Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham urge Trump to submit Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate agreement to Senate to undercut future attempts to revive them
Two prominent Trump loyalists in the US Senate, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, are reportedly pressing the president to submit the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement to the chamber for ratification, in a last-minute attempt to scupper Democratic plans to take America back into the accords.
Every country should declare a state of climate emergency until the world has reached net-zero carbon emissions, the UN secretary general told a virtual summit of world leaders on Saturday. António Guterres said countries had a responsibility to young people to reduce and eliminate high-carbon activities after borrowing trillions to cushion the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic
Prime minister Scott Morrison wanted to announce the policy shift at a weekend summit but he’s not yet secured a speaking spot
The Morrison government will release updated national greenhouse gas emissions projections that claim Australia is nearly on track to meet the target for 2030 it set under the Paris agreement.
An annual emissions projection report to be released on Thursday shows the government now estimates emissions in 2030 will fall just short – by 56m tonnes – of meeting its target of a 26-28% cut compared to 2005 levels if Australia doesn’t deploy Kyoto credits to hit the target.
Exclusive: António Guterres says key promise of $100bn funding will be missed, damaging trust in Paris deal
Rich countries will miss a key promise they made to the poor world on the climate crisis by failing to provide the money necessary for them to cope with its effects, damaging the prospects for global action, the UN secretary general has said.
With Trump no longer a threat, there is a sense of optimism around what the accord could achieve – but only if countries meet their targets
No one who was in the hall that winter evening in a gloomy conference centre on the outskirts of the French capital will ever forget it. Tension had been building throughout the afternoon, as after two weeks of fraught talks the expected resolution was delayed and then delayed yet again. Rumours swirled – had the French got it wrong? Was another climate failure approaching, the latest botched attempt at solving the world’s global heating crisis?
Finally, as the mood in the hall was growing twitchy, the UN security guards cleared the platform and the top officials of the landmark Paris climate talks took to the podium. For two weeks, 196 countries had huddled in countless meetings, wrangling over dense pages of text, scrutinising every semicolon. And they had finally reached agreement. Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister in charge of the gruelling talks, looking exhausted but delighted, reached for his gavel and brought it down with a resounding crack. The Paris agreement was approved at last.
Humanity is facing a new war, unprecedented in history, the secretary general of the UN has warned, which is in danger of destroying our future before we have fully understood the risk.
The stark message from António Guterres follows a year of global upheaval, with the coronavirus pandemic causing governments to shut down whole countries for months at a time, while wildfires, hurricanes and powerful storms have scarred the globe.
Virtual summit an awkward swan song for Trump who skipped some sessions to play golf
G20 leaders meeting remotely pledged on Sunday to “spare no effort” to ensure the fair distribution of coronavirus vaccines worldwide, but offered no specific new funding to meet that goal.
The virtual summit hosted by Saudi Arabia was an awkward swan song for Donald Trump, who skipped some sessions on Saturday to play golf, paid little attention to other leaders’ speeches and claimed the Paris climate agreement was designed not to save the planet but to the kill the US economy.
Climate finance goals declared but campaigners highlight omissions over fossil fuels and poor nations’ support
The world’s publicly financed development banks have pledged to tie together their efforts to rescue the global economy from the Covid-19 crisis and the climate emergency, using their financial muscle to assist a green recovery for poor countries.
But the banks stopped short of pledging an end to fossil fuel finance, and did not set out firm targets for how much funding they would devote to a green recovery in a declaration signed on Thursday by 450 development banks worldwide.
Federal parliament returns; Asio chief warns of ‘real threat’ from foreign spies; incoming Biden administration vows to sign back up to Paris agreement. Follow all the updates
The motion was voted up 28 to 25 with Labor, Centre Alliance, Rex Patrick, Jacqui Lambie and One Nation combining to warn the Coalition over the draft bill’s inadequacies.
Greens senator Larissa Waters motion stated:
Senate just passed a motion 28:25 for a strong corruption watchdog, listing all of the features the Gov’s weak model leaves out. A defacto vote on the Gov’s bill - the Senate can see through the fig leaf of the Gov’s belated and pathetic model that wouldn’t stop a thing! #auspol
Richard Marles says Labor is not pursing a royal commission into the Murdoch media empire and will “let Kevin speak for himself”.
Andrew Leigh officially tabled the Kevin Rudd-led petition, which had more than 500,000 signatures, in the parliament today.
We have talked about our position in relation to the media over a long period of time. Now, this is not something we have been considering. This is something Kevin Rudd has been pursuing in his capacity as a private citizen. I mean, I obviously note it is a significant petition in terms of those who have signed up to it and it has been presented to the parliament appropriately. That is where the matter is that in terms of the opposition.
Biden’s presidency could help reduce global heating by about 0.1C if plans fulfilled, say experts
The election of Joe Biden as president of the US could reduce global heating by about 0.1C, bringing the goals of the Paris agreement “within striking distance”, if his plans are fulfilled, according to a detailed analysis.
Biden’s policy of a target to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and plans for a $1.7tn investment in a green recovery from the Covid crisis, would reduce US emissions in the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide or its equivalents. Calculations by the Climate Action Tracker show that this reduction would be enough to avoid a temperature rise of about 0.1C by 2100.
The United States on Wednesday officially became the only country in the world refusing to participate in global climate efforts, with the fate of the crisis hanging on the still uncalled presidential election.
Donald Trump as of Wednesday has withdrawn the US from the Paris climate agreement, an international pact to try to avert dangerous temperature increases that are already leading to more extreme weather and threaten to shrink world food supplies, force millions to flee their homes and deprive many of basic human rights. Trump’s administration set the US exit in motion a year ago, but it didn’t automatically take effect until 4 November.
The two US presidential contenders offer starkly different approaches as the world tries to avoid catastrophic global heating
Among the myriad reasons world leaders will closely watch the outcome of a fraught US presidential election, the climate crisis looms perhaps largest of all.
The international effort to constrain dangerous global heating will hinge, in large part, on which of the dichotomous approaches of Donald Trump or Joe Biden prevails.
The climate crisis and Covid-19 are crying out for international cooperation, writes the prime minister of Bangladesh
One-third of my country was underwater last month. The heaviest rains in almost a decade began and have still not abated. More than 1.5 million Bangladeshis are displaced; tens of thousands of hectares of paddy fields have been washed away. Millions of my compatriots will need food aid this year.
Calamities, alas, never strike alone. The floods, which come in the wake of widespread destruction caused by Cyclone Amphan in May, are making it more difficult to contain the coronavirus. More than 2.4 million people had already been moved from the destructive path of the storm without delivering them into the even greater danger of Covid-19. Yet while the infection and death rates have been contained, concerns remain until a foolproof safeguard is acquired. Economic lockdowns have hit our textile industry and exports and forced hundreds of thousands of our international migrant workers to return home, with the vast majority remaining unemployed.
Now is a time for courage. It will take sacrifices from everyone for us all to survive, the president of the Marshall Islands writes
My country joined the United Nations nearly 30 years ago, in September 1991. But unless my fellow member states take action, we may also be forced from it: the first country to see our land swept away by climate change.
As the UN general assembly meets in New York, celebrating the 75th anniversary of its formation, we must ask: how many of the 193 nations that it brings together will survive to reach its centenary?
Global voices in the crisis say a US exit from the Paris agreement is damaging, but the fact no other country is leaving shows it can survive this ‘ultimate stress test’
The origins of the world’s historic agreement to tackle climate change, in Paris in 2015, have some familiar themes. Back in 2007, there was a Republican president in the White House who had long been hostile to any action on climate change.
George W Bush had refused to give US backing to a new global roadmap on the climate.
Former EU climate chief Miguel Arias Cañete fears end of Covid-19 will bring higher carbon emissions
Financial help from taxpayers to airlines hit by the coronavirus crisis must come with strict conditions on their future climate impact, the former EU climate commissioner and a group of green campaigners have said.
“It must be conditional, otherwise when we recover we will see the same or higher levels of carbon dioxide [from flying],” said Miguel Arias Cañete, the EU climate commissioner who led the bloc to the Paris agreement, in an interview with the Guardian. “We know the level of emissions we have to commit to [under Paris]. They [airlines] are worried about survival and will need lots of support, lots of liquidity – that gives them a big responsibility.”
Appeal court says decision to give go-ahead not consistent with Paris agreement
Plans for a third runway at Heathrow airport have been ruled illegal by the court of appeal because ministers did not adequately take into account the government’s commitments to tackle the climate crisis.
The ruling is a major blow to the project at a time when public concern about the climate emergency is rising fast and the government has set a target in law of net zero emissions by 2050. The prime minister, Boris Johnson, could use the ruling to abandon the project, or the government could draw up a new policy document to approve the runway.
This summer, Scott Morrison has faced international criticism over his climate change policies. But this government is just the latest in a long line that have either failed on meaningful climate policy at home, orblocked stronger climate action on the world stage.
In this episode of Full Story, Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor explores Australia’s long track record of stalling on climate change action.
Kremlin website recognises global heating as a problem but lists ‘positive’ economic effects
Russia has published a plan to adapt its economy and population to climate change, aiming to mitigate damage but also “use the advantages” of warmer temperatures.
The document, published on the government’s website on Saturday, outlines a plan of action and acknowledges changes to the climate are having a “prominent and increasing effect” on socioeconomic development, people’s lives, health and industry.
Experts horrified at large-scale forest removal to meet wood pellet demand
Plans to shift Europe’s coal plants, including the giant Drax complex in North Yorkshire, to burn wood pellets instead could accelerate rather than combat climate crisis and lay waste to forests equal to half the size of Germany’s Black Forest per year, according to campaigners.
Climate thinktank Sandbag said the heavily subsidised plans to cut carbon emissions will result in a “staggering” amount of tree cutting, potentially destroying forests faster than they can regrow.