The Guardian Climate Change

Australian miner paying ‘massive bonuses’ for ‘steamrolling ahead with an outdated and unacceptably risky coal growth strategy’, activists say

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Whitehaven Coal, one of Australia’s biggest coal producers, faces a rare “second strike” from shareholders this week as climate activists seek to draw attention to the miner’s plans to ramp up volumes and resulting carbon emissions.

The ASX-listed company received a 41% vote against its executives’ remuneration report at last year’s annual general meeting. A vote of at least 25% at this year’s AGM on Wednesday would force a motion to spill Whitehaven’s board.

Carbon dioxide concentration has increased by more than 10% in just two decades, reports World Meteorological Organization

The concentration of planet-heating pollutants clogging the atmosphere hit record levels in 2023, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said.

It found carbon dioxide is accumulating faster than at any time in human history, with concentrations having risen by more than 10% in just two decades.

The harm to babies and mothers is one of the warnings being sent to Cop29 decision-makers by leading scientists

Miscarriages, premature babies and harm to mothers caused by the climate crisis are a “blind spot” in action plans, according to a report aimed at the decision-makers who will attend the Cop29 summit in November.

Potential collapse of the Amazon rainforest, vital Atlantic Ocean currents and essential infrastructure in cities are also among the dangers cited by an international group of 80 leading scientists from 45 countries. The report collects the latest insights from physical and social science to inform the negotiations at the UN climate summit in Azerbaijan.

Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility alleges Santos’s plan to reach net zero by 2040 is ‘little more than a series of speculations’

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A world-first greenwashing case that seeks to hold oil and gas company Santos accountable for its net zero commitments began in the federal court today, brought by one of its own shareholders, the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR).

The organisation claims Santos did not have a proper basis for saying it had a clear pathway to reduce emissions by 26% to 30% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2040, which constituted misleading or deceptive conduct in breach of Australian corporate and consumer laws.

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Consumption of world’s wealthiest people also making it increasingly difficult to limit global heating to 1.5C

The high carbon emissions of the world’s richest 1% are worsening hunger, poverty and excess deaths, a report has found.

Owing to luxury yachts, private jets and investments in polluting industries, the consumption of the world’s wealthiest people is also making it increasingly difficult to limit global heating to 1.5C.

Pledge signed by scientists from nine countries reflects concerns that offsets generated from forest-related projects may not have reduced emissions

Carbon offsets used by corporations around the world to lower their reportable greenhouse gas emissions are “ineffectual” and “hindering the energy transition”, according to more than 60 leading climate change scientists.

A pledge signed by scientists from nine countries, including the UK, US and Australia, said the “only path that can prevent further escalation of climate impacts” was “real zero” and not “net zero”.

Legions of young people are getting organised, skilling up, raising their voices and placing their bodies in the path of those who profit from our addiction

Not long before the Nazis murdered him, the Lutheran pastor and resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that “the ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children”.

That moral challenge is timeless. But with the climate emergency upon us, it has an unsettling new edge, and with that in mind, I’ve been preoccupied lately by the underappreciated power of solidarity.

Climate Change Committee advised Ed Miliband to cut level by 81% but activists want bigger promises

Climate campaigners have urged ministers to make steeper cuts in the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions after the government’s statutory adviser on the climate gave its verdict on new targets.

The Climate Change Committee, which advises the government, has written to Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, to advise cuts of 81% in the UK’s emissions, compared with 1990 levels, by 2035, if emissions from aviation and shipping are excluded.

Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, a total blackout in Cuba, tributes to Liam Payne and the US election: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Lack of time, difficulties with scientific rigour, an uninterested public … television meteorologists open up about why they’re so quiet about the reasons for extreme conditions

Why do TV and radio forecasts rarely contextualise extreme weather events in terms of the climate crisis? After all, the latest data suggests Britain is getting hotter, wetter and stormier. The number of “very hot days” of 30C or more, according to the Met Office’s latest climate report, has trebled over the last few decades. Last year was the second warmest on record since 1884, with only 2022 warmer.

“If you believe, as I do, that climate change is the most fundamental challenge facing humanity,” says Sunil Amrith, history professor at Yale’s School of Environment, and author of the forthcoming book The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Past 500 Years, “any contribution to making its causes and effects more widely known will have a role to play”.

Families cope as experts say learning disruptions caused by hurricane can set children back for years

When Elizabeth Steere’s two sons were little, the family watched The Wizard of Oz and its famous tornado scene that whips Dorothy through the air.

Steere, who lives in Asheville, North Carolina, assured her kids, now 11 and 13, not to worry. “I remember saying, very glibly, ‘That’s not something you guys have to worry about,’” Steele recalled.

Kevin Jordan and two other claimants argued the country’s climate adaptation plans were insufficient and unlawful

An East Anglian man who lost his home to coastal erosion has lost his high court challenge against the government’s climate adaptation plans.

Kevin Jordan was one of three claimants who argued the government’s plans for adapting to the existing and predicted impacts of climate change, known as the National Adaptation Programme 3 (NAP3), were insufficient and unlawful.

Researchers criticised and gaslighted after sharing fears with Guardian say acknowledging feelings is critical to their work

Climate scientists who were mocked and gaslighted after speaking up about their fears for the future have said acknowledging strong emotions is vital to their work.

The researchers said these feelings should not be suppressed in an attempt to reach supposed objectivity. Seeing climate experts’ fears and opinions about the climate crisis as irrelevant suggests science is separate from society and ultimately weakens it, they said.

Subtle temperature difference between ‘ocean skin’ and water beneath found to drive more CO2 absorption

A sliver of cool surface water less than 2mm deep helps oceans absorb carbon dioxide, a British-led team of scientists has established after months of voyages across the Atlantic painstakingly measuring gas and temperature levels.

The subtle difference in temperature between the “ocean skin” and the layer of water beneath it creates an interface that leads to more CO2 being taken in, the scientists observed.

The Siberian republic of Sakha in the Russian far east is one the coldest inhabited regions in the world. The photojournalist Natalya Saprunova spent almost two months documenting the daily lives of the people in the community of Oymyakon

Oymyakon in north-east Siberia is the coldest permanently inhabited place in the world. The village is located at the “Pole of Cold” on the left bank of the Indigirka River in Sakha, a republic in Russia’s far east, and is connected to other rural localities such as Khara-Tumul and Bereg-Yurdya, Tomtor, Yuchyugey and Aeroport, which gets its name from the local airport. The area sits on the Oymyakon plateau and has about 2,000 inhabitants.

A man rides a snowmobile through Oymyakon.

With electric car demand soaring, peak oil may be near – and not a moment too soon for the climate

Oil states and companies such as BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are intent on exploiting new oilfields despite the clear evidence that the world is rapidly cruising through its carbon budget.

However, investors should perhaps note that the International Energy Agency (IEA) is forecasting that peak oil is at hand. In other words, supply will soon outstrip demand, making investment in new oilfields unlikely to be profitable.

Advocates vow to sue, saying plan, crucial to Biden’s clean energy agenda, will drive Tiehm’s buckwheat to extinction

For the first time under Joe Biden, a federal permit for a new lithium mine has been approved for a Nevada project essential to his clean energy agenda, despite conservationists’ vows to sue over the plan, which they say will drive an endangered wildflower to extinction.

Ioneer Ltd’s mine will help expedite production of a key mineral in the manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles at the center of the president’s push to cut greenhouse gas emissions, administration officials said Thursday in Reno.

Leaders are eager to fill us with positivity, but research shows people in distress are more likely to take collective action

If despair is the most unforgivable sin, then hope is surely the most abused virtue. That observation feels particularly apposite as we enter the Cop season, that time of United Nations megaconferences at the end of every year, when national leaders feel obliged to convince us the future will be better, despite growing evidence to the contrary.

Climate instability and nature extinction are making the Earth an uglier, riskier and more uncertain place, desiccating water supplies, driving up the price of food, displacing humans and non-humans, battering cities and ecosystems with ever fiercer storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts and forest fires. Still worse could be in store as we approach or pass a series of dangerous tipping points for Amazon rainforest dieback, ocean circulation breakdown, ice-cap collapse and other unimaginably horrible, but ever more possible, catastrophes.

King Charles III took part in a traditional kava-drinking ceremony before a line of bare-chested, heavily tattooed Samoans and was declared a 'high chief' of the Pacific island nation. The British monarch is on an 11-day tour of Australia and Samoa – the first major trip overseas since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year. The peppery, slightly intoxicating root drink is a key part of Pacific culture and is known locally as 'ava'. Australia’s former deputy prime minister was hospitalised after mistakenly drinking too much of a local brew at a similar ceremony in Micronesia in 2022. The royal couple later visited the village of Moata’a, where Charles was made 'Tui Taumeasina', or high chief

• King Charles becomes Samoan ‘high chief’ and drinks narcotic kava at welcoming ceremony

• Selfies, hugs and protests: King Charles’s new approach in spotlight during ‘fast and furious’ royal tour of Australia