The Guardian Climate Change

An alliance of political groups is harnessing real fears about the local impact of wind and solar farms – and using them to spruik nuclear power

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The entrance is marked by an AI-generated image of a dead whale, floating among wind turbines. On the first floor of the East Maitland bowling club, dire warnings are being shared about how offshore wind may impact the Hunter region – alongside a feeling of not being consulted, of being steamrolled.

“Environment and energy forums” like this one in late November have been held up and down the east of Australia, aiming to build a resistance to the country’s renewable energy transition.

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Researchers mapped brick kilns across India and used climate models to forecast the levels of heat stress workers face between now and 2050

• Photographs by Ishan Tankhar

“I work with fire. But this has been the hottest ever, even for me,” says Harilal Rajput, squinting in the blazing midday sun. Rajput, 41, is a chief fire worker at a brick kiln near the town of Danapur on the outskirts of Patna, capital of the eastern state of Bihar. He is a migrant worker; his wife, a farmer, lives in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh with their three children.

It is almost 1pm on a June afternoon and neither Rajput nor the nine fire workers he supervises have had any food since the previous night. They will eat only when their eight-hour shift ends at about 4pm. His team, he says, is “running on water”.

An area nearly a third larger than India turned permanently arid in past three decades, research shows

An area of land nearly a third larger than India has turned from humid conditions to dryland – arid areas where agriculture is difficult – in the past three decades, research has found.

Drylands now make up 40% of all land on Earth, excluding Antarctica. Three-quarters of the world’s land suffered drier conditions in the past 30 years, which is likely to be permanent, according to the study by the UN Science Policy Interface, a body of scientists convened by the United Nations.

Average global temperature in November was 1.62C above preindustrial levels, bringing average for the year to 1.60C

This year is now almost certain to be the hottest year on record, data shows. It will also be the first to have an average temperature of more than 1.5C above preindustrial levels, marking a further escalation of the climate crisis.

Data for November from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) found the average global surface temperature for the month was 1.62C above the level before the mass burning of fossil fuels drove up global heating. With data for 11 months of 2024 now available, scientists said the average for the year is expected to be 1.60C, exceeding the record set in 2023 of 1.48C.

Male players must step up and add their voice to the campaign to stop our sport being sold out to the big polluters causing climate change

At the Cop29 climate conference last month Sofie Junge Pedersen and Katie Rood again called for Fifa to drop its sponsorship deal with the Saudi Arabian state oil company Aramco. They were among more than 130 female players who signed an open letter in October that described the partnership as a “middle finger to women’s football” that will do real damage to people and our planet.

After the letter was published, I spoke out in support of their initiative. I hoped other professional male players would join me. The women were widely applauded for speaking out but their male counterparts have not followed suit. On Wednesday, Fifa is poised to confirm Saudi Arabia as the host of the 2034 men’s World Cup.

Syrian insurgents take Aleppo, protests in Georgia, martial law in Seoul and the reopening of Notre Dame in Paris: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

New research estimates a 32% increase in deaths of people under 35 if greenhouse gases not radically cut

Extreme heat fueled by the climate crisis is often viewed as primarily a problem for vulnerable segments of the population, such as elderly people. But it is people aged under 35 that are set to suffer the brunt of heat-related deaths as temperatures climb, new research has suggested.

While older people are susceptible to heatwaves, they currently make up the bulk of cold-related deaths. As the world heats up, it will be younger people that will suffer disproportionately as the mortality burden shifts, with the new study estimating a 32% increase in deaths of people under 35 years old this century from heat if greenhouse gases emissions aren’t radically cut.

It’s in a world of hurt

• See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here

Here are some of the standout images from the 2024 Nature Conservancy Oceania Photo Contest.

The 2024 contest saw close to 2,000 entries from photographers in Australia, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea

• Dead native birds and flying foxes found in SA town home to one of world’s largest lead smelters

Campaigners want rethink of national policy because of ‘wasteful knock-it-down-and-start-again approach’

Campaigners are calling for planning rules to consider the environmental implications of knocking down buildings after a controversial redevelopment of Marks & Spencer’s historic store on London’s Oxford Street was given the green light by the government.

Save Britain’s Heritage said national policy should consider the embedded carbon linked to a site when considering its future and prioritise reuse of historic buildings amid the climate crisis alongside issues such as preserving important architecture.

The overwhelming majority of Europeans support climate action, but they must be compensated for its costs in tangible ways

This year was not an easy time to be Green. Green parties took a beating in June’s European elections, with their seat count plummeting from 71 to 53. In national elections they haven’t fared much better. The Green party was nearly wiped out in last week’s general election in Ireland, losing all but one of its seats after having been part of a coalition government.

At the same time, climate-sceptic parties framing environmental policies as elitist and unfair have surged across the continent. In Germany, for instance, the far-right AfD owes some of its electoral success to its rallying cry against an emerging “eco-dictatorship”.

Björn Bremer is an assistant professor of political science at Central European University and a John F Kennedy Memorial fellow at Harvard University. Jane Gingrich is a professor of social policy at the University of Oxford. Hanna Schwander is a professor of political sociology and social policy at the Humboldt University of Berlin. They are all co-conveners of the Progressive Politics Research Network, whose findings are published here

New research challenges us to look beyond the event to the devastating long-term impacts. Governments must take note

The devastation of hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis or tornadoes is often conveyed by how many people have been injured or killed. And based on this, we assess “how bad was it really?” For example, the recent hurricane season in the Atlantic has cost nearly 300 lives in the US and the Caribbean, with Helene killing at least 228 people. These deaths are usually due to flooding of houses and resultant drownings, injuries caused by the destruction of buildings or loss of emergency medical care.

But new research challenges us to see these disasters as broader events that have lasting effects for decades after they hit – whether from stress, financial hardship, pollution or long-term disease. A new paper in Nature magazine develops a methodology to estimate the overall effect of individual tropical cyclones (ie hurricanes and tropical storms) on all causes of mortality across all populations within the US. The authors analysed how mortality rates within a state changed for 20 years after the state was hit by a natural disaster, and took mortality data from 1950 to 2015 to form a longer-term picture.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Couple discovered animal in their driveway in northern Ontario, where climate crisis can change bear behaviour

A man who “leapt on” a polar bear to protect his wife in a northern First Nations community in Canada is expected to fully recover from the severe injuries he sustained in the attack.

But experts caution that changing environmental conditions will lead to a shift in where and when polar bears are spotted, increasing the risk of surprise encounters.

Fourth named storm of the season follows concern over lack of flooding warnings for Storm Bert last week

An amber warning for wind has been issued for large parts of the UK, with power cuts and flying debris possible amid the arrival of the fourth named storm of the season.

Storm Darragh is expected to bring gusts of up to 80mph and heavy rain late on Friday and into Saturday.

‘Tight correlation’ between premium rises and counties deemed most at risk from climate crisis, experts say

Concern over the climate crisis may evaporate in the White House from January, but its financial costs are now starkly apparent to Americans in the form of soaring home insurance premiums – with those in the riskiest areas for floods, storms and wildfires suffering the steepest rises of all.

A mounting toll of severe hurricanes, floods, fires and other extreme events has caused average premiums to leap since 2020, with parts of the US most prone to disasters bearing the brunt. A climate crisis is starting to stir an insurance crisis.

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Detectives investigating four separate incidents of children being approached by drivers in white vans in Melbourne

Victoria police detectives are investigating four separate incidents in Melbourne in the last month of children being approached by drivers in white vans.

People like Mr Rogan prey on people’s vulnerabilities: they prey on fear, they prey on anxiety, they prey on all of the elements that contribute to uncertainty in society.

They entrepreneur fantasy outcomes and conspiracy outcomes as being a normal part of social narrative – I personally find it deeply repulsive.

Climate hack used to reflect heat results in less rain and higher temperatures in surrounding regions, study finds

Painting roofs white and creating lighter coloured pavements and roads are recognised as ways to reflect heat in urban areas and help combat global heating. However, a new study shows that this geoengineering technique unexpectedly causes temperatures to rise in the surrounding region.

Scientists have previously used large-scale climate models to assess the climate impacts of increasing albedo (reflectivity) on land, but these do not pick up changes in small-scale atmospheric circulation. Yu Cheng and Kaighin McColl from Harvard University simulated the localised changes and found that increasing albedo resulted in increased convection at the boundary of the high-albedo area – similar to the breezes found where sea meets land.

US says current climate rules are satisfactory, prompting condemnation from activists and vulnerable countries

Climate justice campaigners have condemned the US after the world’s largest historic greenhouse gas emitter argued against countries being legally obliged to combat the climate crisis.

The US intervention came on Wednesday as part of the historic climate hearing at the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague, where island nations and other climate-vulnerable countries are calling for wealthy polluting nations most responsible for climate breakdown to be held legally responsible.

Mary Lawlor criticizes US’s failure to respond to concerns after Alex Connon and John Mark Rozendaal charges

A leading UN human rights expert has expressed dismay after the US government failed to respond to questions about the criminal crackdown on peaceful climate protesters.

Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, on Tuesday published a letter sent to US authorities raising concerns about the potential violation of international human rights law after two climate activists, Alex Connon and John Mark Rozendaal, were charged with crimes that carried lengthy jail terms.

Carrboro officials say Duke Energy broke state laws waging decades-long ‘deception campaign’ about fossil fuels

A small North Carolina town has launched the nation’s first-ever climate accountability lawsuit against an electric utility.

The litigation, filed by officials from Carrboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday morning, accuses Duke Energy of waging a “deception campaign” to obscure the climate dangers of fossil fuels. Those efforts resulted in delayed action to curb planet-heating pollution, which has pushed up the costs of climate action today, the lawsuit says.