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Third day of UN talks begin but leaders of many big polluting nations absent
If you haven’t guessed already, I’m at the opening ceremony with my colleague Oliver Milman. We were rushed from a staging area to the plenary room by a UN police officer and I broke into a slight jog.
The “Legendary Dance Show: Fire of Anatolia” is, we think, coming to an end. It was very good. A gentleman who I assume is the choreographer is up front taking some plaudits.
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The transition to electric vehicles should be moving apace, but it is not. And why? Incompetence, expedience and cowardice
This is how it works. An industry puts tremendous effort into resisting change: lobbying governments, mobilising the media, pouring money into junktanks. It argues that a transition would threaten jobs, or damage the national interest, or harm poor people, while what it really fears is the cost of retooling its plants or developing new protocols. Then, when the inevitable cliff edge approaches, it whines that change is coming too soon. For reasons beyond its control, it isn’t ready, so the government must delay its plans.
This is what triggered the Dutch nitrate crisis, and the UK’s repeated “emergency” exemptions from the ban on a devastating class of pesticides. Now the same dynamic is driving the UK’s crisis over the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). The result is that, as the global climate summit, Cop31, begins, it looks as if our gift to the world will be a major, predictable and entirely avoidable increase in the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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As the IUCN global conservation body prepares to update its red list of endangered species, scientists explain why calculating the true toll of a pandemic is so hard
It began with the brown skuas. The migratory seabirds had arrived on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia in 2023, harbouring a deadly passenger. Within months, the southern elephant seals that had come ashore to breed became sick. Mothers and newborn pups were weak and trembling, with many struggling to breathe. What followed was a horrific mass casualty event, caused by the highly infectious avian influenza (H5N1).
By 2025, more than 53,000 female elephant seals had died on South Georgia. That is especially alarming, scientists say, because the island is home to more than half of the global breeding population.
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Forget the hoopoes and the ring-necked parakeets, the highlight of our trip was a sound I hadn’t heard for 50 years
As dusk falls on a warm October evening, I gradually become aware of a strange, high-pitched sizzling noise. From our table outside a busy bar, with Spaniards celebrating their national holiday, it reminds me of water carelessly tossed into a scorching frying pan.
I approach a bougainvillea bush decked with rich purple flowers, and the collective clamour separates into distinct notes. I realise I am listening to hundreds – perhaps thousands – of house sparrows, each bird calling frantically to their companions as they gather to roost for the night. It’s a sound I haven’t heard for more than 50 years.
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Conservationists relocate 3,400 one-flowered wintergreens, a species estimated to have lost more than half its UK population in the past 50 years
Thousands of one of Britain’s rarest wildflowers have been moved to safety from an eroding Scottish shoreline where they were at risk of falling into the sea.
Conservationists rescued 3,400 one-flowered wintergreen plants at Culbin Forest in Moray, in an effort to protect a species estimated to have lost more than half its UK population in the past 50 years.
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Upwood, Cambridgeshire: This woodland is a stronghold for elm trees – and that brings the prospect of finding a stunning rarity, the wrinkled peach
Above me, a lively breeze moves through the tall elms, branches creaking between gusts. Most of the crowns look healthy, but a few stand skeletal against the sky, suggesting Dutch elm disease. Below them, the woodland floor is scattered with fallen trunks. I find pale bonnet fungi rising from the mossy bark and the frilled fans of tripe fungus. Where older logs have shed their bark, the exposed wood is marked by elm bark beetle etchings (or “galleries”) and the emergence holes of deadwood beetles.
Raveley Wood is one of a chain of small, elm-rich woods along the Cambridgeshire fen edge. I’m here searching for wrinkled peach, a contender for Britain’s most beautiful mushroom: it has a salmon-pink cap, delicately wrinkled, and gills of the same shade. Ruddy-orange, jewel-like droplets often gather on its stem, a process known as guttation.
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Established in UK cities for decades and much loved for their green plumage, the Himalayan birds have been recast as an ecological threat. But is the idea of invasive species itself a problem?
Before we saw a single parakeet, we heard them: a disembodied static that grew louder as we approached Hither Green cemetery in south-east London. It was an early evening in late June, and we had come to witness an invasion. By the time my friend and I reached the cemetery’s western edge, the clamour was all-encompassing. We hopped the fence and picked our way through the gravestones. Above us now were the birds themselves, their kryptonite-green plumage, scab-red beaks, pearly black collars and trailing tail feathers unmistakable: Psittacula krameri, the ring-necked parakeet.
Hither Green cemetery hosts one of the city’s largest roosts. Every day at dusk, a sizeable chunk of London’s feral parakeet population returns here, to a specific line of poplars. They like to spend the night in the company of their own kind. We watched them come first in ones and twos, and then in larger chirrupping squadrons. Hundreds of them, and then thousands. At maximum capacity, the trees fizzed. Here was a pandemonium, a parakeet concourse. It gave the impression of community, greeting and conversation. “This,” my friend said, “would make a great cheap first date.”
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Delegates from more than 190 countries are gathering in Turkey for climate talks, but the US will be absent
As the planet faces unprecedented human-caused global heating, heads of government are meeting for the next fortnight for the latest round of climate talks. We ask why it matters and what is likely to be achieved.
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High-stakes talks involving 190 countries begin on Monday as world grapples with El Niño supercharged by fossil fuels
The Cop31 summit must produce progress, “a tangible outcome... that people can see is real”, its host has said as scores of world leaders and representatives of close to 190 countries gather in Turkey for the UN climate talks.
The high-stakes meeting begins on Monday, as countries around the world grapple with the strongest El Niño weather system on record, supercharged by fossil fuels, which is set to take hundreds of thousands of lives and cause damage costing trillions of dollars.
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What are the relationships and dominant interests in play, as the summit kicks off after a bitter row over its hosting?
Hosting Cop was a key pledge from Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese in 2021, while in opposition, before his successful election campaign. But arcane rules meant the country had to wait its turn to bid and was then embroiled in an angry row with Turkey over the hosting. The final compromise put Australia in charge of the negotiations which will take place in the Turkish city of Antalya. The bitter taste left by the row lingers and Australia has seemed to some a rather half-hearted host. The country’s media has been much quieter on Cop than previous host countries, and although Albanese will speak at the opening of the leaders’ segment, he is unlikely to stay long.
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