The Guardian Climate Change

Making concerned people aware their views are far from alone could unlock the change so urgently needed

• ‘Spiral of silence’: climate action is very popular, so why don’t people realise it?
• The Guardian is joining forces with dozens of newsrooms around the world to launch the 89 Percent Project—and highlight the fact that the vast majority of the world’s population wants climate action. Read more

A huge 89% majority of the world’s people want stronger action to fight the climate crisis but feel they are trapped in a self-fulfilling “spiral of silence” because they mistakenly believe they are in a minority, research suggests.

Making people aware that their pro-climate view is, in fact, by far the majority could unlock a social tipping point and push leaders into the climate action so urgently needed, experts say.

Young people rode a wave of hope and power when hundreds of thousands protested with them in 2019. Then, momentum was lost

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On a stinking hot November day, seven years ago, Grace Vegesana and a handful of other young climate activists set up a small stage in a large square in Sydney’s CBD – and waited. Inspired by the first school striker for climate, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, the high school students decided to organise their own rally.

Vegesana expected a hundred people to show up. Five thousand came. “It was like, oh my God, we’ve unleashed some kind of beast, people want more,” she recalls. In the months afterwards crowds doubled and then tripled.

Burying our heads in the sand won’t stop the climate crisis or pandemics. We’re taking action to preserve government tools

United States science has propelled the country into its current position as a powerhouse of biomedical advancements, technological innovation and scientific research. The data US government agencies produce is a crown jewel – it helps us track how the climate is changing, visualize air pollution in our communities, identify challenges to our health and provide a panoply of other essential uses. Climate change, pandemics and novel risks are coming for all of us – whether we bury our heads in the sand or not – and government data is critical to our understanding of the risks these challenges bring and how to address them.

Much of this data remains out of sight to those who don’t use it, even though they benefit us all. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has brazenly attacked our scientific establishment through agency firings, censorship and funding cuts, and it has explicitly targeted data the American taxpayers have paid for. They’re stealing from us and putting our health and wellbeing in danger – so now we must advocate for these federal resources.

A doomsday meal bucket drew attention to something end-timers have known forever: the bulk store is the perfect place for stockpiling

Last summer, Costco shoppers noticed something new on the big-box store’s shelves. For the low, low price of $62.99, preparedness-minded customers could snatch up what one food influencer called a “Costco apocalypse dinner kit”.

Think of the kit as a KFC-style bucket, but instead of fried chicken, it is stuffed with an emergency supply of 132 meals – including pouches of dehydrated macaroni and cheese, apple cinnamon cereal and chicken pot pie – promised to last up to 25 years in storage, or until the big one hits.

Island country deals with drought and hurricane damage as it pushes for reparations from countries that benefited from slavery

When category 4 Hurricane Beryl hit the Caribbean last June, the three-island nation of Grenada bore the brunt of its wrath. At the time, the country’s prime minister, Dickon Mitchell, described the destruction as “almost Armageddon-like”. On the small island of Carriacou, it was estimated by officials that more than 90% of the buildings were damaged or destroyed. Agriculture and infrastructure for electricity and communication were almost completely wiped out.

Nearly a year on, there are some signs of recovery and rebuilding, but hollowed-out buildings, roofless houses and charred, dying mangroves tell the story of a community that is still coming to grips with the devastation.

Organizers team up with pro-democracy groups for flurry of actions to demand right to free, healthy lives

Hundreds of marches, pickets and cleanup events are taking place across the US in the run-up to Earth Day on Tuesday, as environmental and climate groups step up resistance to the Trump administration’s authoritarianism and its “war on the planet”.

A fortnight after the “Hands Off” mobilization brought millions to the streets, national and grassroots organizers are teaming up with pro-democracy groups for “All Out on Earth Day” – a wave of actions to demand the right to live free, healthy lives.

Safeguard mechanism revamp leads to overall emissions fall but 70% of coal and gas facilities covered by scheme increased direct pollution

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Australia’s biggest industrial climate polluter – Chevron’s Gorgon gas export plant in Western Australia – received the equivalent of millions of dollars in carbon credits from the federal government last year, despite increasing its emissions.

The revelation in government data last week has sparked calls for changes to the safeguard mechanism, the government policy applied to the country’s 219 largest industrial climate polluting facilities.

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The effects of the climate crisis and a lack of jobs are driving young people away from the Andean highlands but a long-shunned crop could stem the tide

Few young people remain in Bolivia’s highland plateau, the Altiplano. The rising frequency and severity of extreme weather events, such as drought and frost, have reduced their economic prospects and migration has accelerated as the environment becomes more unpredictable.

“The climate isn’t like it used to be,” says Nico Mamani Lima, a farmer and agronomist from Ayo Ayo.

In terms of Earth, we are a dangerous species

Robin McKie’s account of his 40 years as the Observer’s science editor is as deeply absorbing as it is a warning to humanity (“What I’ve learned after 40 years as the Observer’s science editor”, Focus). He takes us back nearly 50 years to British glaciologist John Mercer’s warning that continued use of fossil fuel could lead to a 2C temperature rise by the mid-21st century threatening, among other potential catastrophes, a 5m sea level rise.

His warnings, since echoed by swelling numbers of scientists, point out that climate change “threatens to displace hundreds of millions of people from their homelands”. Tragically, McKie reports, “large parts of society turn their heads and deliberately reject the truths that have been presented to them”. Our increasingly busy roads and airports illustrate this. His article needs to be read by government ministers, reported widely in the press and studied in schools.
Richard Vernon
Oxford

With Peter Dutton’s views on climate change in the spotlight, the focus has turned onto whether there will be any policies to reduce emissions in the next decade

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The Coalition is refusing to say if it will introduce any policies to cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade as it pledges to unwind most climate measures introduced under Labor.

Peter Dutton’s position on the climate crisis came under scrutiny last week after he gave contradictory answers on whether he accepted mainstream climate science. Asked during a leaders’ debate on the ABC whether extreme weather events were worsening, the opposition leader said: “I don’t know because I’m not a scientist”.

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Dropping a Labor goal of 82% of electricity coming from renewable generation by 2030 and slowing the rollout of solar and windfarms, in part by scrapping a “rewiring the nation” fund to build new transmission connections. Instead, it says the country would rely on more fossil fuels – coal and gas-fired power – until it could lift a ban on nuclear energy and build taxpayer-owned nuclear generators, mostly after 2040.

Abolishing fines for car companies that do not meet targets to cut the average emissions from the new cars they sell.

Not supporting Labor’s 2030 emissions reduction target. Former diplomats say lowering the target would put Australia in breach of commitments made in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Opposing a joint Australia-Pacific bid to host a major UN climate summit in Adelaide next year.

The energy secretary has accused Reform UK’s leader of peddling dangerous falsehoods about renewable power

• Tories and Reform use the steel crisis to knock clean energy. They’re wrong: it will secure all our futures

Ed Miliband has torn into Nigel Farage and the Tories for peddling dangerous “nonsense and lies” by suggesting the UK’s net zero target is responsible for destroying Britain’s businesses, including its steel industry.

Cabinet ministers are determined to fight back against the way Reform UK and the Conservatives have unceremoniously lambasted the climate crisis agenda for what they believe are nakedly political reasons before important local elections next month.

Wind power developer eyes legal remedies to order that blocks renewable energy projects and eliminates green job opportunities

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The buildout of renewable energy projects in downstate New York – the region that includes the Hudson valley and below – is often complicated. The space for these projects is limited, particularly in New York City, and they’re often expensive.

Exclusive: Head of Fire Brigades Union calls for statutory body to set national standards amid fears for public safety

• National parks warn of ‘catastrophic’ risk this Easter

Wildfires across the UK during hot, dry springs and summers have exposed a “postcode lottery” of firefighting resources that must be addressed, the head of the Fire Brigades Union has said.

Steve Wright, the general secretary, said public safety was at risk, and called for a statutory body to ensure that each fire and rescue service had enough staff and appliances.

Weeks of fires amid warm and dry spell have decimated ecosystems and threatened endangered species, say experts

• Wildfires expose ‘postcode lottery’ of firefighting resources

Britain’s national parks have warned of a “catastrophic” risk from wildfires this Easter after one of the driest early spring seasons on record.

Park rangers from the South Downs to the Highlands said the prolonged warm weather and breezy conditions had left large areas extremely dry despite recent rain.

In an exclusive extract from Friederike Otto’s new book, she says climate disasters result from inequality as well as fossil fuel

My research as a climate scientist is in attribution science. Together with my team, I analyse extreme weather events and answer the questions of whether, and to what extent, human-induced climate change has altered their frequency, intensity and duration.

When I first began my research, most scientists claimed that these questions couldn’t be answered. There were technical reasons for this: for a long time, researchers had no weather models capable of mapping all climate-related processes in sufficient detail. But there were other reasons that had less to do with the research itself.

Not since Tony Benn has a Labour minister been so assailed – and not just by the Tory press, but also by his own colleagues

Why exactly does Ed Miliband make so many people so angry? At 55, 20 years into his parliamentary career, with rare ministerial experience under both New Labour and Keir Starmer, and a reputation around Westminster and Whitehall as one of politics’ nicer, more knowledgeable characters, he could be a respected figure in a generally inexperienced government. Instead, he’s this unpopular administration’s most controversial member.

“An eco-zealot”, “a net-zero fanatic”, a “nauseating” hypocrite, “a cackling madman”, an “eco-Marxist”, “out of control”, “trashing Britain”, “a recruiting sergeant for the opposition”, the “most dangerous man in Britain” – Miliband provokes rightwing journalists and voters like no other minister. Possibly not since the onslaught in the 1970s on the socialist disruptor Tony Benn, whom Miliband later worked for as a teenager, has a Labour minister been so relentlessly targeted. Even the long-running and complex crisis in Britain’s steel industry has become an opportunity to blame him, despite him being secretary of state for energy security and net zero for fewer than 10 months.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

Nearly a quarter of shareholders vote against the chair, Helge Lund, as green protesters are blocked from entering

BP suffered an investor rebellion on Thursday after facing shareholders for the first time since abandoning its climate strategy at a meeting marred by protest.

About a quarter of shareholders voted against the chair, Helge Lund, at the company’s annual meeting in Sunbury-on-Thames, on the edges of London, which attracted protest from several green campaign groups.

Liberals in the US make up about 15% of the prepping scene and their numbers are growing. Their fears differ from their better-known rightwing counterparts – as do their methods

One afternoon in February, hoping to survive the apocalypse or at least avoid finding myself among its earliest victims, I logged on to an online course entitled Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics.

Some of my classmates had activated their cameras. I scrolled through the little windows, noting the alarmed faces, downcast in cold laptop light. There were dozens of us on the call, including a geophysicist, an actor, a retired financial adviser and a civil engineer. We all looked worried, and rightly so. The issue formerly known as climate change was now a polycrisis called climate collapse. H1N1 was busily jumping from birds to cows to people. And with each passing day, as Donald Trump went about gleefully dismantling state capacity, the promise of a competent government response to the next hurricane, wildfire, flood, pandemic, drought, mudslide, heatwave, financial meltdown, hailstorm or other calamity receded further from view.

Illegally diverted rivers, seawater and poorly managed building projects have polluted the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta. But the Unesco site has a vital role to play in fighting climate change

From the porch of her family home in Nueva Venecia, Magdalena, Yeidis Rodríguez Suárez watches the sunset. The view takes in the still waters of the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta wetlands. Pelicans dip their beaks into the lagoon, ripples breaking the glassy surface. Distant mangroves turn from green to deep purple in the dying light.

The 428,000-hectare (1,600 sq mile) expanse of lagoons, mangroves and marshes in Colombia has been a Unesco biosphere reserve since 2000. Yet, for Rodríguez, 27, the natural abundance is little more than an illusion.

Climate scientists, environmentalists, Labor and Greens condemn opposition leader for comments at Wednesday election debate

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The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has insisted he “believes in climate change” a day after refusing to state if the impacts of global heating were worsening.

Climate scientists, environmentalists, Labor and the Greens lined up on Thursday to condemn the opposition leader for comments he made during Wednesday night’s election leaders’ debate, which prompted renewed scepticism of the Coalition’s commitment to climate action.

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