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Growing number of campaigners urge government to ensure green investment is not done ‘on backs of the poor’
A growing number of climate groups are campaigning for the introduction of a wealth tax to ensure the transition to a sustainable economy is not done “on the backs of the poor”.
Last week campaigners from Green New Deal Rising staged a sit-in outside the Reform UK party’s London headquarters as part of a wave of protests targeting the offices, shops and private clubs of the super-rich across the UK.
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Ministers call for hosepipe bans as East and West Midlands enter drought, joining Yorkshire and north-west
Four areas of England are now in drought as the East and West Midlands have joined Yorkshire and the north-west.
Continuing hot and dry weather was a hazard to crop production and wildlife, ministers said, as they urged water companies to put hosepipe bans in place to conserve water as levels deplete.
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Energy and net zero secretary lays out stark picture of how climate crisis and nature depletion is affecting UK
Ed Miliband has accused the Conservatives of being “anti-science” by abandoning a political consensus on net zero as he gave MPs a stark outline of how the climate crisis and nature depletion are already affecting the UK.
In the first of what is promised to be an annual “state of the climate” report, the energy and net zero secretary set out the findings of a Met Office-led study that detailed how the UK was already hotter and wetter, and faced a greater number of extreme weather events.
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Class action led by two community leaders argued government had legal duty of care to prevent or deal with damage linked to global heating
Two Torres Strait community leaders are shocked and devastated after the federal court dismissed a landmark case that argued the Australian government breached its duty of care to protect the Torres Strait Islands from climate change.
The lead plaintiffs, Uncle Pabai Pabai and Uncle Paul Kabai from the islands of Boigu and Saibai, sought orders requiring the government to take steps to prevent climate harm to their communities, including by cutting greenhouse gas emissions at the pace climate scientists say is necessary.
Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email
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With a bottlenose population threatened by fishing gear, boats and pollution, campaigners on South Korea’s Jeju island are lobbying to extend legal status to the vulnerable cetaceans
It is a beautiful sunny day on the island of Jeju in South Korea and as the boat cuts through the water all seems calm and clear. Then they start to appear – one telltale fin and then another. Soon, a pod of eight or nine dolphins can be seen moving through the sea, seemingly following the path of the boat.
But as they start to jump and dive, fins cutting through the air, it becomes apparent that one dolphin is missing the appendage, his body breaking the surface but without the telltale profile of his companions. His name, given to him by a local environmental group, is Orae, which literally translates as “long”, but in this context means “wishing him a long life”.
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Grant offering up to 10% off will not cover cheap Chinese models, which are built using coal-fired power, or Teslas
Buyers of the “greenest” new electric cars priced at less than £37,000 will be able to get a discount of up to 10% under a UK government scheme, a move that means Tesla fans will still face having to pay the full price.
The Department for Transport has reintroduced a grant, previously scrapped in June 2022, to encourage more drivers to switch from petrol and diesel to electric vehicles.
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Hogshaw, Buxton: House martins are breeding in just one specific spot here, and it’s the old town tip that tells us why
If you came to this Derbyshire spot in winter, with all its down-at-heel problems of congested traffic, air pollution, dense housing and largely garden-free conditions, the bottom of Fairfield Road would be about the last place in Buxton you’d imagine to find breeding house martins. Yet it is about the only place in town with a good-sized colony of these exquisite if declining summer migrants, so unpicking why they have persisted here and gone almost everywhere else locally is instructive.
One element may be the height of the terrace housing. The buildings are on three floors and the overhanging eaves, where martins locate their mud-cup nests, are beyond the reach of “tidy-minded” souls worried about droppings below. A more certain factor is that the back of Fairfield is only a house martin’s swoop away from what was once the town tip called Hogshaw. Yet in the last half-century it has been redeemed by nature and smothered in sallow and birch woodland. Those two are among our most insect-friendly tree species, and the resulting abundance of invertebrates which not only accounts for the birds’ presence here, but determines almost everything about house martins.
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Obsession or ‘drunken stupidity’? Sentencing of guilty men leaves us no closer to knowing their motives
“It’s one of the most asked questions that I get,” says the detective who helped bring to justice the two men who cut down the Sycamore Gap tree in the middle of a stormy September night two years ago. “As soon as anybody knows I’m involved in the investigation, the first question is: ‘Why?’”
Why would anyone cut down a tree that brought only joy and happiness to people? Did Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers see it as a lark? Or a challenge? Was it a cry for help? A yell of anger?
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Crucial for coastal communities, mangroves are threatened by land clearing, development and rising seas
As the morning light hits Oibola village in Solomon Islands, the receding tide drains water through a maze of tangled mangrove roots.
Dressed in muddy jeans and a worn T-shirt, Ben Waleilia moves carefully through the thick mangrove forest, searching for seedlings. Rows of young mangrove shoots stand high as Waleilia gently drops seedlings into a small plastic bucket.
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Household energy bills in some Republican-leaning states could rise by more than $600 every year, analysis of the so-called ‘big, beautiful bill’ finds
The cost of electricity is poised to surge across the US in the wake of Republican legislation that takes an axe to cheap renewable energy, with people in states who voted for Donald Trump last year to be hardest hit by the increase in bills.
As air conditioners crank up across the US during another sweltering summer amid an unfolding climate crisis, rising energy costs will become even more severe for households due to the reconciliation spending bill passed by Republicans in Congress and signed by Trump, who called it the “big, beautiful bill”, on 4 July.
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