Europe and Brazil have a rare opportunity, unimpeded by the US, to make a success of Cop30 – and reshape the world order
The climate crisis, Donald Trump told the UN last month, is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”. With these words the US president rejected the international scientific consensus and evidence that we can all check daily with a basic thermometer. He has also announced he is withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement, signed in 2015 by 195 UN countries. The US joins an axis of deniers including Yemen, Iran and Libya, countries that signed the agreement but never ratified it.
Paradoxically, Trump’s reversal provides an opportunity for others to advance the climate agenda: to sketch out the blueprint of a possible new world order without the US, even if Washington was the architect of the old one.
Francesco Grillo is a visiting fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, and director of the thinktank Vision
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/12/2025 - 23:00
10/12/2025 - 23:00
People urged to savour sights, sounds and smells of the season as poll shows a disconnect during darker months
There may be a bite in the wind and the nights are certainly drawing in but a conservation charity and a television wildlife champion have launched a campaign aimed at getting more people connecting with nature in the autumn and winter months.
The National Trust is launching a “Wild Senses” campaign on the back of the new BBC series Hamza’s Hidden Wild Isles in which the wildlife expert and camera operator Hamza Yassin celebrates the UK’s seasons and encourages viewers to notice, appreciate and reconnect to wildlife everywhere.
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10/12/2025 - 18:01
A 2% blend of low-carbon gas injected into gas grid to fuel Brigg power station in North Lincolnshire is a UK first
Energy companies have injected green hydrogen into Britain’s gas grid and used the low-carbon gas to generate electricity, in a landmark development for the UK’s climate ambitions.
For the first time in the UK, a 2% blend of green hydrogen was injected into the gas grid and blended with traditional gas to fuel the Brigg power station in North Lincolnshire which generated electricity for the power system.
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10/12/2025 - 18:00
Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2C ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’, a report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warns
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The earth has reached its first catastrophic tipping point linked to greenhouse gas emissions, with warm water coral reefs now facing a long-term decline and risking the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, according to a new report.
The report from scientists and conservationists warns the world is also “on the brink” of reaching other tipping points, including the dieback of the Amazon, the collapse of major ocean currents and the loss of ice sheets.
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10/12/2025 - 11:30
Rachel Reeves’s drive to speed up development is beginning to treat wildlife and the environment as expendable. Voters want homes built, but not at any cost
It began with gastropods. Last Tuesday, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told a conference of tech executives that she’d intervened to help a developer build about 20,000 homes in north Sussex that had been held up, she said, by “some snails … a protected species or something”. She added that they “are microscopic … you cannot even see” them.
No one could miss the direction the chancellor was headed in. The snail in question, the lesser whirlpool ramshorn, is one of Britain’s rarest freshwater creatures, found in only a handful of locations and highly sensitive to sewage pollution. But Ms Reeves portrayed it as a bureaucratic nuisance. She then bragged that she’d fixed it – after a friendly developer gave her a call. It’s a bad look for a Labour politician, let alone the chancellor, to boast that green rules can be bent for chums.
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10/12/2025 - 09:00
Grattan Institute report argues fall in costs will provide federal government room for more action on climate
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Australian household energy bills will halve by 2050 as solar panels, batteries and electric cars and appliances become the norm, reducing pressure on the federal government over living costs and creating room for more climate action, a thinktank study suggests.
Modelling by the Grattan Institute finds that cutting greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation in line with the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 will cut average household energy costs from about $5,800 today to about $3,000.
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10/12/2025 - 09:00
Exclusive: National Highways Agency stripped of oversight with project handed to DfT amid Labour government drive for growth
Ministers have stripped the government’s road-building agency of responsibility for a £10bn tunnel under the River Thames amid a drive by Keir Starmer’s cabinet to take tight control over important infrastructure projects for fear of cost overruns and delays.
Oversight of the Lower Thames Crossing – the UK’s largest planned infrastructure project – has been taken away from National Highways and handed to the Department for Transport (DfT).
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10/12/2025 - 09:00
Alcohol, suicide and injuries driving rises among teenagers and young adults despite overall rates falling, authors say
The world faces “an emerging crisis” of higher death rates among teenagers and young adults, according to a major study on the causes of death and disability worldwide.
The reasons vary from drug and alcohol use, and suicide in North America, to infectious diseases and injuries in sub-Saharan Africa, the researchers said, but warned that their data should serve as “a wake-up call”.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email [email protected] or [email protected]. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
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10/11/2025 - 14:00
In this year's Australian bird of the year poll, Guardian Australia's very own Matilda Boseley has made no secret about her favourite. Dressed as an Australian pelican, Matilda navigates the pigeons of Melbourne to find people to tell her what their favourite native birds are – and give us their best birdcall attempts
2025 Australian bird of the year voting is open! Here's how to vote
Australian bird of the year 2025: vote now for your favourite
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World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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