The Guardian Climate Change

New research comes as dozens of small potential fields have received some form of license from the government

Potential new North Sea oil and gas fields with early stage licences from the UK would emit as much carbon dioxide as British households produce in three decades.

The finding has led to calls to the government to reject demands from fossil fuel producers for the final permits needed to allow their operations to go ahead.

Campaigners say Queensland mine given go-ahead this week is a new development, not an extension of an existing mine

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Climate campaigners have challenged a claim by the Albanese government that it has not approved any new coalmines in 2024, saying a Queensland mine given a green light this week was a new development.

The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, approved four coalmine projects on Thursday, describing them all as expansions of existing mines that would mainly be digging up coal to make steel.

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Six days after Cyclone Chido brought widespread devastation to the Indian Ocean archipelago, residents in parts of Mayotte are still without water, food or shelter. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, visited a hospital in Mamoudzou, the capital, where staff and and locals shared their grievances

• Cyclone Chido: locals demand more help from Macron on visit to Mayotte

• Cyclone Chido: many missing in Mayotte as death toll rises in south-east Africa

• Mayotte before and after: satellite images show destruction by Cyclone Chido

French president promises food, water and to rebuild as emergency services search desperately for survivors

Distraught and angry inhabitants of Mayotte shouted out their grievances to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as he visited the island, five days after it was devastated by a cyclone.

High on their list was the lack of water and food, and the fear of looting.

McNeese State University in Louisiana building a liquefied natural gas center, prompting fears of ‘corporate capture’

One of Louisiana’s top public universities has prompted concerns about “corporate capture” over its expanding relationship with the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, despite environmental warnings about pollution and prolonging fossil fuel use.

As the US’s LNG boom gained momentum in south-west Louisiana, McNeese State University courted the industry to help launch a new LNG Center of Excellence currently under construction, hired a director doubling as an LNG industry lobbyist, and approached federal regulators to co-locate their own research center at the university, according to emails obtained via public records requests by DeSmog and the Guardian.

Tanya Plibersek says projects in NSW and Queensland produce coal for making essential steel as critics say move ‘opposite of climate action’

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The Albanese government has approved the expansion of four coalmines that climate campaigners estimate will release more than 850m tonnes of CO2 over their lifetime – equivalent to almost double Australia’s annual emissions.

The four mines will target mostly coal to be used for steelmaking with some thermal coal for burning in power stations.

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Court rules in favor of 16 young people who said their health and prospects were being imperiled by climate crisis

Montana’s top court on Wednesday held that the state’s constitution guaranteed a right to a stable climate system and invalidated a law barring regulators from considering the effects of greenhouse gas emissions when permitting new fossil fuel projects.

The Montana supreme court upheld a landmark trial court decision last August in favor of 16 young people who said their health and futures were being jeopardized by climate change, which the state aggravates through its permitting of energy projects.

In 2019, scientists published a climate-friendly food plan. I’ve long wondered: could it work for most Americans?

• People in the US: how do you eat climate friendly on a budget?

As a fossil fuels and climate reporter, most of my journalism focuses on the need to radically overhaul the energy system. But the food sector also needs a makeover, as it creates between a quarter and a third of all greenhouse gas emissions.

When scientists came up with a new climate-friendly food plan in 2019 and published their findings in the medical journal the Lancet, I read with interest. The guidelines called for more vegetables, legumes and whole grains, which seemed doable to me. The authors even allowed for meat and dairy consumption, albeit in small quantities. Both are major drivers of the climate crisis: the United Nations estimates that meat and dairy produce more than 11% of all global greenhouse gas emissions, and some experts put the figure at up to 19.6%.

Climate-vulnerable pair add weight to proposed treaty seeking transition from coal, oil and gas in equitable way

Pakistan and the Bahamas have joined a growing bloc of climate-vulnerable countries seeking to broker a global pact to phase out fossil fuels in an equitable way, the Guardian can reveal.

The Bahamas is the 15th nation to fully endorse the proposed fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty, which would provide a binding global roadmap to explicitly halt expansion of coal, oil and gas in a fair way – with wealthy nations responsible for the highest emissions transitioning first and fastest.

An incurable illness that turns billionaires into owls

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New study shows LNG exports risk raising greenhouse gas emissions, hampering efforts to curtail climate crisis

The Biden administration has released a long-awaited analysis on the economic and environmental effects of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, concluding any further expansion would drive up costs for domestic consumers and hamper efforts to curtail the climate crisis.

In January Joe Biden paused the Department of Energy’s approvals of fossil gas exports to big consumers in Asia and Europe in order to conduct the review, in a move welcomed by climate scientists, environmental justice advocates and public health experts but decried by the oil and gas industry.

Jacinta Allan’s plans to give police ‘wide-ranging power’ to help tackle antisemtism could be used against other protesters, lawyer says

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The Victorian government has been accused of “shoehorning” new anti-protest measures that could be used to crack down on the climate movement into a suite of fresh measures touted as necessary to combat antisemitism.

On Tuesday, Jacinta Allan announced a suite of legislative proposals to crack down on what the premier said was antisemitism and extremism at protests. The proposals were announced in the wake of an arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue.

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Report says rivers, the sea and surface water endangering properties and that number could hit 8m by 2050

More than 6m homes in England are at risk of flooding under the latest climate projections, a study by the Environment Agency has found.

This could rise to 8m – or one in four properties – by 2050, the study said.

France's interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, has told emergency workers during a meeting not to panic following the worst cyclone to hit Mayotte for 90 years, which has devastated the Indian Ocean territory’s health services. Rescuers are racing to reach survivors after Cyclone Chido laid waste many shantytowns, with hundreds believed dead. The cyclone also damaged Mayotte’s airport, cutting off electricity and water on Saturday. The territory's prefect, François-Xavier Bieuville, told a local broadcaster that he expected the number dead would reach 'close to a thousand or even several thousand'

• Mayotte cyclone: health services in ruins

• Hundreds feared dead as cyclone devastates island of Mayotte

Rainfall patterns are changing, crops are ripening earlier and the normal rhythms of farming have fallen off – exactly as climate scientists warned

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Smell is the most evocative sense. I lit a mozzie coil this week and a flood of childhood memories came back. The great long, dry days of summer stretched before us as the five of us slept side-by-side in a canvas tent like a can of sardines. Playing cards in a classic Australian caravan park. Running across hot sand before jumping on a towel to save our feet. Summer meant sliding down green waves, dodging bluebottles, too much sunburn and fish and chips.

In the last 30 years though, summer has meant harvest and the battle to get the crop off in a reasonable state for the best possible price. It has meant never knowing whether the wheat would be in the bin before Christmas Day.

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One of the world’s longest continuous bird counts has dashed the ‘wistful optimism’ of scientists hoping for a La Niña-driven recovery

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Drier conditions have led to waterbird numbers in eastern Australia plummeting by 50% compared with 2023, one of the country’s largest wildlife surveys has found.

Conducted annually since 1983, the eastern Australian waterbird aerial survey is one of the world’s longest continuous bird counts as well as one of the largest by geographical distance covered.

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Peter Dutton’s path ‘would be an absolute failure’ in decarbonising the electricity sector and meeting Australia’s emission targets, analyst says

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Australia would emit far more climate pollution – more than 1.7bn extra tonnes of carbon dioxide – between now and 2050 under the Coalition’s nuclear-focused plan than under Labor’s renewable energy dominated policy, analysts say.

The opposition last week released modelling of its “coal-to-nuclear” plan that would slow the rollout of renewable energy and batteries and instead rely on more fossil fuel generation until a nuclear industry could be developed, mostly after 2040.

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Medical supplies airlifted to French Indian Ocean territory after Cyclone Chido leaves hundreds feared dead

• Explainer: Everything you need to know about Mayotte

The worst cyclone to hit Mayotte for 90 years has devastated the French Indian Ocean territory’s health services, leaving the hospital severely damaged and health centres out of operation, a minister has said.

“The hospital has suffered major water damage and destruction, notably in the surgical, intensive care, maternity and emergency units,” the French health minister, Geneviève Darrieussecq, told France 2 on Monday, adding that “medical centres were also non-operational”.

As warmer winters melt the snow drifts that endangered Saimaa ringed seals use to raise their young, humans are giving them a helping hand

• Words by Phoebe Weston. Photographs by Samuel Bloch

Eight hours shovelling snow in -20C might not sound like the ideal day out, but a committed team of volunteers in Finland are working dawn to dusk building enormous snow drifts for one of the world’s most endangered seals.

The Saimaa ringed seal was once widespread across Finland but is now confined to Lake Saimaa in the south-east of the country, where just 495 of them remain.

Clockwise from top: volunteers check the suitability of the ice to build a snow cave under the supervision of Heikki Härkönen, coordinator at the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation; Riikka Alakoski, from the Finnish forestry agency inspects an artificial den; and records the location of a breathing hole (the image has been altered to obscure its location); a small den in the ice

Experts express fear – and resilience – as they prepare for president-elect’s potential attacks on climate research

As the world’s largest gathering of Earth and space scientists swarmed a Washington venue last week, the packed halls have been permeated by an air of anxiety and even dread over a new Donald Trump presidency that might worsen what has been a bruising few years for science.

The annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting drew a record 31,000 attendees this year for the unveiling of a slew of new research on everything from seismology to climate science to heliospheric physics, alongside a sprawling trade show and bouts of networking as scientists jostle to advance their work.