The Guardian Climate Change

After Donald Trump’s victory, brute force will prevail over geopolitics as authoritarians are appeased from Russia to Israel to China

Feelings are not the usual focus of a world dominated by macho strongmen, complex geopolitical challenges, wars and disasters. Yet every rule has exceptions. Following Donald Trump’s unexpectedly decisive US election victory, dark storm clouds seeded with powerful emotions overshadow the international landscape.

Feelings of shock and anger that this lying conman again seduced enough voters to win the presidency roil America’s friends and allies. There is incredulity that so very many people collaborated in their own seduction. And there is puzzlement at exit polls that show 45% of female voters backed a serial sexual predator while Latino and black men helped a shameless racist to prevail.

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Record carbon emissions, melting ice sheets and the return of the former US president will all be under the spotlight at this week’s climate summit

It has been a remarkable year for meteorological mayhem with intense heatwaves and storms of extreme intensity battering many parts of our planet. Last month these culminated in the devastating floods that struck eastern Spain and killed hundreds.

Ahead of this week’s Cop29 summit, scientists believe disasters like these are becoming more frequent because major changes in our climate are occurring as emissions from the burning of fossil fuel continue to rise.

The right funding now can protect the frontlines of the climate crisis from the worst effects of extreme weather events

As we approach Cop29 in Baku, world leaders are due to set a new climate finance goal – a sum set aside to help poor countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the effects of the climate crisis. Their negotiations take place against a backdrop of increasingly severe weather events. This year alone, we have witnessed deadly heatwaves across north Africa, Mexico, India and Saudi Arabia; a historic drought across southern Africa; catastrophic wildfires in the Brazilian Pantanal wetlands; record-breaking hurricanes in the Caribbean and the US; and plenty more. The climate emergency knows no borders and spares no one.

These events serve as stark reminders of the pressing need for world leaders and all of us to protect vulnerable communities on the frontline of the climate crisis. For many developing countries, particularly in Africa, the cost of climate impacts is staggering. African nations are losing up to 5% of their GDP because of climate extremes, while some are diverting as much as 9% of their national budgets to overcome the fallout from them. The latest report by the World Meteorological Organization estimates that Africa south of the Sahara alone will need $30bn-$50bn annually over the next decade just to meet the costs of protecting communities facing unprecedented climate-related disasters. We will not be able to reduce poverty, eliminate hunger and build a prosperous and resilient global community without addressing the climate crisis.

Ban Ki-moon is a former secretary general of the United Nations and co-chair, Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens

More than 130 structures destroyed in two days by ferocious Mountain fire, as thousands remain under evacuation order

Firefighters in southern California made progress in their effort to contain a wildfire that destroyed more than 130 structures in two days as fierce wind gusts that were fanning flames eased on Friday.

The Mountain fire, which started on Wednesday morning in Ventura county, had grown to 20,630 acres (about 8,349 hectares) with 14% contained as of Friday evening.

The new president’s disruptive policies will challenge Sir Keir Starmer’s green goals. But with strong leadership he could enhance Britain’s global influence

Donald Trump’s electoral earthquake in America will complicate Sir Keir Starmer’s plans. Nowhere will the shock of Mr Trump’s win be more intensely felt than in environmental policy. His stance on climate – advocating a US exit from the Paris climate agreement and rallying behind “drill baby drill” – is more disruptive than constructive. This should concentrate Sir Keir’s mind as he heads to Cop29, the UN’s annual climate summit, in Baku, Azerbaijan.

At last year’s conference, world leaders agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels in a just and orderly manner for the first time. Mr Trump, however, dismisses the climate crisis as a hoax. With this year likely to be the hottest on record, the devastating effects of global heating are undeniable, as extreme weather batters the planet. Mr Trump may ignore the facts, but the trail of climate-related chaos and destruction speaks for itself.

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The US election, the aftermath of the floods in Valencia, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and the Maa festival in Kenya: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Elnur Soltanov recorded speaking with fake oil and gas group that asked for deals in exchange for sponsoring talks

The chief executive of Cop29 has been filmed apparently agreeing to facilitate fossil fuel deals at the climate summit.

The recording has amplified calls by campaigners who want the fossil fuel industry and its lobbyists to be banned from future Cop talks.

New modelling finds risk to global economies much worse than previously thought, but group of central banks says even this may be an underestimate

The physical shocks caused by climate breakdown will hit global economic growth by a third, according to a risk assessment by a network of central banks.

The rise in the estimated hit to the world’s economies as a result of the shocks from flooding, droughts, temperature rises, and mitigating and adapting to extreme weather was the result of new climate modelling published this year.

Prospects of strong outcome appear dim but there is hope the talks will address pressing issue of climate finance

More than 100 heads of state and government are expected to land in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, over the next few days and the first thing they are likely to notice is the smell of oil. The odour hangs heavy in the air, evidence of the abundance of fossil fuels in this small country on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

Flaring from refineries lights up the night sky, and the city is dotted with diminutive “nodding donkey” oil wells raising and lowering their pistons as they draw from the earth. Even the national symbol is a gas flame, epitomised in the shape of three skyscrapers that tower over the city.

Government must take urgent steps to change UK travel behaviour if carbon dioxide reduction goals are to be met

Europe-wide research has shown Britons are more willing than most Europeans to reduce their use of cars and aeroplanes – an essential requirement if carbon dioxide reduction targets are to be met.

During the Covid pandemic, consumption of petrol, diesel and paraffin plummeted as government restrictions forced people to stay at home – the UK had the third-largest reduction after Austria and Sweden.

On the eve of Cop29 in Baku, António Guterres says dangers are underestimated as irreversible tipping points near

The world is still underestimating the risk of catastrophic climate breakdown and ecosystem collapse, the UN secretary general has warned in the run-up to Cop29, acknowledging that the rise in global heating is on course to soar past 1.5C (2.7F) over pre-industrial levels in the coming years.

Humanity is approaching potentially irreversible tipping points such as the collapse of the Amazon rainforest and the Greenland ice sheet as global temperatures rise, António Guterres has said, warning that governments are not making the deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions needed to limit warming to safe levels.

Country’s foreign minister says UN climate summits have produced ‘no results’ as Pacific nation takes the rare step of withdrawing from upcoming Cop29

Papua New Guinea’s decision to pull out of an upcoming UN global climate summit due to frustration over “empty promises and inaction” has prompted concern from climate advocates, who fear the move will isolate the Pacific nation and put vital funding at risk.

Prime minister James Marape announced in August the country would not attend Cop29 in “protest at the big nations” for a lack of “quick support to victims of climate change”. Then last week, foreign affairs minister Justin Tckatchenko, confirmed Papua New Guinea would withdraw from high-level talks at the summit, which begins on 11 November in Baku, Azerbaijan, describing it as “a total waste of time”.

Mountain fire in Ventura county has destroyed 132 homes and damaged 88, and fire is 5% contained, officials say

A wind-driven wildfire roared through rural and residential communities north-west of Los Angeles, charring more than 20,500 acres and leveling scores of homes.

The Mountain fire in Ventura county, California, continued to burn on Thursday morning, as footage showed dozens of structures turned to smoldering ruins now lining the streets where neighborhoods once stood.

More than 200 people have died in floods that the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has described as the worst natural disaster in the country's recent history. Thousands of troops and police officers were drafted to help with clean-up and searches. Anger rose among residents who felt abandoned by the government and King Felipe and Queen Letizia were heckled when they visited one of the worst-affected areas

• ‘It can lead to chaos’: false claims and hoaxes surge as Spain’s floods recede

• At least 89 people remain missing after floods in eastern Spain

• ‘There’s so much confrontation’: Valencians sick of political bickering after Spain’s floods

Analysis of 19m flights between 2019 and 2023 reveals 50% rise in emissions, condemned as ‘gratuitous waste’

Private jet flights have soared in recent years, with the resulting climate-heating emissions rising by 50%, the most comprehensive global analysis to date has revealed.

The assessment tracked more than 25,000 private jets and almost 19m flights between 2019 and 2023. It found almost half the jets travelled less than 500km and 900,000 were used “like taxis” for trips of less than 50km. Many flights were for holidays, arriving in sunny locations in the summertime. The Fifa World Cup in Qatar in 2022 attracted more than 1,800 private flights.

Pollution is affecting the climate, biodiversity, ecosystems, ocean acidification and human health, according to analysis

Plastic pollution is changing the processes of the entire Earth system, exacerbating climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and the use of freshwater and land, according to scientific analysis.

Plastic must not be treated as a waste problem alone, the authors said, but as a product that poses harm to ecosystems and human health.

Warming climate has caused rivers used for transport to dry up, leaving children with little food, water or school access, says Unicef

Two years of severe drought in the Amazon rainforest have left nearly half a million children facing shortages of water and food or limited access to school, according to a UN report.

Scant rainfall and extreme heat driven by the climate crisis have caused rivers in what is usually the wettest region on Earth to retreat so much that they can no longer be traversed by boats, cutting off communities.

Voters have never been swayed by ‘rational debate’. Only a genuine change in the way we do politics can prevent the march of the right

We were losing slowly. Now we are losing quickly. Democracy, accountability, human rights, social justice – all were rolling backwards as money swarmed our politics. Above all, our life-support systems – the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, ice and snow – have been hammered and hammered, regardless of who is in power. Donald Trump might strike the killer blows, but he is not the cause of an ecocidal economic system. He is the embodiment of it.

Under Joe Biden, the US was missing its own climate goals, and those goals were insufficient to meet the global objective of limiting heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. That target in turn might not be tight enough to prevent a tipping of Earth systems. Already, at roughly 1.3C of heating, we see what looks alarmingly like climatic flickering: the ever wilder perturbations that tend to precede the collapse of a complex system.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

One supports Zionism and the other is horrified by what is happening in Gaza. Could moving on to the climate crisis bring them closer together?

Maria, 53, Manchester

Occupation Recruitment director

Americans will be stuck cleaning up after Maga’s destructive streak because men like this never clean up after themselves

Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do. Our mistake was to see the joy, the extraordinary balance between idealism and pragmatism, the energy, the generosity, the coalition-building of the Kamala Harris campaign and think that it must triumph over the politics of lies and resentment. Our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are, whether it applied to who was willing to vote for a supremely qualified Black woman or who was willing to vote for an adjudicated rapist and convicted criminal who admires Hitler. Our mistake was to think we could row this boat across the acid lake before the acid dissolved it.

We knew what the problems were, and we wanted to fix them. The principal problems that got us to this bleakest moment in American history are intertwined. They are the crisis of masculinity, the failure of the mainstream news media and the rise of Silicon Valley, and in a way they are all the same problem.