The Guardian

Swedish maker of battery cells for electric vehicles says it has enough cash to support operations for only a week

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Northvolt, the Swedish maker of battery cells for electric vehicles, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US, dealing a blow to Europe’s hopes that its most developed battery player would reduce western carmakers’ reliance on Chinese rivals.

Northvolt said it had enough cash to support operations for only about a week and it had secured $100m (£80m) in new financing for the bankruptcy process. It said operations would continue as normal during the bankruptcy.

Negotiations continue amid disputes over climate finance goals and previous commitments on transitioning from fossil fuels

Cop29 will run well into overtime, WWF has said, as delegates from nearly 200 nations awaited a fresh draft of a summit deal on Friday afternoon.

Decisions at the annual UN climate talks are made by consensus, meaning that it is possible for a small number of objectors to easily hold up commitments.

Labour inherited a dire situation that needed desperate change – but powerful lobbies make any tax reform near-impossible

That was a state-of-the-nation image, those thousands of farmers in Whitehall protesting about inheritance tax (IHT). Their little inheritors on toy tractors could hardly have offered a better portrait of a Britain where even modest reforms of wildly irrational tax reliefs are near-impossible. The country loves Old MacDonald and detests IHT.

This is a symbol of the great malaise those same contrary voters feel about the profound unfairness in this most unequal of countries. Few think it’s OK for the top 1% to own almost a quarter of all wealth, or the top 0.1% to take about 60 times more income than their population share, while we are living through the greatest decline in living standards since records began.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Petrostate’s rebuke comes as Saudi Arabia and allies try to derail transition promise made at climate talks last year

• Cop29 climate summit – live updates

The world must stand behind a historic resolution made last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”, the United Arab Emirates has said, in a powerful intervention into a damaging row over climate action.

The petrostate’s stance came as a sharp rebuke to its neighbour and close ally Saudi Arabia, which had been trying to unpick the global commitment at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan this week.

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The return of Trump demands extreme watchfulness. But effective vigilance also requires energy and strength, mental and emotional recharge and balance

A long walk in the mountains last weekend brought sudden perspective to just how heavily the shoutiness and anger was weighing.

Suddenly there was only birdsong, the rustling tree canopies, the gentle burbling of the Snowy River and the wind whispering through the trunks of ancient ghost gums. This was anything but a quiet quietness. But it was the sound of a serenity that only nature can gift – a noise of extreme unplugged-ness if you like.

Rich country budgets are stretched amid inflation, Covid and Ukraine war, Mary Robinson tells Cop29

Poor countries may have to compromise on demands for cash to tackle global heating, a former UN climate envoy has said, as UN talks entered their final hours in deadlock.

In comments that are likely to disappoint poorer countries at the Cop29 summit, Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and twice a UN climate envoy, said rich country budgets were stretched amid inflation, Covid and conflicts including Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Researchers identify collision hotspots around world but reveal almost all these lack preventive measures

Collisions between whales and ships can prove fatal for the marine mammals, but researchers say expanding mitigation measures to just 2.6% of the ocean’s surface would reduce the chance of such strikes in all risk hotspots.

While experts say many whale-ship collisions go unobserved and unreported, making it difficult to put a figure on the scale of the problem, some estimates suggest tens of thousands of the animals are killed each year.

Climate crisis, habitat loss and poaching have reduced its numbers – but will Trump put the kibosh on protections?

They are the tallest animal to roam the Earth and have become an icon of children’s books, toys and awed wildlife documentaries. But giraffes are in decline, which has prompted the US government to list them as endangered for the first time.

Giraffes will be listed under the US Endangered Species Act, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed in a move that will cover five subspecies of the animal. The agency hopes the listing will crack down on the poaching of giraffes, as the US is a leading destination of rugs, pillowcases, boots, furniture and even Bible covers made from giraffe body parts.

Steve Reed says he may not agree on inheritance tax changes but government will listen to rural Britain

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The UK environment secretary has promised to reform the food system to ensure farmers are paid fairly for the food they produce, after many filled the streets of Westminster to campaign against inheritance tax changes.

Speaking at the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) conference, Steve Reed said: “I heard the anguish of the countryside on the streets of London earlier this week. We may not agree over the inheritance tax changes, but this government is determined to listen to rural Britain and end its long decline.”

The prime minister, Keir Starmer, has hit out at the lack of Conservative support for climate targets and said it shows 'just how far the party has fallen'. 'It’s a shame,' he said. 'When Cop was in Scotland, there was a real unity across the house about the importance of tackling one of the most central issues of our time,' Starmer said in Commons after returning from the G20 and Cop29

• Cop29 live - latest updates

Local and state initiatives can act as ‘proof of concept’ for transformative climate and jobs legislation

As Trump and Trumpism devastate the American political landscape, how can people counter this destructive juggernaut? For the past five years, I have been studying how people are actually implementing the elements of the Green New Deal through what has become a Green New Deal from Below. This framework, which ordinary people are already putting into practice, is an approach to organizing that can form a significant means for resisting and even overcoming the Trump agenda.

The Green New Deal is a visionary program designed to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice and eliminating poverty. The Green New Deal erupted into public attention as a proposal for national legislation, and the struggle to embody it in national legislation is ongoing.

Jeremy Brecher is the author of the new book The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy. He is the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements and the co-founder and senior advisor of the Labor Network for Sustainability

Outcry after draft text contains only an ‘X’ instead of setting $1tn funding goal to support developing countries

• Cop29 climate summit – live updates

Hopes of a breakthrough at the deadlocked UN climate talks have been dashed after a new draft of a possible deal was condemned by rich and poor countries.

Faith in the ability of the Azerbaijan presidency to produce a deal ebbed on Thursday morning, as the draft texts were criticised as inadequate and providing no “landing ground” for a compromise.

Stakes high as officials discuss summit’s key question of how much rich countries should pay for developing nations to cope with climate crisis and decarbonize their economies

In response to the latest text on climate finance, Laurie van der Burg, Oil Change International Global Public Finance Manager, said it was “a mixed bag with good, bad and ugly options.”

“Rich countries now have a last chance to step up to pay the climate debt they owe to the Global South and unlock a fair and funded fossil fuel phaseout, while barring dangerous distractions. Wealthy nations must support delivering the trillions urgently needed in public finance with the majority provided debt-free, which is currently on the table.”

Speaking at a press conference in Baku this morning, Hoekstra was asked for reaction to the lack of a clear figure on the climate finance - which currently just has an “X” for the target on the new collective quantified goal (NCQG).

“It is clearly unacceptable as it stands,” said Hoekstra, giving little else away.

Exclusive: Trail would help region with few areas where people can walk in countryside, report says

A new trail along the east coast of England should be created, a Tory thinktank has said, because farmland is preventing those who live there from having access to nature.

A report from Onward has found that in most rural areas, people enjoy extensive rights-of-way networks. But across the east of England, there are many areas where people have barely anywhere they are allowed to walk in the countryside. This, the report says, is because of large areas of high-grade farmland in that area, but also because Lincolnshire has the largest backlog for recognition of historical but unrecorded rights of way, with more than 450 outstanding applications.

Despite a diplomatic push from Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese, Turkey won’t back down on its bid to host Cop31

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Australia’s plan to host a major UN climate summit in 2026 has hit a Turkish roadblock. It is unclear how long it will last.

The Albanese government had expected that its bid to co-host the Cop31 summit in partnership with Pacific island nations – a Labor promise since before it won power in 2022 – would be agreed by now, as the UN climate talks in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku approach their final stages.

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As Cop29 in Azerbaijan reaches final stages, countries try to shore up support for conference where question of limiting global heating will be key

Australia is locked in a standoff with Turkey over which will host vital UN climate talks in 2026, where the question of whether the world can limit global heating in line with scientific advice is likely to be decided.

Australia’s government wants to host the summit in partnership with Pacific nations, which are among the countries most threatened by climate breakdown.

Ukraine's environmental protection minister, Svitlana Grynchuk, and the Palestinian chair for the environmental quality authority, Nisreen Tamimi, raised the alarm on the ecological impact of war in their countries and beyond. Grynchuk said Russia's 'unlawful reporting' of its carbon emissions on Ukrainian territory was undermining the integrity of the Paris agreement. Tamimi said the rebuilding effort in Gaza would release an estimated 30m tonnes of carbon dioxide

• Cop29 live: campaigners say talks are ‘reaching point of real emotion’

OECD complaint alleges top firm has increased investments in companies implicated in environmental devastation

BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset management company, faces a complaint at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for allegedly contributing to environmental and human rights abuses around the world through its investments in agribusiness.

Friends of the Earth US and the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil accuse BlackRock of increasing investments in companies that have been implicated in the devastation of the Amazon and other major forests despite warnings that this is destabilising the global climate, damaging ecosystems and violating the rights of traditional communities.