The Guardian

Global land and ocean surface temperature last month was 0.9C hotter than 20th-century average, beating July 2016 record

July was the world’s hottest month ever recorded, US government scientists have confirmed, a further indication of the unfolding climate crisis that is now affecting almost every part of the planet.

Related: Greenhouse gas emissions must peak within 4 years, says leaked UN report

To accept the facts about climate science without changing the way we live is also to deny reality

It’s easy to laugh at the anti-vaccine movement, and this week they made it easier still. Hundreds of protesters tried to storm Television Centre in west London, apparently unaware that they were not at the headquarters of the BBC or its news operation – which they blame for brainwashing the British public – but at a building vacated by the corporation eight years ago and which now consists of luxury flats and daytime TV studios. If only they’d done their own research.

Anti-vax firebreather Piers Corbyn was there, of course, unabashed by the recent undercover sting that showed him happy to take £10,000 in cash from what he thought was an AstraZeneca shareholder, while agreeing that he would exempt their product from his rhetorical fire. (Corbyn has since said that the published video is misleading.) “We’ve got to take over these bastards,” he said during this week’s protest, while inside Loose Women were discussing the menopause.

The striking thing is not the bad news, which is not really news for those who have followed the science closely. It’s the report’s insights on possibilities for cautious optimism

The first response many of us have to a cancer diagnosis is terror, horror and the conviction that we’re doomed. For those who haven’t been paying serious ongoing attention to climate chaos, reminders that we are facing catastrophe can bring the same kind of response. But if you’ve been through cancer or been close to people who have, you know that the usual next phase is figuring out what the treatment options are and, in most cases, going all out for them. The good news is going to be that you got approved for a promising new treatment, are responding well, you are in remission, feel healthier, have a good prognosis. That there are things worth doing that make a difference.

Climate change is a nightmare, and this summer’s floods, fires and extreme heat, from China to Siberia to British Columbia, are reminders that the problem is rapidly growing worse. Yet the striking thing about the IPCC report released earlier this month is not the bad news, which is not really news at all for those who have followed the science closely. It’s the clarity about possibilities, which I found hopeful.

Experts say chancellor refusing to commit spending needed to shift economy to low-carbon footing

The Treasury is blocking green policies essential to put the UK on track to net zero emissions, imperilling the UK’s own targets and the success of vital UN climate talks, experts have told the Guardian.

A string of policies, from home insulation to new infrastructure spending, have been scrapped, watered down or delayed. Rows about short term costs have dominated over longer term warnings that putting off green spending now will lead to much higher costs in future.

Hundreds of spills off Gulf of Paria having ‘dire’ impact on local fishing in one of the most biodiverse areas of Trinidad and Tobago

Hands masked in thick black oil, the fisher drips toxic globules back into the sea as he pleads with the camera, urging viewers to “share this video”.

In the footage, filmed onboard a small boat, Gary Aboud documents an oil spill this week in the Gulf of Paria, off the Caribbean coast of Trinidad. It is just the latest of many spills that threaten to wreak havoc on the area’s vulnerable marine life and fishing industry.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including rescued storks, wandering elephants and a whiting inside a jellyfish

Traditional owners and farmers are fighting for their land while their own government bankrolls the companies mining it

For many of us, the mention of “the Kimberley” or “the outback” conjures up images of iconic, ancient Australian landscapes. Red soil, endless plains, rugged ranges and spectacular gorges. It is also home to the world’s oldest living cultures. An ancient landscape inhabited for over 50,000 years, maybe closer to 100,000. That long living in a landscape, having a relationship with a place, is almost impossible to comprehend for an immigrant like myself. It’s no surprise that First Nations people are leading the battle to protect their land; to protect this incredible continent of beauty and wonder we are lucky enough to call home.

New gas projects threaten vast tracts of country and communities across Australia – from Western Australia’s stunning Kimberley to the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo and New South Wales’s Pilliga forest. A recent analysis revealed a single fracking company cleared so much native vegetation for geological seismic testing in the Kimberley that, if it was assembled in a straight line, it would be a road that stretched from Perth to London. Last week, traditional owners from the heart of the Northern Territory were in tears during a Senate inquiry into the Morrison government’s use of taxpayer funds to prop up the economically questionable forays of the fracking industry into the Beetaloo.

Greece, Turkey and Italy have borne the brunt of wildfires, while parts of Spain and France are on alert for very high temperatures

Hundreds of fires are burning across the Mediterranean, displacing thousands and causing irreparable damage as human-made climate change causes record-breaking summer heatwaves.

With very high temperatures expected in parts of Spain and France on Friday and Saturday, the crisis threatens to spread with weeks of scorching summer weather still to come across the region.

If Joe Biden is serious about tackling the climate crisis he must use his country’s leverage to curb fossil fuels, not boost them

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has driven home just how dangerous the climate crisis is. Faced with this unprecedented and unique challenge, the central question is: can we change course rapidly enough to contain the damage and preserve a halfway liveable planet? If the stark findings of the IPCC were not alarming enough, they are all the more so given the mounting evidence that the impetus for large-scale climate action may be ebbing.

Given the onrushing disaster, we may be forgiven mood swings. Earlier this year, it seemed that the balance of political and economic forces might be swinging in favour of rapid decarbonisation. China, Japan and South Korea had all made net-zero pledges. Trump, the climate-denier-in-chief, had lost the White House. The new Biden administration was pushing what was billed as a major green infrastructure programme. The NextGenerationEU stimulus package was raising ambition. First the Bank of England and then the European Central Bank (ECB) took on the climate issue. The German Green party was riding high in the polls. Investors and financial markets were dumping dirty assets. Even a lobby like the International Energy Agency, once created to represent the interests of oil consumers, was charting a course to net zero. On 14 July, the EU announced its Fit for 55 plan, which implied, among other things, an end to the sale of new internal combustion engine cars by the early 2030s.

Heavy rains have triggered severe floods and mudslides in northern Turkey, killing at least one person and leaving others missing or injured. Turkey has been grappling with drought and a rapid succession of natural disasters that scientists believe are becoming more frequent and violent because of the climate crisis. The floods hit the Black Sea coastal provinces of Bartin, Kastamonu, Sinop and Samsun

• Turkey battles fresh disaster as floods hit country’s north

Infrastructure bill includes $8bn to develop ‘clean hydrogen’ but study finds large emissions from production of ‘blue’ hydrogen

The large infrastructure bill passed by the US Senate and hailed by Joe Biden as a key tool to tackle the climate crisis includes billions of dollars to support a supposedly clean fuel that is potentially even more polluting than coal, new research has found.

The $1tn infrastructure package, which passed with bipartisan support on Tuesday, includes $8bn to develop “clean hydrogen” via the creation of four new regional hubs. The White House has said the bill advances Biden’s climate agenda and proponents of hydrogen have touted it as a low-emissions alternative to fuel shipping, trucking, aviation and even home heating.

Just when we must be rejecting new drilling, fracking and pipeline infrastructure, Biden isn’t just tolerating fossil fuels - he’s uplifting them

The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints a stark and sobering picture: a global future of extreme weather events that are guaranteed to become more frequent and more intense over coming decades. The horrific flooding that has recently shocked Europe will become more common. The unrelenting fires that have engulfed the western United States and Canada will intensify and widen. And some island nations, it seems, may already be doomed to eradication by inevitable sea level rise.

The only glimmer of hope offered in the IPCC report is that immediate, aggressive action by world leaders could still prevent a future of assured climate chaos from being even worse. As devastating as a 1.5C global temperature increase will be, a 2.5C increase would be unfathomable.

Academics warn ‘fugitive’ emissions from producing hydrogen could be 20% worse for climate than using gas

The government’s plan to replace fossil gas with “blue” hydrogen to help meet its climate targets could backfire after US academics found that it may lead to more emissions than using gas.

In some cases blue hydrogen, which is made from fossil gas, could be up to 20% worse for the climate than using gas in homes and heavy industry, owing to the emissions that escape when gas is extracted from the ground and split to produce hydrogen.

Just as inequality fuelled the pandemic, it could wreck plans to cut emissions

The message from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could hardly be clearer. Business as usual means global temperatures will rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels within two decades. Preventing that happening will require a massive and rapid drop in the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted.

Diagnosis is the easy bit. The question is not whether human beings are on a collision course with nature but how to use the time left to bring about the far-reaching economic changes required to avoid catastrophe.

Rewilding on marginal land could bolster employment without halting traditional agricultural activities, data shows

• Cairngorms crofters: ‘We don’t follow a capitalist grow-grow-grow model’

Rewilding 5% of England could create nearly 20,000 jobs in rural communities and increase employment by 50% compared with intensive farming, figures show.

Related: Cairngorms crofters: ‘We don’t follow a capitalist grow-grow-grow model’

Just £145m of budget went on environment with £40bn spent on emissions-increasing measures, says charity

The UK government is spending many times more on measures that will increase greenhouse gas emissions than on policies to tackle the climate crisis, according to an analysis of the spring budget.

Only £145m in the March 2021 budget was devoted to environmental spending, most of it on the post-Brexit emissions trading scheme for industry, according to an analysis by the conservation charity WWF. But the cost of tax breaks to companies to encourage investment came to more than £34bn, while maintaining the fuel duty freeze – for an 11th consecutive year – is costing about £4.5bn in lost revenues.

Australia cannot afford another election campaign that views the science of climate change as something we can ignore

The latest IPCC report released on Monday essentially lets the world know just how big a hole it has gotten itself into. The good thing is it also lets us all know how we can get out. The problem of course is that when you are in a hole, the first thing you have to do is stop digging.

Lest there still be any misunderstanding – whether it be through ignorance or due to listening to those in the media and politics who seek to mislead – the climate right now is warmer than it has been in modern human history.

People are urging the government to take further and faster action but those who think it’s too costly must first be defeated

It’s easy to feel despair reading the stark warnings in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: the window in which warming can be limited to 1.5C is rapidly closing. The forest fires and flooding on our TV screens, and closer to home, are a wake-up call to the realities of a rapidly warming climate.

The IPCC, the UN body responsible for climate science, described the report as a “code red for humanity”, but 30 years of warnings have not brought about action on a meaningful scale.

Communities on the frontline of the climate crisis say radical solutions must be on the table – before it’s too late

Ayisha Siddiqa doesn’t want fossil fuel companies to determine her future anymore. The industry has promoted climate denial for longer than the 22-year-old has been alive. Rather than watch companies pad their profits as the world burns, Siddiqa has a radical solution in mind.

“Abolish these oil companies, finish them, get rid of them, no more,” she said.