The Guardian Climate Change

LNG exports responsible for $957m in total annual US health costs, says new Greenpeace and Sierra Club report

The expansion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports is responsible for scores of premature deaths and nearly $1bn in annual health costs, according to a new report from the green groups Greenpeace and Sierra Club.

The report links air pollution from LNG export terminals to an estimated 60 premature deaths and $957m in total health costs each year, and found that if all planned and proposed terminals come online, those numbers would shoot up to 149 premature deaths and $2.33bn.

WA newspaper throws tantrum and Tony Abbott blames ‘climate cult’ after prime minister misses fossil fuel company’s party

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If we are looking for something to illustrate Australia’s inability to have any coherent and sustained response to the climate crisis over the past couple of decades, we can find it in the reaction to the fossil fuel giant Woodside’s 70th birthday dinner.

That reaction being a little bit of climate science denial, plus some political patronage and big servings of fossil fuel cheerleading barely disguised as journalism.

Experts say climate policies contained within rightwing manifesto would wreck US climate targets and cost jobs

The impact of Donald Trump enacting the climate policies of the rightwing Project 2025 would result in billions of tonnes of extra carbon pollution, wrecking the US’s climate targets, as well as wiping out clean energy investments and more than a million jobs, a new analysis finds.

Should Trump retake the White House and pass the energy and environmental policies in the controversial Project 2025 document, the US’s planet-heating emissions will “significantly increase” by 2.7bn tonnes above the current trajectory by 2030, an amount comparable to the entire annual emissions of India, according to the report.

Rising cost of living and climate crisis have played spoilers to the celebration, which has sold out every year since 2011

For more than a decade, tickets to Burning Man have sold out almost immediately – sometimes in a matter of minutes.

But this year, less than two weeks before the festival kicks off, tickets are still available – raising questions about the future of the annual desert revelry in the face of the climate crisis and economic instability.

This article was amended on 14 August 2024. It previously stated that Burning Man has been held in Nevada’s Black Rock desert since 1986. The festival actually first began on a San Francisco beach in 1986.

Exclusive: In 2024, 15 national temperature records have been set as weather extremes grow more frequent, climate historian says

• How does today’s extreme heat compare with Earth’s past climate?
• ‘You feel like you’re suffocating’: Florida outdoor workers are collapsing in the heat without water and shade

A record 15 national heat records have been broken since the start of this year, an influential climate historian has told the Guardian, as weather extremes grow more frequent and climate breakdown intensifies.

An additional 130 monthly national temperature records have also been broken, along with tens of thousands of local highs registered at monitoring stations from the Arctic to the South Pacific, according to Maximiliano Herrera, who keeps an archive of extreme events.

Viewed through a long enough lens, our climate can seem unremarkable – but for humans it is unprecedented

• Unprecedented number of heat records broken this year
• ‘You feel like you’re suffocating’: Florida outdoor workers are collapsing in the heat without water and shade

Climate records are tumbling at a galloping pace. The world has just experienced its hottest ever single day on record, amid a string of record-breaking months that followed the planet’s hottest recorded year. But how does this cascade of new highs in the era of modern record-keeping compare with the Earth’s deeper history?

Those who piece together what past climates were like in eras before thermometers and satellites – a practice known as palaeoclimatology – find that today’s temperatures are, when narrowly viewed, unremarkable. For example, the Eocene, an epoch lasting from 56m years to 34m years ago, was “screamingly hotter” than today, by about 10-15C, according to Matthew Huber, an expert in historical climates at Purdue University in the US.

Florida has passed legislation banning local safety rules for outdoor workers, despite heat stress set to cost global economy $2.4tn by 2030

• Unprecedented number of heat records broken this year
• How does today’s extreme heat compare with Earth’s past climate?

It was a hot, muggy day in south Florida when Cristina Lopez sank to her knees, overcome by a wave of nausea and dizziness, as the sun beat down relentlessly on the plant nursery where the Guatemalan migrant works with three of her children.

Lopez was thirsty, overheating, and unable to continue lugging plant pots as the heat index topped 100F (38C). She could barely see straight, but employers are not required to give outdoor workers regular breaks or access to shade, and Lopez said she was reprimanded for taking a short rest.

Shareholders and customers of ANZ, Westpac and NAB are bound to demand their banks do the same, expert says

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The Commonwealth Bank, Australia’s largest lender, has broken ranks with rivals and will stop financing fossil fuel companies that aren’t compliant with the Paris climate goals by the end of this year.

Clients failing to meet an emissions pathway consistent with keeping global temperature increases to the “well below 2C goal of the Paris agreement” would not receive “new corporate or trade finance, or bond facilitation with a maturity beyond 31 December 2024”, CBA said.

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Climate protesters were removed from Parliament House by police on Wednesday morning. In a statement, the protesters said they felt 'betrayed by the Albanese government’s abandonment of major reform to our environment laws earlier this year, following pressure from coal and gas companies'

Unicef analysis also finds children in eight countries spend more than half the year in temperatures above 35C

Almost half a billion children are growing up in parts of the world where there are at least twice the number of extremely hot days every year compared with six decades ago, analysis by Unicef has found.

The analysis by the UN’s children’s agency examined for the first time data on changes in children’s exposure to extreme heat over the past 60 years.

Trump talked about ‘nuclear warming’ while Musk said the only reason to quit fossil fuels is that their supply is finite

Donald Trump and Elon Musk both made discursive, often fact-free assertions about global heating, including that rising sea levels would create “more oceanfront property” and that there was no urgent need to cut carbon emissions, during an event labeled “the dumbest climate conversation of all time” by one prominent activist.

Trump, the Republican US presidential nominee, and Musk, the world’s richest person, dwelled on the problem of the climate crisis during their much-hyped conversation on X, formerly known as Twitter and owned by Musk, on Monday, agreeing that the world has plenty of time to move away from fossil fuels, if at all.

In probably the hottest summer ever, workers are organizing in 13 cities to raise alarm about workplace heat exposure

As temperatures in Baltimore neared 100F earlier this month, 36-year-old sanitation worker Ronald Silver II died after he was found lying on the hood of a car and asking for water.

It’s the kind of tragic workplace heat-related death that advocates say could have been avoided with the right labor protections. So this week, during what will probably be the US’s hottest summer on record, frontline workers are organizing actions in 13 cities across the country, raising the alarm about workplace heat exposure.

Opposition and media turn on government as firefighters work to contain ‘scattered hotspots’

Greek authorities are continuing to battle scattered fires on the outskirts of Athens as officials take stock of the damage wreaked by a disaster that forced mass evacuations and killed at least one person.

On Tuesday, the third day of one of the worst wildfires in living memory, firefighters were helped by a drop in winds as they sought to contain the remnants of an inferno that had reached the capital’s northern suburbs and decimated homes and businesses.

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Greece’s opposition wasted little time Tuesday lambasting prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ centre right government for what has been described as a lacklustre response to the inferno.

Stefanos Kasselakis, who heads the main opposition Syriza party, said that he had only witnessed three water-bombing aircraft in action – and not the 35 that officials had cited – when he visited the operational headquarters of the civil protection ministry.

I will say yet again that from the eruption of the fire on Sunday the time that it took to respond by air was five minutes and with fire engines seven minutes.

The reality is this: that despite the speed of the operational response – the new dogma that in combination with the technical support of drones has been enforced with the hundreds of fires confronted this summer – when extreme conditions prevail the problem becomes insurmountable.

In today’s newsletter: As visitors overwhelm Venice, Barcelona and other famous cities, a model rewarding travellers for being more responsible could inspire other municipalities

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Good morning. Today we’re taking a little trip to Copenhagen to explore a new pilot initiative designed to reward tourists for “climate-friendly actions”. The CopenPay scheme has been designed to encourage visitors to act a bit more responsibly and think about their impact on the environment during trips to the Danish capital.

In return for small environmental actions – like cycling to attractions or fishing litter out of the canals – visitors have been rewarded with small gifts such as free ice-cream and museum tours.

Climate crisis | Hot weather inflamed by carbon pollution killed nearly 50,000 people in Europe last year, with the continent warming at a much faster rate than other parts of the world, research has found. Heat-related mortality was highest in Greece, with 393 deaths per million people.

Ukraine | Ukrainian forces have captured 1,000 sq km (386 square miles) of Russia’s bordering Kursk region, Kyiv’s top commander has claimed, as Vladimir Putin vowed a “worthy response” to the attack. 121,000 people have fled the region since the incursion began.

UK news | A shop security guard has described how he overpowered a knifeman as he stabbed an 11-year-old girl and her mother, 34, in a “horrific” and apparently random attack in London’s busy Leicester Square in front of shocked workers and tourists.

UK news | A “series of errors and misjudgments” in Valdo Calocane’s mental health care led to him being discharged, despite repeatedly not taking medication and showing signs of aggression, months before he killed three people in Nottingham, a report says. The Care Quality Commission warned of “systemic issues with community mental health care”.

Technology | Labour MPs have begun quitting X in alarm over the platform’s direction, with one saying Elon Musk had turned it into “a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups”. Meanwhile, Donald Trump gave a rambling interview to Musk on the platform that was marred with technical issues initially preventing many users from watching the conversation.

If elected, the Democrat is likely to face a trade-off over manufacturing jobs and economic independence from China

Every US presidential election is consequential but American voters face an unusually weighty decision in 2024. The outcome will have implications for foreign policy, social policy, and the integrity of the political system. But none of its consequences will be more profound or far-reaching than on global efforts to combat the climate crisis.

As president, Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement, while the US under Joe Biden rejoined it. Trump has promised to expand oil and gas production, and his campaign has said he will again withdraw the US from the Paris accord if he wins a second term.

UN troops are shoring up flood defences in the South Sudan town. But with record rains forecast, the lives of tens of thousands of displaced people could be at risk

Surrounded by towering mud ramparts, the 300,000 residents of Bentiu in South Sudan will spend today, like tomorrow, anxiously scanning the gathering storm clouds. They live in one of the most vulnerable towns on Earth: a sprawling settlement whose streets lie below the water level of a huge lake that is steadily rising on all sides.

Without the dykes built to encircle the capital of the country’s notoriously volatile Unity state, Bentiu would be completely submerged. But fears are mounting that attempts to preserve Bentiu are futile and that it could soon be washed away, potentially with huge loss of life – a catastrophic impact of the climate crisis on a fragile state.

‘Integrated’ work to help biodiversity and tackle climate crisis can also benefit humanity, says Dr Trisha Gopalakrishna

Restoring and protecting the world’s forests is crucial if humanity is to stop the worst effects of climate breakdown and halt the extinction of rare species.

Researchers have been concerned, however, that actions to capture carbon, restore biodiversity and find ways to support the livelihoods of the people who live near and in the forests might be at odds.

Continent is warming at much faster rate than other parts of world, leading to fires, drought and health problems

Hot weather inflamed by carbon pollution killed nearly 50,000 people in Europe last year, with the continent warming at a much faster rate than other parts of the world, research has found.

The findings come as wildfires tore through forests outside Athens, as France issued excessive heat warnings for large swathes of the country, and the UK baked through what the Met Office expects will be its hottest day of the year.

Number of people seeking emergency care for heat-related illnesses is up in cities including Rome, Florence and Venice

The number of people accessing emergency care for heat-related illnesses has risen sharply in some of Italy’s most popular tourist cities, as the country experiences an intense heatwave that is failing to deter visitors.

Italy has been engulfed in consecutive heatwaves since around the middle of June. Some central and southern areas are expected to record temperatures above 40C in the coming days.