Category Archives: Climate crisis

‘Vulnerable’ Pacific countries must get maximum benefit from ‘loss and damage’ fund, Australian climate minister says

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Chris Bowen also says climate disaster fund will need to be bankrolled by broader-than-expected range of countries in speech ahead of Cop28

Australia’s climate minister, Chris Bowen, says Pacific nations and other countries vulnerable to climate catastrophe should be the major beneficiaries of “loss and damage” funding, and a broader range of countries should bankroll the international effort along with the private sector.

Bowen used a speech to a foreign policy thinktank on Tuesday night to signal Australia’s position ahead of Cop28, the looming United Nations-led climate talks, which get under way in the United Arab Emirates later this month.

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BoM provides El Niño update – as it happened

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Birmingham says China ‘doesn’t appear to be acknowledging the facts’

Shadow foreign minister Simon Birmingham is speaking with ABC RN and is asked about sonar pulses from a Chinese warship that left one Australian naval diver injured.

The Australian navy and Australian defence force operates always with professionalism, and I’m confident that Australia’s version of events is a credible.

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Restaurants, pets and holidays: how UK’s well-off have outsize carbon footprints

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Data shows baby boomers have highest emissions and London has lower footprint than rest of UK

• The great carbon divide: charting a climate chasm

Restaurants, pets and foreign holidays are among the reasons why the UK’s most well-off people rack up carbon footprints far greater than those on low incomes, according to data shared with the Guardian.

The biggest carbon divide is in aviation, with the richest 10% in the UK – the 6.7 million people paid more than £59,000 a year – causing more than six times more climate-heating emissions from flights than the poorest 10%. Spending on electrical items, homeware and furniture also contributes to the outsize impact of the wealthy, who splash out four times more on these goods.

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Tax corporate polluters and rich to help tackle climate crisis, Jeremy Hunt told

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In letter to Guardian, campaigners say billions could be raised to help finance decarbonisation

Jeremy Hunt has been warned that combating the climate emergency will require higher taxes on wealth and big corporate polluters at the autumn statement rather than a package of giveaways for the rich.

In the run-up to the chancellor’s speech to the Commons on Wednesday, a group of 19 leading charities and campaigners – including Greenpeace, Christian Aid and Patriotic Millionaires UK – said billions of pounds could be raised to help finance decarbonisation.

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‘Hell de Janeiro’: scorching heat highlights Brazil’s glaring inequality

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It felt like 58.5C in Rio on Tuesday – and the soaring, indeed dangerous, temperatures are hitting the poorest hardest

The start of summer in the southern hemisphere is still a month away, but Brazil has already experienced its eighth heatwave of the year so far, as temperatures soar to dangerously high levels.

Large swathes of the country were put under red alert this week by Inmet, the national meteorological institute, which warned of risks to health “and even life” as temperatures stayed at least five degrees Celsius above average for more than five days.

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How big are the fires burning in Australia’s north? Interactive map shows they’ve burned an area larger than Spain

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La Niña, invasive grass and land management practices are all factors in the larger-than-average bushfires that have burned an area bigger than Spain. This interactive map shows the total area burned, overlaid on different capital cities

Huge bushfires have burned a significant amount of northern Australia in recent months, with the collective area burned larger than many countries, including Spain.

Experts say the massive fires are primarily due to a higher-than-average fuel load built up over the recent wet La Niña years, with an invasive grass species also contributing to more intense burns.

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UK environment secretary took donation from funder of climate sceptic thinktank

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Exclusive: Steve Barclay accepted £3,000 donation from Michael Hintze, a key funder of Global Warming Policy Foundation

The new environment secretary, Steve Barclay, received a donation from a major funder of a climate sceptic thinktank just weeks before taking up his role, the Guardian can reveal.

Barclay accepted £3,000 from Michael Hintze on 20 October, and is being asked by campaigners to reveal whether he has been lobbied on climate issues by those who seek to deny the extent of climate breakdown.

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WA government fails to back up premier’s claim expanding gas industry will be good for planet

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Western Australian government declines to say whether Roger Cook’s claims backed by publicly available government or third-party analysis

The Western Australian government has produced no evidence to back up a claim that expanding the state’s gas industry – and increasing its greenhouse gas pollution in the short term – will be good for the planet as it will lead to a “dramatic reduction” in global emissions.

The premier, Roger Cook, made the claim at a media conference on Thursday. Cook made similar arguments at a WA energy transition summit on Friday, when speakers including the federal resources minister, Madeleine King, backed the development of new gas reserves alongside renewable energy and critical minerals.

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Australia news live: school strike for climate protests draw huge crowds in Melbourne and Sydney; Albanese says Apec leaders ‘very interested’ in Tuvalu deal

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‘A ceasefire is where we need to get to,’ Zoe Daniel says

Asked by RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas if she supports calls for a ceasefire, Zoe Daniel says:

If you call for a ceasefire, you’re letting down the Jewish community, if you don’t you’re allowing death and destruction to happen in Gaza.

At the end of the day, if I say to you right now, yes, I support ceasefire, that will make zero difference to what is happening in in Gaza.

I’m a former foreign correspondent. I know the logistics of this, of course, a ceasefire is where we need to get to, but you have a terrorist organisation in the middle of this. If there’s just a ceasefire, and there’s no capacity there to try to dismantle Hamas, does that allow Hamas to regroup? What does that actually lead to? That said, I’ve said to you before, very clearly, and I still stick to the position that the Israeli government has to adhere to international law and the rules of war, and I think, in some ways, has not been.

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US and China’s joint climate plan leaves key questions unanswered

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The breakthrough has been welcomed by experts – but it lacks specific emissions cuts or a commitment to phase out fossil fuels

The US and China’s decision to rekindle a joint effort to tackle the climate crisis has provided sorely needed momentum ahead of crucial UN climate talks later this month, while still leaving some key questions unresolved around calling an end to the fossil fuel era.

The difficult relationship between the world’s two largest carbon emitters has somewhat thawed over the issue of global heating, with both sides indicating they see it as a shared menace set aside from other tensions around trade or the status of Taiwan. The US and China are “alarmed” by the state of “one of the greatest challenges of our time” and will work to resolve it despite other differences, as the countries’ joint statement on Tuesday put it.

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China and US pledge to fight climate crisis ahead of Xi-Biden summit

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Announcement fuels hope rivals can use Apec summit as a chance to reduce tensions

China and the US have pledged to work together more closely to fight global heating, declaring the climate crisis “one of the greatest challenges of our time”, hours before a key meeting in San Francisco between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping.

The announcement further fuels hopes that the two nations can mend relations after years of turmoil over issues including trade, human rights and the future of Taiwan.

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Deadliest year on record as Phoenix heat fatalities rise by 50%

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Hottest US city, buffeted by extreme temperatures, sees 579 heat-related in 2023, with large proportion among unhoused people

Heat deaths surged by 50% in Phoenix in 2023 – the deadliest year on record after extreme temperatures pummeled America’s hottest city, official figures show.

At least 579 people lost their lives to heat this year, with senior citizens accounting for one in three deaths, according to the year’s final heat surveillance report by the medical examiner’s office in Maricopa county, where Phoenix is located. Another 56 suspected heat deaths are still under investigation.

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Australia to offer residency to Tuvalu citizens displaced by climate change

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Anthony Albanese announces immigration plan with special visa category for people affected by rising sea levels in the vulnerable Pacific island nation

Australia will offer residency to people affected by climate change in the low-lying Pacific nation of Tuvalu, as part of a sweeping new treaty that also locks the two countries into close security ties.

At a time when many Pacific leaders are pressing Australia to take stronger action against its fossil fuel sector, the treaty explicitly recognises the vulnerability of Tuvalu to rising sea levels.

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Small modular nuclear reactor that was hailed by Coalition as future cancelled due to rising costs

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Opposition climate and energy spokesperson had pointed to SMRs as a solution to Australia’s energy needs, but experts raise questions over price tag

The only small modular nuclear power plant approved in the US – cited by the Australian opposition as evidence of a “burgeoning” global nuclear industry – has been cancelled due to rising costs.

NuScale Power announced on Wednesday that it had dropped plans to build a long-promised “carbon free power project” in Idaho. It blamed the decision on a lack of subscribers for the plant’s electricity.

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Oil and gas ‘not the problem’ for climate, says UK’s net zero minister

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Campaigners call Graham Stuart’s comments ‘laughable’ and say Conservatives are weaponising climate action

Oil and gas are “not the problem” for the climate, but the carbon emissions arising from them are, the UK’s net zero minister has told MPs.

In words that suggested the UK could place yet more emphasis on technologies to capture and store carbon, Graham Stuart said fossil fuel production was not driving climate change, but demand for fossil fuels was.

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Plastic waste ‘spiralling out of control’ across Africa, analysis shows

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Predicted 116m tonnes of waste annually by 2060 is six times higher than in 2019, driven by demand in sub-Saharan Africa

Plastic waste is “spiralling out of control” across Africa, where it is growing faster than any other region, new analysis has shown.

At current levels, enough plastic waste to cover a football pitch is openly dumped or burned in sub-Saharan Africa every minute, according to the charity Tearfund.

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China releases methane plan as hopes rise for new climate agreement with US

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Two countries may soon break ground on a new climate agreement ahead of a presidential meeting next week and the UN’s climate conference, Cop28

China has published a long-awaited methane reduction plan, in a sign that the country is moving closer towards a new climate agreement with the US.

Beijing first committed to reducing its methane output at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021, as part of a joint agreement with the US. But for two years the reduction plan failed to materialise. Its publication on Tuesday, as the US and Chinese climate envoys wrapped up four days of talks in Sunnylands, California, signalled that the two countries may soon break ground on a new climate agreement ahead of a presidential meeting next week and the UN’s climate conference, COP28, at the end of this month.

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Canada’s emissions cut plan insufficient to meet targets, official report finds

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Auditor general says key measures to cut emissions by 40-45% to meet Paris accord commitment delayed or not prioritized

Canada’s emissions reduction plan is insufficient to meet its target to cut emissions by 40% to 45% below the 2005 level by 2030, according to a new a report released by the country’s auditor general.

The audit found the government’s plan insufficient because key measures needed to meet the 2030 target were delayed or not prioritized, according to a statement from the office of the auditor general on Tuesday.

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Kenya makes 13 November nationwide tree planting day a public holiday

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Move announced by interior minister is part of ambitious Kenyan plan to plant 15bn trees by 2032

The Kenyan government has announced a surprise public holiday on 13 November for a nationwide tree planting day, part of its ambitious plan to plant 15bn trees by 2032

The interior minister, Kithure Kindiki, made the announcement via an official notice posted to social media.

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Beef, soy and palm oil products linked to deforestation still imported into UK

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Campaigners accuse government of failing to stick to promises made at Cop26 climate summit in 2021

Beef, soy and palm oil products driving deforestation are still being imported into the UK, despite government promises this practice would end, data has revealed.

Campaigners have criticised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for failing to put practices in place to stop the import of goods from areas with high deforestation rates. This is despite the government having promised at the Cop26 climate conference in 2021 to implement the rules.

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