The Guardian Climate Change

King Felipe VI reportedly plans to revisit Valencia amid alerts for heavy rain, high waves and strong winds

People in flood-hit Spain stacked sandbags and braced for new storms on Tuesday as the political repercussions from last month’s deadly climate disaster rumbled on.

Amid fresh weather warnings, local media reported that King Felipe VI would soon return to the site of the flash floods, after he was pelted with mud and eggs on his first visit last week owing to local fury at the poor preparation and response of the authorities.

Greenpeace and Uplift say Rosebank and Jackdaw licences were granted unlawfully by former Tory government

Climate campaigners have urged a Scottish court to cancel the licence to drill the UK’s largest untapped oilfield, arguing it will cause “sizeable” and unjustified damage to the planet.

Greenpeace and Uplift accuse the former Conservative government of having unlawfully given the Norwegian oil giant Equinor a licence to exploit the Rosebank oilfield, which sits 80 miles (130km) north-west of Shetland and holds nearly 500m barrels of oil and gas.

Keir Starmer has confirmed that the UK has committed to an 81% cut to emissions by 2035. The prime minister also said the British government was due to launch the CIF Capital Markets Mechanism, a climate finance scheme, on the London Stock Exchange to help developing countries

• UK has ‘huge opportunity’ to lead on green investment, Starmer says

• Cop29 – live updates

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In the halls of Cop29, activists from Oil Change International gathered around a computer to watch a Dutch court’s ruling on a major ruling.

In this morning’s verdict, the Dutch appeals court struck down a 2021 ruling ordering oil and gas giant Shell to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels. The activists were devastated.

Environmental Protection Agency rule seeks to curb ‘super pollutant’ more potent than carbon dioxide in short term

Oil and natural gas companies for the first time will have to pay a federal fee if they emit dangerous methane above certain levels under a rule being made final by the Biden administration.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule follows through on a directive from Congress included in the 2022 climate law. The new fee is intended to encourage industry to adopt best practices that reduce emissions of methane – the primary component of natural gas – and thereby avoid paying the fee.

Keir Starmer said the government won't be 'telling people how to live their lives' as part of the drive to achieve climate goals. Speaking to reporters on day two of Cop29 in Azerbaijan, the British prime minister confirmed a stringent new climate goal for the UK to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee. The goal would be achieved by decarbonising the power sector and through a big expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy

• We can hit UK’s big carbon cut without disruption to people’s lives, says Starmer – UK politics live

• UK has ‘huge opportunity’ to lead on green investment, Starmer says

'2024 – a masterclass in climate destruction.' That is how the UN secretary general, António Guterres, started his address to world leaders at Cop29 on Tuesday. 'Families running for their lives before the next hurricane strikes; workers and pilgrims collapsing in insufferable heat; floods tearing through communities, and tearing down infrastructure; children going to bed hungry as droughts ravage crops. All these disasters, and more, are being supercharged by human-made climate change,' he said

• Cop29: 2024 has been ‘masterclass in climate destruction’, says UN chief – live updates

• Critics say approval of ‘climate credits’ rules on day one of Cop29 was rushed

Oil and gas company had challenged 2021 ruling that it must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030

Shell has won its appeal against a landmark climate judgment by a Dutch court, which in 2021 ordered the fossil fuel company to sharply reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

A court of appeal ruled on Tuesday that, while Shell does have a “special responsibility” to cut its emissions as a big oil company, this would not be achieved by imposing a specific legal goal.

PM says Britain can ‘win the race’ as Trump’s election casts doubt on global efforts to tackle climate change

Britain has a “huge opportunity” to get ahead of other countries in the race for green investment after the election of Donald Trump as US president, Keir Starmer has said, as he arrives in Azerbaijan for the Cop29 summit.

Trump’s election victory last week has cast doubt on global efforts to tackle climate change, which the president-elect has called a “hoax”. But as the most senior world leader attending the summit in Baku, Starmer said the global political turmoil could benefit the UK economy.

President-elect says ex-New York congressman will ‘ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions’ as EPA administrator

• US politics – live updates

Donald Trump has picked Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), vowing the appointment will “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions” by the regulator.

Trump, who oversaw the rollback of more than 100 environmental rules when he last was US president, said that Zeldin was a “true fighter for America First policies” and that “he will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet”.

Exclusive: Target is 81% emissions cut compared with 1990, but activists say it must be backed by plan of action

Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.

The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee.

Agreement on rules paving way for rich countries to pay for cheap climate action abroad breaks years-long deadlock

Diplomats have greenlit key rules that govern the trade of “carbon credits”, breaking a years-long deadlock and paving the way for rich countries to pay for cheap climate action abroad while delaying expensive emission cuts at home.

The agreement, reached late on the first day of Cop29 in Azerbaijan, was hailed by the hosts as an early win at climate talks that have been snubbed by prominent world leaders and clouded by the threat of a US retreat from climate diplomacy after Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election.

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UN climate chief Simon Stiell gave a moving speech at the Cop29 opening plenary on Monday, writes Dharna Noor, fossil fuels and climate reporter for Guardian US, who is reporting from Baku.

“In tough times, up against difficult tasks, I don’t go in for hopes and dreams,” he said. “What inspires me is human ingenuity and determination. Our ability to get knocked down and to get up again over and over again, until we accomplish our goals.”

Even if president-elect rolls back climate progress, John Podesta reaffirms commitment to a clean planet at Cop29

The US climate envoy John Podesta said the fight “for a cleaner, safer” planet will not stop under a re-elected Donald Trump even if some progress is reversed, speaking at the Cop29 UN climate talks on Monday as they opened in Baku, Azerbaijan.

“Although under Donald Trump’s leadership the US federal government placed climate-related actions on the back burner, efforts to prevent climate change remain a commitment in the US and will confidently continue,” said Podesta, who is leading the Biden administration’s delegation at the annual talks.

Much is unclear about how Donald Trump’s return to power will affect efforts to tackle global heating, but there are a few things we can say

You’ve likely already heard the worst-case takes: that a second Trump presidency is a disaster for the climate, and will almost certainly lead to emissions being higher than they otherwise would have been. There’s obvious truth in that. But it’s also true that Trump 2.0 will almost certainly not play out in line with immediate post-election predictions.

We have been here before. As the writer and analyst Ketan Joshi points out, in 2016 it was projected that Trump’s policies would lead to a steep rise in US emissions – a fork in the road at odds with the decline forecast if Hillary Clinton had won.

Exclusive: Environmental group says it is ‘concerned’ to hear progress on cleaning up air pollution from diesel-burning may have hit a wall

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Work to regulate one of Australia’s biggest sources of carbon dioxide and other pollutants “has stalled”, despite the project beginning six years ago and comparable nations limiting emissions years earlier, New South Wales government documents have revealed.

State and federal environment ministers agreed in 2018 to examine pollution from non-road diesel engines as part of the national clean air agreement. These machines totalled more than 640,000 – ranging from mining trucks, outboard motors and forklifts to electricity generators – and were forecast to reach 945,000 by 2043.

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How do you capture the effects of the climate crisis on people right now? We have collected testimonies from around the world

• This is climate breakdown: ‘I heard on the scanner there’s a child in the water’

In March 2024, the Guardian’s environment desk began collaborating on a project that we hope will give voice to the growing number of people around the world living through the daily impact of climate breakdown. Our journalists have worked alongside researchers and humanitarian workers at the Climate Disaster Project (CDP) in Canada and the International Red Cross to compile a series of testimonies from survivors of recent extreme weather events.

CDP is an international teaching newsroom coordinated out of the University of Victoria in Canada that collaborates with disaster survivors. The teams are trained in trauma-informed interview skills, and spent hours speaking with people, listening to their stories and then relaying them in a way that takes us all through the experience. In publishing these testimonies and sharing them with you, we were able to help fulfil the project’s aim of creating “a people’s history of climate change” that would honour the dignity of the survivors.

UN’s top climate official warns ‘no country is immune’ from climate disaster as conference begins in Azerbaijan

Businesses in the private sector must stump up cash for the developing world to invest in a low-carbon economy or face the consequences of climate breakdown, the president of the UN climate summit has said.

Mukhtar Babayev, the environment minister of Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s climate conference, wrote in Monday’s Guardian: “The onus cannot fall entirely on government purses. Unleashing private finance for developing countries’ transition has long been an ambition of climate talks.

This emergency will cost trillions of dollars, and is beyond the reach of developing nations. Private investors have to step up

• Mukhtar Babayev is president of the Cop29 UN climate change conference

To avert climate catastrophe, the world needs more climate finance. At Cop29, the UN climate summit in Baku that begins today, agreeing a new climate finance goal is the top priority of Azerbaijan’s Cop presidency.

Developing countries require assistance to tackle their emissions and build resilience against growing climate threats. The $100bn annual target, set in 2009, was intended to be fulfilled by 2020. It is now outdated and falls far short of what is needed for countries at the sharp end of the climate crisis.

Mukhtar Babayev is president of the Cop29 UN climate change conference

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The ‘theme’ chosen for Cop29 must be some kind of dark joke. This summit, like those before it, is a mere act of greenwashing

During rapidly escalating climate and humanitarian crises, another authoritarian petrostate with no respect for human rights is hosting Cop29 – the UN’s latest annual climate summit that starts today and is being held after the re-election of a climate-denier US president.

Cop meetings have proven to be greenwashing conferences that legitimise countries’ failures to ensure a livable world and future and have also allowed authoritarian regimes like Azerbaijan and the two previous hosts – the United Arab Emirates and Egypt – to continue violating human rights.

Greta Thunberg is a Swedish activist and international climate crisis campaigner