The Guardian Climate Change

Scientists found 90% of young coral surveyed remained healthy compared with 25% of older corals, after mass bleaching event in the Caribbean

Young corals bred using in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and planted in reefs around the US, Mexico and the Caribbean have surprised scientists, after most survived last year’s record marine heatwave, while older corals struggled.

A study has found that 90% of the young IVF-created corals surveyed remained healthy and colourful, holding on to the algae that live within them and supply them with nutrition. In contrast, only about a quarter of older non-IVF corals remained healthy.

Hosting the conference would help us overcome our colonial mentality and the fossil fuel lobby, both of which have held us back from tackling climate change

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As the world grapples with the climate crisis, Australia stands at a crossroads. Our bid to co-host the UN’s climate conference, Cop31, with Pacific nations is not just a diplomatic event; it is a pivotal opportunity to redefine our nation’s role in the global fight against climate change. This could mark a shift, propelling Australia from climate laggard to leader on the world stage. With the Cop presidency, we would be at the centre of international climate negotiations, shouldering the responsibility to provide the infrastructure and visionary leadership needed to drive meaningful progress. The stakes are high, but so too are the potential rewards for our nation and the planet.

For years, Australia has been held back from meaningful climate action by the powerful influence of the fossil fuel lobby. This industry has shaped policies and public opinion, prioritising short-term profits over long-term sustainability. Their grip on our political landscape has delayed the transition to cleaner energy and put us on a dangerous path that threatens the security of our communities, our environment and our economy. Now, as the cost of living skyrockets and climate impacts escalate, we’re facing the consequences of that inaction.

Exclusive: Meteorologists say climate change and the amount of heat being added to the oceans make predictions based on the past less reliable

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The Bureau of Meteorology is shifting the way it communicates about climate phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña, because global heating is making predictions based on the past less reliable.

This week the bureau kept the country on a “La Niña watch” and said if the climate system in the Pacific does develop, it’s likely to be short-lived and weak.

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Documents show authority chief said ex-NSW treasurer and energy minister declared Wollemi Capital directorship as ‘material personal interest’

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The Climate Change Authority determined that its incoming chairman, Matt Kean, did not have a conflict of interest despite taking a role at a climate advisory service – but he would need to make ongoing disclosures on relevant investments by the firm.

Brad Archer, the authority’s chief executive, said Kean – a former New South Wales treasurer and energy minister – had declared his position as a director of “regulatory affairs and strategic partnerships” at Wollemi Capital as “a material personal interest”, according to documents seen by Guardian Australia.

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Emergency crews battle to reinforce defences around Wrocław in Poland amid devastating rainfall

Soldiers, emergency workers and volunteers battled through the night to reinforce defences around Wrocław, Poland’s third biggest city, as the EU said flooding in central Europe happening simultaneously alongside wildfires in Portugal showed climate breakdown in action.

More than five times the average rainfall for the whole of September has fallen in five days on swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, triggering devastating flooding that has killed 23 people in four countries.

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'

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lib Dem leader speaks about importance of care and carers as he addresses final day of party conference. This live blog is closed

• Ed Davey urges ‘faster and bolder’ action on NHS and social care

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.

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.

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.

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.

• Death toll reaches 16 as ‘dramatic’ flooding in central Europe continues

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.

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”.

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

• Europe floods – latest updates

• ‘Catastrophe of epic proportions’: eight drown in Europe amid heavy floods