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Edinburgh activists target SUVs in solidarity with Spain’s flood victims
Tyre Extinguishers group stencils ‘These cars kill Valencians’ on 4x4s in city to highlight SUVs’ role in climate crisis
Climate activists in Scotland have carried out a series of actions against SUV cars, saying they are acting in solidarity with the victims of the Valencia floods.
The Tyre Extinguishers have called on their supporters to take actions against SUV cars in their areas, after members of the group in Edinburgh stencilled the sides of targeted vehicles on Sunday night with the words: “These cars kill Valencians.”
Continue reading...Why did so many die in Spain? Because Europe still hasn't accepted the realities of extreme weather | Friederike Otto
Severe flooding is, unfortunately, inevitable. What isn’t inevitable is how ready we are, from early warning systems to emergency services
- Friederike Otto is a climatologist and co-founder of World Weather Attribution
At the time of writing, the death toll has risen to 214. Battered cars and other debris are piled up in the streets, large swaths of Valencia remain underwater, and Spain is in mourning. On Sunday, anger erupted as the king and queen of Spain were pelted with mud and other objects by protesters. Why were so many lives lost in a flood that was well forecasted in a wealthy country?
From the global north’s vantage point, the climate crisis, caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, has long been seen as a distant threat, affecting poor people in the global south. This misconception has perpetuated a false sense of security.
Continue reading...Trump donor fined for pollution leads a fight to end methane emission penalties
Detailed plans from 30 oil and gas producers come amid historic levels of potent planet-heating emissions
A powerful US oil and gas industry lobby group has drawn up detailed plans to kill off penalties for emitting methane, a potent planet-heating gas that’s increasing at the fastest rate in decades, with this effort led by a major donor to Donald Trump whose company has just been fined for methane pollution.
Leaked internal documents from the American Exploration & Production Council (AXPC), a group of 30 oil and gas producers, outline a push to repeal a fee levied on methane emissions should the former US president win this week’s election and Republicans gain control of Congress.
Continue reading...Spain floods: searchers scour car parks and malls amid fears death toll will rise
Day after king and PM pelted by angry residents, search focuses on areas where people could have been trapped
Hundreds of civil and military emergency workers are searching shopping centres, garages and underground car parks for more victims of floods in the Valencia region that have killed at least 214 people, as public anger mounts over Spanish authorities’ handling of the disaster.
Yellow and amber weather warnings were in place for parts of Valencia and neighbouring Catalonia on Monday, with people in the affected areas advised to stay off the roads and keep away from the coast and rivers.
Continue reading...A Vote for Harris Is a Vote for the Planet
‘Two sides of the same coin’: governments stress links between climate and nature collapse
Representatives at the Cop16 summit in Colombia negotiated against a backdrop of extreme weather and ecosystem collapse
As world leaders gathered in Colombia this week, they also watched for news from home, where many of the headlines carried the catastrophic consequences of ecological breakdown. Across the Amazon rainforest and Brazil’s enormous wetlands, relentless fires had burned more than 22m hectares (55m acres). In Spain, the death toll in communities devastated by flooding passed 200. In the boreal forests that span Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada, countries were recording alarming signs that their carbon sinks were collapsing under a combined weight of drought, tree death and logging. As Canada’s wildfire season crept to a close, scientists calculated it was the second worst in two decades – behind only last year’s burn, which released more carbon than some of the world’s largest emitting countries.
In global negotiations, climate and nature move along two independent tracks, and for years were broadly treated as distinct challenges. But as negotiations closed at the Cop16 biodiversity summit in Cali on Saturday, ministers from around the world underscored the crucial importance of nature to limiting damage from global heating, and vice versa – emphasising that climate and biodiversity could no longer be treated as independent issues if either crisis was to be resolved. Countries agreed a text on links between the climate and nature, but failed to include language on a phase out of fossil fuels.
Continue reading...Mud flung at Spain's king as clean up and search efforts continue in flood aftermath – video
The search for people missing in Spain's flood-hit areas continued on Sunday as volunteers helped clear the damage caused by the flooding. On Saturday, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced that thousands of troops would be deployed to help response efforts. The death toll from the floods has risen to more than 210
Continue reading...Residents throw mud and insults at Spanish king on visit to flood-hit town
King Felipe heckled in Paiporta, one of the municipalities worst affected by last week’s floods
Hundreds of people have heckled Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia, as well as the prime minister and the regional leader of Valencia – throwing mud and shouting “murderers” – as the group attempted an official visit to one of the municipalities hardest hit by the deadly floods.
The scenes playing out in Paiporta on Sunday laid bare the mounting sense of abandonment among the devastated areas and the lingering anger over why an alert urging residents not to leave home on Tuesday was sent after the floods began surging.
Continue reading...Drone footage shows scale of devastation caused by Spain floods – video
Drone footage from Torrent, a city just outside Valencia, shows the scale of devastation caused to it by the floods last week. Authorities have announced that the number of casualties from the floods has risen above 200, with Spain's prime minister saying that thousands of troops, police and civil guards would be sent to affected regions to support response efforts
Spain floods: 10,000 troops and police drafted in to deal with disaster
The Guardian view on climate-linked disasters: Spain’s tragedy will not be the last
‘We didn’t realise how hard it is’: small farmers in Europe struggle to get by
Brutal economic situation has inflicted misery on farmers who struggle to turn a profit and forced some to look for alternative streams of revenue
When Coen van den Bighelaar first spoke to school friends about taking over their parents’ dairy farms, he was the only one of the four to voice serious doubts. Fresh out of university, he was making more money in a comfortable office than his father did toiling for twice as long in the field.
But six years later, Bighelaar has followed in his parents’ footsteps, while his friends’ enthusiasm has waned. One quit farming to take a job in logistics. Another opened a daycare centre to supplement the income from selling milk. A third is thinking about buying land and moving to Canada.
Continue reading...Chris Bowen on Trump, science and coal: ‘We’re living climate change. What we’re trying to do is avoid the worst of it’
The climate change minister is ‘disturbed’ by rising temperatures and increasingly unnatural natural disasters – but that’s what gets him out of bed every day
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In Spain, more than 200 people have been killed after the deadliest floods in the country’s modern history. Australia is heating faster than the global average, meaning more extreme heat events, longer fire seasons, increasingly intense heavy rain and sea level rise. And globally, this year is highly likely to be the hottest on record, beating the current title holder, 2023. For some, this escalating scientific evidence can be alarming. But the person in charge of Australia’s response to the climate crisis says that is not a word he would choose.
“If alarm implies concern, sure. But alarm implying surprise? No,” says Chris Bowen, the country’s climate change and energy minister.
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Continue reading...Amid Flood Cleanup in Spain, Residents Try to Make Sense of the Disaster
Spain floods disaster: 5,000 more troops drafted in to deal with aftermath
Pedro Sánchez orders largest ever peacetime troop deployment to deal with flooding that has killed 211 people
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has ordered the country’s largest ever peacetime military deployment, announcing that another 5,000 troops will be drafted in to help deal with the aftermath of this week’s devastating floods, which have killed at least 211 people in eastern, southern and central regions.
Speaking after chairing a meeting of the flood crisis committee, Sánchez said the government was mobilising all the resources at its disposal to deal with the “terrible tragedy”, which stuck hardest in the eastern region of Valencia. He also acknowledged that much of the help still wasn’t getting through and called for unity and an end to political bickering and blame games.
Continue reading...How a Trump Win Would Upend Major Climate Court Fights
¿Las estufas de gas son malas para la salud?
How the U.S. Election Matters for the Rest of the World
Biden Won’t Attend COP29 Climate Talks in Baku, Azerbaijan
How a Year of Rain Flooded Spain in Eight Hours
The week around the world in 20 pictures
Flash floods in Spain, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and the New York Halloween parade: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Continue reading...The Guardian view on climate-linked disasters: Spain’s tragedy will not be the last | Editorial
More than 200 deaths and widespread destruction in Valencia are the latest sign of danger in a warming world
The death toll from floods in Spain’s Valencia region has topped 200. A huge clean-up is under way amid desperate conditions, with severe weather warnings still in place. The storms which caused this devastation – with roads turned into muddy rivers, thousands of homes deluged and cars swept into piles – were unprecedented. The gota fría, or “cold drop”, is a regular occurrence when cold autumnal air moves over the warm Mediterranean, causing dense clouds to form. But this rain, according to the Spanish weather service, was 10 times stronger than a normal downpour.
Extreme weather in Spain, and the rest of southern Europe, is more commonly understood to mean dangerous heat, drought and wildfires. The regional government is under attack regarding the lack of sufficient warnings and there is no doubt that the severity of these floods came as a terrible shock.
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