10 h. ago Pentagon retreats from climate fight even as heat and storms slam US troops

For decades, the military treated climate crisis as a threat. Now it’s backing away from plans to protect people and bases from extreme weatherThis story is from Floodlight, a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.Retired Marine Corps gunnery sergeant Vida Rivera knows heat can be as dangerous as any enemy. Continue reading...

Society

42 h. ago Trump calls climate science a ‘con job’. That could make tackling the crisis a whole lot easier | Francesco Grillo

Europe and Brazil have a rare opportunity, unimpeded by the US, to make a success of Cop30 – and reshape the world orderThe climate crisis, Donald Trump told the UN last month, is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”. With these words the US president rejected the international scientific consensus and evidence that we can all check daily with a basic thermometer. He has also announced he is withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement, signed in 2015 by 195 UN countries. The US joins an axis of deniers including Yemen, Iran and Libya, countries that signed the agreement but never ratified it.Paradoxically, Trump’s reversal provides an opportunity for others to advance the climate agenda: to sketch out the blueprint of a possible new world order without the US, even if Washington was the architect of the old one.Francesco Grillo is a visiting fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, and director of the thinktank Vision Continue reading...

Politics

46 h. ago Poor countries paying billions more to cover debts than they receive as aid to fight climate crisis

The world’s least developed countries paid US $37 billion (£28bn) to service their debts in 2023, but received only $32 billion (£24bn) in climate finance

Economics

3 d. ago Why should you be Labour’s next deputy leader? Guardian readers quiz the candidates

As party members prepare to choose between Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell, the pair answer questions on wealth taxes, Brexit, the climate crisis and the far right Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago How climate crisis is creating hellish conditions for waste pickers at Nairobi dump declared ‘full’ 24 years ago

Nairobi’s Dandora dumpsite continues to receive 2,000 tonnes of waste each day despite being declared full in 2001. Waste pickers who come each day searching for valuables to sell tell Nick Ferris how extreme heat and rains are making the work increasingly difficult

Society

5 d. 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

6 d. 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

6 d. 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

6 d. 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

7 d. 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

8 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

1 week 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

1 week 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

1 week 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

1 week 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

1 week 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

2 w. 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

2 w. 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

2 w. 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

2 w. 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