The Guardian

Glasgow 2021 must be the moment when the promise of Paris 2015 becomes real – history will not forgive us otherwise

Summits do not always live up to the name. They can get bogged down in detail and disagreement, never really reaching altitude.

That is often the case with the annual UN climate summits known simply as the Cop, which have earned a reputation since the first was held 26 years ago for being bewildering marathons that overrun and underdeliver.

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Jamen Percy was taking photos of surfers at Freshwater beach on the northern beaches of Sydney last week when he noticed the water turning blue – he was witnessing a rare bioluminescence bloom

Prime minister says ‘too many countries doing too little’ amid last-minute talks before summit

World leaders have been warned that Cop26 must “mark the beginning of the end of climate change” amid last-minute talks that could help determine the future of the planet.

With the long-awaited environmental summit due to start on Monday, Boris Johnson issued his plea while saying “too many countries are still doing too little”.

The PM should be taking a higher 2030 emissions reduction target to Cop26. No ifs, buts or maybes. Yet he squibbed it

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When Scott Morrison strode into his press conference room on Tuesday to confirm Australia would be taking a net zero emissions target to the Cop26 in Glasgow, the prime minister was running on high revs.

Possibly this was an excess of adrenalin. Big parliamentary day and all that. But he looked nervous. Morrison rarely looks nervous, so this presentation was memorable.

Foraging bees keep away from centre of colony when infested with mites, find researchers

In the past 18 months humans have become all too familiar with the term “social distancing”. But it turns out we are not the only ones to give our peers a wide berth when our health may be at risk: research suggests honeybees do it too.

Scientists have found that when a hive of honeybees is under threat from the mite Varroa destructor – a parasite linked to the collapse of honeybee colonies – the bees respond by changing the way they interact with one another.

Prime minister on way to Italy says our civilisation could mimic the decline of the Roman empire ‘unless we get this right’

Boris Johnson has likened the globe’s battle against the climate emergency to a football team losing 5-1 at half-time, as he flew to Rome for a world leaders’ gathering seen as crucial for setting the tone for next week’s Cop26 climate summit.

Speaking to reporters on the flight to Italy for the G20 meeting, Johnson conceded that he had not always been convinced about climate change, and that his mind had been changed in part by a briefing given by government scientific advisers soon after he became prime minister.

Yes, there have been compromises. But this is the biggest ever plan to curb emissions and, ahead of Cop26, will send a signal to the world

Move aside, Donald Trump: there’s a new American for the world’s progressives to hate. What’s more, he’s not even a Republican, but rather a member of Joe Biden’s Democratic party. He’s Joe Manchin, who represents West Virginia in the US Senate – the body that’s split 50-50, and which Democrats only control if every single senator stays onside. It’s thanks to him – aided and abetted by the Arizona’ Democrat senator Kyrsten Sinema – that Biden cannot take his place at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow proudly pointing to a raft of measures, signed and sealed, by which the US government will tackle the climate crisis.

Biden had a whole plan worked out, and most Democrats backed him. But Manchin refused to say yes. He insisted that Biden drop perhaps the most powerful element of his climate programme: rewards for energy companies that shift to renewable sources, and fines for those that stick with fossil fuels. Manchin killed that off, perhaps because he represents a state that still has some coal mining, perhaps because he has big personal investments in coal, perhaps because he has received fat donations from the fossil fuel industry. Or maybe just because West Virginia voted by an almost 40-point margin for Trump last year and so, to keep winning, Manchin has to look more like a Republican than a Democrat.

Swedish activist says she has not officially been invited to Glasgow climate summit

Greta Thunberg has joined protesters at a “climate justice memorial” in the City of London to protest against the financing of fossil fuel industries ahead of the Cop26 summit.

Activists from environmental groups including Pacific Climate Warriors, Coal Action Network and Extinction Rebellion laid wreaths and flowers at the entrance of the Lloyd’s headquarters.

Ten people detained in Essex and nine in Hertfordshire after group’s 16th action on UK roads

Insulate Britain protesters have been arrested walking on to the M25 in several locations, causing major disruption on London’s orbital motorway days before the start of the Cop26 climate summit.

In driving rain just after 8am on Friday, two groups affiliated with the climate activist movement walked between lanes of oncoming traffic at junctions 28 and 29 of the M25 in Essex.

Pope Francis has urged world leaders to offer 'concrete hope' to future generations. In a special message for BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day, before the Cop26 summit in Glasgow next week, the pontiff said climate change and Covid-19 had 'raised numerous doubts and concerns about ... the way we organise our societies'. These global crises could only be overcome through 'a renewed sense of shared responsibility for our world', he added 

• Pope Francis urges leaders to take ‘radical’ climate action at Cop26

Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin says it’s time to crush the net zero con that puts cash over people’s future

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including shadowy horses, a visiting hippo and a released rare ring seal

The top oil executives claim they never approved a disinformation campaign. That is simply not true

For the first time ever, the executives from four major oil companies and two of the industry’s most powerful front groups testified before Congress about their decades-long effort to spread climate disinformation and block legislation that would reduce US dependence on fossil fuels.

Republicans vehemently opposed the premise of Thursday’s House oversight hearing. Yet within the first round of GOP questioning, led by one of the industry’s staunchest defenders, ranking committee member James Comer of Kentucky, the executives inadvertently proved why they were summoned to testify under oath in the first place.

Jamie Henn is the founder and director of Fossil Free Media, home of the Clean Creatives campaign, which is pressuring advertising and PR firms to stop working with the fossil fuel industry.

Meddling with drivers guarantees a media storm, but mayors behind ambitious road reclamations are consistently rewarded

Every politician knows the word “bikelash”. From Milan to London, from Sydney to Vancouver, reallocating public space from motor vehicles for people to walk and cycle will inevitably send some residents into paroxysms of anger.

But a persistent theme is that voters have time and again reelected the mayors responsible for ambitious road reclamations, often with overwhelming majorities. Although many presume these policies are toxic, projects that make cities more liveable have been shown to be good urban policy and good politics.

Janette Sadik-Khan is a former commissioner of the New York Department of Transportation and a principal with Bloomberg Associates. Seth Solomonow is an adviser and strategist with Bloomberg Associates, specialising in public space and sustainable transport infrastructure. The authors provided pro bono advice to Sala and Duggan on their public space plans.

How to save the world, by counting to zero: the Guardian's Phoebe Weston breaks down all the climate jargon we have been hearing in the run-up to Cop26, the make-or-break climate summit starting on Sunday, and explains what we – and most importantly, our governments – need to do to help protect our planet and its future

• Why are wildfires getting worse? – video explainer
• Climate change is making floods worse: here's how – video explainer
  

My country, Uganda, and much of Africa has been battered by climate-related disasters. Cop26 is a chance for the biggest polluters to set up a compensation fund

• Read more in our Crisis Nigeria series

While walking with a friend through central Kampala last month, we saw a police truck go by, a body in the back.

It’s a sight that has become more common in Uganda. The life of that person, and many others, was taken by a heavy downpour in my home city. Uganda has been battered by floods in recent years, as well as droughts and plagues of locusts. So much has been damaged and lost here as a result of the climate crisis.

President faces challenges to reassert US credibility after Trump but critics say Biden’s actions have yet to match his words

With no major climate legislation firmly in hand and international allies still smarting after four bruising years of Donald Trump, Joe Biden faces a major challenge to reassert American credibility as he heads to crucial UN climate talks in Scotland.

The US president, who has vowed to tackle a climate crisis he has described as an “existential threat” to civilization, will be welcomed to the Cop26 talks with a sense of relief following the decisions of his predecessor, who pulled his country out of the landmark Paris climate agreement and derided climate science as “bullshit”.

The winners of the European wildlife photographer of the year awards, run by the German Society for Nature Photography, have been chosen, with a shot by Angel Fitor of Spain pipping 19,000 entries

Australia has pledged to cut emissions to net zero by 2050, but is it enough to prevent disastrous global heating? Guardian Australia's resident experts on all things climate change - editor Lenore Taylor, environment editor Adam Morton and environment reporter Graham Readfearn - chat with off-platform editor Antoun Issa on Instagram Live, answering audience questions on Australia's climate policies ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

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• Scott Morrison refuses to release net zero 2050 modelling amid condemnation of climate policy
  
• ‘Hollow’: how the Morrison government’s 2050 net zero pledge was reported around the world
• We’ve spent a year waiting for this 2050 climate plan and it’s actually just the status quo with some new speculative graphs | Katharine Murphy
• Australia’s net zero emissions ‘plan’: the five things you should know
• How does Australia’s response to the climate crisis compare with the rest of the world?

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney likens oil company bosses’ responses to those of tobacco industry at historic hearing

The chief executive of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, was accused of lying to Congress on Thursday after he denied that the company covered up its own research about oil’s contribution to the climate crisis.

For the first time, Woods and the heads of three other major petroleum companies were questioned under oath at a congressional hearing into the industry’s long campaign to discredit and deny the evidence that burning fossil fuels drove global heating. When pressed to make specific pledges or to stop lobbying against climate initiatives, all four executives declined.