The Guardian

Rally to demand government action on climate crisis is first worldwide since start of pandemic

Hundreds of thousands of people in 99 countries have taken part in a coordinated global climate strike demanding urgent action to tackle the ecological crisis.

The strike on Friday, the first worldwide climate action since the coronavirus pandemic hit, is taking place weeks before the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK.

Boris Johnson was in New York this week, trying to dodge awkward conversations and ignore domestic shortages

Is the government’s fabled Nudge Unit on a paddleboard somewhere in Crete? You have to ask, after Downing Street urged people not to panic buy petrol, a piece of behavioural science almost guaranteed to make people panic buy petrol. If only there’d been some kind of rehearsal event last year, when telling people not to fight over bog roll generated counterintuitive scenes of Andrex-fuelled violence in the supermarket aisles.

Having said all that, calls for the army to step in to assist with driving petrol tankers feel like dressing for the Global Britain we are, rather than the Global Britain we want to be. There’s a certain inevitability to a country without a foreign policy deploying highly trained soldiers to sit in traffic between BP forecourts. Is it OK to try and help with nation-building if the nation you’re building is your own? Either way, if you pass any troops gunning a tanker down one of our great highways and byways, make sure to say thank you for your service; or rather, for your service station.

Disruptive protesters will face serious consequences, says judge in sentencing Extinction Rebellion activist

A judge has warned protesters who disrupt people’s lives they will face serious consequences, as he jailed a former Paralympic athlete who superglued himself to the roof of a British Airways plane.

Judge Gregory Perrins said the Extinction Rebellion activist James Brown, 56, who has been registered blind since birth, “cynically used” his disability and put his own life at risk to carry out the stunt at London City airport on 10 October 2019.

From turning CO2 into rock to capturing the breath of office workers, a growing number of companies think the answer is yes

Does the world need millions of machines sucking carbon dioxide directly out of the air to beat the climate crisis? There is a fast-growing number of companies that believe the answer is yes and that are deploying their first devices into the real world.

From turning CO2 into rock in Iceland, to capturing the breath of office workers, to “putting oil back underground”, their aim is to scale up rapidly and some have already sold their CO2 removal services to buyers including Bill Gates, Swiss Re, Shopify and Audi. Prices, however, are sky high – $600 (£440) per tonne and more. Given that humans emit about 36bn tonnes a year, that is problematic. .

While its tactics are controversial, there is ‘widespread agreement’ with the group’s demands

Just after 8.15am, a few dozen people split into two groups and stepped on to the A20 just outside Dover before unfurling banners and sitting down in the road.

Traffic quickly backed up, bringing widespread disruption to the country’s busiest port and an angry reaction from motorists and politicians.

Rich states missed $100bn target in 2020 but recent pledges by US, EU and China have lifted prospects, says economist

Developing countries could receive long-promised funds to help them tackle the climate crisis as soon as next year, in a major boost for the prospects of success at the Cop26 climate summit, the climate economist Nicholas Stern has said.

Rich countries pledged in 2009 to provide at least $100bn (£73bn) a year to the developing world by 2020, a target that has been missed. But recent promises of additional cash from the US, the EU and others have lifted the prospects.

The devil will be in the details, but ending investments in overseas coal shows Beijing takes the climate crisis seriously

• Sam Geall is CEO of China Dialogue and associate fellow at Chatham House

“China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy,” said China’s president, Xi Jinping, at the United Nations on Tuesday, “and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.”

It was a short, ambiguous and not entirely unexpected sentence, but it came at a critical moment. UN-led climate talks in November at Cop26 in Glasgow will represent the first opportunity since the signing of the 2015 UN Paris agreement for countries to ratchet up the commitments in their pledges, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Countries need to increase their NDC ambitions by five times if the world is to reach the goal of not warming by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Xi’s announcement, which effectively amounts to the end of international public financing for coal power, seems to match the ambition necessary for this moment.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a huge python, a baby Siamang and rewilded pigs

National parks are a victim of their own success. They have too many tourists – and too little funding

National parks have been called America’s best idea, and for good reason. Unlike the castles and cathedrals of Europe, they belong to everyone. They are democracy writ large, where a people otherwise fiercely devoted to capitalism say: no, not here. Here the meadow does not become a mall. Here we safeguard the beauty and sanctity of nature. Not as a potted plant or a manicured garden, but as vast, wild, largely untrammeled nature. Our original home.

Mountains, canyons, glaciers, forests, rivers, bison, bears, birds and more. National parks provoke and inspire us. They give us stories, educate us, change us. “For my life to matter, for me to do the work I’m meant to do in the world,” the wildlife biologist and author Mary Beth Baptiste writes in her park-inspired memoir Altitude Adjustment, “I have to spend my days in mountains and forests like these, among people committed to their flourishing. And all they ask in return is a simple renunciation of everything I’ve ever known to be true.”

Port remains open, but roads around UK’s busiest port obstructed by 40 campaigners

More than 40 climate protesters have blocked roads around the UK’s busiest port as part of a campaign to tackle fuel poverty and reduce climate emissions.

Campaigners from the group Insulate Britain blocked the A20 around Dover in Kent shortly after 8.15am on Friday.

No need to scream ‘Apocalypse!’ Showing we can make homes warmer and save cash is an easier way to bring people on board

If anything was going to make me well up in public, I never imagined it would be the joys of insulation. Loft lagging does not generally make the heart sing. People do not normally get choked up over cavity wall filling. But it turns out they probably should.

A few weeks ago someone showed me a film about a regeneration project to retrofit a social housing estate in Padiham, near Burnley, with green energy measures – and frankly, it would have melted a heart of stone.

Project backed by Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes to supply electricity to Singapore given go-ahead for subsea cable

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A multi-billion dollar plan to supply electricity to Singapore from a giant solar farm in the Northern Territory has cleared a key regulatory hurdle after winning support from the Indonesian government for a subsea cable route through the archipelago.

The Sun Cable project, backed by billionaires Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes and now expected to cost more than $30bn, also announced it was expanding its proposal by up to 40%, lifting its potential capacity from 14 gigawatts to between 17 and 20 gigawatts.

Affric Highlands initiative to restore nature will involve tree planting, restoring peat bogs and connecting wildlife habitats

A large swathe of the Scottish Highlands stretching between the west coast and Loch Ness is to be rewilded as part of a 30-year project to restore nature.

The Affric Highlands initiative aims to increase connected habitats and species diversity over an area of 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres), incorporating Kintail mountain range, and glens Cannich, Moriston and Shiel. Plans include planting trees, enhancing river corridors, restoring peat bogs and creating nature-friendly farming practices.

Megan Swann is first female Magic Circle president and has been conjuring since she was five

The first female president of the Magic Circle has said her dream gig would be to perform her environmental magic show in front of world leaders at the climate summit in Glasgow.

Megan Swann, 28, is the youngest person ever to be elected to a society set up in 1905 to guard the secrets of magicians. She is determined to use the role as a platform to call for action on the climate emergency.

Schemes to cut air pollution in cities not only save lives, but show how environmental regulation can be done

Estimates of the number of cars, and therefore drivers, affected by the introduction of new emissions rules in London next month vary. Of the capital’s 2.6m registered vehicles, which belong to around half of all households, it is thought that around one in five do not meet the new test. But given that car ownership is higher in the outer boroughs than in the affected area, some drivers of more polluting cars will neither be forced to pay the £12.50 daily charge nor change their vehicles.

Within the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) it is a different story. Most petrol cars registered after 2005 meet the tougher standard; most diesel ones registered before 2015 don’t. Owners of such vehicles have some cause to feel aggrieved. Driving is not inherently antisocial and has been powerfully incentivised for decades, with cheating manufacturers to blame for a false consensus that developed around diesel’s supposedly greener credentials. For families or other groups, driving is too often the cheapest and quickest way to travel – due in part to excessive rail and other transport costs. For some people, in some circumstances, there is no other way to get around.

Preloved kitchens, upcycled T-shirts and cushion swaps. How to make homeware work harder for the planet

As the UN food systems summit takes place on Thursday, governments can do much more, writes Michael Fakhri, UN special rapporteur on the right to food

The role of the UN’s dozens of independent experts, or special rapporteurs, is to report and advise on various human rights. My role revolves around the right to food – which is under enormous threat.

The world’s food systems have been failing people for a long time. The climate crisis is ravaging the planet, biodiversity diminishes every day and food insecurity is on the rise.

Birds, and perhaps other animals too, benefitted from a respite in human activity in North America, research suggests

The shutdown of traveling and socializing during the Covid-19 pandemic last year brought severe dislocation to many people, but if you were a bird during this time it was highly appealing, new research has found.

The distribution of 80% of studied bird species in North America changed during pandemic lockdowns last year, the study found, with most of these species increasing in abundance in and around urban areas that fell unusually quiet due to a sudden drop in traffic.

It can terrorise you for five years – or 10, if you keep it as a pet

A garden snail is eating your roses. “Little snail / Dreaming you go / Weather and rose / Is all you know,” wrote Langston Hughes. It is night time, the snail’s time, after dew or rain – when the snail is happiest, because the conditions are optimal for slime-walkers.

The snail is blind. It knows the rose only by its smell and soft petals. You think you can hear the rasping of tiny teeth: scraping, scraping away at your roses. The snail is deaf: it does not hear your complaints. It could terrorise you for five years – or 10, if you chose to keep it as a pet.

Predictions of debt, deficit and tax revenue out to 2060 rather nicely avoid the major issue that will confront the economy – climate change

The latest long-term report from the Parliamentary Budget Office provides the good news that the budget looks fine and debt levels even in the worst-case scenario are manageable. The bad news is that, as with all our long-term economic forecasts, there is little attention paid to climate change rendering much of these forecasts irrelevant.

The PBO’s latest “Beyond the budget” report charts where the Australian government’s finances are headed over the next 40 years.