The Guardian Climate Change

The prime minister, Keir Starmer, has hit out at the lack of Conservative support for climate targets and said it shows 'just how far the party has fallen'. 'It’s a shame,' he said. 'When Cop was in Scotland, there was a real unity across the house about the importance of tackling one of the most central issues of our time,' Starmer said in Commons after returning from the G20 and Cop29

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Local and state initiatives can act as ‘proof of concept’ for transformative climate and jobs legislation

As Trump and Trumpism devastate the American political landscape, how can people counter this destructive juggernaut? For the past five years, I have been studying how people are actually implementing the elements of the Green New Deal through what has become a Green New Deal from Below. This framework, which ordinary people are already putting into practice, is an approach to organizing that can form a significant means for resisting and even overcoming the Trump agenda.

The Green New Deal is a visionary program designed to protect the Earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice and eliminating poverty. The Green New Deal erupted into public attention as a proposal for national legislation, and the struggle to embody it in national legislation is ongoing.

Jeremy Brecher is the author of the new book The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy. He is the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements and the co-founder and senior advisor of the Labor Network for Sustainability

Wopke Hoekstra gave his reaction at a press conference in Baku to the lack of a clear figure on climate finance

My colleague Patrick Greenfield is following the plenary where countries give their formal response to the draft text.

Cop29 president Mukhtar Babayev gets the plenary started. He asks countries to give their thoughts on the latest iterations of text to inform future versions. He says that with collective effort, he believes that the summit can be finished by 6pm tomorrow.

Outcry after draft text contains only an ‘X’ instead of setting $1tn funding goal to support developing countries

• Cop29 climate summit – live updates

Hopes of a breakthrough at the deadlocked UN climate talks have been dashed after a new draft of a possible deal was condemned by rich and poor countries.

Faith in the ability of the Azerbaijan presidency to produce a deal ebbed on Thursday morning, as the draft texts were criticised as inadequate and providing no “landing ground” for a compromise.

On Qikiqtaruk, off Canada, researchers at the frontier of climate change are seeing its rich ecology slide into the sea as the melting permafrost leaves little behind

Last summer, the western Arctic was uncomfortably hot. Smoke from Canada’s wildfires hung thick in the air, and swarms of mosquitoes searched for exposed skin. It was a maddening combination that left researchers on Qikiqtaruk, an island off the north coast of the Yukon, desperate for relief.

And so on a late July afternoon, a team of Canadian scientists dived into the Beaufort Sea, bobbing and splashing in a sheltered bay for nearly two hours. Later, as they lay sprawled on a beach, huge chunks of the island they were studying slid into the ocean.

The ‘progress’ made at Cop29 has been on carbon markets: a world of magical thinking, over-claiming and distorted truth

We now face, on all fronts, a war not just against the living planet and the common good, but against material reality. Power in the United States will soon be shared between people who believe they will ascend to sit at the right hand of God, perhaps after a cleansing apocalypse; and people who believe their consciousness will be uploaded on to machines in a great Singularity.

The Christian rapture and the tech rapture are essentially the same belief. Both are examples of “substance dualism”: the idea that the mind or soul can exist in a realm separate from the body. This idea often drives a desire to escape from the grubby immanence of life on Earth. Once the rapture is achieved, there will be no need for a living planet.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Many species that would previously arrive in Britain are staying in countries now milder because of climate change

November can be a quiet month for birders in the UK. The summer visitors have long ago headed south, to warmer and more hospitable climes. But while birds from further north and east should now be arriving to overwinter in Britain, many have not yet done so – or if they have, they are in much lower numbers than usual.

The clue to this is the dramatic change in the weather on their breeding grounds in Siberia and northern Europe, as a result of the climate crisis. In recent years there has been unseasonably milder weather, with temperatures often staying well above freezing, which allows the birds to stay put.

As Cop29 in Azerbaijan reaches final stages, countries try to shore up support for conference where question of limiting global heating will be key

Australia is locked in a standoff with Turkey over which will host vital UN climate talks in 2026, where the question of whether the world can limit global heating in line with scientific advice is likely to be decided.

Australia’s government wants to host the summit in partnership with Pacific nations, which are among the countries most threatened by climate breakdown.

OECD complaint alleges top firm has increased investments in companies implicated in environmental devastation

BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset management company, faces a complaint at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for allegedly contributing to environmental and human rights abuses around the world through its investments in agribusiness.

Friends of the Earth US and the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil accuse BlackRock of increasing investments in companies that have been implicated in the devastation of the Amazon and other major forests despite warnings that this is destabilising the global climate, damaging ecosystems and violating the rights of traditional communities.

Chris Uhlmann says power costs are soaring while renewables are falling short, but do the pair have anything in common?

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What is “The Real Cost of Net Zero” asked political journalist Chris Uhlmann this week, after weeks of trailing his new documentary on Sky News Australia.

Uhlmann is no fan of Australia’s shift to renewables, and in a preview published in the Australian said politicians and governments “pushing ambitious renewables targets” were “breathtakingly, stunningly energy illiterate.”

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Graham Readfearn is Guardian Australia’s environment and climate correspondent

Interviews and analysis of court documents show how the world’s most prestigious consulting firm quietly helps fuel the climate crisis

Two giant, mirrored walls are set to rise out of the sands of the Arabian desert. They will run parallel for more than 100 miles from the coast of the Red Sea through arid valleys and craggy mountains. Between them, a futuristic city which has no need for cars or roads will be powered completely by renewable energy.

This engineering marvel, its creators say, will usher in “a revolution in civilization”. It’s the jewel in the crown of a $500bn Saudi government project known as Neom, turning a vast scrubland into a techno-utopia and world-class tourist and sporting destination. Perhaps a harbinger for the end of oil, it will supposedly put the powerful petrostate at the forefront of the energy transition. For American consulting giant McKinsey & Company, its advising on this project appears to be making good on the firm’s green promises.

Trump undeniably made gains but alarm over a rightward shift among African Americans is overblown. Plus: Kenyans embrace standup

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Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, I had a chat with Lauren N Williams, the deputy editor for race and equity at the Guardian US, about the country’s election results and the role Black voters played. I wanted to discuss the reported swing among Black voters to Donald Trump, which seemed pretty significant. However, talking to her made me see things from a different angle. But first, the weekly roundup.

A recent strike narrowly missed slave trade archives in Barbados, and experts warn more and worse is to come as global heating intensifies storms

When the Barbados National Archives, home to one of the world’s most significant collections of documents from the transatlantic slave trade, reported in June that it had been struck by lightning, it received widespread sympathy and offers of support locally and internationally.

A section of the 60-year-old building, Block D, located on the grounds of the “Lazaretto” (the island’s former colony for people with leprosy), caught fire, and sustained serious damage. Official documents including hospital and school records were lost. “It was not just paper that was in the building, but documents that have stories about our families and ancestors,” says the chief archivist, Ingrid Thompson.

Day nine of the climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, begins as negotiators work against the clock

As we wait for day nine to get going it is worth looking back at the closing summary from yesterday when the overriding feeling from negotiators was frustration as progress continued to prove elusive. Let’s hope for more positive news today.

Yesterday’s closing summary:

As day eight began, the climate talks entered the phase known as the ‘valley of death’

Raising funds to finance climate fight is feasible, economists say from my colleague Fiona Harvey

Cop was boosted as G20 reaffirms transition from fossil fuels, although some felt the Brazil meeting could have gone much further

Analysis showed that hundreds of lobbyists for industrial agriculture were attending the Cop29 climate summit in Baku

UK, New Zealand, and Colombia join coalition to phase out fossil fuel subsidies

Data tracks how Earth’s heating has led to rising sea levels and extreme weather – yet there is no sign of emissions slowing

“The era of global boiling has arrived” is what the UN chief, António Guterres, presciently declared last year. In 2024, he has continued to be proven right; a report by the EU’s space programme has found it is “virtually certain” that 2024 will be the hottest year on record. The scientists found global temperatures for the past 12 months were 1.62C greater than the 1850-1900 average, when humanity started to burn vast volumes of coal, oil and gas. The chart below shows just how quickly global surface temperatures have climbed, and this year is on track to be the first to hit 1.5C above preindustrial temperatures.

Strongest atmospheric river seen by California, Washington and Oregon this season knocks out power and downs trees

• California and Pacific north-west brace for an atmospheric river – but what is it?

What was expected to be one of the strongest storms in the north-west US in decades arrived on Tuesday evening, knocking out power and downing trees across the region.

The Weather Prediction Center issued excessive rainfall risks beginning on Tuesday and lasting through Friday as the strongest atmospheric river – a large plume of moisture – that California and the Pacific north-west has seen this season bears down on the region. The storm system is considered a “ bomb cyclone”, which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly.

From my perspective as a 12-year-old, it’s devastating that the protest is getting such a negative reaction from the NSW government

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All year, I have been looking forward to the People’s Blockade of the Newcastle coal port. I’ve been so excited to see the colourful array of kayaks and get to swim and paddle in the harbour with my friends to make our voices heard, and let the government know that we need to do everything we can right now to stop the climate crisis.

I know that Rising Tide has been working incredibly hard to make the blockade a fun and safe experience for everyone, but it feels like instead of listening to our concern about the climate crisis, the state government is doing everything they can to try to stop our “protestival” from going ahead.

Australia and Turkey are both lobbying to host Cop31, the world's annual United Nations climate change negotiations planned for 2026. The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, said Australia wants to co-host Cop31 'in partnership with our Pacific family'. Bowen also announced a $50m contribution to loss and damage caused by the climate crisis.

• Paris agreement is working, Australian minister tells Cop29, but much deeper cuts needed by 2035

• Chris Bowen makes last-minute diplomatic stop in Turkey as Australia ramps up bid to host Cop31

Without action on climate crisis, far greater numbers will also experience floods, wildfires and droughts, according to report

Eight times as many children around the world will be exposed to extreme heatwaves in the 2050s, and three times as many will face river floods compared with the 2000s if current trends continue, according to the UN.

Nearly twice as many children are also expected to face wildfires, with many more living through droughts and tropical cyclones, according to the annual state of the world’s children report.

Poor country delegates say classifications that date back to 1992 are obsolete and two countries ‘should be contributing’

China and India should no longer be treated as developing countries in the same way as some of the poorest African nations are, according to a growing number of delegates from poorer country at the Cop29 UN climate talks.

China should take on some additional responsibility for providing financial help to the poorest and most vulnerable, several delegates told the Guardian. India should not be eligible for receiving financial help as it has no trouble attracting investment, some said.