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Critics say chancellor’s ‘growth at all costs’ plans are not compatible with UK’s climate targets
Rachel Reeves has been accused by environmental experts of putting the climate at risk with high carbon projects including the expansion of Heathrow airport.
The chancellor made airports the central focus of her plan for growth, despite having previously promised to be the first green chancellor and having extolled the benefits of green growth.
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Officials are making clean-energy moves in California, New York and beyond, and Republican states will be integral too
As the Trump administration rolls back decades-old environmental protections and pulls Biden-era incentives for renewable energy, state-level advocates and officials are preparing to fill the void in climate action.
Some state leaders are preparing to legally challenge the president’s environmental rollbacks, while others are testifying against them in Congress. Meanwhile, advocates are pushing for states to meet their ambitious climate goals using methods and technologies that don’t require federal support.
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Road outside high court blocked in protest at ‘draconian’ sentences given to 16 Just Stop Oil ‘political prisoners’
Hundreds of protesters have blocked the road outside the high court in London, where the appeals of 16 jailed climate activists are being heard, in condemnation of “the corruption of democracy and the rule of law”.
As England’s most senior judge heard arguments in the appeal of the sentences of the Just Stop Oil activists, who are serving a combined 41 years in jail, their supporters sat on the road in silence holding placards proclaiming them “political prisoners”.
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While the US president seems hellbent on securing Greenland, local experts advise that achieving control of its potentially lucrative shipping route will be no mean feat
If shipping boss Niels Clemensen were to offer any advice to Donald Trump or anyone else trying to get a foothold in Greenland, it would be this: “Come up here and see what you are actually dealing with.”
Sitting on the top floor of his beamed office in Nuuk harbour, where snow is being flung around by strong winds in the mid-morning darkness outside and shards of ice pass by in the fast-flowing water, the chief executive of Greenland’s only shipping company, Royal Arctic Line, says: “What you normally see as easy [setting up operations] in the US or Europe is not the same up here.” As well as the cold, ice and extremely rough seas, the world’s biggest island does not have a big road network or trains, meaning everything has to be transported either by sea or air. “I’m not saying that it’s not possible. But it’s going to cost a lot of money.”
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Court says UK government green light for Rosebank and Jackdaw permits does not take into account CO2 emissions
The decision to greenlight a giant new oilfield off Shetland has been ruled unlawful by the courts, in a major win for climate action that scientists say is urgently needed.
The proposed Rosebank development – the UK’s biggest untapped oilfield – had been given the go-ahead in 2023 under the previous government.
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Populations have been falling for decades, even in tracts of forest undamaged by humans. Experts have spent two decades trying to understand what is going on
Something was happening to the birds at Tiputini. The biodiversity research centre, buried deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, has always been special. It is astonishingly remote: a tiny scattering of research cabins in 1.7m hectares (4.2m acres) of virgin forest. For scientists, it comes about as close as you can to observing rainforest wildlife in a world untouched by human industry.
Almost every year since his arrival in 2000, ecologist John G Blake had been there to count the birds. Rising before the sun, he would record the density and variety of the dawn chorus. Slowly walking the perimeter of the plots, he noted every species he saw. And for one day every year, he and other researchers would cast huge “mist” nets that caught flying birds in their weave, where they would be counted, untangled and freed.
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Strategies vary from hibernating as adult butterflies to forming a chrysalis – or by not being in the country at all
Surviving winter is the ultimate challenge for the 60 butterfly species that make their living in Britain.
Different species use different tactics. The riskiest, and therefore chosen by the fewest, is to hibernate as adult butterflies. Only five species choose this path and they favour cryptic undersides – so they disappear from view when their wings are closed.
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For nearly two decades, ‘General’ Narsamma and her team at Sangham Radio have honed their craft, learning every aspect of broadcasting, including fixing the radio mast and interview techniques
- Words and photographs by Uday Narayanan
As twilight settles over Sangareddy district in the southern Indian state of Telangana, the airwaves crackle to life. It is the voice of Masanagari Narsamma, a 45-year-old Dalit woman, who has spent the last two decades transforming the lives of women, farmers and children in nearby villages.
“This is our weapon,” she says, gripping the microphone at the radio station. “With this, we speak our truth.”
Masanagari Narsamma and Algole Narsamma in front of Sangham Radio. The duo, with no formal training in media or broadcasting, have built the station into a cornerstone of their community
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The internet’s go-to gathering place for those who rate and revere sticks is big and growing fast. The appeal is simple...
The first stick was small, and shaped like a revolver.
It was late summer 2023 and two friends, Boone Hogg and Logan Jugler, both 31, were on a late summer hike heading towards Delicate Arch, a 16m red rock formation in Utah’s Arches national park, when Jugler spotted it on the ground. He picked it up and began rating its attributes – colour, shape, flexibility – out of 10, while Hogg filmed. Then they uploaded it to Instagram.
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As fires tear through California and Trump sets back efforts to curb the rise of global temperatures, what can individuals do to make a difference?
2024 was the hottest year on record. Average global temperatures rose to 1.6C above preindustrial levels, according to data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) – a rise that led to extreme weather events and “misery to millions of people”, as one of the group’s experts told the Guardian.
Less than a month into the new year, fires have torn through huge swaths of Los Angeles, upending the lives of thousands. Donald Trump, a climate denier, is pulling the country out of international climate agreements and setting back efforts to curb the rise of average global temperatures.
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