The Guardian

Our climate is in crisis, but authoritarians and technocrats don’t have the answers

What the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report confirmed this month is that the stable climate many of us grew up with is gone and has been replaced by a fundamentally unstable one. Sea levels will almost certainly rise and storms will get more intense. Amid a drumbeat of depressing news and decades of inaction, there’s a sort of folk wisdom emerging that liberal democracy might just be too slow to tackle a problem as urgent and massive as the climate crisis. It’s an enticing vision: that governments can forgo the messy, deliberative work of politics in favour of a benign dictatorship of green technocrats who will get emissions down by brute force. With a punishingly tiny budget of just 400 gigatonnes of CO2 left to make a decent shot of staying below 1.5C of warming, is it time to give something less democratic a try?

It would be easy to look at the longstanding stalemate around climate policy in the US, the world’s second biggest emitter and embattled superpower, as evidence that something more top-down is needed. Yet the failure isn’t one of too much democracy but too little. The US Senate empowers West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – a man elected by fewer than 300,000 people – to block the agenda of a president elected by more than 80 million. Climate-sceptical Republicans, backed by corporate interests, have attempted to gerrymander their way to electoral dominance, halting progressive climate action in its tracks. The fossil fuel industry can engulf lawmakers with lobbyists and virtually unlimited campaign donations to sway their votes. And as the Republican party’s leading lights flirt with authoritarians like Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, comprehensive bipartisan climate action remains a pipe dream.

They are blamed for damage to crops but numbers are falling due to predators and disease

The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is perhaps the most often seen mammal in the British countryside. It is also a favourite food for foxes, badgers, weasels, stoats and various birds of prey, especially buzzards, whose numbers often fluctuate depending on rabbit populations.

Yet the rabbit is classed as an invasive species. It was first imported by the Romans from its native habitat in the Iberian peninsula in about AD43. It did not thrive and was reintroduced again by the Normans before becoming established in England. It was so valued as a winter food source that the landed gentry had to have special permission to create a carefully guarded warren and the peasants were kept well away.

The government is launching a consultation on more reintroductions to the wild after a successful trial in Devon

Beavers will be released into the wild under government proposals to support a “cautious” return of the semi-aquatic mammals to English rivers.

The native animals will also be given legal protection in England, making it an offence to deliberately capture, kill, disturb or injure them, or damage their breeding sites or resting places, as part of efforts to support their recovery.

Some experts fear climate crisis is leading creatures back to area where they were hunted almost to extinction

Blue whales, the world’s largest mammals, are returning to Spain’s Atlantic coast after an absence of more than 40 years.

The first one was spotted off the coast of Galicia in north-west Spain in 2017 by Bruno Díaz, a marine biologist who is head of the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute in O Grove, Galicia.

Activists say the bank, which handles government tax accounts, gives billions in funding to fossil fuel industries

Hundreds of Extinction Rebellion protesters have blocked Whitehall in a protest against HMRC’s links to Barclays Bank, which handles the government’s tax collection bank accounts.

On the second day of the environmental protest group’s latest campaign of protest and civil disobedience, activists from its Welsh chapter locked themselves together in the street in front of the tax collection department, stopping traffic.

Blazes are destroying whole communities. The Canadian government must act now to tackle this existential threat

Small fires crackle into life on the hills around us at the slightest provocation. Creeks swell with flash floods, as upland snow melts at record speed. Our town’s beloved colony of great blue herons fall stunned out of the trees in their dozens. Animals, from cougars to rattlesnakes, leave their hidden places to seek water. The temperature has risen, and stalled, at a nearly unbearable 45C.

This is what a heat dome feels like in Vernon, a community in the British Columbian interior in Canada.

The owner of a cabin which became surrounded by flames near Kyburz, California, managed to escape the Caldor fire after shooting the first part of this footage. The fire has burned more than 40,500 hectares (100,000 acres) in the north of the state since it started on 14 August, and more than 12,000 in just two days.

More than 500 structures were destroyed over the weekend by wildfire fuelled by warm winds and drought-stricken vegetation

• California’s Caldor fire burns 100,000 acres as it rips through small towns
• The climate science behind wildfires: why are they getting worse? – video explainer

Insects are eating crops of apples, grapes and hops, and destroying native trees such as maple, walnut and willow in Pennsylvania

The official public guidance is simple and to the point: “Kill it! Squash it, smash it… just get rid of it!”

Such is the threat posed by a summer invasion of troublesome spotted lanternfly insects in the north-east that Pennsylvania’s department of agriculture has resorted to the unorthodox language in its advice on dealing with the pest.

Woodland Trust and National Trust trial sustainable alternatives to plastic protection for millions of saplings

Planting trees without plastic tree guards should be standard practice, a UK study has found, as leading conservation charities and landowners seek sustainable alternatives to reduce plastic waste.

The Woodland Trust has announced it is aiming to stop using plastic tree guards by the end of the year. It is trialling plastic-free options at its Avoncliff site in Wiltshire, including cardboard and British wool. The charity plans to plant 10 million trees each year until 2025.

Both species nest in large hollows that are only found in old trees. As this prime accommodation disappears, competition is cut-throat

• Australian bird of the year 2021: nominate your favourite for the shortlist

The housing market in most parts of Australia is notoriously competitive. You might be surprised to learn we humans are not the only ones facing such difficulties.

With spring rapidly approaching, and perhaps a little earlier due to climate change, many birds are currently on the hunt for the best nesting sites.

Study reinforces the hard evidence that carbon emissions are the main cause of worsening extreme weather

The record-shattering rainfall that caused deadly flooding across Germany and Belgium in July was made up to nine times more likely by the climate crisis, according to research.

The study also showed that human-caused global heating has made downpours in the region up to 20% heavier. The work reinforces the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s landmark report this month that there is “unequivocal” evidence that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main cause of worsening extreme weather.

A Seychelles giant tortoise, a species previously thought to be a strict herbivore, has been filmed chasing and eating a baby bird. Researchers say it was the first documented example of deliberate hunting in the wild by the species.

The video, taken on Fregate Island in July 2020, shows a female giant tortoise slowly stalking a lesser noddy tern chick, snapping at it unsuccessfully before delivering a lethal blow by clamping its jaws directly around its head.

• ‘Horrifying and amazing’: giant tortoise filmed attacking and eating baby bird

Chase in Seychelles is first known example of hunting in wild by creature thought to be herbivore

A Seychelles giant tortoise, a species previously thought to be a strict herbivore, has been filmed chasing and eating a baby bird in a “horrifying and amazing” attack, with researchers stating it was the first documented example of deliberate hunting in the wild by the species.

The video, taken on Fregate Island in July 2020, shows a female giant tortoise slowly stalking a lesser noddy tern chick, snapping at it unsuccessfully before delivering a lethal bow by clamping its jaws directly around its head.

Communities react with shock to news they are being considered as locations for underground facility

The long-running battle to build an underground nuclear waste facility in the north of England has run into fresh problems, as communities reacted with shock to the news that they were being considered as locations.

The north-east port town of Hartlepool is one of the sites in the frame as a potential site for a geological disposal facility (GDF), while a former gas terminal point at Theddlethorpe, near the Lincolnshire coast, is another. Cumbria, where much of the waste is stored above ground, is also being considered.

Concerns about lasting damage after influx of people, many of whom maybe ill-prepared to scale mountain

A conservation charity is urging visitors to “respect” one of the UK’s most beloved mountains amid growing concerns that a sharp increase in the number of walkers is causing lasting damage and too many people are trying to climb the peak without preparing properly.

The Snowdonia Society said Snowdon – Yr Wyddfa in Welsh – was being blighted by footpath erosion, littering and careless wild camping. The charity also said mountain rescue teams were having to save people who try to climb the 1,085-metre (3,560ft) peak in north Wales without the right equipment.

Protesters gather in Covent Garden while activists stage diversion march up Charing Cross Road

Extinction Rebellion protesters have blocked one of Covent Garden’s busiest junctions on the first day of the group’s latest wave of protests targeting London.

At about midday, activists from the group chained themselves together to block the roundabout at Long Acre as a van pulled up with a pink table structure. It was quickly assembled and hundreds of other activists streamed to the roundabout.

Climate-conscious individual choices are good – but not nearly enough to save the planet. More than personal virtue, we need collective action

Personal virtue is an eternally seductive goal in progressive movements, and the climate movement is no exception. People pop up all the time to boast of their domestic arrangements or chastise others for what they eat or how they get around. The very short counter-argument is that individual acts of thrift and abstinence won’t get us the huge distance we need to go in this decade. We need to exit the age of fossil fuels, reinvent our energy landscape, rethink how we do almost everything. We need collective action at every scale from local to global – and the good people already at work on all those levels need help in getting a city to commit to clean power or a state to stop fracking or a nation to end fossil-fuel subsidies. The revolution won’t happen by people staying home and being good.

But the oil companies would like you to think that’s how it works. It turns out that the concept of the “carbon footprint”, that popular measure of personal impact, was the brainchild of an advertising firm working for BP. As Mark Kaufman wrote this summer:

Hypocrisy rules as we prepare to host Cop26 and Boris Johnson prepares to approve a new oilfield off Shetland

Just months before hosting the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, the UK government will decide whether to approve a massive new oilfield 75 miles north-west of Shetland. Boris Johnson has hinted at a likely go-ahead. The Cambo field, being developed by private-equity-owned Siccar Point and Shell, would produce 170m barrels of oil – oil the world cannot afford to burn.

The Cambo decision is the government’s first test since the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned against developing new oil and gas fields. In a landmark report this year, the IEA found that that already-operating fields will produce more oil and gas over the coming decades than can be consumed if global heating is limited to 1.5C.

Acts of aggression likely because of ‘mistaken identity during sexual interactions’, researchers write

Highly venomous and sexually aroused sea snakes may attack human divers after confusing them with other snakes during breeding season, a new study suggests.

Related: Case of the mystery sea snakes: why are reptiles washing up on New Zealand’s shores?

As emissions from industrial sites increase, Grattan Institute recommends a new future fund be set up similar to the national green bank

Greenhouse gas emissions from Australia’s industrial sites have risen 24% since 2005, and need to be addressed now if the country is to have a chance of reaching net zero by 2050, a new report says.

The Melbourne-based think tank Grattan Institute has released a blueprint to reduce emissions from major industry, citing government projections that without action they are expected to stay around current levels until 2030.