At last year’s Cop26 conference, when nations grappled with closing the gap between emissions and targets to limit global heating to 1.5C, one key variable was unclear. Major oil and gas firms had numerous large-scale extraction projects planned or under way, but measurable data on the problem was not available. So, with several other journalists, the Guardian’s environment editor, Damian Carrington, set about finding it.
A “carbon bomb” is an oil or gas project that will result in at least a billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over its lifetime. “Getting hold of solid information about them is an absolute nightmare,” says Damian. “We’re talking about future projects, and that means you’re dealing with uncertainty. And the big oil and gas companies are … not all that open about it.”
There simply wasn’t room to fit all of his remarkably detailed investigation into this week’s magazine but you can find much more from the carbon bombs series here, detailing the impacts from Australia to the US.
Another mass shooting shook the US this week, made all the more shocking by the gunman’s openly racist motives. Edward Helmore finds grief and fury in Buffalo, while for Opinion, the Yale academic Jason Stanley considers how white replacement theory keeps inspiring mass murder.
It’s estimated that 80% of us have handled counterfeit goods at some point in our lives, knowingly or otherwise. Alice Sherwood takes a deep delve into the $600bn a year world of fake products and asks why it’s such a hard market to clamp down on.
Steve Coogan has enjoyed a highly successful career as an actor and comedian, but how would he bear up under fierce cross-examination by his arch-nemesis, TV’s Alan Partridge? You’ll find the interview they both probably wanted on our Culture pages this week.
