The Guardian Climate Change

Report raises concerns that money allocated to combat fires not reaching areas where it could make biggest difference

European funds to prevent forest fires have been poorly targeted and sometimes distributed in a hurry, according to a report from the EU’s spending watchdog.

The number of forest fires in EU countries has increased dramatically over the last two decades as the climate crisis fuels ever bigger conflagrations. An area twice the size of Luxembourg has been consumed by flames in an average recent year, killing people, destroying homes and wildlife and sending megatonnes of planet-heating emissions into the air.

Dan Tehan says Coalition’s position on the Paris agreement and gas reservation scheme are also up for debate

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The financial cost to reach net zero by 2050 may shape the Coalition’s decision on whether to retain or abandon the target, the new shadow minister, Dan Tehan, says, as he prepares to lead a heavily contested internal review of the policy.

The opposition is poised for a protracted brawl over climate targets after the new Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, put all of its policies up for debate after the Coalition’s federal election defeat.

Exclusive: Climate.gov, which supports public education on climate science, will soon no longer publish new content

A major US government website supporting public education on climate science looks likely to be shuttered after almost all of its staff were fired, the Guardian has learned.

Climate.gov, the gateway website for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa)’s Climate Program Office, will imminently no longer publish new content, according to multiple former staff responsible for the site’s content whose contracts were recently terminated.

New study shows regions with best potential to regrow trees and suck climate-heating CO2 from the air

New maps have revealed the best “win-win” opportunities across the world to regrow forests and tackle the climate crisis, without harming people or wildlife.

The places range from the eastern US and western Canada, to Brazil and Columbia, and across Europe, adding up to 195 million hectares (482 million acres). If reforested, this would remove 2.2bn tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, about the same as all the nations in the European Union.

When a US firm saw the seaweed was making their shellfish the ‘biggest and best’ scientists realised they’d hit upon a natural way to combat ocean acidification

• Photographs by Greta Rybus

• More on this story: A drop in the ocean: does experimental technology hold the key to saving the world’s seas?

On a glimmering May morning, Tom Briggs pilots a 45ft aluminium barge through the waters of Casco Bay for one of the final days of the annual kelp harvest. Motoring past Clapboard Island, he points to a floating wooden platform where mussels have been seeded alongside ribbons of edible seaweed.

“This is our most productive mussel site,” says Briggs, the farm manager for Bangs Island Mussels, a Portland sea farm that grows, harvests and sells hundreds of thousands of pounds of shellfish and seaweed each year. “When we come here, we get the biggest, fastest-growing mussels with the thickest shells and the best quality. To my mind, unscientifically, it’s because of the kelp.”

Zoe Benisek, oyster lead at Bangs Island Mussels, harvesting kelp. The seaweed changes water chemistry enough to lower the levels of carbon dioxide to nourish the mussels

It’s not so much that rural and metro communities hold different opinions about climate change but rather they are holding completely different conversations

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We got some rain in rural Victoria over the weekend, and that’s headline-worthy news.

There’s been a record-breaking drought that’s been afflicting the states of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and parts of New South Wales for over a year, but depending where you live – and how you get your news – you may not know much about it.

Copernicus data shows month was 1.4C above estimated 1850-1900 average used to define pre-industrial level

It has been an exceptionally dry spring in north-western Europe and the second warmest May ever globally, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

Countries across Europe, including the UK, have been hit by drought conditions in recent months, with water shortages feared unless significant rain comes this summer, and crop failures beginning to be reported by farmers.

The political and cultural insulation of Japan’s beloved grain is falling apart, and experts warn the country’s relationship with the staple will have to adapt

It’s cheap, filling and a time-honoured way for office workers to calm their hunger pangs. Lunchtime diners at fast-food restaurants in central Tokyo are here for one thing: gyudon – thinly sliced beef and onions on rice. The topping is rich and moreish, but it’s the stickiness of the plump japonica grains beneath that make this one of Japan’s best-loved comfort foods.

Rice cultivation in Japan stretches back thousands of years. In the Edo period (1603-1868), a meal for most people meant a simple bowl of unpolished grain, while members of the samurai class measured their wealth in rice bales.

Investment is pouring into companies promising to geoengineer a rapid change in the pH of our waters – but critics are concerned at the speed at which unproven methods are being adopted

In October 2024, a US company called Ebb Carbon announced the world’s largest marine carbon removal deal to date, signing a multimillion-dollar agreement with Microsoft to try to help fix a very real problem in the world’s seas: ocean acidification.

Ebb plans to use a method called electrochemical ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) to mimic the natural process of ocean alkalisation – in other words, it wants to add huge amounts of alkaline materials to ocean waters that scientists now know are acidifying at an alarming rate.

As the Earth heats up, the amount of algae in our waterways is rapidly increasing, transforming the colour of lakes and killing entire ecosystems

Before the elephants collapsed, they walked in aimless circles. Some fell head first, dying where they stood moments earlier; their carcasses scattered near watering holes across the Okavango delta. The unexplained deaths in May 2020 alarmed conservationists. By July, at least 350 elephants had died and nobody knew why.

“The animals all had their tusks, so poaching was unlikely. A lot of them had obviously died relatively suddenly: they had dropped on to their sternums, which was indicating a sudden loss of muscle function or neural capacity,” says Niall McCann, director of the conservation group National Park Rescue.

British progressives have suffered major setbacks in recent years, in both public opinion and court rulings. Was a backlash inevitable, and are new tactics needed?

Inside a coffin-like glass box lies the figure of a man, his face streaked with scarlet paint. Above it a video plays on loop, showing the afternoon in June 2020 when an exuberant crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters yanked this statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston from its plinth near Bristol harbour and rolled it triumphantly into the water. Five years on from that cathartic execution, the graffiti-smeared statue occupies the far end of the exhibition on protest at the city’s M Shed museum, in a thicket of placards left behind by the departing crowd. Their slogans – “Silence is violence”; “Racism is a dangerous pandemic too” – evoke the radicalism of a summer that already feels oddly consigned to history, when frustration erupted on to the streets but never quite seemed to be channelled into lasting change.

The museum leads visitors to Colston via older stories of resistance figures, once considered shockingly radical but now celebrated without question: Theresa Garnett, the suffragette who brandished a horsewhip at Winston Churchill at Bristol Temple Meads station, or the heroes of the 1963 Bristol bus boycott, who walked to work in protest against the bus company’s refusal to hire black drivers (and helped pave the way for the 1965 Race Relations Act). But the legacy of protests at the modern end of the gallery, where the statue lies sandwiched between exhibits on Extinction Rebellion and Occupy, remains, for now, more contested.

Albanese’s commitment to the climate crisis appears too often to be built on the idea that being better than the Coalition is enough – but that’s not how it works

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Fans of naked political cynicism have had plenty to cheer of late. Those hoping for something more from their elected leaders – a bit of principle and coherency, say – have had no shortage of reasons to lament what Michael Stipe once called the downhill slide into abysmal.

In Australia, there is cynicism right through the Albanese government’s proposed approval of a 45-year life extension for one of the world’s biggest gas developments.

Exclusive: In the first legal challenge to the plan, top climate lawyers claim the government relies too heavily on forestry and failed to consult the public

Hundreds of top environment lawyers are suing the New Zealand government over what they say is its “dangerously inadequate” plan to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050.

It is the first time the country’s emissions reduction plan has faced litigation, and the lawyers believe it is the first case globally that challenges the use of forestry to offset emissions.

Leeds councillor, who made headlines by intervening in 2024 riots, says climate crisis and cost of living affect all races and classes

A Green councillor who intervened to stop rioters and received death threats for vocal support for Gaza is running to replace Zack Polanski as deputy leader of the party.

Mothin Ali, of Gipton and Harehills ward in Leeds – a former Labour stronghold – said he wanted to champion working-class communities, challenge the idea of the Greens as a “middle-class party” and ensure it represents “a diverse Britain increasingly threatened by the far right”.

In seas around the world pH levels are falling – and scientists are increasingly frustrated that the problem is not being taken seriously enough

Read more: ‘Ticking timebomb’: sea acidity has reached critical levels, threatening entire ecosystems – study

On a clear day at Plymouth marina you can see across the harbour out past Drake’s Island – named after the city’s most famous son, Francis Drake – to the Channel. It’s quite often possible to see an abundance of marine vessels, from navy ships and passenger ferries to small fishing boats and yachts. What you might not spot from this distance is a large yellow buoy bobbing up and down in the water about six miles off the coast.

This data buoy – L4 – is one of a number belonging to Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), a research centre in Devon dedicated to marine science. On a pleasantly calm May morning, Prof James Fishwick, PML’s head of marine technology and autonomy, is on top of the buoy checking it for weather and other damage. “This particular buoy is one of the most sophisticated in the world,” he says as he climbs the ladder to the top. “It’s decked out with instruments and sensors able to measure everything from temperature, to salinity, dissolved oxygen, light and acidity levels.”

Ocean acidification has already crossed a crucial threshold for planetary health, scientists say in unexpected finding

• More on this story: How the ‘evil twin’ of the climate crisis is threatening our oceans

The world’s oceans are in worse health than realised, scientists have said today, as they warn that a key measurement shows we are “running out of time” to protect marine ecosystems.

Ocean acidification, often called the “evil twin” of the climate crisis, is caused when carbon dioxide is rapidly absorbed by the ocean, where it reacts with water molecules leading to a fall in the pH level of the seawater. It damages coral reefs and other ocean habitats and, in extreme cases, can dissolve the shells of marine creatures.

NGO says Afghan capital’s 7 million people face existential crisis that world needs urgently to address

Kabul could become the first modern city to completely run out of water, experts have warned.

Water levels within Kabul’s aquifers have dropped by up to 30 metres over the past decade owing to rapid urbanisation and climate breakdown, according to a report by the NGO Mercy Corps.

Environmental lawyer Cormac Cullinan lauded for his work to establish continent’s legal status to protect its interests

Cormac Cullinan has a dream. A dream, he says, that will “change how humanity sees, understands and relates to Antarctica”. The vast frozen continent – home to emperor and Adélie penguins, leopard and Ross seals, and feeding grounds for orcas, beaked whales and albatrosses – should be recognised as an autonomous legal entity “at least equivalent to a country”, says the environmental lawyer.

And this week that dream became one step closer to reality as judges awarded Cullinan the Shackleton medal for the protection of the polar regions.

Usually alive with colour and fish, Ningaloo reef and the Rowley Shoals now look as though they are ‘painted white’ as temperatures rise

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The Rowley Shoals are on many a diver’s bucket list. The three coral atolls, hundreds of kilometres off the Western Australian coastline, are teeming with pristine coral gardens that for a long time, unlike many of the world’s reefs, had escaped the ravages of global heating.

“I’ve seen a fair bit of death and destruction, but Rowley Shoals was always the place that was still standing,” says Dr James Gilmour, a research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

From acknowledging big emotions to finding ways to make climate action fun, it’s important to start where your kids are

• Change by Degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint

• Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

Although it’s unfair, it’s young people (and the generations to come) who will have to deal with fallout from the climate crisis. So how do you talk to young people about living sustainably and raise knowledgeable kids who care about the future of the planet?

Here are some tips for engaging the next generation on the environment meaningfully.