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‘Worrisome’ policy decisions could undermine UK leadership and the talks themselves, say senior climate experts

Boris Johnson must urgently take control of the UK’s presidency of vital UN climate talks, amid a shower of green policy setbacks and growing concern over the lack of a coherent all-government climate strategy, senior international figures have said.

The Cop26 climate summit is viewed as one of the last chances to put the world on track to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, of holding global heating well below 2C, and preferably no more than 1.5C, above pre-industrial levels. There are just over six months left before the crunch talks are scheduled to begin in Glasgow in November.

The green light for a Cumbrian coalmine, which provoked a months-long rowthat ended with the promise of a public inquiry

New licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, while other countries have been asked to forego fossil fuel reserves to stay within global carbon budgets

Cutting overseas aid from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP

The UK’s support for climate sceptic Mathias Cormann to become head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Scrapping the UK’s only “green recovery” measure, the green homes grant

Support for airport expansion

Slashing incentives for electric vehicles

Net zero target, including a 10-point plan

Commitment to reduce emissions by 68% by 2030 – a stiffer set of cuts than promised by comparable developed countries

£11.6bn in climate finance to developing countries between 2021 and 2025

Boost to offshore wind through licensing of sites, funding to improve ports and Contracts for Difference

£1.3bn to local authorities for insulation and low-carbon heating to social housing and households on low incomes

Funding for some low-carbon emerging technologies, including hydrogen, carbon capture and storage and nuclear fusion

Integrated review of defence and foreign policy made climate change “number one priority” for international policy

End to funding fossil fuels overseas

Slashing overseas aid from 0.7 % of GDP to 0.5%

Cumbrian coalmine given green light, now subject to public inquiry

Licensing of new oil and gas exploration sites in North Sea

Scrapping the £1.5bn green-homes grant for home insulation and low-carbon heating, leaving 20 million households without incentives to decarbonise

Slashing incentives to buy electric cars, freeze on fuel duty and £27bn road-building scheme, while emissions from transport fell only 1% in last decade

Support for Mathias Cormann, a climate sceptic, to head the OECD despite concerns from many countries and campaigners

Support for airport expansion

Covid-19 stimulus money given to high-emitting companies without green strings attached

Missing tree planting targets

Thousands of green jobs lost

Automotive sector is working on voluntary emissions reductions but the industry says government inaction is slowing progress

Australia’s peak automotive industry body has released its first “scorecard” of CO2 emissions from cars imported into the country in 2020.

The report from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) breaks down average CO2 emissions by carmaker and the number of sales in order to show the difference between average CO2 emissions and the target set under the industry’s voluntary standard.

Related: Australia 'risks being dumping ground' for cars with greenhouse gas 1,400 times more potent than CO2

Related: Leading the charge: how the hospitality sector is building Australia's EV network

Swedish activist says uneven Covid vaccine rollout means countries would not participate on even terms

The Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg has said she will not attend the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in November, saying the uneven distribution of Covid-19 vaccines would mean countries could not participate on even terms.

The 18-year-old activist said that by November richer countries would be vaccinating young healthy people “very often at the expense of people in at-risk groups in other parts of the world”.

Pressure on the UK as Cop26 approaches

The joy of raising a child, even on the other side of disaster, is intercut with our current slide towards climate chaos

From Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour to Jenny Offill’s Weather and Doggerland by Ben Smith, the “cli-fi” genre is growing exponentially – no surprise, given the coming crisis. In fact, as an artist in any medium it can feel self-indulgent, in 2021, to be making work about anything else. Jessie Greengrass’s Women’s prize-shortlisted debut novel, Sight, used motherhood as a springboard to explore wider ideas of psychoanalysis and medical history; her second tackles the subject of global heating head-on, conjuring a near-future vision of a flooded East Anglia. Where it excels is in its characters’ recollection of the slow, incremental progress towards disaster, and the effort ordinary people made, every day, to block their knowledge of it out: “Crisis slid from distant threat to imminent probability and we tuned it out like static,” Caro, one of the survivors, recalls.

As the novel opens, Caro is a teenager. Her father’s partner, Francesca, is a high-profile climate scientist and campaigner; it’s a mission on which Caro’s father will join her, too. Francesca may be principled and tireless, but she’s also unlikable, her constant insistence on the coming apocalypse cutting her off from most forms of simple human joy. She’s an astute creation on Greengrass’s part, providing readers with a channel for their discomfort; Caro’s weariness with Francesca’s warnings mirrors our own.

–Sal,Grandy said,–they’ve just lost their parents.–They’ve got each other,I said. Grandy gave me a long look.–And you’ve got me.