Climate

Talks on the world’s first treaty to tackle plastic pollution will continue in coming months, delegates said.

Worcestershire town has been flooded seven times in past four years and shop owners can no longer afford insurance

In the aftermath of its latest flood, the town centre of Tenbury Wells was a scene of chaos. The main street was caked with a layer of mud, shop windows were smashed and piles of sodden furniture and wares, all ruined, were heaped in the street.

“On Monday when we came in we wanted to leave, lock the doors and just disappear,” said Richard Sharman, the owner of Garlands Flowers. “We’ve lost about £6,000 and we won’t get a penny back. Six weeks ago we lost about £4,000 in a flood.”

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Policymakers must act as extreme weather events put more pressure on food inflation and production worldwide

Your morning – and afternoon – coffee is the latest staple threatened by climate chaos: the price of quality arabica beans shot to its highest level in almost 50 years last week amid fears of a poor harvest in Brazil.

It follows warnings that orange crops have been wiped out by the catastrophic floods in Valencia, Spain; and the soaring cost of olive oil in recent years, as the southern Mediterranean has sweltered.

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Report calls for course correction to avoid land abuse ‘compromising Earth’s capacity to support human and environmental wellbeing’

Land degradation is expanding worldwide at the rate of 1m sq km every year, undermining efforts to stabilise the climate, protect nature and ensure sustainable food supplies, a study has highlighted.

The degraded area is already 15m sq km, an area greater than Antarctica, the scientific report says, and it calls for an urgent course correction to avoid land abuse “irretrievably compromising Earth’s capacity to support human and environmental wellbeing”.

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Everyone benefits from government weather forecasting. Republicans have the chance to make it better.

An extreme heat wave off California’s coast seemed like an anomaly 10 years ago. But as the ocean warms, the catastrophe may be a glimpse of the future.

Nature is going to solve the problem by eliminating the modern human

In response to Ashish Ghadiali’s story last week (“Yes, there is a lot of greenwashing, but Cop summits are our best chance of averting climate breakdown”, Comment, last week), nearly 70 years ago Gilbert Plass coined the term “climate change” in a paper in the journal Tellus.

Most of that 70 years has been spent arguing over the reality of climate change, an argument by vested interests that continues to this day. Meanwhile, global warming has continued to rise due to the burning of fossil fuels. Now, polar ice caps and glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, causing sea level rises and threatening the survival of over half the world’s population living on islands and in coastal zones near sea level.

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Delegates from more than 170 countries are working to salvage a treaty that would tackle the growing problem of plastic pollution.

Villagers hit by extreme weather accuse Labour of neglecting flood defences as Reform UK reaps political rewards – while denying impact of climate crisis

Thick, dark slurry flecked with stones and twigs covers the entire ground floor of Ralph Connor and Tina Honeyfield’s terraced house in the former coal mining village of Cwmtillery in south Wales. They use the lights on their phone to show what happened when a long-abandoned coal tip collapsed during last weekend’s torrential rainfall and surged through their front and back doors.

“Our house bore the brunt of the landslide… I spent an hour holding the door to prevent the slurry from getting in [last Sunday night],” says Connor, 49, as he stands in the cold gloom of their powerless living room. “It was frightening but when you are in it, you just react. It’s fight or flight.”

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Some in the US are reconsidering children, with fears over reproductive healthcare and the climate crisis front of mind

Chris Peterson wasn’t surprised that Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. But he was surprised by how quickly he and his wife started asking one another: should we try to have another baby before a possible nationwide abortion ban takes effect? Or should we give up on having a second child?

Peterson and his wife, who live in North Carolina, are thousands of dollars in debt because their first child needed to spend weeks in the hospital after being born prematurely. They had wanted to pay off that debt and wait a few years before having a second baby. But now, reproductive rights are again in the balance – Trump has said he would veto a nationwide abortion ban, but his allies are emboldened to push through more restrictions.

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A way to personally connect with wildlife is vital when statistics alone can’t convey the scale of the loss

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid struck Earth, causing the extinction of around 75% of all species. This event was so significant that we now use it to define the boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. There had only been four extinction events of this magnitude up until then; today, we are living through the sixth – and we are its cause.

News of the sixth mass-extinction often comes in the form of statistics – 1 million species threatened with extinction; extinctions now occurring up to 1,000 times more frequently than before humans – and we are left none the wiser about what it is we are losing. A few years ago, I asked the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for a list of species that had recently gone extinct. I wanted to understand what was happening to the natural world, beyond the numbers. The list they sent back contained species from all over the world. One in particular, however, stood out to me.

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Unlike the other major cities that appear on lists of unsafe places, New Orleans has a striking competitive advantage.

Gov. Kathy Hochul is contending with pressures from environmental advocates and President-elect Donald Trump as she charts a path forward.

The ceasefire in Lebanon, the aftermath of floods in Valencia, Russian airstrikes in Kyiv and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

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Government puts forward £1.98bn in funding over three years, an increase of about 40% on last pledge

The UK has increased its contribution to the World Bank, in a move that will boost prospects for climate finance.

Next week, at a meeting in Seoul of the International Development Association (IDA) – the body that funds the World Bank’s support for low-income countries – the UK will put forward £1.98bn in funding over three years, an increase of about 40% on the previous pledge.

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A ‘covalent organic framework’ can be used to capture carbon to store it or convert it for industrial use

An innocuous yellow powder, created in a lab, could be a new way to combat the climate crisis by absorbing carbon from the air.

Just half a pound of the stuff may remove as much carbon dioxide as a tree can, according to early tests. Once the carbon is absorbed by the powder, it can be released into safe storage or be used in industrial processes, like carbonizing drinks.

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More burial sites are forgoing pristine lawns for drought resistant plants and wildflowers that help wildlife. Efforts picked up in the pandemic.

Paul Varry was run over on a city street in what prosecutors suspect was a deliberate act of road rage, as bikers and drivers choose sides.

Paul Varry was run over on a city street in what prosecutors suspect was a deliberate act of road rage, as bikers and drivers choose sides.

Satellite data analysis suggests algal blooms could be behind mass die-off in Botswana that sparked flurry of theories in 2020

More than 350 elephants that died in mysterious circumstances probably drank toxic water, according to a new paper that warns of an “alarming trend” in climate-induced poisoning.

The deaths in Botswana’s Okavango delta were described by scientists as a “conservation disaster”. Elephants of all ages were seen walking in circles before collapsing and dying. Carcasses were first spotted in north-eastern Botswana in May and June 2020, with many theories circulating about the cause of death, including cyanide poisoning or an unknown disease.

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