Environment | The Guardian

‘Right now, we are falling short,’ US president says, urging other world leaders to embark upon a shift to clean energyJoe Biden has warned that the climate crisis poses “the existential threat to human existence as we know it” and urged other world leaders to embark upon a transformational shift to clean energy, as questions linger over the US president’s ability to deliver this vision at home.Biden, addressing a sparse chamber at crucial UN climate talks that have begun in a frigid and drizzly Glasgow, said that the conference must act as a “kickoff of a decade of ambition and innovation to preserve our shared future”. Continue reading...

Complaints about wait to get in hint at poor organisation at multinational summit

Broadcaster appeals for summit to commit to 1.5C temperature limit to avoid climate catastrophe

As world leaders prepare to commit to halting the destruction of forests, here’s everything you need to know about some of the planet’s most biodiverse placesForests and nature are centre stage at Cop26. On the second day of the Glasgow summit, world leaders are announcing a commitment to halting and reversing deforestation. As the second largest source of greenhouse gases after energy, the land sector accounts for 25% of global emissions, with deforestation and forest degradation contributing to half of this.But why do forests matter to the climate, and how can we halt deforestation? Continue reading...

António Guterres says talks may have to become annual and urges countries to ‘choose ambition’

Prime minister gives details of contract talks after French president accuses him of lying about plans to cancel $90bn dealScott Morrison has hit back against an extraordinary accusation from the French president that Australia’s prime minister lied to him over an abandoned $90bn submarine contract, declaring he will not “cop sledging” about Australia’s integrity.Speaking to reporters in Glasgow where he is attending the UN climate conference Cop26, Morrison said Emmanuel Macron was well aware that Australia was contemplating pulling out of the troubled Naval Group diesel submarine contract. Continue reading...

Campaigners warn Brazil may make empty promises at Cop26 to gain access to conservation moneyAmazon forest defenders are urging delegates at Cop26 not to trust the “greenwashing” promises of Jair Bolsonaro’s government, which has wreaked havoc on the environment over the past three years.Brazil will field one of the biggest delegations at the UN climate talks in Glasgow and fund a lavish promotional pavilion inside the conference centre. According to the agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina Corrêa da Costa Dias, and the environment minister, Joaquim Alvaro Pereira Leite, the message is that Brazil is “a longtime champion of the environmental agenda and an agrifood powerhouse”. Continue reading...

My rage against the senator might consume me if I couldn’t set it down hereLate in the evening on Friday 15 October an alert appeared on my phone that seemed at last to portend the end of the world. Two weeks before the UN climate summit in Glasgow – a make-or-break moment for American leadership and international ambition – Senator Joe Manchin had decided to gut our country’s best, and perhaps last, attempt to save itself. With three decades left to decarbonize the global economy, and a window of Democratic control unlikely to recur for years, Manchin’s benefactors in the coal and gas industry had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, killing the Clean Electricity Performance Program that would finally have brought their lucrative global arson spree under control.It was hard not to feel like this was game over, a sensation I’d grown accustomed to after a decade working in the American climate movement. It was the same feeling I’d had after the collapse of the Copenhagen climate talks, and the defeat of the Waxman-Markey bill, and the election of a president willing to drown the world to buoy his ego. But though each of those moments felt crushing, the news on the 15th felt worse. Continue reading...

The stress on the food system caused by the pandemic gave the Stewarts an idea: creating a commercial ranch in ArizonaOn the eastern edge of the Sonoran desert, in the grasslands not ten miles north of the US-Mexico border, James and Rachael Stewart have arranged a dozen weight lifting machines and dumbbell sets.At sundown, as they and their four children herd lambs and alpacas into their stalls, the occasional chick or duck passes between these markers of the Stewarts’ previous life. Continue reading...

The global hunger for change – evident as early as the Rio Earth summit in 1992 – is now insatiableIn September 2006, shortly before the annual UN climate talks to be held that year in Nairobi, Kenya, I looked for hope amid the predictions of ecological collapse and the total failure of countries to act on emissions. It was hard going. The best I could manage was to argue that political, social and technological awareness of the climate crisis was growing and starting to translate into action. It was now a race between new ideas and political realities.A personal revolution was taking place, I wrote. “See how far we have [all] come in a generation … Have you thought about installing solar panels or bought renewable energy? Have you chosen not to take a plane or bought a less powerful car? Have you voted for a political party or an individual because of their record on the environment? Have you tried to recycle more? Have you linked heatwaves and hurricanes with climate change, or wondered what kind of physical world your children will inhabit?” Continue reading...

From the seemingly inexorable increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to the rapid growth in green energyThe level of CO has been rising since the Industrial Revolution and is now at its highest for about 4m years. The rate of the rise is even more striking, the fastest for 66m years, with scientists saying we are in “uncharted territory”. Continue reading...

Mohamed Nasheed says the island state is already harmed by rising sea levels caused by climate changeFive months after narrowly surviving a terrorist bomb attack, the former president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed will arrive at the Cop26 summit with a defiant message: no compromise on 1.5C.That level of global heating is the most ambitious target on the table at Glasgow. It will require a global mobilisation of resources at a scale not seen outside wartime and at least a halving of fossil fuel emissions and tree burning by the end of this decade. Continue reading...

As an environment writer, I have seen many setbacks – but also triumphs such as the tackling of acid rainI’ve been covering climate and the environment for 17 years – it’s astonishing to me that so many positive things are happening in response to the crisis.Of course, we should have been bringing down emissions much sooner, and lots of the things that should have happened didn’t. In particular, I’d point to energy efficiency, which we all thought would be a big win early on, and fossil fuel subsidies, which have not come down as fast as we would have hoped. Continue reading...

Leaders say they hoped for more from talks in Rome and chances of staying below 1.5C are fadingThe G20 is failing poor and vulnerable countries by not agreeing to a climate plan that would ensure their people’s survival, leading figures at the Cop26 climate talks have said.Leaders representing more than a billion of the people most at risk from the climate crisis told the Guardian they were “extremely concerned” and had hoped for more from the G20 summit in Rome. Continue reading...

HGV makers and operators urge MPs to delay end of fossil fuel use for new lorriesThe UK automotive industry is privately lobbying against the proposed 2040 introduction of a ban on sales of new diesel trucks, amid a split between manufacturers over when heavy goods vehicles should abandon fossil fuels.In July the government revealed plans to ban internal combustion engines in new lorries after 2040, following a ban on petrol and diesel cars after 2035 to help tackle the climate crisis. It is now consulting on the measure. Continue reading...

Experts say commitment to cut emissions by 2030 is not ambitious enough and relies too heavily on carbon offsetsClimate change experts have warned that New Zealand has employed “accounting tricks” to create a target for greenhouse gas emissions cuts that looks far more ambitious than it really is.On Sunday the country pledged to halve its emissions by 2030 aspart of the Paris agreement to limit global warming to 1.5C. The announcement was made on the eve of the United Nations Cop26 climate conference. Continue reading...

No stunt, say organisers, who wanted to raise awareness of the pekapeka-tou-roa, which faces the same threats as native birdsIn a huge upset to New Zealand birds, but a win for one of the country’s only native land mammals, a bat has swooped in “by a long way” to take out the annual bird of the year competition.Forest and Bird, which runs the election, thew the bat among the pigeons as a surprise entry this year. The pekapeka-tou-roa, or long tailed bat, is one of two bats in the country and one of the rarest mammals in the world. It is as small as a thumb, and the size of a bumblebee when it is born. Continue reading...

UK PM says climate crisis talks at G20 over weekend only ‘inched forward’The Cop26 climate summit is at serious risk of failure because countries are still not promising enough to restrict global temperature rises to below 1.5C, Boris Johnson has warned.In a blunt admission after two days of preliminary talks at the G20 meeting of world leaders, the prime minister conceded little progress had been made – and the conference is not on track to achieve a deal that keeps the goal alive. He put the chances of success as “six out of 10”. Continue reading...

In the race to avert catastrophic global heating, there is no more wriggle room leftSix years ago, as the Paris accord was agreed amid euphoria at the 21st UN climate conference, the French hosts wisely insisted on a clause obliging countries to match promises with deeds. Having committed to try to hold global temperature rises “well below” 2C compared to preindustrial times – and aspire towards a limit of 1.5C – governments were mandated to produce updated plans in 2020, showing how they would actually achieve that goal.Delayed by a year due to the Covid pandemic, the climate summit now beginning in Glasgow represents that moment of truth. In the words of Laurent Fabius, the former French foreign minister who presided in Paris, Cop26 “is the Cop of action, at which we apply the Paris agreement”. Boris Johnson has acknowledged that there is no prospect of a formal commitment to the 1.5C threshold in Glasgow. But if a pathway to that target is not kept open, the world’s leaders will knowingly be locking the planet into a journey towards environmental catastrophe. This year’s extreme weather events – the terrible heatwaves, wildfires and floods that have made headlines across the globe – are evidence that the destructive consequences of global heating are happening faster than expected and on a larger scale. The world today is 1.1-1.2C hotter than in the preindustrial era. Heating beyond 1.5C would deliver even more devastating droughts and crop failures. It would increase the chances of greater famine and ecosystem collapse. Continue reading...

Hundreds in Halloween outfits march in Edinburgh and Cop26 Coalition holds rally in GlasgowClimate justice campaigners held events in Scotland’s two biggest cities on Sunday as world leaders arrived in Glasgow for the start of the Cop26 summit.Hundreds of activists in Halloween costumes marched through Edinburgh and held a rally outside the Scottish parliament. Continue reading...

Final communique agreed at summit in Italy contains no commitment to reach net zero by 2050World leaders meeting at the G20 summit in Rome have agreed that countries must take meaningful action to keep the world from warming by no more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, but are facing criticism for offering few concrete commitments in order to reach the target.Sunday’s final communique did not include a commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The G20 leaders instead agreed to wording that underlines the importance of reaching net zero by or around the middle of the century, phrasing that meets the positions of China and Saudi Arabia. Continue reading...

Broadcaster, a main sponsor of Cop26 summit, defends Dana Strong’s former transatlantic commuteSky has said broadcasters need to lead by example on the climate crisis – despite reports that its chief executive was regularly commuting by private jet from her home 3,500 miles away in the US.Sky is one of the main sponsors of the Cop26 climate conference, and as part of an attempt to nudge the general public into taking action against global heating, the broadcaster said television dramas should feature more characters buying electric cars or ordering vegetarian options in restaurants. Continue reading...

Accompanied by songs, stories and a stash of lentils, a group trekked from London, connecting with their faith, the countryside and the people they met along the wayWhile most delegates deliberate about whether to drive, fly or catch the train to the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, a dozen or so pilgrims have just spent the past 55 days getting there on foot from London. Members of the female-run faith group Camino to Cop26 have been walking a 500-mile route since early September.Theirs is just one of a number of pilgrimages reaching Glasgow this weekend, with about 250 individuals expected, some coming from as far as Poland and Germany – one group has walked more than 1,000 miles from Sweden. Extinction Rebellion Scotland says their arrival will mark the “opening ceremony” for nonviolent protests planned in the Scottish city and around the world during the UN climate talks. Continue reading...

Report sets out heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and floods that have wreaked havoc this yearThe climate crisis has driven the planet into “uncharted territory”, with far-reaching repercussions for today’s and future generations, according to the UN World Meteorological Organization. It said the Cop26 summit was a “make-or-break opportunity to put us back on track”.The WMO’s State of the Global Climate report shows that the last seven years have been the hottest seven years on record, and that accelerating sea level rise hit new heights in 2021. It also sets out the heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and floods that have wreaked havoc across the planet this year and is intended to inform Cop26 negotiations. Continue reading...

Government must make decisions based on latest climate evidence, say ClientEarth lawyersThe UK government could face a fresh legal challenge over fears that ministers may wave through plans for oil drillers to keep exploring for new North Sea reserves without considering the latest evidence of its impact on the environment.Lawyers from ClientEarth, an environmental law charity, wrote to Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, days before the start of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow to warn against approving projects such as the controversial Cambo oilfield development by relying on outdated climate checks. Continue reading...

Firm hails ‘major advance’ towards making fuel produced using renewable energy viable for large vehiclesThe construction equipment maker JCB has signed a multibillion-pound deal to import and supply hydrogen produced using renewable energy.As the Cop26 climate conference got under way in Glasgow, the company announced a deal with Australia’s Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) that will allow it to start selling “green” gas through a specialist division, Ryze Hydrogen, from early next year. Continue reading...

Environment Agency can do emergency work if life is at risk, but it’s hard to make landowners in England carry out repairsJames Mead was out running in January 2017 when he received a call from a colleague at the Environment Agency. A sinkhole had swallowed up two spaces in the car park at Sheffield’s Decathlon store and he needed to get there pronto.Mead, on call for the Environment Agency as a senior adviser, legged it down to the city centre to inspect the damage. “It happened overnight but just the previous day there would have been cars parked there. The worst-case scenario was very serious,” he said. Continue reading...

The state’s move to electric off-road engines will cut noise and pollution – but some businesses are far from happySometimes I wish I lived in California. It’s not just the weather or In-N-Out Burgers, it’s simpler than that. It’s the peace and quiet I’d soon be experiencing when the state’s new ban on gas-powered engines takes effect. No loud leaf blowers drowning out my Zoom calls. No lawnmowers grooming my neighbor’s yard as I’m trying to concentrate.The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, in his effort to achieve 100% zero emissions, has signed a new bill that bans the sale of small off-road engines by 2024. And while I’m sure many people will welcome the less noisy electrical replacements that will soon be widely used, many small business owners in the landscaping and construction industries are not happy. Continue reading...

The city’s plan to rebuild Manhattan’s East River Park on higher ground has incited a dispute over ‘green gentrification’A strip of land that borders New York’s East River has become the latest environmental justice battle as the city prepares to start construction on a flood prevention project in one of Manhattan’s most economically disadvantaged and diverse communities.East River Park, which covers 57.5 acres and loops around lower Manhattan like a hockey stick, is about the only waterfront green space within walking distance of the Lower East Side’s public housing. During Hurricane Sandy, both the park and much of the nearby housing were significantly damaged by historic levels of flooding. Continue reading...

As nurseries run low on stock and labour shortages grow, industry warns Tory pledge cannot be keptPledges to plant trees fall from politicians’ lips like leaves in the autumn, especially during elections and climate summits. Yet ambitious government planting targets are likely to be missed because there are not enough trees or people to plant them, leading forestry figures have warned.Booming demand means that nurseries are already running out of trees, barely weeks into the planting season, according to the Horticultural Trades Association. And a shortage of workers needed to grow, replant and nurture healthy trees has been made worse by Brexit and under-investment in workforce training, according to the Institute of Chartered Foresters (ICF). Continue reading...

Glasgow glacier symbolises implications for world as global leaders prepare to meet at vital summitBritain is naming a thinning Antarctic ice mass the Glasgow glacier, to symbolise the vast implications for the world of the Cop26 climate conference that starts on Sunday in the Scottish city.More than 120 world leaders will join British prime minister Boris Johnson in Glasgow for the Cop26 summit, one of the world’s last chances to keep alive the goal, agreed in Paris in 2015, of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Continue reading...

Poll finds most Britons believe global warming will have far greater effect on humanity than Covid-19A clear majority of people believe that climate change will have a more significant effect on humanity than will Covid-19, which has already claimed about five million lives worldwide, according to a new poll conducted ahead of the Cop26 summit being held in Glasgow this weekend.The survey, carried out as part of a study into “eco-anxiety” by the Global Future thinktank in conjunction with the University of York, also finds that concern about global warming is almost as common among older and working-class people as it is among those who are young or middle-class. Overall, 78% of people reported some level of eco-anxiety. Continue reading...

After months of home schooling, more and more children are ditching their tech and heading outdoorsAfter more than a year of lockdowns, with limited access to nature, Magdalena Begh was delighted when her six-year-old daughter came home from forest school and informed her she had found three rat skeletons. One of them, Alia told her, was “pretty fresh”. “These little observations are very crucial to their learning – it’s amazing,” says Begh.Since Alia and her sister Hana, nine, started going to the Urban Outdoors Adventures in Nature after-school club in north London in June, they have used clay, learned about insects and made campfires, marmalade and bows and arrows. Continue reading...

While the French and British leaders make political capital out of fishers, the row threatens to spill into crucial Cop26

This week’s talks in Glasgow will be a test of commitment. But there has been little hard diplomacy from Britain, the host nation, to ease the path to an agreementAnyone who listened to Rishi Sunak’s budget speech last Wednesday could be forgiven for concluding that there is nothing particularly urgent for people to worry about – economically or existentially – on the climate front.The chancellor was 35 minutes into his third budget address to MPs before he even alluded to matters environmental. And when a reference finally came it was a fairly brief one – to the government’s “ambitious net zero strategy” – of which he is said to be no great fan. Throughout the entire budget, Sunak did not use the phrase “climate change” once. Continue reading...

Victoria announces state funeral for Bert Newton; international border bans set to end on Monday; Scott Morrison defends Aukus deal at G20 in Rome; Victoria records 1,036 Covid cases, NSW reports 177This blog is now closed

Energy minister refuses to detail full cost of reaching 2050 target as Cop26 summit loomsThe Coalition’s “technology not taxes” plan for net zero emissions by 2050 could cost taxpayers much more than the $20bn allocated by the Morrison government.The emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, told ABC’s Insiders on Sunday that more will need to be spent beyond 2030 to reach the target. Continue reading...

With Cop26 climate summit about to begin, PM Jacinda Ardern says ‘it’s critical we pull our weight’New Zealand has pledged to cut its net greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, toughening its previous ambitions to limit global warming on the eve of the United Nations Cop26 climate conference.“While we are a small contributor to global emissions, as a country surrounded by oceans and an economy reliant on our land we are not immune to the impact of climate change, so it’s critical we pull our weight,” prime minister Jacinda Ardern said in a statement on Sunday. Continue reading...

Campaigners from around the world are uniting to disrupt the Cop26 conference and put pressure on political leadersThousands of protesters from around the world arrived in Glasgow on Saturday to demand urgent action on the escalating ecological emergency before the two-week Cop26 climate conference.Campaigners from scores of environmental justice, indigenous and civil society groups are converging on Scotland’s biggest city to forge alliances and pressure political leaders. Continue reading...

How Guardian journalists reported on the long, twisting road to global action on the climate crisisFrom the earliest global environment conference in the 1970s, through the Rio Earth Summit and 25 subsequent Cops, Guardian journalists have reported on every twist and turn of these gargantuan gatherings, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of delegates over the years.One of the success stories of the conference [is] the little blue and white bicycles parked outside the main buildings used by the UN delegates, UN staff and the press, who have particularly taken to them, sign out a key which fits a lock of any machine. By lunchtime yesterday every key was taken. Continue reading...

Lorna Slater will not attend climate summit which starts in Glasgow on Sunday

The FutureGrid scheme is a tiny replica of Britain’s gas network – but one using a very different, low-carbon, fuelIn the remote hills of Cumbria, a few miles north of Hadrian’s wall, three nondescript terrace houses stand side by side, quietly offering a glimpse of a low-carbon future.The houses are intentionally unremarkable in every way but one: they are the first in the UK to run on a blend of clean-burning hydrogen as part of the most sophisticated hydrogen testing facility in the world. Welcome to Hystreet. Continue reading...

Questions raised over purpose of prosecuting peaceful protestors after activists are found guilty of calling climate-change sceptics ‘liars’Prosecutors are under growing pressure to drop cases against environmental protestors after activists were found guilty of calling the UK’s most prominent climate-change sceptics “liars”.Three campaigners were found guilty of criminal damage after spraying graffiti on the Westminster office of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The organisation, which was once chaired by the former chancellor Nigel Lawson, has been criticised by the Charity Commission for breaking rules on impartiality, with critics accusing it of being the UK’s most prominent source of climate-change scepticism. Continue reading...

Cop26 is about to get under way but are you ready? Take our bumper quiz to find out if you’re a climate hero or net zero when it comes to the big issues Continue reading...

Five men and one woman who have fled Taliban are given no reason for rejectionSix environmental experts from Afghanistan who were due to attend Cop26 as their country’s delegates to the global conference have had their applications rejected just days before the event begins.The six – five men and one woman who cannot be named because it could jeopardise their safety – were looking forward to travelling to the event to help make the concerns of Afghans about the climate emergency heard at the summit. Continue reading...

Thousands from frontline communities in global south have been excluded, activists claimThe global climate summit in Glasgow will be the whitest and most privileged ever, according to campaigners, who warn that thousands of people from frontline communities in the global south have been excluded.World leaders and delegates are expected to be joined by celebrities, corporate chief executives and royals at the critical two-week event.an underlying “hostile attitude” from the UK Home Office towards those travelling from countries in the global south, particularly Africa, which has led to many visas being refused;a failure to honour a pledge to offer Covid vaccines to all delegates, leaving many to search for vaccines in countries with little or no access;constantly changing Covid restrictions for those entering the UK, with travel banned from countries on the UK’s red list, which, until this month, included many of the countries worst hit by the climate crisis. This has left many to seek costly and complicated routes to Glasgow via third countries;an accommodation crisis in the city that has made finding a safe place to stay difficult and expensive. Campaigners have set up a “homestay network” to try to link people up with spare rooms, but say they have thousands on their waiting list Continue reading...

Lord Deben says there is ‘no indication’ Scott Morrison has a plan to deliver the net zero commitment ‘we’ve squeezed out of him’

G20 countries are way off track on delivering on 1.5C. Acknowledging this would be a good start ahead of Cop26The Glasgow Cop26 talks could fail before the conference even begins. This weekend, just as Cop26 starts, the G20 are meeting in Rome. This is a moment of maximum trepidation, as those 20 developed and emerging economies account for 78% of global greenhouse gas emissions. They meet outside the scrutiny and inclusivity of the UN process in Glasgow. What they agree to, or not, could affirm the Paris agreement goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C, or put it firmly out of reach for ever.First, the bad news. The G20 communique is a consensus document, a minimum agreement. If one country says no, for example, to specifying a phase-out date for coal, it won’t be in the final communique, so a vaguer formulation may be used.Every week we’ll hear from negotiators from a developing country that is involved in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations and will be attending the Cop26 climate conference. Continue reading...

Glasgow 2021 must be the moment when the promise of Paris 2015 becomes real – history will not forgive us otherwiseSummits do not always live up to the name. They can get bogged down in detail and disagreement, never really reaching altitude.That is often the case with the annual UN climate summits known simply as the Cop, which have earned a reputation since the first was held 26 years ago for being bewildering marathons that overrun and underdeliver.Make a contribution from just £1Become a digital subscriber and get something in return for your money Continue reading...

Estimates for carbon dioxide storage in trees and soil go far beyond upper bounds of what peer-reviewed science suggests is possible