glacier lost to climate crisis, to be unveiled in August
The first of Iceland’s 400 glaciers to be lost to the climate crisis will be remembered with a memorial plaque – and a sombre warning for the future – to be unveiled by scientists and local people next month.
The former Okjökull glacier, which a century ago covered 15 sq km (5.8 sq miles) of mountainside in western Iceland and measured 50 metres thick, has shrunk to barely 1 sq km of ice less than 15 metres deep and lost its status as a glacier.
Ambitious export plan could generate billions and make Australia the centre of low-cost energy in a future zero-carbon world
The desert outside Tennant Creek, deep in the Northern Territory, is not the most obvious place to build and transmit Singapore’s future electricity supply. Though few in the southern states are yet to take notice, a group of Australian developers are betting that will change.
If they are right, it could have far-reaching consequences for Australia’s energy industry and what the country sells to the world.
Nearly 80% of cities to undergo dramatic and potentially disastrous changes, study finds
London will have a similar climate in three decades’ time to that of Barcelona today, according to research – but if that seems enticing, a warning: the change could be accompanied by severe drought.
Madrid will feel like present-day Marrakech by 2050, and Stockholm like Budapest, according to a report on the likely impacts of the climate crisis. Around the world, cities that are currently in temperate or cold zones in the northern hemisphere will resemble cities more than 600 miles (1,000km) closer to the equator, with damaging effects on health and infrastructure.
Government’s official climate advisers say the lack of proper plans to cope with heatwaves and flash floods is ‘shocking’
The government’s own advisers have declared themselves shocked that the UK has no proper plans for protecting people from heatwaves, flash flooding and other impacts of the climate crisis.
The Committee on Climate Change said the UK’s climate crisis preparations were being run like Dad’s Army and left the population at real risk, adding that funding for programmes to tackle problems resulting from global heating had been cut.
The CCC’s annual progress reports, published on Wednesday, also found that just one of the 25 emissions-cutting policies it said were vital in 2018 had been delivered in full. Lord Deben, who chairs the committee, said ministers could be sued in court if the failure to act continued.
CO2 in bedrooms and offices may affect cognition and cause kidney and bone problems
Indoor levels of carbon dioxide could be clouding our thinking and may even pose a wider danger to human health, researchers say.
While air pollutants such as tiny particles and nitrogen oxides have been the subject of much research, there have been far fewer studies looking into the health impact of CO2.
Residents and campaigners say fast-growing Sitka spruces are spoiling the landscape
Ireland is ramping up its response to the climate crisis by planting forests – lots of forests. East, west, north, south, the plan is to plant forests, the more the better.
With enough trees, goes the hope, Ireland can compensate for many of the cows, vehicles and fossil-burning power plants that make it one of Europe’s worst climate offenders.
Research shows a trillion trees could be planted to capture huge amount of carbon dioxide
Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists, who have made the first calculation of how many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas.
As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”.
Fund managers call on world leaders to bring in carbon pricing and phase out coal power ahead of G20
Superannuation funds and investors representing US$34tn in assets – nearly half of the total under management across the globe – have called on world leaders to bring in carbon pricing and phase out coal power to limit global heating to 1.5C.
Released ahead of a G20 leaders meeting in Osaka, Japan, the statement by 477 institutional investors urges world leaders to accelerate their response to the climate crisis to ensure the goals of the 2015 Paris climate deal can be met.