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UK energy secretary says UN climate talks must find way to keep proposals alive despite significant resistance
Supporters of a global phaseout of fossil fuels must find “creative” ways to keep the proposal alive, including making it voluntary rather than binding, the UK energy secretary, Ed Miliband, has said in the closing stages of the UN climate talks.
As the Cop30 summit in Brazil carried on past the Friday night deadline, the prospect of countries agreeing on the need for a roadmap to a global “transition away from fossil fuels” looked increasingly dim. A first draft of the potential outcome text from the summit had contained the formulation, but in the updated draft text produced on Friday by the Brazilian presidency it had been excised.
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Organised criminals face few repercussions for dumping toxic rubbish as Environment Agency struggles to keep up
In a once scenic ancient woodland outside Ashford, an enormous biohazard cleanup operation is under way to remove the toxic aftermath of the criminal dumping of 35,000 tonnes of rubbish.
Tankers come and go along a new road, built for the purpose. Behind metal gates away from public view, specialists in hazmat suits dig through the mountain of waste dumped on an industrial scale in a woodland that is a protected site of special scientific interest.
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She was sure that there would be warnings if there was any danger. But then the floods came. This is Toñi García’s story
Location Valencia, Spain
Disaster Floods, 2024
Toñi García lives in Valencia. On 29 October 2024, devastating storms hit the Iberian peninsula, bringing the heaviest rain so far this century. The national alert system sounded at around8.30pm local time; by then, however, flood waters had already broken through the city. Scientists say the explosive downpours were linked to climate change.
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Dalby Forest, the North York Moors: It was a misty morning in the forest, and everything was damp – that’s when I saw one for the first time
If you ask someone to draw a mushroom, chances are they will draw a red cap with white dots and a stalk, but they have probably never seen one like this outside of a book. I saw these elusive mushrooms for the first time this autumn when we went to Dalby Forest.
It was early morning and the mist was rolling across the forest, making everything slightly damp. I love forests at this time of year, with the decomposing leaves creating that autumn smell, letting you know that winter is getting closer. I had come with my family to go on a forest walk, and that’s when I saw it.
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Need for new road taxes is clear – but there are concerns that pricing plan could stall transition away from petrol
Three pence: a small charge per mile for an electric vehicle, but a giant conceptual leap for Britain.
Chancellors of the exchequer have long resisted any form of road pricing as politically toxic. That may be about to change next week: Rachel Reeves, perhaps inured to being pilloried for any money-raising proposal, is expected to introduce a charge explicitly linked to how far EVs drive.
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National Trust begins planting the 49 ‘trees of hope’ so the illegally felled tree can live on in a positive way
Saplings from the felled Sycamore Gap tree are to be planted across the UK, including at a pit disaster site, a town still healing from the Troubles and a place which became an international symbol of peace, protest and feminism.
The National Trust said planting of 49 saplings, known as “trees of hope”, would begin on Saturday. It is hoped that the sycamore will live on in a positive, inspirational way.
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Climate sceptics tell us that more people die of extreme cold than extreme heat. What’s the truth?
I began by trying to discover whether or not a widespread belief was true. In doing so, I tripped across something even bigger: an index of the world’s indifference. I already knew that by burning fossil fuels, gorging on meat and dairy, and failing to make even simple changes, the rich world imposes a massive burden of disaster, displacement and death on people whose responsibility for the climate crisis is minimal. What I’ve now stumbled into is the vast black hole of our ignorance about these impacts.
What I wanted to discover was whether it’s true that nine times as many of the world’s people die of cold than of heat. The figure is often used by people who want to delay climate action: if we do nothing, some maintain, fewer will die. Of course, they gloss over all the other impacts of climate breakdown: the storms, floods, droughts, fires, crop failures, disease and sea level rise. But is this claim, at least, correct?
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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Ending use of coal, oil and gas is essential in tackling climate crisis – but even talking about it is controversial
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Climate summit in Brazil needs to find way to stop global heating accelerating amid stark divisions
“It broke my heart.” Surangel Whipps, president of the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, was sitting in the front row of the UN’s general assembly in New York when Donald Trump made a long and rambling speech, his first to the UN since his re-election, on 23 September.
Whipps was prepared for fury and bombast from the US president, but what followed was shocking. Trump’s rant on the climate crisis – a “green scam”, “the greatest con job ever perpetrated”, “predictions made by stupid people” – was an unprecedented attack on science and global action from a major world leader.
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Brazil’s president welcomes world leaders while navigating divided government, promising action on deforestation and emissions
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has welcomed world leaders to Belém for the first climate summit in the Amazon, where conservationists hope he can be a champion for the rainforest and its people.
But with a divided administration, a hostile Congress and 20th-century developmentalist instincts, this global figurehead of the centre left has a balancing act to perform in advocating protection of nature and a reduction of emissions.
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Photo: Vivian Grisogono
