The Guardian

Campaigners say cheap flights, made possible by tax breaks for airlines, are encouraging people to heat the planet

Europe’s cheap flights and pricey train tickets promote dirty forms of transport, campaigners say, with “outrageous” tax breaks encouraging people to heat the planet as they head on holiday.

Train tickets are double the price of flights for the same routes, on average, according to an analysis from Greenpeace published on Thursday. The campaigners compared tickets on 112 routes on nine different days. To get from London to Barcelona, they found, the cost of taking the train is up to 30 times the cost of jumping on a plane.

The planet is being hit with a double whammy of global heating in 2023: on top of the rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gas emissions is an emerging El Niño. This sporadic event is the biggest natural influence on year-to-year weather and adds a further spurt of warmth to an already overheating world. The Guardian's environment editor, Damian Carrington, explains what El Niño is and how it affects extreme weather

• Climate-heating El Niño has arrived and threatens lives, declares UN

These incidents are spreading – and along with them, bogus narratives casting the killer whales as marine avengers

In the opening sequence of the BBC’s original Blue Planet series of 2001, TV’s first real look at life within the world’s oceans, a pod of orca are shown hunting a grey whale and her calf. Over and over, the killer whales jump on the calf, pushing it under the waves, determined to drown it. Once it is finally dead, after a six-hour battle, they eat only its lower jaw and tongue.

I vividly remember watching this as a 10-year-old in 2001 and thinking: I wouldn’t like to take on a killer whale. Lately, however, their attention seems to have turned uncomfortably close to home. In the past few years, a pod of orcas has been ramming boats in the waters off south-west Europe at seemingly increasing rates. From 52 such “interactions” recorded in 2020, there were 197 in 2021, 207 last year and a steady number so far this summer. In three cases, the orcas have damaged boats so badly that they have sunk.

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

Technocratic tinkering and cautious managerialism can’t begin to address the crisis. We need vision – and now

Some would argue that the speech by Tony Blair at Labour’s 1994 party conference in Blackpool was era-defining. “It is time to break out of the past and break through with a clear, radical and modern vision for Britain,” he said.

One may disagree with that vision – but he committed to it years before his election, and delivered much of it in the years after. Huge investment in public services; a minimum wage; a Freedom of Information Act; devolution for Scotland and Wales, and commitment to peace in Northern Ireland.

Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion

The warming of the planet – including the most up-to-date data for 2023 – is entirely consistent with what climate modelers warned decades ago

Thirty years ago, the world’s nations agreed to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. But what is “dangerous climate change”? Just turn on the television, read the headlines of the morning paper or view your social media feeds. For we are watching it play out in real time this summer, more profoundly than ever before, in the form of unprecedented floods, heatwaves and wildfires. Now we know what dangerous climate change looks like. As has been said of obscenity, we know it when we see it. We’re seeing it – and it is obscene.

Scorching temperatures persist across Europe, North America and Asia, as wildfires rage from Canada to Greece. The heat is as relentless as it is intense. For example, Phoenix, Arizona, has broken its record of 18 consecutive days above 110F (43.3C). Even the nights, generally relied upon as a chance to recover from the blistering days, now offer little relief: for more than a week, nighttime temperatures in Phoenix have exceeded 90F (32.2C). Meanwhile, severe and deadly flooding has stricken South Korea, Japan, and the north-east United States, from Pennsylvania to Vermont.

Michael E Mann is a professor of earth and environmental science and the director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at The University of Pennsylvania. He is author of the forthcoming book Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis

Susan Joy Hassol is the director of Climate Communication. She publishes Quick Facts on the links between extreme weather and climate change

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

The world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1m years, prior to human existence, because “we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis, according to James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s.

Hansen, whose testimony to the US Senate in 1988 is cited as the first high-profile revelation of global heating, warned in a statement with two other scientists that the world was moving towards a “new climate frontier” with temperatures higher than at any point over the past million years, bringing impacts such as stronger storms, heatwaves and droughts.

Bayer and Syngenta accused of breaching legal obligations and unethical behaviour over brain toxicity studies

The pesticide companies Bayer and Syngenta have been excoriated in a European parliament hearing after failing to disclose studies on the brain toxicity of their products.

European regulators said the companies had breached legal obligations and behaved unethically. MEPs questioning executives from the companies said their actions had been “outrageous” and represented a “scandal”. The companies rejected the accusations and said they had provided all relevant studies.

Twenty-three of Italy’s 27 main cities expected to be under red alerts as searing temperatures continue; wildfires north and west of Athens force residents to flee

• Italian hospitals report sharp rise in emergency cases as Rome hits 41.8C

Here are some more images form the wires of the wildfires that swept through forestland and towns north-west of Athens for a second day. The fires forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 children close to a Greek seaside resort.

Tourists flocked to China’s scenic Flaming Mountains to experience searing high temperatures amid punishing heatwaves that have scorched much of the Northern Hemisphere.

Get used to it humanity! The planet you thought you lived on is gone

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At least 97% of the blood samples contained a type of PFAS known as PFOS, associated with multiple serious health problems

California researchers have found new evidence that several chemicals used in plastic production and a wide array of other industrial applications are commonly present in the blood of pregnant women, creating increased health risks for mothers and their babies.

The researchers said their findings add to a growing body of evidence showing that many chemicals people are routinely exposed to are leading to subtle but harmful changes in health. The work should be a “wake-up call” to policymakers, they said.

This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group

Report finds government goal to plant 30,000 hectares of woodland by March 2025 unlikely to be achieved

The government has met less than half of its annual tree-planting target in England, MPs have found, putting net zero ambitions at risk.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) this year published what it called “ambitious” nature targets, a requirement under the Environment Act, including the goal of planting 30,000 hectares of woodland by March 2025. A report by the environmental audit committee (EAC) of cross-party MPs has found that this target was unlikely to be met.

Lords committee calls for creation of advisory groups to tackle the pollutants, which may increase risk of heart disease and premature death

Light and noise are “neglected pollutants” that are causing significant harm to human health and can cause premature deaths, a group of peers have said.

The science and technology committee of the House of Lords has called on ministers to do more to tackle these pollutants, which it claims are “poorly understood and poorly regulated”.

Searing temperatures from Spain to Greece underline that the climate emergency cannot be put on hold while other crises are prioritised

The weather map of southern Europe remains a deep, sinister red, as the heat soars above 40C in places and closer to 50C in Sicily and Sardinia. In Madrid, some nights are equatorial rather than tropical, as the temperature stays above 25C. June was the hottest month recorded on Earth for 120,000 years. The hottest week came early this month. “Very dangerous long-duration heat”, to use the language of the recent alert issued by the US National Weather Service in Arizona, sums up the experience of the last few weeks across much of the northern hemisphere. Extreme heat, wildfires and floods are ravaging parts of the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, India and China.

Global heating is not the sole explanation for the hellish impact of Cerberus and Charon, the heatwaves named after mythical denizens of Hades. As in 2016 – the hottest year ever recorded – an emerging El Niño weather pattern is helping drive the barometer upwards. But each time this natural and sporadic event recurs, typically adding 0.2C to the average global temperature, it heats up a planet that is already warmer than before as a result of greenhouse gas emissions.

Court told wild camping is not open-air recreation as park authority appeals against recent ban

Wild camping is not recreation because sleeping is not an enjoyable activity, lawyers acting for a wealthy landowner said in court while defending a judge’s decision to ban the activity on Dartmoor national park.

In a packed courtroom at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Tuesday, lawyers for the Dartmoor national park authority (DNPA) brought an appeal against the decision to ban backpack camping on the common land. The case hinges on whether wild camping counts as “open-air recreation” as allowed in a 1985 law.

Conservationists ‘utterly elated’ at arrival of first offspring since release of 25 of the eagles on Isle of Wight

A white-tailed eagle chick has been born in England for the first time in more than 240 years, and conservationists are “utterly elated” by the new arrival.

White-tailed eagles were once widespread across England but were widely persecuted by humans, and the last record of a pair breeding was in 1780. Since 2019, 25 of these eagles, which are Britain’s biggest bird of prey, have been released to the Isle of Wight as part of an effort to bring back long-lost species.

It is easy to despair as we leave one geological epoch and enter another. Our situation is dire, but we can address it

Land temperatures have hit 60Cin Spain, satellite data shows, with tourists warned to stay off beaches throughout the Mediterranean. Across the pond, more than 100 million Americans are still under extreme heat warnings. The “heat dome” squatting over the south sent thermometers soaring to 56C in Death Valley yesterday, close to the hottest ever recorded on Earth.

The sea is little cooler, with Florida ocean temperatures well above 30C. Further north on land, people are being rescued by dinghies and helicopters from suburban streets as heavy rain causes flooding across Pennsylvania and New York and into New England. Vermont has declared a state of emergency. The National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch for parts of the midwest, and a severe thunderstorm watch for other states. Parts of Canada have been on fire for months.

Gaia Vince is the author of Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval

Judge sides with Barngarla people when blocking facility near Kimba, citing ‘apprehended bias’ of former Coalition resources minister Keith Pitt

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Traditional owners opposing the federal government’s plan for a nuclear waste dump on their land in South Australia have had a major win, with a court ruling the facility can’t be built.

The Barngarla people were jubilant outside the federal court in Adelaide on Tuesday after justice Natalie Charlesworth said the commonwealth’s decision to build the dump near Kimba would be set aside.

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Voters want climate action but don’t trust politicians to do it. Could projects like a Whitehaven windfarm be the answer?

• Rebecca Willis is professor of energy and climate governance at Lancaster University

The seaside town of Whitehaven, in the north-west of England, found itself at the centre of a political storm in May, when the levelling up, housing and communities secretary, Michael Gove, gave his approval for the UK’s first new deep coalmine in more than 40 years just outside the town.

But Whitehaven may soon be known for more than climate-wrecking coal. That is the ambition of Project Collette, a £3bn proposal for a windfarm off the Cumbrian coast to be part-owned by the local community – instigated by the Green Finance Community Hub in collaboration with the engineering firm Arup and community energy specialists Energy4All – and with the potential to power nearby industry. If Cumbrians could stand on the sandstone cliffs and look out at wind turbines they owned, and that had provided jobs for local people, that might just build the political support and engagement that is so vital to reaching our climate targets?

A month of floods, fire and heatwaves from Rome to Chile

Northern hemisphere suffering severe heatwave and record temperatures; John Kerry signals ‘big steps’ at Beijing talks; China and Vietnam evacuate tens of thousands ahead of typhoon Talim

• Extreme temperatures recorded across northern hemisphere

Meanwhile prolonged high temperatures in China are threatening power grids and crops and raising concerns about a repeat of last year’s drought, the most severe in 60 years.

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated in southern China and Vietnam on Monday as typhoon Talim barrelled towards land, AFP reports.

The China Meteorological Administration said typhoon Talim made landfall on the coast of Guangdong province at around 10:20 pm (1420 GMT).