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Afghanistan flash floods kill more than 300 as torrents of water and mud crash through villages
Survivors pick through debris-littered streets and damaged buildings as rescue workers dispatched amid warning some areas cut off by flooding
More than 300 people were killed in flash floods that ripped through multiple provinces in Afghanistan, the UN’s World Food Programme said, as authorities declared a state of emergency and rushed to rescue the injured.
Many people remained missing after heavy rains on Friday sent roaring rivers of water and mud crashing through villages and across agricultural land in several provinces, causing what one aid group described as a “major humanitarian emergency”.
Continue reading...Ministers consider making UK’s carbon targets easier to meet
Fears Climate Change Committee’s advice not to allow carryover from last carbon budget will be ignored
Ministers are considering plans to weaken the UK’s carbon-cutting plans by allowing the unused portion of the last carbon budget to be carried over to the next period.
This would go against the strong recommendation of the government’s statutory climate advisers, the Climate Change Committee.
Continue reading...Brutal heatwaves and submerged cities: what a 3C world would look like
Climate scientists have told the Guardian they expect catastrophic levels of global heating. Here’s what that would mean for the planet
- World is on edge of climate abyss, UN warns
- Climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target
Global heating is likely to soar past internationally agreed limits, according to a Guardian survey of hundreds of leading climate experts, bringing catastrophic heatwaves, floods and storms.
Only 6% of the respondents thought the 1.5C limit could be achieved, and this would require extraordinarily fast, radical action to halt and reverse the world’s rising emissions from fossil fuel burning.
Continue reading...At least 50 dead after flash flooding in northern Afghanistan
Death toll may rise as search continues for victims under mud and rubble and as more rain approaches
At least 50 people, mainly women and children, have been killed in flash flooding in the northern Afghanistan province of Baghlan.
The number was confirmed by Hedayatullah Hamdard, the head of the provincial natural disaster management department, who said it could increase in the coming days.
Continue reading...The week around the world in 20 pictures
War in Gaza, floods in Kenya and Brazil, the Olympic flame in Marseille and the Met Gala in New York: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing
Continue reading...California Will Add a Fixed Charge to Electric Bills and Reduce Rates
It’s not all doom and gloom when it comes to the climate | Fiona Katauskas
You just need to know who to listen to
- See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here
From Ancient Charcoal, Hints of Wildfires to Come
The climate crisis is no laughing matter, no matter what those on Radio 4’s Today programme think | Bill McGuire
As a scientist, I’m faced with indifference and a failure to understand the reality of the climate crisis every day. We must wake people up
- Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL
Do you find climate breakdown funny? Do you think it’s a laughing matter that we are on track to bequeath to our children and their children a planet changed for the worse beyond all recognition? I don’t – and I’m sure the presenters of Radio 4’s Today programme don’t either. But I couldn’t help feeling we were having a bit of a Don’t Look Up moment yesterday, hearing them brush off predictions by top climate scientists that our world will end up at least 2.5C hotter as depressing and “gloomy”. This is not to say that laughter and grim news shouldn’t or can’t go together. I work with comedians to help get the climate crisis message across, but we use humour to aid understanding and to help cope, not to denigrate and mock.
The truth is that most people, including many professional journalists, and most politicians, don’t really “get” climate breakdown. Partly this reflects a heads-in-the-sand attitude, but mainly it flags a poor understanding of just how bad things are set to get.
Continue reading...Two Just Stop Oil protesters attack Magna Carta’s glass case
Group says two women in their 80s took hammer and chisel to protective glass at British Library
Two Just Stop Oil protesters have smashed the glass around Magna Carta at the British Library.
The Rev Sue Parfitt, 82, and Judy Bruce, 85, a retired biology teacher, targeted the protective enclosure with a hammer and chisel on Friday morning.
Continue reading...Brazil is reeling from catastrophic floods. What went wrong – and what does the future hold?
In the country’s south, up to half of the annual predicted rain fell in just 10 days – the third such event in a year. Experts say it is time to plan for a new normal
- Photographs by Daniel Marenco
When the torrential rain began to swallow her city block, Cristiane Batista, 34, grabbed her three children, a couple of backpacks and her smartphone and waited at the door, hoping to be picked up by the municipal trucks preparing to evacuate the population of Muçum, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
“I was terrified. The house was about to flood. We had to get out of there,” she says.
Continue reading...‘No alternative’: EU climate chief urges MEPs not to use crisis as political tool
Exclusive: Wopke Hoekstra says EU must press ahead with cutting greenhouse gases and use policy to bring about economic benefits
Europe’s climate chief has warned against politicians trying to use the climate crisis as a wedge issue in the forthcoming EU parliament elections, calling instead for climate policy that will bring wider economic benefits.
Wopke Hoekstra, the EU commissioner for climate action, said Europe had no choice but to press ahead with strong measures to cut greenhouse gases, whoever was in power, but added that more attention was needed to help businesses thrive in a low-carbon world.
Continue reading...Mass planting of marsh violets key to saving rare UK butterfly, says National Trust
Trust aims to boost small pearl-bordered fritillary colonies in Shropshire Hills by planting 20,000 violets this year for their caterpillars
A mass planting of marsh violets across England’s Shropshire Hills is to take place to try to prevent further decline of the small pearl-bordered fritillary or Boloria selene, a rare UK butterfly.
The small pearl-bordered fritillary’s distribution across the UK has plunged 71% since the mid 1970s and the species is now listed as vulnerable, according to the 2022 state of UK butterflies report.
Continue reading...Fixation on UK nuclear power may not help to solve climate crisis
Waste and cost among drawbacks, as researchers say renewables could power UK entirely
In the battle to prevent the climate overheating, wind and solar are making impressive inroads into the once dominant market share of coal. Even investors in gas plants are increasingly seen as taking a gamble.
With researchers at Oxford and elsewhere agreeing that the UK could easily become entirely powered by wind and solar – with no fossil fuels required – it seems an anomaly that nuclear power is still getting the lion’s share of taxpayer subsidies to keep the ailing industry alive.
Continue reading...‘I am starting to panic about my child’s future’: climate scientists wary of starting families
A fifth of female climate scientists who responded to Guardian survey said they had opted to have no or fewer children
“I had the hormonal urges,” said Prof Camille Parmesan, a leading climate scientist based in France. “Oh my gosh, it was very strong. But it was: ‘Do I really want to bring a child into this world that we’re creating?’ Even 30 years ago, it was very clear the world was going to hell in a handbasket. I’m 62 now and I’m actually really glad I did not have children.”
Parmesan is not alone. An exclusive Guardian survey has found that almost a fifth of the female climate experts who responded have chosen to have no children, or fewer children, due to the environmental crises afflicting the world.
Continue reading...The doom vs. optimism debate
At a Dinner, Trump Assailed Climate Rules and Asked $1 Billion From Big Oil
10 Big Biden Environmental Rules, and What They Mean
UK farmers consider quitting after extreme wet weather and low profits
Farmers ‘on the brink’ after record rains, phasing out of EU subsidies and price volatility
British farmers are considering walking away from their farms as the recent record run of wet weather has left the sector “on the brink”, rural bodies have warned.
The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) and the Soil Association raised concerns over the perilous situations facing many in their industry, with profits being squeezed and extreme weather driven by the climate crisis putting financial and mental strain on farm owners.
Continue reading...