The Guardian

Ahead of Cop26, the UK could take the lead in diverting investments away from carbon emitters

• Richard Curtis is a filmmaker and activist

Someone said something so simple yet so shocking to me recently: that weather used to be the last thing on the news, now it’s the first. Fire, floods, drought; it’s impossible to ignore. Well, I can’t help but feel that we should treat our pensions the same. They used to be the last thing on our minds – the worst possible thing to bring up at a party – but in order to tackle the climate crisis, they must now be the first.

With delegates from across the globe descending upon Glasgow in November for Cop26 – the most important climate negotiations for a generation – a new movement now has the power to deliver on the world’s most urgent agenda.

Democracy got us and the birds into this mess

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Major figures privately admit summit will fail to result in pledges that could limit global heating to 1.5C

Vital United Nations climate talks, billed as one of the last chances to stave off climate breakdown, will not produce the breakthrough needed to fulfil the aspiration of the Paris agreement, key players in the talks have conceded.

The UN, the UK hosts and other major figures involved in the talks have privately admitted that the original aim of the Cop26 summit will be missed, as the pledges on greenhouse gas emissions cuts from major economies will fall short of the halving of global emissions this decade needed to limit global heating to 1.5C.

Climate crisis brings stark intergenerational injustice but rapid emission cuts can limit damage

People born today will suffer many times more extreme heatwaves and other climate disasters over their lifetimes than their grandparents, research has shown.

The study is the first to assess the contrasting experience of climate extremes by different age groups and starkly highlights the intergenerational injustice posed by the climate crisis.

I learned that loving birds is best done by walking in the sun, being curious and appreciating the chatter. Not by sitting on my own looking at books and screens

• The Guardian/BirdLife Australia Bird of the Year poll for 2021 will begin on 27 September

I once saw a picture of a kid standing proudly next to his science project. It was a handmade poster and emblazoned across the top was the strikingly catchy title: “Birds: they’re fucking everywhere!”Obviously photoshopped, these words nevertheless struck me as being both funny and more or less true.

Many years ago, camping in the Cathedrals in Victoria, I woke early to a strange, whirring birdcall. Groggily, I unzipped the tent enough to stick my head out and squinted unattractively in the dawn light. The bird I saw had astonishing violet-blue eyes and was sort of, I dunno, stripy? I am, you may have guessed, a novice birder. So, I did the exact thing that any experienced birder will tell you not to do. I pulled my head back inside my tent and went straight for my field guide. If you too are new to birding, here’s a tip: your field guide isn’t likely to fly away in the next few seconds and (if you’re not me) you have this ace thing called working memory. So get your priorities straight, put down your field guide (or, more likely these days, your phone) and give your new friend your undivided attention. Because life is short and this moment is fleeting.

The shortlist features some birds hit by bushfires and a few urban ‘bullies’ that dominate as cities grow

• The Guardian/BirdLife Australia 2021 bird of the year poll begins on Monday

Blue Mountains resident Carol Probets remembers the gang-gang cockatoo as a bird that was commonly spotted in the region in the 1980s.

“You’d see them really often, most times when you went walking both in the bush but especially around the towns actually,” Probets says.

Replacing Christian Porter is just the start of the PM’s problems, as climate jostling in the National party over net zero threatens to spill into all-out warfare

When Scott Morrison arrives home from his week in Washington, the prime minister needs to deal with two pressing problems – replacing Christian Porter and getting some material in front of the Nationals about net zero.

When it comes to the reshuffle, colleagues think the prime minister will keep changes surgical. People speculate the he will replace the departing Porter with another Western Australian – Ben Morton. Morrison is close enough to Morton to call him “the apprentice”.

Study of how fish are snatched from lines will investigate what species of sharks are the most prolific offenders

Many anglers lament the one that got away. In Florida, the issue is more often the fish that is caught but is then snatched by a shark before being reeled in.

Related: Judge recommends tribe be allowed to hunt gray whales off Washington state

These are massive, charismatic birds with an exhibitionistic streak who have increasingly moved to the city with their natural habitat under pressure

• The Guardian/BirdLife Australia 2021 bird of the year poll begins on Monday

For the past several months, I’ve kept a slightly uneasy vigil on a pair of breeding powerful owls in inner Brisbane, just a couple of kilometres from home. In that time they’ve seen off crowds of curious onlookers, and a determined eviction attempt by sulphur-crested cockatoos, to raise one confident and healthy-looking chick, which will remain dependent on them for several more months yet.

After that, it faces a much bigger challenge: finding and establishing its own territory and mate.

I’ve been reading Jonathan C Slaght’s wonderful book Owls of the Eastern Ice, his account of four seasons trying to locate and protect the largest living species of owl in the remote Russian forests of Primorye, bordering North Korea. The Blakiston’s fish owl is a creature that seems entirely made of mythology. The threats to its continued existence include radioactive rivers and deforestation as well as the by-products of climate change: increasing floods, wildfires, typhoons.

Slaght’s extraordinary adventures on its behalf are like scenes from the end of the world. Rather than rely on the prime minister’s prep school arguments for a revolution in how the planet is managed at the forthcoming Cop26 gathering in Glasgow, organisers might be better advised to leave a copy of Slaght’s book at every world leader’s bedside. If they picked it up in the jet-lagged early hours they might find their dreams haunted, as mine have been, by huge, endangered owls swooping low through their subconscious, reminding them what survival might mean.

Makah chairman welcomes ruling opposed by animal welfare groups and says: ‘We’re doing it for spiritual and cultural reasons’

An administrative law judge has recommended that a Native American tribe in Washington state be allowed to hunt gray whales – a major step in its decades-long effort to resume the ancient practice.

Related: Horror at the Faroes dolphin slaughter is only human – but it risks hypocrisy | Philip Hoare

Exclusive: deal in which UK government would take stake in Sizewell C would risk inflaming geopolitical tensions

Ministers are closing in on a deal that could kick China off a project to build a £20bn nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast and pump in tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer cash instead – a move that would heighten geopolitical tensions.

The government could announce plans to take a stake in Sizewell C power station, alongside the French state-backed power giant EDF, as early as next month, ahead of the Cop26 climate summit.

Move to restrict where people can sleep under canvas will reverse the public’s hard-won right to enjoy the national park

Shamus McCaffery, 53, who lives in the heart of Dartmoor and wild camps there three or four times a month, is among many who are worried about an imminent threat to their freedoms.

Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) has launched a consultation on new bylaws that could reduce the areas where people can legally wild camp in England and Wales by 2,400 hectares, as well as ban activities involving more than 50 people without the agreement of landowners. People caught by the moor’s rangers camping in the wrong spot or gathering in large groups without permission could be fined £500. “Our hard-won freedoms to spend nights on the moor surrounded by nature are at risk,” said McCaffery. “This will criminalise law-abiding users of the countryside.”

An insider reveals what is going on behind the scenes of the climate conference

So far, all the preparation work we have done has been beating around the bush – not much that is substantial is happening yet. The homework has been done very well, but only on the issues that are not very substantive for this Cop, such as technical issues to do with the Paris agreement. We need to discuss now the issues which are most substantive: ambition, and climate finance.

Ambition means how much we are going to cut emissions, in line with the Paris agreement targets – and that means how much are developed countries and the biggest developing countries going to cut emissions. Since the IPCC report in August, this has become even more urgent.

Despite all the analogies for this possibly terminal emergency, it is unlike anything that has come before

Writing in 2003, the American environmentalist Bill McKibben observed that although “some small percentage” of scientists, diplomats and activists had known for 15 years that the Earth was facing a disastrous change, their knowledge had almost completely failed to alarm anyone else.

It certainly alarmed McKibben: in June 1988, the scientist James Hansen testified to the US Congress that the world was warming rapidly and human behaviour was the primary cause – the first loud and unequivocal warning of the climate crisis to come – and before the next year was out, McKibben had published The End of Nature, the first book about climate change for a lay audience. But few others seemed particularly worried. “People think about ‘global warming’ in the way they think about ‘violence on television’ or ‘growing trade deficits’, as a marginal concern to them, if a concern at all,” he wrote in 2003. “Hardly anyone has fear in their guts.”

Birdwatching reminds Georgia Angus of the importance of appreciating our non-human co-inhabitants of this big spinning rock

• The Guardian/BirdLife Australia 2021 bird of the year poll begins on Monday

Over the past few years, my amateur bird watching has escalated into more of an obsession, one that occasionally pulls me out to more remote areas of Australia. Several months ago on one such trip, I had cause to think about what drew me to birds. On that particular day, I was walking in the Warrumbungles in New South Wales, trekking up a slope toward Mt Exmouth. I rounded a corner to spot an enormous wedge-tailed eagle perched on the ridge above me. It was an adult, with dark, near-black plumage, boxy shoulders and an immense beak. Its sheer mass was striking.

Related: Australian bird of the year 2021: nominate your favourite for the #BirdOfTheYear shortlist

Head of Scotland’s natural heritage body says there is too much focus on reintroducing apex predators

Demands to reintroduce predators such as wolves and bears could significantly damage public support for rewilding the British countryside, a senior conservationist has said.

Francesca Osowska, chief executive of NatureScot, a government conservation agency, said rewilding could only succeed if it won support from people living in and managing the countryside, including farmers and Highland estate managers who are worried about losing their livelihoods.

Thousands of protesters, including Greta Thunberg, rallied outside the German parliament in Berlin demanding stronger climate action from the government ahead of Sunday's national election. Friday's strike marks the return of the climate protests that in 2019 drew more than 6 million people on to the streets, before the Covid-19 pandemic largely halted mass gatherings and pushed much of the action online

• Global climate strike: thousands join coordinated action across world
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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.