The Guardian Climate Change

Earth’s greatest living structure is dying. But the humanity of reef scientists is as beautiful as any coral I’ve ever seen

From the dry lab on One Tree Island research station – about 100km off the coast from Gladstone and in the southern region of the Great Barrier Reef – I watch a steady procession of scientists walk to their next encounter with what has become the biggest palliative care unit on the planet.

These scientists head out to the reef like doctors heading to a hospital with no control over saving their patients. They head to a hospital where there is no medicine they can administer to alleviate the pain or to make death easier.

Top experts believe global temperatures will rise by at least 2.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. That frightening prediction must spur us to action

First, the good news. We understand the problem: almost two-thirds of people worldwide believe the climate crisis is an emergency. We know what needs to be done, and should be confident that we will be able to achieve it, thanks to the rapid advance of renewable technologies. Collectively, we can also muster the money to do it.

The scale and speed of global heating make it hard to hang on to these facts. But it is also why we must focus on them rather than throwing up our hands. New research by the Guardian has found that hundreds of the world’s top climate scientists believe global temperatures will rise by at least 2.5C above pre-industrial levels by the century’s end, far above the internationally agreed limit. Only 6% of those surveyed, all from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, thought that the 1.5C target could be met.

The climate crisis is making the farming business unsustainable – and without support for us, food security will suffer too

• Guy Singh-Watson is the founder of organic veg box company Riverford

Farming has always been a risky business. To the chaos of Brexit and the relentless squeezing of the supermarkets, we can add the rapidly escalating threats associated with climate change. In most industries, at the point where risk is judged to outweigh the potential commercial reward, both capital and people tend to make a swift exit, following economist Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of self-interest.

The problem with farming is that most farmers are emotionally invested in their work. An exit is seldom considered – perhaps we should be more like the bankers, but they wouldn’t be much good at growing potatoes.

Climate chaos is threatening food production, trade and lives, says World Meteorological Organization

Hunger and disease are rising in Latin America after a year of record heat, floods and drought, a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has shown.

The continent, which is trapped between the freakishly hot Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, probably suffered tens of thousands of climate-related deaths in 2023, at least $21bn (£17bn) of economic damage and “the greatest calorific loss” of any region, the study found.

Exclusive: Survey of hundreds of experts reveals harrowing picture of future, but they warn climate fight must not be abandoned

• World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target

“Sometimes it is almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken,” says the climate scientist Ruth Cerezo-Mota. “After all the flooding, fires, and droughts of the last three years worldwide, all related to climate change, and after the fury of Hurricane Otis in Mexico, my country, I really thought governments were ready to listen to the science, to act in the people’s best interest.”

Instead, Cerezo-Mota expects the world to heat by a catastrophic 3C this century, soaring past the internationally agreed 1.5C target and delivering enormous suffering to billions of people. This is her optimistic view, she says.

Exclusive: Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results for humanity, poll of hundreds of scientists finds

• ‘Hopeless and broken’: why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair

Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed.

Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit would be met.

Scientists reclassify Humboldt glacier, also known as La Corona, after it melted faster than expected

Venezuela has lost its last remaining glacier after it shrunk so much that scientists reclassified it as an ice field.

It is thought Venezuela is the first country to have lost all its glaciers in modern times.

The US cattle industry adopted a ‘climate neutral’ goal in 2021 but scientists say that ‘misses the point’ in keeping global temperature rises below 1.5C

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Cattle Australia is lobbying the red meat sector to ditch its net zero target in favour of a “climate neutral” goal that would require far more modest reductions in methane emissions.

The $75bn red meat industry, led by Meat and Livestock Australia, announced a target of reaching net zero emissions by 2030 seven years ago, in an attempt to maintain its social licence and drive investments in emissions reduction technology.

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In February, a cold front turned into a storm causing millions in damage – and highlighted a new and urgent need for adaptation and mitigation projects

On 5 and 6 February, a combination of heavy rain and tides hit Jamaica’s north coast about 130 miles west of the capital, Kingston. The storm destroyed a breakwater, causing flooding as well as damage to boats throughout the region.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. The sea rose to the top and rushed through the facilities,” says Travis Graham, a fisher in Oracabessa, Saint Mary, and the executive director of the GoldenEye Foundation, an NGO promoting sustainable development on the island. “The dock was destroyed. Two large vessels used to stay in the bay, and we’ve seen them withstand even hurricanes. This event was different; it easily dragged them ashore after they crashed into each other.”

Outgoing special rapporteur David Boyd says ‘there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand how grave this is’

The race to save the planet is being impeded by a global economy that is contingent on the exploitation of people and nature, according to the UN’s outgoing leading environment and human rights expert.

David Boyd, who served as UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment from 2018 to April 2024, told the Guardian that states failing to take meaningful climate action and regulating polluting industries could soon face a slew of lawsuits.

People living in Nairobi’s Mathare slum fear that if catastrophic flooding does not bring down their homes, the government will

Jane Kalekye trudges through the narrow muddy alley to her tin-roof house in Mathare, one of Kenya’s largest slums. Ever since the devastating floods that forced her out of her home last month, she and other residents who live by the rubbish-choked Mathare River, which runs through their area of Nairobi, have begun an anxious countdown.

It is only a matter of time before their homes are brought down, they say, either by another bout of flooding, or by the government’s ongoing demolition of houses along riverbanks prone to flooding.

More than 100 students have occupied Ghent University in the first European protest to fuse demands about Gaza and the climate crisis.

Ghent’s centrepiece UFO building was peacefully taken over by students calling for concrete action to meet the university’s 2030 climate plans, and asking it to cut ties with institutions connected to the Israeli military. Tents were erected inside the building, which contains all of the university’s administrative departments

• Ghent students occupy university building in climate and Gaza protest

More than 200 expected to join protest calling for climate action and to cut ties with Israeli institutions

• Israel-Gaza war – live updates

More than 100 students have occupied Ghent University in the first European protest to fuse demands about Gaza and the climate crisis.

Ghent’s centrepiece UFO building was peacefully taken over by students calling for concrete action to meet the university’s 2030 climate plans, and asking the university to cut ties with institutions connected to the Israeli military.

Your daily caffeine habit is not good for the planet. Thankfully, researchers are finding alternatives to ground coffee beans

Name: Synthetic coffee.

Age: Three.

Exclusive: Mukhtar Babayev says clear accounting crucial to build trust as developing world seeks trillions in support

Poor countries must demonstrate clearer accounting and transparency to back up their calls for trillions of dollars of climate finance, the president of global climate negotiations has said.

Mukhtar Babayev, the ecology minister of Azerbaijan, who will lead the Cop29 UN climate summit in November, urged governments in developing countries to draw up reports showing their progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and their spending on the climate crisis.

‘I’m very alarmed by everybody’s lack of alarm, that’s the scariest thing for me,’ says Warming Up author Madeleine Orr

If Madeleine Orr had been searching for a launch pad for her book, Warming up: How Climate Change is Changing Sport, last week provided the perfect rocket boosters. Only two years after the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, brandished a “green card for the planet” in a video message, football’s world governing body signed a four-year sponsorship deal with the Saudi oil and gas conglomerate Aramco, the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitter, the third biggest carbon emitter since the industrial revolution (behind China’s state coal company and the former Soviet Union) and one with plans, alongside other fossil fuel companies, to expand production in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.

“A comedian couldn’t write that,” says Orr over the phone from North Carolina. “It is textbook greenwashing. I’m kind of sad that I didn’t put it in the book as case study No 1. But it is a practice that has been going on for 100 years.”

We must ask ourselves what it is that we really need. Only then can we stop our endless consumption and save the planet

• Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life

From a Buddhist perspective, everyone can learn to live simply and be happy. There’s no great secret to it. Simplicity is not an aesthetic or a lifestyle choice. It’s how your life expresses itself when you are content.

How can this thinking help us navigate the climate crisis?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Which conspiracy theories have been proved true? Anne Gibson, Leicester

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Athletics Kenya is worried about how the climate might shape the future of its country, let alone its sport. And it is not alone

The drive from the tiny Eldoret airport to the town of Iten in the south-west corner of Kenya takes about an hour. It’s a winding unlit road with few road signs: you need to know where you’re going to get there. The town’s population isn’t known – there hasn’t been a census in more than a decade – but the local ­municipal authority estimates it around 56,000, up from 40,024 in 2009.

Roughly 35% live below the poverty line. And yet, a sign on the only paved road into town calls this the Home of Champions, owing to its phenomenal athletic success. This corner of Kenya has produced 14 men’s and nine women’s Boston Marathon winners since 1991, who have brought home 22 and 14 wins, respectively. They have also won 13 of 18 gold medals in the 3,000m steeplechase at the World Athletics Championships since the event was introduced in 1983.

Organisers of this year’s environmental conference hope cooperation on green issues could help ease global tensions

This year’s Cop29 UN climate summit will be the first “Cop of peace”, focusing on the prevention of future climate-fuelled conflicts and using international cooperation on green issues to help heal existing tensions, according to plans being drawn up by organisers.

Nations may be asked to observe a “Cop truce”, suspending hostilities for the fortnight-long duration of the conference, modelled on the Olympic truce, which is observed by most governments during the summer and winter Olympic Games.