The Guardian

Some species in Brazil have shrunk by nearly 10% over 40 years of measurements, say researchers

Birds in the Amazon are becoming smaller but growing longer wings, a study has found, with scientists saying global heating is the most likely explanation.

Several recent papers have reported birds getting smaller, but as their subjects were migratory birds there were many confounding factors that could have explained the results, such as hunting, pesticide use or habitat loss.

Panel of 200 scientists tells Cop26 Indigenous people, business, governments and scientists must collaborate

• Cop26 – latest updates

The world’s approach to the Amazon rainforest must be transformed to avoid an irreversible, catastrophic tipping point, according to the most comprehensive study of the region ever carried out.

More than 200 scientists collaborated on the new report, which finds that more than a third of the world’s biggest tropical forest is degraded or deforested, rainfall is declining and dry seasons are growing longer.

Staff guarding delegates at five-star venue were asked to sleep on cots in cramped hotel lounge where they also ate meals

Government delegations staying at the five-star Gleneagles hotel for Cop26 were guarded by security personnel who slept on camping cots in a 40-person dormitory set up in a lounge at the venue, raising concerns about Covid safety at the climate summit.

The team of men were recruited and housed by a security company under a Foreign Office contract just days before the world leaders summit opened at the Glasgow climate talks. Three individuals have now come forward to raise their concerns about the cramped and unsanitary conditions in which they were housed at the luxury hotel.

The surprise Cop26 announcement could herald a crucial era of climate cooperation between the two carbon superpowers

It could have been so much worse. At this critical juncture, talks between the world’s two carbon superpowers – together accounting for some 40% of global greenhouse-gas emissions – could easily have collapsed into a blame game, and a standoff that would have seriously set back global efforts. Instead, the surprise China-US agreement announced on Wednesday night offers renewed hope for joint leadership at last. After the bruising years of the Donald Trump presidency, and the impact of Covid-19 on the negotiations themselves and those poor countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis, trust in multilateralism hangs in the balance.

The new agreement is far from perfect and doesn’t go far enough. Despite promises to cooperate on reducing methane emissions, details in the plan are patchy and need more substance. It could even risk distracting from the multilateral work needed in these crucial last moments of the UN-led Cop26 talks. But it is still important, even inspiring, to see new cooperation emerge. The US and China climate envoys, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua, shared warm words, the latter announcing that “there is more agreement between China and the United States than divergence.”

Sam Geall is CEO of China Dialogue and associate fellow at Chatham House

The prime minister loves a metaphor, but is anyone looking forward to the outcome of this particular match?

Time’s a great healer. It may feel incredible now, but I think Boris Johnson will eventually look back on his final appearance at his own climate conference and regard it as a win that he spent it answering questions about some pompous Devonian QC-slash-MP. Let’s face it: the question of why Geoffrey Cox was allowed to coin it in the British Virgin Islands is ultimately going to feel a lot easier to handle than the question of why the British Virgin Islands were allowed to be permanently submerged under six feet of water.

So yes – right now, there are those who might imagine it embarrassing for the prime minister to have to spend so much as one nanosecond of Cop26 podium time addressing the institutionalised chiselling that still riddles both houses of parliament. But look at the bigger picture, guys! You’ve simply failed to consider how much more awks it’s going to be when we’re all distilling urine for drinking water, composting the dead, and fighting our own vengeful children for control of the higher ground. If Cop26 ends disappointingly, Johnson will eventually judge it a dodged bullet that the most significant failure of his premiership was veiled by 10 days of ferocious sleaze coverage.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Indigenous people, representatives of farmers and environmental NGOs carry red ribbons as they exit convention centre

• Cop26 – latest updates

Carrying blood-red ribbons to represent the crucial red lines already crossed by Cop26 negotiations, hundreds of representatives of global civil society walked out of the convention centre in Glasgow on the final morning of the summit in protest.

The audience at the People’s Plenary in the conference blue zone heard speakers condemn the legitimacy and ambition of the 12-day summit before walking out to join protesters gathered on the streets beyond the security fencing.

Some parts of the crucial climate document have been strengthened while others have been softened

A second draft of the outcome of the Cop26 climate summit has been published. It will be subject to many further revisions before the final outcome is published, probably on Saturday or even Sunday.

Key provisions are still in there, including one calling for countries to return to the negotiating table next year because current targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions are inadequate to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the tougher of two goals in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

I. Science and urgency

1. Recognizes the importance of the best available science for effective climate action and policymaking;

3. Expresses alarm and utmost concern that human activities have caused around 1.1 °C of warming to date, that impacts are already being felt in every region, and that carbon budgets consistent with achieving the Paris Agreement temperature goal are now small and being rapidly depleted;

II. Adaptation

6. Notes with serious concern the findings from the contribution of Working Group I to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report, including that climate and weather extremes and the adverse impacts on people and nature will continue to increase with every additional increment of rising temperatures;

18. Urges developed country Parties to at least double their collective provision of climate finance for adaptation to developing country Parties from the current level by 2025 as a step towards achieving a balance between mitigation and adaptation in the provision of scaled-up financial resources, recalling Article 9, paragraph 4, of the Paris Agreement;

III. Mitigation

20. Reaffirms the Paris Agreement temperature goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels;

28. Urges Parties that have not yet communicated new or updated nationally determined contributions to do so as soon as possible in advance of the fourth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement;

29. Recalls Articles 3 and 4, paragraphs 3, 4, 5 and 11, of the Paris Agreement and requests Parties to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets in their nationally determined contributions as necessary to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal by the end of 2022, taking into account different national circumstances;

36. Calls upon Parties to accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of technologies and the adoption of policies for the transition towards low-emission energy systems, including by rapidly scaling up clean power generation and accelerating the phaseout of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels;

V Finance, technology transfer and capacity-building for mitigation and adaptation

40. Urges developed country Parties to provide enhanced support, including through financial resources, technology transfer and capacity-building, to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation, in continuation of their existing obligations under the Convention and the Paris Agreement, and encourages other Parties to provide or continue to provide such support voluntarily;

VI. Loss and damage

61. Acknowledges that climate change has already caused and will increasingly cause loss and damage and that, as temperatures rise, impacts from climate and weather extremes, as well as slow onset events, will pose an ever-greater social, economic and environmental threat;

Attendees on day 11 of UN summit in Glasgow included London mayor Sadiq Khan and a Tyrannosaurus rex

Cop26 climate summit: day 11 – as it happened

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a swinging gibbon, a cheeky macaque and a preying crocodile

British designer’s tote bag to go on sale at Sainsbury’s and Waitrose in new bid to tackle single-use plastic

With the exception of a new must-have brand of oat milk and an aesthetically pleasing tin of chopped tomatoes, the supermarket experience is not an especially chic one – unless Anya Hindmarch is along for the ride.

Having sent shoppers wild in the aisles of Sainsbury’s with the I Am Not a Plastic Bag bag that opened a debate on single-use plastic in 2007, the accessory designer is returning to the checkouts this winter with a bag she hopes will revolutionise the way we carry our shopping.

Who pays for ‘loss and damage’ is in vogue at Cop26, but the authors of the climate emergency are still escaping accountability

Mohammed Nasheed made global headlines in 2009 by convening the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting. As president of the Maldives, a nation of 1,138 low-lying islands south-west of India, Nasheed donned scuba gear and descended beneath the waves with 13 government ministers. The officials used waterproof pencils to sign a document urging the world to slash carbon dioxide emissions so the Maldives would not disappear beneath rising seas.

“If the Maldives cannot be saved today, we do not feel that there is much of a chance for the rest of the world,” Nasheed told reporters.

This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story. Mark Hertsgaard is Covering Climate Now’s executive director

The response to our most urgent threat requires new forms of creativity and human imagination

Faced with the state of the world and the depth of denial, faced with the data that keeps falling on us, faced with the sense that we are on a ship heading towards an abyss while the party on board gets louder and louder, I have found it necessary to develop an attitude and a mode of writing that I refer to as existential creativity. This is the creativity at the end of time.

It is not given to many people to sense the end of time approaching. Maybe some Atlanteans sensed it. Maybe the sages of Pompeii, if there were any, felt it in advance. Maybe those ancient civilisations whose societies were about to be wrecked by invaders from the sea felt it. But I can’t think of any who had the data that it was coming, who had the facts pouring at them every day, and yet who carried on as if everything were normal.

Albert Camus, writing during the second world war, felt the need for a new philosophy to answer the extreme truths of the times. The absurd was born from that. Existentialism was born too from a world in the throes of extreme crisis. But here we are on the edges of the biggest crisis that has ever faced us. We need a new philosophy for these times, for this near-terminal moment in the history of the human.

It is out of this I want to propose an existential creativity. How do I define it? It is the creativity wherein nothing should be wasted. As a writer, it means everything I write should be directed to the immediate end of drawing attention to the dire position we are in as a species. It means that the writing must have no frills. It should speak only truth. In it, the truth must be also beauty. It calls for the highest economy. It means that everything I do must have a singular purpose.

Ben Okri is a novelist and poet. His latest books are Every Leaf a Hallelujah and The Famished Road

Restaurateurs invited to discuss plant-based ‘faux gras’ ahead of expected ban on liver-based spread

It is prized for its rich flavour and exclusive image by top restaurants and gourmands, but now foie gras is going vegan as the government meets chefs to discuss how to make alternatives out of nuts and mushrooms.

Vegan restaurateurs have been invited to meet UK government advisers to discuss how to create plant-based “faux gras” in the event of an upcoming ban, the Guardian has learned. Sources said the government hoped to show that a gap in the market left by a restriction on the trade of the controversial product could be filled by high-end chefs who are willing to produce alternatives.

The wording of the new text is softer in some places, but experts say many of the key elements to keep hopes of 1.5C temperature rise in reach are still present

My colleague Fiona Harvey says it is a surprise and a positive step that the coal phaseout has remained in the document at all. and that the fact it has remained in the draft is a positive step.

Paragraph 62 in the second draft is new:

62. Also acknowledges the important role of a broad range of stakeholders at the local, national and regional level, including indigenous peoples and local communities, in averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change;

Negotiators in Glasgow are working to come to an agreement as the conference enters its final day

Countries are being called on to accelerate the phaseout of coal power at the Cop26 summit, and to return to the negotiating table next year with improvements to their national plans on cutting greenhouse gases.

The second draft of the key outcome from the Cop26 summit, now nearing its final hours in Glasgow after a fortnight of intense talks, showed a slight softening of language in some instances but retained the core demands for a return.

Campaigners say current design that includes plastic should be replaced with a sustainable version

Remembrance poppies should be fully recyclable or even biodegradable, say green campaigners, amid fears millions will end up in landfill this month.

The Royal British Legion produces about 30m poppies each year. Although the flower and leaf are made from paper, the green stem and black centre are plastic.

Barack Obama may have struck a gloomy tone, but that sense is amplified for those in imminent peril

After an exhausting two weeks of speeches, protests, meetings and increasingly tortuous negotiations at the Glasgow climate summit, a sense of simmering frustration and anxiety has gripped many of the 25,000 attenders.

Even former world leaders are not immune. “There are times where the future seems somewhat bleak,” said Barack Obama on Monday. “There are times where I am doubtful that humanity can get its act together before it’s too late, and images of dystopia start creeping into my dreams.”

New walk covering park’s most spectacular peaks opens to public on Saturday after construction delays

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A 160km multi-day hiking trail running the length of the Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park will open to the public on Saturday, becoming one of the longest trails in Victoria.

Connecting some of the parks’ most spectacular peaks, the Grampians Peaks Trail is a 13-day/12-night journey starting at Mt Zero and travelling south over the ranges that make up Gariwerd and ending in the town of Dunkeld, 270km west of Melbourne.

Whether it’s by car or plane, we need to do less. Yet the government thinks of mobility as a freedom for it to champion

Analysis released at Cop26 climate summit shows Australia’s per capita emissions from coal power nearly double those of China

Australia has the highest greenhouse gas emissions from coal power in the world on a per capita basis, nearly doubling those in China, according to a new analysis released at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

As the talks headed towards a fraught final day, there was disagreement over whether a closing declaration would commit countries to return with stronger short-term emissions reduction targets next year, and explicitly support an accelerated phaseout of coal.