Articles 2020

Guardian investigation reveals fossil fuel links of IPCC authors, with experts declaring the body’s conflict of interest policy ‘not fit for purpose’

One of the biggest upheavals in a millennium is on its way, strengthened by the climate crisis. We need leaders who make things better not worse

Without continued investment in these fields, the world would lose the equivalent of Brazil and Norway’s combined production from the global oil balance each year

Lethal temperatures ​and wildfires have exposed a widening gulf between voters demanding ​action and politicians unwilling to confront the long-term choices global heating requires

Les grandes puissances déploient des initiatives de connectivité qui redessinent la carte du monde. La Chine avec ses Nouvelles Routes de la soie, l’Union européenne et son Global Gateway, les États-Unis et le G7 à travers le Build Back Better World ou B3W/PGII… Tous ces projets traduisent une même ambition : organiser, sécuriser et contrôler l’internationalisation de l’économie, plutôt que la subir.

Une sécheresse des sols comme celle que connaît actuellement la Belgique est onze fois plus probable aujourd’hui qu’avant le réchauffement climatique. C’est ce qu’il ressort d’une nouvelle étude du consortium international "World Weather Attribution" (WWA). Explications.

La chaleur extrême, davantage que le manque de précipitations, est en train de devenir le principal facteur de sécheresse sur le continent européen, selon une étude du réseau de scientifiques World Weather Attribution publiée jeudi.

Combien y a-t-il d'habitants dans le monde ? La population mondiale a atteint 8 milliards le 15 novembre 2022 selon les Nations Unies. Compteur de la population mondiale en direct avec fiches de données, graphiques, cartes et données de recensement concernant les chiffres actuels, historiques et futurs de la population mondiale, les estimations, les taux de croissance, les densités et la démographie

Alors que la Chine et les États-Unis se livrent une guerre sans merci sur le terrain de l’intelligence artificielle, le président Xi Jinping a fait une déclaration assez surprenante lors de l’ouverture de la récente World AI Conference (WAIC) à Shanghai. Le dirigeant a proposé de faire en sorte que l’IA devienne un « bien public mondial » via des modèles open-source, une vision contrastant fortement avec celle des Etats-Unis.

Pour les scientifiques du World Weather Attribution, qui analysent le rôle du changement climatique dans les phénomènes météorologiques extrêmes, la vague de chaleur actuelle est directement liée au réchauffement causé par les émissions humaines de gaz à effet de serre. Une nouvelle alerte, qui confirme que ces épisodes extrêmes sont amenés à se multiplier et à s’intensifier avec le dérèglement climatique.

Le 4 juin dernier, le World Inequality Lab (WIL) a lancé le « Global Justice Project », un programme destiné à « stimuler la recherche, l’élaboration des politiques et l’engagement citoyen afin de façonner un 21ème siècle plus juste, plus démocratique et plus durable ». Pour l’heure, il prend la forme d’un rapport, A Plan for Equality & Prosperity Within Planetary Boundaries, qui prolonge sept working papers du WIL – près de 970 pages de travail scientifique. L’effort est colossal. Comme le résume l’un des co-auteurs de l’étude, l’économiste Lucas Chancel, spécialiste des inégalités (Insoutenables inégalités, 2021) et de l’énergie (Énergie et inégalités, 2025) : « 24 mois de travail, 45 chercheurs venus du monde entier, combinant les connaissances issues de l’économie, de l’histoire et des sciences du climat ». À l’échelle de l’histoire de la macroéconomie, c’est l’équivalent d’une pyramide.

La vague de chaleur qui accable l'Europe depuis plusieurs jours aurait été "quasiment impossible" il y a 50 ans et le changement climatique en est "incontestablement" la cause, affirme le World Weather Attribution (WWA) dans une analyse "rapide" publiée vendredi.

Misschien is het probleem niet dat toekomstscenario's zoals die van het Global Justice Report onhaalbaar zijn, maar dat ze net iets te veel vragen stellen over onze huidige realiteit.

L’humanité peut améliorer les niveaux de vie, réduire les inégalités et maintenir le réchauffement climatique en dessous d’une hausse de 2 °C, selon une vision ambitieuse de la survie de la planète rapportée la semaine dernière par The Guardian. À une époque marquée par l’angoisse écologique, c’est une affirmation remarquablement optimiste. Cet optimisme provient du Global Justice Report, élaboré par le World Inequality Lab de Thomas Piketty. […] Ce rapport va à contre-courant de l’époque actuelle. La démagogie anti-immigration, le retour en grâce des combustibles fossiles, les attaques contre le multilatéralisme et la captation du pouvoir par les milliardaires s’opposent tous à la capacité redistributive de l’État que le rapport juge nécessaire. Pourtant, l’équipe du professeur Piketty affirme que la décarbonation, la « sobriété » et l’égalité peuvent permettre à la majorité de mener une vie agréable.

- Artificial intelligence could pose a "more urgent" threat to humanity than climate change, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton told Reuters in an interview on Friday. Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as one of the "godfathers of AI", recently announced he had quit Alphabet, opens new tab after a decade at the firm, saying he wanted to speak out on the risks of the technology without it affecting his former employer.

Global effort needed to limit effects of pollution, industrial fishing and climate crisis, World Ocean Assessment says

World is approaching point where no one can shut down a rogue AI, says director of body behind research

Y a-t-il un lien entre le plastique et les ouragans Sandy et Katrina, aux États-Unis, la fonte des glaciers dans l’Antarctique, les vagues de chaleur pendant l’été, l’érosion du littoral en Australie — et quantité d’autres catastrophes naturelles qui s’abattent sur nous avec une fréquence accrue ? Nous incriminons le changement climatique. Mais l’impact des déchets plastiques et de l’industrie du plastique sur le changement climatique est souvent méconnu ou, pire, pris à la légère.

A climate monster is growing right now in the Pacific Ocean, perhaps the most fearsome El Niño since before scientists even began modeling them. They now know the pattern quite well: A marine heat-wave in the Pacific Ocean scrambles global weather and produces in some places more intense droughts and in others more intense rainfall and flooding; disruptions to hurricane patterns and monsoon seasons, which can cause widespread crop failures; and much more punishing heat.

Les systèmes d’intelligence artificielle générative, qui parlent si bien, ne comprennent pas encore le monde. De nouvelles méthodes physiques ou statistiques comme les world models, ou « modèles de monde », permettraient de les doter d’une forme de sens commun, qui leur servirait à mieux simuler la réalité et de mieux interagir avec elle.

Closed-door talks over the World Bank’s climate agenda have stalled, as the US pushes to scrap green targets and expand support for fossil fuels

Oil has empowered capitalism, and some of the world’s most exploitative regimes. Move away from it and we can solve some of the key issues we face

What is currently happening in Brussels under the guise of regulatory simplification is being presented as something technical and logical. Less regulatory pressure, more competitiveness. A series of so-called omnibus bills are intended to streamline legislation. Reporting obligations are being limited and reassessments of raw materials postponed. It sounds like administrative efficiency. In Washington, things are moving even faster: Trump is dismantling the basis for climate laws while the world continues to warm up. The framing is the same: rules slow down businesses, and a slowed-down business community makes us poor. But that reasoning assumes something that is not true: that everyone wants the same thing from the market.

Doyne Farmer says a super-simulator of the global economy would accelerate the transition to a green, clean world

The world seems headed into another El Nino, just 3 years after the last one. Such quick return normally would imply, at most, an El Nino of moderate strength, but we suggest that even a moderately strong El Nino may yield record global temperature already in 2026 and still greater temperature in 2027. The extreme warming will be a result mainly of high climate sensitivity and a recent increase of the net global climate forcing, not the result of an exceptional El Nino, per se. We find that the principal drive for global warming acceleration began in about 2015, which implies that 2°C global warming is likely to be reached in the 2030s, not at midcentury.

HAMBOURG — Depuis quelque temps déjà, les climatologues débattent d’une hypothèse inquiétante : le réchauffement climatique est-il en train de s’accélérer ? La Société allemande de physique et la Société météorologique allemande mettent désormais en garde contre ce phénomène dans une déclaration commune. L’hebdomadaire allemand Die Zeit s’est entretenu à ce sujet avec Klaus Richter, président de la Société allemande de physique, et Frank Böttcher, président de la Société météorologique allemande.

With warming set to pass the critical 1.5-degree limit, scientists are warning that the world is on course to trigger tipping points that would lead to cascading consequences — from the melting of ice sheets to the death of the Amazon rainforest — that could not be reversed.

The decline in the health of nature around the world poses a threat to the UK's security and prosperity, an intelligence committee has concluded in a long-awaited report. The document warns of "cascading risks" from the degradation of some of the planet's most important ecosystems, including conflict, migration and increased competition for resources.

Flagship report calls for fundamental reset of global water agenda as irreversible damage pushes many basins beyond recovery

Like living beyond your financial means, using more water than nature can replenish can have catastrophic results.

US demand to own Greenland leaves little scope for compromise, and forcing the issue would entail end of Nato Greenland, with a population of fewer than 57,000, might not seem to be the territory on which the future of the relationship between Europe and the US, the viability of Nato as the world’s most successful defence alliance, or even the fractured relations between the UK and Europe would be determined. But battlefields are sometimes the product of chance, rather than choice. It now feels as if Donald Trump’s threat to impose 10% tariffs on eight fellow Nato states for sending troops last week to support Greenland’s sovereignty may be one of those clarifying moments in which Europe had no option. Successive European leaders condemned Trump’s blackmail and intimidation on Sunday and they sounded as if they meant it.

Satellite analysis warns that widespread land subsidence threatens 1.6 billion people by 2040, with 86% of the at-risk population concentrated in Asia

The “Fueling Ecocide” investigation, led by Environmental Investigative Forum (EIF) and European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), reveals that oil and gas licences overlap with 7,000 protected areas worldwide. The total overlap is 690,000 km², an area bigger than the size of France — despite existing regulations and ongoing efforts to safeguard key biodiversity zones.

From floods to droughts, erratic weather patterns are affecting food security, with crop yields projected to fall if changes are not made

Rob Hopkins has spent the past decades exploring one question: what if we could fall in love with the future? As co-founder of Transition Network and Transition Town Totnes, and author of four books, he travels the world helping communities cultivate imagination, longing and possibility. He believes that the transition we so urgently need depends on one thing above all: imagination.

Data from World Inequality Report also showed top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90%

I always say that models are not predictions; they are qualitative illustrations of what the future could be. But as the future gets closer to the present, models can start being seen as predictive tools. It is the weather/climate dichotomy, so aptly exploited to confuse matters by politically minded people in the discussion about climate. Right now, we are getting close to the point that we could forecast a collapse in the same way as we can forecast the trajectory of a tropical storm. So, you remember how “The Limits to Growth” generated a long term forecast in 1972. Here it is

The UK has announced much harsher rules for asylum seekers including the prospect of more deportations for those whose applications fail. The US is trebling the size of its deportation force. The EU is doubling its border budgets. And in the coming decades, hundreds of millions of people might be displaced by ecological changes.

Ahead of the United Nations climate talks in Brazil, advocacy groups are pushing for companies and governments to set meaningful emissions targets to lower emissions from livestock.

Antibiotic use in farming is now rampant. How meat is produced in China may mean the drugs you need here won’t work, says Prof Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

A climate-focused report out of Europe throws serious shade at plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) cars, pointing out that they emit nearly as much carbon dioxide emissions as combustion engine-powered vehicles. In fact, it highlights how real-world emissions from supposedly greener PHEVs has increased over the years above officially recorded figures to nearly five times. Yikes! The findings come from the European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E), a clutch of non-government organizations focused on sustainable transport policy across the continent. The report has been published ahead of a review of automotive CO2 emission standards, which would see Europe continue to sell plug-in hybrid electric vehicles beyond 2035, when they're set to be phased out in order to meet EU climate targets.

German scientists warn global warming is accelerating faster than expected, raising the risk of a 3 °C rise by 2050 and forcing Europe to confront unthinkable adaptation plans.

The Production Gap Report finds that 10 years after the Paris Agreement, governments plan to produce more than double the volume of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, steering the world further from the Paris goals than the last such assessment in 2023.

Much attention today focuses on uncertainties affecting the future evolution of oil and natural gas demand, with less consideration given to how the supply picture could develop. However, understanding decline rates – the annual rate at which production declines from existing oil and gas fields – is crucial for assessing the outlook for oil and gas supply and, by extension, for market balances. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has long examined this issue, and a detailed understanding of decline rates is at the heart of IEA modelling and analysis, underpinning the insights provided by the scenarios in the World Energy Outlook. This new report – based on analysis of the production records of around 15 000 oil and gas fields around the world – explores the implications of accelerating decline rates, growing reliance on unconventional resources, and evolving project development patterns for the global oil and gas supply landscape, for energy security and for investment. It also provides regional insights

A UN commission has found Israel’s war in Gaza ranks among history’s greatest crimes. The UK government must stop hiding behind legal fictions and recognise the reality

De door de mens veroorzaakte klimaatverandering maakte de droogte die Zuid-Europa dit voorjaar trof 10 keer waarschijnlijker. Dat besluiten klimaatwetenschappers van het collectief World Weather Attribution. Die droogte leidde tot verwoestende zomerbranden in onder andere Turkije, Griekenland en Cyprus. Als de klimaatverandering zich verder doorzet, dreigen zulke megabranden nog veel alledaagser te worden dan ze vandaag al zijn.

This is not a call to despair, but an invitation to understand the forces driving the process of collapse, and to explore how we might navigate the descent with integrity, purpose, and care for the living world.

Almost 100 countries reject draft treaty as ‘unambitious’ and ‘inadequate’

The author of Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination discusses the cost of Big Tech’s huge investment in technologies that may do more harm than good

Extreme heat is breaking records around the world, with wildfires and poor air quality compounding the crisis, according to a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released Thursday.

Forests have historically acted as a reliable planetary thermostat. They regulate Earth’s temperature by removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and locking it in trees, roots and soil — carbon that is emitted if trees are cut down. In a typical year, forests and other vegetation absorb roughly 30% of the carbon that humans emit from burning fossil fuels — a vital climate service performed at virtually no cost by trees around the world, from tropical rainforests to temperate and boreal forests.

Bad climate news is everywhere. Africa is being hit particularly hard by climate change and extreme weather, impacting lives and livelihoods. We are living in a world that is warming at the fastest rate since records began. Yet, governments have been slow to act.

António Guterres says ‘sun is rising on a clean energy age’ as 90% of renewable power projects cheaper than fossil fuels

Just three decades ago, Kabul’s population was less than 2 million, but the toppling of the Taliban in 2001 led to an influx of migrants, lured by the promise of increased security and economic possibility. As its population grew, so did the demand for water. Kabul relies almost entirely on groundwater, replenished by snow and glacier melt from the nearby Hindu Kush mountains. But years of mismanagement and over-extraction have caused those levels to drop by up to 30 meters over the last decade, according to Mercy Corps.

Planet Earth is living on borrowed time, a new global report reveals. The world must stop burning fossil fuels now and take urgent steps to reduce global warming.

Les systèmes d’intelligence artificielle capables, comme ChatGPT, de répondre aux questions des internautes, aspirent à ringardiser les moteurs de recherche traditionnels et à rendre facultative la consultation de sites Internet. Dans ces conditions, que va-t-il rester du World Wide Web ?

The world has been too optimistic about the risk to humanity and planet – but devastation can still be avoided, says Timothy Lenton

Iran’s parliament approved a measure to close the vital global trade route, through which more than a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through daily

When a small Swedish town discovered their drinking water contained extremely high levels of Pfas, they had no idea what it would mean for their health and their children’s future

The growth in US power demand is surging to its highest rate in decades, driven first by the electrification of oil and gas production and then by the build out of data centers. While still below the 5-10% growth seen in China, the world’s first “electrostate," the US power sector is experiencing rapid structural growth. The country is delivering more than a 3.5% annual power demand growth rate for the first time in several decades, potentially positioning the US as the world’s next “electrostate,” despite the strong oil and gas focus of the Trump administration.

Even if agricultural practices adapt in response to higher temperatures, five of the world's six main staple crops will suffer severe losses due to climate change. Global corn yields are projected to fall by about 12 or 28 per cent by the end of the century

Breaching threshold would ramp up catastrophic weather events, further increasing human suffering

Selon une alerte du réseau scientifique World Weather Attribution (WWA), ce mercredi 11 mai, cette fonte accélérée serait le résultat d’une vague de chaleur record entre le 15 et le 21 mai, qui a aussi touché l’Islande.

There’s frustration among researchers that falling pH levels in seas around the globe are not being taken seriously enough, and that until the buildup of CO2 is addressed, the consequences for marine life will be devastating

The Ocean is essential to life on Earth, regulates the climate, supports rich biodiversity, sustains livelihoods, and inspires cultures and societies. However, unregulated human impacts are putting the Ocean and its ability to contribute to humanity at risk. The Starfish Barometer is a new initiative launched on World Ocean Day (8 June 2025) to provide a concise, science-based annual overview of the multiple dimensions of the Ocean through the lens of its interdependence with humanity. Each year, the Starfish Barometer will present a carefully curated selection of Ocean-related developments, chosen for their global significance and grounded in the most up-to-date scientific evidence, intended for a broad non-specialist audience. Rather than offering an exhaustive review, it will spotlight key aspects, robust, evidence-based, and reflective of major developments of the year. The Starfish Barometer emphasizes the two-way relationship between humanity and the Ocean: we impact its future, and it shapes ours. Its

Selon l’étude annuelle «World Wealth Report» de Capgemini, la fortune des plus aisés a dépassé les 90 000 milliards de dollars en 2024. Un record depuis 1997 et la première publication de ce rapport annuel.

Under existing climate policies, global temperatures are projected to reach 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9F) above pre-industrial levels by 2100—a pathway that would ultimately erase 76% of current glacier mass over the coming centuries. But if warming is held to the Paris Agreement's 1.5C target, 54% of glacial mass could be preserved, according to the study, which combined outputs from eight glacier models to simulate ice loss across a range of future climate scenarios.

2024 was the first single year to surpass the 1.5°C global warming threshold – now scientists predict that a year above 2°C is possible in the near future

The world's largest polluters are also the safest from the environmental damage they help create—while the countries least to blame face the greatest threats, including the increased possibility of violent conflict.

Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the seventh of a series of articles on some of these signposts.

Acute global food insecurity rose for the sixth year in a row in 2024, according to the 2025 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), a collaborative effort coordinated by the Food Security Information Network. The report shows that climate extremes, conflict, forced displacement and economic shocks continue to drive malnutrition and food insecurity around the world, with disastrous impacts on those living in many of the most vulnerable regions in the world.

A new report draws on internal company documents and other public records to comprehensively outline the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long campaign to mislead the public and avoid paying for their products’ harms.

Only 6.9% of the 106 billion tonnes of materials used annually by the global economy come from recycled sources—a 2.2 percentage point drop since 2015, according to a new report released today by Circle Economy in collaboration with Deloitte Global. The Circularity Gap Report 2025 (CGR®) finds that global material consumption is outpacing population growth and generating more waste than recycling systems can handle—underscoring the need for global circular economy targets, system-level transformation, and multilateral collaboration.

In the run-up to the November election, conventional analysis suggested that a Trump victory would mean an additional four billion tons of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere by 2030, a total surrender on the climate pledges the country had made under the Paris Agreement and the functional end of the global goals that agreement established among nearly all the world’s nations.

Climate change is driving rising global temperatures, ecological degradation, and widespread human suffering. Yet, as a collective, humanity has failed to implement sufficient changes to mitigate these threats. This paper introduces the concept of “global narcissism” as a speculative lens to analyze the psychological barriers to climate action. By examining different levels of narcissism and their manifestations in human responses to climate change, this framework highlights key obstacles to meaningful action. While humanity is diverse, and lived experiences vary greatly, this perspective offers a way to discuss patterns of response and resistance. A central challenge lies in humanity’s difficulty in recognizing its symbiotic relationship with the non-human world. Through the metaphor of “global narcissism” this paper explores how humanity’s response to ecological crisis mirrors narcissistic defense mechanisms and suggests a collapse is taking place. This framework provides insights into how psychological int

Paper in Nature Climate Change journal reveals major role wealthy emitters play in driving climate extremes. The world’s wealthiest 10% are responsible for two-thirds of global heating since 1990, driving droughts and heatwaves in the poorest parts of the world, according to a study.

The escalating tensions between Pakistan and India serve as a stark reminder that climate change is no longer a distant — it is now a force multiplier for geopolitical instability. As the climate crisis accelerates, so too does its capacity to deepen existing rivalries, strain fragile agreements, and inflame long-standing disputes. In South Asia, the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) has long been a rare success story of transboundary cooperation between two nuclear-armed neighbours. However, as both climate pressures and political tensions mount, this once-resilient agreement is beginning to show signs of severe strain. The looming question is no longer just about water rights — it’s about whether climate change could be the catalyst for the world’s first true climate war.

It is said that George W. Bush Jr. decided to invade Iraq in 2003 because he had read some papers on oil depletion by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO). Of course, it may be just a legend, but I don’t see it as impossible, and perhaps not even improbable. Politicians make decisions on the basis of vague ideas, often on the spur of the moment, and in many cases making terrible mistakes. But they normally understand some of the critical elements that keep alive the system. For the US, the critical resource was, and still is, crude oil. So, it is possible that Bush thought that it was necessary to compensate for the decline of the US oil production by seizing the Iraqi resources. That didn’t necessarily imply to start a war, just like filling the tank of your car doesn’t imply shooting dead the service station operator. But that’s the way some people’s minds work.

A Dartmouth College research team came up with the estimated pollution caused by 111 companies, with more than half of the total dollar figure coming from 10 fossil fuel providers: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil Co., Pemex, Coal India and the British Coal Corporation. For comparison, $28 trillion is a shade less than the sum of all goods and services produced in the United States last year.

A superpower in the fight against global heating is hiding in plain sight. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of people in the world – between 80% and 89%, according to a growing number of peer-reviewed scientific studies – want their governments to take stronger climate action.