20 h. ago ‘Humanitarian’ visa must be created for Pacific Islanders displaced by climate crisis, experts say

Calls for reform to allow people across the Pacific threatened by climate crisis to more easily migrate, particularly to New ZealandClimate and migration experts are calling for urgent action to create legal pathways for people displaced by the climate crisis, as a new report highlights the scale of the problem across the Pacific.Research by Amnesty International released on Thursday found current immigration systems are inadequate for Pacific Islanders seeking safety and stability, as rising seas threaten to make their homelands uninhabitable. Continue reading...

Events

29 h. ago National security threatened by climate crisis, UK defence chiefs due to warn

Report by joint intelligence committee delayed, with concerns expressed that it may not be published The UK’s national security is under severe threat from the climate crisis and the looming collapse of vital natural ecosystems, with food shortages and economic disaster potentially just years away, a powerful report by the UK’s defence chiefs is due to warn.However, the report, which was supposed to launch on Thursday at a landmark event in London, has been delayed, and concerns have been expressed to the Guardian that it may not now be published. Continue reading...

Events

29 h. ago National security threatened by climate crisis, UK intelligence chiefs due to warn

Report by joint intelligence committee delayed, with concerns expressed that it may not be published The UK’s national security is under severe threat from the climate crisis and the looming collapse of vital natural ecosystems, with food shortages and economic disaster potentially just years away, a powerful report by the UK’s intelligence chiefs is due to warn.However, the report, which was supposed to launch on Thursday at a landmark event in London, has been delayed, and concerns have been expressed to the Guardian that it may have been blocked by number 10. Continue reading...

Events

40 h. ago Canada’s former climate minister on making a change, ‘aloof’ Trudeau and sexism

Catherine McKenna’s memoir delves into thorny parts of being in office including death threats and being referred to as ‘climate Barbie’Imagine there was a truck heading directly for your children. What would you do? Surely everything in your power to save them, including jumping in its way? Catherine McKenna, formerly the Canadian minister for environment and climate change, borrows this analogy for the climate crisis from a colleague to argue that we need to use “all the tools at our disposal” to tackle devastating danger that is already with us.McKenna has recently published Run Like a Girl, which documents her time in government, among other things. Peppered with inspirational quotes, personal photos and campaign memorabilia, Run Like a Girl isn’t a straightforward memoir. She wrote it for “women and young people who want to make change”. Continue reading...

Politics

65 h. ago In Spain, what once seemed impossible is now widespread: the young are turning to the far right | María Ramírez

Migration is barely mentioned – instead, failed policies on housing, wages and employment are driving young voters into the arms of VoxAccording to recent polls, almost 40% of Spanish men aged between 18 and 34 say that they plan to vote for Vox, the far-right party. Vox won its first seat in the Spanish parliament in 2019 and now it is surging again. Its recent success is no longer a story of just male voters, either: 20% of young women say they would vote for Vox, with the biggest increase among the youngest voters in that group.It seems that the younger you are in Spain at the moment, the more likely you are to vote for a party that advocates, among other things, the mass expulsion of immigrants in order to preserve “Spanish identity”, the restriction of abortion, end-of-life and trans rights, the dismantling of the European Union’s institutions and the rejection of policies to tackle the climate crisis. Older generations continue to back the two largest parties, the centre-left ...

Politics

3 d. ago Inside The Independent’s Climate 100 event celebrating pioneers in environmental action

The Independent has hosted its second annual Climate 100 event, recognising the environmentalists who are leading the fight against the climate crisis.

Politics

6 d. ago Asad Rehman’s journey from antiracism campaigner in Burnley to head of Friends of the Earth

Climate crisis is ‘interconnected crisis of inequality’, says Rehman, who began organising at his school in the 1970s Each weekday morning, every child in the south Asian community in Burnley would gather before making the journey to school. It was the 1970s, the National Front were mobilising, and they were the children of south Asian workers invited to Britain a decade earlier to fill labour shortages.Among them was Asad Rehman, who had moved to the Lancashire town with his family from Pakistan at the age of four. “We would all walk together, because it was dangerous to walk alone,” he remembers. “Younger children in the middle, older children around the edge, because we’d be attacked on the way.” Continue reading...

Events

6 d. ago ‘Planetary health diet’ could save 40,000 deaths a day, landmark report finds

Diet allows modest meat consumption and would also slash food-related climate emissions by half, says report by 70 leading experts from 35 countriesAdoption of a plant-rich “planetary health diet” could prevent 40,000 early deaths a day across the world, according to a landmark report.The diet – which allows moderate meat consumption – and related measures would also slash the food-related emissions driving global heating by half by 2050. Today, a third of greenhouse gas emissions come from the global food system and taming the climate crisis is impossible without changing how the world eats, the researchers said. Food production is also the biggest cause of the destruction of wildlife and forests and the pollution of water. Continue reading...

Events

7 d. ago Wildfires are getting deadlier and costing more. Experts warn they’re becoming unstoppable

Of 200 fires in the past 44 years, half of the fires that cost US$1bn or more were in the last decadeWildfires tore through central Chile last year, killing 133 people. In California, 18,000 buildings were destroyed in 2018 causing US$16bn (A$24bn, £12bn) in damage. Portugal, Greece, Algeria and Australia have all felt the grief and the economic pain in recent years.As the headlines, the death tolls and the billion dollar losses from wildfires have stacked up around the world, so too have the rising temperatures – fuelled by the climate crisis – that create tinderbox conditions. Continue reading...

Events

7 d. ago Visions of resistance: women fighting to save their homeland – in pictures

The theme of this year’s Women By Women exhibition, Rooted in Resistance, is to showcase images of women defending their land and communities from destruction – by powerful people and corporations or the climate crisis. The pictures, taken by female photographers from Nepal, Cambodia, Brazil and Nigeria, will be on show at the Oxo Gallery in London from 9 to 12 October Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago Tea farmers struggle to pay medical bills as the climate crisis impacts crop sizes

As part of Fairtrade Fortnight, Kenyan tea farmers supplying the UK tell Nick Ferris that extreme weather is bringing new health problems – which they are struggling to deal with as declining production impacts their income

Society

9 d. ago US energy department cracks down on workers’ use of climate crisis language

Efficiency employees reportedly told to avoid ‘climate change’ and similar terms in their work in latest clampdownThe US Department of Energy has told employees in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to avoid using the words “climate change” in what seems to be the latest incident in a crackdown on discussing the climate crisis in the US government.“Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid – and continue to be conscientious about avoiding any terminology that you know to be misaligned with the Administration’s perspectives and priorities,” says an email from an agency acting director obtained by Politico. Continue reading...

Events

9 d. ago Our world is hurtling into climate disaster and what do politicians give us? Oilfields and new runways | Bill McGuire

In the name of ‘pragmatism’, green measures are being ditched, net zero derided. Be very clear: without slashing emissions we are in deep, deep troubleThe hope that followed the signing of the Paris climate agreement in 2016 has long gone as the global community has failed utterly to rein in emissions, which – barring a small pandemic-induced blip in 2020 – have headed remorselessly upwards ever since. And there is little sign of this changing anytime soon. Indeed, as global heating has accelerated over the past few years, instead of trying harder, the world is turning its back on measures to tackle the climate crisis.In the UK, Labour is considering the approval of two major new oilfields in the North Sea – Rosebank and Jackdaw – with both Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves reported to be backing the proposals, which would lock in reliance on fossil fuels at the expense of renewables. Alongside this, instead of the government introducing measures to reduce aviation emissions, such as a...

Politics

9 d. ago World’s major cities hit by 25% leap in extremely hot days since the 1990s

Capitals from London to Tokyo need urgent action to protect people from deadly high temperatures, analysts sayThe world’s biggest capital cities are now sweltering under 25% more extremely hot days each year than in the 1990s, an analysis has found. Without urgent action to protect millions of people from high temperatures, more and more will suffer in the dangerous conditions, analysts said.From Washington DC and Madrid to Tokyo and Beijing, the analysis shows a marked rise in hot days as the climate crisis intensifies. Overall, the assessment by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), found the number of days above 35C in 43 of the world’s most populous capital cities rose from an average of 1,062 a year from 1994-2003 to 1,335 from 2015-2024. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago Interactive map shows how much pollution is blanketing your city

‘Facilities that burn fossil fuels are the overwhelmingly dominant source of heat-trapping pollution that is driving the climate crisis – by using the sky as if it were an open sewer,’ says Al Gore, whose climate group backed the tool

Politics

1 week ago German identity doesn’t rely on cars – Brussels should face down the mighty automakers

Mercedes-Benz and other big manufacturers want to overturn the EU’s 2035 ban on petrol cars. This would be as disastrous for jobs as for the climateThere is something rather old-fashioned about the way Germany views its car industry. When the prime minister of Bavaria, Markus Söder, calls the car the destiny of Germany and the heart of its economy, and says that “without the car, collapse is imminent”, the vehicle he seems to be describing is one with a combustion engine, running on fossil fuels or their derivatives. This nostalgic attachment to the heavy-duty, polluting industries of the 20th century is now colliding with the urgent realities of the climate crisis.Earlier this month, heads of European automotive companies gathered in the Berlaymont building, the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels, for a meeting with its president, Ursula von der Leyen. German car manufacturers came with two demands: to reverse the EU ban on the manufacture of new cars with CO2-emit...

Politics

1 week ago German identity doesn’t rely on cars – Brussels should face down the mighty automakers | Tania Roettger

Mercedes-Benz and other big manufacturers want to overturn the EU’s 2035 ban on petrol cars. This would be as disastrous for jobs as for the climateThere is something rather old-fashioned about the way Germany views its car industry. When the prime minister of Bavaria, Markus Söder, calls the car the destiny of Germany and the heart of its economy, and says that “without the car, collapse is imminent”, the vehicle he seems to be describing is one with a combustion engine, running on fossil fuels or their derivatives. This nostalgic attachment to the heavy-duty, polluting industries of the 20th century is now colliding with the urgent realities of the climate crisis.Earlier this month, heads of European automotive companies gathered in the Berlaymont building, the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels, for a meeting with its president, Ursula von der Leyen. German car manufacturers came with two demands: to reverse the EU ban on the manufacture of new cars with CO2-emit...

Politics

1 week ago Meat is a leading emissions source – but few outlets report on it, analysis finds

Sentient Media reveals less than 4% of climate news stories mention animal agriculture as source of carbon emissionsFood and agriculture contribute one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions – second only to the burning of fossil fuels. And yet the vast majority of media coverage of the climate crisis overlooks this critical sector, according to a new data analysis from Sentient Media.The findings suggest that only about a quarter of climate articles in 11 major US outlets, including the Guardian, mention food and agriculture as a cause. And of the 940 articles analyzed, only 36 – or 3.8% – mentioned animal agriculture or meat production, by far the largest source of food-related emissions. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago Amazon rainforest trees are getting bigger due to climate crisis, study finds

Scientists say the findings should not obscure the devastation wrought by deforestation

Events

2 w. ago Former president Peter Mutharika defeats incumbent in Malawi presidential election

Lazarus Chakwera, who presided over a multi-year economic crisis, concedes election after 85-year-old Mutharika wins 56.8% of voteMalawians have voted in an 85-year-old former leader over an incumbent who presided over a multi-year economic crisis, high inflation, essential goods shortages, climate disasters and international aid cuts.Peter Mutharika got 56.8% of the vote compared with 33% for Lazarus Chakwera, according to official results of the 16 September presidential election announced on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Politics