The Guardian
![Subscribe to The Guardian feed](https://www.seng.org.au/misc/feed.png)
![The Guardian](https://assets.guim.co.uk/images/guardian-logo-rss.c45beb1bafa34b347ac333af2e6fe23f.png)
At Cop28 it feels as if humanity’s shared lifeboat is sinking. There are only hours left to act | Vanessa Nakate
Leaders and activists must fight to the end in Dubai to stop vested interests sabotaging progress on fossil fuel phase-out and adaptation
As Cop28 in Dubai enters its final hours, the emotional weight of the moment is hard to bear. I find myself thinking of a six-year-old boy called Desmond I met in Turkana county, Kenya, who died from severe acute malnutrition on the same day. His death was the result of a climate-induced drought that has left millions of people on the brink of starvation in the Horn of Africa.
I want the negotiators deciding the outcome of Cop28 to know Desmond’s story. Because in the end, the climate crisis is not about pledges, statistics, reports or activists. It’s about human suffering and ruined lives. It’s about death.
Vanessa Nakate is a climate activist, Unicef goodwill ambassador and author of A Bigger Picture: My fight to bring a new African voice to the climate crisis
Continue reading...Cop28 live: talks expected to extend beyond official summit end after ‘insufficient’ draft text
New draft text released by presidency omits reference to phase out of ‘fossil fuels’
Tuesday morning at Cop28 and we’re back in a waiting game. Heads of delegation met until the early hours, mostly expressing their deep unhappiness with the draft text produced by the summit presidency late Monday afternoon.
The scheduled end of the two-week conference has come and gone – that was 11am local – and as yet there is no new text to replace the document from yesterday. Anybody who says they know when this will end is guessing.
Continue reading...UK workers ‘should get day off’ if workplace is hotter than 30C
Exclusive: Report calls for new law on maximum indoor temperature to stop workers overheating
A maximum indoor temperature working law giving people a day off if workplace temperatures surpass 30C should be mandated by government, a new report recommends.
The report by the Fabian Society thinktank highlights inequalities in who bears the brunt of the impacts of climate breakdown and puts responsibility on bosses and landlords to stop people from overheating.
Continue reading...WTO chief urges countries to prioritise subsidies that tackle climate crisis
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says current incentives are distorting world trade and hampering fight against climate breakdown
Governments must start to distinguish between the good subsidies they need to fight the climate crisis and the bad ones that are increasing greenhouse gas emissions, the world’s trade chief has said.
Subsidies and other incentives to burn fossil fuels and encourage poor agricultural practices, amounting to about $1.7tn a year, are distorting world trade and hampering the fight against climate breakdown, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director general of the World Trade Organization, told the Guardian.
Continue reading...A robin: inside her small dark eye, a quantum entanglement | Helen Sullivan
A symbol of spring and rebirth, the robin is a favourite of gardeners and inspiration for poets and dreamers
What is it about the poem “Who killed Cock Robin?” It is so sad, and so coolly dark: a miniature drama played out in the shade of a single tree. The sparrow confesses right away, and nobody minds. The fly – “I, said the fly, with my little eye, I saw him die” – is a witness of whom no questions are asked. Everyone seems eager for the burial, eager to help, insincere in their mourning, “a-sighing and sobbing”.
Everything is small. The fish catching blood in his “little dish”, the rook playing parson with his “little book”. The death of a little bird, and a funeral for a bird the size, and almost the shape, of an orange, and weighing no more than an orange segment.
One of the electrons migrates a few nanometers away, where it feels a slightly different magnetic field than its partner. Depending on how the magnetic field alters the electron’s spin, different chemical reactions are produced. In theory, the products of many such reactions across a bird’s eye could create a picture of Earth’s magnetic field as a varying pattern of light and dark.
Continue reading...Revealed: more than 160 representatives with climate-denying track records got Cop28 access
UN organizers allow groups that have obstructed fossil fuel regulations and other climate action to attend, watchdog finds
Influential industry trade groups, thinktanks and public relations agencies with a track record in climate denialism and misleading the public have been given access to the UN climate talks in Dubai, the Guardian can reveal.
Corporate Accountability, a transparency watchdog, has found that UN organizers greenlighted access to groups that have obstructed fossil fuel regulations and other climate action, giving them the same or greater access to the international negotiations as Indigenous communities, human rights groups and climate justice organizations.
Continue reading...The great climate Cop-out: harnessing the power of a load of hot air | Fiona Katauskas
Cop28: Australia, US and UK say they won’t sign agreement that would be ‘death certificate’ for small islands
Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, says umbrella group of countries is united in saying draft agreement is too weak
A group of countries including Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and Japan have said they will “not be a co-signatory” to “death certificates” for small island states, and have demanded a stronger agreement at the Cop28 summit to deal with fossil fuels and address the climate crisis.
A statement delivered by the Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, on behalf of what’s known as the umbrella group of countries, came as tensions flared at the United Arab Emirates over the text of a draft deal proposed by the summit presidency.
Continue reading...Revealed: over 160 groups with climate-denying track records got Cop28 access
UN organizers allow groups that have obstructed fossil fuel regulations and other climate action to attend, watchdog finds
More than 160 industry trade groups, thinktanks and public relations agencies with a track record in climate denialism and misleading the public have been given access to the UN climate talks in Dubai, the Guardian can reveal.
Corporate Accountability, a transparency watchdog, has found that UN organizers greenlighted access to groups that have obstructed fossil fuel regulations and other climate action, giving them the same or greater access to the international negotiations as Indigenous communities, human rights groups and climate justice organizations.
Continue reading...Fungi and flatworms? Scientists call for greater emoji biodiversity
Researchers say better representation could elicit interest in lesser-known organisms and help conservation efforts
When Stefano Mammola and Francesco Ficetola went to an ecology conference in Prague in 2021, they met a scientist with an unusual complaint. Jennifer Anderson, an expert in aquatic fungi, lamented that the subject of her research was not available in emoji form.
“If you are doing the important work of trying to save the , you can use graphics to help you communicate this in a very relatable way,” said Anderson, a microbial ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “If you are working to save the aquatic fungi, you first must let people know that yes, aquatic fungi exist, then describe in words what they look like – usually not like mushrooms.”
Continue reading...Cop28 draft agreement calls for fossil fuel cuts but avoids ‘phase-out’
Text now being considered by governments calls for ‘reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels’
Oil-exporting countries will be called upon to reduce their production drastically in the coming decades, if a draft agreement published at the Cop28 UN summit on Monday is accepted.
The text avoids highly contentious calls for a “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels, which have been the focus of deep disagreement among the more than 190 countries meeting in Dubai.
Continue reading...Floods and environmental flows a boon for south-east Australia’s waterbirds, survey shows
But populations are in long-term decline and El Niño is drying out wetland habitats
- Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
- Get our morning and afternoon news emails,free app or daily news podcast
Widespread floods and environmental flows have been a boon for waterbirds, with annual surveys in eastern Australia recording more than half a million birds.
But researchers say long-term declines in populations persist and the effects of El Niño and drying across eastern Australia are showing, with the total area of surveyed wetland habitat decreasing over the past year.
Continue reading...Quarter of world’s freshwater fish at risk of extinction, according to assessment
Global heating, pollution, overfishing and falling water levels among factors hitting populations, finds IUCN red list study
Nearly a quarter of the world’s freshwater fish are at risk of extinction due to global heating, overfishing and pollution, according to an expert assessment.
From the large-toothed Lake Turkana robber in Kenya to the Mekong giant catfish in south-east Asia, many of the world’s freshwater fish are at risk of disappearing, the first International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list assessment of the category has found.
Continue reading...‘Megayachts’ are environmentally indefensible. The world must ban them | Chris Armstrong
Roman Abramovich’s yachts are said to emit more carbon than many small countries. This is unsustainable, and wrong
The rich gazed at their superyachts, and decided they were not enough. The new breed of megayachts, which are at least 70 metres (230ft) in length, may be the most expensive moveable assets ever created.
Roman Abramovich’s custom-designed Eclipse is estimated to be worth upwards of $800m. When he tires of its swimming pool, submarine and armoured plating, he can use one of its helipads to fly to the $475m Solaris, which he also owns. On the way he might, perhaps, glimpse the $600m Azzam, commissioned by the former president of the United Arab Emirates.
Chris Armstrong is a professor of political theory at the University of Southampton in the UK and the author of A Blue New Deal: Why We Need a New Politics for the Ocean and the forthcoming Global Justice and the Biodiversity Crisis: Conservation in a World of Inequality
Continue reading...Chris Packham calls for halt to ‘catastrophic’ expansion of Scottish salmon farms
Broadcaster and RSPCA president says moratorium needed as mortality rates jump, while activists question charity’s role in certifying farms
Naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham has called for a halt to the expansion of the Scottish salmon farming industry, as official figures suggest salmon mortality in the country’s farms hit record levels this year.
Packham, the president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), described the growing industry as “catastrophic” for fish welfare and Scotland’s environment.
Continue reading...Cop28 live: ‘time to be ambitious’ says president as summit enters final days
The climate summit is heading into the final part of the negotations. We’ll be following events here all day
Simon Stiell, head of the UN climate change body in charge of Cop, has called out “tactical blockades” and “strategic landmines” as the talks enter their final phase. “We do not have a moment to lose in this crucial home stretch.”
Speaking to journalists on Monday morning, including my colleague Fiona Harvey, Stiell said the remaining areas for negotiation had “narrowed significantly” to leave just two issues. The first is how high the ambition to mitigate climate change is. The second is how willing countries are to back the transition with the support it needs.
Continue reading...Weather tracker: temperatures hit 43.5C in Australia as 2023 on track to be hottest year
Heat in Australia is 15C above December average and comes as Cop28 nears end
Parts of south-east Australia have been experiencing extreme heat over recent days. Temperatures hit 43.5C at Sydney airport on Saturday. This was the highest temperature recorded at this station since records began in 1929, and is about 15C above the December average. Authorities have issued several bushfire warnings and banned fires across many parts of New South Wales.
Temperatures will ease early this week across south and south-east Australia, but will intensify across northern, western and central parts as the week progresses. Here, temperatures could rise widely into the 40Cs by the weekend.
Continue reading...Fossil fuel phase-out will ‘not avert climate breakdown without protections for nature’
Top climate scientist says carbon sinks such as forests and wetlands vital to keeping temperature rise below 1.5C
Human destruction of nature is pushing the planet to a point of no return, and even a phase-out of fossil fuels will not stave off climate breakdown unless we also protect the natural world, one of the world’s top climate scientists has warned.
Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told the Guardian: “Even if we phase out all fossil fuels, if we do not get involved in nature, [the destruction of natural landscapes and habitats] can make us lose what we all have agreed on the safe future for humanity on Earth – that is, to stay within the 1.5C limit. It’s really decisive, that we get it right on nature.”
Continue reading...Only in Australia: huge snake drops from roof during podcast recording – video
A podcast episode takes an unexpected turn when a snake makes an appearance in the roof above a guest who is speaking via video link. The episode is part of the podcast series Fresh Perspectives, produced by the Sydney-based consultancy The Strategy Group. Andrew 'Wardy' Ward of Regen Farmers Mutual is chatting about greenwashing when the two podcast hosts notice a snake dangling behind him from the roof of his porch. 'Oh my god!' gasps co-host Alycia Wolf. Wardy, however, is unfazed: 'It’s only a carpet python ... it's our rodent control officer,' he jokes, before continuing his talk
► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube
Continue reading...The two Australias at Cop28: a country at odds with itself on the climate crisis
At Cop28, Labor has made more progress on climate than the Coalition did in nearly a decade – but can this be true if Australia remains the world’s third biggest fossil fuel exporter?
Two years ago, when the former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison gave in to diplomatic pressure and turned up at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, the story of Australia’s response to the climate crisis was straightforward. There wasn’t one.
Morrison mustered a bit of half-hearted rhetoric and re-heated climate funding, and suffered through the fallout of French president Emmanuel Macron accusing him of lying, but did nothing to dispel the view that Australia had no meaningful climate policies and was a roadblock at the talks not far removed from the Russians and Saudis.
Continue reading...