The Guardian Climate Change

Wind power developer eyes legal remedies to order that blocks renewable energy projects and eliminates green job opportunities

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The buildout of renewable energy projects in downstate New York – the region that includes the Hudson valley and below – is often complicated. The space for these projects is limited, particularly in New York City, and they’re often expensive.

Exclusive: Head of Fire Brigades Union calls for statutory body to set national standards amid fears for public safety

• National parks warn of ‘catastrophic’ risk this Easter

Wildfires across the UK during hot, dry springs and summers have exposed a “postcode lottery” of firefighting resources that must be addressed, the head of the Fire Brigades Union has said.

Steve Wright, the general secretary, said public safety was at risk, and called for a statutory body to ensure that each fire and rescue service had enough staff and appliances.

Weeks of fires amid warm and dry spell have decimated ecosystems and threatened endangered species, say experts

• Wildfires expose ‘postcode lottery’ of firefighting resources

Britain’s national parks have warned of a “catastrophic” risk from wildfires this Easter after one of the driest early spring seasons on record.

Park rangers from the South Downs to the Highlands said the prolonged warm weather and breezy conditions had left large areas extremely dry despite recent rain.

In an exclusive extract from Friederike Otto’s new book, she says climate disasters result from inequality as well as fossil fuel

My research as a climate scientist is in attribution science. Together with my team, I analyse extreme weather events and answer the questions of whether, and to what extent, human-induced climate change has altered their frequency, intensity and duration.

When I first began my research, most scientists claimed that these questions couldn’t be answered. There were technical reasons for this: for a long time, researchers had no weather models capable of mapping all climate-related processes in sufficient detail. But there were other reasons that had less to do with the research itself.

Not since Tony Benn has a Labour minister been so assailed – and not just by the Tory press, but also by his own colleagues

Why exactly does Ed Miliband make so many people so angry? At 55, 20 years into his parliamentary career, with rare ministerial experience under both New Labour and Keir Starmer, and a reputation around Westminster and Whitehall as one of politics’ nicer, more knowledgeable characters, he could be a respected figure in a generally inexperienced government. Instead, he’s this unpopular administration’s most controversial member.

“An eco-zealot”, “a net-zero fanatic”, a “nauseating” hypocrite, “a cackling madman”, an “eco-Marxist”, “out of control”, “trashing Britain”, “a recruiting sergeant for the opposition”, the “most dangerous man in Britain” – Miliband provokes rightwing journalists and voters like no other minister. Possibly not since the onslaught in the 1970s on the socialist disruptor Tony Benn, whom Miliband later worked for as a teenager, has a Labour minister been so relentlessly targeted. Even the long-running and complex crisis in Britain’s steel industry has become an opportunity to blame him, despite him being secretary of state for energy security and net zero for fewer than 10 months.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

Nearly a quarter of shareholders vote against the chair, Helge Lund, as green protesters are blocked from entering

BP suffered an investor rebellion on Thursday after facing shareholders for the first time since abandoning its climate strategy at a meeting marred by protest.

About a quarter of shareholders voted against the chair, Helge Lund, at the company’s annual meeting in Sunbury-on-Thames, on the edges of London, which attracted protest from several green campaign groups.

Liberals in the US make up about 15% of the prepping scene and their numbers are growing. Their fears differ from their better-known rightwing counterparts – as do their methods

One afternoon in February, hoping to survive the apocalypse or at least avoid finding myself among its earliest victims, I logged on to an online course entitled Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics.

Some of my classmates had activated their cameras. I scrolled through the little windows, noting the alarmed faces, downcast in cold laptop light. There were dozens of us on the call, including a geophysicist, an actor, a retired financial adviser and a civil engineer. We all looked worried, and rightly so. The issue formerly known as climate change was now a polycrisis called climate collapse. H1N1 was busily jumping from birds to cows to people. And with each passing day, as Donald Trump went about gleefully dismantling state capacity, the promise of a competent government response to the next hurricane, wildfire, flood, pandemic, drought, mudslide, heatwave, financial meltdown, hailstorm or other calamity receded further from view.

Illegally diverted rivers, seawater and poorly managed building projects have polluted the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta. But the Unesco site has a vital role to play in fighting climate change

From the porch of her family home in Nueva Venecia, Magdalena, Yeidis Rodríguez Suárez watches the sunset. The view takes in the still waters of the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta wetlands. Pelicans dip their beaks into the lagoon, ripples breaking the glassy surface. Distant mangroves turn from green to deep purple in the dying light.

The 428,000-hectare (1,600 sq mile) expanse of lagoons, mangroves and marshes in Colombia has been a Unesco biosphere reserve since 2000. Yet, for Rodríguez, 27, the natural abundance is little more than an illusion.

Climate scientists, environmentalists, Labor and Greens condemn opposition leader for comments at Wednesday election debate

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The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has insisted he “believes in climate change” a day after refusing to state if the impacts of global heating were worsening.

Climate scientists, environmentalists, Labor and the Greens lined up on Thursday to condemn the opposition leader for comments he made during Wednesday night’s election leaders’ debate, which prompted renewed scepticism of the Coalition’s commitment to climate action.

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Blazes in some parts of the country are up by 1,200% since last year, as charities warn about effects on wildlife

Entire ecosystems have been “decimated” and endangered species put at risk after one of the worst wildfire seasons on record in the UK, charities have warned.

Vast areas of habitat for animals including butterflies, beetles and falcons have been damaged, and some peat bogs may take “hundreds of years” to recover following one of the driest Marches in decades combined with warmer than average temperatures in April.

Researchers say urgent action needed to inform people about risks of heatwave temperatures and adapt homes

The number of UK homes overheating in summer quadrupled to 80% over the past decade, according to a study, with experts calling the situation a crisis.

Heat already kills thousands of people each year in the UK and the toll will rise as the climate crisis intensifies. Urgent action is needed both to inform people on how to cope with high temperatures and to adapt homes, which are largely designed to keep heat in during the winter, the researchers said.

Cuts to disaster agency and deregulation of fossil fuels, plus rise of water-guzzling datacentres, highlighted in new report

The Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal climate disaster agency – and the full-throttle deregulation of fossil fuels and water-guzzling datacentres – could prove catastrophic for America’s endangered rivers, threatening the food, water and livelihoods of millions of people, according to a new report.

American Rivers’ annual most-endangered rivers list lays bare a myriad of human-made threats including floods, drought and other extreme weather events driven by the climate crisis, as well as industrial pollution and poor river management – all of which Trump’s regulatory rollbacks will almost inevitably make worse.

Exclusive: Power outages in major cities would help build opposition to climate policies, Colin Boyce tells podcast

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The Coalition MP Colin Boyce says he believes the way to turn voters against renewable energy is to “let Rome burn for a while” and allow power blackouts to occur in major cities.

Guardian Australia reported on Wednesday that Boyce had described blackouts as a “big political opportunity” at a meeting of climate science deniers in late 2023.

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Exclusive: Absence of world’s biggest clean energy producer will be welcomed by US pushing oil and gas exports

China is to snub a major UK summit on energy security next week, the Guardian has learned, amid a growing row over the country’s involvement in UK infrastructure projects.

The US will send a senior White House official to the 60-country summit, to be co-hosted with the International Energy Agency. Leading oil and gas companies are also invited, along with big technology businesses, and petrostates including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Energy watchdog cuts forecast for growth in demand by a third, and says a trade war could mean it falls further

The world will use less crude oil than expected this year due the “substantial risks” posed by Donald Trump’s trade tariffs to the global economy, according to the global energy watchdog.

The International Energy Agency slashed its forecasts for global oil demand growth by a third for the year ahead, and warned that it could make further downward revisions depending on whether a trade war develops.

Parts of the state record their lowest rainfall on record, with devastating impacts on freshwater fish, butterflies, bees and even some hardy trees

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Usually hardy trees and shrubs are dying, waterways have turned to dust and ecologists fear local freshwater fish extinctions could be coming as historic dry conditions grip parts of South Australia.

Large swathes of the state – including the Adelaide Plains, the Fleurieu, Yorke and Eyre peninsulas and upper south-east – have seen the lowest rainfall on record in the 14 months since February 2024, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

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The White House has pulled federal webpages tracking climate and environmental justice data

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Green groups have sued the Trump administration over the removal of government webpages containing federal climate and environmental justice data that they described as “tantamount to theft”.

In the first weeks of its second term, the Trump administration pulled federal websites tracking shifts in the climate, pollution and extreme weather impacts on low-income communities, and identifying pieces of infrastructure that are extremely vulnerable to climate disasters.

With extreme weather and Trump’s looming trade war, US farmers are reeling and resigned to needing another bailout

Farmers across the United States say they could face financial ruin – unless there is a huge taxpayer funded bail out to compensate for losses generated by Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts and chaotic tariffs.

Small- and medium-sized farms were already struggling amid worsening climate shocks and volatile commodities markets, on top of being squeezed by large corporations that dominate the supply chain.

As part of Trump’s administrations ‘efficiency’ drive, staff running decades old program for energy assistance laid off

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), is facing new demands to release almost $400m allocated by Congress to help low-income US families keep the air conditioning on this summer.

The funds are under threat after the staff running a decades old program were fired – as part of the Trump administration’s so-called ‘efficiency’ drive.

European State of the Climate report ‘lays bare’ impact of fossil fuels on continent during its hottest 12 months on record

The home-wrecking storms and floods that swept Europe last year affected 413,000 people, a report has found, as fossil fuel pollution forced the continent to suffer through its hottest year on record.

Dramatic scenes of cars piled up on inundated streets and bridges being ripped away by raging torrents were seen around the continent in 2024, with “high” floods on 30% of the European river network and 12% crossing the “severe” flood threshold, according to the European State of the Climate report.