The Guardian Climate Change

Cop29 presidency announces new drive to cut methane emissions from waste dumps as G20 reaffirms transition from fossil fuels

The UK government has conceded that Australia was mistakenly included on a list of countries that were expected to sign up to a US-UK civil nuclear deal agreed at Cop29 on Monday, writes Adam Morton, Guardian Australia’s climate and environment editor.

The Albanese government flatly denied media reports on Tuesday that it would join the UK and the US in a collaboration to share advanced nuclear technology. The UK and the US announcement said they would speed up work on “cutting-edge nuclear technology”, including small modular reactors, after inking a deal at the Cop29 UN climate summit in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.

We urge them to use the G20 meeting to send a positive signal of their commitment to address the climate crisis.

Chris Bowen also pledges A$50m to a fund to help the world’s most vulnerable people to repair the damage from climate breakdown

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The Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has declared the landmark Paris agreement “is working” as it had brought the world back from “the brink of catastrophic 4C warming”, but argued countries must set the most ambitious emissions targets possible for 2035 to limit worsening global heating.

Giving Australia’s national statement on the conference floor at the Cop29 summit in Azerbaijan, he also pledged A$50m (US$32.5m) towards a global loss and damage fund to help the world’s most vulnerable people to repair the damage from climate breakdown.

My brother called saying there was a storm. I was waiting, waiting, waiting. This is Elisa’s story

Location Saint-Martin-Vésubie, France

Disaster name Storm Alex, 2020

Elisa is a women’s clothing designer who runs her own label in Montreal, Canada. She was born and grew up in Nice, France, where much of her family remained, but was in Canada with her children and partner when Storm Alex gusted towards France and the mountain village where her mother lived. The storm was a powerful extratropical cyclone that caused extreme flooding around the Mediterranean, killing at least 15 people. Three months’ worth of rain – 50cm – fell on Saint-Martin-Vésubie in one day, 3 October 2020.

An update on our progress from the Guardian’s head of sustainability

• The Guardian environment pledge 2024
• Support urgent, independent climate journalism today

Five years ago the Guardian made a pledge that we would “play a part, both in our journalism and in our own organisation, to address the climate emergency” with our first annual environment pledge. That commitment reflected our long history of environment reporting and our view that individual companies had to take greater responsibility for their impact on the natural world. We wanted to demonstrate to readers that we were taking the action that our journalism showed was so necessary, and to be transparent about our progress. Today we publish the 2024 pledge.

Since then we have worked hard to measure and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, to understand our impact on nature and to share our results openly with readers. In our latest sustainability report, published last month, we show that our emissions have fallen by 43% since 2020, putting us well on track to achieve our goal of a 67% cut by 2030.

Nearly 40% of food sector lobbyists have travelled to Baku as part of countries’ delegations

• Cop29 climate summit – live updates

Hundreds of lobbyists for industrial agriculture are attending the Cop29 climate summit in Baku, analysis shows.

They include representatives from some of the world’s largest agribusiness companies including the Brazilian meatpacker JBS, the animal pharmaceuticals company Elanco, and the food giant PepsiCo, as well as trade groups representing the food sector.

Refurbishing an old building is subject to full VAT, but it isn’t if you build a polluting new one. The government’s priorities are all wrong

You can damn oil companies, abuse cars, insult nimbys, kill cows, befoul art galleries. But you must never, ever criticise the worst offender of all. The construction industry is sacred to both the left and the right. It may be the world’s greatest polluter, but it is not to be criticised. It is the elephant in the global-heating room.

It’s hard not to feel as though we have a blind spot when it comes to cement, steel and concrete. A year has now passed since the UN’s environment programme stated baldly that “the building and construction sector is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases”. The industry accounts for “a staggering 37% of global emissions”, more than any other single source. Yet it rarely gets the same attention as oil or car companies.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

City also pauses major repairs to aqueduct as residents and local agencies ordered to cut down on water usage

New York City on Monday issued its first drought warning in 22 years and paused major repairs to its main water aqueduct out of concern for the lack of rainfall.

Dry conditions across the north-east have been blamed for hundreds of brush fires. They had already prompted New York and state officials to implement water-conservation protocols when Mayor Eric Adams upgraded the drought warning and temporarily halted the $2bn Delaware aqueduct project, which was intended to repair leaks in the 80-year-old tunnel.

Marine scientists say one area around Cooktown and Lizard Island had lost more than a third of its live hard coral after bleaching event

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Reefs across the north of the Great Barrier Reef have seen “substantial losses” of coral cover after a summer of extreme heat, two cyclones and major flooding, according to the first results of surveys from government marine scientists.

After the most widespread coral bleaching event seen on the world’s biggest reef system, the Australian Institute of Marine Science said one area around Cooktown and Lizard Island had lost more than a third of its live hard coral – the biggest annual drop in 39 years of monitoring.

When the heat is on, the onus should be on the Coalition to explain why they don’t support measures to ensure their newly discovered battlers have access to rooftop solar

• Guardian Essential poll: almost half of Australian voters want Aukus reviewed after Donald Trump’s election win
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Australia is facing the extreme risk of dangerous concentrations of high pressure and hot air this summer. There is also a strong likelihood of heatwaves.

The return of the performatively anti-climate Donald Trump will see the world’s biggest per capita carbon polluter pull out of global targets, emboldening energy incumbents and their mouthpieces to amp up their attacks on renewables.

Sherry Rehman says rich nations should pay ‘internationally determined contributions’ to help poorer and worst-affected countries

Amid the endless politicking and inscrutable arguments at the UN climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, this month, it can be hard to remember what is at stake. That’s why Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s former climate change minister, is calling on global leaders to “keep an eye on the big picture”.

“We’re here for life and death reasons,” Rehman said.

Cop29 president calls for faster action as progress to agree a climate finance deal slows

• Climate crisis to blame for dozens of ‘impossible’ heatwaves

How usual is it to have G20 happening at the same time as Cop? According to Jen Iris Allan, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University who also writes the Regular Earth Negotiations Bulletin, commenting on Bluesky, it’s not normal at all.

Cop29 happening at the same time as the G20 is a rare opportunity. It gets the leaders of the big economies together in a small setting. They could strike a side deal that would really help here.

The new climate finance target is the big issue that will define COP29. Government ministers are arriving to thrash out everything from the amount of money raised to who contributes towards it.

We’ve seen a few versions of the text as parties make sure their views are represented while trying to produce something their governments can work with. The number of “options” is lower than it was on Wednesday. But the number of brackets - meaning undecided bits - is higher.

It’s still long: 25 pages. Negotiators started with a 9-page text, which they rejected as “unbalanced” - then lots of stuff got added back in. It will need to be shorter. The EU chief negotiator told journalists last week that a 2-page text could capture “everything we need”.

UN climate chief addresses climate summit with no agreement in sight on how to help developing countries

Countries meeting in Azerbaijan to discuss a new global financial settlement for tackling the climate crisis must “cut the theatrics” and get down to serious business, the UN has said.

The UK and Brazil have been drafted in to try to break a logjam at the Cop29 climate summit, which entered its second week on Monday with no agreement in sight on the key issue of how to channel at least $1tn a year to developing countries.

By relying on natural carbon sinks such as forests and peatlands to offset emissions, governments can appear closer to goals than they actually are

Relying on natural carbon sinks such as forests and oceans to offset continued fossil fuel emissions will not stop global heating, the scientists who developed net zero have warned.

Each year, the planet’s oceans, forests, soils and other natural carbon sinks absorb about half of all human emissions, forming part of government plans to limit global heating to below 2C under the Paris agreement.

As the US grapples with smokey skies, Trump is solidifying an anti-science agenda – here are the challenges ahead

In the days that followed Donald Trump’s election win, flames roared through southern California neighborhoods. On the other side of the country, wildfire smoke clouded the skies in New York and New Jersey.

They were haunting reminders of a stark reality: while Trump prepares to take office for a second term, the complicated, and escalating, wildfire crisis will be waiting.

US climate envoy says Trump won’t derail progress as GOP argues for increasing oil and gas production at UN talks

Throughout the UN climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, in recent days, US officials have maintained a studiously sunny disposition, saying that the Republican president-elect, Donald Trump, will not derail climate progress.

The US climate envoy, John Podesta, said the fight “for a cleaner, safer” planet will not stop under a re-elected Trump even if some progress is reversed. The energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said: “The absence of leadership in the White House does not mean that this energy transition is stopped.” And Joe Biden’s climate and energy assistant, Jacob Levine, told reporters that the president’s climate policies had sparked an unstoppable clean energy “revolution”.

Survey also reveals concern about Trump’s effect on economy and climate crisis – although 48% think hotter summers caused by ‘normal fluctuations’

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Almost half of voters (48%) want the Australian government to review Aukus and the acquisition of nuclear submarines after the election of Donald Trump in the US.

Those are the results of the latest Guardian Essential poll of 1,206 voters, which found Australian voters were concerned about the incoming Trump administration’s effect on the economy, peace and climate change.

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The Sutton Dwellings estate in London may offer councils a ‘blueprint’ for ground source heating

Some of the earliest examples of purpose-built social housing in the UK can still be found tucked away along central London’s more affluent streets. Built in Edwardian baroque style, the Sutton Dwellings in Chelsea are perhaps an unlikely site for an innovative scheme at the new frontier of Britain’s low-carbon journey.

This winter more than 80 of the estate’s flats will be warmed by heat pumps that tap the warmth of the earth well below the streets of central London.

Scientists say goal to keep world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is not going to happen despite talks at Cop29 in Baku

The internationally agreed goal to keep the world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is now “deader than a doornail”, with 2024 almost certain to be the first individual year above this threshold, climate scientists have gloomily concluded – even as world leaders gather for climate talks on how to remain within this boundary.

Three of the five leading research groups monitoring global temperatures consider 2024 on track to be at least 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than pre-industrial times, underlining it as the warmest year on record, beating a mark set just last year. The past 10 consecutive years have already been the hottest 10 years ever recorded.

Exclusive: Analyses are stark evidence of how global heating is already supercharging deadly weather beyond anything ever experienced by humanity

• How do we know that the climate crisis is to blame for extreme weather?

At least 24 previously impossible heatwaves have struck communities across the planet, a new assessment has shown, providing stark evidence of how severely human-caused global heating is supercharging extreme weather.

The impossible heatwaves have taken lives across North America, Europe and Asia, with scientific analyses showing that they would have had virtually zero chance of happening without the extra heat trapped by fossil fuel emissions.

Carlos Cuerpo calls on G20 leaders to act and says election results show citizens want redistribution of wealth

Spain’s economy minister has urged the world’s richest countries to “be brave” and redouble efforts to reach an agreement on a global minimum tax on the world’s 3,000 billionaires, saying recent elections have shown citizens are demanding “redistribution of wealth”.

Speaking during a visit to London before the gathering of G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, Carlos Cuerpo said the plan had gained political momentum since the summer, when finance ministers agreed to work together to “ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed”.