Democrats hold Senate floor overnight to protest Amy Coney Barrett confirmation – live

We’ve got a live feed of Senate proceedings up above in the blog – you may need to refresh the page to get the play button to appear. Here’s a clip of Sen. Chris Murphy from earlier.

Sen. Tim Kaine followed him, and he finished his speech by saying that Republican leaders would not wear masks to cover their noses and mouths and protect themselves and others from the coronavirus, but that the “soulless process” of confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court showed they were willing to “cover their eyes and their ears”.

Oliver Milman writes for us that the choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is pretty stark in terms of consequences for the global environment.

The international effort to constrain dangerous global heating will hinge, in large part, on which of the dichotomous approaches of Donald Trump or Joe Biden prevails.

On 4 November, the day after the election, the US will exit the Paris climate agreement, a global pact that has wobbled but not collapsed from nearly four years of disparagement and disengagement under Trump.

Biden has vowed to immediately rejoin the Paris deal. The potential of a second Trump term, however, is foreboding for those whose anxiety has only escalated during the hottest summer ever recorded in the northern hemisphere, with huge wildfires scorching California and swaths of central South America, and extraordinary temperatures baking the Arctic.

“It’s a decision of great consequence, to both the US and the world,” said Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat and key architect of the Paris accords. “The rest of the world is moving to a low-carbon future, but we need to collectively start moving even faster, and the US still has a significant global role to play in marshaling this effort.”

Few countries are on track to fulfill commitments made in Paris five years ago to slash their planet-heating emissions and keep the global temperature rise to “well below” 2C of warming beyond the pre-industrial era. The world has already warmed by about 1C since this time, helping set in motion a cascade of heatwaves, fierce storms and flooding around the planet.

Read more here: Climate at a crossroads as Trump and Biden point in different directions

The summer has been characterised by a series of extreme weather events on both coasts of the US, and that looks set to continue.

Hundreds of thousands of Californians lost power as utilities sought to prevent the chance of their equipment sparking wildfires and the fire-weary state braced for a new bout of dry, windy weather.

More than 1 million people were expected be in the dark Monday during what officials have said could be the strongest wind event in California this year, reports the Associate Press.