Breaking Waves: Ocean News

The Guardian view on M John Harrison’s Booker win: a new frontier for science fiction | Editorial

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 18:00:56 +0000

The End of Everything is a novel for our age of permacrisis. Genre boundaries belong to the past

Fight the climate crisis or go for growth? There is a way Burnham can do both | Jonathan Freedland

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 17:10:23 +0000

The environmental and economic dilemmas he faces are formidable but, with a bold plan, he could set an example for leaders around the world

Rip out ugly clutter to help revive UK high streets, says thinktank

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 17:05:23 +0000

Exclusive: Report says restricting cars and freeing up pavement space could be a cheap way to entice shoppers

The long decline of the high street is a problem that has gripped British governments for years. But what if there was a solution no one had considered before – doing it all on the cheap?

Spending less money is, admittedly, just one element of a report led by the urban thinktank Create Streets. But it does argue that rather than multimillion-pound revamps, a better answer could be smaller changes aimed at making town and city centres more appealing.

‘You cannot build peace on a burning planet,’ UN chief tells Cop31 in farewell speech

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 17:00:14 +0000

António Guterres says climate action central to every aspect of UN’s work, as leaders depart Cop31 and talks go on

Tackling the climate crisis is central to all of human life and must be at the forefront of global governance, the outgoing UN secretary general has said in an emotional farewell address at the Cop31 climate summit.

California governor Gavin Newsom endorses global fossil fuel phaseout

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 16:31:28 +0000

Newsom is the most prominent US politician at Cop31, a process the Trump administration continues to boycott

The leader of the world’s fourth biggest economy, California governor Gavin Newsom, has explicitly endorsed a global phase out of the fossil fuels that drive climate breakdown.

Right to make green challenges to planning decisions under threat, say UK lawyers

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 15:27:43 +0000

Exclusive: Government in ‘private meetings’ about removing cost cap protections under Aarhus convention

The government is considering stripping back legal protections that limit the costs community groups face when challenging planning decisions that threaten nature.

The Aarhus convention, an environmental treaty that was signed into law by the UK in 2005, guarantees the legal right to participate in democratic processes on environmental matters – such as sewage pollution, new roads or datacentre developments.

‘Incredibly unusual’ bird migrating from Siberia found in Cumbria – killed by cat

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 14:00:20 +0000

Siberian rubythroat was thousands of miles off course from its route to winter in south or south-east Asia

A bird that flies south from its breeding grounds in Siberia to winter in south and south-east Asia has been found thousands of miles off course in Cumbria. Regrettably, it was found by a cat.

Chris Hind, Cumbria’s county recorder for birds, said it was “extraordinary” that a Siberian rubythroat was found on his patch, albeit dead. There have been only 17 recorded instances of the bird in the UK, 15 of those in the northern Scottish isles.

UK’s biggest insurer hit by rise in subsidence claims after record hot summer

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 13:37:31 +0000

Increase reported by Aviva after Hastings Direct said claims were up 140% in August and Axa said it had been a ‘surge year’

The UK’s largest insurer has been hit by a rise in subsidence claims after an extremely hot summer left households across the country grappling with the fallout from the growing climate crisis.

Aviva said on Friday it had experienced the jump amid an industry-wide surge in households filing subsidence claims with their insurers to cover repairs, which typically are needed to address cracks, sloping floors, and off-kilter doors and windows.

New York is running out of room for its waste even with Statue of Liberty-sized landfill

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 12:30:18 +0000

One company is proposing elongating the life of the dump, pungent smell and all, several more decades

As a visual representation of how New York is running out of places to put its waste, the largest active landfill in the state is a striking one. The hulking Seneca Meadows landfill is already the height of the Statue of Liberty and its operators are seeking to raise it even further, to the consternation of nearby residents.