The Guardian

My granddaughters got red blotches and their eyes burned. I’ve been having headaches and coughing fits

On the evening of 3 February I was at home in East Palestine, Ohio, watching a movie with my granddaughters, when my daughter Adyson called and asked, “Dad, what’s going on downtown?” I looked out the window and there was an orange glow in the sky. I turned the movie down to talk to my daughter but she’d hung up. Ten minutes later she called back and said, “We’re coming to get you.”

We went to try to figure out what had happened and it was like driving into a cloud – smoke was billowing overhead. A Norfolk Southern freight train had derailed. You could see the flames over the tops of nearby houses and feel the heat from several hundred feet away. Huge clouds of smoke were spreading from the crash site over our town.

Greg Mascher is a grandfather and concerned resident of East Palestine, Ohio

The challenges are myriad, including raising a child and, yes, using the toilet. But we’ve gained so much more than we lost

When people find out that I live on a narrowboat, their eyes light up. They say things like “Gosh, I’d love to do that,” and “That’s so bohemian of you!,” and “It must be so peaceful”. It is peaceful, sometimes, but it’s easy to forget that when you’re struggling to push open a heavy lock gate in the pouring rain with a screaming baby strapped to your chest. Still, I love the way I live: I love being close to the water, and feeling more connected to nature and in sync with the changing seasons than I did living on land.

That isn’t to say boat life was always the plan. I used to imagine I’d end up in some rambling old farmhouse, with Farrow & Ball wallpaper, period features and an open fire. I still get pangs when I visit friends’ seemingly enormous and lavishly equipped houses – upstairs and downstairs! A freezer! Hot taps! But for my husband, Nigel, and I, with our ill-paid, bookish jobs (I’m a writer, he’s a librarian. OK fine, my ill-paid job) along with, you know, The Economy, buying a house just isn’t feasible, especially where we live in Oxford. But owning his own home has always been important to Nige, who grew up in council housing, so we began to explore alternative options. Once we let go of the impossible goal of a house and focused instead on what we could afford, everything changed.

Adam Bandt says deal puts ‘significant hurdles’ in the way of new coal and gas but Chris Bowen insists it will not kill off new investment

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The Albanese government’s signature climate bill targeting big polluters is a step closer to passing after a deal with the Greens including an absolute cap on emissions.

The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, announced the deal on the safeguard mechanism bill on Monday, taking credit for “a big hit on coal and gas” that could effectively block half of 116 proposed new fossil fuel projects.

National Infrastructure Commission accuses ministers of ‘prevarication’ over installation of heat pumps

Ministers have made negligible progress in improving the energy efficiency of the UK’s homes even as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has underscored the need to cut the reliance on gas for home heating, according to the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC).

The independent infrastructure tsars’ annual report warned that the progress towards improving the UK’s infrastructure “stuttered further” last year, despite the need for increased investment to meet its economic and climate goals.

About 200 barrels of reservoir fluid leak into the Dorset harbour, a site of special scientific interest

A major incident has been declared on Sunday following an oil leak from the UK’s largest onshore field into Poole harbour in Dorset.

The incident, which took place at Wytch Farm oilfield in Dorset, resulted in approximately 200 barrels of “reservoir fluid” being released.

Businesses want to trawl for nickel, manganese and cobalt to build electric cars and windfarms

An investigation by conservationists has found evidence that deep-seabed mining of rare minerals could cause “extensive and irreversible” damage to the planet.

The report, to be published on Monday by the international wildlife charity Fauna & Flora, adds to the growing controversy that surrounds proposals to sweep the ocean floor of rare minerals that include cobalt, manganese and nickel. Mining companies want to exploit these deposits – which are crucial to the alternative energy sector – because land supplies are running low, they say.

When my country, Pakistan, flooded last year, women faced particular suffering. That’s true around the world

Last summer, a third of Pakistan was underwater. My country, the fifth most populous in the world, was submerged. Two million homes were destroyed, thousands of acres of agricultural land were flooded and 90% of the crops in Sindh, a food belt, were damaged. Thousands of kilometres of roads were rendered unusable, a million livestock killed, hospitals and schools obliterated, and 30 to 50 million people – a number as large as the population of Canada or Spain – were displaced and dispossessed.

It was the climate crisis that brought this nightmare to Pakistan. Pakistan has the second largest number of glaciers after the Arctic poles and thanks to global heating, they are melting at unprecedented, unmanageable speeds. Glacial melt combined with another consequence of the Earth’s warming climate, erratic monsoon patterns, and together they created what was called a super-flood.

A salon in Sydney is spearheading workshops for hairdressers on how to steer small talk about the weather into conversations about global heating

Inside this chic Sydney hair salon, the chat between stylists and clients could be much the same as in any other hairdressers around the world. Some small talk. The ubiquitous and occasionally mundane chat about holidays and traffic. For regulars, the conversation can move to the deeply personal before you can say semi-tint or shag cut.

In fact, there is only one easily missable clue in the front window that conversations inside Paloma might, when the occasion arises, be a bit different. A poster reads: “This salon chats about love, life & climate action.”

Is it too soon to be nostalgic for all those soft, gentle Marches? Here’s hoping not

In the southern Australian cities where I’ve spent most of my life my birthday on the second day of autumn has always been synonymous with gentle seasonal transition.

It’s no coincidence that the beginning of autumn in March is my favourite time of year. First comes the softer light. The mornings grow darker and slightly crisper.

In his series Fulu Act, Brussels-based documentary photographer Colin Delfosse captures street artists in Kinshasa, who craft striking costumes out of everyday objects found littering the streets, such as discarded wigs, wires, soda cans and bottle lids, to raise awareness of environmental issues facing the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “The statement behind their costumes is to condemn and inform about overconsumption and its side effects, namely pollution, poverty, lack of reliable investments and so on,” says Delfosse. “By capturing these images, I’m giving an echo to their crucial work.”

• Colin Delfosse is shortlisted in the Sony world photography awards 2023. An exhibition of the photographs is at Somerset House, London, 14 April-1 May

Australia Museum says 20-year-old collection will help understand and conserve threatened animals, which are sensitive to climate change

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As floods devastated Lismore, a group of ecologists waited anxiously for a break in the weather so they could move an important scientific collection of “spectacular” spiny crayfish to a new home at the Australian Museum.

The samples of the crayfish were collected more than 20 years ago from deep within the rainforests of north-eastern NSW and southern Queensland by Dr Jason Coughran, a freshwater ecologist.

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Adult fall-run Chinook salmon returned to California’s rivers in near record low numbers in 2022

As drought dried up rivers that carry California’s newly hatched Chinook salmon to the ocean, state officials in recent years have resorted to loading up the fish by the millions on to trucks and barges to take them to the Pacific.

The surreal and desperate scramble boosted the survival rate of the hatchery-raised fish, but still it was not enough to reverse the declining stocks in the face of added challenges.

Exclusive: Labour decries ‘climate vandalism’ as launch plans signal intention to boost fossil fuel industry

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The government is planning to launch its revamped net zero strategy from the UK’s oil and gas capital, Aberdeen, in a clear signal of its intention to boost the fossil fuel industry while cutting key green measures, the Guardian has learned.

Next week’s launch was originally called “green day” in Whitehall, but has been rebranded as “energy security day” and will focus on infrastructure. Campaigners have called the move a travesty.

Ministers will refuse to force oil and gas companies to stop flaring by 2025, as recommended in the review of net zero by Chris Skidmore earlier this year.

Ofgem will not gain important powers to include the net zero target in its regulation of the energy sector, effectively defanging the regulator.

No overarching new office for net zero, as recommended in the Skidmore review.

No compulsion on housebuilders to fit rooftop solar to new housing.

No comprehensive nationwide programme for insulation of the UK’s draughty housing stock, as green groups have been calling for. Instead, the strongest insulation measure is likely to be a consultation on the private rented sector.

The Treasury, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and the Department for Business and Trade are at war over whether to introduce carbon border taxes.

Major roles for carbon capture and storage technology and hydrogen, which could boost the oil and gas industry with questionable gains for the environment.

The potential licensing of a massive new oilfield, Rosebank, under cover of investing in carbon capture and storage technology, which campaigners warn is “greenwash”.

The owner of Paloma salon in Paddington has organised seminars for hairdressers across Sydney to instruct them on how to talk to their clients about climate action. Owner Paloma Rose Garcia started the A Brush with Climate workshops – navigating how to discuss science and solutions with clients – after she 'really understood that there is a unique opportunity that hairdressers have to hold meaningful conversation and assist the community with understanding more about climate and what they can do in their everyday life'

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The owner of Paloma salon in Paddington has organised seminars for hairdressers across Sydney to instruct them on how to talk to their clients about climate action. Owner Paloma Rose Garcia started the A Brush with Climate workshops – navigating how to discuss science and solutions with clients – after she 'really understood that there is a unique opportunity that hairdressers have to hold meaningful conversation and assist the community with understanding more about climate and what they can do in their everyday life'

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Thérèse Coffey reveals proposals for England far less ambitious than those set out in first draft of environment document

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The UK environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has disappointed campaigners after revealing that an ambitious hedgerow plan for England was in fact a typographical error.

At the end of January, environment groups were delighted when Coffey revealed the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan would include aims to plant 30,000 miles of new hedgerows a year by 2037 and 45,000 a year by 2050.

Six KCs among more than 120 mostly English lawyers to sign pledge not to act for fossil fuel interests

Leading barristers have defied bar rules by signing a declaration saying they will not prosecute peaceful climate protesters or act for companies pursuing fossil fuel projects.

They are among more than 120 mostly English lawyers who have signed a declaration vowing to “withhold [their] services in respect of supporting new fossil fuel projects and action against climate protesters exercising their right of peaceful protest”.

Pie-in-the-sky fantasies of carbon capture and geoengineering are a way for decision-makers to delay taking real action

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, one of which dropped yesterday, are formidably researched and profoundly important, but they mostly reinforce what we already know: human-produced greenhouse gases are rapidly and disastrously changing the planet, and unless we rapidly taper off burning fossil fuels, a dire future awaits.

The message is far from hopeless – “Mainstreaming effective and equitable climate action will not only reduce losses and damages for nature and people, it will also provide wider benefits,” said the IPCC chair, Hoesung Lee, in the press release. “This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.”

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including a rescued sloth, a baby nutria and a patient frog

Some Greens want to pass the safeguard mechanism changes and keep fighting on fossil fuels while others want to attack it as a Coalition creation that can’t be redeemed

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The future of one of Labor’s signature climate policies – updating the safeguard mechanism to deal with industrial greenhouse gas emissions – hangs in the balance. The government held off pushing it through parliament this week while negotiations continued with the Greens and key independent senator David Pocock over a potential deal to strengthen it.

The design of the policy is not the Greens’ responsibility, but what happens next is largely up to its party room – with the Coalition opposed, the government can’t get its legislation through without their support. The minor party is divided. Its 15 members will meet through the weekend ahead of a potential decision by Monday. It could go either way. Given the party operates on a consensus model that allows time to find common ground, it could also remain unresolved into next week.