The Guardian

Renewed commitment to coal could scupper Britain’s aim to secure global phase-out pact at climate summit

China plans to build more coal-fired power plants and has hinted that it will rethink its timetable to slash emissions, in a significant blow to the UK’s ambitions for securing a global agreement on phasing out coal at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

In a statement after a meeting of Beijing’s National Energy Commission, the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, stressed the importance of regular energy supply, after swathes of the country were plunged into darkness by rolling blackouts that hit factories and homes.

A record 75% of voters are worried about climate and 69% want the PM to push for net zero, but Queenslanders are less concerned than the rest of the nation

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A majority of Australians are worried about the threat posed by global heating and want serious action to address it, but Queenslanders are less concerned than people in other states, according to the latest Climate of the Nation report.

The authoritative annual survey of 2,626 voters – now in its 14th year and managed by the progressive thinktank the Australia Institute – suggests three-quarters are worried about the climate crisis, the largest proportion in its history.

‘Absurd’ practice causes ecological damage, releases carbon dioxide and can lead to flooding

More than 100 moorland fires have been reported across England’s national parks in the past four days, a fivefold increase on last year.

Just weeks before countries gather in Glasgow for Cop26, the UN climate summit, thousands of acres of moorland across the north of England have been torched as part of annual burning carried out by the grouse shooting industry, a practice wildlife campaigners describe as “absurd” and “illogical on so many grounds”.

The activist says she will continue to repeat her message until governments take meaningful steps to address the climate crisis

Greta Thunberg is “open” to meeting with Joe Biden at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, though the young Swedish activist does not expect much from either the US leader or the make-or-break summit that runs from 31 October to 12 November.

In an interview with the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now, Thunberg expressed surprise at the idea that the US president, or any world leader, might want to sit down with her at Cop26, but said she was open to the possibility, if asked. “I guess that will depend on the situation,” she said. “I don’t see why these people want to meet with me, but yeah.”

At laboratories across Florida, marine biologists have been creating coral reefs, complete with artificial currents and local fish, in the search for a way to prevent stony coral tissue loss disease, which has swept along the state’s coastline and across the Caribbean

• Photographs by Chandan Khanna (AFP/Getty)

The Murdoch press is proselytising, the business lobby is modelling a clean energy future while the PM is trying to tether colleagues to something approaching reality

As the planet prepares to flunk its latest performance review in Glasgow, Australian politics is threatening to reach peak bullshit with its cynically curated “towards net zero” kabuki dance.

After spewing toxic climate emissions into our civic ecosystem for over a decade, the Murdoch press is proselytising the need to act, the business lobby is modelling a clean energy future while the prime minister resolves to tether his nuttier outliers to something approaching reality.

Prince of Wales warns of ‘catastrophic’ impact to planet if more ambitious action not taken in Glasgow

• Prince Charles says he ‘totally understands’ frustrations of climate protesters
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Prince Charles has urged the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, to attend this month’s critical Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, saying it could be the world’s last chance to take action.

In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC, the Prince of Wales was asked about Australia and Morrison as he discussed the climate crisis and the 2021 UN climate change conference, which begins at the end of the month.

A WWF-Australia report reveals more than 1,500 of the country’s unique ecosystems are lacking protection

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More than 1,500 of Australia’s unique ecosystems, both land and sea, are not represented in any of the nation’s protected areas, according to new research.

The study, by WWF-Australia, comes as countries are meeting this week for the first stage of the United Nations biodiversity conference, hosted by China in Kunming. The talks aim to set new targets for protecting and restoring nature.

Arguments about switching from one mode of transport to another miss the point – we ought to be travelling less

All domestic plane journeys in Britain should be banned and passengers told to take a train. So says the Campaign for Better Transport in its contribution to the climate emergency debate. Planes emit six times more CO2 per passenger mile than trains. The trouble is that plane tickets tend to be half the price of train ones. So tax planes, and subsidise trains.

So far, so simple. Planes are bad, trains are good. But trains will always be more expensive to run than planes over long distances. Surface rail in Britain supplies a tiny minority of journeys – just 2% of “trips” and 9% of miles travelled. In 2018-19, 58% of public transport journeys were by bus. The car remains prime, accounting for 61% of trips in 2019. Rail subsidies chiefly benefit better-off travellers. Poorer people use cars, coaches and buses for both work and leisure. And while a car with one person is carbon-inefficient, it is estimated that with four it is nearly as efficient as a train.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

FSO Safer has been abandoned since 2017 and loss of its 1.1m barrels would destroy Yemen’s fishing stocks

The impact of an oil spill in the Red Sea from a tanker that is rotting in the water could be far wider than anticipated, with 8 million people losing access to running water and Yemen’s Red Sea fishing stock destroyed within three weeks.

Negotiations are under way to offload the estimated 1.1m barrels of crude oil that remains onboard the FSO Safer, which has been deteriorating by the month since it was abandoned in 2017. The vessel contains four times the amount of oil released by the Exxon Valdez in the Gulf of Alaska in 1989, and a spill is considered increasingly probable.

Hundreds of international health organisations and professionals sign open letter to politicians ahead of Cop26

More than 400 international health organisations and professionals, representing two-thirds of global healthcare workers, have signed an open letter calling on politicians to consider the health benefits of climate action ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

“We know that climate change is impacting people’s health, this is increasingly visible around the world. We also know that many solutions to address climate change offer tremendous health co-benefits,” said Dr Jeni Miller of Global Climate and Health Alliance, the organisation which drafted the letter. “The health community is really seeing that if we don’t step up and call for action on climate change, we’re failing the patients and the communities that we care for.”

Biggest ever analysis shows public backs carbon tax on industry, flight levies and grants for heat pumps

The UK public backs a carbon tax on polluting industries, higher levies on flying and grants for heat pumps in order to tackle the climate crisis, according to the biggest analysis of policy preferences ever published.

Almost 22,000 people chose their favoured mix of policies to hit the government’s 2030 target for emissions cuts. A speed limit of 60mph on motorways and a campaign to reduce meat eating by 10% were also among the most popular measures, all of which had between 77% and 94% public support.

A carbon tax of £75 per tonne on polluting manufacturing and construction businesses, with some funding to invest in new technologies, supported by 94% of people.

Better-integrated public transport coordinated by local government (93%).

Food campaigns and support from government, supermarkets and food companies promoting plant-based diets and cutting meat and dairy consumption by 10% (93%).

A comprehensive UK-wide electric vehicle charging network by 2028 (91%).

Raising flying costs, particularly on frequent fliers (89%).

Some restrictions on cars entering city centres and a 60mph speed limit on motorways (82%).

Support for less intensive farming and paying farmers to improve nature, including woodlands (79%).

Grants for heat pumps and home insulation for low-income households and low-interest loans for others, reaching 1.4m heat pump installations a year by 2030 (77%).

Overconsumption is inevitable when adverts are so ubiquitous and sophisticated. There must be a pushback

To confront the climate emergency, the amount we consume needs to drop dramatically. Yet every day we’re told to consume more. We all know about air pollution – but there’s a kind of “brain pollution” produced by advertising that, uncontrolled, fuels overconsumption. And the problem is getting worse.

Advertising is everywhere, so prevalent as to be invisible but with an effect no less insidious than air pollution. A few years ago, an individual in the US was estimated to be exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 adverts daily.

Exclusive: upbeat US climate envoy anticipates big announcements from key players at Glasgow talks

• The complete guide to Cop26
• Your Cop26 jargon buster
• Who’s who at the climate summit

The world is poised to make a big leap forward at the UN Cop26 climate summit, with world leaders “sharpening their pencils” to make fresh commitments that could put the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement within reach, John Kerry has said.

Kerry, special envoy for climate to Joe Biden, gave an upbeat assessment of the prospects for Cop26, which begins in Glasgow at the end of this month, saying he anticipated “surprising announcements” from key countries.

As world leaders gather for the environmental conference, here is our summary of the key terminology

• The complete guide to Cop26
• Who’s who at the climate summit
• John Kerry says Cop26 is ‘starting line for rest of decade’

Cop26 will be the 26th conference of the parties to the UN framework convention on climate change, the parent treaty to the 2015 Paris agreement. More than 120 world leaders are expected to attend, with more than 25,000 delegates from 197 countries, in the biggest diplomatic event on British soil since the second world war.

Ecosystem collapse is as much a threat as the climate crisis, but valuing nature will help us meet both these challenges

All eyes are on Cop26 in Glasgow since the climate crisis aroused worldwide attention and compelled more than 120 countries to join the unprecedented global Race to Zero carbon-emissions campaign. But the UN biodiversity conference in Kunming, or Cop15, should not be overshadowed, as biodiversity loss is an equally grave threat to humanity.

Cop15, delayed repeatedly by the Covid-19 pandemic, will take place in two parts, online from 11 October, with more detailed discussions left for April’s meeting in Kunming, China. The conference will convene governments from around the world to agree new goals for nature for the next decade, as global biodiversity losses pose a threat to human wellbeing, affecting food, health and security, and increasing the likelihood of pandemics.

The government should be supporting green jobs for fossil fuel workers, not deepening our dependency on oil and gas

In three weeks’ time world leaders will gather in my hometown of Glasgow to talk about the biggest threat to our future: the climate crisis. We’ve seen an unrecognisable summer of flooding and extreme heat, and as a result people have lost their lives in Europe and around the world. The crisis is very much upon us.

And yet, incredibly, our prime minister, Boris Johnson, is preparing to sign off on a new drilling permit at Cambo oilfield, west of Shetland. If approved, Cambo would produce 170m barrels of oil and would deepen the climate crisis for decades to come. It would be a staggeringly backward move, going against the science and denying us all the green recovery we’ve been promised.

Peter Capaldi is an actor and campaigner

Exclusive: executives demand meaningful action to protect ecosystems as UN biodiversity summit opens

World leaders must do more to prevent the destruction of nature, business leaders have warned before a summit in China that aims to draw up a draft UN agreement for biodiversity.

In an open letter, the chief executives of Unilever, H&M and nine other companies have called on governments to take meaningful action on mass extinctions of wildlife and the collapse of ecosystems or risk “a dead planet”.

Research in Scotland shows electromagnetism mesmerises crabs and causes biological changes that could alter migration

Underwater power cables mesmerise brown crabs and cause biological changes that could affect their migration habits, scientists have discovered.

The cables for offshore renewable energy emit an electromagnetic field that attracts the crabs and causes them to stay where they are.

Polar Zero exhibition in Glasgow features sculpture encasing air extracted from start of Industrial Revolution

An ampoule of Antarctic air from the year 1765 forms the centrepiece of a new exhibition that reveals the hidden histories contained in polar ice to visitors attending the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow.

The artist Wayne Binitie has spent the past five years undertaking an extraordinary collaboration with scientists of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), who drill, analyse and preserve cylinders of ice from deep in the ice sheet that record past climate change.