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Rapporteur calls for defossilization of economies and urgent reparations to avert ‘catastrophic’ rights and climate harms

Economic assumptions about risks of the climate crisis are no longer relevant, says the communications expert Genevieve Guenther

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

False claims obstructing climate action, say researchers, amid calls for climate lies to be criminalised

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

Mark Lynas has spent decades pushing for action on climate emissions but now says nuclear war is even greater threat Climate breakdown is usually held up as the biggest, most urgent threat humans pose to the future of the planet today. But what if there was another, greater, human-made threat that could snuff out not only human civilisation, but practically the entire biosphere, in the blink of an eye?

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

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.

Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure

Tougher laws said to be inspiring clandestine attacks on the ‘property and machinery’ of the fossil fuel economy

US government stripping funds from domestic and overseas research amid warnings for health and public safety

January 2025 was the 18th month in a 19-month period with a global-average surface air temperature exceeding 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service…

Prof James Hansen says pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, though other scientists disagree

Scientists say unusually mild temperatures linked to low-pressure system over Iceland directing strong flow of warm air towards north pole

Forest service website among many sites affected as agencies scramble to comply with president’s orders

The world’s addiction to fossil fuels is a “Frankenstein’s monster sparing nothing and no one”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, told leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. “Our fossil fuel addiction is a Frankenstein’s monster, sparing nothing and no one. All around us, we see clear signs that the monster has become master,”

Shifting responsibility to consumers minimises the role of energy industry and policymakers, University of Sydney research suggests

Analysis shows fossil fuels are supercharging heatwaves, leaving millions prone to deadly temperatures

President formally files new plans under Paris agreement and hails ‘boldest climate agenda in American history’. Joe Biden has announced tougher targets on the US’s carbon dioxide emissions for the next decade, in a defiant final gesture intended as a “capstone” on his legacy on the climate. With just weeks to go before Donald Trump enters the White House, the Biden administration is formally filing new plans under the Paris agreement – the global climate treaty from which Trump has vowed to withdraw.

Average global temperature in November was 1.62C above preindustrial levels, bringing average for the year to 1.60C. Data for November from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) found the average global surface temperature for the month was 1.62C above the level before the mass burning of fossil fuels drove up global heating. With data for 11 months of 2024 now available, scientists said the average for the year is expected to be 1.60C, exceeding the record set in 2023 of 1.48C.

Insurance costs are rising quickly across much of the country. Hurricanes are part of the reason, but it’s the other perils common across the Midwest and Great Plains that complicate costs.

If despair is the most unforgivable sin, then hope is surely the most abused virtue. That observation feels particularly apposite as we enter the Cop season, that time of United Nations megaconferences at the end of every year, when national leaders feel obliged to convince us the future will be better, despite growing evidence to the contrary.

Record emissions, temperatures and population mean more scientists are looking into possibility of societal collapse, report says

Coal and gas exports expected to remain roughly at current level until at least 2035 with 4.5% of emissions linked to Australia, report finds

Melting of ice is slowing planet’s rotation and could disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and GPS

Jordanians now only have access to publicly distributed water a day and a half a week – prompting many to turn to illegal markets.

Scientists warn of ‘scary’ feedback loop in which fires create more heating, which causes more fires worldwide

This year elections are taking place across the globe, covering almost half of the world’s population. It is also likely to be, yet again, the hottest year recorded as the climate crisis intensifies. The Guardian asked young climate activists around the world what they want from the elections and whether politics is working in the fight to halt global heating.

Winter downpours also made 20% wetter and will occur every three years without urgent carbon cuts, experts warn

Human-caused climate crisis brought soaring temperatures across Asia, from Gaza to Delhi to Manila

Climate scientists have told the Guardian they expect catastrophic levels of global heating. Here’s what that would mean for the planet

Exclusive: Survey of hundreds of experts reveals harrowing picture of future, but they warn climate fight must not be abandoned

Exclusive: Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results for humanity, poll of hundreds of scientists finds

Outgoing special rapporteur David Boyd says ‘there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand how grave this is’

Cost of environmental damage will be six times higher than price of limiting global heating to 2C, study finds

If the anomaly does not stabilise by August, ‘the world will be in uncharted territory’, says climate expert

Dangers of wildfires, extreme weather and other factors outgrowing preparedness, European Environment Agency says

Rapid ocean warming and unusually hot winter days recorded as human-made global heating combines with El Niño

Without urgent action, Earth is heading for climate catastrophe. Yet there are reasons for hope in 2024 – including a possible peak in global greenhouse gas emissions.

New paper claims unless demand for resources is reduced, many other innovations are just a sticking plaster Record heat, record emissions, record fossil fuel consumption. One month out from Cop28, the world is further than ever from reaching its collective climate goals. At the root of all these problems, according to recent research, is the human “behavioural crisis”, a term coined by an interdisciplinary team of scientists.

James Hansen says limit will be passed ‘for all practical purposes’ by May though other experts predict that will happen in 2030s

A focus on economic stability in the near-term makes the climate crisis worse in the long-term.

A new paper published in the journal Science has warned that melting areas in the Arctic have become 'frontlines for resource extraction', describing it as a 'modern day gold rush'.

Joint action is essential for planetary and human health Over 200 health journals call on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals to recognise that climate change and biodiversity loss are one indivisible crisis and must be tackled together to preserve health and avoid catastrophe. This overall environmental crisis is now so severe as to be a global health emergency. The world is currently responding to the climate crisis and the nature crisis as if they were separate challenges. This is a dangerous mistake. The 28th UN Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change is about to be held in Dubai while the 16th COP on biodiversity is due to be held in Turkey in 2024. The research communities that provide the evidence for the two COPs are unfortunately largely separate, but they were brought together for a workshop in 2020 when they concluded: “Only by considering climate and biodiversity as parts of the same complex problem … can solutions be developed that avoid maladaptation and max

Catastrophic climate change and the collapse of human societies By Josep Peñuelas, Sandra Nogué National Science Review, Volume 10, Issue 6, June 2023 The scientific community has focused the agend…

The renowned US scientist’s new book examines 4bn years of climate history to conclude we are in a ‘fragile moment’ but there is still time to act

Dr. Michael E. Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. He is director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM). Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research interests include the study of Earth's climate system and the science, impacts and policy implications of human-caused climate change.

An independent think tank producing data-driven analysis on how business and finance are impacting the climate crisis

First complete ‘scientific health check’ shows most global systems beyond stable range in which modern civilisation emerged

The world could fall short of food by 2050 due to falling crop yields, insufficient investment in agricultural research and trade shocks, according to Joe Biden’s special envoy for food security, Dr Cary Fowler. Fowler, who is also known as the “father” of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a global store of seeds for the most significant crops, said studies by agricultural economists showed the world needed to produce 50-60% more food by 2050 in order to feed its growing population. But crop yields rates were projected to decline by between 3-12% as a result of global heating.

A coalition of British Columbians are organizing their municipalities to take oil and gas companies to court over the costs of the climate crisis

Extreme weather is ‘smacking us in the face’ with worse to come, but a ‘tiny window’ of hope remains, say leading climate scientists

As we mark 100 days until the COP28 UN climate summit, the urgency of addressing the climate crisis has never been more palpable. Global failures to mitigate emissions and adapt to the impacts continue to wreak havoc on the planet, and we’re seeing this in a range of ways. Unprecedented extreme weather events have occurred with frightening regularity in 2023. In March, over 500 people lost their lives when Cyclone Freddy struck Malawi. Last month, flooding in the Philippines caused by Typhoons Doksuri and Khanun displaced more than 300,000 people, and the recent wildfires that ravaged Hawaii – in part exacerbated by climate change – continue to make for distressing headlines. This list is likely to become even longer by the end of the year, when COP28 gets underway in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Heatwaves, wildfires and floods are just the ‘tip of the iceberg’, leading climate scientists say

Cooperation is not only in the best interests of all countries, but is absolutely necessary for the survival of the planet

Capitalism's endless growth paradigm can't be squared with sustainability. But no one – from politicians to the protest movement – is willing to admit the truth

Human-caused climate disruption and El Niño push temperature in mountains to 37C

The celebrated science broadcaster and environmental activist says we have to stop elevating the economy and politics over the state of our world

Op woensdag 26 juni werd Jim Skea verkozen tot nieuwe voorzitter van het IPCC, een organisatie van de Verenigde Naties die de risico’s van de klimaatcrisis evalueert. Wat is zijn visie? ‘Elke fractie van een graad maakt een verschil. Dat moeten we onthouden.’

A collapse would bring catastrophic climate impacts but scientists disagree over the new analysis

James Hansen, who testified to Congress on global heating in 1988, says world is approaching a ‘new climate frontier’

Plutonium spike in Canadian lake sediments marks dawn of new epoch in which humanity dominates planet

Research allays fears that rapid scaling back of production would hit people’s savings and pensions hard

Taxing world’s wealthiest people could help poorer countries shift economies to low-carbon and recover from climate damage

World Bank says subsidies costing as much as $23m a minute must be repurposed to fight climate crisis...

World is on track for 2.7C and ‘phenomenal’ human suffering, scientists warn. Up to 1 billion people could choose to migrate to cooler places, the scientists said, although those areas remaining within the climate niche would still experience more frequent heatwaves and droughts. However, urgent action to lower carbon emissions and keep global temperature rise to 1.5C would cut the number of people pushed outside the climate niche by 80%, to 400 million.

Record sea surface temperatures suggest the Earth is headed for ‘uncharted territory’ in terms of sea level rise, coastal flooding and extreme weather

Abusive, often violent tweets denying the climate emergency have become a barrage since Elon Musk acquired the platform, say UK experts

Higher rates slow the renewable energy transition and shield oil and gas producers from competition by low-carbon producers

Campaigners say Rosebank, with a potential yield of 500m barrels, would seriously undermine legal commitment to net zero

IPCC report says only swift and drastic action can avert irrevocable damage to world

The world is at risk of descending into a climate “doom loop”, a thinktank report has warned. It said simply coping with the escalating impacts of the climate crisis could draw resources and focus away from the efforts to slash carbon emissions, making the situation even worse.

Black Mountains College in Wales aims to prepare students for life during a planetary emergency. The college is this year offering a radical new degree course designed to prepare students for a career in times of climate breakdown, and build a generation with the innovative skills and ideas required to tackle the crisis.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund threatens to vote against boards on firms it holds investments with over lax climate and social targets

Letters: I risked prison to stand up against an system that will lead to ecological and societal collapse – we must look for alternative economic models, writes Zoe Cohen

Researchers found that exceeding the 2C increase has a 50% chance of happening by mid-century

Three “super-tipping points” for climate action could trigger a cascade of decarbonisation across the global economy, according to a report. Relatively small policy interventions on electric cars, plant-based alternatives to meat and green fertilisers would lead to unstoppable growth in those sectors, the experts said. But the boost this would give to battery and hydrogen production would mean crucial knock-on benefits for other sectors including energy storage and aviation.

Several US states say news that Exxon scientists predicted global heating accurately strengthens their lawsuits against company

Over the past 12 months, courts from Indonesia to Australia have made groundbreaking rulings that blocked polluting power plants and denounced the human rights violations of the climate crisis. But 2023 could be even more important, with hearings and judgments across the world poised to throw light on the worst perpetrators, give victims a voice and force recalcitrant governments and companies into

People in developing countries are feeling increasingly angry and “victimised” by the climate crisis, the US climate envoy John Kerry has warned, and rich countries must respond urgently. “I’ve been chronicling the increased frustration and anger of island states and vulnerable countries and small African nations and others around the world that feel victimised by the fact that they are a minuscule component of emissions,” he said. “And yet [they are] paying a very high price. Seventeen of the 20 most affected countries in the world, by the climate crisis, are in Africa, and yet 48 sub-Saharan countries total 0.55% of all emissions.”

Overall, however, the climate crisis is bleaker than it has ever been. In October, a slew of reports laid bare how close the planet had neared to irreversible climate breakdown, with one UN study stating there was “no credible pathway in place to 1.5C”, the internationally agreed limit for global heating, and that progress on cutting carbon emissions was “woefully inadequate”.

Most expensive storm cost $100bn while deadliest floods killed 1,700 and displaced 7 million, report finds

The world’s reliance on hi-tech capitalist solutions to the climate and ecological crises is perpetuating racism, the outgoing UN racism rapporteur has warned. Green solutions including electric cars, renewable energy and the rewilding of vast tracts of land are being implemented at the expense of racially and ethnically marginalised groups and Indigenous peoples, Tendayi Achiume told the Guardian in an interview.

A climate protester who blocked a lane of traffic on Sydney Harbour Bridge has been sentenced to 15 months in prison with a non-parole period of eight months, with human rights advocates labelling the punishment “disproportionate”.

All students at the University of Barcelona will have to take a mandatory course on the climate crisis after the establishment agreed to meet the demands of activists conducting a sit-in occupation. The announcement came after a seven-day occupation by a group from the anti-fossil fuel organisation End Fossil Barcelona.

Rich countries must urgently develop a plan to assist countries suffering the ravages of extreme weather, as failure to take early action on the climate crisis has left them increasingly vulnerable, developing nations have said. The V20 – made up of the 20 vulnerable countries facing the worst impacts of the climate crisis, and least able to cope with them – set out its proposals on Monday for how rich countries should pay for the “loss and damage” caused by the climate crisis.

From the seemingly inexorable increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to the rapid growth in green energy

Vast carbon store may be close to point where it could flip from absorbing CO2 to releasing it, research shows. The Congo peatlands are a huge carbon “timebomb” that could be triggered by the climate crisis, research has shown.

A dramatic increase in funding for climate adaptation is needed to save millions of lives from “climate carnage”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said. Climate adaptation includes preparing defences against rising floods, shelters against intensifying cyclones and emergency plans to protect people during worsening heatwaves and droughts. Guterres said only a small fraction of the required finance was given by rich nations to protect vulnerable people.

Failure to cut carbon emissions means ‘rapid transformation of societies’ is only option to limit impacts, report says

Joint committee on national security strategy criticises ‘severe dereliction of duty’ by ministers as threat grows

Key UN reports published in last two days warn urgent and collective action needed – as oil firms report astronomical profits The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe.

De klimaatmars op zondag 23 oktober belooft groot te worden. Dit jaar staat de mars in teken van het recht op voedsel en de energiecrisis, want de klimaatbeweging eist een transitie die ecologisch én klimaatrechtvaardig is. En wel nu. Wij spraken met Simon Sterck (17), lid van de Vlaamse Jeugdraad als VN-jongerenvertegenwoordiger Duurzame Ontwikkeling en actief bij Youth for Climate.

Meer dan 40.000 jongeren staan vrijdag 21 oktober op voor klimaatrechtvaardigheid. Op school of in de jeugdbeweging, ze richten zich tot de hele bevolking om aanstaande zondag mee te lopen in de grootste klimaatmars ooit. De klimaatcrisis baart de jeugd zorgen, want het gaat over hun toekomst. DeWereldMorgen sprak met Maria en Gitte, voorzitters van de leerlingenraad van het Sint-Jozefcollege in Aarschot. Zij komen vandaag met 850 (!) leerlingen op straat in Aarschot.

Denmark ‘gets ball rolling’ at UN ahead of protests as poor nations call for greater collective commitment. Youth groups in Africa are preparing to embark on a series of climate demonstrations on Friday to highlight the problem of “loss and damage” to poor countries blighted by climate breakdown, as only one rich country has so far stepped up with funding for the problem.

Concerns about climate change shrank across the world last year, with fewer than half of those questioned in a new survey believing it posed a “very serious threat” to their countries over the next 20 years.

Some two dozen climate liability suits have been making their way through the courts since 2015, bolstered by media investigations and attribution studies that are able to accurately pinpoint the precise contribution climate change has made to the damages inflicted by extreme weather events. A 2021 study in the journal Nature, for example, found that just over $8bn (£7bn) of the $62.7bn (£55.3bn) in damages caused by Superstorm Sandy across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, is attributable to sea-level rise caused by climate change.

Governments may say they’re doing all they can to halt the climate crisis. Don’t fall for it – then we might still have time to turn things around ‘Stop setting things on fire’: nine great ideas to save the planet Greta Thunberg Greta Thunberg Sat 8 Oct 2022 09.00 BST Maybe it is the name that is the problem. Climate change. It doesn’t sound that bad. The word “change” resonates quite pleasantly in our restless world. No matter how fortunate we are, there is always room for the appealing possibility of improvement. Then there is the “climate” part. Again, it does not sound so bad. If you live in many of the high-emitting nations of the global north, the idea of a “changing climate” could well be interpreted as the very opposite of scary and dangerous. A changing world. A warming planet. What’s not to like?

Billboards hijacked across Europe to highlight role of airline emissions in climate crisis

Words matter. It’s vital terms like ‘crisis’ and ‘calamity’ don’t become rhetorical devices devoid of real content as we argue about what climate action to take.

Giant ice sheets, ocean currents and permafrost regions may already have passed point of irreversible change

In An Inconvenient Apocalypse, authors Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen style themselves as heralds of some very bad news: societal collapse on a global scale is inevitable, and those who manage to survive the mass death and crumbling of the world as we know it will have to live in drastically transformed circumstances. According to Jackson and Jensen, there’s no averting this collapse – electric cars aren’t going to save us, and neither are global climate accords. The current way of things is doomed, and it’s up to us to prepare as best we can to ensure as soft a landing as possible when the inevitable apocalypse arrives.

Two of the UK’s leading hospitals have had to cancel operations, postpone appointments and divert seriously ill patients to other centres for the past three weeks after their computers crashed at the height of last month’s heatwave.

At his remote woodland home, Ben Green is trying to stay positive about a collapse of the food supply

Scientists say there are ample reasons to suspect global heating could lead to catastrophe. The risk of global societal collapse or human extinction has been “dangerously underexplored”, climate scientists have warned in an analysis. They call such a catastrophe the “climate endgame”. Though it had a small chance of occurring, given the uncertainties in future emissions and the climate system, cataclysmic scenarios could not be ruled out, they said.

Blistering heatwaves are just the start. We must accept how bad things are before can we head off global catastrophe, according to a leading UK scientist.

It’s not too late to avert the climate crisis from becoming even more deadly – but the window is closing

Joe Biden is under pressure to declare a national climate emergency as temperatures soar across the US and Europe. Facing political gridlock in Washington, the president could make such an announcement – which would unlock federal resources to address the crisis – as soon as this week, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

Climate scientists have expressed shock at the UK’s smashed temperature record, with the heat soaring above 40C for the first time ever on Tuesday. Researchers are also increasingly concerned that extreme heatwaves in Europe are occurring more rapidly than models had suggested, indicating that the climate crisis on the European continent may be even worse than feared. Temperature records are usually broken by fractions of a degree, but the 40.2C recorded at Heathrow is 1.5C higher than the previous record of 38.7C recorded in 2019 in Cambridge.

Chief meteorologist says extreme temperatures ‘entirely consistent’ with human-induced climate crisis

After all, Western economies – and their economic growth – depend utterly on labour and resources from the South...

António Guterres compares climate inaction to tobacco firms dismissing links between smoking and cancer

As the climate movement hits another impasse, activists Luisa Neubauer and Kumi Naidoo explain why we need to mobilise many more people from all walks of life

Years before the climate crisis was part of national discourse, this memo to the president predicted catastrophe

Climatenomics lays out how ‘supply chain disruptions’ has become a euphemism for the effects of climate change

An investor’s rant gives an insight into the City’s short-termist view of the environment crisis

Models indicate that there could be between 25 and 30 extreme events a year by mid-century

Governments not listening to people with disabilities despite them being at high risk, say researchers

Researchers call for recognition of latest online strategies used to derail climate action

Three former UN climate heads say gap between government promises and actions will change environment irreversibly

Vegetated areas above the treeline in the Alps have increased by 77% since 1984, the study says. While retreating glaciers have symbolised the speed of global heating in the Alpine region, researchers described the increases in plant biomass as an “absolutely massive” change.

Soaring temperatures in subcontinent, which have caused widespread suffering, would be extraordinarily rare without global heating

Food supply expert paints grim global picture hunger 05.23.2022 By Arvin Donley NEW YORK, NEW YORK, US — Global wheat inventories currently stand at about 10 weeks of global consumption, a food supply expert said during a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council on May 19. Sara Menker, chief executive officer of Gro Intelligence, an organization that gathers and analyzes global food and agricultural data, said she disputes official government agency estimates that put global wheat inventories at 33% of annual consumption, countering inventories are closer to 20%. “It is important to note that the lowest grain inventory levels the world has ever seen are now occurring while access to fertilizers is highly constrained, and drought in wheat growing regions around the world is the most extreme it’s been in over 20 years,” Menker said. “Similar inventory concerns also apply to corn and other grains. Government estimates are not adding up.” Menker told the security council that while much of the blame

Long before the current political divide over climate change, and even before the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), an American scientist named Eunice Foote documented the underlying cause of today’s climate change crisis. The year was 1856. Foote’s brief scientific paper was the first to describe the extraordinary power of carbon dioxide gas to absorb heat – the driving force of global warming. Carbon dioxide is an odorless, tasteless, transparent gas that forms when people burn fuels, including coal, oil, gasoline and wood.

The Bank of England governor warned last week of ‘apocalyptic’ food price rises. Yet war in Ukraine, climate change and inflation are already taking their toll all over the world. Apocalypse is an alarming idea, commonly taken to denote catastrophic destruction foreshadowing the end of the world. But in the original Greek, apokálypsis means a revelation or an uncovering. One vernacular definition is “to take the lid off something”.

Many are still missing after this month’s floods. Extreme weather is becoming more frequent, and it can be devastating

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, has now published all three sections of its landmark comprehensive review of climate science.

Jongeren over de hele wereld komen vrijdag 25 maart op straat. Ze eisen aandacht en een krachtdadig beleid voor de wereldwijde klimaatcrisis. Ook in ons land organiseren de jongeren van Youth For Climate een grote betoging, meer bepaald in Brussel. De actievoerders leggen wereldwijd de focus op #PeopleNotProfit en benadrukken zo dat de klimaatstrijd een systeemcrisis én klassenstrijd is, en dat de klimaattransitie klimaatrechtvaardig moet zijn.

New data suggests forests help keep the Earth at least half of a degree cooler, protecting us from the effects of climate crisis

Environmentalists once saw abstraction as the biggest obstacle to climate action. How, they wondered, could one focus the public on the distant future? Today, we confront the opposite problem, with the very immediacy of the crisis generating a strange paralysis. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that global heating made extreme flooding more common, its new report at the end of February spurred relatively little discussion – in part because of the water covering swathes of Queensland and New South Wales. As tinnies plucked desperate residents from the deluge, who could give due weight to the warning from Prof Brendan Mackey, one of the IPPC authors, that the science clearly projected “an increase of heavy rainfall events?”

On 28 February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body solely dedicated to looking at the science behind climate change, will release a major report on the impacts of the climate crisis and why it is imperative that we act now to address the growing risks. The report, which focuses on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, is expected to detail how climate impacts are already wreaking havoc in every part of the world and how, without much bolder action, more lives will be lost and more livelihoods destroyed. The report will look at challenges and solutions for addressing these risks and minimizing vulnerability unique to the world’s regions, cities and other habitats.

Every one of us now has a duty to do something, if not for ourselves then for the survival of future generations

The UK Government is forecasting that, without better plans to improve climate resilience, billions of pounds will be wiped off of national GDP in the coming decades, with the costs of inaction set to outweigh the cost of action by 2045.

De eerste vrouwelijke premier van Barbados, een van de kleinste en meest klimaatgevoelige landen ter wereld, wil het internationale financiële systeem laten werken voor de mensen in de frontlinie van de klimaatcrisis. Haar ideeën haalden het tot in het Glasgow-pact en ook uit Brussel komt er steun.

Exclusive: Greta Thunberg among young people filing legal suit for climate crisis to be declared a global level 3 emergency

The annual "adaptation gap" report — which published Thursday amid the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow — found that the estimated costs to adapt to the worst effects of warming temperatures such as droughts, floods and rising seas in low-income countries are five to 10 times higher than how much money is currently flowing into those regions.

There is a myth about human beings that withstands all evidence. It’s that we always put our survival first. This is true of other species. When confronted by an impending threat, such as winter, they invest great resources into avoiding or withstanding it: migrating or hibernating, for example. Humans are a different matter.

Many economic assessments of the climate crisis “grossly undervalue the lives of young people and future generations”, Prof Nicholas Stern warned on Tuesday, before the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

The scientific consensus that humans are altering the climate has passed 99.9%, according to research that strengthens the case for global action at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow.

The enormous, unprecedented pain and turmoil caused by the climate crisis is often discussed alongside what can seem like surprisingly small temperature increases – 1.5C or 2C hotter than it was in the era just before the car replaced the horse and cart.

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How to Stop the Climate Crisis in Six months - Roger Hallam

ome problems are so big, you can't really see them. Climate change is the perfect example. The basics are simple: the climate is heating up due to fossil fuel use. But the nitty gritty is so vast and complicated that our understanding of it is always evolving. Evolving so rapidly, in fact, that it's basically impossible for humans to keep up.

Human rights council also appoints special rapporteur to monitor impact of climate crisis on rights

An open letter sent on behalf of 1.8 million Fairtrade producers worldwide, ahead of COP26, urges world leaders to keep their promise to provide $100 billion in annual finance to low-income nations disproportionately hit by the climate crisis.

Greta Thunberg has excoriated global leaders over their promises to address the climate emergency, dismissing them as “blah, blah, blah”.

Vital United Nations climate talks, billed as one of the last chances to stave off climate breakdown, will not produce the breakthrough needed to fulfil the aspiration of the Paris agreement, key players in the talks have conceded.

From turning CO2 into rock to capturing the breath of office workers, a growing number of companies think the answer is yes

Despite all the analogies for this possibly terminal emergency, it is unlike anything that has come before

As the world starts to seriously entertain the possibility of commercially mining the deep sea for valuable metals, it’s worth taking a closer look at the claims used to justify its potentially long-lived impacts.

President Biden's climate envoy John Kerry says that unless the world’s top 20 worst emitters do not take “bold action” to tackle the climate crisis, the global environment will reach a point of no return.

Europe’s 25 largest banks are still failing to present comprehensive plans that address both the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, putting their sustainability pledges in doubt, campaigners have warned.

Researchers examined the economic cost of the climate crisis and found it would cut about 37% from global GDP this century, more than twice the drop experienced in the Great Depression. For every tonne of carbon dioxide emitted, the global economy would be $3,000 worse off by the end of the century, they estimated.

Campaign group Extinction Rebellion has begun what it describes as two weeks of climate protests in London. It says its "Impossible Rebellion" will "target the root cause of the climate and ecological crisis".

Drawing people into cities could cut emissions and combat housing crises. But even progressives are hard to convince

CFC chemicals once used in refrigerators would have driven 2.5C of extra warming by 2100 if they had not been outlawed, researchers claim

In a column for Jacobin, Jeremy Corbyn writes that we need class politics to transform our economies and save humanity from climate apocalypse. There’s no other way.

The climate crisis is accelerating at unprecedented pace, according to a new United Nations state-of-the-science report. It is "a code red for humanity," said UN Secretary-General António Guterres — and given that the report concludes the entirety of the warming is due to human greenhouse gas emissions, avoiding the worst of its consequences is up to us.

Organisations representing 90 countries say that their plans to prevent damage have already been outpaced by climate-induced disasters, which are intensifying and happening more regularly. "We need to adapt our plans to the worsening climate crisis. Our existing plans are not enough to protect our people," says Sonam Wangdi, chair of the UN's Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group on climate change.

Het globale voedselsysteem is de belangrijkste oorzaak voor de ecologische crisis en de klimaatontregeling. Het duwt natuurlijke systemen tot voorbij de veilige grenzen voor de mensheid, schrijven Jeremy Coller van het investeerdersnetwerk FAIRR, hoogleraar Johan Rockström van het Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research en Gunhild Stordalen, oprichter van stichting EAT.

Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points. The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.

The “degrowth” movement to fight the climate crisis offers a romantic, utopian vision. But it’s not a policy agenda.

Salmon in the Columbia River were exposed to unlivable water temperatures that caused them to break out in angry red lesions and white fungus in the wake of the Pacific north-west’s record-shattering heatwave, according to a conservation group that has documented the disturbing sight.

Beware summer! The season we used to anticipate as the lightest, brightest, balmiest time of the year now comes with a health warning.

The politics of this new, extreme individualism will make collective responses to social crises impossible

The politics of this new, extreme individualism will make collective responses to social crises impossible, writes Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty

It was a slogan that cut to the chase: “Everybody is talking about Germany. We talk about the weather.”

The Global Alliance for a Green New Deal is inviting politicians from legislatures in all countries to work together on policies that would deliver a just transition to a green economy ahead of Cop26 UN climate talks in Glasgow this November.

Environment minister has 28 days to appeal historic ruling that carbon emissions from coalmine should not cause young people ‘personal injury or death’

be a source of information with regular updates on climate change lawsuits around the world. From cases grounded in human rights claims to straightforward tort suits, litigation relating to the climate crisis has grown substantially in recent years. And as the crisis continues and worsens, climate litigation is likely to rise as people increasingly seek relief through the courts.

Nearly 700 million people worldwide live in low coastal zones vulnerable to sea-level rise and coastal storms. That number could reach a billion by 2050. [..] In response, humans that can move will move...

Fossil fuel companies lied for decades about climate change, and humanity is paying the price. Shouldn’t those lies be central to the public narrative? Every person on Earth today is living in a crime scene. This crime has been going on for decades. We see its effects in the horrific heat and wildfires unfolding this summer in the American west; in the mega-storms that were so numerous in 2020 that scientists ran out of names for them...

Fossil fuel companies lied for decades about climate change, and humanity is paying the price. Shouldn’t those lies be central to the public narrative?

A landmark report by the world’s most senior climate and biodiversity scientists argues that the world will have to tackle the climate crisis and the species extinction crisis simultaneously, or not at all.

The shocking collapse of a 12-storey building in the Miami area last week has raised questions as to the role played by the climate crisis, and whether the severe vulnerability of south Florida to the rising seas may lead to the destabilization of further buildings in the future.

Around the world, dozens of ingenious projects are trying to ‘trick’ the ocean into absorbing more CO2. But critics warn of unforeseen consequences

A new report, published on 14 March, 2021 in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal Ambio, points out that humanity is hurtling towards destruction unless we have the collective wisdom to change course quickly.

Analysis shows significant risk of cascading events even at 2C of heating, with severe long-term effects. The new research examined the interactions between ice sheets in West Antarctica, Greenland, the warm Atlantic Gulf Stream and the Amazon rainforest. The scientists carried out 3m computer simulations and found domino effects in a third of them, even when temperature rises were below 2C, the upper limit of the Paris agreement.

We asked the world’s press to commit to treating climate change as the emergency that scientists say it is. Their response was dispiriting

The climate crisis is causing a widespread fall in oxygen levels in lakes across the world, suffocating wildlife and threatening drinking water supplies. Falling levels of oxygen in oceans had already been identified, but new research shows that the decline in lakes has been between three and nine times faster in the past 40 years. Scientists found oxygen levels had fallen by 19% in deep waters and 5% at the surface.

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The climate crisis is damaging the mental health of hundreds of millions of people around the world but the huge costs are hidden, scientists have warned. Heatwaves are increasing rates of suicide, extreme weather such as floods and wildfires are leaving victims traumatised, and loss of food security, homes and livelihoods is resulting in stress and depression. Anxiety about the future is also harming people’s mental health, especially the young, the scientists said in a report.

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International lawyers, environmentalists and a growing number of world leaders say “ecocide”—widespread destruction of the environment—would serve as a “moral red line” for the planet.

Three out of every four board members at seven major US banks (77%) have current or past ties to climate-conflicted companies or organizations – from oil and gas corporations to trade groups that lobby against reducing climate pollution, according to a first-of-its-kind review by climate influence analysts for DeSmog. and they continue to invest deeply in fossil fuel projects.

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The author and eminent climate scientist on the deniers’ new tactics and why positive change feels closer than it has done in 20 years

The methane emissions leaking from the world’s coalmines could be stoking the global climate crisis at the same rate as the shipping and aviation industries combined.Coalmines are belching millions of tonnes of methane into the atmosphere unchecked, because policymakers have overlooked the rising climate threat, according to new research.

Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling. To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently. Many think of the climate crisis as distinct from the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic. But the three crises – and their solutions – are interconnected.

Rising consumption by the affluent has a far greater environmental impact than the birth rate in poorer nations

The climate crisis is causing ancient permafrost to thaw, which could unleash viruses and bacteria that have been dormant for thousands of years, presenting a potentially catastrophic risk to humans and ecosystems alike.

Humanity at risk if we keep thinking everything is under control

A short glossary of the changes we’ve made to the Guardian’s style guide, for use by our journalists and editors when writing about the environment

Carbon emissions may continue to rise, the polar ice caps may continue to melt, crop yields may continue to decline, the world’s forests may continue to burn, coastal cities may continue to sink under rising seas and droughts may continue to wipe out fertile farmlands, but the messiahs of hope assure us that all will be right in the end. Only it won’t.” — Chris Hedges

Advocates of the Green New Deal say there is great urgency in dealing with the climate crisis and highlight the scale and scope of what is required to combat it. We can afford it, with the right fiscal policies and collective will. But more importantly, we must afford it. The climate emergency is our third world war. Our lives and civilization as we know it are at stake, just as they were in the second world war.

The IPCC report sets out the world’s current knowledge of the impacts of 1.5C of warming and clearly shows the dangers of breaching such a limit. However, many scientists are increasingly worried about factors about which we know much less. These “known unknowns” of climate change are tipping points, or feedback mechanisms within the climate system – thresholds that, if passed, could send the Earth into a spiral of runaway climate change.