Throughout her life, Sarah Thornton hadn’t given much thought to her breasts. They were there, of course, and they’d fed two children. But they had also attracted unwanted attention, and latterly they’d become a source of concern – with a history of breast cancer in her family, and after years of vigilance and tests, in 2018 Thornton was about to undergo a preventive double mastectomy. Preparing for the operation, she realised she still hadn’t given them much consideration, nor what it would be like to have “new” breasts in the form of implants. When they turned out to be bigger than expected, she was shocked, “but in the end,” she says, “it wasn’t the aesthetic form as much as the feeling. It was like losing sentience. And it put me on a quest to understand these things that I’d never thought too much about. These things I’d kind of dismissed as dumb boobs.”

Thornton’s new book, Tits Up: What Our Beliefs About Breasts Reveal About Life, Love, Sex and Society, is a deep dive into the bosom of our fixation with boobs. Writing the book, she says, has transformed how she views her own breasts. “I really did go from dismissing them as a kind of shallow accessory, to thinking of them as a really important body part – one we wouldn’t have a human species without,” she says. “Our top halves have been invaded by male supremacy and I did not realise how deeply patriarchal even my own view of breasts was. I was dismissing them as dumb boobs, partly because they’re positioned primarily in culture as erotic playthings and I didn’t want to just be an erotic plaything.”

She doesn’t want to be a killjoy, she says. “Breasts are not evolutionarily, or universally, erotic. But the sexualisation of breasts causes many women a lot of stress, anxiety and dissatisfaction. That is a real shame, if not a serious political problem, and I think elevating the esteem of this body part that’s so emblematic of womanhood is important.”

I’m speaking to Thornton at home in San Francisco. She grew up in Canada, with a British mother, then spent 26 years in the UK, where she was an arts journalist, academic and author of books including Seven Days in the Art World. She has lived in the US for 12 years, now on the west coast with her wife, the gallerist Jessica Silverman. They often use the word “titties” (“I have a lot of affection for the word,” she says) with their 18-month-old daughter. “I was really struck by the fact that in Chinese one of the dominant slang words is the equivalent of ‘milkies’. That’s just not true in the US, or Anglo-Saxon culture. The only equivalent word would be ‘jugs’, as something that suggests nutritional function, which is the evolutionary raison d’etre of our tits.”

Thornton likes “tits”, and the “tits up” of her book title is American showbiz slang for good luck, a much more positive association than the British version meaning hapless or disastrous. “Tits is the No 1 word used on the internet for breasts,” she says, “and it seemed to me that if women were going to reclaim these words, then we needed to branch out. In the US, men use a much broader vocabulary to describe breasts than women do, and that struck me as a red flag. How come teenage boys can use 10 words and teenage girls use one? It’s like, who thinks they own them?”

And so Thornton is keen to reclaim words such as tits. She also appreciates the word “rack”, something, she adds, which gives the impression of “all the cultural baggage” hanging off it. “A liberated rack has no particular appearance, it is what it is and it just works for its owner. A liberated rack isn’t ashamed, it does what it wants to do. So if you want to free the nipple, you go there; if you want to bundle up in a triple-thick sports bra, do that too. There’s not a singular liberated rack, there’s lots of ways to do it. I know this pluralism sometimes feels over liberal, but when it comes to women’s bodies, it’s hard to be liberal enough.”

For many girls, the development of their breasts is often the first time they become uncomfortably aware of heterosexual male attention. When Thornton was 15, her breasts were groped by an older male colleague at a golf club restaurant where she was working. Not long afterwards, at a sleepover, she was assaulted by the much older boyfriend of her friend’s sister in the middle of the night. Her breasts, she writes, “had become defeated fools – boobs in the literal sense – that needed to be buried in oversized sweaters.” Looking back, she says, “it was a significant event in my body’s history. I’m sure that fed into me being the kind of person who was not someone to flaunt my cleavage. I have such deep respect and love for women who love their cleavage, I just wasn’t good at that. I felt so awkward and vulnerable.”

When Thornton came to breastfeed her two older children, now in their 20s, her breasts took on a different meaning, but it wasn’t a particularly positive experience. “I really wish I had loved breastfeeding more than I did. I didn’t love it and it’s partly because my breasts were such a source of conflict for me.”

Thornton’s research took her from strip clubs to cosmetic surgeons’ clinics to donor milk banks. “The whole book is really told through women’s eyes,” she says. For one transgender woman she interviews, breast surgery was “an essential part of her validity as a woman”. The women who donated to milk banks were not exploited subordinate wet nurses but “allomothers” in the millennia-long precapitalist tradition of communal child rearing. In the strip and lapdance clubs – Thornton is in the “sex work is work” camp, which may jar with many feminists – she comes to the conclusion that, for the women who work there, breasts are not so much sex objects “as much as salaried assistants”. One dancer suggested that having men confronted with her breasts felt more humanising – they were also forced to look at her face – than when it was her bottom being objectified.

An artist, Clarity Haynes, who does a portrait of Thornton’s breasts, used to be a stripper. “She said it was fine if she was getting paid for it,” says Thornton, “but she would get so irate if she was just walking down the street and guys decided to ogle her.”

Given our breast-obsessed culture, it’s thrilling to realise that it was only relatively recently that breasts took on quite so much sexual importance. Thornton traces their sexualisation in the west to 15th-century France. “You need breasts to be disconnected from their primary use in order for them to be fully eroticised, and the first real cultural evidence of that is in French Renaissance painting, with portraits commissioned by French kings of their mistresses who had these pristine breasts – you even have the wet nurse in the background with her heavy, saggy milk-filled ‘jugs’ as a contrast to the perky unused breasts of the mistress.”

Thornton argues that there is a strong link between the sexualisation of breasts and higher rates of formula feeding. As formula became more widespread and affordable – in the US, breastfeeding hit its lowest rates in the 1970s – breast fetishism exploded. She believes in the right of women to choose to formula feed – “it would be inconsistent and preachy to tell another woman what to do with her boobs” – but she points out that she has always had a problem around the word “choice”, “because choices are not equal, we don’t make our choices on a level playing field.”

In a culture where breastfeeding in public can be uncomfortable for many women, support to get it established is missing and lack of employment rights can hinder it. Then there are the women who can’t, or won’t breastfeed for any number of reasons. “One of my interviewees was the victim of sexual abuse and she decided prior to giving birth that she would not breastfeed.”

The woman, Elysia, turned out to be such an abundant producer of milk that she ended up donating 80 US gallons to a milk bank that feeds premature babies. Her son also thrived on her milk. “But she never breastfed. She pumped and delivered raw milk to him, fresh, from ‘jug’ to jug. What’s really beautiful about that story is that she totally changed her relationship with her breasts through that experience. These things that she felt excruciating pain and shame around became something she had love for because they nourished her boy so well.”

Breast fashions change, and in the latter half of the 20th century, large breasts were desirable, and women’s feelings about their breasts “started to be influenced by implant shapes – the round Pamela Anderson shape and size”. Even if that is no longer fashionable, “breast surgery is not going away,” says Thornton. “The lift is on the rise.”

Although she met some male surgeons, “one of whom I call Dr More, because it was always more, more and more”, in her book Thornton chose to focus on female surgeons, who tended to have a far more natural and subtle approach. Thornton sat in on one operation on a woman in her 40s who was having her large implants removed and her breasts lifted. In the US, the number of implants peaked in 2007, writes Thornton. Dr Carolyn Chang, whose operation Thornton watches, tells her that “implants, or at least large ones, are becoming less fashionable. Women want athletic bodies.”

When Thornton ventured into the world of bra design, she found a dominance of foam cups that created a smooth, round appearance and hid the wearer’s nipples – a word that is rarely uttered in the industry, which instead prefers to talk about a breast’s “apex” (one notable exception being the Skims “nipple push-up bra”, which features a moulded nipple shape, launched recently with much hype).

This brought Thornton to the Free the Nipple movement, which began in 2012 to highlight the sexualisation of female nipples and give women the same shirt-free rights as men. In the beginning, Thornton says, she had doubts about it. “I was like, is it really important? After doing the research, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a really fundamental problem.” She writes that she believes “hiding this fundamental mammalian marker is integral to women’s inequality and disempowerment.” Thornton smiles. “Do you think that’s an overstatement? What I would say is men’s and women’s chests are not treated equally in our society and aren’t associated with the same thing.”

It comes to a point with nipples in particular. Men’s nipples are visible everywhere, but also unnoticed. “I didn’t even notice them until I started working on this book and then I just saw men’s nipples everywhere. A white shirt is a recipe for a male nipple.” Women tend not to be comfortable showing theirs, “and it’s partly because there’s this notion that our breasts are primarily sex objects, they don’t belong to us and if we take our top off, we’re going: ‘Come fuck me.’ I genuinely believe that the dismissal of our breasts for the complex things they are is a serious problem for women.”

She hopes that her book will go some way to help elevate the status of breasts, and that women may feel “less critical, more accepting”. Will sagging, ageing breasts ever not be considered, at best, a joke in our culture? Thornton sighs. “Ageing is not generally accepted. We live in a world that is so fast-changing that the meaning of wisdom has shifted.” She misses her “saggy boobs”, she says. “I wish I could give the affection to them that I now feel.” Before her double mastectomy and implants, she took her breasts on what she calls their “final outing” – to the pool at a fancy hotel and, as she swam, thanked them, and apologised for not appreciating them enough over the years.

She is silent for a while and looks suddenly emotional, then says she recently switched gyms; her new one has a lot of older women. “I see a lot of saggy boobs in the dressing room, and I actually feel love for them, genuine affection.” It took her a few years to accept her new breasts. “I’m very grateful that I dodged the bullet of breast cancer and that the experience led me to a place where I learned a lot.” She remembers one of the women she interviewed, a voluptuous burlesque dancer named Dirty Martini. “She said breasts are a gateway to body positivity and I actually think that’s true for a lot of women. They’re front and centre, part of us.”

Tits Up by Sarah Thornton is published by Bluebird (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.

A cross-party group of MPs and peers has urged Rishi Sunak to make a U-turn on his oil and gas extraction plans as part of a broader plea to increase efforts to address the climate crisis.

The 50 politicians, including three Conservatives, wrote to the prime minister calling for the UK to regain its international leadership on the crisis by ending the licensing of new oil and gas fields, appointing a climate envoy, and backing the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance.

All countries agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels” at the Cop28 UN climate summit last December, but without a firm timetable for their phase-out. Despite this pledge, however, Sunak has gone ahead with licensing new oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP, who signed the letter from the all party parliamentary group on climate change, said: “When the prime minister entered Downing Street he promised to protect the environment. But instead he has U-turned on once-leading climate policies, approved the largest undeveloped oilfield in the North Sea, and weaponised green policies.

“If the government is to secure any success at future critical international negotiations, then the prime minister must heed the demands of cross-party parliamentarians.”

Current members of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, which pledge to phase out fossil fuel production, include France, Spain, Denmark, Ireland, Costa Rica and Sweden. Wales is also a member, as sub-national governments can join.

However, some members have been accused of failing to put adequate plans in place to stop production: for instance, Denmark allows licensing in limited circumstances, and its end date for production is 2050.

The government has also dropped the role of climate envoy, usually filled by either a civil servant or senior politician, who spearheads the UK’s international climate policy.

Many countries have an envoy, with John Kerry, for example, serving in the role for the US under Joe Biden until earlier this year. The letter’s signatories call for the role to be reinstated in the UK, and elevated to parity with a secretary of state.

Robbie MacPherson, a senior political adviser at the Uplift campaign group, said: “At a time of huge global instability and political uncertainty, there is also an imperative for the UK to have its own special prime ministerial envoy for climate.

“The government must have consistent representation and never be left without a high-level political presence at global summits.”

The three Tories to have signed the letter are Zac Goldsmith, the former MP and mayoral candidate elevated to the peerage under Boris Johnson, and who has been critical of Sunak since being sacked as a minister last year; Tracey Crouch, a former sports minister; and Pauline Latham, the MP for Mid Derbyshire. Neither of the MPs will stand at the next general election.

Other signatories include Labour’s Clive Lewis, Alex Sobel and Rosie Duffield, Richard Foord of the Liberal Democrats, and Deirdre Brock of the Scottish National party.

The letter called for Sunak to support the setting of a new global goal for climate finance at the Cop29 summit this November in Azerbaijan. It would aim to help developing countries cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.

The signatories also want a UK biodiversity strategy and action plan, as part of international efforts to conserve species across the planet.

Afzal Khan, the Labour MP for Manchester Gorton, said: “MPs across the political spectrum, in both the House of Commons and Lords, want the government to do more to uphold the UK’s reputation as a global climate leader.

“Instead of chasing after the last drop of North Sea oil, and retreating from responsibility, the prime minister must honour our domestic and global climate goals to send a clear message to world leaders this year.”

A Government spokesperson said: “The UK leads the world in net zero, having halved emissions before any other major economy and set into law one of the most ambitious emissions targets in the world. Tackling climate change, however, is a global challenge, and with the UK accounting for less than 1% of annual worldwide emissions we need to work with other countries in tackling this vital issue head on.

“At COP28, we were pivotal in delivering an agreement to transition away from fossil fuels and are committed to continued collaboration with all international partners in tackling emissions.”

The UK has a competitive advantage over the rest of the world in a third of green products and services, giving it a head start in the race to achieve net zero, according to an upbeat report by a left of centre thinktank.

Firms are well placed to manufacture many of the most crucial green products – from electric trains to heat pump components – despite 40 years of decline that have left the UK industrial base smaller than many of its competitors, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said.

The UK is particularly strong in making products and components used for monitoring, measuring and analysing industrial processes that will play a large role in the decarbonisation of the economy – such as the electricity grid and renewable energy generation.

To expand the number of industries capable of manufacturing products that will help achieve net zero, ministers will need to develop a mechanism for supporting businesses that want to expand the range and sophistication of what they produce.

Arguing that ageing industrial plants should be “greened” rather than closed down, the report said state subsidies would allow the UK to make less carbon-intensive steel and avoid an over-reliance on imports that have travelled thousands of miles.

The onshoring of factories to make vital components would shorten supply lines, making the UK “more resilient to future shocks” while also reinvigorating the economy.

George Dibb, the head of IPPR’s Centre for Economic Justice, said the geographical spread of industries primed to support the move to net zero meant the government could level up regions at the same time.

“Over the past 30 years we have slipped sharply behind our global competitors in the quantity and kinds of things we actually make,” Dibb said. “That’s bad for jobs, for living standards, for our security – and for our long-term economic strength as a country.”

“Yet UK manufacturers still have a competitive edge in making some of the products vital for a net zero economy, and with the right government support we have the potential to be world-leading in many more.”

Dibb said all the major products needed to achieve net zero were already available, allowing ministers to use the report as a crib sheet to identify areas in need of Whitehall subsidies.

To assess the UK’s green strengths, the IPPR identified a set of 143 products that could be linked directly to technologies and steps needed to deliver net zero. It found that the UK had a comparative advantage over international rivals in a third.

However, a separate report by MPs also out on Wednesday argues that the UK is ill-prepared to build climate-resilient infrastructure without a huge investment to raise the level of skills in the workforce.

The all-party public accounts committee (PAC) of MPs found that skills gaps in the UK’s workforce were compounded by competition from major global development projects.

“Project management and design are also areas of concern, and [a lack of] skilled professionals in senior positions in particular,” the parliamentary spending watchdog said.

Its report found that 16,000 project professionals must gain accreditation from the government’s project leadership academy to carry out vital work, but only 1,000 have so far.

The MPs found that an “unprecedented” scale of investment was under way across the rail, road and energy sectors with little oversight by ministers or evaluation by civil servants.

The report concluded: “Only 8% of the £432bn spend on major projects in 2019 had robust impact evaluation plans in place and around two-thirds had no plans at all. This is despite high quality evaluation being important to provide evidence for what works, demonstrate value and to make the case for or against further investment.

“Decisions are being made in the absence of evidence, putting value for money at unnecessary risk.”

“Mr Trump, is Todd doing a good job?”

So shouted a pool reporter outside a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday afternoon shortly after Trump’s lead attorney, Todd Blanche, started cross examining former fixer turned prosecution witness, Michael Cohen, in his criminal hush-money trial.

Trump did not reply to that question.

Indeed, this was the same question on everyone’s mind during cross-examination. Blanche tried to lob gotcha questions at Cohen. In turn, Cohen would retort with brief responses, spurring full-throated laughter in the overflow viewing room.

“On April 23, you went on TikToK and called me a ‘crying little shit?’” Blanche asked, in the first of many an awkward salvo.

“Sounds like something I would say.”

“After the trial started, you referred to President Trump as a ‘dictator douche bag’, didn’t you?” Blanche asked at another point, referring to one of Cohen’s social media posts.

“Sounds like something I said.”

Did Cohen say he wanted to see Trump convicted, in a cage, “like a fucking animal?”

“I recall saying that,” Cohen said.

Did he call Trump a “boorish cartoon misogynist?” A “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain?”

Cohen, calm as ever, similarly confirmed these statements sounded like things he would say.

To be clear, Blanche’s attempt to trip up Cohen by pointing out animosity toward Trump makes sense strategically. Prosecutors allege that Trump cast reimbursement for a $130,000 hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels as legal expenses for Cohen, constituting falsification of business records.

Cohen’s testimony put Trump squarely at the center of this alleged scheme, with him telling jurors Tuesday that he paid Daniels “to ensure that the story would not come out, would not affect Mr Trump’s chances of becoming president of the United States”

“At whose direction, and on whose behalf, did you commit that crime?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked him.

“On behalf of Mr Trump,” Cohen said.

So Blanche needs Cohen to look bad, to mitigate the damage of these statements.

“You were actually obsessed with President Trump, weren’t you?” Blanche asked.

“I don’t know if I would characterize it as obsessed, but I admired him tremendously.”

“You publicly said he was a good man?”

Yes.

“You said that he’s a man who cares deeply about this country?”

“I said that,” Cohen responded.

“That he’s a man who tells it straight?” Cohen said, “Yes, sir.”

“And that all he wants to do is make this country great again?”

“Sounds right.”

“At that time, you weren’t lying, right?”

“At that time, I was knee-deep into the cult of Donald Trump, yes,” Cohen said.

Blanche asked Cohen about items that are shown on his podcast’s website, including a shirt with Trump in an orange jumpsuit, which he showed in court. He also showed a photo of a coffee mug that reads: “Send him to the Big House not the White House.”

That’s also a reference to President Trump, correct?

“Correct,” Cohen said.

Didn’t Cohen wear that shirt on his TikTok channel last week? Wasn’t he encouraging people to buy it?

“At the merch store,” Cohen said.

Even when Blanche got Cohen to admit that he wanted to see Trump convicted, he answered with a comically underwhelming: “Sure.”

So eyebrow-raising were Blanche’s initial questions to Cohen – what did he say about him, the attorney, and his associate, another Trump attorney? – that Judge Juan Merchan appeared irked.

“Why are you making this about yourself?” Merchan asked Blanche during a sidebar after this first set of questions. Blanche, for that matter, insisted, “I’m not making it about myself, your honor,” and said he had the right to press Cohen on bias against both his client and lawyers.

“Please, don’t make it about yourself,” Merchan instructed at the sidebar’s conclusion.

Trump, who appeared to nod off repeatedly throughout Cohen’s testimony, did not seem disturbed by the day’s developments. As he left court for the day, Trump told the reporter pool: “It was a very, very good day.”

Blanche will resume his cross-examination of Blanche on Thursday. He told the court that he expects his cross will take all day.

Is there a surer bet in football than Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City doing what they need to do – in other words, win and keep winning – when they have the Premier League title within their grasp?

On the three previous occasions that they have been involved in neck‑and-neck races for the line under Guardiola – the margin for error slim to non-existent – they have never slipped. Their winning sequences have been long and ­devastating. Here we are again, City closing on yet another title, a sixth in total under Guardiola, this victory an eighth in a row when the pressure is at its most acute.

For one night only, everybody connected to Arsenal had turned into Tottenham fans. They were des­perate for their hated rivals to do something neighbourly. Any kind of result for Spurs would have kept Arsenal on top of the table before the final set of fixtures on Sunday.

It did not happen because this is not how it goes with City, ^­however close it was in the final stages, ­however excruciating it must have been for Arsenal to watch. Because with City leading through an Erling Haaland goal shortly after the second-half restart, Spurs had the chances to equalise.

Stefan Ortega was the unexpected City hero. Guardiola’s starting goalkeeper, Ederson, had been forced off with a facial injury after a shud­dering collision with Cristian Romero. ­Ederson did not want to come off; he was incandescent and took out his feelings with a kick at the seats in the technical area. Yet everyone at City would have reason to thank Ortega.

The goalkeeper made a huge block to deny Dejan Kulusevski, on as a Spurs substitute, before ­keeping him out again at close quarters. But that was trumped in the 86th ­minute when Brennan ­Johnson robbed Manuel Akanji and sent Son Heung‑min clean through. With north London holding its breath for so many reasons, Ortega saved again.

Guardiola had thrown himself to the ground in anticipation of Son scoring as everybody expected him to do. He has hurt City on many ­occasions in the past. But when Ortega blocked, Ange Postecoglou raged at the heavens. It was the ­latest illustration of Spurs’ achilles heel under Postecoglou – the frequency with which they have failed to master the big moments.

City had survived and they enjoyed a calm finale when Haaland made it 2‑0 from the penalty spot after Pedro Porro had fouled another substitute, Jérémy Doku. The move was sparked by the excellent Phil Foden; he had also been involved in the ­opening goal and City will be crowned again if – or surely when – they beat West Ham on Sunday.

Spurs’ Champions League hopes are over; they will need a point at Sheffield United on the last day to ensure fifth place and a Europa League finish and it was Aston Villa who were confirmed as the Premier League’s final representative in Europe’s premier competition. Their delight at a first qualification since they played in the old European Cup in 1982-83 knew no bounds. City also celebrated wildly.

It had been a gripping evening, the subplots bubbling furiously, chief among them the one that talked to who the Spurs fans would be sup­porting. On one level, it was incre­dibly strange, given that they were shooting for a Champions League ­finish; on another, it was entirely logical because, well, it was Arsenal.

Guardiola had needed time to work things out because ­Postecoglou sprang surprises with his tactics, even if the emphasis on attack endured, on taking risks. Missing eight injured players, including three left-backs, Postecoglou had asked Micky van de Ven to shuffle over from central defence to fill the problem position. He also started with a new-look box midfield, with his attackers, Johnson and Son, high and wide.

The atmosphere in the Spurs seats was best described as subdued. ­Perhaps the home fans were simply ­trying to process what Postecoglou was doing. It was impossible to say that it did not work. Or perhaps it was something else.

City had their moments in the first half, even if some of them were nearly but not quite in terms of ­finding the killer pass. Foden unloaded a volley after a Pierre-Emile Højbjerg slice that Guglielmo Vicario saved ­brilliantly; Josko Gvardiol volleyed off target from a difficult angle. On the stroke of half-time, Radu Dragusin celebrated wildly after heading clear a goalbound Bernardo Silva shot.

City made errors on the ball, uncharacteristic ones that added to the weird vibe and Spurs had a few flickers before the interval, the biggest one coming early on when ­Rodrigo Bentancur extended Ederson.

City played with greater intensity after half-time, Kevin De Bruyne fully extending Vicario. Spurs almost led, Ederson denying Son at close quarters and then City did. Foden made it happen, winning the ball, getting away up the left and crossing. When it went all the way through, Silva ushered in De Bruyne and he fed ­Haaland. “Are you watching ­Arsenal?” the Spurs fans chanted.

The tension simmered. Bentancur raged when replaced by Kulusevski, kicking the seats as Ederson would do. It was Ortega who would make the difference.

The US, Germany and other countries are putting the climate crisis at the heart of their national security plans but the UK is failing to do likewise, experts have told the government.

Extreme weather and heat are killing increasing numbers of people, damaging economies and forcing millions around the world to flee their homes, adding to an already unstable geopolitical situation, MPs were told on Tuesday at a select committee hearing.

The climate crisis has become a “threat multiplier” that can add to instability and the risk of unrest in many countries and is therefore an international security issue, parliament’s environmental audit committee was told. The increasing dangers of floods, droughts and other damage to vital infrastructure also makes the climate crisis a national security problem within the UK.

But while the US has taken a “whole government” approach to the crisis, ordering the security services to focus on climate risks in their assessments, the UK has lagged behind, according to experts giving evidence.

Erin Sikorsky, the director of the Center for Climate and Security in the US, said: “The US government has put climate change and national security at the front of its foreign security policy agenda under [president Joe] Biden. The Department of Homeland Security has been involved.”

Even though most of the Republican party leadership and the former president Donald Trump have been vehemently opposed to action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, when it comes to national security there has been cooperation on the climate. “It has really been a bipartisan issue for over a decade,” Sikorsky said.

Germany has also integrated climate considerations into all government departments. Kira Vinke, of the German Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, said. “[There has been a] whole government approach, seeing it through a national security and human security lens.”

In the UK, however, not enough has been done to adapt to the impacts of extreme weather and prepare for future risks, said Lady Brown, the chair of the adaptation subcommittee at the government’s statutory adviser, the Climate Change Committee.

“We are not seeing implementation and action,” she said. “We are not very ready at all [for the impacts of extreme weather].”

Helen Adams, a senior lecturer on disaster risk reduction at King’s College London, said part of the problem in the UK was that there was not enough interest in the issue from Downing Street.

“We are not acting at scale, things are not getting to a high enough level [of government],” she said. “It has to come from the top down.” Stark warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the world’s leading climate scientists, were “not getting to the highest level”, she warned.

Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, made his biggest speech yet on national security on Monday in which he said that the UK faced turmoil at home and abroad.

“More will change in the next five years than in the last 30,” he said. “I’m convinced that the next few years will be some of the most dangerous yet transformational our country has ever known … There are storms ahead. The dangers are all too real.”

Yet he failed even to mention the climate crisis in his analysis, despite the world’s leading scientists and many other governments highlighting that rapidly intensifying global heating is one of the biggest risks the world faces.

On climate policy and the target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions, his only words were negative: “In a more unstable world, where dictators like Putin have held us to ransom over energy prices, I reject the ideological zeal of those who want us to adopt policies that go further, faster than any other country, no matter the cost or disruption to people’s lives.”

House Democrats have launched an investigation into a meeting between oil company executives and Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home and club last month, following reports that the former president offered to dismantle Biden’s environmental rules and requested $1bn in contributions to his presidential campaign.

Democrats on the House oversight committee late on Monday evening sent letters to nine oil executives requesting information on their companies’ participation in the meeting.

“Media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in return for large campaign contributions,” the Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the committee, wrote in the letters.

The investigation comes after the Washington Post broke the news of the dinner meeting, where Trump spoke in front of more than 20 fossil fuel executives from companies including Chevron, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum.

It was reported that Trump said steering $1bn into his campaign would be a “deal” for the companies because of the costs they would avoid under him. The former president offered in a second term to immediately end the Biden administration’s freeze on permits for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, while auctioning off more oil drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico and reversing drilling restrictions in the Alaskan Arctic, among other promises.

Oversight Democrats addressed letters to the CEOs of oil giants Chevron and Exxon, liquefied natural gas company Cheniere Energy, and fossil fuel firms Chesapeake Energy, Continental Resources, EQT Corporation, Occidental Petroleum and Venture Global.

They also sent an inquiry to the head of the American Petroleum Institute (API), the fossil fuel industry’s top lobbying arm in the US.

Asked about the investigation, API spokesperson Andrea Woods said the organization “meets with policymakers and candidates from across the political spectrum on topics important to our industry”.

Reports of the meeting are especially troubling, Raskin wrote in the letters, in light of revelations in Politico earlier last week that stated the oil industry is writing up “ready-to-sign executive orders” for Trump aimed at increasing gas exports, slashing drilling costs and increasing offshore oil leases.

He asked the executives to provide the names and titles of any company representatives who attended the Mar-a-Lago meeting, copies of materials shared with the attendees, descriptions of rules and policies discussed at the event, and an account of financial contributions to the Trump campaign made at the event or afterward.

The junior senator from Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse, who chairs the Senate budget committee, has expressed interest in launching an investigation into the meeting as well. “Trump’s offer of a blatant quid pro quo to oil executives is practically an invitation to ask questions about Big Oil’s political corruption and manipulation,” he said in an emailed statement.

Compared with Raskin’s, Whitehouse’s investigation would have a significant advantage: if the companies refuse to turn over information, the Senate budget committee can file subpoenas. Because Republicans have a House majority, House Democrats do not have the power to subpoena documents.

A joint investigation by the Senate budget committee and House oversight Democrats revealed last month that big oil admits that it spent years covering up the dangers of burning fossil fuels, and that major oil companies lobbied against climate laws and regulations they have publicly claimed to support.

“Fossil fuel malfeasance will cost Americans trillions in climate damages, and the budget committee is looking at how to ensure the industry cannot simply buy off politicians in order to saddle taxpayers with the bill,” said Whitehouse.

Re your article (British Gas boss says all UK households should be forced to fit smart meters, 8 May), after being harassed by email, text, telephone, letters and finally doorstepping, and being told that we had to get smart meters for safety reasons, we relented and spent a fun day at home with the fitter. The smart meters don’t work; they never worked. Apparently they don’t work in our type of house.

The European Space Agency might be able to wake up the satellite Rosetta 673m kilometres away, but our power supplier cannot wake up our smart meters. Sorry, I have to rush, they want another meter reading. You see, they are experiencing a high level of calls so no one can answer the phone.
Jim Fleming
Edinburgh

Smart meters are only useful to customers if the visual display unit placed in each home actually works so as to enable householders to monitor fuel consumption. If it doesn’t, energy firms can refuse to repair the display unit if they have been installed by an earlier energy supplier, or if they have been put in over a year ago. Appeals to the energy ombudsman are fruitless. With more than 4m smart meters known to be malfunctioning, this is very much a one-way street exercise, primarily benefiting mammoth energy suppliers.
Andrew Warren
Cambridge

One problem is that installation teams and power companies don’t seem to communicate with each other, hence the dismal litany of misunderstandings and repeated emails, all asking for the same information, and requests to take pictures of the meter and its details – something I imagine the installer should have done. I blame Margaret Thatcher, but then I blame her for most things.
David Redshaw
Saltdean, East Sussex

Riot police used teargas to disperse protesters outside Georgia’s parliament and MPs brawled inside as a “foreign agents” bill – condemned as a Kremlin-inspired act of repression – was passed into law.

The bill was backed by 84 MPs to 30 despite western pressure and the rolling protests that have brought hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets of the capital, Tbilisi.

A number of protesters were treated by medics after teargas was used on a noisy but seemingly peaceful crowd of a few thousand people, while squads of police dragged some individuals away.

The violence spread into the chamber, with a dozen MPs fighting and one MP, from the governing Georgian Dream party, being held back by security guards as he violently lurched at the chair of the main opposition, Levan Khabeishvili.

Under the legislation adopted on Tuesday, media or civil society groups in Georgia that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad will have to register as “organisations serving the interests of a foreign power”.

The US state department has called the bill “Kremlin-inspired”, as it has echoes of legislation introduced into the Russian statute books in 2012 by Vladimir Putin, which many people say has been used to silence critics.

The president of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili, has said she would veto the law, but the governing party has sufficient numbers in parliament to overrule her.

Georgia’s prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, earlier on Tuesday met the US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, Jim O’Brien, in Tbilisi to discuss Washington’s concerns.

The prime minister’s office said Kobakhidze had “explained to Jim O’Brien the need to adopt the law On Transparency of Foreign Influence” and reiterated the “readiness of the leadership team to carefully consider all legal comments of international partners within the framework of the veto procedure.”

Kobakhidze said on Monday that O’Brien had also requested a meeting with the billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, the honorary chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party, who is widely thought to drive government policy.

He said Ivanishvili – who made his fortune in Russia – rejected the request on the grounds that the US had frozen $2bn (£1.59bn) of his funds.

The European Commission on Tuesday restated its position that the new law would undermine Georgia’s application to join the European Union. “EU member countries are very clear that if this law is adopted it will be a serious obstacle for Georgia in its European perspective,” it said.

Tina Bokuchava, parliamentary leader of the opposition United National Movement said: “Today’s vote will focus minds on the urgent need for regime change in Georgia. With elections to look forward to in October, I am confident that the unity seen on our streets in recent weeks will prove a watershed moment in our nation’s history.

“Our rightful place is in Europe – but the Ivanishvili stranglehold must be broken first if this dream is to be realised.”

On Monday, students from 30 Georgian universities joined the protests and went on strike, backed by lecturers.

Irakli Beradze, 22, a student in Tblisi, holding up a sign saying, “Russian can’t gaslight us, we have gas masks”, said that he and thousands of others “would not let Russia have our country”.

But in a speech on Tuesday, a Georgian Dream MP, Archil Talakvadze, called critics of the new law a “radical and anti-national political opposition united by political vendetta”.

“But nothing and nobody can stop the development of our country,” he added.

Elite French police forces are hunting gunmen who rammed into a prison van, killing at least two prison officers and allowing the inmate they were transporting to escape.

A police source told Agence France-Presse three officers were killed and two others wounded in the attack. Another source close to the case, who also asked not to be named, said two prison officers had been killed and three wounded.

The incident took place late morning at a road toll in Incarville in the Eure region of northern France, another source close to the case added.

The inmate was being transported between the towns of Rouen and Evreux in Normandy.

A police source said several individuals, who arrived in two vehicles, rammed the police van and then fled. One of them was wounded, the police source said.

It was not immediately clear how many attackers there were in total.

“Everything is being done to find the perpetrators of this crime,” the president, Emmanuel Macron, wrote on X. “We will be uncompromising,” he added, describing the attack as a “shock”.

The justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti, confirmed the attack on the prison convoy and said on X he was immediately heading to a crisis cell at his ministry.

“I am frozen with horror at the veritable carnage that took place at the Incarville toll,” said Alexandre Rassaert, the head of the Eure region council. “I hope with all my heart that that the commando team of killers which carried out this bloody attack will be arrested quickly.”

A unit of the GIGN special police force has been dispatched to apprehend the suspects.

Traffic was stopped on the A154 motorway where the incident took place.

The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, wrote on X that he had ordered the activation of France’s Epervier plan, a special operation launched by the gendarmerie in such situations.

“All means are being used to find these criminals. On my instructions, several hundred police officers and gendarmes were mobilised,” he said.

BFMTV, quoting a source close to the investigation, said the 30-year-old inmate had been convicted last week and sentenced to 18 months in prison over robberies in 2019.

It said he had also been charged with murder over a 2022 killing linked to drug trafficking.

A source close to the case, speaking to AFP, identified the inmate as Mohamed A. born in 1994.

Law and order is a major issue in French politics ahead of next month’s European elections and the incident caused fierce reactions from politicians, especially the far right.

“It is real savagery that hits France every day,” claimed Jordan Bardella, the top candidate for the far-right National Rally, which is leading opinion polls for the elections.