The Guardian Climate Change

The billionaire’s return to power signals a new era of upheaval in US politics, marked by authoritarian ambitions, glaring conflicts and polarisation

On the surface, Donald Trump’s inauguration looked like the usual transfer of power, with political rivals exchanging polite applause. This was a facade. Mr Trump’s address feigned conciliation but was, in reality, a rightwing call to arms against his enemies, rejecting the unity the ceremony represents. Mr Trump presented a grim picture of a country on its knees that only he can revitalise. He declared not one but two national emergencies, pledging to return “millions of criminal aliens” and “drill, baby, drill” for the “liquid gold under our feet”. His alarming call to “take back” the Panama Canal from China hints at ambitions to reshape the global order, potentially through force.

A flurry of Trumpian executive orders will accelerate the climate emergency, defy the US constitution over birthright citizenship and reduce the scope of legal protections. Forget the stirring rhetoric of Kennedy; Trump’s message was blunt: enemies at home and abroad, beware. Where Roosevelt once inspired hope, Mr Trump offered fear.

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Altadena’s Village Playgarden education center served diverse families with outdoor classrooms, small farm and animals – till it was destroyed by flames

In Altadena, it had become the hot ticket among the preschool set.

But when Geoff and Kikanza Ramsey-Ray first bought the two-acre property at the edge of town in 2008, it was a shambles. The home was a rental for over 30 years and the grounds were woefully neglected. Yet the couple saw promise. Nestled against Angeles Crest national forest, with a mountain view and on a road with few other homes, the place felt protected and perfect for their vision: an early education center called Village Playgarden.

Some say Trump part two needs a new strategy as ‘the novelty of mass mobilization has kind of worn off’

Prominent leftwing activists across the US say a second Trump administration demands new tactics to achieve their goals, amid expectations the huge protests that marked both the Biden and first Trump presidencies won’t materialize in the same way.

As many as 4.6 million people attended Women’s Day marches in the US the day after Donald Trump’s first inauguration. The Saturday before Trump was inaugurated for a second time, thousands turned out in Washington DC and in cities around the country as part of the People’s March, this year’s version of the Women’s March – though the turnout was much smaller than in 2017.

Unlike tariffs, a new form of protectionism could target climate-wrecking, untaxed corporations and their billionaire owners

• Gabriel Zucman is a French economist

How should Europe respond before Donald Trump’s policies destabilise the global economy? All countries will soon have to take a stand on the new US president’s tariff threats. While a shift away from free trade clearly carries risks, it also presents a valuable opportunity to reimagine our outdated international economic relations – if we can grasp what makes this moment unique.

In many ways, Trump’s economic agenda follows the Republican party playbook that dates back to Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential run, which launched the party’s enduring mission to dismantle Roosevelt’s New Deal. Trump claims the US was never better off than under William McKinley’s presidency (1897-1901), when the federal government, before income tax existed, was pared down to a minimum.

Gabriel Zucman is professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics and École normale supérieure – PSL, and founding director of the EU Tax Observatory

At least we have TikTok back

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The global south needs a fairer deal than this one, in which it funds the lifestyle and wealth of the global north

The World Bank calculated last month that the rich world earned more than $1.4tn (£1.15tn) in loan repayments from the developing world in 2023, with the sums likely to top $2tn a year by 2030. Rich countries have in effect become the world’s bankers, squeezing debtors in the global south. Poorer nations are forced to borrow in rich-world currencies to pay for their energy and food, while their exports consist mainly of low-value goods compared with their imports.

Colonial patterns of extraction plainly did not disappear with the withdrawal of troops, flags and bureaucrats. Whether a debt crisis in the developing world occurs depends on decisions beyond its control. The risk increases if US interest rates rise and if poor nations’ exports – often priced by commodity speculators or wealthy-world buyers – fail to generate enough dollar reserves to stabilise their exchange rates.

Shifting responsibility to consumers minimises the role of energy industry and policymakers, University of Sydney research suggests

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It’s not unusual to see individuals championed as heroes of climate action, with their efforts to install rooftop solar and buy electric cars promoted as pivotal in the fight to save the planet.

Hero figures can motivate others to follow suit, but a University of Sydney study suggests the way the energy sector shapes this narrative sets individuals up to fail.

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Environmentalists are braced for new construction on the president’s signature border wall – and the damage that would wreak

During Donald Trump’s first presidential term, he began an ambitious and costly border militarization program, including the construction of over 450 miles of wall that severed wildlife corridors and fragmented ecosystems in some of the country’s most remote and biodiverse regions. With his second inauguration on Monday, environmentalists are bracing for any new phase of construction that could exacerbate the ecological toll of the border wall.

“It’s an absolute travesty and a disaster for border wildlife,” said Margaret Wilder, a human-environment geographer and political ecologist at the University of Arizona, regarding the environmental impact of the existing border wall and the prospect of renewed construction. She said the wall harmed efforts “after many decades of binational cooperation between the US and Mexico to protect this fragile and biodiverse region. I don’t think Americans realize what is at stake.”

Hunger and hope in Gaza, fires in California and the Australian Open in Melbourne: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

• Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

As fires set LA ablaze, some houses are left standing amid ashes thanks to concrete walls, class A wood – and luck

When last week’s fires in Los Angeles set parts of the city ablaze, one viral image was of a lone house in Pacific Palisades that was left standing while all of the homes around it were destroyed.

Architect Greg Chasen said luck was the main factor in the home’s survival, but the brand-new build had some design features that also helped: a vegetation-free zone around the yard fenced off by a solid concrete perimeter wall, a metal roof with a fire-resistant underlayment, class A wood and a front-gabled design without multiple roof lines.

Adam McKay says the Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio-starring satire resonates with a widespread feeling of being deceived by government and media

Adam McKay, writer-director of climate-crisis satire Don’t Look Up, says that the film’s popularity with viewers shows the popular will to tackle climate change, despite the critical brickbats the film attracted and political inertia around the issue.

McKay was speaking to the NME during the wildfire emergency that is currently affecting Los Angeles, which has included many high-profile victims from the Hollywood community. Saying that while Netflix, the film’s distributors, would not release definitive audience figures, he estimated that “somewhere between 400 million and half a billion” people saw it, and that “viewers all really connected with the idea of being gaslit”.

Big oil executive plans to celebrate Trump’s inauguration as California burns – though experts say climatic conditions are only getting more extreme

Donald Trump’s response to the catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles has provided a stark prologue to how his US presidency will probably handle the growing threat of such disasters – through acrimony, brutal dealmaking and dismissal of a climate crisis that is spurring a mounting toll of fires, floods and other calamities.

As of Thursday, four fires, whipped up by wind speeds more typically found in hurricanes, have torched 63 sq miles (163 sq km) of Los Angeles, a burned area roughly three times the size of Manhattan, destroying more than 12,000 homes and businesses and killing at least 25 people. The Palisades and Eaton fires, the largest of the conflagrations that have turned entire neighborhoods to ash, are still to be fully contained.

As natural disasters make need to cut CO2 emissions clearer than ever, energy demand of AI systems is about to soar

Violent weather events have been top of the news agenda for weeks, with scientists and fact-based news organisations attributing their increased severity to climate breakdown. The scientists consulted have all emphasised the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

At the same time there are predictions about artificial intelligence and datacentres urgently needing vast amounts of new electricity sources to keep them running. Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) have been touted as the green solution. The reports suggest that SMRs are just around the corner and will be up and running in the 2030s. Google first ordered seven, followed by Amazon, Microsoft and Meta each ordering more.

Data for 2024 shows humanity is moving yet deeper into a dangerous world of supercharged extreme weather

Wildfires that blazed around the world in 2024 helped to drive a record annual leap in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, surprising scientists. The data shows humanity is moving yet deeper into a dangerous world of supercharged extreme weather.

The CO2 level at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii jumped by 3.6 parts per million (ppm) to 427ppm, far above the 280ppm level before the large-scale burning of fossil fuels sparked the climate crisis. The Mauna Loa observations, known as the Keeling curve, began in 1958 and are the longest running direct measurements of CO2.

National Weather Service says ‘wind siege has finally ended’ and forecasts higher humidity but warns high winds could return next week

As the battle against the deadly fires in Los Angeles county entered its 10th day, officials warned evacuees against returning to their homes due to the presence of toxic, hazardous waste and exposed power and gas lines.

During a Thursday press conference, Yonah Halpern, principal engineer with LA county public works said that toxins such as asbestos, and mercury could be found in fire debris and that the US Environmental Protection Agency and county fire department would be going house to house to assess and remove hazardous materials at no cost to the property’s owner.

Experts say climate crisis was likely responsible for a quarter of the dryness that fueled the fires’ rapid spread

As Los Angeles’s deadly wildfires continue to burn, a group of survivors is taking aim at the industry most responsible for fueling climate disasters: fossil fuels.

Residents impacted by the blazes lamented during a Thursday conference call losing their homes and communities and called for litigation and policies that could force big oil to pay for the damages. In the coming days, lawmakers will introduce legislation with that aim in mind.

With the outlook for risk of fire, flood and other disasters increasing, this is not a problem that will go away

As we watch the horror of the Los Angeles fires, Australians are painfully reminded of our own vulnerability to climate change, which continues to exacerbate the impact and frequency of these unnatural disasters.

The images of loss and destruction in LA are particularly painful to those who have experienced such losses first-hand in Australia.

Nicki Hutley is an independent economist and councillor with the Climate Council

The fires have been devastating for humans and taken a toll on nature, but many of California’s ecosystems will be able to regenerate

Beth Pratt has spent her career protecting Los Angeles’ mountain lions, which roam an area currently engulfed by wildfires. These apex predators, also known as cougars or pumas, share a scrubby landscape with lavish private homes and a dense network of roads. When major fires take out huge areas of open space, their options are limited.

“This is the LA area – these mountain lions can’t move into the Kardashians’ back yard,” says Pratt, California executive director for the National Wildlife Federation. “My heart is very heavy right now,” she says.

After insurers like State Farm dropped policies, to switch to the state’s Fair plan was prohibitively pricey for many

When Palisades resident James Borow realized last Tuesday that his house was on fire, he was 300 miles away in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. The power was out at his house but a friend suggested he remotely turn on his Tesla and see if the cameras showed anything.

From the car camera, he watched in a panic as his house burned. As he drove home from Vegas to LA, he called his parents and told them: “You’ll see it on the news tomorrow, but the house is totally gone. I just watched it.”