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The Guardian Climate Change
Wildfires rage across Portugal – video
At least seven people have died and more than 50 have been injured as hot, dry and windy weather inflames wildfires across Portugal. The country's civil protection service said 54 wildfires were burning nationwide, mainly in the north, with 5,300 firefighters mobilised. Portugal’s prime minister, Luís Montenegro, said the country faced 'some very difficult times over the next few days'
Continue reading...Superyacht and private jet tax could raise £2bn a year, say campaigners
Oxfam says ‘commonsense solution’ would reduce emissions and raise urgently needed climate finance
Fair taxes on superyachts and private jets in the UK could have brought in £2bn last year to provide vital funds for communities suffering the worst effects of climate breakdown, campaigners say.
Private jet use in the UK is soaring. It was home to the second highest number of private flights in Europe last year, behind only France, according to figures from the European Business Aviation Association.
Continue reading...More floods are coming to Britain, but you ought to know this: the system that should protect us is a scandal | George Monbiot
A network of public bodies are supposed to safeguard us from flooding. But, like old boys’ clubs, they are bastions of self-interest
Labour’s first stage of government resembles a vast forensic excavation. As it works through the Conservatives’ midden of horrors, it discovers an ever greater legacy of underinvestment, neglect and corruption. However disappointing the new government’s compromises might be, we shouldn’t forget how overwhelming this task must feel.
So I’m sorry to expose yet another toxic stratum. It contains a series of stupendous failures in the governance of rural bodies, which, in the case I want to discuss, put human lives at risk.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...More than £494bn subsidies a year in developing world harmful to climate, says report
ActionAid says ‘parasitic behaviour’ is fuelling the climate crisis and represents ‘corporate capture’ of public finance
More than $650bn (£494bn) a year in public subsidies goes to fossil fuel companies, intensive agriculture and other harmful industries in the developing world, new data has shown.
The subsidies entrench high greenhouse gas emissions and are fuelling the destruction of the natural world, according to a report from the charity ActionAid.
Continue reading...‘We empower ourselves’: the women cleaning up Bolivia’s Lake Uru Uru
Once clean enough to drink, the Andean lake was poisoned by mining pollution and urban waste. But now Indigenous women are using giant reeds to revive the vital ecosystem
• Photographs by Claudia Morales for the Guardian
Looking out over Lake Uru Uru in the Bolivian highlands, it is hard to imagine that it once supported thousands of people, and was a sanctuary for wildlife, including 76 species of birds.
Plastic waste now stretches as far as the eye can see, the water is tinged black or brown, and the stench is overwhelming.
Continue reading...Global spending on subsidies that harm environment rises to $2.6tn, report says
Exclusive: analysis finds $800bn increase in direct support for activities including deforestation and fossil fuel use
The world is spending at least $2.6tn (£2tn) a year on subsidies that drive global heating and destroy nature, according to new analysis.
Governments continue to provide billions of dollars in tax breaks, subsidies and other spending that directly work against the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement and the 2022 Kunming-Montreal agreement to halt biodiversity loss, the research from the organisation Earth Track found, with countries providing direct support for deforestation, water pollution and fossil fuel consumption.
Continue reading...Fossil fuel companies sponsor $5.6bn in global ‘sportswashing’ deals
Thinktank says funding from oil and gas firms is attempt to ‘divert attention from their role in fuelling the climate crisis’
Fossil fuel companies pumped at least $5.6bn (£4.2bn) of sponsorship money into motorsports, football, golf and even snow sports in an effort to “buy social licence to operate”, according to a new report.
Almost no major spectator sport remains untouched by oil and gas money, according to research carried out by the New Weather Institute (NWI), a climate thinktank, which traced more than 200 sponsorship deals between sports teams and the industry.
Continue reading...Man accused of arson in devastating California wildfire pleads not guilty
Justin Wayne Halstenberg, 34, was denied bail and entered his plea from jail in a video arraignment Tuesday
A California man has pleaded not guilty to starting a fire that authorities said ballooned into the rapidly spreading Line fire that has scorched at least 39,000 acres (15,783 hectares) and forced the evacuations of thousands of homes.
Online court records show that Justin Wayne Halstenberg, 34, entered the plea from jail in a video arraignment Tuesday in the San Bernardino city of Rancho Cucamonga. He was denied bail and appointed an attorney, the records show.
Continue reading...Ed Davey says Liberal Democrats will be ‘responsible opposition’ to Labour – as it happened
Lib Dem leader speaks about importance of care and carers as he addresses final day of party conference. This live blog is closed
The number of migrants who have crossed the English Channel since Labour won the general election has passed 10,000, according to provisional figures from the Home Office. As PA Media reports, some 65 migrants were detected crossing the Channel on Monday, taking the cumulative number of arrivals since July 4 to 10,024. PA says:
The cumulative total for the year so far now stands at 23,598.
This is 1% lower than the equivalent figure at this point last year, which was 23,940, and 21% lower than the total at this stage in 2022, which was 29,783.
The home secretary announced the package of up to £75m, which redirects funds originally allocated to the previous government’s Illegal Migration Act. It will unlock sophisticated new technology and extra capabilities for the NCA to bolster UK border security and disrupt the criminal people smuggling gangs. The investment is designed to build on a pattern of successful upstream disruptions announced at an operational summit, attended by the prime minister, at the NCA headquarters last week.
The truth is that in the last few years, something went badly wrong. Badly wrong, in our national debate on climate change and net zero.
Net zero became, under the Tories, a battleground. A battleground of the worst type of narrow-minded Westminster tactical warfare.
Continue reading...Portugal wildfire deaths rise to seven after firefighters trapped in blaze
More than 50 people injured as 54 fires burn across country amid hot, dry and windy weather
Seven people have been killed and more than 50 injured in wildfires ravaging central and northern Portugal, authorities have said, after three firefighters died on Tuesday when their vehicle was trapped in flames.
Portugal’s civil protection service said 54 wildfires were burning nationwide, mainly in the north, with 5,300 firefighters mobilised. France, Greece, Italy and Spain sent eight water-bombing planes through the EU’s mutual assistance mechanism.
Continue reading...Spanish Socialist Teresa Ribera gets top EU role steering climate and antitrust policy
Spain’s deputy PM among six executive vice-presidents in Ursula von der Leyen’s next European Commission team
Spain’s deputy prime minister, the outspoken Socialist Teresa Ribera, will take charge of Europe’s “clean transition” and antitrust enforcement, in a powerful role at the heart of the next European Commission.
Ribera is to become one of six executive vice-presidents in the incoming EU executive led by Ursula von der Leyen, which is expected to start work at the end of the year.
Continue reading...People evacuated via helicopters after catastrophic flooding in central Europe – video
The death toll from torrential rain and flooding in central and eastern Europe has risen to at least 16, with several more people missing. Authorities reported deaths in the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria. In Nysa, a southern Polish town, a surgeon drowned after returning from work. The mayor ordered a mass evacuation on Monday afternoon while some people tried to prevent the river's embankment from collapsing with sandbags.
Continue reading...Biden’s green policies will save 200,000 lives and have boosted clean energy jobs, data shows
Two separate reports find policies will save Americans from pollution in coming decades and added nearly 150,000 jobs
The environmental policies of Joe Biden’s administration will save approximately 200,000 Americans’ lives from dangerous pollution in the coming decades and have spurred a surge in clean energy jobs, two independent reports outlining the stakes of the upcoming US presidential election have found.
The first full year of the Inflation Reduction Act, the sprawling climate bill passed by Democratic votes in Congress in 2022, saw nearly 150,000 clean energy jobs added, according to a new report by nonpartisan business group E2.
Continue reading...The environment was meant to be ‘back on the priority list’ under Labor. Instead we’ve seen a familiar story | Adam Morton
There have been moments of modest progress but the Albanese government has not lived up to its early rhetoric
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It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Back in the heady new government days of July 2022, Tanya Plibersek told the National Press Club that change was coming for environmental protection in Australia after a decade of disaster and neglect.
Releasing the five-yearly state of the environment report, which the previous Coalition government had received months earlier but put in a drawer until it was turfed from office, the new environment minister said it told a “story of crisis and decline in Australia’s environment”.
Continue reading...Submerged cemeteries and collapsed bridges in drone footage of Europe floods – video
Torrential rain has brought catastrophic flooding to central and eastern Europe. At least six people have died in Romania, five have reportedly died in Poland, one person died in the Czech Republic and three people have died in Austria. Flooding has forced the evacuations of thousands of people from their homes. Extreme rainfall is more frequent across most of the world, as human-caused climate breakdown supercharges extreme weather
Continue reading...The Stakes: how JD Vance's home town has won millions in climate investment that he calls a 'green scam'
Locals called it a ‘miracle’ when the steel plant in JD Vance’s home town got $500m for an upgrade. But Trump’s running mate calls shifting the US to cleaner energy a ‘green scam’
A hulking steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, is the city’s economic heartbeat as well as a keystone origin story of JD Vance, the hometown senator now running to be Donald Trump’s vice-president.
Its future, however, may hinge upon $500m in funding from landmark climate legislation that Vance has called a “scam” and is a Trump target for demolition.
Continue reading...Did you know climate change made the entire Earth wobble for nine days! What? | First Dog on the Moon
Is there anything climate change cannot do?!
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‘There’s something in the air’: UK airport expansion gears up for takeoff
Lobbyists are increasingly confident about expansion plans as concerns for the economy start to deepen
The younger, tormented minister mulling his position before the Labour government granted Heathrow’s third runway in 2009 might have been greatly relieved to know that, 15 years later, not a shovel would have touched the ground.
But now, returning to power with a revamped energy and climate brief, Ed Miliband again finds himself in a cabinet which, many in aviation hope, may usher in bigger airports and more flights – as well as enough CO2 emissions to outweigh any new solar farms.
Continue reading...Key flood defences in disrepair across England as wet autumn looms, data reveals
Leaked government figures show proportion of assets in adequate condition has fallen ‘significantly below’ target
Thousands of flood defences in England that are supposed to protect properties from serious damage are in a state of disrepair, according to official figures leaked to the Observer before what is expected to be a wetter than usual autumn.
Data from inside the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency about the so-called “asset condition” of key flood defences shows the proportion of those regarded as being in adequate condition now stands at just 92.6%, compared with 97.9% in 2018-19. This is the proportion of defences judged to be fit for purpose after rigorous inspection by experts.
Continue reading...Race is on to produce a super-coral to survive world’s warming seas
Widespread bleaching of reefs is devastating delicate ecosystems
It is one of the least understood processes in nature. How do two very different species learn to live with each other and create a bond, known as symbiosis, which can give them a powerful evolutionary advantage?
Coral reefs are the most spectacular manifestations of symbiosis – and understanding the mechanics of this mutual endeavour has become an urgent task as global warming has triggered the widespread collapse of reefs across the planet.
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