Anthony Albanese joins about 4,000 people in Fiji for preparatory meeting for year-ending Cop31 UN climate summit
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The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has declared it is “important that Pacific voices are heard” after landing in Fiji on Monday to attend his first UN climate summit since becoming prime minister more than four years ago.
Albanese joined about 4,000 people in Nadi for a preparatory meeting for the year-ending Cop31 UN climate summit in Turkey while facing criticism from his political opponents at home. Pre-Cop meetings are usually small and bureaucratic affairs, but this meeting has a double purpose: it is being held in the Pacific after Australia and regional leaders argued it would help bring global attention to the plight of countries most at risk from the climate crisis.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/05/2026 - 04:52
10/05/2026 - 03:20
Temperatures in US state forecast to hit high 30s celsius this week, while regions in Indonesia grapple with wildfires
The National Weather Service in the US has issued extreme heat warnings for parts of southern California, including Los Angeles, until Thursday, as temperatures are expected to hit the high 30s celsius. Burbank, a suburb north of Los Angeles, recorded 39C on Saturday, a few degrees shy of the October record for the region set in 1987. A persistent area of high pressure will remain in place this week, leading to further hazardous hot weather and increased fire risk.
Parts of Indonesia are in the midst of an extreme wildfire season, which has peaked over the past month. Western Kalimantan (Borneo) and southern Sumatra have been particularly badly affected. The lack of rainfall has dried the usually water-logged tropical soils, meaning that fires have been able to spread quickly, above and below the surface. Indonesia’s soils are also extremely rich in peat, meaning that the smoke produced from the fires contain higher levels of toxic gases such as sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide. Cities in surrounding areas and as far as Malaysia and Singapore have experienced reduced air quality in recent weeks as a result. Drought and wildfires are more common in this part of the world during El Niño events owing to suppressed thunderstorm activity.
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10/05/2026 - 02:34
Andrew Griffith makes speech today as Reform UK accuses party of copying policies they ‘announced weeks and months ago’
Tories to pledge to scrap Environment Agency and Natural England
Yesterday, as a gimmick, the Tories were handing out “Bottler Burnham” bottles of water (“0% strength”) to make a point about Burnham supposedly cancelling plans for an early election under pressure from the Tories. It is a version of a stunt they pulled in 2008 when they gave journalists bottles of a “Bottler Brown” beer. (Gordon Brown did pull plans for an early election at the last minute; this time the jibe is unfair, because there were no Burnham plans for an early election.)
The new bottles feature the image of Burnham produced by the Manchester artist Stan Chow.
The SNP’s effective ban on new nuclear energy in Scotland flies in the face of common-sense.
No part of Great Britain should be missing out on plans for new nuclear renewal.
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10/05/2026 - 01:20
Alpine areas also experience record-breaking heat with snow depth recorded at zero in Kosciuszko national park
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Australia had its second hottest September on record last month as global heating and a strengthening El Niño combined to break a string of heat records around the country.
Bureau of Meteorology data showed the minimum night-time temperatures across the continent were also the hottest for any September, on a record that goes back to 1910. Averaged temperatures ranked in the top five warmest Septembers for every state, and the sixth hottest for the Northern Territory.
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10/05/2026 - 00:02
Juvenile humpback was spotted near Bundjalung national park in what experts say is a rare but not unprecedented event
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While the case of a whale found 11km upstream in a New South Wales river this weekend was unusual, it was not unprecedented, experts say.
The juvenile humpback, which swam into the Clarence River on the state’s mid-north coast and later died, was towed out to sea on Sunday, according to NSW authorities.
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10/04/2026 - 23:00
As trawlers compete with Greenland sharks for halibut and cod, conservationists and fishers clash over what to do about misunderstood species
‘When I accidentally catch a shark, I bring it to my dogs,” Henrik Jensen, a 27-year-old from Greenland’s west coast, says casually. “I don’t let it back down because [the sharks] bully me and cut my lines.”
Jensen has fished for halibut in Ilulissat, Greenland’s third largest town, for a decade. He works an hour north of the town’s main iceberg-laden fishery, which sustains the livelihood of nearly 400 fishers. There, the halibut are bigger and more plentiful, but so are the Greenland sharks.
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10/04/2026 - 16:00
Shadow chancellor will also promise to scrap affordable homes regulations as part of strategy to refocus on growth
The Conservatives will announce a bonfire of regulations including abolishing affordable homes and community funding rules as well as scrapping Natural England and the Environment Agency.
The shadow chancellor, Andrew Griffith, will say the party intends to “streamline regulations” that protect nature and oblige developers to include affordable homes and community services such as GP surgeries, to speed up infrastructure and housebuilding.
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10/04/2026 - 09:00
Global campaign group 350.org urges Cop31 hosts to announce a coal phase-out date and national roadmaps to get off fossil fuels
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The hosts of the next major United Nations climate conference, Turkey and Australia, are facing criticism for being partners in a coal supply chain while remaining near silent on the need for a global deal to rapidly get off fossil fuels.
With the Cop31 summit in the Turkish Mediterranean city of Antalya just a month away, the two countries running the fortnight-long talks have been accused by activists of a “vacuum of action” on plans for a transition away from coal, gas and oil – a key goal of many nations at the talks.
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10/04/2026 - 07:30
A statewide initiative pairs climate-focused coursework with community service – and is spreading to other states
As a student at a high school not far from Denver’s main airport, Anthony Muñoz wondered whether the jet fuel from airplanes flying above his campus was harming living things.
An avid gardener, Muñoz partnered with a local university to create a garden on the campus of his charter school, Vista Academy, filling it with native plants that could detect ground-level ozone pollution. He also worked with climate scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federal office in nearby Boulder, who directed Muñoz on what data to collect, what the condition of leaves reveals about air quality and why milkweed matters for monarch butterfly migration.
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10/04/2026 - 06:50
A 30-year forestry experiment in Australia found that heavily thinned mountain ash forests grew unusually large trees while recovering enough carbon to match or exceed untouched areas. The results suggest carefully managed thinning could support timber production, wildlife habitat, and carbon storage at the same time.
