The Guardian

Chris Bowen also says climate disaster fund will need to be bankrolled by broader-than-expected range of countries in speech ahead of Cop28

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

Australia’s climate minister, Chris Bowen, says Pacific nations and other countries vulnerable to climate catastrophe should be the major beneficiaries of “loss and damage” funding, and a broader range of countries should bankroll the international effort along with the private sector.

Bowen used a speech to a foreign policy thinktank on Tuesday night to signal Australia’s position ahead of Cop28, the looming United Nations-led climate talks, which get under way in the United Arab Emirates later this month.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Jealous Mpofu wins Tusk’s ranger of the year award for his work with a maligned and misunderstood species

When Jealous Mpofu was a boy, he overheard his father’s bosses talking negatively about painted dogs, wild African canines with distinct marble coats that are among the world’s most endangered species.

“They said they didn’t kill an animal, they grabbed the flesh. They said they were rough animals,” Mpofu said.

Nature Talks presents the results of the nature photographer of the year 2023 competition. Jacquie Matechuk, from Canada, is the winner in the contest, an initiative from the organisation also responsible for the annual Nature Talks photo festival in the Netherlands

Surfers Against Sewage finds 60% of representative sample of popular locations to be unsafe for swimming

The majority of popular inland bathing spots in the UK surveyed in a report have been found to be unsafe for swimming.

In a representative sample of popular swimming and water sports locations, 60% were found to have pollution at unsafe levels, the annual report from campaign group Surfers Against Sewage found.

Landmark finding in judicial review over management of Costa Beck river could force overhaul of government’s plans

The government and environment agency failed in their duty to restore and protect waterways from pollution, the high court has ruled in a significant case that could force an overhaul of the government’s plans.

Fish Legal and Pickering Fishery Association took the government to judicial review over its river basin management plan for the Costa Beck river in the Humber district, which had a reputation as one of the best fly fishing spots in the UK until a few years ago.

Sentences risk silencing public concerns about the environment, climate change rapporteur Ian Fry says

Long sentences handed to two Just Stop Oil protesters for scaling the M25 bridge over the Thames are a potential breach of international law and risk silencing public concerns about the environment, a UN expert has said.

In a strongly worded intervention, Ian Fry, the UN’s rapporteur for climate change and human rights, said he was “particularly concerned” about the sentences, which were “significantly more severe than previous sentences imposed for this type of offending in the past”.

Icelandic singer condemns ‘terrible suffering’ of salmon farming with proceeds from her new single with Rosalía going to activists

The Icelandic singer Björk has condemned industrial salmon farming in open pens as “extraordinarily cruel”, as she announced her debut song with the Catalan singer Rosalía, which will be available on Tuesday 21 November.

The pair will donate the proceeds of the single, a love song based on a recently recovered recording Björk made two decades ago, to activists opposing the controversial industry in Iceland.

Data shows baby boomers have highest emissions and London has lower footprint than rest of UK

• The great carbon divide: charting a climate chasm

Restaurants, pets and foreign holidays are among the reasons why the UK’s most well-off people rack up carbon footprints far greater than those on low incomes, according to data shared with the Guardian.

The biggest carbon divide is in aviation, with the richest 10% in the UK – the 6.7 million people paid more than £59,000 a year – causing more than six times more climate-heating emissions from flights than the poorest 10%. Spending on electrical items, homeware and furniture also contributes to the outsize impact of the wealthy, who splash out four times more on these goods.

Carbon emissions of richest 10% is up to 40 times bigger than poorest, and ignoring divide may make ending climate crisis impossible, experts say

• The great carbon divide: charting a climate chasm

The richest 10% of people in many countries cause up to 40 times more climate-heating carbon emissions than the poorest 10% of their fellow citizens, according to data obtained by the Guardian.

Failing to account for this huge divide when making policies to cut emissions can cause a backlash over the affordability of climate action, experts say.

In the 1970s, Graeme Pearman measured rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, briefing three prime ministers on what that meant for the planet. After decades leading Australia’s climate research, Pearman, now 82, speaks of the frustration that the science didn't lead to meaningful change.

This video is part of Weight of the World: a climate scientist's burden. The series features three pioneering Australian climate change scientists - Graeme Pearman, Lesley Hughes and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. Pearman was measuring CO2 in the atmosphere as long ago as 1971. Hughes is one of the first ecologists to warn that rising temperatures would push many species towards extinction. Hoegh-Guldberg’s research revealed the risk that global heating would have on the ocean’s richest ecosystems - coral reefs.

The series tells the story of how the three scientists made their discoveries, how they came under attack for their science and the personal toll it has taken on them. And importantly, how they stay hopeful.

‘We must start setting records on cutting emissions,’ UN boss says after temperature records obliterated in 2023

The world is on track for a “hellish” 3C of global heating, the UN has warned before the crucial Cop28 climate summit that begins next week in the United Arab Emirates.

The report found that today’s carbon-cutting policies are so inadequate that 3C of heating would be reached this century.

I think people everywhere, even on juries, have had enough of our leaders’ failure to tackle the climate crisis

In 2021, I was arrested with eight other women for breaking the windows at HSBC’s headquarters in London. On Thursday, after just two hours of deliberation, a jury of our peers found all nine of us not guilty of nearly half a million pounds in criminal damage.

Although the three-week trial was the most gruelling experience of my life, I trusted the jury to acquit us for two reasons. First, I believe the human spirit is basically good and cooperative, and when given the chance we will make decisions that are compassionate and fair.

Gully Bujak worked with Extinction Rebellion for several years and is now a community organiser in Hull

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

The 1% aren’t just the biggest climate wreckers, they also greatly influence how the world responds to the crisis

When you talk about the climate crisis, sooner or later someone is going to say that population is the issue and fret about the sheer number of humans now living on Earth. But population per se is not the problem, because the farmer in Bangladesh or the street vendor in Brazil doesn’t have nearly the impact of the venture capitalist in California or the petroleum oligarchs of Russia and the Middle East. The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%. The rich are bad for the Earth, and the richer they are the bigger their adverse impact (including the impact of money invested in banks, and stocks financing fossil fuels and other forms of climate destruction).

In other words, we are not all the same size. Billionaires loom large over our politics and environment in ways that are hard to understand without taking on the shocking scale of their wealth. That impact, both through their climate emissions and their manipulations of politics and public life means they are not at all like the rest of humanity. They are behemoths, and they mostly use their outsize power in ugly ways – both in how much they consume and how much they influence the world’s climate response.

Renowned for clean-energy tech, the billionaire seems to be at one now with super-emitters and far-right global climate deniers

Elon Musk was once lauded as a sort of green Tony Stark – the genius inventor who leads a double life as superhero Iron Man – for single-handedly tackling the climate crisis one Tesla at a time, helping to forge a clean energy future and pushing for new taxes to drive down fossil fuel use.

But the climate credentials of the world’s richest person have become clouded by his embrace of rightwing politicians, some of whom dismiss global heating, as well as by his management of X, formerly known as Twitter, during which many climate scientists have fled the platform amid a proliferation of misinformation about the climate crisis.

Research shows impact from lifestyles and investments of likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk

• Introduction: the great carbon divide
• Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%

Twelve of the world’s wealthiest billionaires produce more greenhouse gas emissions from their yachts, private jets, mansions and financial investments than the annual energy emissions of 2m homes, research shared exclusively with the Guardian reveals.

The tycoons include the Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the tech billionaires Bill Gates, Larry Page and Michael Dell, the inventor and social media company owner Elon Musk and the Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim.

‘Polluter elite’ are plundering the planet to point of destruction, says Oxfam after comprehensive study of climate inequality

• Introduction: the great carbon divide
• Twelve billionaires’ emissions equal to fuelling 2.1m homes

The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency, a report says.

The most comprehensive study of global climate inequality ever undertaken shows that this elite group, made up of 77 million people including billionaires, millionaires and those paid more than US$140,000 (£112,500) a year, accounted for 16% of all CO2 emissions in 2019 – enough to cause more than a million excess deaths due to heat, according to the report.

‘My hope is that the viewer will pause, slow down and take notice. Pay attention to the small, magical things that are happening within each one of the images on these pages and find your own place within them. There we can meet in silence—be still, and watch with wonder.’ - Palani Mohan palanimohan.com.

The book Watch in Wonder is published by Hong Kong University press and the images are on display at the Blue Lotus gallery, Hong Kong, 17 November till 10 December 2023.

Earlier this year, the Norwegian artist and photographer Tine Poppe stumbled across a Ted Talk about the environmental impact of the cut flowers industry. In her series Gilded Lilies she sets these flowers against scenery around the world. ‘The backdrops create an illusion of the flowers having been documented in their natural habitat,’ she says, ‘but the viewer will notice that something is off at a second glance.’ The flowers in the portraits are genetically engineered examples of their species, grown in industrial scale greenhouses and transported on long-haul flights. ‘I hope to convey a sense of our planet’s mortality,’ she says.

• See more at Tine Poppe’s Instagram profile

Many of the chemicals being spread as sewage sludge are untested or can’t be assessed. That’s why I’m suing for answers

It’s an experiment with 8 billion test subjects, no controls and no endpoint. What happens when you release thousands of novel chemicals, most of which have not been tested for their impacts on human health or ecosystems, into a living planet? What are the effects on the development of foetuses, on human brains, other organs, immune systems, cancer rates, fertility? What are they doing to other species and to Earth systems? We seem determined to find out the hard way.

The gap between our actions and our knowledge is astounding. Of the 350,000 registered synthetic chemicals, about a third are impossible to assess, as their composition is either “confidential” or “ambiguously described”. For most of the rest, deployment comes first, testing later. For instance, the health and environmental impacts of 80% of the chemicals registered in the European Union have yet to be assessed. And the EU is as good as it gets. Our own government, as one of the benefits of Brexit, has just decided to downgrade the safety information chemical companies have to provide to an “irreducible minimum”.

Rules, still subject to formal approval, stop exports to non-OECD countries and limit them elsewhere

The EU has struck a deal to stop ships of waste plastic landing in ports of poor countries.

European lawmakers and member states agreed on Friday to ban exports of plastic rubbish to countries outside the OECD group of mostly rich countries from the middle of 2026. The deal comes as diplomats meet in Nairobi, Kenya, to hammer out a global treaty on plastic pollution.