This summer’s extreme weather and wars in Iran and Ukraine have made our need for food stockpiles more pressing than ever
When a business makes long-term plans, they call it prudence. When a government makes long-term plans, they call it communism. Any sustained state intervention attracts the prefix “Soviet-style”, and triggers vicious attacks across the billionaire media. So governments have developed a bias against long-term thinking. This may explain why we no longer maintain strategic food reserves.
In Britain, where soils have parched, market analysts warn that we’re facing the most severe food security crisis in decades. In normal years, crop failures at home don’t threaten our security, thanks to global trade. This is one of the reasons why hunger and famines are rarer and less deadly than they used to be. But this is not a normal year, because the problem is now global.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/13/2026 - 02:00
08/13/2026 - 00:08
Days of rain has caused widespread flooding across the Philippines capital, Manila, and filled the city’s waterways with debris. A massive cleanup operation involving teams of workers and heavy machinery is under way
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08/13/2026 - 00:00
Rio Tinto makes power supply deal with federal and NSW government to cut emissions and decarbonise, preventing potential closure
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Resources giant Rio Tinto says Australia’s largest aluminium smelter will run entirely on renewable energy by 2033 after it struck a $2.5bn subsidy deal with the federal and New South Wales governments to prevent a potential closure.
The deal – announced by Anthony Albanese and the NSW premier, Chris Minns, at the Tomago smelter near Newcastle on Thursday – is for a 10-year below-market power supply guarantee that begins after the facility’s existing coal-focused electricity contract with AGL ends in December 2028.
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08/12/2026 - 23:00
As a controversial Spanish plan for sustainable meat on an industrial scale is dropped, it has revived the ethical debate over farming these intelligent wild animals
In 2022 Nueva Pescanova, Spain’s largest fisheries business, announced it was investing €65m (£56m) in the world’s first industrial octopus farm and processing plant near the Canary Islands’ port of Las Palmas.
Despite the creatures being notoriously difficult to farm, the company predicted that by 2025 it would be producing 3,000 tonnes of octopus a year on Gran Canaria.
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08/12/2026 - 23:00
Rise in new mine proposals, mainly in states of Odisha and Jharkhand, comes despite plateau in global demand
Enough new coalmining projects were proposed last year to increase global supplies by 2.5bn tonnes a year, an increase of 11% from the year before, even as demand for coal plateaus, according to a new report.
Global Energy Monitor, an NGO, found that India ignited a rise in new coalmine proposals in 2025 despite a global slowdown in the number of mine openings because of falling demand for the fossil fuel.
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08/12/2026 - 18:01
RCN calls for more air conditioners as Burnham faces pressure to recognise urgency of adaptation to climate crisis
Nurses are collapsing during shifts amid “inhumane and impossible” conditions caused by extreme heat, their union has warned, as Andy Burnham promised to grapple with “the bigger questions” of climate adaptation.
Amid growing pressure from Labour backbenches to fully acknowledge the urgency of adaptation measures as the climate crisis bites, Burnham said he was for now focusing on the immediate crises caused by an ongoing summer of extreme heat.
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08/12/2026 - 15:00
The writer – who was also shortlisted in 2023 – has won the prize for her book When There Are Wolves Again, a speculative work of eco-fiction set in near-future Britain
A novel about rewilding and climate activism in Britain has been named this year’s winner of the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction.
When There Are Wolves Again by EJ Swift is an “ambitious study in the power of long-term hope in the face of climate breakdown”, said the award’s director, Tom Hunter.
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08/12/2026 - 13:17
Move by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is latest government rollback of climate science activity
The Trump administration has pulled its support for an annual report on the environmental changes across the Arctic, a region that is already heating up four times faster than the global average due to the climate crisis.
On Tuesday, Kim Doster, the communications director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), said the federal agency was withdrawing its support for the Arctic Report Card, which has provided environmental updates on the region to scientists and the public since 2006.
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08/12/2026 - 13:00
US envoy had claimed Americans could be extracting crude by as early as next year
Greenland authorities have forced a US oil company connected to Donald Trump to postpone drilling wells in the Arctic territory, defying claims by the US president’s envoy that Americans could be extracting crude by next year.
Amid Trump’s imperialist threats, tensions have been rising on Greenland’s eastern coast after the oil company brought drilling equipment ashore in July without permission, drawing a “strong warning” from the government.
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08/12/2026 - 10:00
Proposal to cut building costs by scrapping the construction code would increase bills for the poorest households, critics say
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A Coalition plan to abolish compulsory energy standards for new homes that help reduce people’s exposure to heat and cold has been criticised by advocates as a “cost-of-living timebomb” that would deepen inequality.
The opposition’s housing and environment spokesperson, Andrew Bragg, said a Coalition government would cut the National Construction Code from more than 2,000 pages to 80, and strip away all requirements for new homes beyond demanding they were “basic and safe”. Longstanding compulsory energy and accessibility measures would become “optional extras”.
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