George Monbiot Budleigh Salterton, on the south coast of Devon, sits above the most frightening cliffs on Earth. They are not particularly high. Though you don’t want to stand beneath them, they are not especially prone to collapse. The horror takes another form. It is contained in the story they tell. For they capture the… Read More Fossil fuel burning once caused a mass extinction – now we’re risking another
Humanity is on a “highway to climate hell”, the UN secretary general has warned, saying the fight for a liveable planet will be won or lost in this decade. António Guterres told world leaders at the opening of the Cop27 UN climate summit in Egypt on Monday: “We are in the fight of our lives and we… Read More World is on ‘highway to climate hell’, UN chief warns at Cop27 summit
Fiona Harvey The top 1% of earners in the UK are responsible for the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions in a single year as the bottom 10% over more than two decades, new data has shown. The findings highlight the enormous gaps between what have been termed “the polluting elite”, whose high-carbon lifestyles fuel the… Read More Polluting elites
Linda Geddes The next pandemic may come not from bats or birds but from matter in melting ice, according to new data. Genetic analysis of soil and lake sediments from Lake Hazen, the largest high Arctic freshwater lake in the world, suggests the risk of viral spillover – where a virus infects a new host… Read More Next pandemic may come from melting glaciers, new data shows
‘We’ve been greenwashed out of our senses. It’s time to stand our ground’ ‘Stop setting things on fire’: nine great ideas to save the planet Maybe it is the name that is the problem. Climate change. It doesn’t sound that bad. The word “change” resonates quite pleasantly in our restless world. No matter how fortunate we… Read More Greta Thunberg on the climate delusion
Andrew Roth It took Alina three goes at the local conscription centre to get her husband out of Russia’s war in Ukraine. She knew the local officials managing the mobilisation in her town south of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, she said. So when her husband, who has health problems because of his weight and served… Read More Kremlin attempts to calm Russian fury over chaotic mobilisation
Andrew Downie in São Paulo Some of the world’s biggest central banks are unwittingly helping to finance agri-business giants engaged in the destruction of the Brazilian Amazon, according to a report published on Wednesday. The Bank of England, the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are among the institutions that have bought millions of… Read More World’s central banks financing destruction of the rainforest
JUAN COLE A mere category 1 hurricane dumped so much water on Puerto Rico so quickly that one of its rivers has swollen to 25 feet above normal, even more than it rose during Hurricane Maria in 2017, which was a Category 5 hurricane. The island is beset by flash floods, and is getting 16-30 inches… Read More Climate Crisis and the Age of the Super-Typhoon: Storms batter, flood Puerto Rico, Pakistan, Japan and Shanghai
Adam Morton There is no shortage of things to say about what’s going wrong. The extent of damage caused at 1.2C of global heating since pre-industrial levels is proving greater than was forecast by climate scientists not that long ago. As discussed last week, the disastrous toll of the historic flooding in Pakistan and heatwaves and droughts… Read More Reasons for (cautious) optimism: the good news on the climate crisis
The climate crisis has driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, according to a major study. It shows five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1C of global heating caused by humanity to date. These include the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap, eventually producing a huge sea level rise,… Read More World on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, study finds
After the truth-shower 