The Guardian Climate Change

The divestment movement has a long history among US student activists, including in the overlapping movements of today

Cameron Jones first learned about fossil fuel divestment as a 15-year-old climate organizer. When he enrolled at Columbia University in 2022, he joined the campus’s chapter of the youth-led climate justice group the Sunrise Movement and began pushing the school in New York to sever financial ties with coal, oil and gas companies.

“The time for institutions like Columbia to be in the pocket of fossil fuel corporations has passed,” Jones wrote in an October 2023 op-ed in the student newspaper directed toward the Columbia president, Minouche Shafik.

British Medical Association says decision to take Dr Sarah Benn off medical register for five months ‘sends worrying message’

Doctors groups are calling for urgent consideration of the rules for medical professionals who take peaceful direct action on the climate crisis, which they say is the “greatest threat to global health”, after a GP was suspended from the register for non-violent protest.

Dr Sarah Benn, a GP from Birmingham, was taken off the medical register for five months on Tuesday by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), the disciplinary arm of the General Medical Council (GMC), over her climate protests. The tribunal said Benn’s fitness to practise as a doctor had been impaired by reason of misconduct.

High winds, rains, winter storms and tropical cyclones accounted for 80% of power interruptions over the last 20 years

Power outages in the US are rising, as climate-related extreme weather strain an already burdened energy grid.

Over the last decade, severe storm outages increased by 74% compared with the previous 10 years.

Investors lodge 58% protest vote against emissions report but defiant chair Richard Goyder maintains company is part of solution to climate change

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Woodside Energy has suffered an embarrassing rebuke of its climate credentials after its emissions plan was overwhelmingly rejected by shareholders at its annual general meeting on Wednesday.

Investors lodged a 58% vote against Woodside’s climate report, representing the strongest protest recorded against any of the dozens of listed companies around the world that regularly put climate-related resolutions to shareholders.

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A dawn chorus of flutes, whistles and chirps once flowed through my Cambridge window, but there has been a shocking collapse in birdlife. What can be done?

Every year from February through to June, the early morning chorus of birdsong is one of the most evocative manifestations of spring. During late winter I open the bedroom window before going to sleep, to hear that incredible mix of flutes, whistles and chirps that begin before first light, when I wake. I listen for the layers of song that simultaneously come from close by and far away.

This year though, the dawn chorus that once was the soundtrack for spring in central Cambridge has collapsed. It was noticeably quieter in 2023, and this year strikingly so. Blackbirds are depleted and song thrushes no longer heard at all. The dunnocks – once one of the most common garden songsters – have disappeared, as have the chaffinches, whose early February song was among the first audible confirmations of lengthening days. The cheery chatter of house sparrows is absent and the once familiar sound of coal tits has fallen silent. Long-tailed tits are now rare, and so far this year I’ve heard no blackcaps. Great and blue tits, robins and goldfinches, are still present, but down in number.

The region is turning towards Russia and other global players when it comes to security. Tackling the climate crisis would contribute to a solution

Two apparently separate developments in the Sahel are linked by more than geography. Last week, the US confirmed that it will withdraw more than 1,000 troops from Niger after the military junta revoked a security pact – just six years after a new $110m military base opened. Meanwhile, a record heatwave is the latest deadly extreme weather event.

The US had hoped to maintain the military agreement despite last summer’s coup, part of a wave of military power grabs across the central Sahel and the wider region. French troops had already been expelled, with France earlier withdrawing from Mali and Burkina Faso. Mali’s regime also ordered an end to the UN stabilisation mission. Western departures come alongside the growing presence of Russian mercenaries, including the Wagner group.

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Sarah Benn is first of three GPs facing disciplinary tribunals this year over climate activism

A doctor who went to jail after a series of climate protests has been taken off the medical register for five months – and still faces being permanently struck off.

The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) – the disciplinary arm of the General Medical Council (GMC) – suspended Dr Sarah Benn on Tuesday, having found last week that her fitness to practise as a doctor had been impaired by reason of misconduct.

Philippe Lamberts warns far-right gains in elections could destroy plan to protect nature and biodiversity

The EU’s green deal to restore biodiversity, clean the continent’s soil, air and water, and mitigate climate breakdown is at high risk of being killed off, the co-president of the Green group of MEPs has warned.

The Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts said the green deal, which has informed everything from tax policy to environment law making, would be a thing of the past if the far right made significant gains in the June EU parliamentary elections.

Trudi Warner on a year being pursued by government lawyers determined to prosecute her over a jurors’ rights protest

Two days before Trudi Warner faced court under threat of a contempt of court prosecution, she fell off her bike and ruptured the tendons in her hand.

Now the hand is black and blue, tightly bandaged, and requires surgery. It is an indication that 69-year-old Warner, who spent her working life as a child social worker and has committed her retirement to climate action, is not as tough and unflappable as her demeanour suggests.

Claire O’Neill, a former climate minister, says PM’s move was to ‘try and create political division and dividing lines’

The UK government’s decision to weaken some of its climate commitments was a “retrograde step” that would set back vital cross-party action to cut carbon emissions, Claire O’Neill, a former Conservative climate minister, has said.

O’Neill, who was known as Claire Perry when she served as a minister under David Cameron and Theresa May, said the rolling back of emission reduction efforts by Rishi Sunak appeared to be a ploy for political advantage.

Chris Stark says populist response and culture war around the term is inhibiting environmental progress

The concept of “net zero” has become a political slogan used to start a “dangerous” culture war over the climate, and may be better dropped, the outgoing head of the UK’s climate watchdog has warned.

Chris Stark, the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), said sensible improvements to the economy and people’s lives were being blocked by a populist response to the net zero label, and he would be “intensely relaxed” about losing the term.

Organizers at Columbia, Tulane and the University of Virginia write to attorneys general arguing schools’ investments are illegal

Campus organizers at three universities filed legal complaints on Monday arguing that their schools’ investments in planet-heating fossil fuels are illegal, the Guardian has learned.

The students from Columbia University, Tulane University and the University of Virginia each wrote to the attorneys general of their respective states calling on them to scrutinize their universities’ investments. They accuse their universities of breaching the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, a law adopted by 49 states that requires non-profit institutions to consider their “charitable purposes” when investing, and exercise “prudence” and “loyalty”.

Stories of dismay but also resilience as crisis in food production builds after 18 months of exceptionally wet weather

Farmers have been dealing with record-breaking rainfall over at least the past year, meaning food produced in Britain has fallen drastically.

Livestock and crops have been affected as fields have been submerged since last autumn on account of it being an exceptionally wet 18 months.

Results highlight the difficulties government faces in selling energy transition to sceptical public

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Voters have backed Anthony Albanese’s Future Made in Australia plan but are under the misapprehension that renewables are the most expensive form of power.

Those are the results of Guardian’s latest Essential poll of 1,145 voters, illustrating the difficulty for Labor of selling the energy transition to sceptical voters.

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AustralianSuper says it has ‘ongoing concerns’ about how the country’s biggest oil and gas company will reach net zero emissions by 2050

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Australia’s biggest superannuation fund has joined a protest vote against Woodside Energy’s failure to do more to address the climate crisis, saying it has unanswered questions about the fossil fuel company’s plans.

AustralianSuper said it had spent “a lot of time reviewing and engaging” with Woodside on its climate transition plan before the company’s annual general meeting on Wednesday, and still had “ongoing concerns” about how it would reach net zero emissions by 2050.

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Historic hearing will receive submissions from people whose human rights have been affected by climate change

Julian Medina comes from a long line of fishers in the north of Colombia’s Gulf of Morrosquillo who use small-scale and often traditional methods to catch species such as mackerel, tuna and cojinúa.

Medina went into business as a young man but was drawn back to his roots, and ended up leading a fishing organisation. For years he has campaigned against the encroachment of fossil fuel companies, pollution and overfishing, which are destroying the gulf’s delicate ecosystem and people’s livelihoods.

Trudi Warner was accused of contempt for holding placard reminding jurors of right to acquit based on conscience

A high court judge has thrown out an attempt by the government’s most senior law officer to prosecute a woman for holding a placard on jury rights outside a climate trial.

Mr Justice Saini said there was no basis for a prosecution of Trudi Warner, 69, for criminal contempt for holding a placard outside the trial of climate activists that informed jurors of their right to acquit a defendant based on their conscience.

Though touted as a model of environmental preservation, the country has recently signalled a shift from phasing out fossil fuels to boosting the economy. Franz Tattenbach on the tension between green credentials and growth

“This country is what the world would like to be but is not,” says Franz Tattenbach, Costa Rica’s minister of environment and energy. The 69-year-old economist is keenly aware of his role as guardian of the country’s reputation for forward-looking biodiversity initiatives and forest restoration. Since the 1970s, successive governments have sought to do justice to its wildlife, enacting a widely praised conservation policy that has boosted the country’s image as a model of environmental preservation.

From his ninth-floor office window in San José, Tattenbach can see the mountains surrounding the Central Valley. Beyond them lie the jungles, the wild beaches and the areas where nearly 6% of the world’s biodiversity resides in just 51,100 sq km (19,700 sq miles) of land, and extensive marine protected area.

Funds will be targeted at disadvantaged areas to create 200,000 jobs, after last week’s oil and gas lease restrictions in Alaska

Joe Biden will mark Monday’s Earth Day by announcing a $7bn investment in solar energy projects nationwide, focusing on disadvantaged communities, and unveiling a week-long series of what the White House say will be “historic climate actions”.

The president is traveling to Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park to deliver a speech touting his environmental record, including measures to tackle the climate crisis and increase access to, and lower costs of, clean energy.

Norway’s KLP and the UK’s LGIM among those who say they have concerns over energy giant’s carbon transition goals

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Woodside Energy is facing the prospect of an overwhelming protest vote against its climate plans when shareholders meet on Wednesday, as global investors pick apart the emissions strategy of Australia’s biggest oil and gas company.

Norway’s largest pension fund, KLP, and Britain’s biggest asset manager, LGIM, are the latest investors to disclose they will vote against Woodside’s climate report, citing concerns over its carbon transition plans.