The Guardian

Senior Beijing adviser also defends scale, depth and detail of country’s ‘unappreciated’ climate actions

Chinese officials are sceptical of claims that Cop26 commitments will keep global heating below 2C, and want other countries to focus on concrete actions rather than distant targets in the final week of the talks.

They feel that China, the world’s biggest emitter, is doing more than it is given credit for, including plans to peak coal consumption by 2025 and add more new wind and solar power capacity by 2030 than the entire installed electricity system of the US.

NSW parliamentary inquiry told concerns of Rachel Musgrave and another ecologist were ‘watered down’ by consultants

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Ecologists involved in the multibillion dollar plan to raise the wall of Sydney’s main water reservoir say their input detailing the threat to endangered species in the world heritage-listed region was either watered down or ignored altogether.

The claims – made in separate evidence presented on Monday to a NSW upper house inquiry into the state government’s plan to raise the Warragamba dam wall at least 14 metres – raise fresh questions over the independence of the environmental impact statement (EIS) prepared for the project.

The ratchet issue is among several sticking points still to be finalised as negotiators return to the Cop26 table

Countries that have failed to come up with national plans on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in line with limiting temperature rises to 1.5C must be forced back to the negotiating table every year from now on, poor countries have said ahead of crunch talks at the Cop26 climate summit.

Current pledges are inadequate, and would lead to heating of 2.7C, according to UN calculations. But under the Paris agreement, countries are only required to ratchet up their pledges – known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – every five years, with the next deadline falling in 2025. Developing countries say this is much too late.

Letter to Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund trustees warns of ‘full-blown climate catastrophe’

More than 130 MPs, including over half of the parliamentary Labour party, have signed a cross-party letter to their pension fund calling on it to divest from fossil fuel companies to “ensure that our pensions are not funding climate disaster”.

The letter, to be delivered on Monday to trustees of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund (PCPF), applauds recent reductions in investments in fossil fuels, but adds: “We believe you must go a step further, divesting from the fossil fuel industry in its entirety, as quickly as possible.

Foreign minister Simon Kofe hopes the speech will demonstrate the reality for countries on the frontline

Tuvalu’s foreign minister has recorded a speech for the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow standing knee-deep in seawater to highlight how his low-lying Pacific Island nation is on the frontline of climate change.

Images of Simon Kofe standing in a suit and tie at a lectern set up in the sea, with his trouser legs rolled up, have been shared widely on social media, drawing attention to Tuvalu’s struggle against rising sea levels.

Communities and groups say being shut out of key negotiations will have dire consequences for millions

The legitimacy of the Cop26 climate summit has been called into question by civil society participants who say restrictions on access to negotiations are unprecedented and unjust.

As the Glasgow summit enters its second week, observers representing hundreds of environmental, academic, climate justice, indigenous and women’s rights organisations warn that excluding them from negotiating areas and speaking to negotiators could have dire consequences for millions of people.

The first week of the summit included digging in on fossil fuels and putting net zero through the spin cycle

As the climate talks in Glasgow reach their midpoint, it’s worth taking a look back at Australia’s extraordinary performance in the first week.

Fresh from the G20 meeting in Italy where he refused to agree to a ban on coal, the first thing Scott Morrison did upon arrival in Glasgow was a stand-up press conference, which barely mentioned the words climate change.

Morrison government rejects direct calls for action from Britain, the US, Europe and Pacific nations at Cop26

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Pressure on the Australian government to lift its 2030 emissions target is expected to escalate and continue into next year, based on a document released by the British hosts at the Glasgow climate summit.

A summary of issues to be negotiated in the second week of the Cop26 talks includes a push for countries that have not improved their short-term targets to be told they are expected to do so in 2022.

Constant change in the climate policies of Australia and New Zealand has been a huge disappointment to Pacific island nations

When I came into office as president of Kiribati in 2003, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had released its third assessment report and, like my predecessors, I believed the report’s projected rise in sea levels posed a real threat to the survival for those of us on the frontline. Accordingly, in my first address at the UN General Assembly in 2004 I drew attention to the dangers posed by climate change, especially to small island nations like Kiribati and other Pacific island countries.

The fact that no other leader made any reference to it in their statement worried me and I wondered whether I might be making a fool of myself, especially when the focus of international attention at the time was on more real and present threats like terrorism. Thankfully by the next assembly, in 2005, other Pacific island leaders had joined the call for action. This has gathered great momentum in the years since.

High-profile experts cast doubt over the bulk of the country’s touted reductions in greenhouse pollution

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Australia is likely to be releasing more emissions from deforestation than reported to the United Nations, new analysis indicates, stoking calls for an independent review of the sector that has delivered the bulk of the country’s claimed reductions in greenhouse gas pollution in recent decades.

An assessment of satellite imagery of more than 50 properties in Queensland by Martin Taylor, an adjunct senior lecturer at the University of Queensland, has identified significant discrepancies between what is treated as cleared land by Australia’s National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS) and the Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (Slats) used by the state government.

Exclusive: poll of 10 countries including US, UK, France and Germany finds people prioritising measures that are already habits

Citizens are alarmed by the climate crisis, but most believe they are already doing more to preserve the planet than anyone else, including their government, and few are willing to make significant lifestyle changes, an international survey has found.

“The widespread awareness of the importance of the climate crisis illustrated in this study has yet to be coupled with a proportionate willingness to act,” the survey of 10 countries including the US, UK, France and Germany, observed.

One of the world’s largest bird counts is ‘hours of terror separated by minutes of boredom’

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“Two-hundred pelicans breeding, 20 whiskered terns, 100 grey teal, 30 black swans, one little pied cormorant …”

Richard Kingsford, a veteran ecologist, is rattling off the waterbirds he’s spotting below. He clutches his voice recorder closely to overcome the engine noise as our Cessna banks steeply, tracking the shoreline of Lake Brewster, a large lake in central-west New South Wales.

From Philippines to Greenland, protecting dying coral reefs to melting ice sheets, young people are fighting for their futures

• What is Cop26 and why does it matter? The complete guide

For millions of young people around the world, climate breakdown is something they have known their entire lives. Many live in regions that are particularly at risk of being affected by tipping points - parts of the Earth’s system where small changes, such as increased temperatures, could lead to accelerated and irreversible impacts.

A landmark IPCC report earlier this year warned that tipping points such as melting ice sheets or Amazon forest loss could soon be triggered, with the potential to bring catastrophic change to vulnerable areas.

Levy on imports related to CO2 generated by meat production might be necessary, says minister

The UK may eventually need to implement a carbon dioxide border tax to stop consumers effectively exporting greenhouse gas emissions abroad, the environment secretary has said.

On Sunday, George Eustice insisted he was not in favour of a domestic meat tax to help reduce global heating and that such a proposal had “never been on the cards”.

Instead of investing to cheat death, we should be trying to make old age livable and dignified for all

Welcome to the era of immortalists: scientists, dreamers and – crucially – billionaires, who want us to think of age as a curable disease, and our final end as something that could be indefinitely postponed. According to one estimate, the revenues of the global anti-ageing industry will increase from about $200bn today to $420bn by 2030. One sure sign of its rosy prospects is the involvement of high-profile people in the US who have made vast fortunes from the internet. If many of them can avoid taxes, why not death?

“Death is sort of an affront to American life,” wrote Zadie Smith in 2003. “It’s so anti-aspirational.” In tech circles, this kind of distaste for mortality often blurs into the culture of “biohacking” (fasting, closely tracking your vital signs, gobbling supplements and “smart drugs”) which is one manifestation of transhumanism: to quote the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, “a belief that the human race can evolve beyond its current limitations, especially by the use of science and technology”.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

Climate-related disasters have killed more Americans from flooding and wildfires than the 2,996 people who died in the 9/11 attacks. Let’s treat the climate crisis with equal seriousness

Large government bureaucracies are often slow to adapt to changing realities, such as the catastrophic threats we face in a warming world. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is no exception. New research from Brown University’s Costs of War Project shows that the DHS has been overly focused on foreign and foreign-inspired terrorism, while violent attacks in the US have more often come from domestic sources. A combination of willful ignorance and institutional inertia caused the agency to miss the rise in white supremacy and domestic terrorism that led to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.

The new data from Dr Erik Dahl, Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, show that just one of the 46 failed terror plots in the US from 2018 through 2020 was directed by a foreign organization. In contrast, 29 plots were planned or carried out by domestic groups. In 2019, DHS finally acknowledged the growing threat of targeted violence and domestic terrorism borne mainly of far-right ideology and white supremacy and issued its first strategy document identifying these threats.

Heidi Peltier is a senior researcher at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and director of programs for the Costs of War Project

Lands End, a new exhibition of international artists staged at the site of a historic San Francisco restaurant, showcases the fragility of the planet through photography, film and found objects.

• Lands End runs 7 November 2021 – 27 March 2022 at 1090 Point Lobos Ave San Francisco

Promised an income, those affected by $20bn oil project are losing their land and resources instead

A bumpy, mud-spattered road leads deep into Kakumiro district in western Uganda, where the longest heated oil pipeline in the world will pass through its homes, farms and wetlands.

The villagers in the Kijungu settlements welcomed the project when the route was announced in 2017, hoping that the government and companies involved would buy their land and change their lives for good. Their optimism has since given way to frustration.

Green campaigners are aghast as report shows increases in many departments despite a drive to cut emissions

Ministers and civil servants took nearly 107,000 domestic flights in Britain in just one year despite a drive to reduce carbon emissions, reveals a new official report on “greening government”.

The environmental audit reveals 22 Whitehall departments and government agencies took 106,824 internal flights in the year to 31 March 2020, an average of 293 flights a day.

Coalition aims to give voice to ideas and solutions it believes are largely absent from the Cop talks

A counter climate summit kicks off in Glasgow on Sunday amid mounting criticism from activists about greenwashed solutions and stalled action from corporations and rich nations inside Cop26.

The People’s Summit for Climate Justice will bring together movements and communities from across the world to amplify voices, ideas and solutions it believes are largely absent from Cop – including the global green new deal, polluters’ liability, indigenous ecological knowledge and the gulf between net zero and real zero emissions.