The Guardian Climate Change

Government’s emergency planning advice has sparked sales of essentials but no panic stockpiling, say prepping shop owners

When the UK government launched its “Protect and Survive” public information campaign in 1980 on how to stay alive after a nuclear attack, it was met with a combination of scepticism, disbelief and derision.

The advice included how to build a “fallout room” at home, how to whitewash windows to protect from a blast, and how to store a dead body for up to five days.

UK allies have long urged people to stockpile supplies for a crisis. How are people from France to Australia being advised to prepare?

The UK has told people to fill their pantries with food for three days in case of catastrophe, joining a host of countries urging citizens to ready themselves for core systems failing.

Such advice, once dismissed as the preserve of preppers, has become more common in government circles as climate breakdown worsens weather extremes and geopolitical tensions turn cyber-attacks and sabotage into a regular occurrence.

At the midpoint of the last century the region had 1,450 glaciers and a new study reveals the extent of losses

​As world leaders struggle to meet deadlines to halt nature loss set four years ago, a rare leopard in host country Armenia offers a symbol of what is at stake

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The Armenian capital Yerevan is chock-a-block right now with officials, scientists and environmentalists from all over the world gathering for Cop17. Everyone is here to try to rescue a historic deal to end the destruction of nature.

The pressure is on. Targets set for 2030 are woefully off track, and the nearly 200 countries present need to agree on a plan to speed things up. All this is happening at a time when national budgets are tight and leaders are distracted by conflict, protests and the global energy crisis.

This Norwegian village is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth. How can its people save it?

What does the UK’s approval of the Jackdaw gasfield mean?

US extreme weather survivors are a growing group – now they want to be a political force

People succumbed to heat at highest rates in Malta, Italy and Hungary, with health issues, loneliness and poverty exacerbating toll

Heat killed a record 50,000 people in European cities this summer, new research suggests, with scientists blaming climate breakdown for two in every three of the deaths.

Morgues and funeral homes filled with bodies from June to August as the heat added by planet-baking pollution cut short an extra 32,000 lives in urban areas, the researchers found. Hot days pushed vulnerable bodies into overdrive and warm nights prevented them from recovering.

The high court found NSW is responsible for emissions from burning exported coal. What message does it send when the government can step in and bypass the law?

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As someone who lost their home in the black summer bushfires, I was buoyed by the high court finding in favour of a small community group in the Hunter Valley earlier this month.

Led by two retired science teachers, Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan, the Denman Aberdeen Muswellbrook Scone Healthy Environment Group took on a massive coal corporation and won. As a fellow schoolteacher, I felt a particular sense of pride seeing these ordinary Australians act on their care for their community and future generations.

PM pledges commitment to address climate crisis, saying in Guardian article that his ‘determination is unwavering’

• Andy Burnham: We will make the net-zero transition work for Britain

Andy Burnham has said he will not “abandon the responsibility” of fighting the climate crisis after the government approved the Jackdaw gasfield, pledging to block new North Sea licences and keep Britain on track for net zero by 2050.

The comments are the prime minister’s most forthright yet on net zero, after many MPs have privately cast doubt on the authenticity of his commitment to tackling the climate crisis.

PM will also announce funding for specialised protective gear and the deployment of military aircraft

The UK government is to create an AI Cobra unit to spot wildfires after this year’s record-breaking summer saw devastating blazes across the country.

The country experienced its hottest-ever summer this year, with prolonged dry periods and extreme heat fuelling wildfires that triggered an emergency alert to mobile phones in England and Wales. Figures released on 8 October showed a clear upward trend in the number of fires recorded each year.

Be Ready campaign aims to prepare UK for impact of climate crisis, technological dependency and threats by hostile state

Every Briton is being urged to stock up to nine litres of bottled water and three days’ worth of food in new government guidance designed to ensure that households can survive a weather, cyber or other serious emergency.

The Be Ready campaign is aimed at persuading people to stock up with supplies to last 72 hours, amid growing official concern about the impact of the climate crisis, technological dependency and hostile state threats.

Protecting jobs and strengthening energy security in the short term does not mean wavering on Labour’s deep commitment to a cleaner, greener future

On Wednesday, the energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, gave the go-ahead for gas production to begin at the Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea. This has been the subject of fierce debate for many years, with strong views on both sides. I want to explain what the decision means and how it fits with Britain’s climate commitments.

At a time of acute global instability, it makes sense to responsibly use our resources here at home. Gas from this field will begin heating our homes and powering our businesses this winter. In the longer term, it will significantly strengthen our energy security by increasing domestic gas production by about 6% and support the UK’s energy supply for more than a decade. Wednesday’s decision will also protect hundreds of jobs in Scotland and add almost £3bn to the UK economy over the lifetime of the project.

Andy Burnham is prime minister of the United Kingdom

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Students across Kalimantan and Sumatra took to the streets to demand government accountability for the wildfires and toxic haze blanketing the region. While Indonesia regularly battles wildfires in the dry season, these blazes are the most intense in more than a decade and exacerbated by slash-and-burn practices to clear land for agriculture, including palm oil, of which Indonesia is the world’s largest producer

• Indonesia fights fire with dry ice as toxic haze spreads across region

Assessment finds global heating is endangering 96% of coral reefs across 80 countries – a figure scientists say should serve as a ‘wake-up call’

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Almost every shallow-water coral reef on the planet, including Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, faces a high risk of ecosystem collapse before 2075 because of global heating, according to an assessment by United Nations nature advisers.

About 24% of the planet’s reefs across more than 80 countries are already critically endangered, the assessment said, but when the expected impacts of global heating were added this rose to 96%.

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This foolish decision undermines hopes that this government will take the necessary steps the climate crisis demands

When the news broke that the UK government had approved the Jackdaw gasfield, I was at a Guardian climate event at the Royal Geographical Society. Appropriately, the theme suggested by readers was what can the public actually do in the face of what feels like paralysing climate doom?

There is so much going on that is hopeful: biodiversity tracking, river protection, rewilding. Shruti Suresh, from the independent watchdog Global Witness, told those in attendance that if they wanted to effect change, they should protest against Jackdaw and the Rosebank oilfield project. The message was so well understood that it didn’t need labouring. The mood in the room when the news came in was one of audible dismay. People had just watched the minister for climate transition declare that she could see the challenges ahead and was ready for them. The Jackdaw announcement will face immediate protest and legal challenge, but it sends a very clear signal from the government: we don’t mean what we say about ending emissions.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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At a gathering in Texas, near where floods killed 136 people last year, survivors are united on the need for urgent action

It may be a club none of its members actually want to be in, but the growing number of people in the US affected by extreme weather disasters are starting to organize into a political force.

Severe wildfires, floods storms and other calamities now touch the lives of huge numbers of Americans – about half of all people in the US by one estimate – as the climate crisis supercharges extreme events. Some survivors are now coalescing to push for improved disaster response and even action on the politically contentious issue of global heating.

Critics say move will jeopardise climate targets, fail to cut cost of living and distract from need to decarbonise energy

• UK politics live – latest updates

Climate campaigners and green experts have condemned the government’s decision to allow the drilling of the Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea.

They said approval for the site would jeopardise the UK’s climate targets, fail to reduce the cost of living, and distract from the need to decarbonise the UK’s energy sector.

In today’s newsletter: The government has approved drilling in the Jackdaw gas field despite fierce opposition and evidence against it

Good morning. After weeks of speculation, the secretary of state for energy and net zero, Miatta Fahnbulleh, approved drilling in the Jackdaw gasfield this morning. In a statement, published a few minutes before today’s First Edition, Fahnbulleh stressed that the government remains “resolute” in achieving net zero by 2050. It has also announced a new wealth fund that will invest tax revenues from North Sea oil and gas into low-carbon projects.

Even so, Fahnbulleh’s decision will be a monumental disappointment for climate campaigners (and I’d bet many readers of First Edition, too). So this morning’s newsletter is about two things: why the government approved Jackdaw, despite all of the arguments marshalled against it, and, in an attempt to strike a more hopeful note, what it can do to reduce the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels. That’s after the headlines.

UK news | During the Covid-19 pandemic, and government failures caused the virus to spread “like wildfire” among vulnerable and elderly people, a public inquiry has found.

Europe news | Italy’s government is sending 500 soldiers to Milan and vowed a “firm response from the state” after protests against the cost of living descended into clashes with police, vandalism and looting.

Ukraine | The US has resumed sharing intelligence with Kyiv about Russian missile strikes, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after a meeting with the US envoy Steve Witkoff in Norway.

Media | Television channels BBC Three and BBC Scotland are to close and the Radio 4 Extra radio station will be scrapped, as part of the corporation’s drive to cut £500m in costs.

UK news | RAF Typhoon fighters are to be used in efforts to protect Saudi Arabia from attack by Yemen’s Houthis, as western allies increase their intervention in the escalating conflict.

As glaciers melt and permafrost thaws, Longyearbyen, on the remote Arctic islands of Svalbard, faces climate-induced problems from tap water to housebuilding to landslides

• Heavy metals make Norwegian village’s tap water toxic

On a rugged mountain plateau of snow-dusted rocks, in the remote archipelago of Svalbard, a glaciologist, Andy Hodson, points out the “ears” of ice, white against the rock, that gave Foxfonna glacier its name, after the arctic fox.

The small glacier, on a mountain 8 miles (15km) outside the Norwegian village of Longyearbyen, is a popular summer hike for tourists who come here seeking the Arctic experience.

Action needed to avoid disastrous overshoot of climate targets, according to organisation’s environment body

The world needs to cut carbon emissions by nearly a fifth in the next four years, and by close to half within a decade, to avoid overshooting climate targets by a disastrous margin.

Although the “window has closed” on holding temperature rises to 1.5C, in line with scientific advice, limiting the “overshoot” of that target is still possible, according to the UN Environment Programme (Unep).

During a summer fire that destroyed homes in Stourbridge, low pressure meant filling a water carrier took 40 minutes

Concerns have been raised about how drought affects the UK’s ability to cope with wildfires after MPs were told firefighters struggled for water supplies during this year’s record summer.

The government has been urged to set out water companies’ statutory responsibilities during major fire incidents to improve the country’s preparedness for the years ahead.