The Guardian Climate Change

As the US grapples with smokey skies, Trump is solidifying an anti-science agenda – here are the challenges ahead

In the days that followed Donald Trump’s election win, flames roared through southern California neighborhoods. On the other side of the country, wildfire smoke clouded the skies in New York and New Jersey.

They were haunting reminders of a stark reality: while Trump prepares to take office for a second term, the complicated, and escalating, wildfire crisis will be waiting.

US climate envoy says Trump won’t derail progress as GOP argues for increasing oil and gas production at UN talks

Throughout the UN climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, in recent days, US officials have maintained a studiously sunny disposition, saying that the Republican president-elect, Donald Trump, will not derail climate progress.

The US climate envoy, John Podesta, said the fight “for a cleaner, safer” planet will not stop under a re-elected Trump even if some progress is reversed. The energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said: “The absence of leadership in the White House does not mean that this energy transition is stopped.” And Joe Biden’s climate and energy assistant, Jacob Levine, told reporters that the president’s climate policies had sparked an unstoppable clean energy “revolution”.

Survey also reveals concern about Trump’s effect on economy and climate crisis – although 48% think hotter summers caused by ‘normal fluctuations’

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Almost half of voters (48%) want the Australian government to review Aukus and the acquisition of nuclear submarines after the election of Donald Trump in the US.

Those are the results of the latest Guardian Essential poll of 1,206 voters, which found Australian voters were concerned about the incoming Trump administration’s effect on the economy, peace and climate change.

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The Sutton Dwellings estate in London may offer councils a ‘blueprint’ for ground source heating

Some of the earliest examples of purpose-built social housing in the UK can still be found tucked away along central London’s more affluent streets. Built in Edwardian baroque style, the Sutton Dwellings in Chelsea are perhaps an unlikely site for an innovative scheme at the new frontier of Britain’s low-carbon journey.

This winter more than 80 of the estate’s flats will be warmed by heat pumps that tap the warmth of the earth well below the streets of central London.

Scientists say goal to keep world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is not going to happen despite talks at Cop29 in Baku

The internationally agreed goal to keep the world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is now “deader than a doornail”, with 2024 almost certain to be the first individual year above this threshold, climate scientists have gloomily concluded – even as world leaders gather for climate talks on how to remain within this boundary.

Three of the five leading research groups monitoring global temperatures consider 2024 on track to be at least 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than pre-industrial times, underlining it as the warmest year on record, beating a mark set just last year. The past 10 consecutive years have already been the hottest 10 years ever recorded.

Exclusive: Analyses are stark evidence of how global heating is already supercharging deadly weather beyond anything ever experienced by humanity

• How do we know that the climate crisis is to blame for extreme weather?

At least 24 previously impossible heatwaves have struck communities across the planet, a new assessment has shown, providing stark evidence of how severely human-caused global heating is supercharging extreme weather.

The impossible heatwaves have taken lives across North America, Europe and Asia, with scientific analyses showing that they would have had virtually zero chance of happening without the extra heat trapped by fossil fuel emissions.

Carlos Cuerpo calls on G20 leaders to act and says election results show citizens want redistribution of wealth

Spain’s economy minister has urged the world’s richest countries to “be brave” and redouble efforts to reach an agreement on a global minimum tax on the world’s 3,000 billionaires, saying recent elections have shown citizens are demanding “redistribution of wealth”.

Speaking during a visit to London before the gathering of G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, Carlos Cuerpo said the plan had gained political momentum since the summer, when finance ministers agreed to work together to “ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed”.

Labor government ‘not acting in good faith’ when it stands on global stage and promotes its climate credentials, special envoy at Cop29 says

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Pacific governments at a UN climate summit are criticising Australia’s plans for a massive gas industry expansion in Western Australia, saying it could result in 125 times more greenhouse gas emissions than their island nations release in a year.

As the Cop29 summit in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku begins its second week, representatives from Vanuatu and Tuvalu have called on Australia to stop approving new fossil fuel developments, including a proposal to extend the life of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas facility until 2070.

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Minor party’s offer, which includes ban on native-forest logging, represents its second concession on stalled legislation in less than a week

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The Greens have dropped their demand for a climate trigger to be incorporated in the government’s stalled Nature Positive legislation, indicating they are now prepared to pass the bills in return for a Australia-wide ban on native-forest logging alone.

The party has previously refused to support Labor’s legislation, insisting that both a climate trigger and forest-logging ban must be included.

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Jochen Flasbarth called on Cop29 delegates to press on as world faces increasing crises and drop in solidarity

Governments meeting to forge a global settlement on climate finance must get over their differences this week and come to a deal – because if talks carry on until next year they stand little chance with Donald Trump in the White House, the German development minister has said.

Jochen Flasbarth, one of the most influential ministers at the UN Cop29 summit, said that if the final days of the summit did not produce a breakthrough countries would face a much tougher prospect.

The grim negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, have shown the need for reform of the UN annual global climate talks

‘Global emissions continue to increase, carbon sinks are being degraded and we can no longer exclude the possibility of surpassing 2.9C of warming by 2100.” It is a bleak assessment of our planet’s future and could have been made by just about any environmental organisation on Earth.

In fact, they are the views of an international group of climate experts that highlight, in sharp detail, the manifest failings of the UN’s annual Cop climate summits, whose 29th iteration is now being staged in Baku, Azerbaijan. These talks, they said last week, are no longer fit for purpose and need an urgent overhaul.

Piles of loo paper, a years worth of tinned good and snake-proof boots. No wonder prepping has become a lifestyle choice

Prepping – I’m coming round to it. I’ve had Prepare, the old government website that Oliver Dowden launched this spring, open on my laptop in a quivering tab for a while now, and this week I’ve been dipping in every now and then to remind myself of “how to prepare for an emergency”. How many bottles of water we may need, tweezers, a sage reminder about the fact of tinned meat.

I’ve dabbled in prepping before, without really realising what I was doing. A fear in the early 2000s that Rimmel might stop making my favourite eyeliner led to me dashing to Boots to buy five. Which is fairly normal, I think? On the spectrum of normal? Sensible probably, when so many, as you’ll know, have brushes too fine or ink that disappears in rain. In the grip of lockdown, as supermarket deliveries were increasingly scarce, when I was blessed with a Tesco slot I would focus not on toilet paper or flour, but on treats. I’d stockpile the good biscuits, and, in my naivety, Biscoff spread. I remember there were very large gift bars of Galaxy chocolate on offer for a while, bars the size of a small dinghy which I would buy in bulk, nibbling away at the corners like a parasite. That was when we started decanting our pulses. Still, beside the microwave sits a proud wall of oversized Tupperware, carefully labelled in my six-year-old daughter’s handwriting: “spageti”, “green lenttles”, “ryce”. It felt good. I felt prepared, but for what, was unclear.

PM seeks to reassure Australians about the fate of their businesses under US Trump administration

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Anthony Albanese is seeking to reassure Australian exporters about the fate of their businesses under an incoming US Trump administration, insisting he is confident they will be spared tariffs of up to 20% that the president-elect is threatening to impose.

The prime minister said on Sunday that he did not expect any US move to slap tariffs on incoming goods to include imports from Australia.

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Wealthy nations are yet to offer the hundreds of billions of dollars that economists say are needed to help the developing world cut emissions

Leaders of the world’s biggest economies meeting in Rio de Janeiro on Monday must agree to provide the finance that the world’s poorest need to tackle the climate crisis or face “economic carnage”, the UN has warned.

The G20 nations are about to gather in Brazil for two days of talks, while many of their ministers remain in Azerbaijan where crucial negotiations at the Cop29 climate crisis summit have stalled. Rich countries’ governments have not yet put forward the offers of hundreds of billions of dollars in financial aid that economists say are needed to help poorer countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.

Ongoing dry conditions threaten to aggravate blazes in New York and New Jersey as wildfire seasons grow in intensity

Wildfires continue to ravage parts of New York and New Jersey, fueled by high winds and record low precipitation and, despite some rain over last weekend, there is no immediate relief in sight for the historic drought in the region, with ongoing dry conditions exacerbating the risk of spreading fires.

Last month was the driest on record in New York City, with only 0.87in (2.2cm) of rain compared with the historic average of 4.12in for October, and forecasts predict the deficit between normal levels of rain and this autumn in the region will grow before the end of the season.

More lobbyists for the controversial technology were present this year, despite debate about its viability

At least 480 lobbyists working on carbon capture and storage (CCS) have been granted access to the UN climate summit, known as Cop29, the Guardian can reveal.

That is five more CCS lobbyists than were present at last year’s climate talks, despite the overall number of participants shrinking significantly from about 85,000 to about 70,000.

Revealed: more than 100 executives given special guest badges as activists challenge role of oil and gas firms at talks

The host country of this year’s UN climate summit, Azerbaijan, has rolled out “red carpet” treatment to fossil fuel bosses and lobbyists, the Guardian can reveal.

At least 132 oil and gas company senior executives and staff were invited to the Cop29 summit, and had special badges denoting they were guests of the presidency.

Trump back in the White House, the aftermath of the floods in Valencia, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and Rafael Nadal’s farewell: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

At Cop29 the global south needs to unite for sustainable growth, leveraging resources and negotiating transformative climate finance pacts

More than a century of burning coal, oil and gas has fuelled intense heatwaves, prolonged droughts, heavier rains and devastating floods. To prevent even more severe impacts, the UN global climate summit, Cop29, must deliver tangible results to keep global temperature rises below 2C – the limit defined in the 2015 Paris agreement. Achieving this goal means human societies can only emit a finite amount of additional carbon dioxide, known as the world’s “carbon budget”.

Developed nations have exceeded their carbon budgets, while developing countries remain within theirs. Carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for centuries, turning past unchecked fossil fuel use into a costly planetary bill. Between 1870 and 2019, the US, EU, Russia, UK, Japan, Canada and Australia – home to just 15% of the global population – accounted for over 60% of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.

Far-right president may announce country’s departure from agreement after meeting Donald Trump

There is growing concern that Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, is set to announce his country’s departure from the Paris climate accord.

Earlier this week, negotiators from Milei’s government were ordered to leave the Cop29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, after just three days. Now, the Guardian understands that Milei is considering announcing a formal withdrawal from the agreement, and that a decision could be made after a formal meeting with Donald Trump.