The Guardian

Speaking at the event in Riyadh on Saturday, Prince Charles said there was a 'dangerously narrow window' to accelerate climate action. In a video message to the Saudi Green Initiative Forum, and just a week before the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, the Prince of Wales said world leaders must ‘consider the kind of future existence that we are bequeathing to our grandchildren and their children's children’. He also welcomed Saudi Arabia’s target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060.

• Saudi Arabia sets target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060

One of world’s biggest oil exporters more than doubles its annual target to reduce carbon emissions

Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s top oil exporters, has announced it aims to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060 and more than double its annual target to reduce carbon emissions.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made the announcement in brief scripted remarks at the start of the kingdom’s first Saudi Green Initiative Forum.

Government urged to carry out comprehensive review of curriculum and decarbonise school estate by 2030

Climate crisis education should become fully embedded in the system, unions have urged.

A joint letter to the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, calls for a review of the curriculum to ensure everyone is mobilised for a “sustainable future”.

Ambivalence, industrial disputes and other issues are complicating city’s build-up to the climate conference

Diwali candles in pretty terracotta pots are stacked around the counter at Suresh & Sons grocer in Finnieston, the Glasgow district that borders the UN-managed “blue zone” of the Scottish Event Campus. Next weekend more than 30,000 delegates from 196 countries will converge on the area for the crucial two-week Cop26 climate conference.

Four days into the event is the Hindu festival of lights, Leena Kumar explains. The council advised her to talk to suppliers about getting stock delivered before the road closures begin this weekend, but it is not that easy, she says. “We are well-informed, but we still don’t know what’s going to happen,” she laughs.

An insider says keeping temperatures within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels rests with big developing countries in G20

As we get closer to the beginning of Cop26, I worry that the main goal – keeping temperature rises within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – is slipping away.

The Covid-19 pandemic offered the opportunity for a global reset. We could rebuild in a way that was green and with lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Every week we’ll hear from negotiators from a developing country that is involved in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations and will be attending the Cop26 climate conference.

Each item will have an estimate of its carbon footprint, so visitors can make ‘climate-friendly choices’

Plant-based dishes will dominate the menu at the Cop26 climate conference, where 80% of the food will be from Scotland.

The low-carbon menu includes 95% British food, especially locally sourced Scottish produce, and each menu item has an estimate of its carbon footprint, “helping attendees make climate-friendly choices”.

Winter squash lasagne (0.7kg CO2 equivalent emissions) – celeriac, glazed root vegetables and winter squash, with a vegan cheddar.

Organic kale and seasonal vegetable pasta (0.3kg CO2 ee) – spelt fusilli, field mushrooms, kale and seasonal vegetables.

Braised turkey meatballs (0.9kg CO2 ee) – with organic spelt penne pasta in a tomato ragu.

Organic spelt wholegrain penne pasta (0.2kg CO2 ee) – with a tomato ragu, kale, pesto and oatmeal crumble.

Summit president says 2015 global emissions agreement a ‘framework’ but rules were left for future talks

Achieving a global climate deal in Glasgow in the next three weeks will be harder than signing the Paris agreement of 2015, the UK president-designate of the Cop26 talks has said.

Alok Sharma, the cabinet minister in charge of the UK-hosted talks, just over a week away, said the task would be to get nearly 200 countries to implement stringent cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions, in line with holding global temperature increases to within 1.5C of pre-industrial levels – a goal fast receding as global carbon output continues to climb.

With Glasgow around the corner and an election in sight, the prime minister could’ve done without this week’s privileges committee fracas

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Funnily enough, the most explosive drama of the week was not Liberals and Nationals facing off about the net zero target. That bullfight had been long scheduled.

The lesser-known fracas inside the government unfolded shortly after it used its numbers in the House of Representatives to quash Labor’s bid to refer Christian Porter’s use of a blind trust to pay legal fees to the privileges committee.

Lobbying on behalf of fossil fuels should surprise no one. But the world must follow the science

There should be no surprise about leaked documents showing governments lobbying hard against clauses in an upcoming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that they regard as detrimental to their interests. Ever since the start of the UN process aimed at preventing unchecked global heating (known as Cop, short for Conference of the Parties), countries have sought to protect their own industries, economies and people – particularly the fossil fuel businesses that have powered capitalist development since the Industrial Revolution.

Last time the nations met, in Madrid in 2019, progress was scuppered by a wall of resistance with President Trump perched on top. The hope was that with Trump gone, and a US administration in place that recognises the need for action, such blockages could be overcome. This remains the aim in the run-up to the conference opening in Glasgow next weekend. Given the warnings from scientists, who are unequivocal about the dangers, there is no rational alternative than to persist with the attempt at global climate governance that the Cop represents. As the British Treasury acknowledged in a review published this week, the cost of inaction will be higher than the cost of action.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a hungry jay, rescued turtles and a lone wolf

Professional and environment groups tell parliamentary hearing scheme needs reform to manage conflicts of interest

Environmental offset policies are failing to halt the decline of wildlife and certain habitats should now be off limits to development, a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry has heard.

MPs have also been told the NSW government needs to reform a scheme that allows for the financial trade of environmental offset credits on private land so that there are clear rules for managing conflicts of interest and the potential for insider trading, after revelations in a Guardian Australia investigation.

Forestry England among agencies still buying peat, which is UK’s biggest natural store of CO2

Government agencies are still buying peat-based compost even though the environment secretary is planning to ban it, new data has revealed.

Peatlands occupy about 12% of the UK’s land area, and are the country’s largest natural carbon dioxide store, locking in an estimated 3.2bn tonnes of CO2, as well as providing habitats for birds, insects and plants. For years they have been neglected and dug up, and currently just 20% of UK peatlands remain in a natural state.

With government support, councils can lead the way in generating clean energy, insulating housing and reskilling staff

At Cop26 this year, we’ll hear about diplomats and heads of state negotiating over targets, but when a river bank bursts or a storm hits, it’s our local councils that are left to clear up the mess. When Storm Frank lashed the north-east of Scotland over the new year of 2016, it was council binmen, engineers, housing officers, social workers and home carers who worked day and night mobilising volunteers to evacuate homes and find temporary accommodation for some 300 households.

In the weeks and months afterwards, Aberdeenshire council had to deal with a mile stretch of destroyed road, three washed-away footbridges, and damage to several bridges. This is on top of the clean-up operation and returning families to their homes. Despite financial assistance from the Scottish government, the council was left with a bill of around £15m. This is the less glamorous, but very real work, that goes into responding to climate change.

Young’s Seafood joins calls for sustainable quotas of mackerel, herring and blue whiting to be agreed in line with scientific advice

The UK’s largest seafood processor is threatening to stop sourcing fish from the north-east Atlantic unless coastal states, including the UK and countries in the EU, reach a suitable agreement on managing populations this month.

Young’s Seafood has joined Tesco, Co-op, Princes, Aldi, Asda, Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and other retailers and suppliers in calling for urgent action from ministers to manage populations of mackerel, herring and blue whiting more sustainably.

It has been years and years of searching – all of it using the gold standard Australian furry animal bait

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Wood burning is causing dirty air from the UK to Australia, but a study shows incentives to switch can work

In 2010, air pollution scientists from three of Europe’s biggest cities – Paris, Berlin and London – sat down together. Our data showed a new and consistent pattern. Air pollution from wood burning had returned to our cities. Biomass energy schemes were subsidising new wood burners in schools and offices and wood was being burned in power stations, too, but the additional air pollution in our cities was coming from homes. We wrote a paper warning that biomass subsidies to reduce climate emissions may be leading to increased acceptability and popularity of home wood burning in stoves and fireplaces too.

By 2016, home wood burning was the second-largest source of particle pollution emitted in London. By 2018, it was responsible for nearly half the emissions across Europe.

Environment groups decry plan to use site regeneration years after operations end at Glencore’s Mangoola mine as offsets

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Habitat destruction caused by a new coalmine development in the New South Wales Hunter region will be offset through rehabilitation of the coal pit more than a decade after endangered ecosystems are cleared.

Environment groups have labelled the plan to allow future rehabilitation of the mine site to be claimed as part of Glencore’s offsets for its Mangoola mine expansion near Muswellbrook as “cynical and grotesque”.

American plastics industry, described by experts as ‘the new coal’, releasing at least 232m tons of gas annually

The plastics industry in the United States is on track to release more greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) than coal-powered electricity generating plants by the end of the decade, according to a new report released on Thursday.

The report, by Bennington College’s Beyond Plastics project, found that the American plastics industry is releasing at least 232m tons of GHG annually, the equivalent to 116 average-sized coal-fired power plants.

The Biden administration has released three reports on security and humanitarian disasters that could strike as world heats up

The climate crisis is likely to intensify cross-border clashes, aggravate conflicts over water and migration and cause instability, especially in developing countries, in ways that could threaten global security, the Biden administration warned on Thursday.

A clutch of simultaneously released reports by the White House, the US intelligence community and the Department of Defense paint a grim picture of the raft of security and humanitarian disasters that could strike at once as climate disaster continues to set in.

Researchers say findings in Mozambique demonstrate impact of human interference in nature

Ivory poaching over decades has led to the evolution of tuskless elephants, researchers have found, proving that humans are “literally changing the anatomy” of wild animals.

A previously rare genetic mutation causing tusklessness has become very common in some groups of African elephants after a period in which many were killed for their tusks, according to a study published in the journal Science.