Research shows natural hazards linked to climate crisis disrupted 23 elections in 18 countries in 2024
Democracy is under mounting threat from the climate crisis, with new analysis documenting how elections are increasingly shaped not only by political forces but also by floods, wildfires and extreme weather.
At least 94 elections and referendums across 52 countries have been disrupted by climate-related impacts over the last two decades, researchers found.
Continue reading...The Albanese government overhauled policy and promised significant pollution cuts – but carbon offsets are still being used as an excuse
Is this how a national scheme to cut climate pollution is supposed to work?
Australian government data released this week shows emissions from Australian coalmines increased last financial year. About 80% of the coalmines pumped more into the atmosphere than their government-imposed limit.
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Continue reading...Tim Friede put his ‘ass on the line’ to help stop snakebite deaths – whose numbers appear to be rising amid the climate crisis
As we overheat and degrade our planet, more people are set to come into contact, sometimes fatally, with venomous snakes. One man hopes to provide an unusual solution to this, after subjecting himself to 200 intentional snakebites to his body.
For nearly 20 years, Tim Friede, 58, allowed some of the most lethal snakes in the world to bite him so he could build up an immunity that could one day be developed into a universal antivenom.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Former UN climate chief to co-chair Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality
What are the health impacts of sea-level rise, and who should pay?
Christiana Figueres: Sea-level rise is a health crisis and we must hold polluters accountable
Countries are being “held hostage” by their reliance on fossil fuels, a former UN climate chief has warned, describing the health impacts of climate change as “the mother of all injustices”.
Christiana Figueres, an international climate negotiator who helped deliver the Paris agreement signed in 2016, made the comments as she was announced on Wednesday as co-chair of a Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality.
Continue reading...Conservationists say move could push species closer to extinction and clearer environmental rules are needed instead
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Conservationists and scientists have warned a mining lobby proposal to use artificial intelligence to speed up national environmental approvals could generate “robodebt-style” failures, putting threatened species at further risk.
The Minerals Council of Australia has asked the government to spend $13m to trial the use of AI to help companies prepare applications and help the federal government make decisions.
Continue reading...Scientists tracked bird population in Canberra’s botanic gardens and found climate impacts starting to affect them
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A common and well-loved bird of bush and garden could go extinct within 30-40 years due to the weather impacts of climate change, researchers say.
Data derived from nearly 30 years of weekly observations tracked the lives of superb fairy wrens in Canberra’s botanic gardens, noting the changing weather’s impacts on them.
Continue reading...Electric buses are just 1% of the Australian fleet compared with 80% in urban China, a quarter in the Netherlands and 12% in the UK
As diesel climbs past $3 a litre amid fuel security concerns, transport advocates are calling for the rollout of electric buses across Australia to be prioritised.
In Australia, just 1% of buses are electric, compared with 80% of the urban fleet in China, a quarter in the Netherlands and 12% in the UK.
Continue reading...Exclusive: War in the Middle East is draining the global carbon budget faster than 84 countries combined
The US-Israel war on Iran is a disaster for the climate, according to an analysis that finds it is draining the global carbon budget faster than 84 countries combined.
As warplanes, drones and missiles kill thousands of people, level infrastructure and turn the Middle East into a gigantic environmental sacrifice zone, the first analysis of the climate cost has found the conflict led to 5m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in its first 14 days.
Continue reading...Some Holyrood candidates have been accused of spreading false rumours about asylum hotels, describing Humza Yousaf as ‘not British’, and backing Tommy Robinson
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
Malcolm Offord, Reform UK’s Scottish leader, has doubled down on his defence of the party’s vetting by dismissing remarks by candidates backing Tommy Robinson or describing Humza Yousaf as an “Islamist moron” (see 10.12am) as “fruity language”.
It has taken a matter of hours for Reform Scotland’s big launch to fall apart and their true colours to show.
If Nigel Farage refuses to act and remove this candidate, Malcolm Offord must step up and show some leadership himself. This incident has confirmed once and for all how poisonous and chaotic Reform is and I have no doubt that Scots will send them packing.
Again, as I say, this was done in a former life before she became a member of Reform. We’ve all said things in the past that may be intemperate… I am saying that we have to grow up on this and not take offence at every moment in time.
I’ve been very clear that we have brought in a whole range of candidates, 80% of whom are not politicians. They’re real people with real lives who said real things in a past life. Okay, this was said before she was a candidate. She wasn’t even a member of the party at that time.
And what we got in the situation is that in all our lives in the past, we’ve made comments that might sometimes be intemperate. But the issue with this modern world we live in is everything is now written down and remembered. I just think we have to be more, more realistic about the fact that real people say real things, and now she’s a candidate, she will be held to a higher standard.
Liberal Democrats urge the government to ensure the NCA or new National Police Service takes over investigations into serious waste crime. We also need an independent review of the entire waste crime system to crack down on organised gangs once and for all. New powers for the Environmental Agency simply won’t cut it.
Continue reading...Second landfall expected over weekend in NT as Queensland premier says relatively limited damage so far ‘an incredibly good news story’
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Tropical Cyclone Narelle weakened in intensity on Friday evening after barrelling into far north Queensland as one of the state’s fiercest cyclones in living memory – downing trees, ripping off roofs and swelling rivers.
As of 4pm local time, the Bureau of Meteorology downgraded Narelle from a category 3 to category 2 storm, meaning while it was less severe there were still destructive winds near the centre of 100 km/h and wind gusts up to 150 km/h.
Continue reading...Lawsuit says rescission of endangerment finding – which ruled greenhouse gases threaten public health – was illegal
A coalition of 24 states, alongside a dozen cities and counties, has sued the Trump administration over its decision to revoke the bedrock scientific determination underpinning virtually all US climate regulations.
The new lawsuit, filed in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Thursday, is being led by the states of Massachusetts, California, New York and Connecticut. It argues that the Environmental Protection Agency’s February rescission of the 2009 endangerment finding – which the White House described as the “single largest deregulatory action in US history” – was illegal.
Continue reading...Massive storm tracking a path to Queensland coast, which intensified offshore Thursday morning to category 5, fuelled by warm waters in Coral Sea
Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle is expected to make landfall in far north Queensland on Friday morning as a monster category 5 storm, bringing destructive wind gusts of 250km/h, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
The severe cyclone rapidly intensified over the past 48 hours and in the early hours of Friday morning had built to a category 5 storm that was barrelling west, sitting about 150km east of the small town of Coen. Coen has a population of approximately 330.
Continue reading...Greenhouse gases dropped just 0.1% last year as environment minister criticises lack of improvement
Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany have again missed targets set by the Climate Protection Act and barely fell at all in 2025.
Emissions decreased by just 0.1% last year compared to the previous year, according to data from the German Environment Agency.
Continue reading...Robert Habeck says world has moved on from weaponising energy to using tariffs, technology and more to inflict harm
The weaponisation of energy when Russia invaded Ukraine has given way to “weaponising everything” since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Germany’s former economy minister has said.
Robert Habeck, the Green politician responsible for keeping the lights on during the last energy crisis, said the belief gas “would never be a political weapon” led successive German governments blindly into Putin’s trap by building the Nord Stream pipelines and selling strategic reserves to Gazprom, which Russia emptied before the invasion.
Continue reading...Global heating linked to rising risk of extreme rain that causes devastating landslides and rising coffee prices
The record floods that have brought death and destruction to the heartland of Brazil’s coffee industry are expected to intensify if people continue to burn fossil fuels, analysis has shown.
Dozens of residents in the state of Minas Gerais have been buried alive in landslides or swept away as roads turned into rivers over the past month. Thousands more have been forced to evacuate their homes, while the wider, longer-term effects are likely to include higher prices for coffee across the world.
Continue reading...Australia Institute data finds state and federal subsidies for coal, gas and oil products increased 10% in past year, growing at a faster pace than funding to NDIS
Australian federal and state government subsidies that encourage fossil fuel use and help drive the climate crisis will reach $16.3bn this year after leaping by nearly 10%, according to a new analysis.
It found federal and state governments will pay or forgo the equivalent of $31,020 each minute in 2025-26 to subsidise companies producing and using coal, gas and especially oil, mostly in the form of diesel.
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Continue reading...Vermont and New York face high stakes to protect climate superfund laws as it faces attacks from Trump’s DoJ
By rolling back a bedrock climate legal determination, the Trump administration has undercut its attacks on a groundbreaking state climate accountability law, green groups have argued in court.
Trump’s justice department has asked a judge to kill a first-of-its-kind 2024 Vermont “climate superfund” policy requiring major polluters to pay for damages caused by their past planet-heating pollution, partly on the grounds that that federal law, not state law, governs greenhouse gas emissions. But last month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the endangerment finding, the scientific determination giving federal officials the authority to control those very pollutants.
Continue reading...Pacific island says the US weakened its proposal to advance a key climate ruling but vows to hold major polluters accountable
The Trump administration’s attempt to sink a UN resolution demanding countries act on the climate crisis has caused cuts to the proposal but hasn’t entirely killed it, according to the tiny Pacific island country spearheading the effort.
The US has demanded that Vanuatu, an archipelago in the south Pacific, drop its UN draft resolution that calls on the world to implement a landmark international court of justice (ICJ) ruling from last year that countries could face paying reparations if they fail to stem the climate crisis.
Continue reading...Atmospheric machine-gun has fired storm after deadly storm at the region this year, leaving a trail of widespread destruction
For Andrés Sánchez Barea, in Spain, it was the fear that arose when water started to spurt from plug sockets. For Nelson Duarte, in Portugal, it was the helplessness that hit as violent winds smacked down trees and tore tiles from roofs. For Amal Essuide, in Morocco, it was the reality that dawned when a corpse was pulled onboard a boat in the flooded medina.
Each moment of horror is a fragment of the destruction wrought by an atmospheric machine-gun that in recent weeks has fired storm after storm at the western Mediterranean. Scientists do not know if climate breakdown helped pull the trigger, but research suggests it loaded the chamber with bigger bullets.
Continue reading...Coalition government agrees to remove parts of controversial law and allow homes to rely on fossil fuels
Germany’s coalition government has been accused of abandoning its climate targets after agreeing to scrap parts of a contentious heating law mandating the use of renewables in favour of a draft law allowing homeowners to rely on fossil fuels.
While the previous law required most newly installed heating systems to use at least 65% renewable energy, often with a heat pump, the amended legislation will allow households to keep using oil and gas.
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