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World Meteorological Organization says 2023 will be hottest year on record, leaving ‘trail of devastation and despair’

• Cop28 live – latest updates

“We are living through climate collapse in real time,” the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has told Cop28 delegates in Dubai.

He spoke at the launch of the World Meteorological Organization’s stark State of the Climate report, which said 2023 will be the hottest year ever recorded.

Cop28: Can fossil fuel companies transition to clean energy?
On Tuesday 5 December, 8pm-9.15pm GMT, join Damian Carrington, Christiana Figueres, Tessa Khan and Mike Coffin for a livestreamed discussion on whether fossil fuel companies can transition to clean energy. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

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The challenges we face are enormous – economic, environmental, political. Our future is at stake, so let’s come together and win

We are living in the most difficult moment in modern history. If you feel anxious and overwhelmed about what’s going on, you’re not alone. The extraordinarily challenges we face are very real, but we can never let them become excuses for checking out of the political struggles that address these crises and will define our future.

Our nation and, indeed our planet, are at a critical juncture. It is imperative that we recognize what we are up against, and what we must do to move our politics toward justice and human decency. And we can start by acknowledging that the American people have been through a lot, and that their confidence in politics and in government has been shaken.

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A new coalition is seeking to speed the uptake of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) arguing that high prices keep demand low but low demand keeps prices high as it prevents economies of scale developing.

A large European utility has formally launched a subsidiary based in the UAE as it aims to scale involvement in carbon markets, according to a release Thursday.

Agreements have been struck with African states home to crucial biodiversity hotspots, for land representing billions of dollars in potential carbon offsetting revenue

• Who is the UAE sheikh behind deals to manage vast areas of African forest?

The rights over vast tracts of African forest are being sold off in a series of huge carbon offsetting deals that cover an area of land larger than the UK. The deals, made by a little-known member of Dubai’s ruling royal family, encompass up to 20% of the countries concerned – and have raised concerns about a new “scramble for Africa” and the continent’s carbon resources.

As chairman of the company Blue Carbon, which is barely a year old, Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook al-Maktoum has announced several exploratory deals with African states that are home to crucial wildlife havens and biodiversity hotspots, for land that represents billions of dollars in potential offsetting revenue. The sheikh has no previous experience in nature conservation projects.

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A French initiative launched this week to develop a methodology for assessing the biodiversity benefits of activities, a move expected to underpin the creation of voluntary biodiversity credits.

UN secretary general insists the 1.5C climate goal ‘is not dead, it’s alive’ on day one of summit in Dubai

At the Guardian we’ve been working hard to get you up to speed with what to expect from Cop28. If you can’t stop to read, you can listen.

The Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast this week focuses on everything you need to know about the climate talks, with host Ian Sample talking to Fiona Harvey, our environment editor and resident Cop expert.

As Rishi Sunak lands in Dubai, we are deeply concerned by the message the UK government is sending to countries in the global south affected by its alarming inaction on climate change. Ahead of the Cop summit this week, the UK claims that it is more ambitious on climate than any other major economy, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

As it issues licences for over 100 new oil and gas fields and fails to provide a proper roadmap on how it will deliver £11.6bn in loss and damage finance to climate-stricken countries, the UK’s decisions today will continue to cause environmental catastrophe well into the future and cause immense harm to women and girls disproportionately affected by climate breakdown.

The UK is also the heart of the global financial sector, which our recent research found has poured hundreds of billions of pounds into fossil fuels and agribusinesses since the Paris agreement. With UK banks like HSBC and Barclays among the largest funders of climate chaos, it also has a responsibility to regulate the sector, ensuring that money stops flowing towards climate-wrecking industries.

Instead of accelerating investments into fossil fuels and continuing its harmful, polluting legacy, it should show strong leadership in Dubai and commit to phasing out fossil fuels entirely.

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It's Day 1 of COP28 and enough delegates to fill a mid-size city – nearly 100,000 – are arriving en masse at Expo City in Dubai, UAE. In our daily running blog, Carbon Pulse will report relevant or useful updates throughout the day. Timestamps are in local time (Gulf Standard Time, GMT+4).

The disease left me debilitated and jobless. What will it take for the water companies to clean up their act?

Surfing was my life. In 2022, I even moved to Devon to work as a teacher so that I could be closer to the waves. As a surfer, I’ve always had a respect for the sea and the power of the tides. But I never realised that it was perhaps the quality of the water that was the biggest risk to my health.

At work one day, I suddenly experienced deafening tinnitus in my left ear. At an emergency doctor’s appointment I was told I had an ear infection and was given antibiotics. The doctor said the likely cause was exposure to sewage in the sea. I was eager to surf again, but I waited the recommended month before getting back in at Saunton Sands beach in north Devon. Perhaps naively, I forgot to check the sewage warnings and only noticed afterwards that there had been a sewage alert in place.

Reuben Santer is a surfer based in Devon

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Bill Johnston to quit parliament after setting up the roadmap for a dramatic reshaping of the world's biggest standalone grid from coal to renewables.

The post W.A. energy minister quits after guiding radical switch from coal to renewables appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Success at Cop28 and in the future lies in equipping a new generation to lead the transition to a greener planet. Countries such as Kenya have already laid the groundwork

The faces of young climate activists have become familiar in reports of UN climate talks. Their frustration and anxiety are understandable. We are off-track in achieving global climate goals, and their generation faces a crisis it did not create.

But what often goes unnoticed in climate discussions is the proactive work of dynamic young people in low- and middle-income countries. From the Kenyan Youth Biodiversity Network engaging in national policy discussions to social entrepreneurs in the Philippines creating green business opportunities, young people are taking matters into their own hands by actively educating their communities and seeking green opportunities.

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Identifying and prioritising mitigation technologies or activities could assist East African countries in developing “positive lists” that can be used to help combat climate change through the operationalisation of the Paris Agreement’s Article 6, according to a new study.

Plans by the new right-wing coalition government in New Zealand to lift the ban of offshore oil and gas exploration will make things uncomfortable for the country’s negotiators at COP28, according to observers, with the Pacific nation often taking an outsized leadership role at the UN climate talks despite its small size.

The New South Wales (NSW) state parliament on Thursday passed legislation that will make its emissions reduction targets legally binding, the government announced.

Speaking in the lead up to Cop28 in Dubai, Christiana Figueres said she has lost faith in oil companies

People must balance outrage and optimism after a “hellish summer” of extreme weather, the UN’s former climate chief has urged at the start of the Cop28 climate summit.

“We have to keep the outrage really high because we are so darn late,” said Christiana Figueres, a veteran negotiator hailed as the architect of the Paris climate agreement. She pointed to the weak policies that governments have set in order to cut planet-heating pollution and the $7tn with which they directly and indirectly subsidise fossil fuels.

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This year’s summit in Dubai must be the moment when the developing world finally meets its climate crisis promises

• Ban Ki-moon and Graça Machel are deputy chairs of the global human rights organisation The Elders

After a year marked by unparalleled global temperature highs and climate impacts, leaders are set to meet in Dubai for the 28th conference of the parties to the UN framework convention on climate change – Cop28. We have entered an unprecedented era of global heating: 2023 is near certain to be the hottest year on record.

We have seen extreme wildfires blanketing North America, more than 15,000 killed by extreme weather events in Africa, record-breaking heatwaves in China, southern Europe and the United States, as well as deadly hurricanes and cyclones including Storm Daniel, which killed at least 10,000 people in Libya, Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, and caused at least $20bn (£16bn) of damage. Ocean temperatures also soared to record-breaking highs, posing a critical threat to the health of coral reefs and causing widespread disruption to marine ecosystems.

Graça Machel is a deputy chair of the global human rights organisation The Elders, and a women and children’s rights advocate. Ban Ki-moon is a deputy chair of The Elders, co-chair of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens, chair of the Global Center on Adaptation, and the 8th secretary general of the United Nations

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We are belatedly waking up to the many health risks of microplastics. Yet too little research focuses on the most exposed demographic of all

For the last 70 years, we have all been lab rats in the biggest health experiment of human history, one that none of us signed up for, least of all our children.

In the run-up to attending the global plastic treaty negotiations in Nairobi, I was feeling frustrated about the coverage of microplastics and their impact on human health, so I wrote a report, Babies v Plastics. I wanted to emphasise that these tiny, insidious fragments of plastic are associated with not just one health risk, but with an entire range of health issues, from elevated miscarriage rates to early puberty.

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An Australian pipeline company has signed on a junior partner to develop more biomethane as it takes steps to decarbonise its operations longer term.

Voluntary market exchange operator Xpansiv announced late Wednesday that it had dumped more REDD projects from its N-GEO Standard Spot Contract after Verra listed them as ‘on hold’.