Climate catastrophe is on our doorstep – yet Labour’s impending approval of further drilling will bring more pain for negligible gains
Pinch yourself, it’s happening again. Here is a Labour government spending a vast amount of political capital to earn tiny material gains while risking huge political losses. It occurred repeatedly under Keir Starmer, and now – with the impending decision to approve further gas and oil drilling in the North Sea – it is happening under Andy Burnham. You rack your brains to explain it, but no rational explanation comes.
Burnham is studiously cryptic about his reasons. His clearest statement to date goes as follows: “There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that.” Does he mean that oil and gas workers are struggling? If so, this decision will be of little use to them. The Jackdaw gasfield, likely to be approved this week, will generate a grand total of 27 direct full-time jobs. The Rosebank oilfield, whose approval is likely to follow soon, will support 450 UK-based jobs during its lifetime. Yet the UK’s net zero economy directly employs 300,000 people, and a further 400,000 jobs are planned. The rest of the green economy employs more than 600,000. A just transition for fossil fuel workers, securing jobs in the green economy, is better for everyone.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/10/2026 - 00:00
09/09/2026 - 22:05
Party will back plan to allow big industry to use a new koala national park in NSW to offset its climate pollution, but three senators will dissent
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A controversial plan to allow big industry to use a new koala national park in New South Wales to offset its climate pollution is expected to go ahead after the Greens reached a deal with Labor, and decided not to vote with the Coalition to block it.
But three Greens – Tasmanians Nick McKim and Vanessa Bleyer, and Western Australia’s Jordon Steele-John – declared they would cross the floor to oppose the deal on Thursday afternoon.
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09/09/2026 - 21:00
Temperatures reached 1.65C above preindustrial levels, months before El Niño system reaches full strength
August was the joint-hottest month ever recorded around the world, with global temperatures reaching 1.65C above preindustrial levels, scientists said on Thursday, amid warnings of further heating on the way.
August 2026 tied with July 2023 for the hottest month ever recorded, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Sea surface temperatures also soared to their highest levels on record for August.
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09/09/2026 - 15:23
Exclusive: State government delayed releasing major report into the health of the koala population for more than 12 months
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The Victorian government sat on a report for more than 12 months that found the state’s koala population was in chronically poor health.
The review of the state’s koala populations, led by state science agency the Arthur Rylah Institute in conjunction with scientists from major universities, was completed for the Victorian government in June 2025.
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09/09/2026 - 09:01
Climate Council forecasts more than 267,000 coastal properties will be damaged by flooding by 2100, costing hundreds of billions of dollars
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When grazier Peter Lake moved to the Clarence Valley in the New South Wales northern rivers region in 2007, he knew was “buying in flood country with … eyes open”.
His cattle farm, about halfway between Yamba and Grafton, borders the Coldstream River and has flooded five times since 2009.
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09/09/2026 - 06:00
In the first project of its kind, scientists are trying to answer if the future of Alaska’s streams and tundra may depend not on survival of the fittest but on how species adapt together
On Alaska’s North Slope, scientists tread carefully across clumps of tussock grasses toward a fast-flowing stream draining the imposing Brooks Range of ice and snow. Near Galbraith Creek, they string out a mist net for white-crowned sparrows. The birds have recently arrived from southerly latitudes, intent on feasting on the insects that will soon descend on the tundra like storm clouds.
The Arctic summer is short-lived, and sparrows have only a few weeks to establish territories, find mates, lay eggs and raise their chicks on a steady diet of bugs. From every ensnared bird, the scientists collect blood, feather and faecal samples to see what they are eating and how that changes over the summer.
Galbraith Creek on Alaska’s North Slope
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09/09/2026 - 01:00
Green leader says ministers must stop ‘hiding the truth’ about threat to UK security from climate and nature crisis
Zack Polanski has challenged Andy Burnham’s government to publish an unredacted version of an explosive report by the UK’s spy chiefs that found the collapse of overseas ecosystems would have catastrophic consequences for the UK’s national security.
The Green party leader in England said the prime minister should come clean about the scale and impact of the climate and nature crisis and called on the government to publish in full the report that warns the UK faces devastating security consequences.
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09/09/2026 - 01:00
Facilities likely to employ 10,400 workers, compared with 40,000 in industry estimates, thinktank says
Datacentres in the UK will create just a quarter of the jobs predicted by the tech sector, while consuming vast amounts of energy, according to new research.
Environmental thinktank Verdant predicts that all the datacentres currently planned are likely to directly employ 10,400 workers – compared with the more than 40,000 cited in projections by the industry lobby group TechUK.
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09/08/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 09 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00243-9
The WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies is the first global treaty to restrict the use of harmful fishing subsidies. The agreement is a critical step towards reigning in the destructive subsidies that have fueled the rapid depletion of global fish stocks. However, these important new rules are being undermined by the significant number of countries—including some of the world’s biggest fishing nations—that have refused to ratify the treaty.
09/08/2026 - 17:09
Officials say sighting a sign species – driven to extinction in state before reintroduction in 2011 – expanding its range
A gray wolf has recently been seen in California’s Mendocino national forest for the first time since the species returned to the state 15 years ago, state wildlife officials confirmed.
Officials in Lake county, which is about two hours north of San Francisco, said last week the California department of fish and wildlife (CDFW) had received reports of sightings in the forest in late August. The agency verified the presence of a wolf in the far north end of the county, county supervisor Brad Rasmussen said in a statement on social media.
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