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Exclusive: Analyses are stark evidence of how global heating is already supercharging deadly weather beyond anything ever experienced by humanity
At least 24 previously impossible heatwaves have struck communities across the planet, a new assessment has shown, providing stark evidence of how severely human-caused global heating is supercharging extreme weather.
The impossible heatwaves have taken lives across North America, Europe and Asia, with scientific analyses showing that they would have had virtually zero chance of happening without the extra heat trapped by fossil fuel emissions.
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António Guterres says succesful outcome at Cop29 is still ‘within reach’ but only with ‘leadership’ from world’s most powerful countries
How usual is it to have G20 happening at the same time as Cop? According to Jen Iris Allan, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University who also writes the Regular Earth Negotiations Bulletin, commenting on Bluesky, it’s not normal at all.
Cop29 happening at the same time as the G20 is a rare opportunity. It gets the leaders of the big economies together in a small setting. They could strike a side deal that would really help here.
The new climate finance target is the big issue that will define COP29. Government ministers are arriving to thrash out everything from the amount of money raised to who contributes towards it.
We’ve seen a few versions of the text as parties make sure their views are represented while trying to produce something their governments can work with. The number of “options” is lower than it was on Wednesday. But the number of brackets - meaning undecided bits - is higher.
It’s still long: 25 pages. Negotiators started with a 9-page text, which they rejected as “unbalanced” - then lots of stuff got added back in. It will need to be shorter. The EU chief negotiator told journalists last week that a 2-page text could capture “everything we need”.
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Exclusive: Company has failed to tackle serious safety concerns or upgrade vital IT systems, Guardian investigation reveals
Thames Water has £23bn of assets that are in urgent need of repair and the supply of water to its 16 million customers is “on a knife-edge”, a Guardian investigation can reveal.
Britain’s biggest water company has failed to tackle adequately serious safety concerns, has not upgraded essential IT systems and has tolerated a culture of intimidation among staff, according to insiders and an analysis of documents.
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Manufacturers want ministers to ease EV mandate, which would mean energy firms losing out
Big UK businesses including Ovo, SSEand BT Openreach are urging the government to stick to current electric car targets as struggling carmakers pile pressure on ministers to relax the rules before industry talks this week.
The businesses said the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate, which forces carmakers to sell greater numbers of electric cars each year, is an essential part of the plan to reduce the carbon and air pollution emissions caused by vehicles on Britain’s roads.
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Caister St Edmund, Norfolk: Dozens of deer and hares are out in the fields, grazing in relative safety, and Dad is especially excited to see mating slugs
We leave the farm track, the truck bumping into the open field. The headlights scan the dark expanse of grassland. For a moment, I’m 10 years old again – transported back to a night-time safari with Dad.
This evening, I’m helping with his podcast. And by helping, I mean saying as little as I can get away with, while he talks about the farm and wildlife. We both love communicating about nature, but I prefer the quieter, more introverted process of writing.
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Powerful storm systems bring heavy rainfall, widespread flooding and landslides to Central America and Asia
Tropical Storm Sara has caused significant disruption across Central America in recent days after forming in the Caribbean Sea on Thursday afternoon. It is the 18th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season and the third this month. The large number of tropical storm and hurricane formations this season can be attributed to the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico being warmer than average, thus providing more energy for the development and intensification of these systems.
Since its formation, Sara has affected Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize and Guatemala, bringing heavy rainfall, widespread flooding and landslides. The slow-moving nature of the storm has exacerbated the damage, prolonging the duration of its impact. However, Sara is losing strength; initially it had sustained winds of 45mph on Thursday but weakened slightly after moving inland, with winds dropping to 40mph by Sunday. According to the National Hurricane Centre, Sara is expected to dissipate into an area of low pressure as it moves north-west toward the southern region of the Yucatan peninsula on Monday.
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Brown bears, introduced into Trentino province 20 years ago, have begun to clash with the local human population
Franca Gherardini used to cherish the sublime views from her home in Caldes, a village surrounded by forests on the slopes of the Brenta Dolomites in northern Italy’s Trentino province.
But now she tries to shut out the scene as much as possible, rolling down the window canopy in the morning to avoid looking towards the area where her son, Andrea Papi, 26, was killed by a bear.
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Wildlife experts in US west have found small aircraft are ideal for protecting humans and livestock from predators
The first time that Terry Vandenbos watched a bear run from a drone, on a spring day two years ago, he was chasing the animal himself. After he saw the grizzly cross a road near his property, the Montana rancher hopped on his all-terrain vehicle, planning to scare it away from his cattle if needed.
But the bear began sprinting away when he was still far from it, looking over its shoulder as it ran, and Vandenbos looked up too; overhead, a small drone was following the bear, its four propellers emitting a high-pitched whine as it sent the animal towards a nearby lake.
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Campaigners blame United Utilities for blighting famous lake with raw effluent
• United Utilities refuses to hand over data on sewage discharges into Windermere
A short stroll from Beatrix Potter’s former farmhouse in the Lake District are the waters of Cunsey Beck, nestling in the breathtaking landscape that inspired the tales of childhood favourites Jeremy Fisher and Jemima Puddle-Duck.
Campaigners say the once clear waters are regularly blighted by raw sewage from a nearby works. New figures obtained by the Observerreveal the Near Sawrey plant is alleged to have illegally discharged untreated sewage on 56 days from 2021 to 2023.
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Her last book sold 2m copies. Now the Native American ecologist is taking on capitalism. She talks about how the ‘gift economy’ could heal divisions across the US
When the ecologist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer is in a city for work and starts to feel disconnected from the natural world, she likes to do a breathing exercise. She inhales and thinks about how she is breathing in the breath of plants. And then she exhales, and she thinks about how her breath, in turn, gives plants life. “That is a super fundamental way to recognise our reciprocity in the living world; that we are not separate,” she tells me, speaking on a video call from her farm near Syracuse, in upstate New York.
Once you begin to recognise yourself as symbiotically connected to plants, it might shift your views on politics, too. One of the great “delusions” of market capitalism, Kimmerer continues, is its notion of self-interest. Because how should you define the self? “If my self is the economic me, supposed to maximise my return on investment, that’s a very different notion than if my self is permeable, if it includes the trees whose oxygen I am breathing, and those birds, and the soil,” she says.
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