The Guardian Climate Change

As ICJ hears landmark climate case, Grenada’s PM says vulnerable nations expect a long, hard fight for aid

It’s a macabre picture: tombs, headstones and wreaths, lovingly selected by family members, floating into the oblivion of the ocean, and with them the remains of loved ones uprooted from their final resting place. Some are dragged back to land, washed up on beaches on the Grenadian island of Carriacou, transforming the beautiful Caribbean shoreline into a chaotic graveyard.

This disturbing reality, says Grenada’s prime minister, Dickon Mitchell, is a poignant example of the gravity of the climate crisis and its impact on his country.

The sprawling Florida mansion sits in one of the most vulnerable places in the US to climate-driven disasters

A sprawling Florida mansion set beside a powdery white sand beach overlooking the azure Gulf of Mexico is currently the most expensive property listed for sale in the United States, yours for a mere $295m.

It is also in one of the most vulnerable places in the country to climate-driven disasters and faces an almost inevitable flooding event in the coming years.

Fossil fuel giant’s lawyer says the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility is ignoring years of work by Santos

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Santos says the alleged greenwashing case against it represents a “biased retelling” of the company’s net zero roadmap and climate reports.

Neil Young KC, representing Santos, presented the company’s closing arguments in the federal court on Tuesday, in response to allegations of greenwashing by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR).

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The Victorian premier has defended the state’s business credentials saying there’s key data missing from the Business Council of Australia’s report. Follow today’s news headlines live

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Weather check shows mixed conditions forecast across Australian cities

It’s a mixed, if warm, bag in capital cities today, with the Bureau of Meteorology forecasting storms in Melbourne, sunny skies in Brisbane and Adelaide and showers across all other major cities.

Vanuatu leads the charge of several nations arguing developed nations have a legal responsibility beyond non-binding promises

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Australia has been accused of undermining its Pacific neighbours in a landmark international legal case after it argued that high-emitting countries are not obliged to act on the climate crisis beyond their non-binding commitments to the 2015 Paris agreement.

In the case before the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ), Vanuatu is leading an argument brought by several Pacific nations and developing states – including Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu – that developed countries have a legal responsibility beyond existing UN frameworks. The case does not specify the names of countries that would fall under the definition of high emitters.

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Organisation asked supporters if they ‘want to feel different on our election night’ in an ad with half of Trump’s face and half of Dutton’s

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Climate 200 has reported a surge in first-time donors in November off the back of a donation-matching campaign comparing the Coalition and opposition leader Peter Dutton to the politics of Donald Trump.

The funding aggregator claims to have raised $377,000 from 3,900 donations including 1,373 people who donated to it for the first time, the biggest wave of first-time supporters since it was launched in 2021.

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Researchers at ANU found no real difference between the climate opinions of regional and urban Australians. Remember that as we head into the next federal election, with renewable energy on the front line

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I have many heritages: Chinese, Irish, Anglo and Japanese among them. I am a journalist. I grew up in the city but have lived in the country for 30 years. How should I define my identity?

Rural life has colonised my writing life. But I would hazard a guess I am not fully accepted as rural in many circles. I am certainly not the mythical bush person of legend.

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Vanuatu envoy makes claim as landmark hearing gets under way at international court of justice in The Hague

A handful of countries should be held legally responsible for the ongoing impacts of climate change, representatives of vulnerable nations have told judges at the international court of justice (ICJ).

During a landmark hearing at the Peace Palace in The Hague, which began on Monday, Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and environment, said responsibility for the climate crisis lay squarely with “a handful of readily identifiable states” that had produced the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions but stood to lose the least from the impacts.

An ambitious multi-part project will transform seven miles of seabed into an artistic destination with a cautionary message

Over the next few years, coastal waters just off of Miami Beach will be transformed by The ReefLine, an ambitious new project that aims to occupy seven miles of seabed within shouting distance of the sands. The ReefLine aims to one day create an enormous, art-studded underwater playland, including a sculpture park, snorkel trail, and artificial reef.

One of the first pieces of this project, Miami Reef Star — a gigantic 90-foot star that will eventually be visible to landing aircraft descending over the waters — will be on exhibition during Art Basel Miami Beach. Set up in prototype on Miami Beach itself, it will be a part of Star Compass, a series of three large-scale installations curated by Ximena Caminos and Dodie Kazanjian. In addition to Reef Star, Star Compass will also include The Great Elephant Migration, a work consisting of 100 life-sized sculptures of elephants, and Voile/Toile - Toile/Voile by French conceptual artist Daniel Buren, which will stage an enormous sailboat race.

Direct flights from the US to Nuuk expected to double next year but there are concerns about the expected influx

The capital’s new airport has been opened, two more are in the making, and expectations are high: the Americans are coming to Greenland.

On Thursday, the first ever international flight into Nuuk, the most populous settlement on the autonomous Danish territory, landed to cheers on the ground and in the cabin of Air Greenland flight GL781 where passengers were served miniature bottles of Nicolas Feuillatte champagne.

ICJ to hear submissions from more than 100 groups in Pacific-led campaign to provide an advisory opinion on states’ obligations for climate harm

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is due to begin hearings in a landmark climate change case on Monday, examining what countries worldwide are legally required to do to combat climate change and help vulnerable nations fight its devastating impact.

After years of lobbying by island nations, the UN General Assembly asked the ICJ last year for an opinion on “the obligations of States in respect of climate change.”

Worcestershire town has been flooded seven times in past four years and shop owners can no longer afford insurance

In the aftermath of its latest flood, the town centre of Tenbury Wells was a scene of chaos. The main street was caked with a layer of mud, shop windows were smashed and piles of sodden furniture and wares, all ruined, were heaped in the street.

“On Monday when we came in we wanted to leave, lock the doors and just disappear,” said Richard Sharman, the owner of Garlands Flowers. “We’ve lost about £6,000 and we won’t get a penny back. Six weeks ago we lost about £4,000 in a flood.”

Policymakers must act as extreme weather events put more pressure on food inflation and production worldwide

Your morning – and afternoon – coffee is the latest staple threatened by climate chaos: the price of quality arabica beans shot to its highest level in almost 50 years last week amid fears of a poor harvest in Brazil.

It follows warnings that orange crops have been wiped out by the catastrophic floods in Valencia, Spain; and the soaring cost of olive oil in recent years, as the southern Mediterranean has sweltered.

Report calls for course correction to avoid land abuse ‘compromising Earth’s capacity to support human and environmental wellbeing’

Land degradation is expanding worldwide at the rate of 1m sq km every year, undermining efforts to stabilise the climate, protect nature and ensure sustainable food supplies, a study has highlighted.

The degraded area is already 15m sq km, an area greater than Antarctica, the scientific report says, and it calls for an urgent course correction to avoid land abuse “irretrievably compromising Earth’s capacity to support human and environmental wellbeing”.

Nature is going to solve the problem by eliminating the modern human

In response to Ashish Ghadiali’s story last week (“Yes, there is a lot of greenwashing, but Cop summits are our best chance of averting climate breakdown”, Comment, last week), nearly 70 years ago Gilbert Plass coined the term “climate change” in a paper in the journal Tellus.

Most of that 70 years has been spent arguing over the reality of climate change, an argument by vested interests that continues to this day. Meanwhile, global warming has continued to rise due to the burning of fossil fuels. Now, polar ice caps and glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, causing sea level rises and threatening the survival of over half the world’s population living on islands and in coastal zones near sea level.

Villagers hit by extreme weather accuse Labour of neglecting flood defences as Reform UK reaps political rewards – while denying impact of climate crisis

Thick, dark slurry flecked with stones and twigs covers the entire ground floor of Ralph Connor and Tina Honeyfield’s terraced house in the former coal mining village of Cwmtillery in south Wales. They use the lights on their phone to show what happened when a long-abandoned coal tip collapsed during last weekend’s torrential rainfall and surged through their front and back doors.

“Our house bore the brunt of the landslide… I spent an hour holding the door to prevent the slurry from getting in [last Sunday night],” says Connor, 49, as he stands in the cold gloom of their powerless living room. “It was frightening but when you are in it, you just react. It’s fight or flight.”

Some in the US are reconsidering children, with fears over reproductive healthcare and the climate crisis front of mind

Chris Peterson wasn’t surprised that Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. But he was surprised by how quickly he and his wife started asking one another: should we try to have another baby before a possible nationwide abortion ban takes effect? Or should we give up on having a second child?

Peterson and his wife, who live in North Carolina, are thousands of dollars in debt because their first child needed to spend weeks in the hospital after being born prematurely. They had wanted to pay off that debt and wait a few years before having a second baby. But now, reproductive rights are again in the balance – Trump has said he would veto a nationwide abortion ban, but his allies are emboldened to push through more restrictions.

A way to personally connect with wildlife is vital when statistics alone can’t convey the scale of the loss

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid struck Earth, causing the extinction of around 75% of all species. This event was so significant that we now use it to define the boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. There had only been four extinction events of this magnitude up until then; today, we are living through the sixth – and we are its cause.

News of the sixth mass-extinction often comes in the form of statistics – 1 million species threatened with extinction; extinctions now occurring up to 1,000 times more frequently than before humans – and we are left none the wiser about what it is we are losing. A few years ago, I asked the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for a list of species that had recently gone extinct. I wanted to understand what was happening to the natural world, beyond the numbers. The list they sent back contained species from all over the world. One in particular, however, stood out to me.

The ceasefire in Lebanon, the aftermath of floods in Valencia, Russian airstrikes in Kyiv and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Government puts forward £1.98bn in funding over three years, an increase of about 40% on last pledge

The UK has increased its contribution to the World Bank, in a move that will boost prospects for climate finance.

Next week, at a meeting in Seoul of the International Development Association (IDA) – the body that funds the World Bank’s support for low-income countries – the UK will put forward £1.98bn in funding over three years, an increase of about 40% on the previous pledge.