Climate

Spokesperson for administrators tells Guardian Australia statement will be released on Tuesday afternoon detailing the future of the airline. Follow today’s news headlines live

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

Murray Watt says the opposition has “started the new climate wars” after Barnaby Joyce and Keith Pitt, two senior Nationals, called for Australia to pull out of the Paris agreement. You can read more on this from Karen Middleton below:

Speaking to ABC News Breakfast, Watt said:

We’re back to the same old climate wars in the Coalition. I saw overnight that [Joyce and Pitt] openly called for the Coalition to pull out of the Paris agreement. They’ve spent the last couple of days trying to paper over the cracks in the Coalition, saying that they can withdraw the target without withdrawing from the agreement. Now it’s out there in the open for everyone to see. And you can set your clock by Barnaby Joyce causing new climate wars within the Coalition. It’s seem like we’re back to the bad old days.

We’re on track to get to 42%, which is only 1% short of the 43% target.

Continue reading...

Industry groups said the E.P.A. had exceeded its authority in requiring the drinking-water cleanup. The chemicals, known as PFAS, are linked to cancer and health risks.

The Environmental Defense Fund, entering controversial territory, will spend millions of dollars examining the impact of reflecting sunlight into space as global warming worsens.

Supporters hospitalized following rallies in Las Vegas and Phoenix, where temperatures have broken records

Dozens of Donald Trump’s supporters have been requiring medical help at his rallies in the scorching US south-west but it seems lost on him that his plans to reverse climate policies and “drill, baby, drill” for fossil fuels will only worsen extreme weather, campaigners say.

A total of 24 people at a Trump rally in Las Vegas on Sunday required medical attention due to the heat, according to the Clark county fire department, with six taken to hospital for treatment. The hospitalizations come after a further 11 people needed to be admitted to hospital for heat exhaustion as they waited for Trump to speak at a rally in Phoenix on Thursday.

Continue reading...

The Coalition’s rejection of a 43% cut in emissions by 2030 will have major ramifications for us and the world

• Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates
• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

Peter Dutton plans to breach the text and spirit of the landmark Paris climate agreement, backed in 2015 by a Coalition government along with the leaders of more than 190 other countries.

This should be clear to anyone who clicks on this link and reads the deal reached in the French capital.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Can a heat wave ever melt climate denial in Florida? It certainly hasn’t yet. Governor Ron DeSantis’s recent response is a scorched-earth campaign to wipe out climate science from state policy. On the very day in May that Key West registered a record 115-degree heat index, DeSantis signed a bill that:

• Eliminates requirements for businesses to consider climate friendly products and practices in lodging and vehicle fuel efficiency;
• Prohibits offshore wind energy;
• Prohibits localities and homeowners associations from restricting or banning fuel sources and appliances, most notably gas;
• Eliminates requirements for the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to establish goals and strategies to increase renewable energy and include renewable energy development and reduction of fossil fuels in long-range forecasts of energy supply and demand;
•  Repeals grant programs and incentives for individuals, businesses, school districts and local governments to diversify energy supplies to mitigate the effects of climate change;

Waving his magical-thinking wand to make climate change disappear from virtually every aspect of policymaking, DeSantis bloviated that he is “rejecting the agenda of radical green zealots.” Not even two weeks later, Florida was hit with a Memorial Day weekend of yet more heat records in Miami and Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Tampa hit a daily record of 97 degrees on May 29.

That caused a television meteorologist at NBC’s Miami affiliate to all but say that Florida is under a state of climate emergency, inflamed by political insanity. Meteorologist Steve MacLaughlin said on social media that “Florida is on fire, underwater and unaffordable.” He told viewers in a video that the state was rolling back important climate change legislation and language despite “record heat, record flooding, record rain, record insurance rates and the corals are dying all around the state.”

MacLaughlin did not stop there. He made a public plea for viewers to register their concern for climate change at the ballot box. “Please keep in mind the most powerful climate change solution is the one you already have in the palm of your hands — the right to vote,” MacLaughlin said. “And we will never tell you who to vote for, but we will tell you this: We implore you to please do your research and know that there are candidates that believe in climate change and that there are solutions, and that there are candidates that don’t.”

MacLaughlin’s stance was especially notable given the harassment many television weather forecasters have experienced for following the science to tie climate change to increasingly severe weather. The harassment was symbolized by last year’s resignation by Chris Gloninger, an award-winning television meteorologist in Des Moines, Iowa after he received threatening emails.  

“Danger Season” realities

Florida is hardly the only state in a state of denial as the United States enters what the Union of Concerned Scientists describes as “Danger Season”–the period from late spring through early fall where the nation is at particular risk of a host of devastating rains that can trigger floods, hurricanes and storms that can deliver baseball-sized hail, and extreme heat and drought that can kill people and ignite wildfires.

As heat saturated the Sunshine State, a siege of severe storms killed at least dozen people on Memorial Day weekend across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and Alabama. Hundreds of thousands of people in Texas lost power, many streets in Houston were under water and several people were killed by blown-down trees and limbs that fell on houses, tents, trailers and vehicles. A few days later, Denver recorded the largest hailstones in 35 years.

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott has dutifully issued disaster declarations for many counties that have been battered by severe weather since late April. On May 15, as DeSantis deleted climate change from state policy while Florida broke heat records, Abbott wrote President Biden for a White House disaster declaration. Abbott said the incidents were “of such severity and magnitude that an effective response is beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments, and that supplementary federal assistance is necessary to save lives and to protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster.”

Deadly state policies

When it comes to acting on climate change to avert the threat of disasters, though, Abbott is much like DeSantis. He has vetoed legislation for energy efficiency in new construction, signed laws banning localities from banning gas in new construction and issued an executive order that directs “every state agency” to fight federal actions to reduce dependence on oil and gas.

Most cruelly, Abbott signed a bill last year that bars cities and counties from mandating heat protection rules stronger than the state’s, that might allow for things such as more frequent water breaks,. This year, DeSantis signed a similar bill. This is despite the fact that Texas has set heat death records three years in a row, and  leads the nation in heat-related construction worker deaths. Both Texas and Florida were in the top five states for heat deaths last year. A 2021 analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that by 2065, the outdoor exposure to hazardous heat could quadruple.

Last week, the Associated Press published an analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that last year was the deadliest for heat across the nation in 45 years of record keeping, with heat listed as a factor on more than 2,300 death certificates. It was a sorry exclamation point on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s assessment that 2023 was the Earth’s warmest year on record..

And even that number of US deaths may be a vast understatement given that heat illnesses are often not mentioned on death certificates. Texas A&M climate scientists Andrew Dessler and Jangho Lee told the AP that last year’s real national annual heat death toll may be more like 11,000–and that it could get much worse. “We’re going to look back at 2023 and say, man, that was cool,” Dessler said. “The problem with climate change is, if it hasn’t pushed you over the edge yet, just wait.”

The question is: when will the toll of heat and severe weather push DeSantis, Abbott and like-minded politicians toward policies to cool the planet? Last year, the nation suffered a record 28 billion-dollar weather disasters, hugely impacting Midwestern and Southern states thus far resistant to climate-friendly policies.

Quietly reaping benefits

There are occasional nods to reality as DeSantis last month signed into law a measure requiring homeowners to disclose a property’s flood history. But for the most part, conservative states are engaged in a selfish game of quietly reaping the benefits of renewable energy while doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry, to retard progress on the national level.

For instance, the top four states for wind generation growth over the last decade, according to a report in April by Climate Central, are Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Kansas. The top states for solar power growth since 2014 are Texas and Florida. Two of the top three states for adding clean energy jobs in 2022 were Texas and West Virginia, according to the US Department of Energy.

Nonetheless, all of those states are among the more than two dozen suing the Environmental Protection Agency over the Biden administration’s rules that cut carbon pollution at the national level from existing coal-fired power plants and new natural gas plants. They all are also among the two dozen states that currently have laws on the books prohibiting localities from banning gas in new buildings, despite the wealth of science showing that the methane associated with gas production is a potent contributor to global warming. Not surprisingly, many of these same states also rank in the bottom half of the State Energy Efficiency Scorecard published by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

Yet, when climate-related disaster strikes, these same states beg for federal disaster aid. Only then do they become, to borrow from DeSantis, “radical green zealots.” Except that the only green they are seeking is federal cash.

While the government should indeed deliver aid to families and businesses that suffer destruction, it would be a lot better if Abbott and others returned the favor by not trying to destroy federal efforts to stem the forces behind the damage. Abbot has boasted that “Texas is not going to stand idly by and watch the Biden administration kill jobs.” It will be more momentous when he and his ilk are finally humbled enough by storms and heat to say they will no longer stand idly by to watch climate change kill people.

Claudia Sheinbaum, a former climate scientist and Mexico City mayor, has often led with politics over the environment

The month before Mexico’s 2 June presidential vote the country was bedeviled by water cuts and blackouts as a record heatwave took the country beyond red and into an ominous purple on the weather map.

As dehydrated monkeys dropped dead from trees, the landslide victory of Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist, might look like salvation. But her record paints a more complicated picture – one where climate convictions have often, and may still, come second to political pragmatism.

Continue reading...

Former Nationals leader says ‘aspirations have to take a secondary position to the economic reality’ after Peter Dutton said he would oppose government’s targets

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce and Morrison cabinet colleague Keith Pitt have called for the Coalition to abandon the Paris global climate change agreement and related emissions reduction targets, as the prime minister accused opposition leader Peter Dutton of walking away from climate action.

Dutton has said he would oppose the government’s target of a 43% cut to 2005-level emissions by 2030, telling the Australian newspaper there was “no sense in signing up to targets you don’t have any prospect of achieving”.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

More than 400 scientists write to political parties urging ambitious action or risk making Britain and the world ‘more dangerous and insecure’

After five years of record heat and record floods, one might assume British politicians would also pay record attention to the climate issue in the current election campaign.

But with the manifestos due this week, concerns are growing that the response of the two main parties will range from tepid progress to a great leap backwards, despite the certainty of further climate chaos during the next parliament.

Continue reading...

Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota, has stepped into the spotlight as a cheerleader for oil and former President Donald J. Trump.

Serious discussion about the climate crisis, reforming taxation and funding public services are also taboo for the two main parties

It is not so much the elephant in the room as the big fat hairy mammoth. Brexit is the most consequential thing the Conservatives have done since the last election. More, it is the most impactful legacy of their 14-year stretch in power. When the histories are written, every other failure of this Tory era will be a footnote compared with that epic folly.

With Partygate and all the other scandals on his watch, Boris Johnson recklessly tested Britain’s tolerance for being governed by a prime minster who flagrantly debased standards in public life. With the maxi-disaster of her mini-budget, Liz Truss conducted a deranged experiment that exploded not just in her face, but blew the doors off the country. Ruinous to the Tory party’s reputation as those episodes were, nothing has left a wound as deep, gaping and untreated as that inflicted by Brexit. Yet there’s a conspiracy of silence about it from both the Tory leader and his Labour rival. It did not feature once, not even as an aside, in last week’s 60 minutes of televised mouth-to-mouth combat between the two. Rishi Sunak, who advocated Brexit, doesn’t want to talk about it for the obvious reason that none of the promises which accompanied that enterprise – “a new golden age” anyone? – has come true. He will also be aware that most voters have concluded it has been such a calamity for the UK that we ought never to have torn ourselves apart from the EU.

Continue reading...

Federal government says opposition is saying ‘white is black’ following Peter Dutton’s comments to News Corp on Paris climate agreement

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has savaged the Coalition after a frontbencher insisted the opposition was “absolutely committed” to the Paris climate agreement a day after leader Peter Dutton foreshadowed he would scrap Labor’s target to reduce emissions by 43% by 2030.

Dutton told the Weekend Australian he would oppose the legislated 2030 target – a 43% cut compared with 2005 levels – at the next election, declaring there was “no sense in ­signing up to targets you don’t have any prospect of achieving”.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

The main things to know as voters in 27 countries head to the ballot box to shape the next five years of European Union policies.

The main things to know as voters in 27 countries head to the ballot box to shape the next five years of European Union policies.

Economic growth has been ecologically costly — and so a movement in favor of ‘degrowth’ is growing.

Mt Buller had the country’s only ski-on chairlift operating on season’s opening day on Saturday – but snow is forecast for the week ahead

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

It was a grassy start to Australia’s ski season, with one resort trying to remain upbeat “although we may not have snow on the ground” and a few pockets of human-made alternatives to play on elsewhere.

Mt Buller, in Victoria, was blessed with the only ski-on chairlift in the entire country on the opening day of the winter season on Saturday.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Farmers and researchers tell of the impact of a rapidly changing climate, and the measures being taken to adapt

Paola Ferraro marches through the neat grids of vines that chequer the slopes of Monfumo and rattles off the number of ways violent weather hurts her family’s prosecco production.

Spring frost kills buds, summer hail storms thrash leaves, long droughts starve vines of water, while strong rains spark landslides that drown them in mud.

Continue reading...

Opposition leader reportedly told News Corp he would oppose the legislated 2030 emissions target – a 43% cut compared with 2005 levels – at the next election

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

Peter Dutton has been accused of planning to break Australia’s commitment to the landmark Paris climate agreement after he said he would reject the country’s 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target.

The opposition leader reportedly told the Weekend Australian that he would oppose the legislated 2030 emissions target – a 43% cut compared with 2005 levels – at the next election but remain committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

The new measure requires automakers to achieve an average of 65 miles per gallon for all the car models they sell by 2031.

Homeowners in areas battered by climate disasters are facing dizzying insurance rate increases. But builders of housing for the homeless and other low-income families are also struggling.