The Guardian Climate Change

War in Gaza, Britain’s general election, fires in California and the Tour de France: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Party co-leader and new MP Carla Denyer says election shows voters ‘have had enough of incremental change’

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The Green party will push the incoming Labour government to “be braver” on key issues, from the climate crisis and sewage in rivers to housing and tax, according to Carla Denyer, the party’s co-leader and one of its four new MPs.

The party quadrupled its number of MPs, beating Labour in Bristol Central and Brighton Pavilion and the Conservatives in Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire.

It’s not a grain, but the seed of a plant related to rhubarb, and is gluten-free, insect friendly and tolerant of drought

Most Britons will not be familiar with buckwheat. It’s not really part of our traditional cuisine, although we may have eaten some. But in many part of the world the seeds are part of the staple diet, for example as an eastern European porridge called kasha, Japanese noodles and American waffles. It’s not a grain, and is not a type of wheat; buckwheat is the seed of a plant related to rhubarb, and is likely to became a useful alternative crop for arable farmers as global heating bites.

A new study that compared wheat and buckwheat success rates in a high carbon dioxide atmosphere, plus the temperatures and drought conditions that we can expect in the coming decades, found buckwheat survived and produced its crop of seeds in conditions that killed wheat or severely curtailed grain production. Buckwheat also has the advantage of being gluten-free and rich in fibre and minerals. Because it flowers for months, it is also a favourite for bees and other insects. One plus for farmers is it likes poor soils so no expensive fertilisers are needed.

An unprecedented storm has caused devastation. Caribbean states need support

The islands that have been hardest hit by Hurricane Beryl will take years to recover. Nine out of 10 homes on Union, which is part of St Vincent and the Grenadines in the eastern Caribbean, were damaged or destroyed on Monday. On Carriacou, which is part of Grenada, hardly any buildings were left unscathed. On Tuesday, the Grenadian prime minister, Dickon Mitchell, described the situation as “almost Armageddon-like”.

The course taken by Beryl meant that Jamaica, which is home to nearly 3 million people, did not receive its full force as had been feared. But houses and roads were flooded, and a woman was killed, taking the overall death toll to at least 10. Barbados and other islands were also damaged.

Category 3 storm with wind speeds of up to 120mph continues to wreak ‘utter devastation’ in Caribbean

• Why Hurricane Beryl foretells a scary storm season

Hurricane Beryl is barrelling through the Cayman Islands after causing death and destruction in Jamaica.

The British overseas territory is bearing the brunt of the hurricane, which has been causing “utter devastation” in the Caribbean since Monday, when it almost destroyed parts of Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

It is no coincidence that ever more extreme politics has come at a time of ever more extreme weather

A disrupted climate and diminished natural world are widening the dividing lines of ideological debate. Left unchecked, this will undermine democracy.

That may not be the first thing on the minds of British voters as they go to the polls on Thursday. It is probably also a minority view in the rest of Europe or the US, where people are too much in the thick of a polycrisis to consider anything outside politics and economics as usual. But from a distance, in my case from the Amazon rainforest, there is a very different explanation for the tremors being witnessed in the old world and the new.

It’s festival season! But are festivals any good for the environment? This week Chanté chats to Lewis Jamieson of Music Declares Emergency and the Grammy-nominated House DJ Jayda G about how festivals can become more sustainable and why the music industry can be an important voice in the fight for climate justice.

Jayda G’s documentary Blue Carbon can be watched here

Archive – BBC, TikTok (billsvids), CNN, Blue Carbon (WaterBear), Instagram (liamcmusic_), BBC 5Live,

Hurricane Beryl has destroyed houses and flattened trees in the south-east Caribbean after landing on Carriacou, an island in Grenada, as a category 4 storm.

The hurricane, which has killed at least six people, is heading toward Jamaica

• ‘Please send help’: Caribbean reels from Hurricane Beryl devastation

Fears of ‘big regression’ in climate action that could spread across Europe if National Rally gains power

A victory for the far right in the French elections could deal a serious blow to climate policy in France, experts have warned, with consequences that could ripple through the European Union and beyond.

The second round of snap polls, whichEmmanuel Macron called after the National Rally (RN) scored big gains in European elections last month, could result in Marine Le Pen’s party securing a majority in the French parliament on Sunday, although nationwide efforts to form a “republican front” may prevent that.

Voters and politicians now know slow, incremental change just won’t cut it. The next government must be bold and brave

• Caroline Lucas is a former Green MP

When I entered parliament back in 2010 as the first Green MP, I used every possible trick in the book to push the environment up the UK’s political agenda. In the early days, progress was agonisingly slow. Simply making the case that Britain should be powered by renewables, not fossil fuels, was a daily battle. Every single budget, I would stand up and ask the same question: what about the climate? And then, quite quickly, things finally began to change.

I’ll never forget the moment I realised the environment movement had finally entered the political mainstream. The shift dawned on me during the school strikes five years ago, which brought over a million people worldwide out on to the streets in protest. I stood on top of a makeshift platform on a fire engine outside parliament and saw a vast crowd of young people, stretching as far as the eye could see, demanding climate justice and action.

Caroline Lucas is an environmental activist and former Green MP

Next government urged to have a proper plan for food security, as UK’s climate becomes more unpredictable

UK fruit and vegetable production has plummeted as farms have been hit by extreme weather.

The country suffered the wettest 18 months since records began across the 2023-24 growing year, leaving soil waterlogged and some farms totally underwater. The impact on harvests has been disastrous. Data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shows that year-on-year vegetable yields decreased by 4.9% to 2.2m tonnes in 2023, and the production volumes of fruit decreased by 12% to 585,000 tonnes.

Homes flattened, apocalyptic scenes and at least four dead as St Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada try to recover

This should have been a week of celebration in the Caribbean country of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). The annual Vincy Mas carnival, which attracts thousands of tourists, had advertised a packed schedule of costume parades and soca competitions.

Instead, the Vincentian population is reeling from what the country’s prime minister has described as the “utter devastation” wrought by Hurricane Beryl, which ravaged the multi-island country and its eastern Caribbean neighbour Grenada.

Indigenous land is disproportionately affected by wildfire and their isolated nature makes aid access difficult

When Robert Laboucan pictured his son taking his first steps he imagined it would be at home, maybe even in front of a camera in their living room. Instead, the one-year-old first walked in the hallway of the Flamingo Inn in High Level, the tiny Alberta town where the family have been living for more than a year after escaping the massive wildfires that devastated the Indigenous-owned Fox Lake Reserve.

“It was really hard,” said Laboucan, a member of the Little Red River Cree Nation.

The ex-president is ranting about low water pressure and attacking mundane rules and technologies – and Republicans in Congress are now following his lead

When Donald Trump embarked upon a lengthy complaint at a recent rally about how long it takes to wash his “beautiful luxuriant hair” due to his shower’s low water pressure, he highlighted the expanding assault he and Republicans are launching against even the most obscure environmental policies – a push that’s starting to influence voters.

In his bid to return to the White House, Trump has branded Joe Biden’s attempt to advance electric cars in the US “lunacy”, claiming such vehicles do not work in the cold and that their supporters should “rot in hell”. He’s called offshore wind turbines “horrible”, falsely linking them to the death of whales, while promising to scrap incentives for both wind and electric cars.

We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2021: It’s easy to despair at the climate crisis, or to decide it’s already too late – but it’s not. Here’s how to keep the fight alive. By Rebecca Solnit

The fire at Anglo American’s Grosvenor coalmine in Moranbah broke out after methane ignited

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Conservation groups say a fire that has been burning since Saturday at an underground coalmine is Queensland is an “environmental disaster” that highlights the risks of methane gas to workers, community health and the climate.

The fire at Anglo American’s Grosvenor coalmine in Moranbah broke out after methane ignited on the longwall coalface. It was still burning on Tuesday.

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Tech giant’s goal of reducing climate footprint at risk as it grows increasingly reliant on energy-hungry data centres

Google’s goal of reducing its climate footprint is in jeopardy as it relies on more and more energy-hungry data centres to power its new artificial intelligence products. The tech giant revealed Tuesday that its greenhouse gas emissions have climbed 48% over the past five years.

Google said electricity consumption by data centres and supply chain emissions were the primary cause of the increase. It also revealed in its annual environmental report that its emissions in 2023 had risen 13% compared with the previous year, hitting 14.3m metric tons.

The climate emergency should have been a more prominent theme during an underwhelming election campaign

For all the many televised encounters between party leaders, one huge subject has largely flown under the radar during this underwhelming election campaign. In 2019, at a time when the Brexit crisis had overwhelmed national politics, Channel 4 nevertheless devoted an entire pre-election debate to the climate emergency. Boris Johnson didn’t turn up. But, sensing the mood of the times, as prime minister he was soon committing to a “green industrial revolution”. Climate action was high-profile and it mattered.

Contrast that with last week’s final leaders’ debate between Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer. None of the questions selected from the audience addressed the environment. Aside from one attempt by Mr Sunak to suggest that Labour’s green plans will lead to higher taxes – feeding into the Conservative party’s wider attack strategy – both leaders focused their energy and political capital elsewhere. It has been much the same throughout the campaign. Economists, industrial leaders and environmental campaigners are united in their desire for more proactive green government. But the politics has become difficult.

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The season to tap trees is now earlier and longer, but new processes and generations are helping the industry thrive

On a warm May Monday, more than three dozen high school students took to the forest behind a former dairy barn at Vermont State University in Randolph.

In teams of four, they ran blue plastic tubing from tree to tree, racing to connect the tubes across three trees in 30 minutes. One student leaned back and pulled it taut with his body weight while another secured tube to tree. Quickly, they dashed to the next in what appears to be a twisted tug-of-war.

Technical difficulties blamed for new blow to firm’s sustainable energy plans

Shell has paused the construction of one of Europe’s largest biofuel plants which was expected to convert waste into green jet fuel and biodiesel by the end of the decade.

The oil company said on Tuesday it would “temporarily pause” work on one of its biggest energy transition projects to address the technical difficulties that have delayed its progress so far.