The Guardian

Cop26 breakthrough will require rich nations to finally make good on promise to help poorer ones

Next month’s Cop26 talks could end in abject failure. Anybody who has monitored the tortuous attempts of the World Trade Organization to piece together a global free trade agreement knows how hard multilateral negotiations can be.

A breakthrough in Glasgow is possible but requires two things to happen: the world’s leading emitters of greenhouse gases need to accelerate their net zero carbon plans; and they have to recognise it is their own self-interest to help the less fortunate countries already struggling with the effects of global heating.

George Eustice did his best not to start an all-out trade war with France over fishing rights but his fellow MPs were less pacific

It’s war. At least it would be if a handful of Tory MPs got their way. And who better to fight than the French? Our oldest enemy. The cause of the dispute was the British trawler detained overnight by our beastly neighbours for allegedly fishing without permission in French territorial waters, and now the subject of an urgent question in the Commons.

It was left to George Eustice, the secretary of state for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to try to negotiate a peace. Or failing that, a truce. If the French were to intensify their checks on seafood at Calais, then the food supply chain really would be in trouble. He still wasn’t entirely clear quite what had happened, he insisted, but he was sure it was all just a misunderstanding of some sort.

Australia needs a mass citizens’ movement, bringing together friend and foe, farmer and city dweller, across generations

There are no climate deniers any more. Whatever anger we feel at the opportunities missed, we still celebrate that the battle of ideas, at least, is won.

Now there are climate hawks and climate doves. Hawks see a global emergency and the need to mobilise as if human civilisation is at stake. Doves – the moderates in the business community and governments who serve their interests – see a serious environmental problem that we should address, but slowly and without too much disruption, especially to them.

Scandals and backdoor support for fossil fuels blight an organisation that ought to be taking the lead at Cop26

• Jake Hess is a researcher at the World Bank in Washington DC

The World Bank is facing the biggest test in its history. Next week, Bank executives are attending the Cop26 global climate summit in Glasgow, where key decisions about the fate of humanity will be made. If the Bank wants to achieve its official goals of eradicating poverty and building shared prosperity, now is the time to step up. Because nothing will increase poverty and undermine prosperity more than runaway global warming.

It is likely to fail this test, however. At a time when the world needs to move away from dirty energy as quickly as possible, the Bank has spent more than $12bn on direct fossil fuel project financing since the landmark Paris climate agreement. And its overall credibility is weaker than ever after a data manipulation scandal involving senior leaders.

Jake Hess is a researcher at the World Bank in Washington DC

Encouraging short-distance travel by the most damaging mode of transport shows yet again that profit trumps climate action

I don’t like to be constantly complaining about things, so let’s start with the good stuff from Wednesday’s budget announcement that air passenger duty (APD) is going to be halved on domestic flights. It won’t take long.

The best thing about it is that the cut in domestic APD will now apply only to those in the cheapest seats – “reduced rate” passengers. The Treasury had consulted on a change that would have cut £39 from the cost of an internal private jet flight, and £13 for a first-class traveller – but this didn’t happen, thankfully. It is also true that the overall direct impact on carbon emissions of this new tax incentive to domestic air travel is likely to be small; domestic flights account for just 4% of UK aviation emissions, and this cut in the tax rates won’t do much to change that.

Leo Murray is co-founder and director of innovation at climate charity Possible

The tools at Biden’s disposal to limit dangerous global heating are enormous. If he wants it, he can do it – but does he want it?

After months of bullish rhetoric about the United States’ climate leadership, the US could still show up to COP 26 empty handed. That doesn’t have to be the case – whatever charismatic obstructionists like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema have to say about it. The climate certainly isn’t waiting on them to change: the UN Emissions Gap Report released this week finds that the world is on track to warm by a catastrophic 2.7C degrees.

The White House has pegged its Paris Agreement success on being able to pass an ambitious spending package, with plenty of money built in for key climate priorities. In recent weeks the administration pegged its audacious goal, of slashing emission by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, to something called a Clean Electricity Payments Program (CEPP). That’s out. And even if the compromise $55bn a year of climate spending the White House promised on Thursday makes it through to legislation, carrots for green spending can only go so far. The US will still not have picked up critical sticks needed to go after the polluting industries driving up temperatures.

Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at The New Republic. She is the co-author of A Planet To Win: Why We Need A Green New Deal (Verso) and the co-editor of We Own The Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style (The New Press)

Arnd Drossel one of many travelling to the summit attempting to raise awareness of the climate crisis

Arnd Drossel has spent the past three months rolling around inside a 160kg steel ball.

The German environmental activist left his home in Paderborn on 30 July in the giant contraption resembling a hamster ball that he made with his son.

If we are to reverse the destruction of our planet, it will take more than ‘heroic’ words from ministers in Canberra

Countries and corporations have been falling over each other to claim they are doing more than any other in the world to stop climate breakdown.

Now Australia has added to the throngs of climate pledges. One of the world’s biggest coal exporters grandly announced an aim to reach net zero by 2050 and said it was doing more than others to address the climate crisis.

Eleanor Salter is a writer and climate campaigner

Requiring carbon certificates could lead African producers to sell in markets with lower standards

The EU could inadvertently “sabotage efforts” to limit global heating to 1.5C or 2C as a result of a controversial carbon border levy, a thinktank has said.

The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) said the EU’s proposed “carbon-border adjustment mechanism” (CBAM) – which would require importers of energy-intensive goods to pay a price for environmental damage – could lead to African producers selling into other markets with lower standards, hindering climate action.

The heads of top US oil companies will answer accusations that their firms have spent years lying about the climate crisis

The heads of major oil companies will make a historic appearance before Congress on Thursday to answer accusations that their firms have spent years lying about the climate crisis.

For the first time, the top executives from the US’s largest oil company, ExxonMobil, as well as Shell, Chevron and BP will be questioned under oath about the industry’s long campaign to discredit and deny the evidence that burning fossil fuels drove global heating.

Achim Steiner says failure by UK hosts to recognise developing nations’ concerns could lead to breakdown of talks

Developing countries, many of which are deeply indebted following the Covid-19 crisis, must be the focus of the Cop26 summit if the UK hopes to make it a success, the UN’s development chief has said.

Achim Steiner, the executive director of the UN development programme, said: “For developing countries at this juncture, a sense of recognising their dilemmas is extremely important. They do not need to be told that climate change is important, that everybody has to do more.

Toymaker’s instructions for a better world target policy chiefs ahead of global climate summit

Lego is touting it as its most ambitious build to date, but rather than many pages of instructions, the toymaker’s latest handbook offers only 10 steps.

The booklet is not for a physical model, however. Instead it offers “building instructions for a better world” ahead of the crucial Cop26 climate talks that start in Glasgow this Sunday.

To successfully emerge from Covid into a fairer, greener future we need to recognise nature as an essential piece of the puzzle

Nearly two years after the first reported case of Covid-19, the world is still facing the repercussions. At the same time, the extent of our planetary emergency – of climate crisis, biodiversity loss and inequality – has become evident. As we rebuild our societies and economies, we are faced with a unique opportunity to build a nature-positive future that we must not let slip away. It is time for all of us to chart a planetary response to our planetary crisis – a response that puts nature at the centre.

Our shared global experience with Covid-19 has underlined the interconnectedness of our different systems. The science is clear: climate, biodiversity and human health are fully interdependent. Yet, within discussions around post-Covid recovery, nature is not yet recognised enough as an essential piece in the puzzle of a resilient future for all.

Frans Timmermans is executive vice-president for the European Green Deal, Achim Steiner is administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and Sandrine Dixson-Declève is co-president of the Club of Rome

From climate crisis to anti-racism, more and more corporations are taking a stand. But if it’s only done because it’s good for business, the fires will keep on burning

In early 2020, bushfires raged across Australia. More than 3,000 homes were destroyed, reduced to ash and rubble by the unrelenting onslaught of flames. Tragically, 34 people died in the fires themselves, with an estimated 445 more dying as a result of smoke inhalation. More than 16m hectares of land burned, destroying wildlife and natural habitats. Nearly 3 billion animals were affected. So massive were the fires that the smoke was visible over Chile, 11,000km away. The record-breaking inferno that engulfed Australia was described as a “global catastrophe, and a global spectacle”. As reported in the New Statesman, Australia had come to symbolise “the extreme edge of a future awaiting us all” as a result of the climate crisis. The Australian government’s inquiry into the bushfires unequivocally reported that “it is clear that we should expect fire seasons like 2019–20, or potentially worse, to happen again”.

If we turn the clock back to less than a year earlier, 15 March 2019 marked the day that 1.4 million children turned out at locations around the world, on “strike” from school in support of action against the climate crisis. In Australia, the strikes were especially targeted at the government’s dismal record of inaction, with many politicians being climate-change deniers. The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, was vocal in his criticism of the strikes. He wanted students to stay in school instead of engaging in democratic protest. His public statement said: “I want children growing up in Australia to feel positive about their future, and I think it is important we give them that confidence that they will not only have a wonderful country and pristine environment to live in, that they will also have an economy to live in as well. I don’t want our children to have anxieties about these issues.”

Pace of emissions reductions must be increased significantly to keep global heating to 1.5C

Every corner of society is failing to take the “transformational change” needed to avert the most disastrous consequences of the climate crisis, with trends either too slow or in some cases even regressing, according to a major new global analysis.

Across 40 different areas spanning the power sector, heavy industry, agriculture, transportation, finance and technology, not one is changing quickly enough to avoid 1.5C in global heating beyond pre-industrial times, a critical target of the Paris climate agreement, according to the new Systems Change Lab report.

The Morrison government released its net zero plan and Angus Taylor penned a scary piece about methane, but both lacked substance

• Temperature Check is a weekly column examining claims about climate change made by governments, politicians, business and in the media. See the latest column and follow the series here
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Will cutting emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane by a third really spark mass culls of Australian cattle, ruin the gas industry and “make life harder for everyday Australians”?

If you ask the the emissions reduction minister Angus Taylor, the answer is a resounding yes, smothered in extra scary sauce.

Joe Biden’s exhortations for major economies to do more may not match what he is able to legislate

“The Australian Way” was the title of the Morrison government’s rollout of its “whole-of-economy Plan” for net zero emissions by 2050, the phrase used at least eight times in Tuesday’s press conference.

Repeatedly reminding us of the “Australian” character of the plan serves multiple purposes for a government preparing for re-election. It can’t help but signal defiance, designed to head off international criticism of Australia’s climate aspirations before the Glasgow summit. As Scott Morrison elaborated: “We won’t be lectured by others who do not understand Australia. The Australian way is all about how you do it, and not if you do it. It’s about getting it done.”

Signatories include scientists from US, EU, India and African and South American countries

Chief scientists and presidents of the national science academies of more than 20 countries including Sir Patrick Vallance have written to world leaders ahead of the Cop26 climate summit, urging them to set out policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sharply, to limit global heating to 1.5C.

Governments must rapidly step up their policies to deploy low-carbon energy and other technologies and address emissions from the main high-carbon sectors of the economy, as well as bring forward innovative technologies, the signatories urged.

World heritage sites in US, Australia and Russia among those that have emitted more carbon than they absorbed since 2001

Forests in at least 10 Unesco world heritage sites have become net sources of carbon since the turn of the millennium due to wildfires, deforestation and global heating, says a new report.

Protected areas such as Yosemite national park in the US, the Greater Blue Mountains area in Australia and the tropical rainforests of Sumatra in Indonesia are among the sites that have emitted more carbon than they absorbed since 2001 as a result of human activities, according to research by the World Resources Institute, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Unesco. The analysis found more sites were expected to switch from sinks to sources of carbon in the coming decades.

The chancellor’s speech was all about the next election, stupid

Rishi Sunak’s budget and spending plans were about politics rather than economics. His Commons statement was designed to frame the arguments in the run-up to an election rather than dealing in a substantial way with a post-Covid, post-Brexit, transition to a net zero economy. However Mr Sunak knows that voters want a break with the recent past. The chancellor sought to insulate the government from politically toxic claims it is enacting austerity, by spending money to reduce waiting times for NHS patients and bringing up per-pupil education spending in England to levels last seen under a Labour government. He also signalled to “blue wall” voters that he has a heart, not just a head – by vowing eventually to restore the UK overseas aid budget to 0.7% of GDP. The hidden economics of the budget can be found in the small print: most of the extra money for public services disappears in two years’ time.

Increasing government expenditure is necessary, but this temporary hike won’t be enough. Local councils will see a sharp rise in funding next year, but this is inexplicably frozen in the following two years. Mr Sunak spoke to his own tribe by confidently cutting taxes for domestic flights, freezing fuel duty and splurging on roads – in breezy defiance of the prime minister’s green messaging ahead of climate talks at Cop26. Mr Sunak spent twice as much in tax cuts for bankers than Covid catch-up lessons for schoolchildren. While the economy has made a recovery from the pandemic, the Office for Budget Responsibility warned that the UK’s supply crisis has been made worse by post-Brexit immigration rules and trade barriers.