The Guardian

Ending unsustainable commercial exploitation of the Earth’s ‘blue heart’ is as vital as curbing fossil fuel use, says pioneering biologist

World leaders gathered for Cop26 must ban industrial fishing on the high seas to have a chance of preserving the ocean, the Earth’s “largest carbon-capturing and oxygen-generating system”, the deep-sea explorer and oceanographer Sylvia Earle has said.

Earle, 86, has clocked up more than 7,000 hours underwater and holds several records, including in 1979 for the deepest untethered dive by a woman.

Exclusive: Greta Thunberg among young people filing legal suit for climate crisis to be declared a global level 3 emergency

Greta Thunberg and youth climate activists from around the world are filing a legal petition to the UN secretary-general urging him to declare a “system-wide climate emergency”.

As Cop26 enters its final days, climate campaigners were due to file a legal document on Wednesday calling on António Guterres to use emergency powers to match the level of response adopted for the coronavirus pandemic by pronouncing the climate crisis a global level 3 emergency – the UN’s highest category.

The dwindling flow of the Euphrates River combined with Turkey’s occupation of Alouk water station has disrupted access to water for 460,000 people

• Photographs by Daniela Sala
• World’s ‘calamitous’ water crisis being ignored in climate talks – WaterAid

Interconnectors – linking areas rich in hydro, wind or solar power – can help to even out fluctuations in weather

When the weather is calm, wind turbines stop turning. That’s obvious, but as the UK increasingly relies on wind power generation, so an energy crunch looms if the wind doesn’t blow.

One way to smooth out the vagaries of weather for renewable energy supplies is a European super powergrid. These so-called interconnectors across national borders are already here. On 1 October, a 720km (450-mile) undersea power cable went live between the UK and Norway, the world’s longest subsea interconnector. This allows Norway to export surplus hydropower to the UK, but if water levels drop in the Norwegian hydro reservoirs during dry weather, the shortfall could be supplemented by wind generation from the UK. An even longer interconnector is proposed between the UK and Iceland, tapping into Iceland’s huge supply of renewable hydro and geothermal energy. North Africa could also be plugged in – there is an ambitious proposal to link the UK to a projected giant solar scheme in Morocco.

With the climate of northern Europe rich in wind, and southern areas with plenty of sunshine, sharing a range of renewable energies across borders helps to even out fluctuations in weather, making power supplies more secure as well as clean.

Xie Zhenhua claims country has concrete plans rather than ‘paying lip service’ to commitments

China has detailed and concrete plans on how to meet its climate commitments, and is pushing those plans forward vigorously, unlike some countries that are “paying lip service” to their climate targets, the head of delegation for China at the Cop26 climate talks has said.

Xie Zhenhua, China’s veteran chief official, said: “President Xi [Jinping] announced recently on many multilateral occasions China’s specific targets and concrete policies, measures and actions. We have a policy framework to ensure that we can achieve our climate target.”

Pandering to the rich has got us into this mess. The correlation between wealth and polluting behaviour could not be clearer

Most of our dysfunctions are caused by pandering to the rich. The way governments have allowed democracy to be eroded by lobbyists (including politicians with lucrative private interests); the deregulation that lets corporations, oligarchs and landlords squeeze their workers and tenants, then dump their costs on society; the permissive environment for profiteering during the pandemic; the degradation of health, education and other public services by the constant drive towards privatisation: all these are symptoms of the same condition.

The same applies to the worst of our predicaments: the destruction of our life-support systems. The very rich arrogate to themselves the lion’s share of the planetary space on which we all depend. It is hard to understand why we tolerate this attack on our common interests.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Co-author Prof Jacek Jasieniak says city’s CBD could be a photovoltaic ‘powerhouse’

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Central Melbourne has the potential to generate three-quarters of its electricity needs from solar power, according to new modelling.

By integrating more solar panels into roofs, walls and windows, the City of Melbourne could generate 2,354 gigawatt hours of energy a year – equivalent to 74% of its current electricity consumption, the Monash University research suggests.

Matt Kean urges the Coalition government to ‘go a lot further’ to help drive EV uptake

• Sarah Martin: In a galling pivot, Scott Morrison hopes he can peek under the bonnet of an EV and be accepted as a convert
• What is the Morrison government’s electric cars policy – and will it actually drive take-up?
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The New South Wales treasurer, Matt Kean, has taken a swipe at the Morrison government’s new electric vehicle policy, as he unveiled additional funding that sees his state’s investment dwarf the federal commitment.

On Wednesday, the day after the prime minister, Scott Morrison, unveiled $178m in new funding for a future fuels fund to build charging stations across Australia, Kean announced an additional $105m to boost uptake of EVs among fleet operators in NSW.

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There is a way the Coalition can claim its climate policy is all about technology not taxes and still show it is serious about net zero

Supporters of fossil fuels in Australia’s media and political classes have been gleefully echoing Greta Thunberg’s claims that the Glasgow climate summit has been a failure. Yet both European and American politicians have been busily working on other plans to discipline climate change bludgers. These involve measures such as taxing carbon intensive goods imported from countries without equivalent emission control policies, and also choking off finance to high-polluting industries.

The Morrison government’s recently released long-term emissions reduction plan claims that it will protect us from such actions, stating the plan will “ensure Australian exporters are not targeted by trade action, and Australian businesses do not face cost of capital premiums”. While Scott Morrison might be able to fool voters, there is little chance the US and European governments will fail to notice this is a plan to freeload off their hard work.

In a decision made by Trump’s interior secretary days before leaving office, critical land for the northern spotted owl would have been logged

In a victory for the northern spotted owl, the Biden administration has struck down a Trump-era plan that would have removed more than 3.4m acres of critical habitat for the imperiled bird and opened the old-growth forests where it lives to logging.

The population of the small chocolate brown owl, which lives in forested areas in Washington, Oregon, and northern California, has been in decline for decades and has already lost roughly 70% of its habitat. Its numbers have plummeted 77% in Washington state, 68% in Oregon, and close to half in California, according to studies by the US Geological Survey, and biologists fear that further habitat reduction would put them on the path to extinction.

Speaking on stage alongside the puppet 'Little Amal’, leaders and campaigners have said the climate crisis cannot be ended without the empowerment of women. Indigenous women and politicians including Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives, demanded increased investment.

The 3.5-metre puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee started her journey in Turkey on 27 July and has travelled nearly 5,000 miles across Greece, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and France, symbolising millions of displaced children

• ‘World designed by men has destroyed many things,’ Cop26 warned

Dominic Raab defended ex-attorney general for working from Caribbean in lockdown – but do Tories really see the problem?

Geoffrey Cox: (reaching for the phone) Yes?

Dominic Raab: Thank God I’ve managed to track you down.

The true Australian Way would be to harness clean transport technology to lower costs, improve the air we breathe and create new jobs, all while supporting net zero emissions

The Morrison government on Tuesday announced its future fuels and vehicles strategy. Overall it’s a missed opportunity.

Electric vehicles should not be seen as an environmental issue. The transition to electric vehicles is a major economic opportunity for Australia – if we can get coherent and strategic national policy to capitalise on the benefits of this transformative change.

Climate crisis cannot be ended without the empowerment of women, politicians and campaigners tell summit

“The world as designed by men has destroyed many things,” Cop26 delegates have been told, as leaders and campaigners warned that the climate crisis could not be ended without the empowerment of women.

Women and girls around the world suffer disproportionately from the impacts of climate breakdown, as they are on average poorer, less educated and more dependent on subsistence farming. A UN report found 80% of those displaced by the climate emergency are women.

Our climate analysis shows there’s a nearly 1C difference between countries’ 2030 commitments and their 2050 targets

• Bill Hare and Niklas Höhne are collaborators on the Climate Action Tracker project

Since the Paris agreement in 2015, countries around the world have promised ambitious action on climate change. Six years later, it is clear that they haven’t followed through on that promise. In the latest analysis carried out by Climate Action Tracker, published today, we find that the vast majority of states’ proposed 2030 actions and targets to reduce emissions are inconsistent with their longer-term net zero goals.

There is a nearly one degree gap between governments’ current policies and what would be required to actually achieve their stated 2050 targets.

Research from world’s top climate analysis coalition contrasts sharply with last week’s optimism

• Follow all the latest from Cop26 – live

The world is on track for disastrous levels of global heating far in excess of the limits in the Paris climate agreement, despite a flurry of carbon-cutting pledges from governments at the UN Cop26 summit.

Temperature rises will top 2.4C by the end of this century, based on the short-term goals countries have set out, according to research published in Glasgow on Tuesday.

Some of the best images from the global climate summit in Scotland on Monday 8 November

Marli Yontep Krikati became the first woman in her Amazon village to lead the forest guardians after the men declared the job too dangerous. The forest guardians are groups of indigenous Brazilians who patrol their territories to guard against illegal logging, farming and mining in the face of lax enforcement of Brazil's environmental laws under Jair Bolsonaro's government. Forest guardian leaders regularly receive death threats from powerful interest groups who encourage these unlawful activities. Now, as Brazil declares an end to deforestation by 2030 as part of the Cop26 summit, we follow the forest guardians on patrol to witness the severity of the deforestation challenge

• Latest news from the climate crisis conference in Glasgow

Failure to pass Build Back Better would disillusion a generation of voters, and potentially fracture the Democratic party

Deep into the night last Friday, long past the hour when most Americans had ceased paying attention, Congress passed the $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill otherwise known as the BIF. Its passage was heralded as a victory for President Biden, and the daily news chyrons dutifully marked a point in his column. But beyond the horserace myopia of the Beltway – and especially among young people – the news came tinged with the threat of disaster. Because for those of us interested in sustained human civilization on a habitable planet, the most relevant fact about the BIF is this: without consequent passage of the clean energy and social welfare bill known as Build Back Better, the BIF alone will exacerbate the climate crisis.

The reasons are manifold. The bill is riddled with exemptions and subsidies for corporations like ExxonMobil, whose lobbyists were caught bragging about their role in shaping the text. It invests in highways, bridges and airports that – in the absence of an aggressive drive to electrify cars and planes – will only add to emissions from the transportation sector. And the climate funding it does contain is focused not on drawing down emissions but on preparing Americans for worsening floods, fires and superstorms. If this is all we get, the message to young people is clear: Exxon will continue to be allowed to drown your homes, but not to worry, the government is investing in some life vests. Good luck!

Daniel Sherrell is the author of Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World (Penguin Books) and a climate activist

At Cop26 Sir Patrick Vallance has said he eats less meat and cycles but society needs to change more

Changes in behaviour are needed to tackle the climate emergency, the UK’s chief scientific adviser has said at the Cop26 summit.

Sir Patrick Vallance said behaviour change was starting to happen but needed to go further and said he cycled to work, ate less meat and had taken the train to the climate summit in Glasgow. He also said the climate crisis was a far bigger problem than coronavirus and would kill more people if immediate changes were not made.