The Guardian

The European Union has backed a loss and damage fund, one of the key demands of developing countries at the climate talks

The low-lying Pacific island of Tuvalu has been reaction to the EU’s proposal on loss and damage. Their finance minister, Seve Paeniu, called for support for phasing out all fossil fuels, language so far missing from the draft Sharm el-Sheikh agreement.

He described the EU position on loss and damage as a “breakthrough”.

Change in stance puts spotlight on US and China, which have both objected to fund

• Cop27 live – latest news updates

A breakthrough looked possible in the deadlocked global climate talks on Friday as the European Union made a dramatic intervention to agree to key developing world demands on financial help for poor countries.

In the early hours of Friday at the Cop27 UN climate summit in Egypt, the European Commission vice-president, Frans Timmermans, launched a proposal on behalf of the EU that would see it agree to establishing a loss and damage fund.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including migrating crabs, a rescued leopard and a monkey carrying a puppy

Young girls illegally work the mines in north-east India, risking disease and death, while trying to better their lives at school

• Words by Elle Kurancid, photography by Walaa Alshaer

Focusing on activists detracts from what we should be angry about – failure to tackle the most urgent problems of our age

Disruptive political activism, from strikes to boycotts to road occupations, always makes enemies. That’s part of the point: confrontations and controversies mean publicity. More ambitiously, stunts and provocations by activists are also meant to remind the public that the status quo itself is built on disruptions. Even supposedly cautious governments are constantly altering the distribution of power and wealth, and the environment itself.

Four years since the founding of Extinction Rebellion, known by its highly committed members as XR, climate activists in Britain and many other countries are still launching waves of protests: blocking roads, throwing food over famous artworks, gluing themselves to surfaces in public places and spray-painting banks that invest in fossil fuels. New groups have appeared with XR-style tactics and goals: Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, Animal Rebellion, Youth Climate Swarm. A steady stream of activists from teenagers to pensioners are prepared to face arrest and imprisonment in order to press governments, businesses and voters to change their behaviour.

Community members and campaigners have hailed the move as a win for vulnerable marine ecosystem and wildlife

Canada has rejected a mine expansion project in the Arctic after years of uncertainty and fierce protest, in what community members and campaigners say is a win for the vulnerable marine ecosystem and wildlife.

Baffinland Iron Mines’ planned expansion to its Mary River site would have seen it double output to 12m tonnes of iron ore. To bring the ore to market, the mine also said it needed to build a 110km railway to a port near the community of Pond Inlet as well as doubling its shipping.

Four dams on California-Oregon border to be decommissioned on Klamath River, which fish use to reach spawning grounds

A US agency seeking to restore habitat for endangered fish gave final approval on Thursday to decommission four dams straddling the California-Oregon border, the largest dam removal undertaking in US history.

Dam removal is expected to improve the health of the Klamath River, the route that Chinook salmon and endangered coho salmon take from the Pacific Ocean to their upstream spawning grounds, and from where the young fish return to the sea.

With only one full day of official talks left, there are no clear agreements on key issues including funding for loss and damage

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has flown to the attempted rescue of troubled climate talks in Egypt, warning of a “breakdown in trust” between rich and poor governments that could scupper hopes of a deal.

He urged countries reaching the final day of the Cop27 UN climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh to find common ground. “There has been clearly, as in past times, a breakdown in trust between north and south, and between developed and emerging economies,” he said. “This is no time for finger pointing. The blame game is a recipe for mutually assured destruction.”

Meat-rich wet food causes eight times more emissions, giving some dogs the same carbon footprint as a human

Wet cat and dog food is far more environmentally damaging than dry pet food, according to a new study. It found that wet food results in eight times more climate-heating emissions than dry food.

The analysis found that a wet food diet for a typical dog resulted in an “ecological pawprint” for the animal that was the same as for its human owner. There are estimated to be 840 million cats and dogs in the world and, with numbers rising, the impact on the environment of feeding them is under increasing scrutiny.

Developing countries demand agreement on loss and damage fund as leaders criticise gaps in climate draft

Environment secretary dashes hopes Sunak government will reverse policy to help reach net zero targets

• Cop27 live – latest news updates

The de facto ban on solar farms will be continued by Rishi Sunak’s government, the environment secretary has signalled.

Thérèse Coffey, fresh from her visit to Cop27, suggested to parliament that she would be continuing with policy plans initiated under the former prime minister Liz Truss, which would block solar power from most farmland.

Attacking art works that are safely encased in glass does nothing to further the activists’ cause – if anything it makes a case for climate complacency

As an art historian, my job is to look askance at words such as “masterpiece”, and to question the canon of “great art”. In my spare time, I have also sprayed chalk paint on civic structures in protest at the lack of action on climate. So at first I expected to view the latest attacks on art as shocking but justifiable. After all, do these attacks not also reveal the fragility of what we hold dear? Do they not make us think about what we want to save for the next generation? Yet the answer to these questions, I decided, is mostly no. Instead, these attacks feel part of a helpless careering towards climate chaos.

As splash after splash of acidic liquid hits the glass casings of art works by Van Gogh, Monet, Klimt, and now Emily Carr, everyone around the world who sees the photographs and footage is going through the same mental process: an astonished intake of breath, followed by the realisation that everything is actually fine. The art work is safe behind glass, tightly sealed by expert conservators. What looks dangerous is a mere spectacle, not a reality.

Ansto chief says it may not be able to keep producing nuclear medicine if it runs out of waste storage space at its Lucas Heights facility

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Australia’s peak nuclear organisation has warned it could be forced to cease production of life-saving cancer medicine if a controversial nuclear waste dump, planned for South Australia, is scrapped.

The chief executive of Australia’s Nuclear Science Technology Organisation (Ansto), Shaun Jenkinson, said the federal government organisation would not be able to keep producing nuclear medicine if it ran out of waste storage space at its Lucas Heights facility.

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Communities in NSW have faced flash flooding and heavy rains this week, causing extensive damage in Molong and Eugowra

• ‘We saved the cat’: flood-hit NSW town of Forbes could be divided for days
• ‘Utterly terrifying’: the moment a ‘wave of biblical proportions’ destroyed NSW town of Eugowra
• Why is so much of Australia flooding right now?

World faces ‘stark reality that there is no safe limit of global warming for coral reefs’, says researcher

You don’t have to travel far from the sprawling convention center that’s staging the UN climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to see what’s at stake. This coastal resort town is fringed by an ecosystem seemingly facing worldwide cataclysm from global heating – coral reefs.

As negotiators haggle over an agreement that may or may not maintain a goal to restrain global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the nearby corals face a more brutally unyielding scenario.

'Coral reefs are not just a pretty face,' says Simon Donner, a climate scientist taking a break from Cop27 to go snorkelling with the Guardian in Egypt. 

Reefs provide 'really incredibly important services to people all across the tropics and subtropics, including food, income, but also shoreline protection', he said, adding that without the structure of the coral reef off the coast of many islands, waves and the effects of rising sea levels would be much greater.

The coral reefs off the coast of the resort town are part of a 2,485-mile Red Sea network, with 200 species of coral off Egypt alone. They are considered by scientists to be more resilient to global heating than those found elsewhere in the world, such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef, which has suffered four mass-bleaching events in the past six years. 

But here, Donner spotted signs of disease and possible heat-related damage to corals that closely hug the shoreline.

• The race to save the world’s reefs from the climate crisis

The first version of the document has come out, but it may change significantly in coming days

As global politicians face difficult discussions on the draft over the coming hours, public opinion appears to be supportive of the idea that richer countries should pay loss and damage finances for climate action in poor countries.

Damian Carrington, our environment editor writes: A significant majority of people in the UK think the country has a responsibility to pay for climate action in poorer and vulnerable countries, an opinion poll conducted for the Guardian shows.

No details of a fund on loss and damage financing for poorer countries

“Welcomes” the fact that parties agreed for the first time to include “matters related to funding arrangements responding to loss and damage” on the summit agenda.

No call for a phase down on all fossil fuels

Stresses the importance of exerting all efforts to meet Paris Agreement goal of holding global average temperature to well below 2C and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C

With the right global economic policies, we could fight poverty and global heating at the same time

For the best part of three centuries, there has been a consensus about the goal of economic policy. Since the dawn of the industrial age in the 18th century, the aim has been to achieve as rapid growth as possible.

It’s not hard to see why there has been this focus. Growth has raised living standards, increased life expectancy, improved medical care and resulted in better educated, better fed populations.

Document will provide basis for negotiations over coming days and is likely to be significantly reworked

• Cop27 live – latest news updates

The UN climate agency has published a first draft on Thursday of what could be the overarching agreement from the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt However, much of the text is likely to be reworked in the coming days.

The reaction from some NGOs has been swift and frustrated, with one Greenpeace representative saying it paved the way for “climate hell”.

Reuters contributed to this report

Bacteria can fertilise ecosystems but need to be studied closely to identify potential pathogens, scientists say

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of bacteria are being released by melting glaciers, a study has shown.

The microbes being washed downstream could fertilise ecosystems, the researchers said, but needed to be much better studied to identify any potential pathogens.