The Guardian Climate Change

I do not think it is a leap to see our exploitive relationship with Earth as part of a centuries-long war against the environment

Standing on the edge of Utah’s terminal Great Salt Lake is to witness the religion of over-water consumption in the desert. Our thirst is greater than this inland sea can bare as it is disappearing in the shadows of climate chaos, extreme heat and a megadrought not seen in 2,500 years. Twelve million migrating birds depend on this water body for food, rest and breeding. Flocks of Wilson’s phalaropes, small and handsome shorebirds, spin in saline waters creating water columns alive with brine shrimp and flies and resulting in a feeding frenzy. American avocets and black-necked stilts stand stoically in the shallows. Thousands of ducks are sprinkled on the lake like pepper. Water and sky merge as one. There is no horizon. All appears well in this serene landscape of pastel blues animated by birds. It is not.

The health of the Great Salt Lake is only as strong as the health of the human community that surrounds it. And vice versa. If the 2 million people living within the Great Salt Lake watershed with Salt Lake City at its center do not mobilize to put more water in the lake, the death of the Great Salt Lake will be their own. This will also be the demise of millions of migrating birds.

Terry Tempest Williams is a writer, naturalist and activist

I do not think it is a leap to see our exploitive relationship with Earth as part of a centuries-long war against the environment

Standing on the edge of Utah’s terminal Great Salt Lake is to witness the religion of over water-consumption in the desert. Our inland sea is disappearing in climate chaos evidenced by extreme heat and a megadrought not seen in 2,500 years. Ten million migrating birds depend on this water body for food, rest and breeding. Flocks of Wilson’s phalaropes, small and handsome shorebirds, spin in saline waters creating water columns alive with brine shrimp and flies and resulting in a feeding frenzy. American avocets and black-necked stilts stand stoically in the shallows. Thousands of ducks are sprinkled on the lake like pepper. Water and sky merge as one. There is no horizon. All appears well in this serene landscape of pastel blues animated by birds. It is not.

The health of the Great Salt Lake is only as strong as the health of the human community that surrounds it. And vice versa. If the 2 million people living within the Great Salt Lake watershed with Salt Lake City at its center do not mobilize to put more water in the lake, the death of the Great Salt Lake will be their own. This will also be the demise of millions of migrating birds.

Terry Tempest Williams is a writer, naturalist and activist

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva says Amazonia suffering its worst drought in more than 40 years

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has flown into the Amazon amid growing alarm over the droughts and wildfires sweeping the rainforest region and others parts of Brazil.

Speaking during a visit to a riverside community near the city of Tefé, the Brazilian president said Amazonia was suffering its worst drought in more than 40 years. He said he had come to discover “what is going on with these mighty rivers” that in some places now resemble deserts.

Rising temperatures causing largest glacier in Dolomites to lose 7-10cm of depth a day, according to scientists

The Marmolada glacier, the largest and most symbolic of the Dolomites, could melt completely by 2040 owing to rising average temperatures, experts have said.

Italian scientists who are monitoring glaciers and the impact of climate emergency, and who took part in a campaign launched by environmentalist group Legambiente, the international commission for the protection of the Alps (Cipra), with the scientific partnership of the Italian Glacier Committee, said on Monday the Marmolada was losing between 7 and 10cm of depth a day.

Storm expected to make landfall in Louisiana on Tuesday evening and bring heavy rainfall to Mississippi and Texas

Communities along the US’s Gulf coast are bracing for possible impact as Tropical Storm Francine is expected to become a hurricane later in the day on Tuesday and make landfall in Louisiana the following morning.

The storm has been moving northward, the National Hurricane Center said, and is expected to be just offshore the coasts of north-eastern Mexico and southern Texas by Tuesday evening.

Promise to ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ made at Cop28 climate talks has been left out of draft resolutions

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Campaigners have claimed some of the world’s largest economies are turning their backs on a pledge made last year to transition away from fossil fuels.

Ministers from the G20 group of developed and developing countries, including the US, UK, China and India, will meet in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday to discuss the global approach to the climate crisis.

Under the Tories, non-violent climate protesters were jailed for up to five years – and there is little sign that Labour will change tack

• Linda Lakhdhir is the legal director of Climate Rights International

In December 2023 when Stephen Gingell was sentenced to six months in prison for slow marching for half an hour on the Holloway Road in north London, the sentence was considered shocking. Unfortunately, it is far from the exception. In fact, my organisation, Climate Rights International, has spent the past eight months looking into restrictions on climate protests among western democracies and has found that the UK – mostly under the Conservatives – has introduced some of the harshest anti-protest legislation in recent years.

You may remember Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, who were sentenced to multi-year prison sentences in April 2023 for climbing the cables of the Queen Elizabeth II bridge to object to new oil, gas and coal projects. The three-year sentence imposed on Trowland was, at the time, the longest ever for a climate protest in the UK. But, it has since been surpassed. In July, in a case that made international headlines, five fossil-fuel protesters were sentenced to four- and five-year sentences after participating in a Zoom call about staging climate protests on the M25.

Linda Lakhdhir is the legal director of Climate Rights International

Last year Antartica’s sea ice was 1.6m sq km below average – the size of Britain, France, Germany and Spain combined. This week it had even less than that

Sea ice surrounding Antarctica is on the cusp of reaching a record winter low for a second year running, continuing an “outrageous” fall in the amount of Southern Ocean that is freezing over.

The Antarctic region underwent an abrupt transformation in 2023 as the sea ice cover surrounding the continent crashed for six months straight. In winter, it covered about 1.6m sq km less than the long-term average – an area roughly the size of Britain, France, Germany and Spain combined.

Report says governments in global north increasingly using draconian measures while criticising similar tactics in global south

Wealthy, democratic countries in the global north are using harsh, vague and punitive measures to crack down on climate protests at the same time as criticising similar draconian tactics by authorities in the global south, according to a report.

A Climate Rights International report exposes the increasingly heavy-handed treatment of climate activists in Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the US.

Record prison sentences for non violent protest in several countries including the UK, Germany and the US.

Preemptive arrests and detention for those suspected of planning peaceful protests.

Draconian new laws passed to make the vast majority of peaceful protest illegal.

Measures to stop juries hearing about people’s motivation for taking part in protests during court cases, which critics say fundamentally undermines the right to a fair trial.

I’m sorry but your Big Prawn has climate-induced shell rot

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Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa want international criminal court to class environmental destruction as crime alongside genocide

Three developing countries have taken the first steps towards transforming the world’s response to climate breakdown and environmental destruction by making ecocide a punishable criminal offence.

In a submission to the international criminal court on Monday, they propose a change in the rules to recognise “ecocide” as a crime alongside genocide and war crimes.

Chongqing authorities say cloud seeding to break heatwave did not cause winds that sent laundry flying

It was the talk of the town. After the authorities sought to break a long-running heatwave in Chongqing by using cloud-seeding missiles to artificially bring rain, the Chinese megacity was blasted by an unusual weather event – an underwear storm.

Termed “the 9/2 Chongqing underwear crisis”, an unexpected windstorm on Monday brought gusts of up to 76mph (122km/h), scattering people’s laundry from balconies on the city’s high-rises. Douyin, China’s sister app to TikTok, was filled with videos of pants and bras flying through the skies, landing in the street and snagging on trees.

Climate crisis is driving key predators from their homes and threatening an already embattled ecosystem

Sharks are deserting their coral reef homes as the climate crisis continues to heat up the oceans, scientists have discovered.

This is likely to harm the sharks, which are already endangered, and their absence could have serious consequences for the reefs, which are also struggling. The reef sharks are a key part of the highly diverse and delicate ecosystem, which could become dangerously unbalanced without them.

Even a majority of Republicans support efforts to hold manufacturers accountable for allegedly deceptive claims

Concern about the fossil fuel and plastics industries’ alleged deception about recycling is growing, with new polling showing a majority of American voters, including 54% of Republicans, support legal efforts to hold the sectors accountable.

The industries have faced increasing scrutiny for their role in the global plastics pollution crisis, including an ongoing California investigation and dozens of suits filed over the last decade against consumer brands that sell plastics.

Research shows a public less nationalistic, less ideological, with its own sense of national pride – and a media and political class out of sync

Once again the gap between politics and media, on one hand, and the general public, on the other, continues to be revealed in its scale. Survey after survey bring us the news that things are changing. That the British public is becoming more progressive in attitude towards refugees and asylum seekers, immigration, unions and industrial action, net zero targets and, most recently, British history.

The National Centre for Social Research’s British social attitudes survey shows a country that has become less nationalistic and jingoistic and, most sharply, less “proud” or “very proud” of British history. Along with that, there were also declines in pride in Britain’s democracy, its political influence and its economic achievements. The only two spheres where pride remained constant and high were sport, and art and literature.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Uluru, the Daintree and Bondi beach among iconic Australian locations that could be impacted if planet hits even 2C of warming by 2050

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South Australia’s wine regions shrouded in bushfire smoke, the Daintree rainforest cut off by flooding and tourists marooned at major airports because of violent storms. This snapshot is the potential chaotic future for Australia’s tourism industry, a new report has warned.

At least half of 178 tourism assets around the country – from national parks to city attractions and airports – are already facing major climate risks, the analysis showed. And as the heat rises, so do the disruptions. Many of the country’s 620,000 tourism jobs will be under threat, according to the report from insurance group Zurich and economic analysts Mandala.

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The system by Saturday had been dousing Texas and Louisiana with heavy rains for days

A tropical depression may form next week in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Hurricane Center.

In a forecast on Saturday afternoon, the NHC said that an area of low pressure had formed over the Bay of Campeche in the southern area of the Gulf of Mexico. It had been producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms.

Hottest summer on record continues, with millions from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Seattle under heat alerts

An intense heatwave across the US west has brought unusually warm temperatures to the region – some of the highest of the season – and broken heat records.

Millions of Americans from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Seattle are under heat alerts. Even before this latest bout of extreme weather, which began on Wednesday and is expected to last through the weekend, summer 2024 was already considered the hottest summer on record.

Soggy summers and warmer winters are hitting sales as climate crisis blurs seasons

When the season switched from summer to autumn, like clockwork clothing stores would swap out the racks of floaty frocks and fill them with heavy coats and jumpers.

Now, as the nights draw in, retailers are having to rejig seasonal ranges as the UK’s unpredictable weather calls for summer jackets and lighter knits.

This year will more than likely end up the warmest humanity has measured, reports European climate service

Summer 2024 sweltered to Earth’s hottest on record, making it even more likely that this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, the European climate service Copernicus reported on Friday.

And if this sounds familiar, that’s because the records the globe shattered were set just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from an El Niño, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said.