Category Archives: Climate crisis

El Niño forecast to drive record heat from the Amazon to Alaska in 2024

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Coastal areas facing ‘enormous and urgent climate crisis’ as event supercharges human-caused global heating, scientists say

The current climate event known as El Niño is likely to supercharge global heating and deliver record-breaking temperatures from the Amazon to Alaska in 2024, analysis has found.

Coastal areas of India by the Bay of Bengal and by the South China Sea, as well as the Philippines and the Caribbean, are also likely to experience unprecedented heat in the period to June, the scientists said, after which El Niño may weaken.

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People displaced by climate crisis to testify in first-of-its-kind hearing in US

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Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will hear how climate is driving forced migration across the Americas

Communities under imminent threat from rising sea level, floods and other extreme weather will testify in Washington on Thursday, as the region’s foremost human rights body holds a first-of-its-kind hearing on how climate catastrophe is driving forced migration across the Americas.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) will hear from people on the frontline of the climate emergency in Mexico, Honduras, the Bahamas and Colombia, as part of a special hearing sought by human rights groups in Latin America, the US and the Caribbean.

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Cash-strapped London council starts crowdfunding drive to pay for green upgrades

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Southwark asks residents to invest as little as £5 to help fund eco-projects such as cycle hangars and school upgrades

Deep cuts to government funding have led a council in south London to ask its residents to invest their own money, for a financial return, to build cycle hangars, new LED street lighting and green upgrades at schools and leisure centres.

In the midst of a financial crisis hitting town halls across England, councillors in Southwark have resorted to a crowdfunding scheme to raise £6m over the next six years to help fund climate-friendly projects.

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‘People put a lot of hope on me’: Estonia’s youngest MP already making waves

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Hanah Lahe is just 24 but she is already a leading voice for change in the former Soviet Baltic state

Hanah Lahe can’t remember the fall of the iron curtain. Estonia’s youngest MP grew up surfing the web and consuming American television. Just nine years before her birth, it was all so different. When borders reopened after the end of Soviet rule in 1991, Estonians rushed to stare at bananas, enthralled by the arrival of this new, exotic fruit.

“People were standing in line sometimes not even to buy, but just to have a look at them. Those who would buy them would not even eat them because it was such a big thing,” says Lahe, 24, recounting a story her grandmother told her. “When a plastic bag from another country that had a big brand name arrived, people would use it all the time.”

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Sunak stands with net zero and climate conspiracy group at farming protest

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Demonstration against Welsh Labour policy included No Farmers No Food campaign calling for end to climate measures, and Welsh Tory leader

Rishi Sunak attended a protest alongside a group which has posted conspiracy theories about climate change, and which campaigns against net zero, the Observer can reveal.

The prime minister has been accused of “pandering to extremists” by farmers and wildlife groups, who have asked him to “listen to reason and logic” rather than conspiracy theories.

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Colombia vows to put nature at the heart of global environmental negotiations

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The environment minister Susana Muhamad says nature is a ‘pillar’ of fighting the climate crisis

The next round of global biodiversity negotiations will put nature at the heart of the international environment agenda, Colombia’s environment minister has said, as the country prepares for the Cop16 summit.

Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who is expected to be the Cop16 president, said the South American country would use the summit to ensure nature was a key part of the global environmental agenda in the year building up to the climate Cop30 in the Brazilian Amazon in 2025, where countries will present new plans on how they will meet the Paris agreement.

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UK quits treaty that lets fossil fuel firms sue governments over climate policies

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Britain joins France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands in withdrawing from charter it says ‘penalises’ shift to net zero

The UK is pulling out of a treaty that lets fossil fuel firms sue governments over their climate policies.

The government said the UK was withdrawing from the energy charter treaty after efforts to modernise it ended in stalemate.

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Growth in CO2 emissions leaves China likely to miss climate targets

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Carbon intensity of the country’s economy remains high, despite rapid improvements in clean energy output

China is off track on all of its core 2025 climate targets, despite the fact that clean energy is now the biggest driver of the country’s economic growth, analysis has found.

After years of extraordinarily rapid growth, China is now grappling with a slowdown that is causing ripples internally and internationally. The government has supercharged the growth of the renewable energy industry but it has simultaneously poured stimulus funds into construction and manufacturing, and continues to approve coal power.

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Removing UK climate protesters’ defence ‘could erode right to trial by jury’

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Attorney general’s attempt to end climate protesters’ use of consent defence is slippery slope, says KC

A UK government attempt to remove one of the last remaining defences for climate protesters would be a slippery slope to the erosion of the constitutional right to trial by jury, the court of appeal was told on Wednesday.

The attorney general, Victoria Prentis KC, is arguing that one of the last available defences being used by environmental protesters should be removed. Prentis is making the appeal in the case of a defendant known as C, after a string of acquittals by juries of defendants for acts of criminal damage involving daubing paint on buildings.

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University of Florida student senate passes ‘green new deal’

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In a rebuke to Governor Ron DeSantis’s denialism, the student body calls for campus-wide measures to tackle the climate crisis

The University of Florida student senate voted in favour of a “green new deal” late on Tuesday, becoming the first public university to adopt such a resolution through student government.

The mandate – which was unanimously passed – calls for sweeping campus-wide measures to tackle the climate crisis that include just transition, total divestment from fossil fuels, disclosure of the university’s financial ties within the private sector and a ban on receiving research funding from the fossil fuel industry.

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Ten of Australia’s top companies lack clear plans to stop using or supporting fossil fuels, report says

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UTS researchers say firms including Coles, Woolworths, Telstra, Rio Tinto and Qantas have no ‘comprehensive, independently verified and fully costed plan’ to reduce emissions

Ten of Australia’s best-known corporations – including Coles, Telstra, Woolworths and Qantas – have no clear plans to stop using or supporting fossil fuels despite having targets to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report.

The companies were also failing to report clearly the impact of their businesses on the climate warming caused directly or indirectly from land clearing.

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Very cool: trees stalling effects of global heating in eastern US, study finds

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Vast reforestation a major reason for ‘warming hole’ across parts of US where temperatures have flatlined or cooled

Trees provide innumerable benefits to the world, from food to shelter to oxygen, but researchers have now found their dramatic rebound in the eastern US has delivered a further, stunning feat – the curtailing of the soaring temperatures caused by the climate crisis.

While the US, like the rest of the world, has heated up since industrial times due to the burning of fossil fuels, scientists have long been puzzled by a so-called “warming hole” over parts of the US south-east where temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled, despite the unmistakable broader warming trend.

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End fossil-fuel era to address colonial injustices, urges prominent historian

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West should address ‘colonisation of the present’ and not focus on past, argues David Van Reybrouck

Cities in the global north that curb their carbon emissions are doing more to address colonial injustices than those who focus their efforts on taking down statues and changing street names, one of Europe’s leading historians has said.

David Van Reybrouck, the Belgian author of a bestselling history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a new book on Indonesia’s independence from Dutch rule, has become one of the key drivers of a nascent and often fraught debate about Europe’s colonial legacies. Those who have lauded his work include the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

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Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, study finds

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Denialism highest in central and southern US, with Republican voters less likely to believe in climate science

Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, a new study out of University of Michigan reveals – shedding light on the highly polarized attitude toward global warming.

Additionally, denialism is highest in the central and southern US, with Republican voters found less likely to believe in climate science.

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Amazon rainforest could reach ‘tipping point’ by 2050, scientists warn

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‘We need to respond now,’ says author of study that says crucial forest has already passed safe boundary and needs restoration

Up to half of the Amazon rainforest could hit a tipping point by 2050 as a result of water stress, land clearance and climate disruption, a study has shown.

The paper, which is the most comprehensive to date in its analysis of the compounding impacts of local human activity and the global climate crisis, warned that the forest had already passed a safe boundary and urged remedial action to restore degraded areas and improve the resilience of the ecosystem.

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Difficult to predict fate of Australia-Tuvalu deal on climate and security, intelligence boss says

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Senior intelligence officer agrees deal is facing risk of unravelling amid ‘political change and turbulence’ in Pacific nation after elections, Senate hears

A senior Australian intelligence chief has acknowledged a landmark climate and security deal with Tuvalu may be at risk in the wake of the Pacific nation’s election.

Andrew Shearer, who leads the government’s Office of National Intelligence (ONI), said his agency was “obviously aware of recent political change and turbulence in Tuvalu”.

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Polar bears risk starvation as they face longer ice-free periods in the Arctic

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Bears use ice to access food, but study of animals in Canada shows them struggling to adapt to more time on land amid climate crisis

Polar bears in Canada’s Hudson Bay risk starvation as the climate crisis lengthens periods without Arctic Sea ice, despite the creatures’ willingness to expand their diets.

Polar bears use the ice that stretches across the ocean surface in the Arctic during colder months to help them access their main source of prey – fatty ringed and bearded seals.

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Australian fossil fuel tax could raise $100bn in first year alone, Rod Sims and Ross Garnaut say

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Revenue from carbon solution levy could subsidise green iron, aluminium and fuel production, veteran economists argue

A tax on fossil fuel production could help fund Australia’s transition to becoming a carbon-free energy giant, lower the cost of living and assist the world to cut greenhouse emissions, according to two veteran economists.

Ross Garnaut, a leading economist during the Hawke government, and Rod Sims, a former head of the competition watchdog, say a so-called carbon solution levy would raise $100bn in its first year alone if introduced in 2030-31 and set at Europe’s five-year average price of $90/tonne of carbon dioxide-equivalent.

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US climate scientist Michael Mann wins $1m in defamation lawsuit

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Scientist wins award against conservative writers who said his work was ‘fraudulent’ and that he ‘molested and tortured’ data

The high-profile climate scientist Michael Mann has been awarded $1m by a jury in a defamation lawsuit against two conservative writers who compared his depictions of global heating to the work of a convicted child molester.

The case stretches back 12 years. In a statement posted on Mann’s X account, one of his lawyers said: “Today’s verdict vindicates Mike Mann’s good name and reputation. It also is a big victory for truth and scientists everywhere who dedicate their lives answering vital scientific questions impacting human health and the planet.”

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Monarch butterfly numbers dip to second lowest level in Mexico wintering grounds

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Experts say the endangered insect numbers fell by 59% this year, blaming pesticide use and climate change for the reduction

The number of endangered monarch butterflies at their wintering areas in Mexico has dropped by 59% this year to the second lowest level since record keeping began, experts said, blaming pesticide use and climate change.

The annual butterfly count doesn’t calculate the individual number of butterflies, but rather the number of hectares they cover when they clump together on tree branches in the mountain pine and fir forests west of Mexico City. Monarchs from east of the Rocky Mountains in the US and Canada overwinter there.

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