Annual cuts of 2.5% would keep aviation’s contribution to global warming at about 0.04C, research suggestsA modest diet in our flying habits would be enough to level off the global heating caused by the aviation industry. That’s the surprising conclusion from a study, which also warns that if the aviation industry continues to grow at current rates then it will be responsible for around nearly 0.1C of heating by 2050.Taking a flight adds to global heating in two ways. The first is from the direct effect of burning jet fuel and producing carbon dioxide, which remains in the atmosphere. The second is from indirect effects caused by tailpipe emissions in the upper atmosphere, resulting in cirrus clouds that trap additional heat and complex chemical reactions that alter the balance of greenhouse gases such as ozone and methane. Continue reading...

Farmers for Climate Action chief tells Rural Network Facebook Live event Australia’s stance is about protecting the gas industry

Researchers take sticky beak at bin chicken DNA to see if city-dwellers could revive country populations

Fossil fuels are surging in post-pandemic recovery as scientists warn 1.5C emission limits will be reached in 11 yearsGlobal carbon emissions are shooting back to the record level seen before the coronavirus pandemic levels, new analysis has shown. Scientists said the finding is a “reality check” for the world’s nations gathered at the Cop26 climate summit.The emissions driving the climate crisis reached their highest ever levels in 2019, before global coronavirus lockdowns saw them fall by 5.4%. However, fossil fuel burning has surged faster than expected in 2021, the international research team said, in stark contrast to the rapid cuts needed to tackle global heating. Continue reading...

Report into lobbying tactics names ExxonMobil and Chevron as worst, while carmaker Toyota takes thirdExxonMobil and Chevron are the world’s most obstructive organisations when it comes to governments setting climate policies, according to research into the “prolific and highly sophisticated” lobbying ploys used by the fossil fuel industry.The biggest US oil companies, as well as American Petroleum Institute, a lobby group, were found to be the worst offenders in a global report by lobbying experts at the thinktank InfluenceMap. It concluded that companies were manipulating governments to take “incredibly dangerous paths” in their approach to climate action. Continue reading...

Critics say pledge to end use of dirtiest fuel source in 2030s and 40s does not go far enoughMore than 40 countries have agreed to phase out their use of coal-fired power, the dirtiest fuel source, in a boost to UK hopes of a deal to “keep 1.5C alive”, from the Cop26 climate summit.Major coal-using countries, including Canada, Poland, Ukraine and Vietnam, will phase out their use of coal for electricity generation, with the bigger economies doing so in the 2030s, and smaller economies doing so in the 2040s.More than 20 governments and financial institutions, including the UK, US and Denmark, agreed to phase out overseas finance for all fossil fuels.Research showed that the world could be on track to limit global heating to 1.9C, if commitments from India and other countries on greenhouse gas emissions are fulfilled.Data seen by the Guardian revealed fossil fuel companies were using the energy charter treaty to sue governments for the losses they incur from national commitments to decarbonise.Ireland was told it would need to cull 1.3m animals to meet climate targets.The UK chancellor, Rishi Sunak, told the Cop26 conference London would become a global hub for net zero investment. Continue reading...

Remote Indigenous housing models are not fit for purpose, and it will be ‘quite difficult’ to remain in communities if nothing changes

Labour accuses PM of ‘staggering hypocrisy’ over flight from Glasgow to go to Daily Telegraph reunion at private clubBoris Johnson has been accused of “staggering hypocrisy” after it emerged that he flew back to London from the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow by private jet to go to a dinner at a men-only private members’ club.The prime minister is reported to have attended the exclusive private members’ club The Garrick in the West End for a reunion of Daily Telegraph journalists. He flew 400 miles on Tuesday night from Glasgow to London, according to the Daily Mirror. Continue reading...

Summary of the main developments on the third day of the UN climate summit in Glasgow

Catch up on all the events in Glasgow on Wednesday, where the focus was on financeYellen says a price tag can be put on the action needed, and that it’s estimated at $100-150tn. She says a lot will depend on how public finance is used to direct adaptation and mitigation domestically.She says the US is stepping up by quadrupling the level of international climate finance to more than $11bn a year by 2024. Continue reading...

Council property has been restored to habitability by locals after reports of activists having to sleep roughActivists in Glasgow have “re-opened” a disused building to house climate justice campaigners visiting the city for the Cop26 summit, as those forced to camp because of lack of affordable accommodation face plummeting temperatures.The Glasgow city council property in Tradeston, a former homeless services unit, has been restored to habitability over the past few days by a group of local activists frustrated at reports of visitors forced to sleep rough. Continue reading...

Bloom of the plant, which emits a putrid odor of rotting flesh, began Sunday and quickly drew visitors to botanical gardenThe bloom of a giant and stinky Sumatran flower nicknamed the “corpse plant” because it smells like a dead body is drawing huge crowds to a southern California botanical garden.The bloom of the Amorphophallus titanum plant began Sunday afternoon at the San Diego Botanic Gardens in Encinitas. By Monday morning, timed-entry tickets had sold out, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported, and more than 5,000 people were expected to have visited the garden by Tuesday evening. Continue reading...

Vital rulings on the world’s energy future are being made behind closed doors and others may be unknown

Treaty allows energy corporations to sue governments for billions over policies that could hurt their profits

Biologists heartened as 79 nests of endangered reptile recorded in Broward county this year after low of 12 in 2017.The number of leatherback turtle nests found along some south Florida beaches reached record numbers this year, surprising biologists.The 79 nests laid by endangered turtles along beaches in Broward county this year is nearly double the previous record, according to the South Florida SunSentinel. The previous record was 46 in 2012, and the record low for leatherback nests was 12 in 2017. Continue reading...

Renewable energy received $3.3bn in the same period between 2010 and 2020 but researchers say that gap has narrowed

UK among countries at Cop26 vowing to divert funds to low-carbon energy from 2022

Lower-than-normal wind speeds and supply chain problems pile pressure on Ørsted and VestasTwo of the world’s biggest wind energy companies have warned of difficult conditions as slower-than-usual winds and supply chain difficulties delay manufacturing.Ørsted, a Danish company, said lower-than-normal wind speeds throughout the third quarter had affected its earnings. Across the first nine months of 2021 slow winds cost the company 2.5bn Danish kroner (£290m) compared with the previous year. Ørsted makes about two-thirds of its revenues from offshore wind including off the UK’s coasts. Continue reading...

Summit president’s comments on finance day accused of trying to commercialise climate activismAlok Sharma, the UK cabinet minister and president of the Cop26 summit, has been accused of appropriating the climate activism movement after he told conference delegates “you are the new Swampys”.Opening the summit’s finance day, which aims to channel cash towards transitioning global economies to net zero carbon emissions, Sharma recalled climate protests of the 1990s. Continue reading...

University of Melbourne research suggests India’s plans could make sizeable difference to projections

Indian foreign secretary says price and popularity of renewables behind Modi’s 2070 net zero targetThe staggering take-up of solar power in India has enabled the prime minister, Narendra Modi, to announce a more ambitious climate plan at the Cop26 conference in Glasgow, according to the country’s foreign secretary.India’s commitment to get half of its energy from renewables and to reach net zero by 2070 was arguably the most positive news from the opening phase of the UN gathering. Continue reading...

Experts says global heating a significant factor in more regular disappearance of Scotland’s ‘Sphinx’ patchThe UK’s longest-lasting snow patch, which has survived countless summers on a remote mountainside in the Cairngorms, has melted away for only the eighth time in 300 years as the Cop26 climate talks take place in Glasgow.Nicknamed “the Sphinx”, the hardy patch of snow is found on Braeriach, Scotland’s third-highest mountain at 1,296 metres (4,252ft), near Aviemore. It had shrunk to the size of an A4 piece of paper in recent weeks before finally disappearing in mild weather. Continue reading...

With more than a third of the country’s greenhouse gases coming from farming, Dublin faces huge pressure over reduction aimsUp to 1.3 million cattle would have to be culled in Ireland to reach anticipated government targets for reducing greenhouse gases in the agriculture sector, a new report has concluded.

Long-imperiled birds offer scientific breakthrough after genetic testing highlights rare phenomenonThe California condor is the largest flying bird in North America, with a 10ft wingspan that enables it to soar up to 15,000ft – nearly half the height of a commercial airplane. Now the birds can claim another superlative feat: scientists have discovered that females can reproduce without a male partner, in a rare phenomenon known as parthenogenesis.Oliver Ryder, the director of conservation genetics for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, has called the recent findings a “eureka moment”. Continue reading...

A governance facility in Papua New Guinea is among projects Australia claims as ‘significantly focused’ on climate adaptationAustralia has been accused of “greenwashing” its aid to the Pacific, with the government claiming that major projects are significantly focused on climate adaptation when they have little or no link to climate change or the environment.The accusations, in a new report by Greenpeace Australia Pacific, come after Scott Morrison announced an additional $500m for international climate finance for projects in the Indo-Pacific on the first day of the Cop26 summit in Glasgow. Continue reading...

Can the Middle East wean itself off oil? Plus: the return of Abba

This greenwashing tactic has failed – to pursue it now would be to blow a huge hole in the Paris agreement

Living Language Land includes Namibian bushman’s word for ‘magical journey’ and one from Philippines to denote ‘a forest within a forest’Western leaders at the Cop26 climate summit have been urged to embrace a far more holistic view of humanity’s place in the natural world by an art project celebrating indigenous minority languages.The Living Language Land project has identified 25 words from minority languages and dialects around the world – including Native American Lakota, Murui, a native language of Colombian and Peru, and Scots Gaelic – that highlight each culture’s ties to their land. Continue reading...

Everyone knows that the people inside that building are not going to be the ones who solve the climate crisis

The handwaving and complexity obscure a simple truth: nation states must stop funding dirty industriesIn some respects, preventing climate breakdown is highly complicated. But in another, it’s really simple: we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground. All the bluster and grandstanding, the extravagant promises and detailed mechanisms discussed in Glasgow this week amount to nothing if this simple and obvious thing doesn’t happen.A recent study in the scientific journal Nature suggests that to stand a 50% chance of avoiding more than 1.5C of global heating, we need to retire 89% of proven coal reserves, 58% of oil reserves and 59% of fossil methane (“natural gas”) reserves. If we want better odds than 50-50, we’ll need to leave almost all of them untouched.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnistCop26 and a greener future, with George Monbiot. Join a Guardian Live online event on climate justice on Thursday 4 November at 8pm. Tickets at gu.com/guardianlive Continue reading...

Unclear if ‘Freya’ is conducting protest lie-in or just waylaid, though Dutch navy note her choice of ‘Walrus-class submarine’The disruption from the climate emergency being experienced by marine wildlife reached a new high in the first week of Cop26, when a female walrus was discovered sleeping on a submarine in a naval base in North Holland.Walruses normally live in the polar regions – several hundred miles north. This particular animal is one of at least two of the species that have been seen far from their Arctic habitat. Another wandering walrus, seen off the Scilly Islands, France, Spain and West Cork, Ireland, has since been sighted back in Icelandic waters. Continue reading...

Midnight visit by Marsican bear follows siting in neighbouring village fountainAn Italian woman who investigated what she thought was a burglar on her balcony, has described a petrifying encounter with a rare brown bear.The Marsican bear had climbed on to her bedroom balcony in Pescosolido, a village in the Lazio province of Frosinone, just days after a bear was spotted bathing in the fountain of a neighbouring village. Continue reading...

Analysis identifies 56 new chemicals in water supplies – including some linked to critical diseasesWater utilities and regulators in the US have identified 56 new contaminants in drinking water over the past two years, a list that includes dangerous substances linked to a range of health problems such as cancer, reproductive disruption, liver disease and much more.The revelation is part of an analysis of the nation’s water utilities’ contamination records by the Environmental Working Group, a clean water advocate that has now updated its database for the first time since 2019. Continue reading...

Pledge by over 450 financial institutions in 45 countries billed as one of the successes of Cop26 summitHundreds of the world’s biggest banks and pension funds with assets worth $130tn have committed themselves to a key goal in limiting greenhouse gas emissions, the UK government will announce on Wednesday.The pledge by more than 450 financial institutions in 45 countries is intended to be one of the top achievements by the UK hosts of the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, and comes as some of the other aims of the summit – chiefly, setting the world on a path to limit global heating to 1.5C – are looking hard to reach.UK prime minister Boris Johnson said he was “cautiously optimistic” about reaching a deal to keep the 1.5C target on track. Returning to a football analogy in which he had said the world was the equivalent of 5-1 down, he declared on Monday evening that the score was now “more like 5-2 or 5-3”.US president Joe Biden announced a plan by 90 countries to control methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Under the agreement, which does not include major emitters Russia and China, emissions of methane would fall 30% by the end of the decade.In another multinational deal, more than 40 countries including the UK, US, EU, India, China and Australia signed up to a plan to coordinate the introduction of clean technologies around the world. By collaborating on things like hydrogen production and electric vehicles, the members of the Breakthrough Alliance hope to bring forward the “tipping point” at which green technology is more affordable than fossil-fuel technology.The group of countries with the most ambitious climate targets, known as the High Ambition Coalition, were boosted by the announcement that the US would be rejoining their ranks after withdrawing from the Paris agreement entirely under former president Donald Trump. Observers said the move would strengthen efforts to stay on track for the target of 1.5C of heating. Continue reading...

Criticism of Santos pavilion display comes as Coalition confirms it will not join global pledge to cut methane

Rishi Sunak should temper his hopes of a huge pool of business cash to fund the net zero transitionAdd up the assets of 450 of the biggest financial companies spread across 45 countries and what do you get? A very big number for Rishi Sunak to boast about, that’s what. About $130tn (£95tn) to be precise.The chancellor, who is kicking off tomorrow’s finance day at the Cop26 conference, will say that 40% of the world’s financial assets is now owned by institutions aligned with the Paris 2015 goal of limiting the increase in global temperature to no more than 1.5C of pre-industrial levels. Continue reading...

‘It is a gigantic issue and they just walked away,’ says US president, who also criticises Russia’s failure to attend Cop26Joe Biden launched a stinging attack on China on Tuesday for the failure of the country’s president, Xi Jinping, to show up to the Cop26 UN climate summit, and failing to show leadership on the climate crisis.The US president said it was a “big mistake” that his Chinese counterpart had chosen not to attend the summit, where more than 120 world leaders have spent the last two days discussing ways to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C. Continue reading...

UK PM claims there has been a turnaround since G20 summit as he urges China to make improved pledgeBoris Johnson has declared he is “cautiously optimistic” about a deal at Cop26 to keep global temperature rises below 1.5C as he urged China to commit to bringing emissions down by 2025.The prime minister had previously said if the climate emergency were a football match the world would be 5-1 down but he said on Monday that the score was now more like 5-2 or 5-3. Continue reading...

Host prime minister says ‘if we don’t fix our climate, it will be an economic catastrophe’ as US says it will cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030

MPs heard about scale of problem during first reading of plastics (wet wipes) billWet wipes which contain plastic are forming “islands” across the UK after being flushed, with rivers changing shape after the products pile up on their banks, MPs have heard as legislation aiming to ban their sale had its first reading in the House of Commons.Labour MP Fleur Anderson’s plastics (wet wipes) bill would prohibit the manufacture and sale of wet wipes containing plastic if it was to pass through parliament and receive royal assent. Continue reading...

Exclusive: campaigners say lack of penalties for dirty assets from Bank of England gives industry little incentive to changeThe Bank of England is facing criticism over the way it is conducting its first climate stress tests, with politicians and campaigners warning that a lack of penalties for dirty assets will give banks little incentive to clean up their act.While the regulator has been praised for committing to the exercise, the Bank of England has come under fire for so far refusing to publish data for individual firms, and stopping short of introducing immediate capital requirements, which would make it more expensive to offer loans and services to fossil fuel companies and high carbon projects. Continue reading...

Nicola Sturgeon says women’s safety paramount particularly after Sarah Everard murderPolice Scotland has apologised to women in Glasgow who had to walk home in darkness on Monday night after well-lit streets were blocked off due to Cop26 climate summit security concerns.Residents near the Cop venue said police guarding the security cordon told them to walk long distances through Kelvingrove Park and sidestreets in Finnieston because main streets had suddenly been closed off. Continue reading...

Extraordinary measures are being taken to save some of the world’s largest and oldest trees, which are at risk of being wiped out by more intense firesAshtyn Perry was barely as tall as the shovel she stomped into barren ground where a wildfire last year ravaged the California mountain community of Sequoia Crest and destroyed dozens of its signature behemoth trees.The 13-year-old with a broad smile and a braid running to her waist had a higher purpose that, if successful, she’ll never live to see: to plant a baby sequoia that could grow into a giant and live for millennia. Continue reading...

Analysis: first minister can steer clear of any policy failures while pointing to benefits independence could bringAs world leaders, negotiators and activists converged on Glasgow for the start of the Cop climate summit, curious delegates who picked up a Scottish newspaper may have seen a small advert from the Scottish National party.Its main image was of Skye’s famous crags bathed by sunshine, with a soft-focus portrait of the first minister, and it read: “A nation in waiting welcomes the nations of the world.” Continue reading...

UK, US and China among countries representing two-thirds of global economy to agree to push green energy and carsA plan to coordinate the global introduction of clean technologies in order to rapidly drive down their cost has been agreed at the Cop26 summit by world leaders representing two-thirds of the world’s economy.A global transition to green energy and vehicles is vital in tackling the climate crisis, and economies of scale mean that costs plummet as production increases – as already seen with solar panels and LED lightbulbs. Continue reading...

The coal and gas works, if approved, would result in a nearly 30% increase in emissions within Australia

Ironic prize bestowed for blocking access to negotiations as well as organisational failures

Victoria’s daily Covid numbers drop below 1,000; NSW records 173 cases and four deaths. This blog is now closed

Financing in lead up to Cop26 largest of all major UK banks, finds campaignersBarclays has financed more in fossil fuel projects than any of the UK’s largest banks in the months leading up to the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, according to a report by climate finance campaigners.The bank financed $5.6bn (£4.1bn) for new fossil fuel projects from January 2021 to the eve of the UN climate summit, Market Forces found, despite growing international warnings that any new fossil developments would destroy any chance of avoiding a catastrophic climate breakdown. Continue reading...

Fossil fuel advertising on overseas output jars with DG’s call to ‘dial up the focus on sustainability’The BBC received about £300,000 in advertising revenue last year from Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Aramco, despite BBC director general Tim Davie calling on every arm of the broadcaster to “dial up the focus on sustainability” and reduce net greenhouse gas emissions.Although the BBC does not carry advertising in the UK, much of its overseas output is supported by commercials. Continue reading...