They suck up energy and water, and blast out heat. Just who is better off from all this investment – aside from tech bros?

The two great existential threats of our time – the climate crisis and AI – come hurtling together in the explosion of datacentres across Australia and around the world.

You can hardly avoid hearing about them these days, either with awed reverence of the promised benefits to humankind or with fear and anger given the implications for the climate, inflation, jobs and even housing affordability.

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© Photograph: Jono Searle/AAP

© Photograph: Jono Searle/AAP

© Photograph: Jono Searle/AAP

There are far better ways to tackle climate breakdown, but successive governments have chosen to listen to the fossil fuel companies instead

The new prime minister will be looking for money? Well, here’s £21.7bn lying on the ground. The government could cancel its deranged, disastrous carbon capture and storage (CCS) programme at no cost to public welfare: in fact, it would greatly reduce the harm we will suffer.

Sorry, did I say £21.7bn? That’s the figure the government has been putting in its press releases for spending on this programme between now and 2050. But this covers only the first phase of the project. The climate experts Dr Andrew Boswell and Simon Oldridge worked through the data produced by the government’s Climate Change Committee, which was scattered across different spreadsheets, and discovered that the projected cost of the full CCS programme between now and 2050 is £264bn.

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© Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian

© Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian

© Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian

Bill Frist, a surgeon who also served as Senate majority leader, has emerged as an outspoken advocate for environmental health. “A healthier planet means healthier people,” he said.

© Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Labour has approved a wave of renewable energy projects, but turning plans into power remains slow. Why is that?

Labour has a race on its hands if it is to lock in its promise to achieve a virtually zero-carbon electricity system by 2030.

Britain’s next prime minister will have to move fast: the climate emergency is raging, high energy bills are driving up the cost of living and the reactionary right is threatening a fossil fuel push if it wins power.

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© Composite: Guardian design / SSE

© Composite: Guardian design / SSE

© Composite: Guardian design / SSE

The lawsuit aims to hold fossil fuel companies responsible for a heat wave in Portland five years ago. The industry says the case should be thrown out.

© Michael Hanson for The New York Times

A scientific analysis concluded that such high temperatures, across so much of the continent, would “not have been possible” without global warming.

© Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The extreme heat smothering Europe has upended Climate Week in London.

© Pool photo by Yui Mok

The burning of fossil fuels is raising temperatures worldwide, but local factors, on land and at sea, determine which regions warm most rapidly.

© Toby Shepheard/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images