Closing summary
It’s been a day filled with climate records being broken around the world. The Guardian will continue to bring you extensive coverage of extreme weather and the climate crisis across our site, but for now, this live blog is closing.
Here’s where the day stands:
Phoenix has officially broken its record for consecutive days with a temperature of 110F or higher. It’s been 19 days the city has suffered under these extreme temperatures, topping the previous record of 18 consecutive days of 110F or higher in 1974.
Miami is dealing with the worst heatwave on record with temperatures that feel like between 105 and 110F on Tuesday. On Sunday, Miami-Dade county was issued its first ever excessive heat warning.
Hospitals in Italy are seeing a sharp increase in the number of people seeking emergency care for heat-related illnesses as a heatwave continues to tear through the country. At 41.8C (107F), temperatures in the capital Rome set a new record.
Beijing has topped its record for high-temperature days in a year with 27 days. The previous record was set in 2000, when there were 26 high-temperature days that year.
I’m Erum Salam, signing off.
Updated
As cities like Phoenix and Miami swelter in record-breaking heat, House Republicans are offering their own solution to the climate crisis: planting trees.
Party members are moving away from denying the climate crisis altogether, the Associated Press reports.
The House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, is at the helm of a conservative-led effort to address the warming planet by advocating for planting a trillion trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
While visiting a natural gas drilling site in north-east Ohio to promote House Republicans’ plan to increase domestic energy production from fossil fuels, McCarthy was asked about climate change, to which he responded: “We need to manage our forests better so our environment can be stronger. Let’s replace Russian natural gas with American natural gas and let’s not only have a cleaner world, let’s have a safer world.”
From the Associated Press:
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that heat-trapping gases released from the combustion of fossil fuels are pushing up global temperatures, upending weather patterns around the globe and endangering animal species. But the solution long touted by Democrats and environmental advocates – government action to force emissions reductions – remains a non-starter with most Republicans.
Enter the idea of planting a trillion trees. A 2019 study suggested that planting trees to suck up heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could be one of the most effective ways to fight climate change. Major conservation groups, and former President Donald Trump, who downplayed humanity’s role in climate change, embraced the idea.
But the tree-planting push has drawn intense pushback from environmental scientists who call it a distraction from cutting emissions from fossil fuels. The authors of the original study have also clarified that planting trees does not eliminate “the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.
Read the full article here.
Updated
