The Guardian Climate Change

Joe Biden gave his first speech since quitting the race – here’s what to know from the roughly 10-minute address

Joe Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office on Wednesday night in an emotional speech that encompassed some of the reasons that led him to withdraw from the presidential race. This was the first speech Biden has made since he announced his withdrawal from the race on Sunday.

Most notably, the 81-year-old president, who was recovering from Covid-19 this week, highlighted the importance of passing the torch to a new generation, referring to his endorsement for Kamala Harris as the new contender for November’s elections.

Hint: it’s not good news

• See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here

Researchers uncover ‘remarkable new way in which trees provide a vital climate service’ by reducing emissions

Microbes in the bark of trees play a vital role in removing methane from the atmosphere, scientists have discovered.

The greenhouse gas is a product of agriculture and the burning of fossil fuels and is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. However, it remains in the atmosphere for a shorter time.

In thrall to the oil and gas industries, wealthy nations are backing calamitous projects. But the tide is turning

• Tessa Khan is executive director of the climate action organisation Uplift

It is a delusion to believe that the world’s climate is being pushed to the brink solely by undemocratic petrostates such as Russia and Saudi Arabia. The truth is that about half of all planned oil and gas developments between now and 2050 will be sanctioned by wealthy governments that position themselves as climate leaders: the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK.

It is the countries that like to think of themselves as the good guys that are driving the climate crisis – and not just because of historical emissions and the high-carbon lifestyles of our middle class. It is because our governments refuse to take one of the most obvious actions needed to stop the crisis: keeping oil and gas in the ground. As we have heard time and again, governments are planning to sanction vastly more oil and gas than can be burned in a world with a safe climate.

Tessa Khan is a lawyer and the executive director of the climate action organisation Uplift

In a kayak off the Devon coast I witnessed the kind of entitled mindlessness that has ravaged society, and our planet

On a calm and beautiful morning off the coast of south Devon last week, I was watching a small pod of dolphins from my kayak. I had spotted them from half a mile away, feeding and playing on the surface. They were heading my way, so I sat on the water and waited.

But from round the headland, at top speed, came a giant twin-engined maritime wankpanzer. Though the dolphins were highly visible and it had plenty of time either to stop or avoid them, it ploughed towards them at full throttle. As it passed, missing them by a few metres, the driver turned and glanced at them, but never checked his speed. The dolphins dived. They briefly reappeared much farther from the coast, after which I didn’t see them again. I could hear the boat long after it disappeared: it sounded like a jetliner. God knows what distress it might have caused the dolphins, which are highly sensitive to sound.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Preliminary data from Copernicus suggests temperature records were shattered, taking world into ‘uncharted territory’

World temperature records were shattered on Sunday on what may be the hottest day scientists have ever logged, data suggests.

Inflamed by the carbon pollution spewed from burning fossils and farming livestock, the average surface air temperature hit 17.09C (62.76F) on Sunday, according to preliminary data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which holds data that stretches back to 1940. The reading inched above the previous record of 17.08C (62.74F) set on 6 July last year, but the scientists cautioned that the difference was not statistically distinguishable.

High court hears case brought by claimants who say rights have been breached as result of adaptation plan

In December, council officials ordered Kevin Jordan to leave his home, warning him it was at risk of falling into the sea at any moment.

On Tuesday, he had his day in court, accusing the government of failing to do enough to adapt to the changes the UK is facing as a result of climate breakdown.

Vice-president’s record on climate crisis strikes stark contrast with Trump in potential 2024 election match-up

Kamala Harris has a strong record on the environment that will provide a vivid contrast with Donald Trump, who has vowed to rescind climate change policies should he return to the White House, according to green advocates who have welcomed the prospect of a Harris presidency.

“We are confident that she is ready to carry forward President Biden’s historic legacy and set a new high bar for climate ambition in America,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen, one of a raft of green groups, including Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, the NRDC Action Fund, and Climate Power, that has now endorsed the leading contender for the Democratic nomination.

Last week, five supporters of the Just Stop Oil climate campaign who conspired to cause gridlock on London’s orbital motorway were sentenced to lengthy jail terms by a judge who told them they had ‘crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic’. Columnist and campaigner George Monbiot tells Ian Sample why the sentences are so significant, how they fit into a crackdown on protest in the UK in recent years, and what impact they could have on future climate activism in the UK

Clips: ITV, Just Stop Oil, BBC, The Sun

Read more reporting on this story

Stormont’s rescue proposal for UK’s largest lake criticised by campaigners for dilution of sewage reduction targets

There will have to be a move away from intensive farming around Lough Neagh if it is to survive, campaigners have said, as the noxious algal blooms that last year devastated the vast body of water returned to its shores earlier than ever.

Lough Neagh is the UK’s largest lake and supplies more than 40% of Northern Ireland’s drinking water. But vast amounts of phosphorus, nitrogen and other substances draining into the lough have left it at crisis point for some years now.

Leftwingers set up protest camp on Sylt to demonstrate against far right, economic exclusion and climate crisis

Punks from across Germany have set up a summer-long protest camp on the North Sea holiday island of Sylt to demonstrate against economic exclusion, environmental degradation and the presence of the far right in one of the country’s most exclusive areas.

For the third consecutive year, the young leftwingers with mohawks, torn T-shirts and facial piercings began descending on Sylt at the weekend, mainly by train, to disrupt the seasonal repose of the elites.

With temperatures high and rising, it is time to stop flinching away from the realities of our bodies

There is a particular summer weather that I – and perhaps I alone – love. Hot, overcast and damp. The days when the air feels like the breath of a particularly big and lusty dog. The days when thunder is always imminent. The days when you start to use a council tax bill as a makeshift fan across your neck on the train.

Why am I so drawn to this heavy, expectant clamminess? This overcast sense of excitement? Because – and this is not the time for euphemism – I am a sweaty woman. I contain rivulets. Along my temples, under my breasts, across both armpits, behind my knee; I am as slick and shiny as a pebble on the seashore. And when the weather turns humid, you all simply meet me where I stand.

Hunting migratory birds is illegal in the country, but a series of crises means enforcement is derisory and many birds are being shot ‘just for fun’

Shell casings litter a meadow on Mount Terbol in northern Lebanon. The valley below falls along one of the world’s busiest routes for migratory birds. The mountain peak, buffeted by harsh winds, creates a natural corridor that encourages birds fatigued from long journeys between Africa and Eurasia to fly at low altitudes.

Those low-flying birds are easy targets for poachers who live in the mountain communities, says Michel Sawan, director of the Lebanese Association of Migratory Birds (Lamb). “They say: ‘We inherited this culture from our grandfathers,’ and I keep saying: ‘Your grandfathers are and were wrong.’”

Botanical gardens lost 400 trees during 2022 drought, prompting research into potential loss in coming decades

More than half of the tree species at Kew’s Royal Botanical Gardens are at risk of death because of climate breakdown, a study by the public body has found.

Founded in 1840, Kew Gardens says it houses the largest botanical collection in the world. During the drought of 2022, the botanical gardens in south-west London lost 400 of its trees. Scientists at Kew decided they should map and chronicle the climate risk to the trees to see how many could feasibly be lost to the changing weather in the coming decades.

Amid stagnant or falling yields producers across India and east Africa are being forced to adapt

Tea is a British institution and 100m cups will be drunk today, but experts are warning that our beloved brew could get pricier as extreme weather causes misery for growers in India and Kenya.

Last week’s official cost of living update put food inflation at 1.5%, but a breakdown of price moves showed a box of 80 teabags now costs £2.65, a rise of 18p, or 7%, on a year ago.

Ed Miliband has won the argument that his party must go big to cut carbon emissions. But he will need to go bigger still

Sir Keir Starmer’s legislative plan to green Britain has arrived not a moment too soon. Last week, the government’s advisers warned that only a third of the carbon reductions required by law would be met under existing plans. The Climate Change Committee said that, for the first time since setting itself carbon-reduction targets, the UK is not on track to meet its goal. It is supposed to reduce emissions in 2030 by 68% compared with 1990 levels, to meet net zero by 2050.

The UK should, says the committee, now be in a phase of rapid investment and delivery. But the Tories’ turn against net zero policies has meant little progress on the rollout of low-carbon technology. That is why Labour’s king’s speech, which put the environment at the centre of policymaking, was so welcome. Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, won the argument that the urgency of the climate emergency needed a bigger, more interventionist state.

The Australia Institute says tax exemption on ‘commercial vehicles’ with no testing requirement is incentivising people to buy utes instead of EVs

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A loophole in Australia’s tax law is in effect subsidising the price of luxury utes such as Ram and Chevrolet SUVs, costing taxpayers more than $250m a year in forgone revenue, an analysis has found.

The research from the Australia Institute centres on the Luxury Car Tax (LCT) – introduced in 2000 for imported cars partly to protect the domestic industry that existed at the time – and an exemption that applies to certain utes.

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The robotic services allow farmers to rely less on chemicals. ‘This solves a lot of problems,’ workers say

On a sweltering summer day in central Kansas, farm fields shimmer in the heat as Clint Brauer watches a team of bright yellow robots churn up and down the rows, tirelessly slicing away any weeds that stand in their way while avoiding the growing crops.

The battery-powered machines, 4ft (1.2 metres) long and 2ft (0.6 metres) wide, pick their way through the fields with precision, without any human hand to guide them.

Twisters is the latest in a long line of movies that fail to address the environmental emergency – experts say it’s a missed opportunity

A rodeo crowd waves cowboy hats as a man rides a bucking horse. Then comes a shower of leaves, a chorus of mobile phone rings and a wail of klaxons. Horses run wild and cars collide. One vehicle is whipped into the air by what a weatherman calls a once-in-a-generation tornado outbreak.

This is a scene from Twisters, starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones, in which rivals come together to try to predict and possibly tame ferocious storms in central Oklahoma. A sequel to the hit disaster movie Twister from 1996, it is a Hollywood summer blockbuster designed to entertain – but also a lost opportunity to raise awareness of the climate crisis.

Countries and companies involved in oil and gas extraction to be asked to join scheme aimed at tackling global heating

Fossil-fuel producing countries and companies are being asked to pay into a new international fund to help poor countries cope with the effects of the climate crisis.

The climate investment fund is being set up by the Azerbaijan government, host country of the Cop29 UN climate summit in November.