The Guardian

Oxford English Dictionary found between 2018 and 2020 use of ‘climate crisis’ increased nearly 20-fold

When people spoke of a “climate refugee” in the 19th century, they would be describing someone who had moved to a place where the climate is healthier or more congenial.

But in modern parlance, the meaning has shifted to reflect current global crises – now climate refugees are those who are forced to move in response to extreme weather or rising sea levels.

A parliamentary inquiry is set to begin, triggered by a Guardian Australia investigation that exposed multiple, serious flaws

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Problems that have long flown under the public radar will finally be aired in the New South Wales parliament when an inquiry into the integrity of the state’s environmental offsets scheme begins.

It is a significant inquiry that follows an investigation by Guardian Australia.

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Retirement of Najin, 32, leaves her daughter Fatu as the only egg donor in embryo implantation scheme

One of the world’s last two northern white rhinos is being retired from a breeding programme aimed at saving the species from extinction.

Najin, 32, is the mother of Fatu, who is now the only donor left in the programme, which aims to implant artificially developed embryos into another more abundant species of rhino in Kenya.

Officials from fossil fuel firms may attend fringe events but campaigners hail lack of official role

Fossil fuel firms will have no official role in the Cop26 climate summit, it can be revealed, amid growing concern among UK officials that big oil’s net zero plans do not stack up.

Private emails from civil servants in the Cop unit, seen by the Guardian, show doubts about one oil major’s net zero plans, with an official saying BP “[does] not currently fit our success criteria for Cop26” and another noting “it’s unclear whether [its net zero] commitments stack up yet”.

States with large meat and dairy industries also attempted to amend IPCC’s report, documents say

Countries that produce coal, oil, beef and animal feed have been lobbying to water down a landmark UN climate report, according to a leak of documents seen by Greenpeace’s investigation team.

Days before Cop26, the international climate change negotiations taking place in Glasgow, the leaks show fossil fuel producers including Australia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Japan are lobbying the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to remove recommendations that the world needs to phase out fossil fuels.

Activist says countries such as UK, US and China use ‘creative carbon accounting’ to augment green credentials

• There are no real climate leaders yet – who will step up at Cop26? | Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg has accused countries including the UK of being in denial over the extent of the climate and ecological crisis and using “creative carbon accounting” to augment their green credentials.

In an opinion piece for the Guardian, the Swedish activist says world leaders have been responsible for several years of inaction in reducing emissions which she has termed “their decades of blah, blah, blah”.

Like other rich nations, the UK is more talk than action on the climate crisis. Something needs to change in Glasgow

• Greta Thunberg accuses world leaders of being in denial over climate crisis

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called the recent IPCC report on the climate crisis a “code red” for humanity. “We are at the verge of the abyss,” he said.

You might think those words would sound some kind of alarm in our society. But, like so many times before, this didn’t happen. The denial of the climate and ecological crisis runs so deep that hardly anyone takes real notice any more. Since no one treats the crisis like a crisis, the existential warnings keep on drowning in a steady tide of greenwash and everyday media news flow.

Barnaby Joyce says demands were not a captain’s call but most MPs were not given a copy of documents

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The federal resources minister, Keith Pitt, has declared solar panels don’t function in the dark when asked if he still believed renewables don’t work as the junior Coalition partner finalised its demands for potentially agreeing to net zero by 2050.

The Nationals party room met on Thursday evening to consider structural adjustment principles to put to Scott Morrison in exchange for supporting a net zero emissions reduction target.

Staff initiatives have successfully cut emissions, but without serious infrastructure investment there’s nowhere left to go

If news reflected the magnitude of the planet’s crisis, one story would splash the headlines every day, filling every column inch, airtime minute and swipe of TikTok. Writing about anything else often seems trivial. Cop26 will briefly ignite the news, but for how long afterwards? Be grateful to Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain activists, who don’t give up, though they too need to keep finding new ways to capture public attention.

With the climate summit less than a fortnight away, the government’s inadequate “plan” for net zero shines a flickering light on how much more needs to be done. Cop26 risks exposing the weak will of the world’s leaders to take action. Far from holding to the vital 1.5C heating limit, the UN says cuts volunteered by countries so far will heat the world by 3C above pre-industrial levels: certain calamity. Commitments still fall 60% short of the 2050 net-zero target, needing $4tn investment this decade alone.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Emissions reduction minister Angus Taylor says commenting on draft IPCC report doesn’t equate to running interference, as Greenpeace claims

Australia pushed back against a finding in a major climate report that fossil fuel power stations be urgently phased out, and requested the country be removed from a list of the world’s leading producers and consumers of coal, Greenpeace has said citing leaked documents.

Australia was among a handful of major fossil-fuel exporting nations that sought to weaken the conclusions of the report, due to be released at the Glasgow summit that begins later this month, Greenpeace’s investigative arm, Unearthed, said on Thursday.

As a farmer I produce meat and cheese from animals that graze in my orchard on diverse, carbon-sequestering grasslands

Last week, I went to the funeral of an old farmer named Brian. Until he died, Brian managed his farm, with its traditional orchards, hedgerows, and meadows, as an ecosystem. I could see from the age of the farmers who came to pay their respects that this way of farming was dying out and being replaced by a farming system that is one of the greatest contributors to the climate and nature crisis we face. However, there is hope. My husband and I, like the many new farmers emerging, learned our approach from these old farmers, who have been through drastic changes in the farming industry, yet have managed to keep alive their knowhow.

Our family-run farm in Dorset produces meat, cheese, vegetables and apple juice, using many of these same agroecological farming methods. Agroecological farming means we nurture the soil, insects, grassland, plants, animals and trees on our land to provide healthy affordable food for our local community. For us, farming isn’t just a business, and it isn’t just about feeding human beings – it’s about feeding all living things on the planet.

Jyoti Fernandes is a farmer based in Dorset

Greenpeace says law enforcement failures led to Unesco sites and land mapped for orangutan habitats being turned into palm oil plantations

Almost one-fifth of the land used for Indonesian oil palm plantations is located in the country’s forest estate, despite a law banning such activity, according to a study by Greenpeace.

The report, produced by Greenpeace and TheTreeMap, describes a catastrophic failure of law enforcement that has allowed swathes of land, including Unesco sites, national parks and areas once mapped as habitat for orangutan and Sumatran tigers, to be turned into oil palm plantations.

Watching your land wither before your eyes is gut-wrenching, so we’ve been listening to the science and responding. But we can’t do it alone

Just so we’re clear: rural Australians are not the backwards-looking, climate denying hicks some of our political “representatives” make us out to be.

But if I wasn’t embedded in the farming community and living in rural Australia, I would probably be cursing people like me too. The narrative coming from some politicians has the propensity to make one believe that rural Australians are as uneducated and unaware as the duelling banjo players from the movie Deliverance.

The protest comes a day after Joe Biden appeared ready to settle for a smaller environmental proposal ahead of the COP26 summit

With little more than sun hats, placards and folding chairs, five young activists have begun a hunger strike in front of the White House urging Joe Biden not to abandon his bold climate agenda.

The protest, organized by the Sunrise Movement youth group, came a day after the US president threatened to water down his $3.5tn social and environmental legislation ahead of the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

Treasury document suggests move to electric vehicles could hit poorer citizens hardest

Anger is growing across the Conservative party over a Treasury document on the costs of the net zero strategy which MPs claim has been “neutered” – though sources insisted estimates had not been reliable enough to include.

Alongside Boris Johnson’s strategy to end Britain’s contribution to the climate crisis by 2050, the Treasury released an assessment warning it may need to raise taxes or cut public spending to fund the strategy.

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Fairness is vital if people are not to be left behind, but although the government is now saying the right things, its actions lag behind

The collection of new climate policies released by the government this week are being scrutinised for their ambition and effectiveness. But it is also crucial to judge them for their fairness. We need to reduce total emissions as rapidly as possible – “fairness” at a macro level means protecting poorer countries that have done little to cause the problem, and those countries that have emitted the most overall, such as the UK, moving fastest.

At a more micro level, fairness is also vital. The move to net zero will lead to major changes across all aspects of UK society, and a lot of less well-off people are understandably worrying whether they can afford to cut their emissions. It’s essential to design policies so that this transition is fair for individuals and that no one is left behind. This is not only the right thing to do, but it also makes sense politically: if fairness is not baked in then people will resist change, and that reasonable resentment will be magnified and manipulated by those seeking to delay action for other reasons.

Rebecca Newsom is head of politics at Greenpeace UK

Our ridiculous addiction to acquiring more possessions is stuffing up the planet, so it’s time to call in the experts

Ages ago, an old friend who was an early adopter of environmental concerns wanted a new kitchen. He asked an expert he knew from his work in woodland conservation what wood his new kitchen should be built with. He was startled to get a sharp response: “If you really care, then don’t come to me asking which wood to use; ask yourself if you really need a new kitchen.” Point taken, but not much acted upon, by him, me or anyone else I’ve come across.

I’m so sick of stuff. Some of it is stuff I really need or that is at least genuinely nice to have, but a good 70% is useless stuff. Clothes I’ll never wear, books I’ll never read, kitchen utensils I’ll never utilise. Items big and small that presumably felt essential the day I bought them but turned out to be quite the opposite. I suppose that as I get older the 70% figure will grow and grow until the morning of the day I shuffle off this mortal coil. At this point the percentage of stuff I own that is useless to me will stand at a nice round 100, because, of course, I won’t be able to take it with me. But what I will be able to do is leave it to my children to bump up the percentage of stuff useless to them that they own. And so it goes on.

Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist

Government ‘nudge unit’ document published alongside net zero strategy before being withdrawn within hours

A blueprint to change public behaviour to cut carbon emissions, which includes levies on high-carbon food and a reduction in frequent flying, was published alongside the government’s net zero strategy on Tuesday, before being withdrawn within a few hours.

Produced by the behavioural insights team, or “nudge unit”, the document, Net Zero: principles for successful behaviour change initiatives, emphasises that tackling the climate crisis requires “significant behavioural change”. The behaviours the British public may have to reduce include a significant reduction in demand for high-carbon activities such as flying and eating ruminant meat.

Identical twins have more similar views on environmental issues than non-identical ones, research finds

Some people are more environmentally conscious than others, and scientists say the reason could be in their genes.

A study has found that identical twins have more similar views on conservation and environmentalism than non-identical twins. The researchers say this suggests there could be a link between people’s genetic makeup and their support for green policies.