Our coverage of climate change


A selection of our best stories

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Latest stories

Pleistocene Park
One Russian scientist hopes to slow the thawing of the Arctic

Sergei Zimov is a polarising figure, but the results from his Pleistocene Park seem promising so far

Ratcheting up
Paris-anniversary climate pledges bring progress but fall short

Promises at the Climate Ambition summit do not mark a real turning-point

Counting the carbs
Making sense of banks’ climate targets

A lack of data and differing methodologies will make measuring performance fiendishly tricky

Energy markets
OPEC loosens up

Amid a cloudy outlook for oil, American frackers can no longer count on OPEC’s price supports

Science

Thar she blew
An elegy for the world’s biggest creatures

An encounter with a dying whale on a beach in Perth set off Rebecca Giggs’s inquiry

The World If
How to hybridise batteries and supercapacitors

The offspring will give electric cars more range and power

Hydrogen-powered flight
Is the time now ripe for planes to run on hydrogen?

Some planemakers think the answer may be “yes”

Ecology
Arid areas have more trees than previously thought

A census of all Earth’s trees may eventually be possible

The World If
Wildfires will be more common in a warming world

Clever design of buildings and infrastructure can limit the damage

Politics

Losing seam
As the federal government harrumphs, Australia moves away from coal

Both its states and its export markets have pledged drastic cuts in carbon emissions

Reluctant revolution
Oil-rich Alberta seeks ways to go green

Canada’s main fossil-fuel producing province mulls hydrogen and geothermal power

Killing coal
Time to make coal history

Coal is at the toxic heart of the fossil-fuel economy

Business and finance

Schumpeter
How Enel became Europe’s climate centurion

Who says utilities are cold-hearted and dull?

Daily chart
Energy’s covid recovery

Demand for electricity has revived, despite uncertainty about the path of the virus

Greenbacks for greenery
Climate-conscious venture capitalists are back

Can they both make money and protect the planet?

What next
Meet NextEra, America’s most valuable energy firm

The clean-energy utility has surpassed ExxonMobil in market capitalisaion—and shows no signs of slowing

Climate briefs

Softening the blow
Climate adaptation policies are needed more than ever

People are already suffering from catastrophic losses as a result of extreme weather events like cyclone Amphan

Not-so-slow burn
The world’s energy system must be transformed completely

It has been changed before, but never as fast or fully as must happen now

Bad times
Damage from climate change will be widespread and sometimes surprising

It will go far beyond drought, melting ice sheets and crop failures

Climate briefs

Projections of the future
How modelling articulates the science of climate change

From paper and pencil to the world’s fastest computers

The problematic politics of climate change
Why tackling global warming is a challenge without precedent

The first of six weekly briefs looks at the history of efforts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions