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Guardian investigation reveals fossil fuel links of IPCC authors, with experts declaring the body’s conflict of interest policy ‘not fit for purpose’
On her first day as an expert author on the world’s most important climate reports, Prof Julia Steinberger knew nobody else, so she sat down at a stranger’s table for breakfast.
“Hi, I’m Julia. I’m from the University of Lausanne,” she said. The man across the table replied: “I’m Mustafa Babiker. I work with Saudi Aramco.”
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Rafael Moreno, whose company has opened demo plant in Brazil, says market is ‘nervous’ as Trump-Xi summit looms
The head of a mining company hoping to supply the EU with rare earths in two years’ time has said it is “paramount” to end China’s stranglehold on the supply of the raw materials used in everything from cars to wind turbines and military jets.
As Donald Trump and China’s president, Xi Jinping, prepare to meet on Thursday in their second summit of the year, Rafael Moreno said it was also “imperative” that they do a deal for Beijing to ease up, once again, on its threat to ban exports of rare earths.
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Brigg, Lincolnshire: As my attention turns to drilling next year’s cash crops, I create a disturbance out in the fields
Sometimes a moment of surprise has years of experience behind it. Last week as I was out in the oilseed rape fields applying a cocktail of microbe food (molasses, humates and fish paste), I had quite a shock when up went a large flock of grey partridges, a covey of 26. Twelve would be considered large, with red-legged partridges only ever appearing in pairs, but I’ve not seen 26 grey here in my lifetime.
This is testament to our nature‑friendly approach to farming, including this year planting specific margins to encourage sawfly larvae, crickets, weevils and ground beetles. These insects form the entire diet of grey partridges (and yellowhammers) during their first two weeks of life. In addition, rather than just planting overwinter cover crops and “catch” crops to mop up loose nutrients and protect the soil from the elements, I now add millet, the seed of which is a boost for older birds. The idea is to create a mosaic of habitats that connect through the landscape.
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Exclusive: The tax-funded research aims to protect British wildlife from the human-caused climate crisis
Vaccines for ash trees, skin treatments for newts and gene-edited swallowtail butterflies are among 14 tax-funded projects from the UK’s “invention agency” aiming to accelerate nature’s ability to adapt to the climate crisis.
The £54m accelerated adaptation programme from the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) – a public body that funds high-risk, high-reward tech projects – aims to investigate applications of biotechnology that can speed up wild species’ evolution and help them to adapt to new threats such as global warming and disease.
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Amid record-shattering heatwaves and popular demand for climate action, why are politicians often timid or in denial?
It was, according to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the “summer of truth”. Climate chaos ripped through Europe and the northern hemisphere, sending heat records tumbling, scorching crops in the fields, burning forests, emptying rivers and reservoirs, warping train tracks, melting roads and killing about 35,000 people in Europe alone.
The EU has estimated the damage at about €180bn, and the full bill is yet to arrive: harvests have been depleted, which will probably raise food price inflation, and expensive repairs to infrastructure have only just begun.
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Much of the UK is still officially in drought after its hottest summer on record, but grasslands are slowly recovering their colour
The landscapes of southern England and Wales are slowly regaining their colour after this summer’s extreme heat.
The UK’s hottest summer on record left the south of the country dried out and brown, making the impact of the drought particularly visual.
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After summer’s heatwaves, prepare for winter of storms and heavy rain, with millions of UK homes at risk of flooding
The accelerating climate crisis and this year’s record-breaking El Niño mean that, although the summer’s heatwaves are still fresh in the memory, households in the UK are already being told to prepare for a potentially destructive winter of storms and heavy rain – leaving millions of homes at risk of flooding.
Government action is needed to improve flood defences and build reliance on a national and regional level. But with the UK’s flood season just weeks away, the Guardian spoke to experts to find out what action communities and individuals can take to make their neighbourhoods and homes more resilient, from self-closing airbricks to deflated children’s footballs.
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The Canadian government has committed C$25m to try to rescue the caribou in the province – but there is no agreement on how best to save the keystone species
The caribou of Quebec are at breaking point. The province, home to 15% of Canada’s population of woodland caribou, has seen numbers crash to about half of what they were a decade ago. For years, local First Nations people, researchers and environmental groups have criticised the provincial government’s lack of action on protecting caribou, an animal considered a keystone species by Indigenous peoples.
A recently announced agreement between the federal and Quebec governments has raised hopes that the province will finally be compelled to release a protection strategy. The federal government has committed C$25m (£13m) to the province for caribou over five years, with an additional C$15m for the First Nations communities on whose land the herds live.
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Intensified by this year’s super El Niño, fires in Borneo and Sumatra are emitting toxic air for swathes of the population in Indonesia and its neighbours
For months, parts of Indonesia’s Borneo and Sumatra islands have been ablaze. The fires are sometimes lit illegally as a cheap way to clear land for plantations of oil palm, of which Indonesia is the world’s largest producer.
So prevalent is the technique that it even has a special term: slash and burn.
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People are increasingly crossing paths with the wild animals as homes ring the outskirts of forests, sparking a new era of coexistence
Every year, as summer draws to a close and fall begins, California’s bears get hungry.
Black bears have long roamed the state, hunting for acorns, ants and pine nuts by the bucketload to pack on calories before hibernation. But increasingly, for every berry and root, there’s an even greater temptation: our trash and the detritus of human existence.
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