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How the court will lean is unclear amid Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil’s attempt to stop lawsuits at state level

The US supreme court began its new nine-month term hearing arguments on Monday in a major case in which big oil companies attempted to strike a fatal blow against lawsuits that seek to hold them accountable for the climate crisis.

After the almost two-hour hearing, while it was not yet clear which way the justices were leaning, experts said the court may find it challenging to write a majority decision siding with industry.

A researcher at a climate change think tank says the Conservative policy would be a ‘disaster for first time buyers’

Yesterday, as a gimmick, the Tories were handing out “Bottler Burnham” bottles of water (“0% strength”) to make a point about Burnham supposedly cancelling plans for an early election under pressure from the Tories. It is a version of a stunt they pulled in 2008 when they gave journalists bottles of a “Bottler Brown” beer. (Gordon Brown did pull plans for an early election at the last minute; this time the jibe is unfair, because there were no Burnham plans for an early election.)

The new bottles feature the image of Burnham produced by the Manchester artist Stan Chow.

The SNP’s effective ban on new nuclear energy in Scotland flies in the face of common-sense.

No part of Great Britain should be missing out on plans for new nuclear renewal.

Party in England and Wales ditches commitment to phase out nuclear in major shift in its energy policy

Green party members have voted to end the party’s opposition to nuclear power, dropping a commitment to phase out the technology in a major shift in its energy policy.

The motion, adopted at conference, removes a “blanket opposition to nuclear fission” and instead commits the Green party of England and Wales to assessing nuclear projects alongside other low-carbon technologies.

An international symbol for the city, the sign is also hallmark of the region’s environmental richness

Atop Mount Lee, in the heart of Los Angeles, the wind is quiet. Two red-tailed hawks sail above, barely flapping as they coast the thermal air like surfers on a wave. Standing beside the giant letters of the Hollywood sign, the city seems peaceful. On a clear day, blocks and blocks of homes unfold beneath and the skies reveal sights all the way to Catalina Island – 10 miles out, across the Pacific.

That’s the beauty seen from the Hollywood sign.

Italian police say Maltese citizen under investigation for smuggling after animals found packed in car

A Maltese man is facing animal cruelty charges after allegedly attempting to transport 300 tortoises and 77 parrots from Sicily to Malta.

The animals were found packed into a car near the boarding area for a Malta-bound catamaran during an inspection at the Sicilian port of Pozzallo, the local unit of Italy’s financial police squad said on Monday.

Anthony Albanese joins about 4,000 people in Fiji for preparatory meeting for year-ending Cop31 UN climate summit

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The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has declared it is “important that Pacific voices are heard” after landing in Fiji on Monday to attend his first UN climate summit since becoming prime minister more than four years ago.

Albanese joined about 4,000 people in Nadi for a preparatory meeting for the year-ending Cop31 UN climate summit in Turkey while facing criticism from his political opponents at home. Pre-Cop meetings are usually small and bureaucratic affairs, but this meeting has a double purpose: it is being held in the Pacific after Australia and regional leaders argued it would help bring global attention to the plight of countries most at risk from the climate crisis.

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As trawlers compete with Greenland sharks for halibut and cod, conservationists and fishers clash over what to do about misunderstood species

‘When I accidentally catch a shark, I bring it to my dogs,” Henrik Jensen, a 27-year-old from Greenland’s west coast, says casually. “I don’t let it back down because [the sharks] bully me and cut my lines.”

Jensen has fished for halibut in Ilulissat, Greenland’s third largest town, for a decade. He works an hour north of the town’s main iceberg-laden fishery, which sustains the livelihood of nearly 400 fishers. There, the halibut are bigger and more plentiful, but so are the Greenland sharks.

A statewide initiative pairs climate-focused coursework with community service – and is spreading to other states

As a student at a high school not far from Denver’s main airport, Anthony Muñoz wondered whether the jet fuel from airplanes flying above his campus was harming living things.

An avid gardener, Muñoz partnered with a local university to create a garden on the campus of his charter school, Vista Academy, filling it with native plants that could detect ground-level ozone pollution. He also worked with climate scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federal office in nearby Boulder, who directed Muñoz on what data to collect, what the condition of leaves reveals about air quality and why milkweed matters for monarch butterfly migration.

The 20 best residential gardens have been revealed in the first-ever Landscape Australia awards shortlist. Jury chair Emily Wong said each project was a response to urgent issues such as the climate crisis, fire and flood resilience, and the loss of biodiversity. They saw gardens as ‘part of a larger living commons that supports different ecologies and also … the future of Australian cities’. Wong also noted that private gardens take up a large quantity of space in Australian cities. ‘So really, these gardens are about seeing the design as a contribution to shared infrastructure’

A third runway would fly in the face of reason. If we are to prioritise human life over short-term ‘growth’, we need to use planes less, not more

If a third runway is built at Heathrow, what will be the impact on the wealth of the nation? It will cost us somewhere between £23.4bn and £62.5bn. These are not my figures; they weren’t calculated by environmental groups, but by the Department for Transport.

For decades, government ministers have told us that airport expansion is essential for “growth”. As chancellor, Rachel Reeves claimed that a third runway at Heathrow would add 0.43% to GDP, figures we later discovered came from a report commissioned by the airport. The transport department’s own analysis concluded that the real addition to GDP would be between 0.03% and 0.05%: eight to 14 times less. Against this, it weighed the social and environmental costs of the project, to reveal a massive net loss. It found that a third runway would cause major harm to the health and wellbeing of up to 3 million local people.

A caiman wearing a wig, two brown bears laughing and a leopard doing a handstand feature in the selection of finalists from this year’s Nikon Comedy Wildlife awards. Winners will be announced on 8 December

Imagine the UK with a 20-year investment plan, with green homes and fast transport. We already have the tools to make it happen

You’ve just left school. What’s your future?

I know a physics graduate making flat whites; a 30-year-old living in his childhood bedroom who feels like a failure; a lad in Blyth who turned down a job 15 miles away because there’s no bus, and for young people his age car insurance is almost £2,000 a year. Britain’s young people are our greatest resource, and we are failing them because capital markets won’t allocate investment where it is needed. Saying “hope” in a conference speech sounds warm. But people need a plan.

Jamie Driscoll is a Green party councillor on Newcastle city council and former North of Tyne mayor

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Democratic-led coalition says gutting key protections will set US back decades and worsen climate crisis

States and cities sued the Trump administration on Thursday for repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas.

Twenty-one states, led by New York, are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant rule. The Democratic-led coalition also includes Pennsylvania’s governor, the District of Columbia, New York City, Chicago and the city and county of Denver. They argue that “gutting one of the country’s most significant climate protections” will set the nation back decades and worsen the climate crisis.

Oct. 1 is when new federal rules for sharing the Colorado River start. It's going to be messy and courts will likely have to weigh in.

Lake Mead is at its lowest level since it was filled nearly 90 years ago, Lake Powell also at a historic low

It was 42C (108F) degrees as we motored across Nevada’s Lake Mead in our rented pontoon boat. Colby Pellegrino with the Southern Nevada Water Authority wanted to show us something we shouldn’t have been able to see. She pointed toward a rock island where a large metal pipe was sticking out of the water.

“That is the first intake that was built to bring municipal water into the valley in 1970,” Pellegrino said.

As the midterms approach, Americans’ digestive health has become a bizarre talking point

Donald Trump seems to spend an unusual amount of time thinking about toilets.

Back in 2019, he bizarrely claimed: “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once.” He repeated this claim at a Michigan rally the following year. “Ten times, right, 10 times,” Trump complained. “Not me, of course not me, but you,” he added while pointing at an unfortunate audience member.

Records show Vineland facility in New Jersey emitted health-harming pollution before regulators stepped in

DataOne, the Microsoft-linked New Jersey datacenter recently hit with a $1m fine for running unpermitted generators, emitted large amounts of health-harming air pollution for nearly a year before state regulators stepped in, according to public records obtained by Floodlight.

The Vineland facility’s 62 gas-fired generators became public in August after a Floodlight/Guardian visual investigation found them operating without permits. The New Jersey department of environmental protection last week fined the company over the fleet but did not disclose how long the generators had been operating nor how much air pollution they had released into the surrounding community over the past year.

This story is from Floodlight, a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here

The global climate phenomenon has triggered devastating infernos in the ape’s Indonesian heartlands, with long-term effects on the animals still unknown

The mother’s hands were peeling from walking on the torched ground. Her eight-month-old baby, which clung to her side, was dehydrated and thin. The pair, named Mama Abu and Abu (“ash” in Indonesian), were found in an oil palm subsidiary estate, rescuers say.

The orangutan pair were saved last month from wildfires that are devouring Indonesia’s forests and peatland, unleashing thick smog, and destroying the habitat of some of the planet’s most vulnerable species.

There is no greater treachery than this failure to face up to the climate crisis. How can we now fend off despair?

The Independent Planning Commission’s published reasons for approving the largest coalmine in New South Wales history in the context of mounting death, disaster and despair brought on by global heating reads like a hostage statement.

In its decision, the commission accepts that the extension of the Hunter Valley Operations’ mine for a further 19 years – resulting 809m tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution – will materially worsen global warming. The panel members cite CSIRO’s finding that climate change is having a growing effect on the lives and livelihoods of all Australians and that the severity of that impact “will depend on the speed at which global greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced”. They reject the idea that keeping HVO’s coal in the ground would make no difference to global warming.