The Guardian

List of facilities makes it clear that virtually no part of the US appears free from the potential risk of air and water contamination with the chemicals

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified more than 120,000 locations around the US where people may be exposed to a class of toxic “forever chemicals” associated with various cancers and other health problems that is a frightening tally four times larger than previously reported, according to data obtained by the Guardian.

The list of facilities makes it clear that virtually no part of America appears free from the potential risk of air and water contamination with the chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

Roadblocks have caused anger but members say only maximum economic disruption will make politicians listen

The riskiest time in Insulate Britain’s road block protests is before the police arrive, their activists say. When they targeted a busy junction of the A1090 in Thurrock, Essex, on Wednesday morning, just outside the eastern edge of London, the police didn’t appear for nearly an hour. No serious injuries were reported, but it was close.

The first lorry, hurtling towards the T-junction, did not look like it was going to stop: it ground to a halt inches from the faces of three activists. Cars and vans mounted kerbs and central reservations to evade them. Motorists emerged from their vehicles, pink with rage, snatched protesters’ banners and dragged them from the road like ragdolls.

Junior Coalition party is being briefed on Morrison government’s climate policy proposal by minister Angus Taylor

The Nationals leader, Barnaby Joyce, has suggested it is “highly unlikely” his party will agree to Australia significantly increasing its 2030 emissions reductions target, ahead of a party room meeting to discuss the Morrison government’s climate policy.

The Liberal energy minister, Angus Taylor, has been tasked with walking the junior Coalition partner through the climate proposal, with the Nationals to make a decision on what they’re prepared to support following Sunday’s presentation.

White House forced to rewrite domestic bill as it makes late bid to secure backing for international deal

President Joe Biden is likely to abandon a clean energy programme that was the centrepiece of his efforts to tackle greenhouse gas emissions at home, US media reported, because of opposition from a swing-vote Democratic senator from a state with a historically large coal industry.

Funding to replace coal- and gas-fired plants with wind, solar and nuclear generation was part of a massive budget bill that Biden is struggling to get through Congress.

With weeks to go before the Cop26 climate summit, documents show PM being warned about the risks of damage to the UK from green investment

Confidential documents leaked to the Observer reveal an extraordinary rift between Boris Johnson and his chancellor, Rishi Sunak, over the potential economic effects of moving towards a zero-carbon economy, with just weeks to go before the crucial Cop26 climate summit.

As Johnson prepares to position the UK at the head of global efforts to combat climate change and curb greenhouse gas emissions as host of the Glasgow Cop26 meeting, the documents show the Treasury is warning of serious economic damage to the UK economy and future tax rises if the UK overspends on, or misdirects, green investment.

People say they don’t want to be lectured to by professional athletes, but we’re not trying to school anyone on the science

Global warming, climate change, the climate crisis. What you call it evokes different reactions. Whether it stirs desperation, fear, passion or scepticism, the impact on the environment remains the same. By now, we’re well acquainted with these expressions and are entirely unsurprised by scientific reports proclaiming the irreversible damage our way of living has had on the natural world.

Primarily the result of the burning of fossil fuels, this harm has led to an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events which, among other things, has disrupted sports across the globe. It’s no longer a problem for future generations. The world has run out of time while waiting for an uncomfortable humanity to face up to a ruinous reality of our own making. This is happening now.

Insulate Britain’s use of civil disobedience to fight the climate catastrophe was a catastrophe in itself. Search for the pressure group on YouTube and you see clips of delighted rightwing journalists taking apart its leaders. Sympathisers will say that a right wing that has barely recovered from its climate change denial was always going to lay into the activists. But Insulate Britain did not have to make life so easy for its foes.

The physical courage of demonstrators who walked into the speeding traffic on motorways counted for no more than the urgency of their cause. They targeted ordinary people, who were just trying to get to work or take their sick relatives to hospital, rather than fossil fuel companies and the finance industry that supports them. Their tactical stupidity left them wide open to attack.

The mayor of Imperial Beach, California, says big oil wants him to drop the lawsuit demanding the industry pay for the climate crisis

Serge Dedina is a surfer, environmentalist and mayor of Imperial Beach, a small working-class city on the California coast.

He is also, if the fossil fuel industry is to be believed, at the heart of a conspiracy to shake down big oil for hundreds of millions of dollars.

An insider talks about efforts to cut methane, one of the most prevalent greenhouse gases but which has had little attention

While global climate efforts have tended to focus on the fight against carbon dioxide, many other threats that attract less attention are just as dangerous to our planet.

Negotiations over these more granular issues take place away from the limelight. But the policies and agreements that emerge are some of the most vital steps in the fight against climate change.

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.

Campaigners fear net zero strategy is being hamstrung by Rishi Sunak, who refuses to provide adequate funding

Boris Johnson faces a significant test of his leadership before the Cop26 climate summit as the chancellor and business secretary are at war over the imminent plan for reaching net zero carbon dioxide emissions.

The government is poised to publish its long-awaited net zero strategy on Monday, setting out how the UK will meet its targets to cut CO2 emissions by 78% by 2035 and reach net zero by 2050. This will also include the heat and buildings strategy for insulating draughty homes and phasing out gas boilers, along with a massive expansion of offshore wind, and building electric vehicle charging networks.

The Queen, Charles and William have hit out at those who are all talk on the climate crisis. One has to wonder who they mean

I understand why they go out, “but it isn’t helpful to do it in a way that alienates people,” explained Prince Charles of Insulate Britain, in an interview this week in which he also revealed, somewhat alienatingly, that he’d had his Aston Martin converted to run on “surplus English white wine and whey from the cheese process”.

At long last, a line to eclipse Ed Begley Jr’s from an old episode of The Simpsons, in which the actor explains that his preferred vehicle is “a go-kart, powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction”. A deeply committed environmental activist, Begley has always been able to take the piss out of himself – a pastime you sense has never been top or even bottom of Prince Charles’s to-do list. Or, in fact, of the to-do list of the many, many servants who do for him in his many, many residences.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a rutting deer, a Javan langur and some cunning foxes

Government will call for producers and consumers of commodities such as soya and cocoa to commit to stopping land clearances

The UK government is pushing for an ambitious agreement among world leaders at Cop26 to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation, the Guardian can reveal.

Big producers and consumers of deforestation-linked commodities such as soya, cocoa, coffee and palm oil have been asked to commit to halting land clearances, the second largest source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. A coalition of world leaders is expected to announce the initiative on the second day of the climate summit in Glasgow alongside new funding to protect forests.

Dutch team designed and built two-person van with kitchen, bed, shower, loo and range of up to 450 miles a day

A team of students from the Netherlands are due to complete an 1,800-mile (3,000km) road trip across western Europe in a solar-powered camper van that they designed and built themselves.

The Stella Vita is designed for two passengers and has a kitchen, sitting area, bed, shower and toilet. Using solar energy alone, the vehicle can cover up to 450 miles on a sunny day, reaching a top speed of 75mph, as well as powering all the inside amenities, a TV and a laptop.

One is the astonishing fall in the cost of renewable energy. The other is the huge growth in the citizens’ movements demanding action

• Bill McKibben is the Schumann distinguished scholar at Middlebury College, Vermont, and leader of the climate campaign group 350.org

So many things have broken the wrong way since the Paris climate accords were agreed in mid-December of 2015. Within eight weeks Donald Trump had won his first presidential primary, an insane comet streaking across the night sky, trailed by outliers like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. The world has endured opéra bouffe distractions like Brexit, and the true paralyzing emergency of the pandemic.

And yet here we are, staggering and stumbling towards the real follow-up to Paris, starting 31 October in Glasgow. The international order, such as it is, is held together with baling wire and duct tape: China (its housing market cratering) and the US (between rebellions) are spitting at each other, India half-lost in its ugly experiments with repression, Europe Merkelless. The global south is ever more rightly angered by the failure of the north to deliver on its necessary pledges for climate finance – and to pay for the increasingly obvious damage that global warming has inflicted on nations that did nothing to cause it. But somehow all these players must stitch together a plan for dramatically increasing the speed of a global transition off fossil fuel – and if they don’t, then Paris will forever be the high-water mark of climate action. (And the actual high-water mark of rising seas will jump upward.)

António Guterres says current efforts are more consistent with global heating ‘way above 3C’

Airlines and shipping companies have failed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, and must step up with fresh commitments on the climate crisis as Cop26 approaches, the UN secretary general has said.

António Guterres said current efforts were inadequate and would lead to catastrophic global heating.

Environmental protest group suspends direct action campaign with open letter to Boris Johnson

Insulate Britain has said it is pausing its roadblock campaign for 10 days, in a letter to the prime minister calling on him to “get on with the job” of insulating Britain’s homes.

A spokesperson for the group said the decision was taken midway through last week, to give the government time to consider its demands. Its five-week campaign of direct action has caused disruption on motorways and busy roads in and around London.

Make the Label Count campaign says system due to come into force in 2023 is misleading and outdated

New eco-labels for fabrics being introduced in the EU are not strict enough, campaigners say.

From 2023 all clothes and shoes sold in the EU will include colour-coded labels informing customers about the products’ environmental impact. But the Make the Label Count campaign, launched this week, says the system of measurement developed in 2013 is misleading, outdated and not in line with the EU’s climate goals.

Mums for Lungs writes to health secretary calling for toxic wood-burning stoves to be banned by 2027

Only seven councils in England have issued fines for toxic wood smoke, a total of 19 penalties in the past six years, despite more than 18,000 complaints.

The campaign group Mums for Lungs, which gathered the data, has written to the health secretary calling for wood stoves to be phased out by 2027 because of the deceptively high levels of air pollution they emit.

The CEOs of Exxon, BP, Shell and Chevron face a Capitol Hill hearing on their climate crisis lies – will it mirror the downfall of big tobacco?

Two weeks from today, Darren Woods will face a potential doomsday moment before the US Congress.

As the CEO of ExxonMobil, Woods was paid $15.6m last year to run the richest, most powerful private oil company in history. But his earnings and influence will be on the line when he appears before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on 28 October. His testimony could mark the beginning of the end of big oil escaping legal and financial responsibility for the climate crisis.