The Guardian

António Guterres tells Climate Ambition Summit more must be done to hit net zero emissions

Governments around the world should all declare a state of climate emergency until the world has reached net zero CO2 emissions, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has told a summit of world leaders.

At least 38 countries have already declared such a state of emergency, often owing to their vulnerability to the impacts of climate breakdown, which are already being felt.

Boris Johnson has said the UK is committed to reducing carbon emissions by 68% on 1990 levels, and encouraged countries around the world to work together on the climate emergency during the UN's climate ambition summit, which is being held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. The prime minister said his motivation was to save the environment and create new jobs 

• UK to stop funding overseas fossil fuel projects

Biologists hail ‘one of the great conservation successes’ but species’ fate uncertain as warming rapidly transforms Arctic

In some rare good news from the top of the world, bowhead whale populations have rebounded and are nearing pre-commercial whaling numbers in US waters.

Related: US plans to protect thousands of miles of coral reefs in Pacific and Caribbean

Despite Boris Johnson’s pledges, the UK is way off course on its path to zero emissions. It’s Labour’s job to force the issue

• Matthew Pennycook is shadow minister for climate change

The coronavirus pandemic and the jobs crisis it has precipitated are rightly consuming our immediate attention. Meanwhile, the climate and environment emergency has not gone away. These intersecting crises demand urgent and coordinated action.

When it comes to averting catastrophic global heating, the science is unequivocal: bold action is required, and it is required now. As the UN has warned, limiting warming to 1.5C requires “far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” for which “the next few years are probably the most important in our history”.

Australia’s nut trees have been added to the IUCN’s red list of threatened species as numbers in the wild dwindle

When Ian McConachie was growing up in postwar Queensland, his aunt had macadamia nut trees in her back yard. She told him that one day the trees would be famous. More than 70 years later she has been proved right – the Australian nut is a delicacy prized in kitchens around the world.

But this week the macadamia came to the world’s attention for another reason: Macadamia integrifolia, or the Queensland nut tree, was listed as vulnerable on the IUCN red list of threatened species “on account of its population size, suspected at potentially fewer than 1,000 mature individuals”. Its endangered relative, Macadamia ternifolia, has previously been listed on the IUCN red list of threatened plants, as the four macadamia species indigenous to Australia come under significant environmental pressure.

Move follows EU member states’ agreement to 55% cut in carbon emissions by 2030 on verge of interim climate summit

The UK taxpayer is to stop funding fossil fuel projects overseas as part of the government’s push for international action on the climate ahead of a key summit on Saturday.

Related: The Paris agreement five years on: is it strong enough to avert climate catastrophe?

The best of the week’s wildlife pictures from around the world, including a Sumatran tiger and rare storks

Spread of fatal illness has slowed, new research shows, leading to new optimism about chances of survival

The spread of a facial cancer that ravaged the Tasmanian devil population has slowed due to the animal’s “amazing evolutionary response”, increasing its chance of survival, new research suggests.

An international team of scientists used a genomic tool typically used to track viruses such as Covid-19 to monitor the spread of the transmissable cancer that has led to devil numbers crashing by more than 80% over the past two decades.

Campaigners who helped end logging and mining in the spectacular paradise of lakes, rainforests and beaches now fear global heating

Before he died in February 2019, John Sinclair had been fighting for Fraser Island off the Queensland coast for the best part of 50 years.

In the early 1970s the world’s biggest sand island – an ethereal paradise of lakes, towering rainforests and ancient dunes – was under pressure from sand mining and more than a century of logging.

Official modelling could give you the impression the Morrison government has achieved something meaningful. But you would be wrong

Great news! The government says Australia is on track to meet the greenhouse gas emissions reduction target for 2030 it set as part of the global Paris climate agreement. Cue the page one headlines, the fireworks, the “mission accomplished” banner on the deck of USS Abraham Lincoln.

Or something like that. You could certainly be left with the impression the Morrison government had achieved something meaningful following the release of the annual official emissions projections data on Thursday.

Covid hasn’t stopped the climate emergency. As a nation, we can encourage others to take ever more ambitious action

• Dominic Raab is the foreign secretary

On Saturday the UK, UN and France will co-host the climate ambition summit alongside partners Italy and Chile, on the fifth anniversary of the UN’s landmark Paris agreement. The summit brings together the world’s most ambitious climate leaders from government, business and civil society, all seeking to ramp up action and ensure the Paris agreement is delivered.

Related: EU member states agree 55% cut in carbon emissions by 2030

The Bureau of Land Management is moving from Washington to Colorado – but some see it as an attempt to undermine the agency

In November 2017, less than a year after Donald Trump took office, Ryan Zinke proposed ejecting the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a federal agency that oversees 250 million acres of federal land, from its longtime headquarters in Washington DC.

The BLM’s key responsibilities include administering grazing permits for ranchers, mining, and oil and gas extraction permits; since the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, it has also had a mandate to oversee recreation and conservation on its lands.

Inquest is considering whether London air pollution contributed to nine-year-old’s asthma death

The mother of a girl who suffered a fatal asthma attack thought to have been triggered by air pollution has said she wants “justice” for her daughter.

Nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah died in February 2013 having suffered numerous seizures and made almost 30 hospital visits over the previous three years.

Scientists brand 7% decline a ‘drop in the ocean’ and call on governments to push ahead with structural changes

Greenhouse gas emissions, which plunged by a record amount this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, are set to rebound next year as restrictions are lifted further and governments strive to return their economies to growth, according to a global study.

The UK showed the second biggest fall in emissions globally, down 13% for the year compared with 2019, with only France showing a larger drop, of 15%. The plunge reflects the prolonged and severe lockdowns in both countries, with surface transport particularly affected.

Mayor of Paris praises ‘important milestone’ on fifth anniversary of the landmark agreement

More than 50 of the world’s leading cities are on track to help keep global heating below 1.5C and tackle the worst impacts of the climate crisis, according to a new report.

From mass tree-planting in Buenos Aires to new public transport networks in Mexico City, 54 of the world’s leading cities are now rolling out plans that will cut their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement, according to a new study by the C40 cities network.

Greta Thunberg has warned the world is failing to tackle the climate emergency and is in a ‘state of complete denial’ nearly five years after the Paris agreement.

Thunberg, 17, whose solo school strike in 2018 snowballed into a global youth movement, spoke out ahead of a UN event at which national leaders have been asked to increase their pledges on emissions cuts.

In a video shared exclusively with the Guardian, she calls on leaders to account for failing to reverse rising carbon emissions, but concluded: ‘There is hope … we are the hope – we, the people’

• The Paris agreement five years on: is it strong enough to avert climate catastrophe?

Exclusive: Climate striker speaks before UN event marking five years since the Paris accord

The world is speeding in the wrong direction in tackling the climate emergency, Greta Thunberg has said, before a UN event at which national leaders have been asked to increase their pledges for emissions cuts.

Thunberg, whose solo school strike in 2018 has snowballed into a global youth movement, said there was a state of complete denial when it came to the immediate action needed, with leaders giving only distant promises and empty words.

Project hopes to influence policymakers at Cop26 UN climate change conference in Glasgow

People around the world will have a chance to discuss responses to the climate crisis in a planned global citizens’ assembly to inform UN talks in Glasgow in 2021, organisers said on Thursday.

The project aims to build on similar initiatives in individual countries such as Ireland, France and Canada, where citizens’ assemblies have given politicians a steer by generating ambitious proposals on divisive issues.

Three frog and one shark species have vanished, and Amazonian dolphin and oak trees are threatened

Europe’s biggest land mammal, the European bison, is beginning to recover in numbers thanks to conservation efforts and breeding programmes, according to an update on threatened species.

By the early years of the last century, the once abundant European bison could be found only in captivity in a few places, and it was only after the second world war that animals were reintroduced into the wild in small numbers. By 2003 there were 1,800 in the wild, and by last year the number had more than tripled to a population of more than 6,200 in 47 free-ranging herds in Poland, Belarus and Russia.

I enjoy the camaraderie between motorists, so it was a nasty shock to find myself shunned when I took my friend’s BMW X5 for a spin

I always need to be liked; the opposite is too difficult to bear. All the best therapists say this way of thinking is seriously suboptimal, but there you go. This feeling is so ingrained that I even take it on the road with me, literally. I am the most accommodating driver ever. I am always letting people in with a cheery wave, often to the annoyance of my passengers and doubtless the motorists stuck behind me. A true saint among drivers.

I loved driving lorries for my dad’s scaffold company, many moons ago. The code of pleasantries between lorry drivers is a wonderful thing and I wanted as much of it as possible. When overtaking another lorry, the driver would flash you in when it was safe to move back into the lane. I would then flash my hazard lights to convey my gratitude for their assistance. Naturally, I would provide the same service when I was being overtaken. Sweet.