Labour not protecting people, economy and homes from climate crisis, watchdog says

Plans to protect UK from extreme weather are inadequate, Climate Change Committee says in scathing assessment

Labour is putting people, the economy and the environment in increasing peril by failing to act on the effects of the climate crisis, the UK’s climate watchdog has said.

Flooding, droughts and heatwaves are all increasing in severity due to climate breakdown, but current plans to protect people, land and infrastructure against extreme weather have been judged inadequate in a scathing assessment of the UK’s preparedness.

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Phasing out fossil fuels ‘doomed to fail’, says Tony Blair as he calls for rethink of net zero policy – UK politics live

‘Any strategy based on either phasing out fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail,’ says former PM

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

Keir Starmer is not expected to campaign in the Hamilton byelection, a critical contest for Scottish Labour which takes place in early June, Anas Sarwar has confirmed.

I wouldn’t expect Keir to be campaigning in the byelection. That’s not to say he won’t, but I’m not expecting Kier to campaign in the byelection.

I’ll be on the stump campaigning for a Labour win. I’m the candidate for first minister next year. I’m the one that wants to remove the SNP from government.

Next year, we’ve got to demonstrate to people that for all Nigel Farage might want to come here with his easy answers and create a bit of a circus, the reality is a vote for Reform only helps the SNP. If you want to get rid of the SNP, only Scottish Labour can beat them.

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Climate plan based on phasing out fossil fuels doomed to fail, says Tony Blair

Former PM claims net zero policies losing public support and says there should be greater focus on carbon capture

Tony Blair has warned that any strategy based on phasing out fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is doomed to fail.

Calling for a reset of action on climate change, the former prime minister suggested the UK government should focus less on renewables and more on technological solutions such as carbon capture.

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Trump’s first 100 days supercharged a global ‘freefall of rights’, says Amnesty

World now in era of repressive regimes’ impunity, climate inaction and unchecked corporate power, says report

The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency have “supercharged” a global rollback of human rights, pushing the world towards an authoritarian era defined by impunity and unchecked corporate power, Amnesty International warns today.

In its annual report on the state of human rights in 150 countries, the organisation said the immediate ramifications of Trump’s second term had been the undermining of decades of progress and the emboldening of authoritarian leaders.

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The Coalition denies emissions will rise if it wins the election. What do the facts say?

We break down the major parties’ climate claims, counter-claims and policies – and find out what the experts say

The Coalition has disputed claims that greenhouse gas emissions would be higher if it won the election than under a returned Labor government. It points to its record between 2013 and 2022 compared with what has happened under Labor over the past three years.

Speaking to the ABC’s RN Breakfast on Monday, the Coalition climate change and energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien, said “under the former Coalition government you saw emissions fall” – from 12% to 29% less than 2005 levels. And that in Labor’s three years in office emissions “have flatlined”, showing the ALP has “failed”.

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Trump order to loosen fishing regulations poses major risks, experts warn

Conservationists fear fallout from president’s proclamation on fishing in federally protected area of Pacific Ocean

Environmental conservation groups are expressing major concerns over Donald Trump’s recent proclamation to reverse fishing regulations across the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine national monument, a federally protected area in the central Pacific Ocean spanning nearly 500,000 sq miles.

As one of the most pristine tropical marine environments in the world, the monument is now at risk following Trump’s decision last week to unleash American commercial fishing in the area with far-reaching environmental consequences.

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Lifesize herd of puppet animals begins climate action journey from Africa to Arctic Circle

The Herds project from the team behind Little Amal will travel 20,000km taking its message on environmental crisis across the world

Hundreds of life-size animal puppets have begun a 20,000km (12,400 mile) journey from central Africa to the Arctic Circle as part of an ambitious project created by the team behind Little Amal, the giant puppet of a Syrian girl that travelled across the world.

The public art initiative called The Herds, which has already visited Kinshasa and Lagos, will travel to 20 cities over four months to raise awareness of the climate crisis.

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Trump administration kills landmark pollution settlement in majority-Black county

Decision will affect mostly low-income Alabama residents as DoJ dismisses agreement over untreated sewage as DEI

The Trump administration has killed a landmark civil rights settlement requiring Alabama to address raw sewage pollution in majority-Black, residential areas south-west of Montgomery, dismissing it as an “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) agreement.

The decision could condemn low-income people in Lowndes county, about 40 miles south-west of Montgomery, to indefinitely continue living with no or failing sanitation infrastructure.

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Badenoch declines to criticise Jenrick over Reform coalition comments – as it happened

Spokesperson for Tory leader says she agrees with colleague that ‘we need to bring centre-right voters together’. This blog is closed

Rosie Duffield, the independent MP who left Labour after the election in part because she felt her gender critical views made her unwelcome in the party (although her resignation letter focused on welfare issues), has claimed that Keir Starmer no longer arguing a trans woman is a woman shows he is a “manager rather than a leader”.

Speaking on LBC, Duffield said:

It’s just another sign of the prime minister’s lack of leadership skills. I’m bound to say that, he’s a manager rather than a leader. He responds and reacts rather than leads from the front, and this is what we’re seeing again from him.

Nigel Farage is peddling a dangerous fantasy by claiming the UK can be self-sufficient in gas.

After sixty years of drilling, the truth is the UK has already burned most of its gas. That’s down to geology, not politics, and no amount of hot air from Farage will change that.

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More than 80% of the world’s reefs hit by bleaching after worst global event on record

An ashen pallor and an eerie stillness all that remains where there should fluttering fish and vibrant colours in the reefscape, one conservationist says

The world’s coral reefs have been pushed into “uncharted territory” by the worst global bleaching event on record that has now hit more than 80% of the planet’s reefs, scientists have warned.

Reefs in at least 82 countries and territories have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white since the global event started in January 2023, the latest data from the US government’s Coral Reef Watch shows.

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‘Bordering on incredible’: Coalition under fire for planning to scrap Labor climate policies and offering none of its own

With Peter Dutton’s views on climate change in the spotlight, the focus has turned onto whether there will be any policies to reduce emissions in the next decade

The Coalition is refusing to say if it will introduce any policies to cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade as it pledges to unwind most climate measures introduced under Labor.

Peter Dutton’s position on the climate crisis came under scrutiny last week after he gave contradictory answers on whether he accepted mainstream climate science. Asked during a leaders’ debate on the ABC whether extreme weather events were worsening, the opposition leader said: “I don’t know because I’m not a scientist”.

Dropping a Labor goal of 82% of electricity coming from renewable generation by 2030 and slowing the roll out of solar and wind farms, in part by scrapping a “rewiring the nation” fund to build new transmission connections. Instead, it says the country would rely on more fossil fuels – coal and gas-fired power – until it could lift a ban on nuclear energy and build taxpayer-owned nuclear generators, mostly after 2040.

Abolishing fines for car companies that do not meet targets to cut the average emissions from the new cars they sell.

Not supporting Labor’s 2030 emissions reduction target. Former diplomats say lowering the target would put Australia in breach of commitments made in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Opposing a joint Australia-Pacific bid to host a major UN climate summit in Adelaide next year.

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Miliband in blistering attack on Farage’s UK net zero ‘nonsense and lies’

The energy secretary has accused Reform UK’s leader of peddling dangerous falsehoods about renewable power

Tories and Reform use the steel crisis to knock clean energy. They’re wrong: it will secure all our futures

Ed Miliband has torn into Nigel Farage and the Tories for peddling dangerous “nonsense and lies” by suggesting the UK’s net zero target is responsible for destroying Britain’s businesses, including its steel industry.

Cabinet ministers are determined to fight back against the way Reform UK and the Conservatives have unceremoniously lambasted the climate crisis agenda for what they believe are nakedly political reasons before important local elections next month.

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The great Mississippi tops list of most endangered rivers amid fears over Trump rollbacks

Cuts to disaster agency and deregulation of fossil fuels, plus rise of water-guzzling datacentres, highlighted in new report

The Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal climate disaster agency – and the full-throttle deregulation of fossil fuels and water-guzzling datacentres – could prove catastrophic for America’s endangered rivers, threatening the food, water and livelihoods of millions of people, according to a new report.

American Rivers’ annual most-endangered rivers list lays bare a myriad of human-made threats including floods, drought and other extreme weather events driven by the climate crisis, as well as industrial pollution and poor river management – all of which Trump’s regulatory rollbacks will almost inevitably make worse.

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‘Let Rome burn’: Coalition MP says allowing blackouts the only way to turn voters off renewable energy

Exclusive: Power outages in major cities would help build opposition to climate policies, Colin Boyce tells podcast

The Coalition MP Colin Boyce says he believes the way to turn voters against renewable energy is to “let Rome burn for a while” and allow power blackouts to occur in major cities.

Guardian Australia reported on Wednesday that Boyce had described blackouts as a “big political opportunity” at a meeting of climate science deniers in late 2023.

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China to snub UK energy summit amid row over infrastructure projects

Exclusive: Absence of world’s biggest clean energy producer will be welcomed by US pushing oil and gas exports

China is to snub a major UK summit on energy security next week, the Guardian has learned, amid a growing row over the country’s involvement in UK infrastructure projects.

The US will send a senior White House official to the 60-country summit, to be co-hosted with the International Energy Agency. Leading oil and gas companies are also invited, along with big technology businesses, and petrostates including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

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Deadly floods and storms affected more than 400,000 people in Europe in 2024

European State of the Climate report ‘lays bare’ impact of fossil fuels on continent during its hottest 12 months on record

The home-wrecking storms and floods that swept Europe last year affected 413,000 people, a report has found, as fossil fuel pollution forced the continent to suffer through its hottest year on record.

Dramatic scenes of cars piled up on inundated streets and bridges being ripped away by raging torrents were seen around the continent in 2024, with “high” floods on 30% of the European river network and 12% crossing the “severe” flood threshold, according to the European State of the Climate report.

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Revealed: nearly 2m hectares of koala habitat bulldozed since 2011 – despite political promises to protect species

Guardian Australia is highlighting the plight of our endangered native species during an election campaign that is ignoring broken environment laws and rapidly declining ecosystems

Nearly 2m hectares of forests suitable for endangered koalas have been destroyed since the iconic species was declared a threatened species in 2011, according to analysis for Guardian Australia.

The scale of habitat destruction in Queensland and New South Wales – states in which the koala is formally recognised as being at risk of extinction – has continued despite political promises it would be protected.

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Will global climate action be a casualty of Trump’s tariffs?

Clean energy investors likely to pull back from US, but other countries may seize opportunity to speed transition

Donald Trump’s upending of the global economy has raised fears that climate action could emerge as a casualty of the trade war.

In the week that has followed “liberation day”, economic experts have warned that the swathe of tariffs could trigger a global economic recession, with far-reaching consequences for investors – including those behind the green energy projects needed to meet climate goals.

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Trump administration cuts $4m to Princeton’s climate research funding

White House claims university’s work exposed students to ‘climate anxiety’ and ‘exaggerated climate threats’

Almost $4m in federal funding has been stripped from an Ivy League university’s prestigious climate research department because the Trump administration has determined it exposed students and other young people to “climate anxiety”.

The government research grants to Princeton University have been cut off because the White House considers its work on topics including sea level rise, coastal flooding and global warming to be promoting “exaggerated and implausible climate threats”, according to the New York Times.

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Palau president backs Australia’s bid to host Cop31 climate summit after Dutton labels it ‘madness’

Surangel Whipps Jr says he would be ‘deeply disappointed’ if attempt were abandoned under Coalition

The president of Palau has delivered a pointed barb at Peter Dutton while strongly backing an Australian bid to host a UN climate conference on behalf of the Pacific, arguing that it would boost regional solidarity and he would be “deeply disappointed” if the attempt was abandoned under the Coalition.

Speaking at a renewable energy conference in Sydney on Wednesday, Surangel Whipps Jr described seeing two-thirds of an island in his archipelago country disappear under water in his lifetime. “For those of us in the Pacific who have lived through storm surges, rising ocean levels and increasingly high tides, the phrase ‘water lapping at our door’ is not a metaphor or a punchline. It’s our fear and reality,” he said.

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