Morning mail: Hurricane Irma leaves trail of destruction Friday: Evacuations ordered in Florida as Irma approaches US after battering Caribbean islands. Plus: marriage equality campaign hots up following high court ruling Hurricane Irma tore through the Caribbean island of St Maarten, leaving thousands homeless. Photograph: Gerben van Es/AP Eleanor Ainge Roy @EleanorAingeRoy Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 8 September. Top stories The death toll from Hurricane Irma has risen to 13 as the Florida governor ordered a quarter of a million people in coastal areas to urgently evacuate before the storm hits in less than 12 hours. A fuller picture of the carnage wrought by one of the most powerful storms in history has began to emerge and it is one of absolute devastation, with some parts of the Caribbean islands completely flattened. On Barbuda, where Irma made its first landfall early on Wednesday, 95% of all buildings have been destroyed, and large areas of the island remain under water, with 60% of its 1,800 residents now homeless. Survivors have described the experience as "like a horror movie", with cars flying through the air and people tying themselves to roofs to avoid being swept away. Philip Levine, the mayor of Miami Beach, ordered a mandatory evacuation of the barrier island beginning at daybreak on Thursday, US time. "This is a nuclear hurricane," he said. "I'll do anything in my power to convince them to leave. Get off Miami Beach." Follow the Guardian's live coverage of Hurricane Irma here. Campaigning on marriage equality resumes in earnest following Thursday's decision by the high court to allow the postal survey to go ahead, to the relief of Malcolm Turnbull. Attention now turns to protections against vilification in the campaign and the content of the bill that is expected to be brought before parliament next week. Gay Alcorn writes that there has long been a disconnect between the electorate's attitudes to same-sex marriage and the way elected representatives were prepared to vote. But there is a sea change under way. According to research soon to be published in the Australian Journal of Political Science, not a single politician who wanted to legalise same-sex marriage in the failed attempt in 2012 now has doubts. But by 2016 almost 60% of Labor MPs who voted no had shifted to supporting same-sex marriage, and 21% of Coalition MPs had changed their minds. Emissions from the electricity sector dropped by the biggest amount on record in the three months to June, but that wasn't enough to stop Australia's overall greenhouse gas emissions from continuing to rise. The effect of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station closure is seen for the first time in quarterly projections produced exclusively for the Guardian, but at the same time emissions rose from almost every other sector – industrial energy, transport, industrial heat and agriculture. The results mean Australia has now consumed 24% of its carbon budget set by the government's Climate Change Authority – the total amount of carbon it can release from 2013 while doing its fair share to keep global warming under 2C. The de facto leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, has defended her handling of renewed violence in the west of her country, where a crackdown has displaced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims. There have been calls for Suu Kyi to be stripped of her Nobel peace prize, but she said it was "a little unreasonable" to expect her government to solve the issue in 18 months. "The situation in Rakhine has been such since many decades. It goes back to pre-colonial times," she said. The Guardian's exclusive report from the Bangladesh border reveals horrific tales of a massacre in one village as Rohingya tried to flee attacks by the army. It's election time in Malcolm Turnbull's backyard, but all anyone can talk about is the pavilion. Bondi Pavilion, that is. Feelings are running so high in the Waverley council chambers, in Sydney's eastern suburbs, that councillor Joy Clayton, a Liberal member since 1983, crossed the floor to vote against her own party. A powerful grassroots campaign, Save Bondi Pavilion, is even hoping to tip the result in this blue-ribbon Liberal area in council elections on Saturday Sport In the first of the AFL finals Adelaide booked a home preliminary final with a comfortable win over GWS Giants, with Eddie Betts notching three goals. The Giants' grim night was compounded by another hamstring strain to key forward Jeremy Cameron – just weeks after he returned from the same injury. Nathan Lyon's six wickets, to go with the seven he bagged in the first innings, gave Australia victory inside four days in the second Test against Bangladesh, meaning the tourists depart the sub-continent having avoided an embarrassing series defeat. Next stop for Steve Smith's side: the Ashes. Thinking time The writer Alexis Wright. Photograph: Meredith O'Shea for the Guardian It's been 10 years since Indigenous author Alexis Wright wrote the Miles Franklin-winning time-bending novel Carpentaria. Set in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the book may have been written to Wright's own country, but the power of the story broke all boundaries and became acclaimed around the world. Wright reflects on her struggle to publish "this strange blackfella book in the time of John Howard" and the joy of finally seeing it embraced by readers and critics alike. On Thursday Josephine Wilson was announced as the winner of this year's Miles Franklin award for her novel Extinctions. The high court's decision that the same-sex marriage survey is valid continues the great Australian tradition of making reform protracted and painful, writes David Marr. But change is coming anyway. "One way or another, this year or next, parliament will vote for a change that's now accepted across the western world. All the court did was leave an obstacle in its path." This week Brigid Delaney wallows in a wave of noughties nostalgia and wonders what impact the era of Winehouse, George W Bush and The Wire has had on the current decade. Recalling her years of London gastro pubs and Sex and the City box sets, Delaney says the time since 2007 has "flown by in the blink of an eye. So why the nostalgia? Why the books and the museum? Why the tug – always the tug with the past – that things were better then? Because – maybe, just before the financial crisis of 2008 hit – they were. But not for everyone. And not by much." What's he done now? Donald Trump has tweeted a hollow reassurance to the 800,000 Americans in limbo after his administration announced the end of the Daca program, which protected undocumented migrants who came to the US as children from deportation. "For all of those (DACA) that are concerned about your status during the 6 month period, you have nothing to worry about - No action!" he said. Media roundup The Fairfax papers and the Australian splash with the high court's decision on the same-sex marriage survey, while the Age also reports on Victorian MP Rachel Carling- Jenkins' emotional speech to Victoria's parliament. Carling-Jenkins revealed how she had discovered her now-estranged husband's extensive collection of child pornography last year. The NT News devotes its front page to a 19-year-old Darwin woman who took her own life after battling depression. Her parents are calling for more open discussion of depression in the Territory, and for more funding for research. And the ABC reports that nearly 26,000 guns have been surrendered in the national firearms amnesty since July, the first national call-out for illegal guns since the Port Arthur massacre. Coming up The Nationals are holding their federal conference and MP George Christensen will be putting forward an anti-burqa motion. Masterchef judge George Calombaris will be sentenced in Sydney after pleading guilty to a charge of assault after shoving a fan at the A-League grand final in May. It was reported he was being taunted over underpaying workers Supporting the Guardian We'd like to acknowledge our generous supporters who enable us to keep reporting on the critical stories. If you value what we do and would like to help, please make a contribution or become a supporter today. Thank you. Guardian News & Media Limited - a member of Guardian Media Group PLC. Registered Office: Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9GU. Registered in England No. 908396