The Guardian Climate Change

Outgoing CEO of promoters’ body says inquiry has produced no evidence that companies have engaged in anticompetitive behaviour

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Many of Australia’s live music business models are “broken and unsustainable”, a parliamentary inquiry into the crisis-hit sector has heard.

But overseas-based companies such as Live Nation and TEG, the large tour promotion multinationals that have come under criticism during the inquiry, are not the problem, the industry’s peak body says.

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The environmental regulator has a history of backing fossil fuels – that is why its preliminary view on Woodside’s Browse project is extraordinary

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The news that the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority is likely to recommend that a massive gas export development off the state’s north-west shouldn’t go ahead is remarkable, but shouldn’t be.

We don’t know much about what the EPA told Woodside Energy in February about its Browse project off the state’s Kimberley coast. All we have is a line that WAtoday extracted from the EPA – that it had formed a “preliminary view” that the proposal was “unacceptable”.

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Married couple from Bristol attract awe and abuse on X with photos that show ‘staggering’ changes in the Alps

A tourist has posted “staggering” photos of himself and his wife at the same spot in the Swiss Alps almost exactly 15 years apart, in a pair of photos that highlight the speed with which global heating is melting glaciers.

Duncan Porter, a software developer from Bristol, posted photos that were taken in the same spot at the Rhône glacier in August 2009 and August 2024. The white ice that filled the background has shrunk to reveal grey rock. A once-small pool at the bottom, out of sight in the original, has turned into a vast green lake.

America’s landmark climate law, which turns two years old this month, has Harris’s signature all over it

Two years ago today, I watched as Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote for the largest climate investment in American history. It was an emotional moment. After decades of inaction, America had finally passed a climate law – one of the strongest climate laws in the world.

I didn’t know it then, but a month later I would get a call asking if I would like to interview the vice-president about climate policy.

Climate denialists – 23 in Senate and 100 in House – are all Republicans and make US an outlier internationally

US politics is an outlier bastion of climate denial with nearly one in four members of Congress dismissing the reality of climate change, even as alarm has grown among the American public over dangerous global heating, an analysis has found.

A total of 123 elected federal representatives – 100 in the House of Representatives and 23 US senators – deny the existence of human-caused climate change, all of them Republicans, according to a recent study of statements made by current members.

Firefighters make advances on wildfire that has burned 627 sq miles, but return of high temperatures may help it grow

Fire crews battling California’s largest wildfire this year have corralled a third of the blaze aided in part by cooler weather, but a return of triple-digit temperatures could allow it to grow, fire officials said Sunday.

Cooler temperatures and increased humidity gave firefighters “a great opportunity to make some good advances” on the fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills, said Chris Vestal, a spokesperson for the California department of forestry and fire protection.

Though tiny compared with rivals, English wine trade is thriving as climate crisis fuels flood of new capital from investors

The largest English vineyards increased their revenues by 15% last year, as wine investors respond to the climate crisis by planting more vines.

While the UK still languishes well down the list of the largest wine-producing nations, below countries such as Uzbekistan and Tunisia, the industry’s output has soared in recent years, rising by 77% last year to 161,960 hectolitres, equivalent to 21.6m bottles.

As Americans worry about inflation and ‘no planet B’, some look to the trash for answers

When Annemarie Cox drives around San Diego, she scans the urban landscape for one thing that the rest of the population likely ignores: dumpsters. Where other people see trash, she sees possibilities – quirky secondhand clothes, collectible antiques, even family heirlooms and photographs that have been casually discarded.

On one recent Tuesday in southern California, the mid-morning sun already beating down, Cox’s usual quest was under way. She paid a visit to one of her favorite local dumpsters, first resting her forearms comfortably on the sides and then reaching barehanded towards whatever was at the bottom. Other than a broken TV atop a huge stack of cardboard boxes, there wasn’t much to find this time around.

Sticky mucilage made of microalgae covers the surface and fishing is impossible as waters reach 30C

Almost every morning, Daniele Montini and his wife, Alfreda, take a stroll in the shallow waters of the Adriatic Sea. The ritual, followed by many residents in Fano, a coastal town in Italy’s central Marche region, is advised by doctors to stimulate blood circulation and maintain a healthy respiratory system through breathing in the salty air.

It is 7.30am and the outside temperature is already a muggy 29C. The couple, who were born in Fano, know that their summers, and their winters, are being transformed by global heating. What they are not quite used to is the stagnant, much warmer sea.

When a juror was sworn in on a cupful of water from the Roding he made modern history

The barrister Paul Powlesland, who has acted for climate protesters, was called to jury service last week, and made judicial history by taking an oath on the thing most holy to him – not an ancient book, but a cupful of water from his local river in north-east London: “I swear by the River Roding, from her source in Molehill Green to her confluence with the Thames,” he said, “that I will faithfully try the defendant and give a true verdict according to the evidence.”

Powlesland explained that he wanted to promote the idea of the sacredness of nature, and its place in the legal system. “I hope that many others follow suit,” he said, “and animism is soon found more regularly in our courts.”

Air conditioning isn’t always enough to keep you safe – but people across the US have hacks to handle extreme heat

Another heatwave is sweeping much of the US this week, with millions under heat advisory. The blistering and potentially life-threatening temperatures come as much of the western US faces devastating wildfires and the north-east endures “apocolyptic” floods.

Scientists agree such conditions would be virtually impossible without the climate crisis. Last week saw the four hottest days ever recorded on the planet, and 2024 is expected to be the warmest year on record.

Centuries-old Montrose golf links falling into the sea and town at risk of flooding as coastal erosion accelerates

A beach in north-east Scotland is eroding rapidly owing to climate change, leaving a town at risk of flooding and its centuries-old golf links crumbling into the sea.

The Dynamic Coast report in 2021 studied the rate of erosion at Montrose and predicted that 120 metres would be lost over 40 years, an average of 3 metres a year.

From weekly skills-sharing to rewilding streets, communities are working to improve the planet while bolstering the health of people

At first glance, Melrose Avenue is just two ordinary rows of terrace houses, tucked behind Moseley Road in Birmingham. Only the eye-catching orange benches and a pair of communal pink bicycles suggest something special is happening here.

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, Jan Burley, a retired social worker who lives at number 10, fills her watering can and helps the children and grandchildren on the street to water the mint and coriander they are growing on shared planters. “I didn’t do gardening until I was 60, but if you can get the children young they will care more about the world to come,” she says.

Infrastructure essential to decarbonise electricity generation by 2030 met with resistance by those affected

Tucked away beyond the industrial landscapes of north-east Derbyshire and the M1 corridor, the Amber Valley is an oasis of greenery: ancient trees, listed buildings and public footpaths that are increasingly popular with tourists.

But Katie Hirst, a local resident, fears that appreciative visitors will vanish along with the unspoilt landscape if a route of 50-metre-high pylons is brought down the valley as National Grid intends.

Simone Biles at the Olympics, the prisoner swap between Russia and the US, Israeli bombardment in Gaza and wildfires in California: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

• Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

Famous Utah lake has lost 73% of its water, and dried areas have released 4.1m tons of carbon dioxide, studies show

For years, scientists and environmental leaders have been raising alarm that the Great Salt Lake is headed toward a catastrophic decline.

Now, new research points to the lake’s desiccating shores also becoming an increasingly significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have calculated that dried out portions of the lakebed released about 4.1m tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in 2020, based on samples collected over seven months that year.

Supermarket says unpredictable weather makes planning difficult but other grocers stick to schedule

The budget grocery chain Iceland is to delay launching its autumn range, including an expanded choice of pies and pastries, this year in response to increasingly warm September weather.

Richard Walker, the executive chair of the Deeside-based retailer, said Iceland had decided to push back its seasonal shift towards increasing the range of pies, pastries and other cool-weather favourites available in stores – and associated promotional activity – by two weeks from its historic norm to mid-September.

Local people on the archipelago sense ‘an opportunity in the north’ as southern Europe swelters

Jenny Björklund was out on an island in Finland’s Åland archipelago with a friend when they saw a boat approaching across the Baltic Sea. She assured her friend, who was visiting from Gothenburg in Sweden, that they would be left alone.

“Don’t worry, they won’t come here because we are here. This is our island,” Björklund, a co-owner of a restaurant and distillery on the archipelago, says she told her friend. Sure enough, she was right.

So far this year officials warnings have been issued for 25 floods, and China is only halfway through its peak flood season

Halfway through the peak flood season, China has already experienced the highest number of significant floods since record keeping began in 1998, and the hottest July since 1961, authorities said on Friday.

This year so far it has recorded 25 “numbered” events, which the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources defined as having water levels that prompt an official warning or are measured at a magnitude of a “once in two to five years” event.

Belts of trees and large lakes suck cooler air that reduces urban heat island effect by 0.5C, scientists say

A reduction in temperature of 0.5C may not sound much but with cities getting hotter as the climate warms it could save the lives of elderly people and young children.

The urban heat island effect, which raises temperatures in cities by 2-3C because the sun’s rays are absorbed by roads, roofs and other hard surfaces, is already making life uncomfortable for millions worldwide and causing an increasing number of deaths.