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Environment

  • An air conditioning unit in a home

    ‘It’s unbearable’: in ever-hotter US cities, air conditioning is no longer enough

    Record-breaking temperatures in the last few years shatter the myth that air conditioning alone will keep people safe
  • emissions rise from a smokestack at a plant behind a grassy field

    Air in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ likely more toxic than previously thought

  • a man in a red hat and blue suit claps

    Trump vows to ‘drill, baby, drill’ despite rally attendees wilting in extreme heat

  • Melrose Learning Academy students (L-R) Lyra Modersbach, Augie Balquist, Juliette Sanchez, Lucy Downed, Yuji Hong, & Jayden Tern successfully petitioned the Oakland Unified School board to decommission their school's gas broiler and replace it with a heat pump. Photographed in the broiler room at Melrose Learning Academy in Oakland, California May 16, 2024.

    Adults doubted us. We found a way to shrink emissions at our middle school anyway

  • The sun sets over Bears Ears national monument seen from the Moki Dugway north of Mexican Hat, Utah.

    ‘America the beautiful’: how Biden is conserving land and water as Trump looms

  • Aerial, hilltop view of green, partitioned valley, with tree-covered hills on other side.

    Napa Valley has lush vineyards and wineries – and a pollution problem

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CO2 tracker

  • The most important number of the climate crisis:

    422.2

    atmospheric CO2 in parts per million, 7 May 2024

    72.2

    above safe level,
    passed 1990

    24.9

    increase in past
    10 years

    280300320340360380400420 parts per million1960199020142024Safe level: 350ppmLatest: 422.2ppm

Latest news

  • African protesters waving placards with slogans such as "#stop eacop" and "divest from fossil fuels"

    Ugandan oil pipeline protester allegedly beaten as part of ‘alarming crackdown’

  • A small yellowish songbird perched on a log

    Rare birds at risk as narco-gangs move into forests to evade capture – report

    Cocaine traffickers have put two-thirds of Central America’s key habitats for threatened birds under threat, study finds
  • South West Water workers handing out emergency rations of bottled water to residents affected by the cryptosporidium outbreak in south Devon in May.

    Global heating will increase risk of parasite outbreaks, say South West Water owners

    Pennon Group annual report lists dangers to water quality posed by higher temperatures
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Big oil uncovered

  • an oil refinery

    Supreme court ruling delays climate litigation big oil has sought to thwart

  • Oil facility beneath red sky at dusk

    Republican governors gather to attack Biden’s climate agenda

  • A flooded street in a Vermont town with a Highway 14 sign sticking out of the water.

    ‘Game-changing’: Vermont becomes first state to require big oil to pay for climate damages

  • A large pollution-spewing oil refinery.

    Majority of US voters support climate litigation against big oil, poll shows

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America's dirty divide

  • A drawing of Audubon with rifle, dog and horse.

    New York City Audubon changes name to distance itself from racist namesake

  • air conditioner units on the side of a building

    Hot summer may bring 8% rise in utility costs for many people across the US

  • illustration of a person experiencing heat stress

    How heat affects the body – inside and out

  • a pregnant person touching their belly

    Heatwaves increase risk of early births and poorer health in babies, study finds

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Our unequal earth

  • a glass of soda with ice and a straw

    Is aspartame bad for you? What we know about the sweetener’s health risks

  • A collage of three side-by-side images shows several cobs of corn, two women holding fresh onions and a construction site.

    ‘A sanctuary’: how neglected Native American communities are organizing their own food hubs

  • A woman and child's hands make pizza dough from scratch

    Amid rising US food prices, what should we be cooking from scratch?

  • A row of cows stand close together at a farm

    As avian flu hops to cows and at least two humans, migrant farm workers are at risk

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The age of extinction

  • A stocky beige-coloured horse with an erect mane standing on a open grassy plain

    Wild horses return to Kazakhstan steppes after absence of two centuries

  • A brown booby perched on the end of a spinnaker pole of a sailboat

    More intense, frequent tropical cyclones may devastate seabird colonies – study

    Up to 90% ‘lost in the blink of an eye’, say scientists studying Cyclone Ilsa’s effect on birds on Western Australian island
  • A brown trout swimming among rocks in clear water

    Meth-addict fish, aggro starlings, caffeinated minnows: animals radically changed by human drugs – study

    Addiction, anxiety and sex reversal have been reported in species by researchers as a range of substances contaminates ecosystems
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Seascape

  • Black and white image of two people watching a ship sinking in the sea

    Wreck of Shackleton’s ship Quest found, last link to ‘heroic age of Antarctic exploration’

  • A blue crab being held up by a man

    ‘Anything can be edible’: how Italians are making a meal of invasive crabs

    • A sea otter with a purple sea urchin surrounded by water

      Save our seas: five ways to rewild and conserve the ocean

    • Dr Alex Hearn and his colleagues in a boat in fading light tagging a shark in the Galápagos marine reserve.

      ‘Where do sharks hang out?’: the race to find safe spaces for the Galápagos’ ocean-going predators

    • Charles Saunders shows off an enormous dungeness crab, caught as part of a population survey by the Nuxalk Guardian Watchmen.

      ‘It was like the wild west’: meet the First Nations guardians protecting Canada’s pristine shores

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Opinion

  • Adam Morton

    Peter Dutton’s plans will breach the Paris agreement on climate – that much is clear

    Adam Morton
  • Graham Readfearn

    The things that you’re liable to read in the IPCC bible ain’t necessarily so, Chris Uhlmann says. It’s a bold claim

    Graham Readfearn
  • Helen Sullivan

    An orchard: a place where you tame trees, or try to

    Helen Sullivan
  • The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, and the prime minister, Anthony Albanese

    Are the climate wars really over, or has a new era of greenwashing just begun?

    Joëlle Gergis
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Multimedia

  • Will sewage in the Thames hurt the Tories? The view from Henley and Thame – video

  • Grandmother and Grandson, Tamburi

    ‘Protecting them is impossible’: raising children in a contaminated town – in pictures

    Families in Taranto, Italy, watch their kids play in polluted soil in the shadow of a steelworks, knowing that many people there have lost their lives to cancer. Lisa Sorgini captures their struggle
  • Northern elephant seals huddle together at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center's temporary field hospital in Laguna Beach, California.

    Week in wildlife – in pictures: puffins on the rebound, a sticky tortoise and a joey named Sprout

    The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
  • The eruption does not pose an immediate threat to human life or property, according to authorities.

    0:37

    Aerial pictures show Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupting – video

  • BLAZE #28 From the series BLAZE

    Australian photography auction – in pictures

  • Claude was caught eating 4,050 food tree seedlings at Eastern Forest Nursery near Lismore in 2023

    0:54

    Notorious seed-stealing koala caught in brazen daylight robbery in northern NSW – video

  • A black-and-white ruffed lemur pup hanging off a branch.

    Week in wildlife – in pictures: playful baby lemurs, kingfisher tug-of-war and a beautiful bee-eater

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