The Guardian

Because the global south is bearing the brunt of climate breakdown, it’s people of colour who are suffering most

It’s 4am, and sparks from the circular saw are flying by my head. I have been given goggles to protect my eyes from the debris and although I’ve been told that I’m in safe hands, I do not feel safe at all. I’m cold from sitting on the road for five hours; my back is stiff, my hands are numb and, to top it all off, humanity is on the edge of extinction. This probably seems an odd way to spend my time to some of you, but this is how climate activists who engage in direct action try to be heard. We have tried everything else. We are exhausted and terrified. So we keep doing it.

Last year I was included in an article about climate activists. In the original article, I was the only person pictured without my placard. My placard said: “Climate inaction = racism.” I want to talk about what this means.

Elise Yarde is a climate justice activist from London

Proposed ban on trophy hunting imports ignores African perspectives and could reverse conservation gains, says open letter

A proposed UK ban on trophy hunting imports risks undermining the conservation of rhinos, elephants and other endangered wildlife, according to a group of leading scientists and conservationists who said African perspectives have been ignored by the government.

On Friday, MPs will vote on a private member’s bill to ban trophy hunting imports while, separately, the government is preparing legislation to ban hunting trophies from thousands of species, including lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants and polar bears.

We can’t just sit back and watch what’s happening to the planet. We are not an audience. Like it or not, we are in this story

As a scientist and a movie maker, we both once naively assumed that data and storytelling would converge to help prevent the imminent collapse of our habitable climate. Fire tornadoes, mega hurricanes, biblical floods, fossil fuel companies misleading the public and gambling our lives for huge profits – of course, such apocalyptic imagery would lead to gripping newscasts, dramatic interpretations, and stirring speeches from our leaders, sparking action at every level of society.

After all, the real-life story of the climate crisis makes even the wildest, biggest-budget film like Don’t Look Up seem like a charming EM Forster adaptation. But does this story-of-all-stories get wall-to-wall news coverage? Nope. Not by a long shot.

Study finds that Americans overall are becoming increasingly worried about global heating and more engaged with the issue

A new report has revealed that a record number of Americans are now alarmed about the climate crisis.

The study, published by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, found that Americans overall are becoming increasingly worried about global heating, more engaged with the issue and more supportive of finding solutions to the issue.

Water companies should each designate one area as fit for use by 2025, says environmental audit committee in highly critical report

Water companies in England should each designate a stretch of river as bathing water by 2025 to drive the cleanup of a chemical cocktail of sewage, agricultural waste and plastic pollution that is suffocating biodiversity and risking public health, MPs have said.

In a report published on Thursday, MPs on the environmental audit committee said they wanted more assertive regulation and enforcement from Ofwat and the Environment Agency to restore rivers to good ecological health, protect biodiversity and adapt to a changing climate. They also called for Ofwat to act to limit bonuses paid to water company bosses who continue to oversee the dumping of raw sewage into England’s rivers.

‘Seeing one in real life is indescribable,’ says marine biologist of the technicolour marine mollusc she spotted off Queensland

Only a handful of people have spotted the dazzling blanket octopus in the wild, making it one of the rarest sights in the marine world.

The technicolour marine mollusc was spotted last week by reef guide and marine biologist Jacinta Shackleton, off the coast of Lady Elliot Island in the Great Barrier Reef .

Marine biologist Jacinta Shackleton has filmed an encounter with an extremely rare 'rainbow-like' blanket octopus on the Great Barrier Reef. Her screams of delight can be heard even underwater and through her diving mask. Shackleton said that the blanket octopus generally spends its lifecycle in the open ocean so it’s even more unusual to see one on the reef. 'Seeing one in real life is indescribable, I was so captivated by its movements, it was as if it was dancing through the water with a flowing cape,’ said Shackleton. ‘The vibrant colours are just so incredible, you can’t take your eyes off it’

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Hong Kong scientists design simple filter system to capture the harmful microplastics – but there’s a catch

A single tumble dryer could be responsible for releasing 120m micro plastic fibres into the air each year, a study has found.

Tumble dryers are one of the main sources of microfibre pollution in the atmosphere, according to research by Prof Kenneth Leung, director of the State Key Laboratory of Marine Pollution (SKLMP) and department of chemistry at City University of Hong Kong.

Police prosecutors had argued Rosa Hicks aided and abetted other activists by photographing them applying washable chalk paint

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An Extinction Rebellion activist whose home was raided by Western Australia’s counter-terror police over a chalk message has had the case against her thrown out by a Perth magistrate.

Rosa Hicks was one of six arrested after a group of activists used washable chalk paint to write messages on a pedestrian bridge in Perth within view of Woodside’s headquarters to protest the company’s development of the $16bn Scarborough gas project.

Research shows planned expansion of conifer woodlands across the UK could have unintended consequences

Conifer plantations, which are being expanded around the UK to combat the climate crisis and foster biodiversity, are in danger of hurting one of the key species they were thought to protect: red squirrels.

The threatened red squirrels, driven to near-extinction over most of the UK by grey squirrel incursion, were thought to thrive in conifer habitats as the food sources in such forests tend to be limited to small seeded cones, which red squirrels are better at exploiting than the more generalist grey squirrels. That should mean conifer plantations prove better for red squirrels than greys.

ClientEarth and Friends of the Earth say strategy fails to include policies needed to ensure emissions cuts

The UK government is being sued over its net zero climate strategy, which lawyers argue illegally fails to include the policies needed to deliver the promised cuts in emissions.

Court papers were filed on Wednesday by ClientEarth (CE) and, separately, by Friends of the Earth (FoE). CE also claims the failure to meet legal carbon budgets would contravene the Human Rights Act by impacting on young people’s right to life and family life.

Analysts fear government’s commitment to net zero is facing most severe test yet as PM comes under increasing pressure

The government’s climate agenda is under threat as Boris Johnson’s popularity slumps, according to green campaigners who work closely with the Conservative party.

As the prime minister faces further lockdown party allegations, and angry Conservative MPs seek answers over energy price rises and the cost of living crisis, analysts fear the government’s commitment to net zero is facing its most severe test yet.

Families facing crippling price rises want to know why the system is in chaos. It’s because ministers have no coherent plan

When any crisis faces the country, it falls to the government to act, and to do so swiftly. So with the energy crisis, we need the government to stop the dither and delay of the last decade and act.

In contrast, Labour has already put forward a bold plan to levy a windfall tax on oil and gas producers, who have made billions in this crisis, to limit the expected price rise in April. Our package would save most households about £200, and we would also target extra support to 9 million of the lowest earners, pensioners and the squeezed middle, taking up to £600 off their bills.

Ed Miliband is the shadow secretary of state for climate change and net zero

Last year the oceans absorbed heat equivalent to seven Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating each second, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year

I was fortunate to play a small part in a new study, just published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, which shows that the Earth broke yet another heat record last year. Twenty-three scientists from around the world teamed up to analyze thousands of temperature measurements taken throughout the world’s oceans. The measurements, taken at least 2,000 meters (about 6,500ft) deep and spread across the globe, paint a clear picture: the Earth is warming, humans are the culprit, and the warming will continue indefinitely until we collectively take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We used measurements from the oceans because they are absorbing the vast majority of the heat associated with global warming. In fact, more than 90% of global warming heat ends up in the oceans. I like to say that “global warming is really ocean warming”. If you want to know how fast climate change is happening, the answer is in the oceans.

Ocean heating driven by human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, in sixth consecutive year record has been broken

The world’s oceans have been set to simmer, and the heat is being cranked up. Last year saw the hottest ocean temperatures in recorded history, the sixth consecutive year that this record has been broken, according to new research.

The heating up of our oceans is being primarily driven by the human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, and represents a starkly simple indicator of global heating. While the atmosphere’s temperature is also trending sharply upwards, individual years are less likely to be record-breakers compared with the warming of the oceans.

Year was third-costliest extreme weather year on record with affected communities spread from coast to coast

The US was battered by 20 separate billion-dollar climate and weather disasters in 2021, one of the most catastrophic climate years on record which led to at least 688 deaths, according to the annual report of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Damage from the year’s 20 most costly disasters, which included thousands of wildfires burning across western states, frigid temperatures and hail storms in Texas, tornadoes in the south-east, and tropical storms saturating the east coast, totaled around $145bn.

Exclusive: river groups appalled by strategy set out in briefing that says agency only has capacity to deal with most severe cases

England’s Environment Agency has told its staff to “shut down” and ignore reports of low-impact pollution events because it does not have enough money to investigate them, according to a leaked internal report.

The ruling on so-called “category 3 and 4” incidents mean that events such as farm pollution or hazardous dumps by business may not be properly investigated. The decision has infuriated river groups and NGOs.

Invasive prickly plant is widely cleared in Scotland and has been used as animal fodder in the past

The gorse bushes that have invaded many Scottish landscapes could produce enough protein to feed millions of people, according to the leader of a Scottish government research programme.

The surprising suggestion by Prof Wendy Russell, at the University of Aberdeen, comes from research on the protein content of invasive plants that have to be doused with herbicides or burned back to keep them under control.

Global heating continued unabated with extreme weather rife and greenhouse gases hitting new highs

The last seven years were the world’s hottest on record, with the first analysis of global temperature in 2021 showing it was 1.2C above pre-industrial levels.

The assessment of the year, by the European climate agency Copernicus, also found carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached record levels and that the potent greenhouse gas methane surged “very substantially”, also to a new record.

• Planet-heating emissions rose by 6.2% compared with 2020
• Rise largely down to increase in cars and trucks on the road

Planet-heating emissions roared back in the United States in 2021, dashing hopes that the pandemic would prove a watershed moment in greening American society to address the climate crisis, new figures have shown.

Following the onset of the pandemic in 2020, millions of people switched to working from home, car and airplane travel plummeted and industrial output slowed. This led to a sharp drop in greenhouse gas emissions, spurring predictions that a newly shaped American economy would emerge to help banish the era of fossil fuels.