Of 200 fires in the past 44 years, half of the fires that cost US$1bn or more were in the last decade
Wildfires tore through central Chile last year, killing 133 people. In California, 18,000 buildings were destroyed in 2018 causing US$16bn (A$24bn, £12bn) in damage. Portugal, Greece, Algeria and Australia have all felt the grief and the economic pain in recent years.
As the headlines, the death tolls and the billion dollar losses from wildfires have stacked up around the world, so too have the rising temperatures – fuelled by the climate crisis – that create tinderbox conditions.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/02/2025 - 13:00
10/02/2025 - 12:32
Kemi Badenoch’s plan to scrap the Climate Change Act is reckless. Ed Miliband offers a bolder, fairer vision. The future must be built on renewables
Let’s scrap Britain’s successful climate law so we can burn more gas, lose investment and have higher bills. Crazy as it might seem, that is the message of Kemi Badenoch’s new energy strategy. The Conservative leader proposes to repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act in favour of a plan to “maximise oil and gas extraction”, and remove all legally binding carbon targets. It’s pitched as pragmatism. But it’s a lurch into ideological self-harm.
Britain’s energy problem isn’t its climate legislation, which is admired globally, backed by industry and supported by the public. It’s that this country remains too dependent on volatile fossil fuels. Emissions targets are not the reason for high bills. It is gas prices, which skyrocketed after Russia invaded Ukraine. They set UK electricity prices. In Europe, they don’t – that’s why bills are lower there. Rather, Mrs Badenoch is choosing to follow Donald Trump in rolling back climate goals and seeing electricity prices in the US rise, not fall.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
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10/02/2025 - 10:00
Photographer Jem Cresswell spent five years documenting the southern hemisphere’s humpback whales in the waters surrounding the Tonga Trench for his new book Giants, out now
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10/02/2025 - 10:00
Swinging wildly from confident to confused, and permanently dishevelled, this most relatable of cuckoos blunders through life as best it can
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A sudden thud made me look up from my work. A stack of books sprawled across the floor. There were folders too, the contents fanned out like a deck of cards. In the middle, unperturbed by the mess it was creating, a pheasant coucal sauntered down the hallway. The bird was a feathered wrecking ball.
In those days, I lived in a traditional Queenslander. The hall was once a veranda running the full length of the house. It had been enclosed with louvres to make a pleasant, airy office. I’d leave the door open to catch the breeze. To wildlife, an open door is an invitation. I’d been visited by a grey fantail, an entire family of pied butcherbirds and a brush-turkey, who had entered with uncharacteristic stealth and made off with a shoe. This was the first pheasant coucal.
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10/02/2025 - 09:45
Latest disposal by ‘punk’ beer company follows £37m loss and closure of 10 pubs
BrewDog has sold a Highlands rewilding estate it bought with great fanfare in 2020 after posting losses last year of £37m on its beer businesses.
The company paid £8.8m for Kinrara near Aviemore and pledged it would plant millions of trees on 50 sq km of land, initially telling customers the project would be partly funded by sales of its Lost Forest beer.
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10/02/2025 - 08:45
The battle inside No 10 about whether the PM should attend an absolutely crucial climate summit in Brazil is ludicrous. He must assert himself – and go
No sooner has Keir Starmer reshuffled his cabinet, pronounced on Reform’s racist policies and made his party conference speech, than another key decision comes hurtling towards him. But this one concerns the future of the world. The issue is whether the prime minister attends the UN climate summit in Brazil next month.
You may think this would not require too much thought. Two years ago, Starmer attacked Rishi Sunak for not going to a much less significant climate meeting and said that, were he prime minister, he would definitely attend.
Michael Jacobs is professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield and a visiting senior fellow at the thinktank ODI Global
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10/02/2025 - 08:11
Theresa May, Alok Sharma, business and church leaders say plan would harm UK and not even Margaret Thatcher would have countenanced it
The former prime minister Theresa May has condemned a promise made by Kemi Badenoch to repeal the Climate Change Act if the Tories win the next general election, calling the plans a “catastrophic mistake”.
She joined other leading Tories, business groups, scientists and the Church of England in attacking the Conservative leader’s announcement, which would remove the requirement for governments to set “carbon budgets” laying out how far greenhouse gas emissions will be cut every five years, up to 2050.
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10/02/2025 - 06:15
Barack Obama, Prince William and Tanzanian president among many to mark death of primatologist at age of 91
World leaders, friends and former colleagues have been paying tribute to the primatologist Jane Goodall, who died in California on Wednesday, aged 91.
Goodall devoted her life to studying chimpanzees and other great apes, and became a global champion for primates and for conservation, helping to challenge the idea that the primates were vegetarian and that only humans could use tools. She died in her sleep from natural causes while on a speaking tour in Los Angeles, according to her institute, leading to an outpouring of dedications from around the world.
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10/02/2025 - 05:00
Experts are finding new and more humane ways to protect the last 74 southern resident killer whales
Nestled between the US state of Washington and Vancouver Island, the San Juan Islands are a vibrant haven for North American wildlife. Here, all of the world’s remaining 74 southern resident sub-species of orcas find sanctuary, surfacing daily from the depths of the Salish Sea.
Out at sea watching the whales is Dr Deborah Giles, an orca scientist, with her colleague, Eba. Eba is a brown and white rescue dog with a remarkable nose. Found as a cold, wet, five-month-old puppy on the streets of Sacramento, she has been detecting whale scat – or faeces – since the age of four.
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10/02/2025 - 04:07
Tory leader also claims the party was close to bankruptcy when she took over last year
Kemi Badenoch vows to repeal Climate Change Act
Voters trust the Green party most … on green issues, is the rather unsurprising finding of a poll by YouGov looking at how voters view the party, which starts its autumn conference tomorrow. The Greens are least trusted on the economy and on defence.
But there is something remarkable about this. In his write-up for YouGov, Dylan Difford says:
Unsurprisingly, Britons have a particular degree of confidence in the Greens when it comes to the environment. What’s notable, though, is that a majority of Britons (54%) say they have at least a fair amount of trust in the party on the issue. Out of the 18 areas polled, which have been asked about all five major parties, this is the only issue for any of the parties for where most people express confidence in a given party.
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