The Guardian

Covid-19 may well have been one attempt by the Earth to protect itself. Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier

I don’t know if it is too late for humanity to avert a climate catastrophe, but I am sure there is no chance if we continue to treat global heating and the destruction of nature as separate problems.

That is the wrongheaded approach of the United Nations, which is about to stage one big global conference for the climate in Glasgow, having just finished a different big global conference for biodiversity in Kunming.

James Lovelock is the originator of Gaia theory and the author, most recently, of Novascene. This op-ed was told to Jonathan Watts, the Guardian’s global environment editor

All the latest news and developments from the UN climate talks in Glasgow

• See all our Cop26 coverage
• US rejoins coalition to achieve 1.5C goal at UN climate talks
• Biden to unveil pledge to slash global methane emissions by 30%
• Cop26: world leaders agree deal to end deforestation

Insulate Britain protesters have blocked a major carriageway near Manchester Airport, in one of the climate group’s first protests outside of London.

Footage from LBC on Twitter shows a small group of protestors in orange hi-vis jackets blocking the carriageway near the intersection of junction 6 of the M56 and the A538, as well as several police vans.

Ironic prize bestowed for blocking access to negotiations as well as organisational failures

• Cop26 – live updates

The UK has received the ironic “Fossil of the Day” award for failing to make Cop26 the most accessible climate summit and “hindering civil society’s access to the negotiations”.

The prize, organised by Climate Action Network International (CAN), is traditionally awarded every day during the Cop conferences to countries that “have done their best to block negotiations”.

We are resilient in the face of worsening floods and drought, but refuse to accept more failures from world leaders

As I travelled on the train to Glasgow for Cop26 a few days ago, I felt the enormous power of my people and my ancestors around me. I am a Samoan, from one of the regions most threatened by climate breakdown, despite contributing little to emissions. I am at the climate summit to represent the voices of our communities, and of those who could not travel here due to Covid-19 and continuing vaccine apartheid. I bring with me the voices of a Pacific that refuses to give up.

Time is fast running out for my islands, and we will accept no more excuses or failures from world leaders. We know they’re not doing enough – the most recent scientific report by the IPCC has shown us that. Cop26 must deliver concrete solutions urgently, and we are here to force them to act.

Brianna Fruean is a Samoan climate activist, student and member of the Pacific Climate Warriors delegation at Cop26

The Rainbow Warrior has brought us to Cop26 to speak up for the sidelined citizens of the global south. We can’t be ignored

• The writers are members of the climate action group Fridays for Future MAPA

How can you hold climate talks without including the most affected people? You can’t. How can you make decisions on the best way to adapt to climate impacts without talking to those forced to adapt? You can’t. And how can you deliver climate justice by continuing to ignore those that are suffering the most? You can’t.

As the Cop26 climate summit gets under way, and the so-called leaders of the world take centre stage to deliver yet more empty promises, we – five youth climate activists from five of the most affected areas across Africa, Asia, Central America and the South Pacific – have arrived despite attempts to shut us out.

This article was written by five Fridays for Future MAPA (Most Affected People and Areas) youth climate activists: Bernard Ewekia, 25, from Tuvalu; Jakapita Kandanga, 24, from Namibia; Edwin Namakanga, 27, from Uganda; Maria Reyes, 19, from Mexico; and Farzana Faruk Jhumu, 22, from Bangladesh

American activists from the group Build Back Fossil Free gathered outside the Cop26 entrance in Glasgow as Joe Biden arrived on Monday, to demand he take executive action to block fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency. The group included black and Indigenous leaders whose communities are on the frontline of fossil fuel extraction, facing the consequences of air pollution and contaminated drinking water and land across the US

• Cop26: Biden urges action on climate change and vows US will ‘lead by example’
• UN climate talks in Glasgow Cop26: India targets net zero by 2070 – as it happened
  

Israeli minister hits out at ‘outrageous’ treatment after having to wait for two hours

An Israeli minister has described how she was denied entry to the Cop26 summit because as a wheelchair user she was unable to access the Glasgow venue, criticising the refusal to accommodate her as “outrageous”.

Karine Elharrar, Israel’s energy and water resources minister, who has muscular dystrophy, waited for two hours outside after organisers refused to let her enter the compound in the vehicle in which she had arrived, she said.

A personal carbon allowance was first proposed a decade ago – but leaders haven’t been brave enough to take up this idea

Are we doomed, or is there still a chance to save civilisation? It’s easy to veer between despair and slender hope, when the UN says emissions that need to fall by half this decade are only on course for a cut of about 7.5%. How helpless we feel when big emitters refuse to attend Cop26. What an unconvincing “one minute to midnight” call to action from Boris Johnson, who is cutting foreign aid and the cost of domestic flights while mulling a new coalmine and a Shetland oilfield. The absurd Brexit fishing spat makes a mockery of exhorting other world leaders to lift their sights to the horizons of the climate crisis.

The scale of what’s needed is politically unfathomable. Yet Johnson pretends answers can be conjured up “without so much as a hair shirt in sight”. In thundering, prophetic form, a recent article from George Monbiot set him right: the world’s richest 1% emit 35 times what each individual should use to ensure global heating does not exceed a 1.5C rise. The super-rich use their fortunes to shape the political agenda, diverting our attention from the true climate culprits with the “micro consumerist bollocks” of ditching coffee cups and plastic bags. “We will endure only if we cease to consent,” Monbiot writes – and he’s right.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Fossil fuel advertising on overseas output jars with DG’s call to ‘dial up the focus on sustainability’

The BBC received about £300,000 in advertising revenue last year from Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Aramco, despite BBC director general Tim Davie calling on every arm of the broadcaster to “dial up the focus on sustainability” and reduce net greenhouse gas emissions.

Although the BBC does not carry advertising in the UK, much of its overseas output is supported by commercials.

New vehicle a change for Toyota, which has to date relied heavily on hybrid technology

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Toyota has released details about its first mass-produced electric vehicle in a significant step for the world’s second-biggest carmaker.

The bZ4X is an SUV with optional rooftop solar panels that will be sold in both front-wheel or all-wheel-drive variants.

US-led alliance includes 90 countries but China, India and Russia have not joined the methane pact

• See all our Cop26 coverage

US president Joe Biden will try to underscore his green credentials by unveiling an action plan to control methane, regarded by the administration as the single most potent way to combat the climate crisis in the short term.

Leading an alliance of 90 countries, including for the first time Brazil, he will on Tuesday set out new regulatory measures to limit global methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by the end of the decade.

The UK has built a coalition of 100 countries committed to ending the destruction of forests by the end of the decade

• Zac Goldsmith is the UK’s international environment minister

This morning, at the all-important Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, the prime minister is urging world leaders to commit to take radical action to reverse the catastrophic degradation of the world’s forests. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of what he is asking.

Put simply, there is no credible response to the climate crisis – or to so many of the biggest challenges we face – that does not involve protecting and restoring nature on a massive scale.

Zac Goldsmith is the UK’s international environment minister

To understand our opportunities and pressure points we need an open, inclusive, genuine process

• Greg Jericho: the emissions projections are a farce based on technological pipe dreams

Australia finally has a net zero target. Even without being legislated, it matters as a signal. It will effectively be bipartisan, a rare and valuable thing in Australia’s climate policy.

Of course the long-term goal could be used to deflect from the fact that not much is being done to put Australia on a low-carbon pathway right now, but it must be taken at face value if we are to stand a chance.

Cop26 pledge cautiously welcomed as ‘first step’ in making indigenous rights central to climate crisis talks

At least $1.7bn of funding will be given directly to indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) in recognition of their key role in protecting the planet’s lands and forests, it will be announced at Cop26 today.

The governments of the UK, US, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands are leading the $1.7bn (£1.25bn) funding pledge, which is being announced as part of ambitious global efforts to reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030, with campaigners cautiously hopeful that this conference of the parties (Cop) could be the first to properly champion indigenous peoples’ rights.

Historic declaration at Cop26 commits countries to ending major cause of CO2 emissions

World leaders have agreed a deal that aims to halt and reverse global deforestation over the next decade as part of a multibillion-dollar package to tackle human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

Xi Jinping, Jair Bolsonaro and Joe Biden are among the leaders who will commit to the declaration at Cop26 in Glasgow on Tuesday to protect vast areas, ranging from the eastern Siberian taiga to the Congo basin, home to the world’s second largest rainforest.

Now most countries have experienced the climate crisis as wildfires, floods or heatwaves, leaders know they must deliver

For a conference that had already been delayed by a year, perhaps this was a fitting start for the delegates and world leaders who made their way to Cop26 with a mission to save the planet.

It was raining. There was no shelter. And the thousands of participants who had come to the UK from all four corners of the globe faced the mother of all queues to get inside.

The Queen has recorded a message for the world leaders attending the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, asking them to think of the future and be the pioneers who take decisive action. The Queen is not attending the United Nations summit in person after being given medical advice to rest

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

The Indian prime minister made five pledges on the country's efforts in tackling the climate emergency over the next few decades. India, a developing country of more than 1.3 billion people, is the world’s third largest emitter of carbon dioxide after the US and China

The veteran news anchor tweeted presence of ‘20,000 world leaders and delegates’ 47 miles east of actual summit

Eyebrows were raised at Cop26 on Monday when a veteran US news anchor announced he would be covering the climate summit from Edinburgh – 47 miles east of Glasgow.

Wolf Blitzer, a news anchor with CNN, wrote on Twitter that he was reporting from Edinburgh in Scotland, “where 20,000 world leaders and delegates have gathered for the Cop26”.

British monarch urges world leaders to rise to challenge of ‘true statesmanship’

The Queen has expressed her hope that world leaders would “rise above the politics of the moment, and achieve true statesmanship” in tackling the climate crisis as she welcomed Cop26 delegates to Glasgow in a recorded video address.

In a message played at the evening reception, she also recalled how her “dear late husband, Prince Philip,” had warned of the threat of “increasingly intolerable” world pollution more than half a century ago.