Category Archives: Climate crisis

France becomes latest country to leave controversial energy charter treaty

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Quitting the ECT, which protects fossil fuel investors from policy changes that might threaten their profits, was ‘coherent’ with Paris climate deal, Macron said

France has become the latest country to pull out of the controversial energy charter treaty (ECT), which protects fossil fuel investors from policy changes that might threaten their profits.

Speaking after an EU summit in Brussels on Friday, French president, Emmanuel Macron, said: “France has decided to withdraw from the energy charter treaty.” Quitting the ECT was “coherent” with the Paris climate deal, he added.

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‘Nature is striking back’: flooding around the world, from Australia to Venezuela

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Heavy rain and rising waters continue to take a deadly toll in countries including Nigeria, Thailand and Vietnam

It has been a drenched 2022 for many parts of the world, at times catastrophically so. A year of disastrous flooding perhaps reached its nadir in Pakistan, where a third of the country was inundated by heavy rainfall from June, killing more than 1,000 people in what António Guterres, the UN secretary general, called an unprecedented natural disaster.

While floods are indeed natural phenomena, a longstanding result of storms, the human-induced climate crisis is amplifying their damage. Rising sea levels, driven by melting glaciers and the thermal expansion of water, are increasingly inundating coastal areas, while warmer temperatures are causing more moisture to accumulate in the atmosphere, which is then released as rain or snow.

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Floods and warm weather perfect storm for Japanese encephalitis outbreak in Australia, researchers warn

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Modellers say those within 4km of an infected piggery potentially vulnerable, meaning 740,546 people at risk of mosquito-borne virus

Warming temperatures combined with flood waters could leave almost 750,000 Australians vulnerable to Japanese encephalitis – a disease that until last year was confined to Asia and far-northern Australia.

The mosquito-borne disease was first detected on the Australian mainland in 1998, but its range expanded dramatically earlier this year. Cases were reported in dozens of southern piggeries (pigs are one of the main carriers of the virus) and there were also 31 confirmed cases in humans and six deaths.

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Tim Winton urges Fremantle Dockers to drop Woodside Energy sponsorship

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Group of fans including former WA premier Carmen Lawrence say having fossil fuel company as major sponsor is ‘no longer appropriate’

High profile Fremantle Dockers fans, including Tim Winton and former Western Australian premier Carmen Lawrence, have called on the club to end its partnership with Woodside Energy.

In a letter to the club’s president, Dale Alcock, and other board members, the group wrote it “it is no longer appropriate to have a fossil fuel company as our major sponsor moving forward”.

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Amount of ocean heat found to be accelerating and fuelling extreme weather events

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The rate of warming in the top 2km has doubled from levels in the 1960s, review finds

The amount of heat accumulating in the ocean is accelerating and penetrating ever deeper, with widespread effects on extreme weather events and marine life, according to a new scientific review.

One of the report’s authors said the devastating floods in eastern Australia had likely been made worse by warming oceans. The risks would continue to rise as the ocean took up more heat, the report said.

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Science minister warns CSIRO against ‘renting out’ its brand to giant gas companies

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Ed Husic says science agency should focus efforts elsewhere after ‘very major’ gas company asked it to support net-zero bid

The science minister, Ed Husic, has questioned the priorities of Australia’s premier science body, warning it against “renting out” its brand to huge gas companies that could easily fund their own decarbonisation efforts.

Husic told the Spark festival on Monday that a “very major gas company” had approached CSIRO to support its claims of working towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions. While emphasising CSIRO’s independence, Husic said it should focus efforts elsewhere.

“Gas firms at the moment are making enough money to ensure that the mint could blush,” Husic told the gathering.

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Billionaire Mo Ibrahim attacks ‘hypocrisy’ over Africa’s gas

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Telecoms entrepreneur says continent’s people should be allowed to use their vast reserves

One of Africa’s richest entrepreneurs, the telecoms billionaire Mo Ibrahim, has criticised developed countries for seeking to dissuade African nations from exploiting their vast reserves of gas.

Ibrahim told the Guardian in an interview: “We need a balanced and a fair policy for everybody. Gas can be useful to our transition … [Those who say otherwise] are hypocrites.”

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Public ownership of power assets key to smooth shift to renewables, Queensland energy minister says

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Government also able to offset impact of higher energy prices globally following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mick de Brenni says

Retaining control of its electricity assets has given Queensland an edge over other regions in coordinating and funding the race to decarbonise the economy, the state’s energy minister, Mick de Brenni, says.

Queensland last month unveiled a $62bn plan to rid its power grid of coal by 2036, replacing the generation with 25GW of large-scale wind and solar farms, new transmission lines and two giant pumped hydro plants for storage.

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One dead and two missing after Greek island of Crete hit by flash flooding

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A man in his 50s dies while trapped in car as extensive damage in seaside villages reported

A man was found dead and two people were missing on Saturday after torrential rain brought major flooding to the Greek island of Crete, emergency workers said.

A man in his fifties died while trapped inside his car as the rains began to fall in the southern Greek island, a popular holiday destination. Local media reported extensive damage in seaside villages, where streets have become rivers carrying away everything in their path.

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CSIRO abruptly scraps globally recognised climate forecast program

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Exclusive: Funding halted from June 2021 without fanfare and after science agency reportedly spent $15m on teams of scientists

Australia’s premier science organisation abruptly scrapped a fully-funded, globally recognised program to predict the climate in coming years without consulting an advisory panel that had praised its “good progress” only weeks earlier.

Launched in 2016 with $37m in funding over 10 years by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, the Decadal Climate Forecasting Project was meant to help industries from agriculture to dam operators and emergency services to better cope with climate variability and extremes.

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UK joins calls for World Bank reform to focus funding on climate crisis

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Alok Sharma’s intervention puts pressure on Trump-appointed Bank chief who faces calls to resign

The UK has joined calls for sweeping reforms to the World Bank, to focus much-needed funding on the climate crisis, saying that its current structures are not working.

The intervention from Alok Sharma, the current president of the UN climate talks, heaps further pressure on beleaguered World Bank chief, David Malpass. He has faced calls to resign over an apparently climate-dismissing stance, and the Bank’s perceived failures to deliver climate finance.

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Australia news live: Victoria and Tasmania hit by flooding; NT triple murderer sentenced to life in jail

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Seventy flood warnings in place across Victoria, with 10,000 people without power and 40 schools and childcare centres shut. Follow the day’s news live

‘Walk the talk Labor’: Spender urges government to help households decarbonise

Independent MP Allegra Spender has taken to social media to urge the Albanese government to take action supporting Australian households as they decarbonise:

Our families and businesses are hurting. Sovereign risk is not a defence when the super profits are being made because of a war.

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Second world war ‘Ghost Boat’ emerges in California lake, puzzling officials

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The drought hit Lake Shasta coughed up a Higgins vehicle and experts are struggling to explain its presence

Waning water levels across the west – symptoms of the region’s record drought – have revealed yet another artifact.

Dubbed the “Ghost Boat” by officials, the rusted carcass of a second world war Higgins boat, used to transport troops into battle and on to beaches overseas, began to emerge from the shallows in Lake Shasta last fall. Levels have sunk low enough this year to excavate the craft fully.

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UK’s lost leadership role hurts Somalia’s fight against famine, says drought envoy

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Britain is no longer the key humanitarian player and ‘great ally’ it once was, says envoy trying to get support for Somalia’s drought

The UK has lost its leadership role in the world and is letting down its allies, a senior official in the Somali government has said.

Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, the presidential envoy for Somalia’s drought response, said Britain used to be second only to the US as a key player in international forums and advocacy, but has since slipped, saying that countries such as Somalia were being left without support to face “the new climate reality”.

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Phoenix could see deadliest year for heat deaths after sweltering summer

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With 22 days hitting 110F or higher, suspected heat deaths in the Arizona capital topped 450

Extreme heat contributed to as many as 450 deaths in the Phoenix area this summer, in what could be the deadliest year on record for the desert city in Arizona.

The medical examiner for Maricopa county, which includes Phoenix, has so far confirmed 284 heat-related deaths, while investigations into 169 more suspected heat fatalities are ongoing. The highest number of deaths – and emergency hospital visits – coincided with the hottest days and nights.

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UN body reaches long-term aviation climate goal of net zero by 2050

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Decision described as a compromise by several European countries who wanted a more ambitious target

A United Nations body has agreed to a long-term aspirational goal for aviation of net-zero emissions by 2050, despite challenges from China and Russia, as countries aligned overwhelmingly with airlines amid pressure to curb pollution from flights.

Nevertheless, environmentalists criticised the non-binding nature of the agreement as toothless.

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African countries urge rich nations to honour $100bn climate finance pledge

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Ministers rebuke ‘shameful’ failure to meet funding promises for poorer countries to cope with climate crisis ahead of Cop27 summit


Ministers and high-ranking officials of African nations have urged rich countries to do more to combat the climate crisis, and called the failure to meet a funding promise from 2009 “shameful”.

At a conference in Giza, Egypt, on Wednesday in the run-up to next month’s UN climate summit, Wael Aboulmagd, Egypt’s special representative for Cop27, attacked wealthier nations for not honouring an agreement to provide $100bn (£87.5bn) a year to developing countries by 2020.

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‘I have a voice’: African activists struggle to attend UN climate talks in Egypt

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Young campaigners from the continent most affected by the climate crisis face financial and accreditation difficulties for Cop27

African climate activists from some of the countries most affected by global heating say they are struggling to get access to the UN climate talks in Egypt in November.

Cop27, which has been termed “the African Cop”, threatens to take place without African activists advocating for communities devastated by drought, floods and fossil fuel projects in the negotiations when life-or-death decisions about climate finance will be made.

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Pakistani PM says he should not have to beg for help after catastrophic floods

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Shehbaz Sharif says he wants ‘climate justice’ from rich polluting countries after monsoons put a third of his country under water

Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister, has said Pakistan should not be forced to go out with a “begging bowl” to rich polluting nations after the floods that have devastated the country and said he would be seeking “climate justice” from the international community.

Speaking from his home in Lahore, Sharif warned that Pakistan is facing an unprecedented crisis of health, food security and internal displacement after the “apocalyptic” monsoons which put a third of Pakistan’s regions under water. Some areas were hit by 1.7m of rainfall, the highest on record.

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Cop27 host Egypt warns UK not to backtrack from climate agenda

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Unusual diplomatic intervention prompted by fears over Liz Truss’s commitment to net zero

The Egyptian government, host of the next UN climate summit, has warned the UK against “backtracking from the global climate agenda”, in a significant intervention prompted by fears over Liz Truss’s commitment to net zero.

The warning before the Cop27 conference, which will take place in just over a month in Sharm el-Sheikh, to the host of Cop26, which took place in Glasgow last November, is highly unusual in diplomatic terms. The hosts of successive Cops are responsible for a smooth handover of the talks.

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