Last year’s floods have been followed by heatwaves. Ministers must throw their weight behind resilient, adaptable agriculture
British farmers are, of course, not the only people who are suffering from the effects of this summer’s heatwaves. Across Europe and the Middle East, record-breaking temperatures are threatening lives as well as livelihoods. France has experienced its largest wildfire since 1949, while across Europe an estimated 500,000 hectares of land have burned.
But farmers are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather, which has a direct impact on crop yields. So reports of a second consecutive year in which food growers in parts of the UK are seeing dramatic falls in production should concern the British public. Access to food is frequently taken for granted in the world’s wealthiest nations. But increased food insecurity is among the dangerous effects of the climate crisis, as well as being worsened by Trump’s tariffs, and geopolitical instability including the war in Ukraine.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/18/2025 - 12:53
08/18/2025 - 12:10
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08/18/2025 - 10:54
Assessment suggests cost of project to store 700,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste could reach £54bn
The UK’s proposal for a new underground nuclear waste dump has been described as “unachievable” in a Treasury assessment of the project.
Ministers have put new nuclear power at the centre of their green energy revolution. But the problem of what to do with 700,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste – roughly the volume of 6,000 doubledecker buses – from the country’s past nuclear programme, as well as future waste from nuclear expansion, has yet to be solved.
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08/18/2025 - 10:03
In ‘exclusive’ with the Australian, Mike Wirth, CEO of company responsible for more greenhouse gases than any other independently owned entity, wants Australia to be more like the US and Middle East
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The boss of Chevron, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies that reported earnings of $9bn in the last six months, has had a few gripes about Australia that he wanted to get off his chest.
In an “exclusive” interview with The Australian this weekend, the company’s chief executive Mike Wirth argued he wanted Australia to be more like the US and the Middle East – and, if it was, then it would be in a better position to compete for fossil fuel investment dollars.
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08/18/2025 - 09:26
People returned to Palacios de Jamuz, a village in north-west Spain, after homes, crops and trees were badly burnt in recent blazes. Relentless heat and raging wildfires continue to ravage southern Europe, with a quarter of weather stations in Spain recording temperatures of 40C (104F) or above over the weekend
Wildfires rage in Spain and Portugal amid searing heat
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08/18/2025 - 07:12
Fishing club chaired by singer threatens court action over abstraction it says is putting rare trout population at risk
The singer and environmentalist Feargal Sharkey is threatening to take the Environment Agency to court for draining a river that hosts the oldest fishing club in England and putting a rare population of brown trout at risk.
The former Undertones frontman chairs the Amwell Magna Fishery, which has used the secluded stretch of the River Lea in Hertfordshire since 1841.
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08/18/2025 - 07:00
Exclusive: Public comments show that a crackdown on signs ‘disparaging’ Americans is not popular
As part of his administration’s war on “woke”, Donald Trump has asked the American public to report anything “negative” about Americans in US national parks. But the public has largely refused to support a world view without inconvenient historical facts, comments submitted from national parks and seen by the Guardian show.
Notices have been erected at every National Park Service (NPS) site, which spans 433 national parks, monuments and battlefields, following an order from May entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, issued by Trump’s department of the interior. The president had demanded a crackdown on any material that “inappropriately disparages Americans”.
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08/18/2025 - 06:27
Extreme temperatures exacerbated by carbon pollution fuel fires in southern Europe as green policies are rolled back
Europe live – latest updates
Europe scorched by wildfires – pictures from space
Relentless heat and raging wildfires continue to ravage southern Europe, with one-quarter of weather stations in Spain recording 40C temperatures, as the prime minister urged people to “leave the climate emergency outside of partisan struggles”.
The Spanish weather agency Aemet recorded a high of 45.8C in Cádiz on Sunday, while one in eight weather stations nationwide hit peaks of at least 42C (108F) . The agency warned of “very high or extreme fire danger” in most of the country in a post on social media on Monday.
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08/18/2025 - 05:00
We can save water and help the environment just by clearing out our inboxes – so what am I doing with all these old takeaway receipts?
Our worst water-wasting habit might not even feel slightly damp: we’re now being told to save water by clearing out our inboxes. “Deleting emails, unbelievably, makes a difference to the amount of water the country uses,” Helen Wakeham, the Environment Agency director of water, told the World at One last week. Hoarding decades’ worth of “Your Amazon order is out for delivery” notifications in datacentres consumes not just energy but water for cooling, and tech companies are building those datacentres in some of the most water-scarce places in the world.
Wakeham called an email cull “something really tangible people might not think of that can make a difference”, and I do want to make a difference. I don’t use water-gobbling ChatGPT, I comply with the hosepipe ban (albeit swearing at Yorkshire Water as I slop washing-up water into my shoes transporting it to my dying plants) and my showers are so short they’re basically pointless. So I checked my inbox: 39,674 emails dating back to 2009. Ugh.
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08/18/2025 - 04:00
The country’s coastal communities have long lived with flooding but as climate change accelerates rising sea levels and reclamation projects reshape Manila Bay, residents now see their homes under water more often• Photographs by Ezra Acayan for Getty Images
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