Residents in Blossburg, Pennsylvania are bringing the Tioga River back to life after 200 years of acid mine drainage.

From crop failures to coral bleaching, a new tool developed by climate scientists aims to predict in detail the impacts of each megatonne of carbon emissions

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The emissions from a single coalmine expansion might not seem like a lot when compared with the scale of global emissions, which are measured in gigatonnes (that’s one thousand million tonnes).

However, scientists have been saying for years that every tonne of carbon dioxide adds to global warming, and every fraction of a degree increase matters.

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© Illustration: Guardian Design

© Illustration: Guardian Design

© Illustration: Guardian Design

Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan’s four-year fight over MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant coalmine went all the way to the high court

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When Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan and a few of their neighbours in the New South Wales Hunter region decided to take on the expansion of a local coalmine, people thought they were “crazy” to engage in the David and Goliath battle.

“When we started this, people thought we were crazy – a little community group taking on a billion-dollar coal company, arguing that the climate harm from burning this coal is our problem too,” Wales says.

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© Photograph: Climate Media Centre/ZoeLonergan

© Photograph: Climate Media Centre/ZoeLonergan

© Photograph: Climate Media Centre/ZoeLonergan

In the second article in a series on the Polish economy, we look at how the country is forging closer ties with its neighbours

Two miles off the coast of Gdańsk, the white steel piles of Poland’s first offshore gas terminal rise from the slate-grey Baltic. Installed at a height eight metres above the waves, the floating cranes and construction vessels here are on the frontline of Europe’s push for energy security.

Since the taps were turned off on Russian gas after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, Poland has turned to the global energy market for supplies. But while conditions are far from ideal as the Middle East war drives oil and gas prices to stratospheric levels, strengthening the diversity of the country’s energy mix remains a top priority for Poland, its Baltic neighbours, and the EU at large.

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© Photograph: Anna Liminowicz/The Guardian

© Photograph: Anna Liminowicz/The Guardian

© Photograph: Anna Liminowicz/The Guardian

The mostly Democratic-led states say that the E.P.A. acted unlawfully when it erased Biden-era limits on carbon dioxide from coal- and gas-fired plants.

© Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York Times

In a previously unreported letter, a top lobbyist floated the idea of using emergency powers to keep aging coal plants open.

© Rachel Woolf for The New York Times

The 64-year-old Michigan power plant was set to retire. Then the Trump administration intervened in a way that overstepped its authority, a court ruled.

© Julián Trejo Bax/Associated Press

Five years after virtually every world leader agreed to “phase down” the burning of coal for climate reasons, the fuel is more widely used than ever.

© Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan/Associated Press