Climate

On my return to the UK from Brazil I’ve seen how northern latitudes are behaving like the equatorial margins

Returning to British suburbia from the Brazilian Amazon is always disconcerting, but it has been doubly weird in the past few days because the London commuter belt has been inundated with volumes of rain that normally belong in the tropics.

Mini-tornadoes, flash floods and the dumping of a month’s worth of rain in a single day have flooded transport hubs, high street pubs, and the shrubs of semidetached homes.

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!

It isn’t fit for humans now,

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Lilly, an 8.5-metre tall puppet designed to help children talk about the environment, provokes mixed response

They say it is rude to comment on a baby’s appearance but that has not stopped the residents of Rochdale, who awoke on Wednesday to a “freaky” new arrival.

Lilly, an 8.5-metre tall puppet designed to help children talk about the environment, went on display in the town centre to a somewhat bewildered response.

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Around the country, people with a deep distrust of government want to preemptively ban the use of aerosols to reduce heat from the sun.

Ethanol made from maize has been touted as a green fuel, but a closer look at its production puts paid to this claim

Ethanol made from corn was touted as a clean, renewable fuel for vehicles. Because the maize plants absorb carbon dioxide as they grow they were deemed environmentally friendly, and this is now big business in the US where billions of gallons of ethanol are blended into nearly all petrol supplies.

The problem is that actually ethanol is worse for the climate than petrol. Growing maize and producing ethanol from its starch ends up creating more greenhouse gas emissions than petrol – tilling the land for maize releases carbon in the soil, fertilisers produce their own emissions and emissions are given off when ethanol is burned in engines.

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Terry Tempest Williams shares her experience surviving the terror and beauty of a flash flood.

Some restless entrepreneurs are releasing pollutants in the sky to try to cool the planet.

Wildlife experts fear that a rat could disrupt the island’s delicate balance, so they are pulling out all the stops.

At a New York Times Climate Forward event, Kevin D. Roberts said climate change amounted to a “hot year.”

US president also mocks former president’s windmill conspiracy theories at Climate Week event in New York

Joe Biden has lauded the US’s progress in fighting the climate crisis during his presidency, while also criticizing Donald Trump for his dismissal of the “more dangerous world” that global heating poses to future generations.

The US president was speaking at a Bloomberg event on Tuesday being held as part of Climate Week in New York, a summit that runs alongside the United Nations general assembly, which the US president spoke at earlier in the day.

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In 27 states, utilities can disconnect power for non-payment on the hottest days, which can have deadly consequences

Michael Crowley runs his air conditioner nonstop on hot summer days to keep his cat, Arya, comfortable. But when the Richmond, Virginia, chef got home after work on 7 August 2022, it “felt like 100 degrees”. His power was out. He phoned his leasing office and was told his electricity bill was unpaid.

Crowley protested, saying his utilities had long been covered by his rent check. But then he learned his building’s new property manager required tenants to pay for power separately – something Crowley said was unclear. No one told him about the delinquent bill, he said.

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Letter says technologies to produce blue hydrogen and capture CO2 are unproven and could hinder net zero efforts

Leading climate scientists are urging the government to pause plans for a billion pound investment in “green technologies” they say are unproven and would make it harder for the UK to reach its net zero targets.

Labour has promised to invest £1bn in carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) to produce blue hydrogen and to capture carbon dioxide from new gas-fired power stations – with a decision on the first tranche of the funding expected imminently.

Lock the UK into fossil fuel production for generations to come.

Result in huge upstream emissions from methane leaks, transport and processing of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US.

Rely on carbon capture and storage (CCS) during the production of hydrogen – technology they say has been abandoned in the vast majority of similar projects around the world.

Pose a danger to the public if there are any leaks from pipes carrying the captured carbon. At least 45 people had to be taken to hospital after a leak in the US.

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In his first interview with Western media since becoming president of Senegal, Bassirou Diomaye Faye said the United Nations has to change to reflect changing world demographics.

As climate change threatens the availability of food, we must diversify what’s on our plates.

Nine climate protesters have stopped a coal train headed to the Port of Newcastle in opposition to the federal government’s approval of three new mining projects. Rising Tide, the group behind the move, said in a statement that the three projects – Whitehaven Coal’s Narrabri thermal coal project to 2066, Mach Energy’s Mount Pleasant thermal coal project to 2058 and Yancoal’s Ashton coal project to 2064 – would create 1.4bn tonnes of emissions

• Tanya Plibersek approves three coalmine expansions in move criticised as ‘the opposite of climate action’

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Until the government changes its stance on the environment and the war in Gaza and Lebanon, there is nothing to celebrate

On Monday morning, we walked into the main hall of Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool, before the keynote speech of the chancellor, Rachel Reeves. What we did next, you might have seen.

Shortly after Reeves began her address, two of us stood to speak out on Labour’s complicity in suspected Israeli war crimes, and the party’s ties to climate-wrecking corporations. We were there on behalf of Climate Resistance, a group campaigning to end the cosy relationship between politics and the fossil fuel industry. Just like arms manufacturers, oil companies have been guilty of hindering democratic processes with donations and lobbying, putting human lives on the line for their own profits.

Jack McGinn is a climate activist with Climate Resistance

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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Andy Jarvis, Bruce Friedrich, Will Harris and Katie Cantrell are part of a group focused on food who are leading conversations at the Times’s Climate Forward Changemaker Lunch.

Jamal Lewis and Aloja Airewele are part of a group focused on electrification. They are leading conversations at the Times’s Climate Forward Changemaker Lunch.

For over two decades the city’s mayor has reclaimed public space for people and limited vehicles in the city center, which reduced traffic and improved air quality.

With electricity scarce, Africa’s most populated country struggles to provide lifesaving cooling without worsening the very crisis causing the heat.

Solutions to the problem of climate change have never been more clear. But the scale of the problem keeps getting bigger.