The Guardian

Rishi Sunak has defended watering down his climate policies as he insisted the UK was still 'leading the charge' in tackling the climate crisis at the Cop28 summit in Dubai. Climate politics is 'close to breaking point', he said, adding: 'I shift a date to be in line with almost every other country and it’s treated like it’s a rather extreme measure.' The UK prime minister also said he did not face any criticism from the world leaders he met for delaying a UK ban on selling new petrol and diesel vehicles

• Sunak says not a single leader at Cop28 has criticised UK’s petrol car ban delay

Prime minister defends Britain’s climate record at UN summit and urges countries to decarbonise

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Rishi Sunak says he did not face any criticism from the world leaders he met for delaying a UK ban on selling new petrol and diesel vehicles as he repeated his defence of the UK’s climate record.

Before and during his swift visit to Dubai for the Cop28 climate conference, the prime minister had been focusing on urging other countries to do all they could to decarbonise, while celebrating Britain’s achievements.

Labour leader says ‘things will be done differently’ if he wins the next election

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Keir Starmer has accused Rishi Sunak of “shrinking and retreating” from showcasing leadership on the global stage at Cop28 and over the climate crisis.

The Labour leader said the transition to net zero could benefit millions of people in the UK who are struggling with the cost of living crisis. But instead, the “smallness” of Sunak’s politics was affecting his ability to show a “seriousness and a want to lead” on the issue.

As Cop28 gets under way, it is vital that corporations and richer nations invest in the global south

• Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is president of the Cop28 United Nations climate change conference and William Ruto is president of Kenya

Without urgent action to bolster green jobs in developing economies, the collective action needed to win the fight against climate change will remain elusive. Developing nations face a number of socioeconomic challenges, forcing them to tighten spending. More people worldwide are living in hunger, and 2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water at home. More than 60% of low-income countries are in, or at high risk of, debt distress, while access to capital is limited and the cost of borrowing prohibitive. This leaves minimal room for the debt creation and spending needed to fund climate action.

Green industrialisation presents an opportunity for developing nations to achieve socioeconomic transformation by combining environmental stewardship and economic progress. It offers a pathway for sustainable and inclusive growth and can address these structural challenges by improving access to energy, industrialisation and diversification, and growing employment.

Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is president of the Cop28 United Nations climate change conference

William Ruto is president of Kenya

Cop28: Can fossil fuel companies transition to clean energy?
On Tuesday 5 December, 8pm-9.15pm GMT, join Damian Carrington, Christiana Figueres, Tessa Khan and Mike Coffin for a livestreamed discussion on whether fossil fuel companies can transition to clean energy. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

Designation means the bathing waters carry risk of sickness, as government is accused of ‘gross negligence’

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The three rivers designated for swimming in England have all been given “poor” status in newly published government water quality figures

Data released by the Environment Agency on Friday showed that during the 2023 bathing season 96% of bathing waters in England met minimum standards, with 90% of bathing waters in England being rated as “good” or “excellent”. This was a decline from the previous year’s statistics which showed that 97% met the minimum standard of “sufficient”, while 93% met the highest standards of good and excellent.

Exclusive: Move to categorise PFOA as linked to cancer in humans by World Health Organization ups pressure on UK government

A substance found in hundreds of drinking water samples across England has been categorised as carcinogenic by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The move will increase pressure on the UK government to take action on “forever chemicals”.

UK monarch addresses summit as British PM among world leaders arriving in the UAE for climate talks

My colleague Nina Lakhani has more on yesterday’s loss and damage agreement.

As the second day gets under way, the president of the G77 plus China group – the bloc of 135 developing countries which played a key role in yesterday’s historic resolution on operationalising the loss and damage fund – said the decision sent a clear political message.

“It was a milestone in terms of creating a positive mood for the very, very complex process on the GST [global stock take] that we had ahead of us now. But the fund needs to be filled up. The pledges announced were a welcome sign, but they were just pledges and must materialise as soon as possible. And we expect much, much more because of the impact of loss and damage in developing countries,” said ambassador Pedro Pedroso of Cuba.

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

Rishi Sunak’s attendance comes after he scaled back pledges to help the UK reach net zero by 2050

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King Charles will give a “call to arms” in his Cop28 climate summit opening statement, Rishi Sunak has said, expressing delight over the monarch’s record championing the issue.

Sunak said it was a “proud moment” for him to witness Charles deliver his speech on Friday, which “speaks volumes about our type of leadership as a country”.

Charities and NGOs accuse government of changing how it calculates climate spending to claim it will exceed targets

Rishi Sunak has been accused of sending out the wrong signals on tackling the climate emergency as he heads to the Cop28 summit in Dubai after saying his revised net zero targets show he is “not in hock to the ideological zealots”.

The prime minister will allocate about £1.6bn of climate finance during the summit and claim that the UK will exceed its target of spending £11.6bn over the five years to 2026.

Scientists studying the birds in Antarctica have found they snooze for 11 hours a day without falling deeply asleep

Spending your nights sleeping for just four seconds at a time might sound like a form of torture, but not for chinstrap penguins, which fall asleep thousands of times a day, new research finds.

Scientists studying the birds on King George Island in Antarctica found they nod off more than 10,000 times a day, allowing them to keep a constant eye on their nests, protecting eggs and chicks from predators. In total, the birds manage 11 hours of snoozing a day – without ever slipping into uninterrupted sleep.

Exclusive: Climate groups say projected amount is 10 times greater than estimates of Australia’s remaining fair ‘carbon budget’ if global heating is to be limited to 1.5C

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The Australian government will face decisions on whether to greenlight 30 fossil fuel developments, mostly to export coal or gas, that together could result in more than 20bn tonnes of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.

Climate groups have calculated the potential total climate pollution from fossil fuel developments currently submitted for environmental approval. Including emissions released both during production and when the fossil fuel was ultimately burned for energy – often in overseas power plants – they found the developments could lead to an additional 22bn tonnes of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere.

The government deserves credit for a fall in electricity emissions but large parts of industry and farming are still emitting the same as they were in 2005

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The wonks call it climate Christmas – the dump of Australian climate change information from the federal government that happens shortly before the end of the parliamentary year, and just as the annual UN climate summit kicks off.

It’s impossible to get across it all in one brief sitting, so this is by necessity a first look only, but the hundreds of pages of data published in five documents on Thursday tell us a lot about where Australia is up to on the climate crisis, and where it is heading.

Border collie Jessie sniffs out elusive species last seen in 1937 among dunes of South Africa

An elusive, iridescent golden mole not recorded since before the second world war has been rediscovered “swimming” in the sand near the coastal town of Port Nolloth in north-west South Africa.

The De Winton’s golden mole (Cryptochloris wintoni), previously feared extinct, lives in underground burrows and had not been seen since 1937. It gets its “golden” name from oily secretions that lubricate its fur so it can “swim” through sand dunes. This means it does not create conventional tunnels, making it all the harder to detect.

Matthew Hedges, tortured in UAE in 2018, tells reporters and activists to take clean phones and watch who they deal with

Journalists and campaigners attending the Cop28 climate conference in Dubai should “not be naive” and take steps to protect their physical and digital security, a British academic who was tortured in the summit’s host country has warned.

Matthew Hedges, who was detained in the United Arab Emirates for seven months in 2018, advised reporters and activists to take new, clean phones, think carefully about who they deal with and how and where they protest.

There are clear parallels between the climate crises facing Rishi Sunak and the former PM – and there’s one gamechanging solution

With energy prices at record highs and the Conservatives trailing in the polls, a Tory prime minister pacifies restless backbenchers and the right-leaning media by promising to cut green costs for consumers, while pinning future bill increases on Labour’s “gimmicky” 2030 decarbonisation goals. That describes 2013, but could just as easily apply to 2023. It seems that Rishi Sunak has not just recycled David Cameron back into his cabinet, he has recycled Cameron’s energy policies, too. But Cameron’s approach to climate policy was more nuanced than many give him credit for. Sunak, as well as Labour, could learn something from his successes and failures.

I worked with Cameron in 2013, and while some will find this surprising, he really did care about the climate. Once in power, he committed significant sums to developing offshore wind, and continued to speak on climate crisis issues at home and abroad. Since 2010, renewable electricity output has grown by 500%, coal has been almost phased out, and electric vehicle sales have soared. Many of Cameron’s policies are ones to be proud of.

Tara Singh is managing director of public affairs at Hill & Knowlton. She was the government’s special adviser on energy and environment from 2013 to 2015

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Fund to help world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries hit by climate disaster likely to be first decision agreed on at conference

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• Why loss and damage funds are key to climate justice

The Cop28 climate summit has officially opened, with the first decision likely to be on relief for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries, which are being hit increasingly by climate disaster.

A blueprint for a new fund for loss and damage, focused on the rescue and relief of poor countries stricken by extreme weather, is expected to be officially agreed on and adopted on Thursday. This will involving setting up a fund under the auspices of the World Bank at first, able to disburse money to developing countries and funded by rich industrialised nations and emerging economies and fossil fuel producing countries, such as China, Gulf states and the Cop28 host country, the United Arab Emirates.

Cop28: Can fossil fuel companies transition to clean energy?
On Tuesday 5 December, 8pm-9.15pm GMT, join Damian Carrington, Christiana Figueres, Tessa Khan and Mike Coffin for a livestreamed discussion on whether fossil fuel companies can transition to clean energy. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

As Cop28 conference begins, letter to heads of state from the C40 group says fossil fuels era must end

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Governments must commit to bringing the fossil fuel era to a close, a group of mayors representing the world’s leading cities has demanded, amid growing pressure for an agreed phase-out of oil, gas and coal at the Cop28 climate talks.

Leaders from the nearly 200 countries at the United Nations climate summit under way in the United Arab Emirates must face the “inescapable truth” that fossil fuels must be left behind, a letter to heads of state from the C40 group, which includes the mayors of cities including New York, London, Beijing, Paris and Cape Town, states.

World Meteorological Organization says 2023 will be hottest year on record, leaving ‘trail of devastation and despair’

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“We are living through climate collapse in real time,” the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has told Cop28 delegates in Dubai.

He spoke at the launch of the World Meteorological Organization’s stark State of the Climate report, which said 2023 will be the hottest year ever recorded.

Cop28: Can fossil fuel companies transition to clean energy?
On Tuesday 5 December, 8pm-9.15pm GMT, join Damian Carrington, Christiana Figueres, Tessa Khan and Mike Coffin for a livestreamed discussion on whether fossil fuel companies can transition to clean energy. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

The challenges we face are enormous – economic, environmental, political. Our future is at stake, so let’s come together and win

We are living in the most difficult moment in modern history. If you feel anxious and overwhelmed about what’s going on, you’re not alone. The extraordinarily challenges we face are very real, but we can never let them become excuses for checking out of the political struggles that address these crises and will define our future.

Our nation and, indeed our planet, are at a critical juncture. It is imperative that we recognize what we are up against, and what we must do to move our politics toward justice and human decency. And we can start by acknowledging that the American people have been through a lot, and that their confidence in politics and in government has been shaken.