Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Invertebrate of Year Q&A: discuss our countdown with Patrick Barkham

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 05:00:10 +0000

This week, we launched our third annual vote to honour nature’s unsung heroes. The Guardian’s natural history writer – and woodlouse fanboy – Patrick Barkham will be here from 4pm BST (11am EDT) to discuss this year’s poll and why we must celebrate the spineless

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Murderous heat, an endangered food supply, decimated landscapes: embrace the Mediterranean life | George Monbiot

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 05:00:10 +0000

As climate disaster stares us in the face, the radical right says ‘Embrace the Mediterranean life’. Embrace death, more like it

Can’t you leftists understand? Mass death is good for you. Reject the woke love of life! Welcome civilisational collapse! Watch it all burn, then dance in the ashes! This, roughly speaking, is how the dismissal of climate action is now being justified: the argument has shifted from science denial to outright nihilism.

Calls to ban ‘toxic’ pet flea treatments that harm UK wildlife and environment

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 05:00:09 +0000

Over-the-counter treatments for cats and dogs contain chemicals that are banned in pesticides and pollute waterways

Over-the-counter flea treatment for cats and dogs should be banned as millions of hazardous chemicals are unnecessarily applied to UK pets each year, a parliamentary report has concluded.

Cats and dogs are widely treated with topical, or “spot on”, treatments that include insecticides to prevent fleas. Vets often recommend regular treatments as a preventive measure, even when the animals do not have fleas.

‘I just want to find them’: deadly cloudbursts devastate Kashmir’s mountain communities

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:10 +0000

Increasingly erratic weather patterns due to climate change mean people are losing homes, crops and livestock

As rain lashed the Pir Panjal mountains before dawn on 19 July, Haji Mohammad Latief stepped outside his home in Murrah, a remote mountain village in Indian-administered Kashmir. His daughter had asked him to move the family’s car to a safer place as the rain got heavier.

Europe’s rivers are running dry, and the knock-on effects are disastrous | Yiannis Baboulias

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:09 +0000

Droughts that were once a century now happen every year, and the impact on wildlife, industrial output and culture itself is catastrophic

Penguins and dolphins among nearly 400 Australian species under threat from bird flu as ‘true extent of disaster’ revealed

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 01:36:21 +0000

Assessment of more than 2,000 native species warns nearly one in five at high risk of deadly H5N1, including parrots, fur seals and quolls

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Protesters occupy 200-year-old tree at US-Mexico border to stop its destruction: ‘She’s our Statue of Liberty’

admin — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 23:20:58 +0000

Demonstrators stage ‘tree sit’ in Arizona town to stop felling of ancient cottonwood grove to make way for border wall

Protesters are staging a “tree sit” in a tiny Arizona town to prevent the destruction of a grove of ancient cottonwood trees as federal contractors race to build a row of two 30ft walls along the border with Sonora, Mexico.

Government contracts to require job creation instead of green targets under new rules

admin — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 21:30:00 +0000

Louise Haigh says taxpayer money must benefit local communities amid backlash from environmental groups

Ministers will scrap the requirement for companies to prove their green and progressive values before they are awarded government contracts, and instead ask firms to prove they will help young people back into work.

We launched a war on nature. Now we are in a climate warzone | Rebecca Solnit

admin — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 10:00:47 +0000

Summer is not what it once was. We have been robbed of one of life’s great joys

Far beyond the fires raging across Europe and North America, the smoke, dangerous to breathe, hangs in the air, dimming the view, changing the very color of sunlight into something grimly unsettling.

‘Nobody cares’: the Turkish farmers bearing the burden of UK’s plastic waste problem

admin — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:00:18 +0000

Britain exported 139,000 tonnes of rubbish to Turkey last year, leaving smallholders and poor districts of Adana to cope with the debris, microplastics and toxic smoke

UK plastic ‘waste colonialism’ found to be polluting Turkey’s farming heartland