The Guardian

Based in part on reporting by the Guardian last year, a non-partisan group alleged a ‘disturbing pattern of misconduct’

Following allegations of a “disturbing pattern of misconduct” at Donald Trump’s interior department, based in part on Guardian reporting, the agency’s watchdog has opened a probe into six top officials there.

It comes in response to a 20 February ethics complaint filed by the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan watchdog group, that alleged a culture of “skirting ethical rules” among key staff appointed in the wake of Trump’s November 2016 election victory.

Greta Thunberg took her climate message to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster on Tuesday. The 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist told a packed room that her future and the futures of her fellow children had been 'sold'.

She said: 'We probably don't even have a future any more. That future has been sold so that a small number of people can make unimaginable amounts of money.'

Thunberg's visit coincides with the ongoing Extinction Rebellion protests across London to highlight the dangers of climate change

• Greta Thunberg condemns UK's climate stance
  
• 'You did not act in time': Greta Thunberg's full speech to MPs

Michael Gove admits to feeling guilt as young activist says: your fossil fuels policy is beyond absurd

Greta Thunberg took her climate message to the heart of power in Westminster on Tuesday, with a quiet but powerful message to MPs that prompted politicians to declare contrition for their failure to act.

After the noise of Brexit in parliament and the disruption of Extinction Rebellion outside, the 16-year-old Swedish activist cut an extraordinarily composed figure as she arrived with her trademark braids, hand-painted placard and a speech that forced politicians to reflect on a crisis that is growing steadily worse despite three decades of political promises.

Shadow health secretary pledges to make climate change a central policy focus

Labour has backed the Extinction Rebellion protesters who have carried out a week of civil disobedience and occupations to highlight the ecological emergency, likening them to the Chartists, suffragettes and anti-apartheid activists.

Speaking in response to an urgent question in the Commons on Tuesday, the shadow energy minister, Barry Gardiner – who also holds the international trade role – said that alongside the school strikes, the protests organised by Extinction Rebellion were reminiscent of previous memorable struggles.

More than 1,000 people have been arrested in the past week while taking part in the biggest civil disobedience event in recent British history – a campaign of mass non-violent direct action orchestrated by the group Extinction Rebellion to highlight how little time the world has left to halt manmade environmental breakdown. The group started its protest on 15 April, stopping traffic at Oxford Circus, Marble Arch, Waterloo Bridge and the area around Parliament Square, and has continued to occupy sites across the capital alongside smaller protests around the UK

More than 1,000 demonstrators have been arrested in London in the past nine days. Here, nine of the climate change protesters explain the extraordinary ends they will go to for the Earth

I have never been a campaigner or activist before, but I have been worrying about the environment for decades. For 20 years I have written letters, signed petitions, ridden a bike – I have done everything that is “polite” – but the situation has, if anything, gone backwards.

From Extinction Rebellion to Greta Thunberg, the message about climate change is louder than ever before. Tell us how you feel about the movement

As the last Extinction Rebellion protesters were cleared from Waterloo Bridge on Sunday night, many moved on to sites at Marble Arch and Parliament Square, marking a week-long occupation in London mirrored in 33 other countries.

The protests have been met with both resounding support and disapproval. Still, millions of people have now heard their call for transformative and urgent change to avoid climate catastrophe.

Read the full text of the speech Greta Thunberg gave to MPs at the Houses of Parliament

My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 16 years old. I come from Sweden. And I speak on behalf of future generations.

I know many of you don’t want to listen to us – you say we are just children. But we’re only repeating the message of the united climate science.

Teenager who sparked global youth movement hits out at airport expansion and support for fossil fuels

‘You did not act in time’ – Thunberg’s full speech

The UK government’s active support for fossil fuels and airport expansion is “beyond absurd”, Greta Thunberg has told MPs.

The 16-year-old Swedish student, who sparked a global youth-based movement when she began a “climate strike” outside Sweden’s parliament last year, gave a typically blunt speech. She told MPs: “This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.”

Order targeting the protest is first to explicitly mention organisers could be detained

Police have warned Extinction Rebellion organisers that they face arrest if they incite protesters to block roads around Parliament Square.

The Metropolitan police said it was imposing pre-emptive conditions restricting any demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday to the lawn in the centre of the square, after hearing that activists with the group planned to gather there.

Study shows how destabilised natural systems will worsen man-made problem

The release of methane and carbon dioxide from thawing permafrost will accelerate global warming and add up to $70tn (£54tn) to the world’s climate bill, according to the most advanced study yet of the economic consequences of a melting Arctic.

If countries fail to improve on their Paris agreement commitments, this feedback mechanism, combined with a loss of heat-deflecting white ice, will cause a near 5% amplification of global warming and its associated costs, says the paper, which was published on Tuesday in Nature Communications.

As the state is swept by a super bloom, these flowers are popping up – a silver lining for areas hit hard by intense fires

When wildfires swept through southern California last year they left a trail of destruction: leveling houses, historic Hollywood sets and sites of biodiversity. Now a rare flower is proving that great destruction can give rise to something spectacular.

Park ranger Ana Beatriz Cholo has been on a mission to find fire poppies – a rare and elusive species that only grows on the heels of major fires – in the Santa Monica Mountains, which were especially hard hit. She knew they were unusual, and that the 2018 Woolsey fire, which scorched more than 96,000 acres, made this a good year to hunt.

In 2007, over a friendly drink, the Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, came up with a radical plan to address the effects of the financial crisis and climate change. He called it the Green New Deal. Plus: the Guardian’s education correspondent on why schools are going to test four-year-olds

In 2007, Larry Elliott met a friend to discuss the financial crisis. Over the course of the evening, and several drinks, they cooked up the Green New Deal – a plan to deal with the effects of the economic crisis and the threat of climate change. They formed the Green New Deal Group and, though Gordon Brown and Barack Obama briefly flirted with the idea, it did not progress much further.

But in 2018, the youngest US congresswoman in history, the Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, picked it up and the idea has been gaining traction ever since. Ocasio-Cortez’s plan mixes old and new. She wants a living-wage job for anyone who wants one; universal healthcare; and basic income programmes as part of a “detailed national, industrial, economic mobilisation plan” that would ensure the US is powered by 100% renewable electricity, and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing, agriculture and other industries.

Swedish activist says world faces ‘existential crisis’ and must achieve goals of Paris deal

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist, has given her support for a general strike for the climate, saying the student movement she inspired needs more support from older generations to ensure politicians keep their promises under the Paris agreement.

Speaking at a public event in London as Extinction Rebellion protests continued in the capital, the initiator of the school strike for climate movement was typically frank about the scale of the problem the world faces and the impact her campaign has made. “People are slowly becoming more aware, but emissions continue to rise. We can’t focus on small things. Basically, nothing has changed,” she said.

The US news media devotes startlingly little time to climate change – how can newsrooms cover it in ways that will finally resonate with their audiences?

This article is excerpted from an piece published by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation. The Guardian is partnering with CJR and The Nation on a 30 April conference aimed at reframing the way journalists cover climate change. More information about the conference, including a link to RSVP, is here.

Last summer, during the deadliest wildfire season in California’s history, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes got into a revealing Twitter discussion about why US television doesn’t much cover climate change. Elon Green, an editor at Longform, had tweeted, “Sure would be nice if our news networks – the only outlets that can force change in this country – would cover it with commensurate urgency.” Hayes (who is an editor at large for The Nation) replied that his program had tried. Which was true: in 2016, All In With Chris Hayes spent an entire week highlighting the impact of climate change in the US as part of a look at the issues that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were ignoring. The problem, Hayes tweeted, was that “every single time we’ve covered [climate change] it’s been a palpable ratings killer. So the incentives are not great”.

Police say than 1,000 arrests made in eight days of Extinction Rebellion protests

Scores of environmental activists lay on the floor at the Natural History Museum in London as part of the eighth day of protests by Extinction Rebellion, which have brought chaos to the capital.

As many as 100 of the group’s protesters participated in the “die-in” on Monday afternoon to raise awareness of the mass extinction of species.

Campaigner and barrister attempted to create a law to criminalise ecological damage

Polly Higgins, one of the most inspiring figures in the green movement, has died aged 50.

Higgins, a British barrister, led a decade-long campaign for “ecocide” to be recognised as a crime against humanity. She sold her house and gave up a high-paying job so she could dedicate herself to attempting to create a law that would make corporate executives and government ministers criminally liable for the damage they do to ecosystems.

Arrests made after police urge activists to move to Marble Arch, where Greta Thunberg spoke to protesters on Sunday

Police have cleared the remaining Extinction Rebellion activists from Waterloo Bridge in London, despite earlier calls on social media for people that were willing to be arrested to “go there and save it”.

The roads around Parliament Square were cleared of protesters earlier on Sunday, with the northbound carriageway of Waterloo Bridge reopened to traffic by the evening. On Sunday night, police continued their operations, moving to remove the last activists, who had glued themselves to the bridge and to each other.

Shops that minimise the environmental impact of our consumer habits are springing up across Britain. Could they help us avert catastrophe?

The smell in Natural Weigh, a zero-waste shop that opened a year ago in Crickhowell in mid-Wales, is lovely. The shop – filled with pasta, grains, seeds and dried fruit served from hoppers to avoid plastic packaging; washing-up liquid and laundry products that customers pump into their battered old squeezy bottles; fair-trade coffee and chocolate, plus an array of environmentally friendly products, such as bamboo toothbrush holders, plastic-free dental floss and vegan leather snack pouches – looks lovely. The little town itself, which prides itself on having the best high street in Britain, is lovely, too. I am captivated.

Natural Weigh is part of a quiet revolution. Over the past two years, well over 100 of these stores have sprung up across the UK. Precise numbers are hard to come by, but some in the business say there are almost 200, many in environmental hotspots such as Brighton, Bath, Bristol and north-east London, but also in plenty of other less obviously fertile areas. Zero-wasters are in touch with each other on Facebook, and have their own bible in Bea Johnson’s book Zero Waste Home.

London demonstrators will offer to vacate most sites if mayor meets some demands

Climate change protesters who have stopped traffic in a series of peaceful demonstrations across London will offer to vacate some sites in exchange for the mayor, Sadiq Khan, acting on some of their demands.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) said it would “pause” its demonstrations in an attempt to achieve its political aims as it enters the second week of its campaign to have the government declare a climate emergency, reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025 and establish a citizens’ assembly to devise an emergency plan of action.