Yahoo News Inside the 18 October Guardian Weekly – The Polluters
Last week, the Guardian began an intensive investigation into the businesses, lobby groups and politicians who have made the most significant contribution to the climate crisis. In this edition we reveal the 20 companies who have made the most seismic contribution to the climate crisis – alongside a timeline of who knew what about global warming, and when. We also report from Richmond, California, where an oil town is fighting back against one of its major employers. Then, perhaps most importantly, Guardian columnist George Monbiot asks what we can – must – do as a society to fight back. This special issue focuses on the impact of the fossil fuel companies, but The Polluters series – which you can read in full here– investigates the significant role other groups have played in preventing decisive action on the climate emergency from taking place.
Donald Trump’s impeachment investigation may rumble on, but his administration’s decision to withdraw US troops from northern Syria has been the defining moment of the past seven days, perhaps the year. Martin Chulov has been on the ground on the Syrian/Turkish border as the Kurdish groups who have done so much to destroy the so-called Islamic State come under siege from the Turkish military and militias in the north. Trump declared last week that his sympathy for the Kurds was limited as the they “didn’t help us in Normandy”. That pig-headed reference testified to the mess of Trump’s foreign policy. Julian Borger, our world affairs editor, analyses the breathtaking speed of the unravelling in Syria and asks if this might just have been the worst week for US foreign policy since the Iraq invasion.
Last Saturday morning, seasoned marathon-watchers sat and watched in awe as Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge, surrounded in Vienna by an all-star team of wind-blocking pacemakers, became the first person to run the distance in under two hours. Though it wasn’t an official world record, Kipchoge’s achievement, Sean Ingle writes, will be remembered alongside Roger Bannister’s sub-four-minute mile, even if the branding of the event by a British petrochemical company may have left an unsavoury taste. Elsewhere last weekend, Kipchoge’s compatriot Brigid Kosgei smashed the 16-year-old women’s marathon record in Chicago, and Japan’s rugby team brought joy to a nation ravaged by Typhoon Hagibis by qualifying for the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals for the first time. Andy Bull explains why the Brave Blossoms’ triumph was unlike anything he’d ever seen.
We also feature interviews with Ronan Farrow about what chasing Harvey Weinstein did to his life; John le Carré speaks about the state of modern Britain, in advance of his latest book; Oliver Wainwright looks at life and work of the pioneering designer Charlotte Perriand and we review a new collection of short stories by Zadie Smith.
