The Guardian Climate Change

Ex-president’s allies and Project 2025 propose restrictions to EPA’s ability to protect public from toxins like PFAS

A second Donald Trump presidency would represent a serious threat to dealing with the toxic impact of PFAS “forever chemicals”, as well as other toxins, and could be a danger to the health of millions of Americans, experts and environmental campaigners warn.

For example, over the last year, the Environmental Protection Agency developed groundbreaking drinking water limits for highly toxic PFAS compounds, and designated several of the “forever chemicals” as hazardous substances, a move that will force industry to clean up its pollution. The steps represent a major win for the water quality and taxpayers, but a new Trump administration would likely shred the rules.

Our response to global heating and the decimation of animal species is to marginalise the Green party and lock up protesters

Signs and wonders. Omens of black portent. Part of an American looney’s ear has been shot off by another American looney. The proposed presidency of the earless looney had been endorsed by Atomic Kitten’s Kerry Katona. A computer went wrong and everything in the world stopped working everywhere. On Tuesday it was reported that Chris Packham regretted having once ridden an elephant. Last Sunday was the hottest day ever. A lioness hath whelped in the streets. Graves have yawn’d and yielded up their dead. Suella Braverman sat in for James O’Brien on LBC and the last surviving member of the Four Tops died. Surely we are living in The End Times. The optics, as they say, are not good.

But last week I sat outside at night alone on my Welsh mountain holiday, drinking draught Bwtty Bach beer from a plastic flask and reading an old Brigid Brophy paperback. For a moment I was happy beyond measure, forgot the world beyond, and stopped worrying. And then I saw something was awry in my idyll. I looked up at a security light, a stark halogen glow between the grey stone wall and the bright buck moon. Not long ago, in such a night as this, such a lamp as that would always have been hazed by a fuzzy penumbra of buzzy invertebrates. But tonight the air around it was hungry and dead, the entomological equivalent of an empty Republican convention room, where no one at all turns up to listen to Boris Johnson.

Stewart Lee’s Basic Lee is available to stream on Now TV. He is previewing 40 minutes of new material in Stewart Lee Introduces Legends of Indie at the Lexington, London, in August with Connie Planque (12), Swansea Sound (13) and David Lance Callahan (14)

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

A 2% levy would affect about 100 billionaire families, says the country’s climate chief, but the $250bn raised could be transformative

Proposals to slap a wealth tax on the world’s super-rich could yield $250bn (£200bn) a year to tackle the climate crisis and address poverty and inequality, but would affect only a small number of billionaire families, Brazil’s climate chief has said.

Ministers from the G20 group of the world’s biggest developed and emerging economies are meeting in Rio de Janeiro this weekend, where Brazil’s proposal for a 2% wealth tax on those with assets worth more than $1bn is near the top of the agenda.

As the Park fire rages near Chico, residents who were evacuated from the deadly Camp fire in 2018 are evacuated again

As the biggest fire of the season raged through northern California on Saturday, Stephen Murray wasn’t taking any chances.

The Paradise resident loaded up his vehicle and prepared to flee with his wife and children. Almost six years after the Camp fire destroyed his hometown and killed 85 people, the community was under an evacuation warning due to the Park fire, which had scorched nearly 350,000 acres.

Wind turbines are among changes being considered by heir to the Duchy of Cornwall estate to tackle the climate crisis

His father thinks windfarms are a blot on the landscape, once saying he feared Britain would end up like Denmark “knee deep in these damn things”. But now Prince William is considering overturning their effective ban on royal land.

The Prince of Wales has ordered a major review of renewable energy on his 130,000-acre Duchy of Cornwall estate, which is expected to change the face of his hereditary property empire stretching across 20 counties in England.

Public health adviser says higher temperatures caused by climate crisis pose danger for visitors not used to them

The climate emergency poses a “real risk” to Spain’s traditional mass tourist model as rising temperatures and more frequent heatwaves hit the country’s most popular coastal destinations, a senior public health adviser has warned.

Héctor Tejero, the head of health and climate change at Spain’s health ministry, said the increasingly apparent physical impacts of the climate emergency had already led the ministry to begin talks with the British embassy on how best to educate “vulnerable” tourists about coping with the heat.

Wildfires in California, Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Israeli bombardment in Gaza and Snoop Dogg at the Paris Olympics: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

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

Energy secretary seeks to reestablish UK as a global leader on the climate crisis with meeting of Cop presidents

Labour will honour a pledge of £11.6bn in overseas aid for the climate crisis, the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, told an unusual meeting of Cop presidents past and present on Friday, as he sought to re-establish the UK at the heart of international climate discussions.

As the Labour government prepares for this year’s climate-emergency summit in November, Miliband hosted Mukhtar Babayev, the Azerbaijan government minister who will lead Cop29, and Ana Toni, the top official on the climate for Brazil, which will host Cop30 in the Amazonian city of Belem in 2025 in a meeting to discuss what steps are needed to make a success of the next two UN climate Cops, as the “conferences of the parties” under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are known.

More than 120,000 heat-related ER visits were tracked in 2023, as people struggle in record-breaking temperatures

In his 40 years in the emergency room, David Sklar can think of three moments in his career when he was terrified.

“One of them was when the Aids epidemic hit, the second was Covid, and now there’s this,” the Phoenix physician said, referring to his city’s unrelenting heat. Last month was the city’s hottest June on record, with temperatures averaging 97F (36C), and scientists say Phoenix is on track to experience its hottest summer on record this year.

Danielle Smith and her government’s refusal to combat global heating is said to have made blazes more intense

When Danielle Smith, premier of Alberta, began her grim update about the wildfire damage to Jasper, the famed mountain resort in the Canadian Rockies, her voice slipped and she held back tears.

Hours earlier, a fast-moving wildfire tore through the community, incinerating homes, businesses and historic buildings. She praised the “true heroism” of fire crews who had rushed in to save Jasper, only to be pulled back when confronted by a 400ft wall of flames. She spoke about the profound meaning and “magic” of the national park.

Planet’s largest blanket bog is first peatland to be designated by Unesco after 40-year campaign

The Flow Country, a vast and unspoiled blanket bog that carpets the far north of Scotland, has been made a world heritage site by Unesco.

The planet’s largest blanket bog, the Flow Country covers about 1,500 sq miles of Caithness and Sutherland, and is the first peatland in the world to be designated by Unesco, after a 40-year campaign by environmentalists.

Communities affected by construction of renewable energy infrastructure ‘have the right to see the benefits’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Labour will seek to persuade people living near proposed pylon routes and other renewable energy infrastructure that the developments are critical to bring down bills and tackle carbon emissions, the energy secretary said.

Ed Miliband promised to consider new benefits for communities affected by the construction of renewable energy infrastructure, and community ownership of the assets, which could include onshore windfarms and solar farms.

National Whale and Dolphin Watch organisers say data collected will help with research into marine mammals

Hundreds of wildlife enthusiasts are expected to gather along UK coastlines over the next 10 days to count and record whales and dolphins.

The National Whale and Dolphin Watch, taking place from 26 July to 4 August, is hosted by the Sea Watch Foundation and aims to get volunteers to observe and record sightings of the UK’s most impressive marine mammals.

As it rapidly adopts clean technologies while drilling furiously for oil and gas, the Nordic nation is a paradox

The average Norwegian, better known for loving nature than destroying the planet, is more likely than anyone else to drive to work in an electric car and warm their home with a heat pump. When they turn on the kettle in the morning or charge their phone at night, Norwegians plug into an electricity grid that runs almost entirely on renewables. Their politicians write cheques to save trees in tropical forests and politely pressure other countries to protect the environment, too.

But on one metric, Norway’s leafy green image darkens to an oily black. Citizens of the rich Nordic nation dig up more petroleum per person than Russians, Iranians, North Americans and Saudi Arabians.

A hardy few of you still see some hope as you trudge wearily along life’s grim parade

• Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are published
• Get all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints

Record heat is killing hundreds in Clark county. But one of America’s fastest-growing metro areas just keeps getting bigger

Hot air wafted through the heavy, gold-lined doors of a Las Vegas casino as they opened, offering a reminder of a disaster quietly unfolding outside. Even though the sun had just set on an evening in mid-July, temperatures were yet to dip below 100F (37C).

Spawned from a paved-over oasis in the Mojave, this desert metropolis has always been hot. But a string of brutal heatwaves this summer has pushed Sin City to a deadly simmer.

Charli xcx declared the VP brat and the KHive is rejuvenated – can gen Z’s enthusiasm make a difference in November?

In a series of events over 24 hours that would have been unimaginable a week ago, Kamala Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket, secured the backing of Joe Biden and key leaders, brought in a record-breaking $81m, and became the face of brat summer.

“kamala IS brat,” pop star Charli xcx declared on Sunday, a reference to her new album released last month that has launched countless memes declaring it the season of the brat. A brat, in the British singer’s own words, is “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it”.

Despite climate-friendly plans, the government’s controversial decision to take over the Trans Mountain pipeline made it one of world’s biggest promoters of fossil fuel projects

• ‘Inexcusable’: should climate hypocrites get the petrostates label?

Like all major rivers winding through the country, Canada’s most controversial oil pipeline is destined for the ocean.

The Trans Mountain pipeline crosses two provinces, threads a national park in the Rocky Mountains, dips underneath bodies of water and passes through dozens of First Nations communities before terminating at a sprawling oil storage facility on the verdant shores of the Pacific.

Brazil court freezes assets of Dirceu Kruger to pay climate compensation for illegal deforestation

A Brazilian cattle rancher has been ordered to pay more than $50m (£39m) for destroying part of the Amazon rainforest and ordered to restore the precious carbon sink.

Last week, a federal court in Brazil froze the assets of Dirceu Kruger to pay compensation for the damage he had caused to the climate through illegal deforestation. The case was brought by Brazil’s attorney general’s office, representing the Brazilian institute of environment and renewable natural resources (Ibama). It is the largest civil case brought for climate crimes in Brazil to date and the start of a legal push to repair and deter damage to the rainforest.

State of the UK Climate report shows sea surface temperatures 0.9C higher than the 1961 to 1990 average

The water near the UK’s coasts was hotter in 2023 than scientists have ever before recorded, a report has found, with children today experiencing a hotter and wetter climate than that in which their parents and grandparents grew up.

The sea surface temperature near coasts was 0.9C hotter and winter rainfall across the country was 24% greater over the last decade than the average from 1961 to 1990, according to the State of the UK Climate 2023 report. It found the number of “hot” (28C) days has more than doubled over that period, and the number of “very hot” (30C) and “extremely hot” (32C) days has more than tripled.