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Prime minister gives press conference on Australia’s commitments to climate action; Daniel Andrews explains new measures; Victoria confirms four Covid deaths overnight, NSW one death – follow all the day’s news

• Boris Johnson says chances of Cop26 success are ‘touch and go’
• Qantas in talks with federal government over vaccine rules
• Vaccine rollout tracker; cases and data tracker
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The estimates hearings today cover off the same committees as yesterday:

About 100 rats have been discovered since a $17m eradication program on the world heritage-listed island but experts say all is not lost

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Despite the deployment of 22,000 lockable traps and more than 40 tonnes of poison dropped via helicopters, nearly 100 rats have been discovered on Lord Howe Island since April – but experts are still hopeful the $17m eradication program has been a success.

The last rat seen on the island was supposed to have been flushed out by a detection dog in 2019 but the latest mop-up effort marks a significant test for the sometimes controversial program on the remote, world-heritage listed island 700km north-east of Sydney.

Economists have failed to take account of ‘immense risks and potential loss of life’, says author of landmark review

Many economic assessments of the climate crisis “grossly undervalue the lives of young people and future generations”, Prof Nicholas Stern warned on Tuesday, before the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Economists have failed to take account of the “immense risks and potential loss of life” that could occur as a result of the climate crisis, he said, as well as badly underestimating the speed at which the costs of clean technologies, such as solar and wind energy, have fallen.

Northern California is seeing record rainfall. All the water will help reduce wildfire risks and could help alleviate drought conditions, but it also means a risk for debris flows and evacuations.

The U.N. meteorological agency says despite a decrease in emissions due to reduced economic activity during COVID-19, carbon dioxide and other warming gases continued to accumulate in the atmosphere.

(Image credit: Charles Mostoller/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The transition to heat pumps will affect almost every household in the UK, but it won’t work without public support

The government has finally handed in its climate homework. Less than a fortnight before hosting the Cop26 climate summit – arguably the most important meeting in human history – the new net zero strategy is supposed to tell us how the UK will go from long-term hand-waving to now-term problem-solving.

There is both a lot in there, and not enough. Until the government’s official advisers give their assessment we won’t know for sure if the plan stands a good chance of achieving legal carbon targets through to 2037. If you want a simple headline for now, I’d offer this: we’re pointing in the right direction, but setting off at a jog. Physics demands we sprint.

Max Wakefield is the director of campaigns for the climate action group Possible

Care work – paid and unpaid – has huge knock-on effects for the climate that can no longer be ignored

It is no coincidence that both care and our climate are in crisis. Addressing each requires us to recognise that we are vulnerable and interdependent, as a species and individually. This will only become more apparent, because – as the world gets hotter and consequently more dangerous – we are going to need to care for each other more than ever before. As initiatives including Naomi Klein’s The Leap and the Feminist Green New Deal have explained, we need a care-centred approach to meet the demands of a future that looks very different to our past.

First, we must broaden our understanding of what constitutes a “green job”. Research by the Feminist Green New Deal has found that a majority of people identify solar panel installers as green workers, but far fewer consider care workers to be in the same camp. This shows us something important about our mindset. So far, we have thought in terms of greening highly polluting industries – turning from fossil fuels to renewables – rather than identifying what is simply green, ie what is low-carbon by nature. This is the difference between tweaking our current system and stepping into a new approach that makes different kinds of work central to our economy. From this perspective, care work becomes a core component of our future, as those calling for its inclusion in a green new deal have advocated.

Emily Kenway is a writer and author of The Truth About Modern Slavery

A major climate meeting is about to get underway in Glasgow, Scotland. It's a pivotal moment in the struggle against climate change. But it's taking place in the midst of political tensions.

(Image credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

NGOs call on officials to stop meeting BP and other oil and gas producers to limit influence over climate policy

Oil and gas companies should be treated like the tobacco industry and denied routine meetings with EU officials, a group of NGOs have said, as they revealed that fossil fuel producers have enjoyed hundreds of meetings with Brussels decision makers since the Paris climate agreement.

Since 2015, six oil and gas giants, including BP and Norway’s Equinor, plus fossil fuel trade bodies have held 568 meetings with top officials at the European Commission, the body responsible for drafting EU climate and energy legislation, according to research by four environmental campaign groups, including Friends of the Earth and the Corporate Europe Observatory.

Gifts and donations were from oil companies, airports, petrostates and climate-sceptic thinktanks

The Conservative party and its MPs have registered £1.3m in gifts and donations from climate sceptics and fossil fuel interests since the 2019 general election, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal.

Oil companies, petrostates, airports and businesses linked with Russian energy tycoons are among this set of donors, who have either made money from fossil fuels or stand to lose economically or politically from cutting emissions.

Keith Pitt added to cabinet ahead of question time; Origin Energy fined $5m after allegedly charging prohibited exit fees; Morrison government will sign off on a regional transition package in exchange for Nationals’ support for climate emissions target; Victoria records 1,461 Covid cases, NSW 294. Follow the day’s developments live

• Nationals agree to net zero target by 2050 despite Barnaby Joyce’s opposition
• Most Victoria restrictions to lift next month, but ‘vaccinated economy’ to stay for 2022
• Vaccine rollout tracker; cases and data tracker
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Oh good.

Just a reminder that he will be acting prime minister for the week Scott Morrison is in Glasgow.

Despite pushing ahead with dozens of new coal power plants, China has a new plan to increase wind and solar power in its march towards carbon neutrality

China is targeting a clean energy goal of reducing fossil fuel use to below 20% by 2060, according to an official plan published by state media.

The cabinet document, released on Sunday, follows a pledge by President Xi Jinping to wean the world’s biggest polluter off coal, with a target of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality 30 years later.

Net zero strategy should have defined what green jobs are so that progress can be measured, says committee

The government has come under fire from the environmental audit committee of MPs for its “inconsistent” policy on green jobs. The committee said that despite pledging millions of pounds to green jobs initiatives, ministers are yet to define what a “green job” is.

“The workforce of the future is being undermined by a lack of evidence-based government policies on how jobs will be filled in green sectors,” said Philip Dunne, the committee chairman. “Encouraging announcements of investment in green sectors of the economy are very welcome but the government admits that claims about green jobs lack explanation and data on how the targets will be achieved.”

Flooding was reported across the San Francisco Bay Area while the National Weather Service's Sacramento office warned of "potentially historic rain."

(Image credit: Noah Berger/AP)

John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. 40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. 41 I receive not honour from men. 42 But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. 43 I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. 44 How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? 45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. 46 For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me.  47 But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

NPR's David Folkenflik speaks with Ama Francis, who works on climate displacement with the International Refugee Assistance Project, about the growing threat of climate migration.

Climate finance plan needed to gain backing of developing nations for any deal at Glasgow talks

The world’s poorest countries are set to benefit from a new climate funding plan to help them cope with the impacts of climate breakdown, in an effort to break the impasse between developed and developing countries at the UN Cop26 climate summit

The UK government, as Cop26 host, will unveil the proposals on Monday along with ministers from Germany and Canada, who have been charged with drawing up a plan for climate finance, needed to gain the backing of scores of developing countries for any deal at the talks, which open in Glasgow next Sunday.

Readers respond to letters from readers who were sceptical about the practicality of replacing gas boilers with heat pumps

Your correspondents are too gloomy about heat pumps for houses and flats (Letters, 20 October). Heat pumps may be unusual in Britain, but they are a major industry and very widespread in Europe and elsewhere. They are used in Canada, where outside temperatures drop very low. Individual units may not be suitable for high-rise blocks – although they might be installed on balconies. But high-rise buildings make up a small fraction of the housing stock, and blocks can have communal heating and cooling with large centralised heat pumps.

Older heat pumps were noisy, but new makes are on the market that are much quieter. It is not true, except in the worst cases, that installing heat pumps requires dwellings to be insulated first. The great majority of houses and flats in the UK are already reasonably insulated, and heat pumps can be run for longer and at lower temperatures than gas boilers. Better insulation of existing gas-heated houses and flats will by itself only produce modest cuts in carbon emissions. To meet climate goals, we have to stop using gas.

Researchers call for new firefighting techniques that focus on managing landscapes, as global heating sees increase in blazes

• ‘It still gives me nightmares’: the firefighters on the frontline as the world burns
• Read more in the Harmed by heat series

A new approach is urgently needed to tackle global wildfires as current methods are no longer working, draining the public purse and placing lives at risk, according to experts.

This summer saw some of the worst wildfires in history and underscored the destructive impacts of global heating. As Cop26 approaches and is expected to shine a light on the importance of protecting ecosystems and building defences to avoid loss of homes and lives, experts say a lack of foresight and funding worldwide means harmful wildfires will continue to rage, putting communities and firefighters in danger.

There is no longer any population or place on earth untouched by PFAS contamination. We are living through a toxic experiment with no control group

This week the EPA announced a new roadmap to research, restrict, and remediate PFAS – a group of industrial “forever chemicals” that have been linked to cancer and are found in our food, water, and even our blood. President Biden is requesting $10bn in the infrastructure bill to address PFAS. But this new attention still falls short of what’s required to confront an unprecedented crisis that affects the health of the entire United States and countless people across the world.

Today, toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are everywhere we’ve thought to look for them. As engineered, these synthetic chemicals glide through air and water with ease, evade all natural processes of decay, and inflict debilitating injuries even at exceedingly low levels of exposure. The petrochemical industry has its fingerprints all over the ubiquity of PFAS, yet that very ubiquity is now being used as an excuse against doing anything about it. PFAS are becoming too toxic to fail.