The Guardian

The southern French city of Montpellier is the latest to recognise the benefits of incentivising residents to get on buses, trams and trains

For residents of Montpellier, the new year has brought new travel possibilities. Since just before Christmas, locals have been able to sign up for a free pass to the entire bus and tram network in France’s seventh‑largest city. The majority of a population of 300,000 have, not surprisingly, taken up the offer. Yet the city council is not presenting this as largesse on its part. Rather, says its head of transport, Julie Frêche, it is making the change “because mobility is a right”.

Slowly but surely, the dial on public transport policy across Europe is shifting. The pandemic – and the apparently long-term change to working patterns it triggered – has played a part, as has the cost of living crisis. Prior to both, the environmental need to rely less on cars had already begun to chip away at longstanding assumptions about how we get around.

Heavy flooding hit the village of Pulborough in southern England after the River Arun burst its banks. Cars were seen driving on a road amid flooded fields in the aftermath of Storm Henk. Major rivers across the UK were flooded as the government issued a further 300 flood warnings. A succession of storms in recent weeks meant prolonged rainfall fell on saturated ground, causing more extreme flooding

• UK weather: Storm Henk flooding misery to continue beyond weekend

Climate Change Committee tells chancellor issuing new oil and gas licenses is ‘inconsistent’ with government’s temperature goals

Jeremy Hunt has been criticised by the head of the independent Climate Change Committee (CCC) over his assurances that the government can still meet its climate targets while allowing companies to extract more oil and gas from the North Sea.

Piers Forster, the interim chair of the CCC, publicly challenged the chancellor on Sunday, after Hunt used predictions made by the committee to defend his government’s oil and gas licensing bill. MPs will vote on the bill on Monday, with several Conservative MPs likely to team up with Labour in voting against it.

1,800 properties estimated to have flooded in England, as forecasters warn of colder weather on the way

The misery and chaos caused by flooding in England is set to continue until at least Monday, according to authorities.

In its latest update, the Environment Agency estimated that more than 1,800 properties had flooded after the heavy, intense downpours brought by Storm Henk.

As Afcon kicks off under an oil firm’s banner, it is a tragic irony that the climate crisis is making the game ever more unsafe to play outdoors

This Saturday, the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) – or to give the competition its full title, the TotalEnergies Afcon 2023 – the continent’s biennial international men’s football tournament, will kick off in Ivory Coast. The main point of interest, in the British sports press at any rate, is the impact that this will have on the course of the Premier League, where the leading teams will, mid-season, be losing their African star players for up to six weeks. Less remarked on, perhaps, is that Afcon 2023 is actually being played in 2024, and that its title is so prominently linked to the French hydrocarbon giant.

For more than half a century, the tournament has been played in January and February but, in an effort to placate the needs of a few European leagues and clubs, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) had originally scheduled this edition for June and July 2023. However, those dates coincided with west Africa’s rainy season, and under conditions of climate crisis the region has become more vulnerable to more extreme weather events at this time of year.

More than simple pleasure and ticking a species off a list, it’s a hobby that dwells on the joy of being alive

As city dwellers head off for the summer break into the country or along the coast, their focus might be drawn to a splash of colour from a king parrot in the bush or a lone sandpiper on a deserted beach.

For most, it’s idle curiosity or an appreciation of nature that draws their attention.

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The country should be building resilience into the infrastructure to counter flooding like that brought by Storm Henk, experts say

Hydrologist Hannah Cloke has a straightforward description of the inundation that has just struck Britain. “Our decorations may have come down but the flood warning map is currently lit up like a Christmas tree.”

And the immediate cause of this mayhem is clear. A sequence of storms this autumn and winter – Babet, Ciarán, Debi, Elin, Fergus and Gerrit – have turned Britain into “a sopping wet sponge”, as the Reading University researcher put it.

Scientist say animals still need protecting and also connecting to restore habitats fragmented by human activities

African elephant populations have stabilised in their southern heartlands after huge losses over the last century, according to the most comprehensive analysis of growth rates to date.

The latest analysis also provides the strongest data so far showing that protected areas that are connected to other places are far better than isolated “fortress” parks at maintaining stable populations, by allowing the elephants to migrate back and forth between areas as they did naturally in the past.

PM insists government is responding, as some residents are told to expect five more days of misery and colder weather

Large swathes of England ended the week devastated by flood water as rivers reached record highs, provoking a bitter political row over funding for the country’s most vulnerable areas.

Labour accused Rishi Sunak of being “asleep at the wheel” over flood warnings at the end of a week in which at least 1,000 properties were flooded and some villages were totally cut off, with parts of Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire worst affected.

Midwinter is for hibernation and the chance to make different kinds of connections

“Disconnect from the internet for at least two hours a day and treat your own thoughts like a garden through which you are strolling,” was the advice offered by the novelist Ian McEwan to younger writers after being made a Companion of Honour in December. The capacity to be curious about mental processes – while simultaneously experiencing them – is an important one for an author seeking to describe the human condition. But anyone who values self-awareness will be used to noticing how their mind works and wondering why.

“Only connect” was the maxim of another famous novelist, EM Forster. Forster used the characters in his novels to put flesh on his arguments against the emotionally repressive code of the time. But McEwan’s recommendation to disconnect should not be understood as a repudiation of Forster’s humanism. He was not warning writers off paying attention to other people’s minds and ideas – but drawing attention to the need to spend time with our own. In a world of permanent connection, in which attention has been commodified, switching off and away from the outside world is arguably harder than ever before.

‘We need to move so much faster’ to battle climate crisis, warns the Rev Canon Nick Davies, as locals assess damage

Standing at the top of Tewkesbury Abbey tower, the Rev Canon Nick Davies is talking about the flood.

But this is no sermon; the vicar is not reading from the Book of Genesis. He is discussing the flood waters before his very eyes, stretching far into the distance and besieging the medieval market town once again.

Mukhtar Babayev is named president-in-waiting of UN climate summit to be held in November

Cop29, the next round of UN talks to tackle the climate crisis, will be led by another veteran of the oil and gas industry.

Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s ecology and natural resources minister, has been appointed the president-in-waiting for the Cop29 climate talks when they take place in the country in November.

Other families have spread on to the finest beaches – but how often do you travel an inner-city waterway and happen upon ‘bats, bats, bats, and more bats’?

• This is part of a series in which great Australian writers tell us about their summers away from the beach

My son and I drive 10 minutes from home to the venerable Fairfield Park boathouse. We study a list of river-faring craft and choose a two-seater kayak. He likes sitting at the front, he tells me, so he can pretend he’s alone. I like sitting at the back so I can watch him grow before my eyes.

On the river we make a show of synchronised paddling but, when we’re out of sight, we let ourselves drift downstream. Eucalypts overhang the water and we float through reflections of twisting branches, making them ripple. Ducks come and race us. Parrots skitter through the trees that line the banks. Only the appearance of a bridge connecting the Eastern Freeway reminds us we’re mere kilometres from Melbourne’s city centre.

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Cost of sugar surges to highest level since 2011 after extreme dry spell in India and severe drought in Thailand threaten crops

The climate crisis has been previously identified as a threat to coffee and beer, and its impact could now be stretching to another of life’s joys: dessert.

The global cost of sugar has surged to its highest level since 2011 following concerns of overproduction rates from India, which has experienced an extreme dry spell that has threatened crops, and Thailand, which is facing a severe drought. The two countries are the largest exporters of sugar, after Brazil.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Climate thinktank says Britain could be left trailing in global race to develop low-carbon energy

Labour’s independent energy advisers have warned the party against watering down its £28bn green spending plans in advance of its promise to create a zero carbon electricity system by 2030.

Experts at the climate thinktank Ember, which provided the independent analysis underpinning Labour’s green targets, said growing international competition for low-carbon investment from the US and EU could leave the UK lagging in the global race for low-carbon energy.

Stalled growth in electric vehicles comes despite government goal to phase out petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles by 2035

The number of new cars registered in the UK has jumped by nearly 18% but electric vehicle demand is flatlining, prompting the industry to call for a VAT cut to stimulate sales.

Annual figures released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) on Friday show 1.9m new cars were registered last year, well up on the previous year’s figure of 1.6m and the highest level since the 2.3m registrations of 2019.

The only problem with being a refuse hunter is that once you start, it’s hard to stop – you could find a unicorn

When I was a child, the highlight of visiting my grandmother was being allowed to take her rubbish to the communal refuse room. The room had a chute that you could drop tied bags of household rubbish into, and they would travel down to a furnace somewhere.

My brother and I took it in turns to push the bag in, leaning over to try and watch it travel the length of the silver chute. Sometimes we’d try and pretend we could see the flames as the bag hit the furnace.

Spider measuring record 7.9cm across is almost as big as largest female collected in 2021, which was named Megaspider by Australian Reptile Park

With fangs that could pierce a human fingernail, the largest male specimen of the world’s most venomous arachnid has found a new home at the Australian Reptile Park where it will help save lives after a member of the public discovered it by chance.

The potentially deadly Sydney funnel-web spider dubbed “Hercules” was found on the Central Coast, about 80km north of Sydney, and was initially given to a local hospital, the Australian Reptile Park said in a statement.

Eco-friendly British produce could become unaffordable luxury if low quality imports still allowed, say farmers

Tightening environmental standards for British farmers while importing food produced to lower standards risks making eco-friendly food an unaffordable luxury item, farmers have said.

At the Oxford Farming Conference on Thursday, the environment secretary, Steve Barclay, announced that the government would consult on a new labelling scheme that would single out food produced to UK standards, allowing consumers to choose more environmentally friendly food.