The Guardian

There is only a small window in which to mitigate the worst effects. So make a change now, and make it one you can stick to

If the prospect of nuclear war wasn’t enough, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) picked this week to drop its latest report on the state of the climate crisis.

The key findings are bleak, if familiar. Climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly; many of the impacts will be more severe than predicted. Nowhere will be spared. “The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, a co-chair of the working group producing this report. These health impacts are physical – ​​increased chance of dengue fever, for example, or cardiovascular disease – but also mental: the suffering of living through storms, famine, heat stress, and the loss of homes and cultures.

Alice Bell is co-director at the climate change charity Possible and author of Our Biggest Experiment: A History of the Climate Crisis

Carbon emissions from felling of tropical forest doubled in just two decades and are accelerating, research says

Carbon emissions from tropical deforestation this century are far higher than previously thought, doubling in just two decades and continuing to accelerate, according to a study.

The world’s forests form an enormous carbon store, holding an estimated 861 gigatons of carbon – equivalent to nearly a century’s worth of annual fossil fuel emissions at the current rate. When trees are cut down, they release the carbon they store into the atmosphere. Since 2000, the world has lost about 10% of its tree cover, becoming a major driver of global heating.

Wool parish councillors say proposed building would threaten lives of house martin and swift colonies

The shiny exterior of a new police headquarters in Dorset could pose a “lethal threat” to the local bird population.

Concerns have been raised by Wool parish council over the potential for bird deaths as a result of the reflective surface of the proposed building in Winfrith, the Dorset Echo reported.

Mostly Republican states challenge whether EPA has authority to limit carbon emissions from US power plants

• Opinion: the supreme court has climate change in its sights

The US supreme court was on Monday hearing a case its conservative majority could use to hobble Biden administration efforts to combat climate change.

The administration is already dealing with congressional refusal to enact the climate change proposals in Joe Biden’s Build Better Back plan. Now the justices are taking up an appeal from 19 mostly Republican-led states and coal companies over whether the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

America’s first national park inspired a global movement of ‘fortress conservation’, but we know today indigenous peoples are essential stewards of nature

• Read more: Yellowstone at 150: busier yet wilder than ever, says park’s ‘winterkeeper’

On 1 March 1872, the US president, Ulysses S Grant, enacted a federal protection for the Yellowstone landscape, creating America’s first national park and one of the first in the world. The decision affected thousands of people from at least 27 distinct Native American tribes. More than 10,000 years of history were erased from the narrative at the stroke of a pen.

Yet Yellowstone inspired a global national parks movement. Early parks were established to preserve “wilderness”, mostly by colonists grabbing land. The removal (or worse) of local people was not always an objective, but was too often a result. Despite many successes, protected area designations worldwide have notched up a catalogue of legacy issues.

The court is breaking with precedent, procedure and prudence to achieve the ultra-conservative majority’s policy preferences

Granting a petition by several states and coal companies, the supreme court on 28 February will address what appears to be a technical legal question: does the Environmental Protection Agency have authority to calculate Co2 emissions targets for power plants based on mitigation techniques involving steps “beyond the fence-line” of individual plants? In truth, the matter the court is considering implicates –and imperils – the federal government’s power to fashion flexible solutions not only to global warming but to all manner of complex problems.

The stakes are higher still: by ruling on the case at all, the court usurps power constitutionally entrusted to government’s politically accountable branches. Article 3 of the constitution limits federal courts to deciding concrete “cases and controversies” about the rights of individual parties. Yet this “case” involves neither a concrete dispute nor the specific rights of any of the challengers. Instead, it’s akin to an exam question about the options theoretically available to a federal agency to address a grave problem. In answering that hypothetical question, the court will have arrogated to itself an unprecedented, open-ended power to reshape the nation’s social and economic landscape – far in excess of its legitimate authority, as the foundational case Marbury v. Madison put it, to “declare what the law is”.

Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School. His many books include American Constitutional Law, the most frequently cited treatise on the US constitution. You can follow him on Twitter @Tribelaw. Jeremy Lewin will receive his JD degree from Harvard Law School in Spring 2022

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says climate effects expected to be more severe than initially predicted

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Catastrophic flooding on the scale of the disaster hitting Queensland and New South Wales is becoming more likely as the planet heats due to greenhouse gas emissions, climate scientists have warned.

The latest major assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found global warming caused by humans was causing dangerous and widespread disruption, with many effects expected to be more severe than predicted.

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Report says human actions are causing dangerous disruption, and window to secure a liveable future is closing

• Analysis: this report asks: what is at stake? In short, everything

Climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly, many of the impacts will be more severe than predicted and there is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said.

Even at current levels, human actions in heating the climate are causing dangerous and widespread disruption, threatening devastation to swathes of the natural world and rendering many areas unliveable, according to the landmark report published on Monday.

Everywhere is affected, with no inhabited region escaping dire impacts from rising temperatures and increasingly extreme weather.

About half the global population – between 3.3 billion and 3.6 billion people – live in areas “highly vulnerable” to climate change.

Millions of people face food and water shortages owing to climate change, even at current levels of heating.

Mass die-offs of species, from trees to corals, are already under way.

1.5C above pre-industrial levels constitutes a “critical level” beyond which the impacts of the climate crisis accelerate strongly and some become irreversible.

Coastal areas around the globe, and small, low-lying islands, face inundation at temperature rises of more than 1.5C.

Key ecosystems are losing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide, turning them from carbon sinks to carbon sources.

Some countries have agreed to conserve 30% of the Earth’s land, but conserving half may be necessary to restore the ability of natural ecosystems to cope with the damage wreaked on them.

Eight dead and hundreds rescued from rooftops as rainfall exceeds annual averages in just a few days

The flood broke through the levee before daybreak. By the time many residents of Lismore in northern New South Wales woke up on Monday, the water had begun to lap at their doorsteps.

Those unable to flee climbed on to upper levels of their homes, then out on to their rooftops. Hundreds were rescued by boats and kayaks and jetskis; many others are still unaccounted for.

Analysis by the Marine Conservation Society shows dredging at England’s Dogger Bank site has increased despite government pledge to ban the practice

The government is under pressure to safeguard Britain’s marine conservation areas after analysis showed the Dogger Bank protected site has seen a threefold increase in destructive bottom trawling since Brexit.

A year ago, conservationists welcomed government proposals to ban trawling and dredging fishing practices, which involve dragging weighted nets over the seabed, in 14,030 sq km (5,400 sq miles) of English waters, an area equivalent to the size of Northern Ireland. The area includes Dogger Bank and three other marine protected areas (MPAs).

Minister who led Cop26 climate talks issues stark warning on eve of landmark report from IPCC

The impacts of the climate crisis are proving much worse than predicted, and governments must act more urgently to adapt to them or face global disaster, the UK president of the UN climate talks has warned on the eve of a landmark new scientific assessment of the climate.

Alok Sharma, who led the Cop26 climate summit last year, said: “The changes in the climate we are seeing today are affecting us much sooner and are greater than we originally thought. The impacts on our daily lives will be increasingly severe and stark. We will be doing ourselves and our populations a huge disservice if we fail to prepare now, based on the very clear science before us.”

Brisbane and Queensland’s south-east are set to endure more wild weather as the state grapples with a flood crisis. With the death toll from floods in Queensland and New South Wales rising to seven, severe weather warnings remain in place across 900km of Australia’s eastern seaboard

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On eve of alarming IPCC report, organisation warns governments to treat crisis on a par with war and peace

Governments must start treating the climate crisis as a national security concern, on a par with war and peace, as climate breakdown threatens countries’ stability and safety, the global chief of the Red Cross has warned.

Jagan Chapagain, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said: “People should be seeing the climate as a national security issue, as it is having an impact on national security. We need to see that the climate crisis is not only having an environmental impact, but a very significant security impact.”

Exclusive: Some Canon Institute for Global Studies posts call the climate crisis ‘fake news’ and compare Greta Thunberg to a communist

A thinktank linked to Japanese technology giant Canon is coming under pressure to remove multiple articles from a research director that describe the climate crisis as “fake news” and compares campaigner Greta Thunberg to a communist.

One Australia-based international fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS), Prof Jeffrey Braithwaite, told the Guardian the claims about climate science from research director Dr Taishi Sugiyama were “not defensible”.

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While swift parrot numbers plunge, their Tasmanian breeding grounds are still being logged. It’s a recipe for extinction, experts say

What if a critically endangered bird could be given a chance at survival by protecting just 7% of Tasmanian native forests earmarked for logging?

And what if the Tasmanian forestry administrators had – for different reasons – already argued that logging should be reduced by roughly that amount?

Drivers with no off-street parking must use public charging points and miss £950 in savings, warns thinktank

Almost 10 million households in England and Wales risk missing out on savings of £950 a year that come from owning an electric car, according to a study warning that richer households stand to benefit most.

About a third of households have no access to off-street parking or a personal garage, so will miss out on lower costs from charging the cars using cheaper overnight electricity.

A man has had a lucky escape after his houseboat was sucked under the raging waters of the Brisbane River. Onlookers watched on in anguish as the vessel careered out of control towards the ferry wharf. ‘There’s people on it,’ one person could be heard saying, and, ‘Jump off!’ A man then says, ‘Quick, maybe we should call the police.’ Police and volunteer rescuers were quick to get to the site and pulled the man from the wreckage. The terrifying moment came as a severe storm system pummelled Brisbane and south-east  Queensland

• ‘We didn’t really expect it’: Brisbane residents caught off-guard by fast-rising floods
• Brisbane homes flooded as ‘rain bomb’ continues to threaten lives in south-east Queensland

• Australia news updates

Without fossil fuel, and Europe’s dependence on it, Putin wouldn’t have so much power. We need clean energy now, but big oil has other plans

Never ones to let a good crisis go to waste, the fossil fuel industry and their allies have taken to the airwaves over the last few days to try and use the Russian invasion of Ukraine as an excuse for greater oil and gas development.

It’s the classic shock doctrine that we’ve come to expect from big oil, and unless our politicians are wise enough to see through it, it’s a strategy that will continue to undermine our ability to take action on climate change over the decade to come.

Jamie Henn is the founder and director of Fossil Free Media

Sussan Ley says number of humpback whales in Australian waters has grown from 1,500 at height of the commercial whaling industry to estimated 40,000

Humpback whales have been removed from the threatened species list after a significant increase in numbers in the 60 years since they were first protected, but green groups warn populations could decline again as oceans warm.

Global heating is predicted to have a significant impact on krill populations in Antarctica, a major feeding ground for humpback whales.

Report says average 4% of GDP will be spent on adapting to climate breakdown, risking deeper poverty

African countries are being forced to spend billions of dollars a year coping with the effects of the climate crisis, which is diverting potential investment from schools and hospitals and threatens to drive countries into ever deeper poverty.

Dealing with extreme weather is costing close to 6% of GDP in Ethiopia alone, equating to a spend of more than $1 repairing climate damage for every $20 of national income, according to research by the thinktank Power Shift Africa.