Climate

Pollution is affecting the climate, biodiversity, ecosystems, ocean acidification and human health, according to analysis

Plastic pollution is changing the processes of the entire Earth system, exacerbating climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and the use of freshwater and land, according to scientific analysis.

Plastic must not be treated as a waste problem alone, the authors said, but as a product that poses harm to ecosystems and human health.

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Diplomats and leaders from around the world are gathering for annual climate negotiations. Here’s what they’re all about and what Donald Trump’s victory means for the meeting.

Warming climate has caused rivers used for transport to dry up, leaving children with little food, water or school access, says Unicef

Two years of severe drought in the Amazon rainforest have left nearly half a million children facing shortages of water and food or limited access to school, according to a UN report.

Scant rainfall and extreme heat driven by the climate crisis have caused rivers in what is usually the wettest region on Earth to retreat so much that they can no longer be traversed by boats, cutting off communities.

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Voters have never been swayed by ‘rational debate’. Only a genuine change in the way we do politics can prevent the march of the right

We were losing slowly. Now we are losing quickly. Democracy, accountability, human rights, social justice – all were rolling backwards as money swarmed our politics. Above all, our life-support systems – the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, ice and snow – have been hammered and hammered, regardless of who is in power. Donald Trump might strike the killer blows, but he is not the cause of an ecocidal economic system. He is the embodiment of it.

Under Joe Biden, the US was missing its own climate goals, and those goals were insufficient to meet the global objective of limiting heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. That target in turn might not be tight enough to prevent a tipping of Earth systems. Already, at roughly 1.3C of heating, we see what looks alarmingly like climatic flickering: the ever wilder perturbations that tend to precede the collapse of a complex system.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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One supports Zionism and the other is horrified by what is happening in Gaza. Could moving on to the climate crisis bring them closer together?

Maria, 53, Manchester

Occupation Recruitment director

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A new report, urging rich nations to give more climate aid to poorer ones, comes as Donald Trump’s election throws global climate talks into disarray.

The former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, famously said, “you campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”

But if you campaign with lies, you will govern with lies.

Donald Trump and JD Vance just became President- and Vice President-elect by relying heavily on cruel, hateful, and disinforming rhetoric. Throughout the campaign, both candidates, their spokespeople, and surrogates relied on overt, unapologetic racism, on targeted anti-trans ad buys and messages, and on attacks on climate change science, policy, and progress, to name just a few examples of their key messages.

We should expect them to spread more hate speech and disinformation after they are inaugurated. And we should understand that we don’t have to stand by helplessly when they do.

Lies our president-elect told us

Disinformation, the intentional spreading of lies, is a form of propaganda. Those who wield it as a political tactic have three main goals: to spur and stoke division, to reinforce political and cultural identities that weaken discourse and democracy, and to maintain or reinforce existing power structures and undermine progress.

The Trump-Vance campaign stoked political division by amplifying Russian disinformation about the federal government’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. This content dovetailed perfectly with their campaign’s anti-immigrant, anti-government, and anti-US-support-for-Ukraine narratives.

There are many ways in which Russia, a petrostate, benefits from its state media outlets and from social media accounts spreading lies during the US election process, but an obvious one is that Russia profits from a US government that undermines international climate negotiations and progress by withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Joseph Goebbels, the chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, disclosed the “secret of propaganda” when he remarked that “those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.”

Over the past decade or so, we have seen strategic and successful efforts from the fossil fuel industry and its allies to cement disinforming narratives into political and cultural identity, and the Trump-Vance campaign joined in whole-heartedly. In their statements and posts, climate science and solutions denial overlapped with other conspiratorial thinking—about COVID19, global economic initiatives, drivers of migration, immigrants themselves, and antisemitism.

It’s hard to find common ground on climate policy when a significant proportion of the public has been sold lies about climate science, scientists, advocates, and progress. This, of course, is the point. Climate disinformation is intended to deny science, deceive the public, delay action, or dodge responsibility. In so doing, it maintains the power of the fossil fuel industry and its political allies and locks the world’s people into an increasingly dangerous future.

Quid pro quote

Come January, the fossil fuel industry has a powerful and shameless ally in the White House. We can expect even fewer brakes on worst impulses and actions in the second Trump administration.

During the 2024 campaign, candidate Trump reportedly offered to “roll back a slew of environmental regulations in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions” from the fossil fuel industry. If these allegations are true, it is astonishing and appalling that the President-elect solicited a campaign contribution in exchange for anti-environmental (and anti-health) action, and even quoted his price.

A Senate investigation into the issue has been stymied, lawmakers say, because big oil and gas companies are not responding, though “none of them have denied the accuracy of the reporting.”

Big Oil companies are demonstrated purveyors and chief beneficiaries of climate disinformation, but they’re not in it alone. Big Tech, including some companies that own large online search engines and social media platforms, are fossil fuel industry accomplices—they too spread and profit off climate lies, greenwash their own business practices, and support anti-climate officials, including President-elect Donald Trump.

What to expect while we’re reflecting

I’m not saying, better the devil you know, but this isn’t our first go-around with a Trump administration.

We should be confident that how candidates Trump and Vance behaved in the election is once again how they’ll govern, and that because of the strategic thinking behind Project 2025, a second Trump White House will be better prepared to do serious, long-term harm to the US government, the people in the country, and our climate.

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that we will see continued

• attacks on the truth-tellers, that is scientists and science-based advocates,
• efforts to exacerbate political and social division rather than to help people suffering from climate-fueled disasters,
• lies about climate-fueled disasters and risks (anyone remember Sharpiegate?),
• fuel for conspiratorial thinking that undermines trust in democracy, institutions, science, and other people.

Yes, the administration will change in January 2025, but some things won’t. When confronted with climate disinformation or by conspiratorial thinkers, it’s still best not to waste time on bad faith arguments or in playing scientific whack-a-mole. It’s still best to speak with curiosity and empathy with people you love who’ve been disinformed. It’s still kind and wise to ask them where they’re getting their information, and why it resonates with them.

And if people you care about are attracted to conspiracist thinking, boy, have you got an ACTUAL conspiracy for them—the actions of the fossil fuel industry and its pals (see here, here, and here).

Hold Big Tech accountable, too

I often hear that in the United States, taking action to stop the spread of climate disinformation online is impossible because of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. I think that, to a certain extent, this is a red herring. As an analogy, I have a right to my opinion but I don’t have the right to publish that opinion in the New York Times.

Many platforms and search engines already have editorial policies, including policies against certain categories of mis- and disinformation. An oft-cited criterion for removing mis- or disinforming content is that, as Meta/Facebook writes, it “directly contribute(s) to the risk of imminent physical harm.”  That’s why, with climate impacts being ever more heavily borne around the world, it’s important to demand that platforms include climate disinformation in their lists of barred content.

Here are some other demands UCS, as part of the global Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition, has for Big Tech:

• Throttle bad actors’ posts. Online climate-disinforming content originates from a small number of accounts. If accounts repeatedly defy anti-disinformation policies, platforms can “throttle” or delay content from those accounts, fact-checking BEFORE allowing posts to go live and spread falsehoods and harm.
• Don’t profit. Platforms and search engines can simply STOP advertising, monetizing, and amplifying climate disinformation.
• Do better. We can all work together to demand that search engines and social media platforms develop new, counter disinformation policies and/or strengthen and enforce existing ones.

Struggle on

There’s a long, hard road ahead of us and a lot of uncertainty. One thing I am sure about is that no effort to clean up and safeguard the systems that inform (and too often, disinform) the world will be wasted. Counter disinformation work is crucial to building a world in which facts, science, truth matter, and democracy ultimately prevails.

Americans will be stuck cleaning up after Maga’s destructive streak because men like this never clean up after themselves

Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do. Our mistake was to see the joy, the extraordinary balance between idealism and pragmatism, the energy, the generosity, the coalition-building of the Kamala Harris campaign and think that it must triumph over the politics of lies and resentment. Our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are, whether it applied to who was willing to vote for a supremely qualified Black woman or who was willing to vote for an adjudicated rapist and convicted criminal who admires Hitler. Our mistake was to think we could row this boat across the acid lake before the acid dissolved it.

We knew what the problems were, and we wanted to fix them. The principal problems that got us to this bleakest moment in American history are intertwined. They are the crisis of masculinity, the failure of the mainstream news media and the rise of Silicon Valley, and in a way they are all the same problem.

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People urged to stop flow of misinformation as fire department says it is hindering work to save citizens

Home to more than 120 shops, a cinema and 34 restaurants, the Bonaire shopping centre had long been known as one of the largest in the Valencia region. After flood waters coursed through the municipality of Aldaia last week, it began making headlines for another reason: disinformation over the fate of its vast underground car park.

Online personalities, including one with more than 10 million followers, along with a prominent TV host and a far-right activist, seized on the fact that rescuers had been unable to enter the car park, falsely claiming that it contained hundreds – if not thousands – of bodies.

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Copernicus Climate Change Service says 2024 marks ‘a new milestone’ and should raise ambitions at Cop29 summit

It is “virtually certain” that 2024 will be the hottest year on record, the European Union’s space programme has found.

The prognosis comes the week before diplomats meet at the Cop29 climate summit and a day after a majority of voters in the US, the biggest historical polluter of planet-heating gas, chose to make Donald Trump president.

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The new report also says that global warming has hit a threshold, at least temporarily, that countries had pledged to avoid.

Democrats had attacked Donald J. Trump’s ties to the conservative policy blueprint for reshaping the federal government. Several of its authors served in his administration.

The head of the World Bank on what comes next after the U.S. election.

How damaging this presidency is to the planet depends very much on how other countries react. There’s no time to waste

• US election 2024 live: latest news and updates
• US election results 2024: live map and tracker

Donald Trump’s re-election to the White House is a major setback for climate action but ultimately it’s the US that could end up losing out, as the rest of the world will move forward without it.

The US is the world’s biggest economy and its second biggest emitter. Positive US engagement on climate has been crucial to landmark leaps forward, like getting the Paris agreement over the line, and just last year committing to transitioning away from fossil fuels.

The US missing in action in the latter half of this critical decade for climate action is nobody’s idea of a good outcome.

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President-elect Donald J. Trump promised to delete climate policy. He could face pushback from Republicans benefiting from a boom in clean energy.

The Trump victory sets back the world’s attempt to rein in dangerous levels of warming and potentially isolates the United States in the global energy transition.

MEPs express concern for EU climate leadership as commission head confirms she will miss Baku summit

Ursula von der Leyen’s decision to miss the Cop29 climate summit is “a fatal signal” and raises questions about Europe’s commitment to the climate crisis, observers have said.

The European Commission confirmed on Tuesday that its president would not attend the UN climate talks in Baku, which start on Monday. “The commission is in a transition phase and the president will therefore focus on her institutional duties,” a spokesperson said.

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Election of a ‘climate denier’ to US presidency poses ‘major threat to the planet’, environmentalists say

• US election 2024 – latest updates
• US election results 2024: live map and tracker
• Senate and House results 2024: live maps and tracker

Donald Trump’s new term as US president poses a grave threat to the planet if it blows up the international effort to curb dangerous global heating, stunned climate experts have warned in the wake of his decisive election victory.

Trump’s return to the White House is widely expected to result in the US, yet again, exiting the Paris climate agreement and may even remove American involvement in the underpinning United Nations framework to deal with the climate crisis.

Trump wins the presidency – how did it happen?

Republicans retake control of the Senate

Abortion ballot measure results by state

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He invented a computer model that made it possible to measure human-induced climate change. He also helped break a color barrier in science.

The Murrumbidgee River had 55% less water in 2018 than it did in 1988, with the Lowbidgee flood plain hardest hit

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A section of one of Australia’s longest rivers, the Murrumbidgee, lost more than half of its water over a 30-year period due to dams and other diversions, according to new research.

Scientists at the University of New South Wales examined the impacts of dam infrastructure and irrigation on natural water flows in the lower Murrumbidgee River since 1890.

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