The Guardian Climate Change

Hundreds of Indian farmers who have been camping for more than 100 days between the Punjab and Haryana states to demand better prices for their crops have been enduring a savage heatwave sweeping swathes of northern India.

Temperatures in Delhi, not far from the protest, have hit a record high of 49.9C (121.8F), as authorities warned of water shortages in the capital

• Delhi temperature hits 49.9C as India’s capital records hottest day

• Record breaking heat hits Delhi – in pictures

Los Angeles has long owned large swathes of the Owens valley. An investigation reveals how the city has tightened its grip

This article is reported by AfroLA and co-published by AfroLA, Guardian US and Inyo County’s The Sheet. It’s the first of several stories examining the impact of Los Angeles’s extensive landownership in the Owens Valley.

A red horse statue perched on a 12ft pole greets drivers coming to the town of Bishop from the south. It’s one of the first landmarks here, part of Mike Allen’s corrugated metal feed store – a local institution that sells camping gear, livestock feed and moving equipment in this expansive region of inland California.

IPPR research examines transport emissions by income, gender, location, ethnicity and age

Wealthy white men from rural areas are the UK’s biggest emitters of climate-heating gases from transport, according to a study.

Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) looked at transport emissions by income, gender, location, ethnicity and age. The study broke down the transport emissions into international and domestic flights, private road transport and public transport.

Half of all new cars are now SUVs, making them a major cause of the intensifying climate crisis, say experts

Sales of SUVs hit a new record in 2023, making up half of all new cars sold globally, data has revealed. Experts warned that the rising sales of the large, heavy vehicles is pushing up the carbon emissions that drive global heating.

The analysis, by the International Energy Agency, found that the rising emissions from SUVs in 2023 made up 20% of the global increase in CO2, making the vehicles a major cause of the intensifying climate crisis. If SUVs were a country, the IEA said, they would be the world’s fifth-largest emitter of CO2, ahead of the national emissions of both Japan and Germany.

And almost half of respondents back the filing of criminal charges against oil companies that have contributed to the climate crisis

As US communities take big oil to court for allegedly deceiving the public about the climate crisis, polling shared with the Guardian shows that a majority of voters support the litigation, while almost half would back an even more aggressive legal strategy of filing criminal charges.

The poll, which comes as the world’s first-ever criminal climate lawsuit was brought in France last week, could shed light on how, if filed, similar US cases might be viewed by a jury.

From badly behaved travellers to horrendous carbon emissions, summer holidays aren’t always an unmitigated good. Here is how to travel responsibly and still have a great time

Tourism is almost back to pre-pandemic levels – which is good news and bad news. However much holiday destinations rely on them, no one wants badly behaved tourists blocking views, partying wildly in the streets or pricing local people out of their own cities. Overtourism, carbon emissions, nature depletion and plastic pollution are all huge concerns. But that doesn’t mean you have to cancel your holiday. Here are 28 ways to be a better tourist this summer.

Labour and Liberal Democrats dominated list of MPs who were rated as very good in backing environmental policies

No elected Tory MPs have been rated as voting positively on climate issues, under a survey of parliamentary voting patterns since the Conservatives took power in 2010.

Only a single sitting Conservative was rated as “good” on climate votes in the ranking, but that was Lisa Cameron, the MP for East Kilbride, who defected from the Scottish National Party in October.

Gardens could be part of the solution to the climate and biodiversity crisis. But what are we doing? Disappearing them beneath plastic and paving

In my 20s I lived in Manchester, on the sixth floor of a block of council flats just off the A57, or Mancunian (Mancy) Way. A short walk from Manchester Piccadilly station and the city centre, it was grey, noisy and built up. I loved every piece of it – my first stab at adulthood, at living on my own. I painted my bedroom silver and slept on a mattress on the floor, and I grew sweetcorn, tomatoes and courgettes in pots on the balcony. (I was 24 – of course I grew sweetcorn on the balcony.)

I worked and played in the bars and clubs of Manchester’s gay village, and I would walk home in the early hours, keys poking through my clenched fist to protect me from would-be attackers, and I would see hedgehogs.

The Coalition has no climate policy. But Labor’s positions are undermined by its confused stance on gas and the delay of new environmental laws

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Federal parliament is back for the next fortnight and I have a wishlist. Not for things that will happen – let’s not get ahead of ourselves – but for questions that could be addressed if the country is to treat the climate and extinction crises as seriously as our leaders claim they do.

There is no shortage of discussion about nuclear energy due to the Coalition’s much-hyped but yet-to-appear plan to overturn a national ban and bring it to Australia. The issue won plenty of attention after a CSIRO-led assessment that it would be far, far more expensive than wind and solar backed by energy storage and new transmission lines.

Exclusive: Bronze age remains and Roman roads among 12,802 sites discovered using latest technology

Bronze age burial mounds, Roman roads and deserted medieval villages are among almost 13,000 previously-unknown ancient sites and monuments that have been discovered by members of the public in recent months, it will be announced this week.

Truck drivers and doctors are among more than 1,000 people who participated in Deep Time, a “citizen science project” which has harnessed the power of hobbyists to scour 512 sq km (200 sq miles) of Earth Observation data, including high-resolution satellite and lidar – laser technology – imagery.

• Read more from My DIY climate hack, a new series on everyday people’s creative solutions to the climate crisis

Among food, travel, decor and single-use items, parties can create an enormous amount of waste – and weddings are among the most egregious offenders.

For Cindy Villaseñor, 33, that reality just didn’t sit right with her eco-conscious mindset. So when it came time to plan her own wedding, she and her partner agreed to do things differently.

Reduce emissions, build resilience, repair ecosystems, remove greenhouse gases: these are the four Rs that can save us

• David King is chair of the global Climate Crisis Advisory Group

In 2008, the late American climate scientist Wally Broecker warned of the global repercussions of polar ice loss. Today, his predictions echo louder than ever as Greenland ice haemorrhages at an alarming rate, threatening rapid sea-level rise. Over the past 15 years, the Arctic Circle region has been heating up at four times the global average; it’s now more than 3C above levels in the 1980s. In 2023, we witnessed a staggering loss of Antarctic Sea ice.

Over the past year, land and ocean temperatures have soared, far beyond what was anticipated for an El Niño year. Global average temperatures have breached the 1.5C mark, indicating that climate transition has been unleashed. From record-breaking wildfires across continents to catastrophic floods threatening to submerge major cities, extreme climate events have become the new norm, causing massive loss of life and economic damage worldwide.

David King is the founder and chair of the global Climate Crisis Advisory Group

Vulnerable economies must be supported with finance and practical aid to find long term solutions, says Jorge Moreira da Silva of Unops

The world has a “moral responsibility” to support the fight for survival being faced by small island states, according to a leading UN agency chief.

Ahead of the fourth annual conference of small island developing states (Sids) being held in Antigua and Barbuda this week, Jorge Moreira da Silva, the executive director of the (Unops), called for recognition of the problems faced by what he called “some of the most vulnerable economies in the world” who contributed less than 1% to global carbon emissions.

Cut free from the constraints of reporting, a story can take its own shape, can lead you down rabbit holes you’d never expected

During my nearly 40 years as a journalist, the climate crisis has been a constant, creeping refrain – from the first greenhouse conference in the late 1980s and the first IPCC report in the early 90s. There was the Hawke governments’ plan to cut emissions by 20% below 1988 levels by 2005, and the subsequent walking back of that plan.

Then on through the decades of bitter political division and debate and policy failures; the proposal for an Emissions Trading Scheme under John Howard; Kevin Rudd’s “great moral challenge of our generation”; the ill-fated Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the Gillard ETS, the relentless campaign against it by Tony Abbott and the wasted decade of what’s become known as the “Climate Wars” that followed.

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Labour shadow energy security secretary agrees climate crisis is emergency but ‘massively questions’ activist group’s tactics

The climate activist group Just Stop Oil is “alienating people” from its cause, Ed Miliband said at the Hay festival.

Speaking at a Q&A at the event via a video call from his constituency in Doncaster, the shadow secretary of state for energy security and net zero responded to an audience member who said she had been driven to support Just Stop Oil because she felt “so let down by politicians”.

As demand for sustainable housing grows, architects go back to basics to future-proof homes for a changing climate

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“Energy efficient”, “carbon neutral” and “net zero” are buzzwords we hear more and more as we face the impact of climate change. But do we think about them enough in building?

Globally, a move towards sustainable housing is growing. In Europe, efforts to move to greener homes hope to combat rising energy costs and be better for the planet. But 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions still come from the real estate sector.

The Indigenous campaigner won a historic legal victory to protect Waorani land in the Amazon rainforest. Now she has written a groundbreaking memoir

When Nemonte Nenquimo was a young girl, experience began to reinforce what she had come to know intuitively: that her life, and those of the Waorani people of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, were on a collision course with forces it would take all their strength and determination to resist. “Deep down, I understood there were two worlds,” she remembers in We Will Not Be Saved, the book she has written with her husband and partner in activism Mitch Anderson. “One where there was our smoky, firelit oko, where my mouth turned manioc into honey, the parrots echoed ‘Mengatowe’, and my family called me Nemonte – my true name, meaning ‘many stars’. And another world, where the white people watched us from the sky, the devil’s heart was black, there was something named an ‘oil company’, and the evangelicals called me Inés.”

In 2015, Nenquimo, now 39, co-founded the Ceibo Alliance, a non-profit organisation in which she united with members of the A’i Cofán, Siekopai and Siona peoples of Ecuador, Peru and Colombia to fight for rights over their territories. Since then, she has won numerous awards for her activism, including the prestigious Goldman environmental prize; she was featured in Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2020, and has been named a United Nations Champion of the Earth.

Small islands like ours face an uncertain future. We can adapt – but climate finance that we badly need must be unlocked

• Mohamed Muizzu is the president of the Maldives

For the Maldives, the existential threat of the climate crisis, particularly sea level rise, has been a reality we have grappled with for decades. In 1989, recognising the urgency of our situation, with our islands standing just one metre above sea level, we brought this issue to the global stage for the first time.

This early recognition of our vulnerability sparked a national transformation as we embarked on proactive climate resilience and adaptation measures. Thirty-five years later, has the rest of the world truly been listening? If you look at how the world’s reaction to the climate crisis is funded, the answer is clearly “no”.

Demonstrators gathered outside Paris meetings of energy giant and Amundi, with some forcing their way into fund manager’s tower block

The head of TotalEnergies has told shareholders that new oilfields have to be developed to meet global demand, as the annual meetings of the French energy giant and one of its biggest shareholders were picketed by climate activists.

Police said they detained 173 people among hundreds who gathered outside the Paris headquarters of Amundi, one of the world’s biggest investment managers and a major TotalEnergies shareholder.

War in Gaza, the Russian offensive in Kharkiv, Rishi Sunak in the rain and Cate Blanchett in Cannes: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing