The Guardian Climate Change

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.

Governments issue health warnings as schools shut and crops fail, with fears that worse is to come as heatwave tightens grip

Extreme heat has gripped much of south and south-east Asia over recent weeks, killing dozens of people, forcing millions of students to miss school and destroying crops.

Both the Philippines and Bangladesh shut schools due to the unbearable heat last month, while governments across the region have issued health warnings. In Thailand, at least 30 people have died from heatstroke since the start of the year.

Our inadequate electricity network is stopping the building of thousands of new homes. And the necessary move to low-carbon heating and cars is only increasing demand

Oxford has a severe housing problem. With house prices 12 times the average salary, it has become one of the least affordable cities in the country. Its council house waiting list has grown to more than 3,000 households, with many having to live in temporary accommodation.

An obvious solution is to build more homes, but those trying to do this face a big barrier: electricity.

War in Gaza, US campus protests, missile strikes in Kharkiv and floods in Kenya: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

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

Florida wildlife corridor will spearhead climate resilience if allowed to evolve and essential preparatory work done, study says

Climate predictions in Florida, for the most part, make pretty grim reading. Rising oceans threaten to submerge most of the state by the end of the century, and soaring temperatures could make it too hot to live here anyway.

But new research by a coalition of prominent universities paints a more upbeat picture of Florida’s future as a thriving state for humans and wildlife, with natural resources harnessed to mitigate the worst effects of the climate emergency generally, as well as extreme weather events such as hurricanes and floods.

Environmental campaign groups took joint action against decision to approve carbon budget delivery plan

The UK government’s climate action plan is unlawful, the high court has ruled, as there is not enough evidence that there are sufficient policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, will now be expected to draw up a revised plan within 12 months. This must ensure that the UK achieves its legally binding carbon budgets and its pledge to cut emissions by more than two-thirds by 2030, both of which the government is off track to meet.

Researchers find many countries unprepared for influx of new species and will be vulnerable to bites

Climate breakdown is likely to lead to the large-scale migration of venomous snake species into new regions and unprepared countries, according to a study.

The researchers forecast that Nepal, Niger, Namibia, China, and Myanmar will gain the most venomous snake species from neighbouring countries under a heating climate.

As the climate crisis forces people to abandon their land in Rajasthan, a new industry has sprung up in the desert state, with thousands of gaily decorated vans setting off to sell ice-cream across the country

The parched villages of Gangapur in the desert state of Rajasthan have a new season in their calendar. Between November and February, car workshops along the town’s dusty mile-long market open before sunrise, cylindrical stainless-steel food containers are put on display, and traders stock up on chocolate and strawberry syrups.

Come March, the villagers start preparing to migrate. In the workshops, thousands of vehicles are converted into vans for selling a variety of ice-cream, from plain condensed milk flavoured with cardamom to chocolate, vanilla and pistachio, while local farmers turned dessert makers have their old mini-trucks serviced in readiness for the drive to distant towns and cities, where they will sell the sweet treat for the next nine months.

Attorney and non-profit founder Julia Olson calls appeals court ruling on lawsuit filed by 21 young people ‘tragic and unjust’

A federal appeals court on Wednesday evening granted the Biden administration’s request to strike down a landmark federal youth climate case, outraging climate advocates.

“This is a tragic and unjust ruling,” said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit.

Shifting atmospheric circulation patterns have placed US state in frontline of climate crisis

Changing weather patterns might not have been foremost in Bob Dylan’s mind when he wrote The Times They Are A-Changin’, but his lyrics seem apt now. Rising greenhouse gases are altering the world’s weather patterns and new research demonstrates how increased emissions have shifted atmospheric circulation patterns, resulting in more frequent extreme weather events around the world.

California in North America has ended up being at the frontline of the climate crisis in recent years, lurching between extreme drought and excessive rain. To understand what might have triggered these extremes, researchers modelled the interplay between the three major drivers of the weather in this region and the impact that greenhouse warming has had on these drivers.

Amsterdam is home to 45,000 sq metres of ‘blue-green’ roofs, which absorb rainwater and allow it to be used by building residents to water plants and flush toilets

You might visit Amsterdam for its canals, and who could blame you, really. But the truly interesting waterways aren’t under your feet – they’re above your head.

Beautiful green roofs have popped up all over the world: specially selected plants growing on structures designed to manage the extra weight of biomass. Amsterdam has taken that one step further with blue-green roofs, specially designed to capture rainwater. One project, the resilience network of smart, innovative, climate-adaptive rooftops (Resilio), has covered more than 9,000 sq metres (100,000 sq ft) of Amsterdam’s roofs, including 8,000 sq metres on social housing complexes. Citywide, the blue-green roof coverage is even bigger, estimated at more than 45,000 sq metres.

Use of enclosed combustors leaves regulators heavily reliant on oil and gas companies’ own flaring data

Oil and gas equipment intended to cut methane emissions is preventing scientists from accurately detecting greenhouse gases and pollutants, a satellite image investigation has revealed.

Energy companies operating in countries such as the US, UK, Germany and Norway appear to have installed technology that could stop researchers from identifying methane, carbon dioxide emissions and pollutants at industrial facilities involved in the disposal of unprofitable natural gas, known in the industry as flaring.

US Senate hearing reviewed report showing sector’s shift from climate denial to ‘deception, disinformation and doublespeak’

The fossil fuel industry spent decades sowing doubt about the dangers of burning oil and gas, experts and Democratic lawmakers testified on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

The Senate budget committee held a hearing to review a report published on Tuesday with the House oversight and accountability committee that they said demonstrates the sector’s shift from explicit climate denial to a more sophisticated strategy of “deception, disinformation and doublespeak”.

Final submissions begin in racial discrimination case brought by Mehreen Faruqi against Hanson. Follow the today’s news live

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As we flagged earlier, the treasurer Jim Chalmers will today announce foreign investment changes, with approvals to be made quicker and greater scrutiny to be placed on potential risks.

You can read all the details on this from Peter Hannam below:

Right now, we treat investments from right around the world more or less the same. We want to streamline it for the less-risky investments so we can devote much more time and energy and resources to screening the sorts of investments that we’re seeing in critical industries – like critical minerals, critical infrastructure, critical data, and the like.

This is all about strengthening the foreign investment framework to make sure that investment is in the national interest. We want to maximise the right kind of investment, but we want to minimise risk and that’s what these changes I’ll announce today are all about.

Agreement gives leeway to countries heavily reliant on coal and allows power plants fitted with carbon-capture technology

Ministers from the G7 countries agreed on Tuesday to end the use of unabated coal power plants by 2035 – but left the door open for those heavily reliant on coal to breach the deadline.

After two days of talks in Turin, Italy, they published a pledge to “phase out existing unabated coal power generation in our energy systems during the first half of 2030s” to curb the rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Scientists stunned by scale of destruction after summer of storm surges, cyclones and floods

Beneath the turquoise waters off Heron Island lies a huge, brain-shaped Porites coral that, in health, would be a rude shade of purplish-brown. Today that coral outcrop, or bommie, shines snow white.

Prof Terry Hughes, a coral bleaching expert at James Cook University, estimates this living boulder is at least 300 years old.

Internal documents revealed by committee show companies lobbied against climate laws they publicly claimed to support

Big oil has privately acknowledged its efforts to downplay the dangers of burning fossil fuels, US Democrats have found.

Major fossil-fuel firms have also pledged support for international climate efforts, but internally admit these efforts are incompatible with their own climate plans. And they have lobbied against climate laws and regulations they have publicly claimed to support, documents newly revealed by the committee show.

Politicians fear perceived costs of green transition are driving poor and rural voters to parties such as AfD

Raising his voice above the pounding drums and honking tractors, Lutz Jankus, a city councillor from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), distanced himself from the furious protest unfurling before him.

“They’re rightwing extremists,” he said about Free Saxony, a loose political movement that includes neo-Nazis and skinheads, as his colleagues began to pack up their tent on the side of the square in the centre of Görlitz.

The far right are on the march in Germany and the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany has become the most popular party in several states. Immigration and a sense of being economically left behind have been driving factors in the rise in popularity but the Green party and the federal government’s climate policies have also borne the brunt of public anger. The Guardian travelled to Görlitz, on the German border with Poland, to find out to what extent Germany’s green policies are fuelling the far right

• How climate policies are becoming focus for far-right attacks in Germany