The Guardian Climate Change

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.”

British director of Human Rights Watch attacks ‘dangerous hypocrisy’ of government

Britain’s crackdown on climate protest is setting “a dangerous precedent” around the world and undermining democratic rights, the UK director of Human Rights Watch has said.

Yasmine Ahmed accused the Labour government of hypocrisy over its claims to be committed to human rights and international law.

Eaton fire tore through Altadena, burning buildings and killing many. Its residents are only now taking in the scale of devastation

A week after wildfires tore through the community of Altadena, the smell of destruction still hangs in the air. The acrid smoke seeped into the walls of homes that survived the Eaton fire, which burned 7,000 buildings and killed at least 15 people.

On Woodbury Road, where unblemished homes stand in between blackened lots of charred rubble, the devastation overwhelms the senses. The houses that haven’t completely collapsed offer glimpses of life before disaster arrived – pitchers and mugs in a cabinet, all a deep black, a bed still standing, a scorched bicycle and children’s toys.

Oil company to lose 5% of its staff in effort to cut costs amid shareholder worries over green energy strategy

BP is to cut thousands of jobs from its global workforce, amounting to 5% of its staff, in an effort to save billions in costs to appease its worried shareholders.

The oil company told staff on Tuesday that it would cut 4,700 jobs and scrap another 3,000 contractor positions, after its chief executive promised to reduce the company’s costs by at least $2bn (£1.6bn) by the end of 2026.

With few exceptions, the news has shied away from showing how the unfolding climate crisis plays a large role in the disaster

Last week, as the Sunset fire was bearing down on her Los Angeles home, Allison Agsten approached a group of television news crews gathering in her neighborhood. Did any of them plan to mention the role of the climate crisis in their reporting?

The question was professional as well as personal for Agsten, who runs a climate journalism center at the University of Southern California and has trained reporters on how to connect the climate crisis to what’s happening in the world. She has lived in her home along Runyon Canyon, near Hollywood, for a decade.

Tory leader to condemn predecessors’ Brexit, climate and migration failings amid rising popularity of Reform UK

Kemi Badenoch will attack the Conservative party’s record under Boris Johnson and Theresa May on Brexit, the economy, net zero and immigration in a speech aimed at “rebuilding trust”.

The Tory leader, who is competing with the sharp rise in popularity of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, will “acknowledge the Conservative party made mistakes” under her predecessors.

Exclusive: Report by risk experts says previous assessments ignored severe effects of climate crisis

The global economy could face 50% loss in gross domestic product (GDP) between 2070 and 2090 from the catastrophic shocks of climate change unless immediate action by political leaders is taken to decarbonise and restore nature, according to a new report.

The stark warning from risk management experts the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) hugely increases the estimate of risk to global economic wellbeing from climate change impacts such as fires, flooding, droughts, temperature rises and nature breakdown. In a report with scientists at the University of Exeter, published on Thursday, the IFoA, which uses maths and statistics to analyse financial risk for businesses and governments, called for accelerated action by political leaders to tackle the climate crisis.

I’ve been writing about climate change for years. I know my graphs won’t change minds, but facts matter

2025 has not started well, and you should be bloody angry.

We are less than five months from the federal election and both major parties’ climate change policies are an amalgam of indolence and lies.

Will water soon be a marketable commodity or a priceless public good?

There’s a scene in the film Mad Max: Fury Road where the evil ruler Immortan Joe, gazing down from a cliff upon his parched, emaciated subjects, turns two turbines, and water gushes from three gigantic sluices. The wretched masses surge forward to catch the deluge in their pots and bowls. And as imperiously as he opened the gates, Joe shuts them. “Do not become addicted to water,” he roars. “It will take hold of you.” But, of course, he already has taken hold of them by withholding, essentially, life.

We don’t have to await the dystopian future for the water wars to begin. The struggle over water, between private interests and the public good, the powerful and the weak, is raging now. From Love Canal to Flint, Michigan; Bolivia to Ukraine to Tunisia; budget-cutting, privatization, corporate malfeasance and climate crises are conspiring to create political violence, mass migration, property damage and death.

A century of foolhardy development, including public subsidies for rebuilding in the firebelt, hugely contributed to this tragedy, writes our architecture critic. LA must rethink – and build upwards not outwards

‘Crime don’t climb” is one of the glib mottoes long used by Los Angeles real estate agents to help sell the multimillion dollar homes in the hills that surround the sprawling metropolis. Residents of the lush ridges and winding canyons can rest assured, in their elevated green perches – safely removed from the smog-laden, supposedly crime-ridden flatlands beneath. What the realtors neglect to mention, however, is that, while crime rarely ascends the hills, flames certainly do. And that the very things that make this sun-soaked city’s dream homes so attractive – lush landscaping, quaint timber construction, raised terrain and narrow, twisting lanes – are the very things that make them burn so well. They create blazing infernos that, as we have seen over the past week, are tragically difficult to extinguish.

LA’s ferocious wildfires have seen an area about three times the size of Manhattan incinerated. At least 12,000 homes have burned to the ground and 150,000 people have been evacuated, as entire neighbourhoods become smouldering ruins. Twenty-five people have died, 24 more are missing. Estimates suggest the cost of damage and economic losses could reach $250bn, making it the costliest wildfire in US history – mainly due to the flames torching some of the highest-value real estate in the country. And it’s not over yet. The city is bracing for further destruction, as weather forecasts suggest winds might pick up again.

Air Resources Board withdraws request for approval of rules to limit pollution from diesel trains and big rigs

California’s efforts to limit pollution from diesel-powered trains and big rigs were stalled in anticipation of pushback from the incoming Trump administration.

The California Air Resources Board said on Tuesday it withdrew its requests for federal approval to implement stricter emissions rules for locomotives and semi-trucks because the US Environmental Protection Agency had yet to approve them. The decision came just days before Joe Biden leaves office.

Global heating means atmosphere can drive both extreme droughts and floods with rapid switches

Climate “whiplash” between extremely wet and dry conditions, which spurred catastrophic fires in Los Angeles, is increasing exponentially around the world because of global heating, analysis has found.

Climate whiplash is a rapid swing between very wet or dry conditions and can cause far more harm to people than individual extreme events alone. In recent years, whiplash events have been linked to disastrous floods in east Africa, Pakistan and Australia and to worsening heatwaves in Europe and China.

Luke Evans, whose work has been called ‘breathtakingly new’, says he has lost experimental data and all equipment

A scientist in Liverpool has lost more than a decade of work after the prefabricated building that served as his research lab was destroyed in a suspected arson attack.

Luke Evans, the chief executive of Scintilla CME and a PhD student at the University of Liverpool, was due to submit his work in March. His research centres on advanced fuel cell technology that converts organic waste into clean energy, and could be crucial in the transition away from fossil fuels.

Forecasters warn of ‘particularly dangerous weather situation’ in California; Gavin Newsom hits back at House speaker for ‘politicizing’ tragedy

• Big oil pushed to kill bill that would have made them pay for wildfire disasters
• Tell us about financial consequences you are facing

LA mayor, Karen Bass, has shared a phone number for residents who have evacuated to get assistance in finding and retrieving pets in evacuation areas.

Posting on X, Bass wrote:

Pets are family.

The City is making help available to find and retrieve pets in evacuation areas.

The scope of the Cop26 net zero banking alliance may have been limited, but the exodus of six US banks signifies a seismic political shift

Last week, as flames began tearing through greater Los Angeles, claiming multiple lives and forcing more than 100,000 people to evacuate, JP Morgan became the sixth major US bank to quit the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) since the start of December. A smaller story, certainly, but the departure of top US banks from the NZBA in the weeks since Donald Trump’s re-election nonetheless speaks to a seismic political shift prompting major financial institutions to turn away from the climate-related commitments they made in the optimistic years after the Paris agreement.

The NZBA is a voluntary network of global banks committed to “align lending and investment portfolios with net zero emissions by 2050”. It is part of the umbrella Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which counts among its membership dozens of “alliances” covering the various segments of global finance. For its part, the NZBA requires new members to submit science-aligned targets within 18 months of joining, alongside disclosing plans for and status updates on meeting them.

Adrienne Buller is director of The Break Down and the author of The Value of a Whale: on the illusions of green capitalism

I feel like I am safe in saying that we are not thriving on our changing planet – and we will not in the coming decades

My house in Altadena burned down in the wildfires on Wednesday. It all happened quickly. On Tuesday around 7pm, my wife and daughters went to a hotel as a precaution. I left the house with the dogs when the mandatory evacuation order came in around 3am. As best as I can put the timeline together, our home burned down around the same time that the sun came up, and I was able to drive in and see the damage around 2pm.

Neighbors that went in after said it looked like a “war zone”. I have never been in a war zone thankfully, but I didn’t think so. There was nothing violent or chaotic about it. No one stopped me from driving in. There were no sirens. I stood alone – no one else around – in front of my house that was at that point just a fireplace and chimney. The house across the street was about halfway done with burning down, and the house behind ours had just started to burn.

Benjamin Hamlington is a research scientist at Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a team lead at Nasa Sea Level Change team