Governments have not committed to measures modelled in the report on Lismore’s 2022 floods, which led to the deaths of 13 people
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Building 10 new dams in New South Wales’s northern rivers could have reduced flood levels by up to two metres during devastating floods in 2022, but not enough to prevent a key levee overspilling, a report has found.
The CSIRO report was released on Tuesday, four years after it was commissioned by the Morrison government following NSW’s one-in-100-years floods.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/30/2026 - 03:18
06/30/2026 - 03:00
As the the shocking heatwave continues, our European environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan answered your questions about which countries have responded best, who is being held to account, and why people are surprised after decades of warnings
sloth_101 asks: Most reports still talk about this issue in terms of “records”? Technically, that might be correct but it feels like it’s missing the urgency of the matter. “Records” are meant to be broken. These records clearly are not. Isn’t there a better way to describe it? For example, how “climate change” is often replaced with “climate emergency” or “climate breakdown”?
Ajit: I had never thought about it like that before but I can see how it can be read that way. It is partly a limitation of the language and partly an issue of accuracy. Ideally, I would spell it out – “Germany has been hit by heat it has never seen before” – but, because we are talking about measurements since records began, rather than over a longer period of history. I prefer to speak of “record-breaking” heat. The urgency can still be conveyed by describing the damage that hot weather does to our bodies and stating the death toll, which comes to tens of thousands of people across Europe in a typical summer. Each year heat kills 10 ten times more people than murderers in Europe.
Ajit: So far there has been fairly little evidence of this happening. Far-right parties talk a lot about migrants and climate, but almost exclusively as separate issues. One recent exception is Switzerland, where a referendum this month on capping the country’s population at 10 million people linked the impact of migration on the Alpine nation’s natural resources, but the link here was more about environmental degradation than climate breakdown.
Some data suggests migrants tend to pollute about as much as the native-born population – flying more but driving less - so there is no obvious avenue by which they would hold foreigners responsible for increased temperatures. What seems more likely is that, as temperatures rise to intolerable levels in North Africa and the Middle East, increased migration to Europe will force far-right parties to confront the paradox that the migration they want to stop will be exacerbated by the fossil fuel pollution they support.
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06/30/2026 - 01:00
Energy system operator says sum needed to deliver clean power targets while meeting rising demand is up by 50%
The cost of rewiring Great Britain’s electricity networks through the 2030s is now 50% higher than before the Labour government came to power, and could reach almost £90bn in the next decade, according to the energy system operator.
Building new high-voltage transmission lines and infrastructure to connect low-carbon energy to the grid in the 2030s was initially forecast by the energy system operator to cost £58bn.
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06/29/2026 - 21:14
A warm start to winter is part of a global trend of extreme and unseasonable temperatures caused by global heating
Many parts of Australia have already broken early winter maximum and minimum temperature records.
In southern Australia, Sydney and Melbourne had their warmest-ever starts to winter. Daily observations show both cities experienced above-average June temperatures almost every day of the month.
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06/29/2026 - 10:49
Red warnings issued in Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Balkans, with authorities urging people to stay indoors
Parts of central, eastern and southern Europe sweltered on Monday as the “heat dome” behind last week’s record-breaking temperatures shifted east, bringing dangerous conditions to a new swathe of the continent.
Budapest is forecast to exceed 40C on Tuesday, according to models from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
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06/29/2026 - 07:21
Teams painstakingly combed endangered Atlantic habitat over several years, helping to grow 8m native trees
A small band of volunteers has helped to grow nearly 8m native trees in Scotland, crucial to efforts to restore lost parts of the Atlantic rainforest, after collecting 11m seeds by hand.
About 100 volunteers, including retired teachers and doctors, office workers and young families, have spent tens of thousands of hours venturing into often remote woods in the western Highlands and islands to search out seed-bearing trees.
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06/29/2026 - 07:00
US commerce department accuses state of ‘environmental terrorism’ and plans to evaluate its coastal agency
The Trump administration plans to evaluate the performance of the California Coastal Commission, in the latest escalation of a dispute between the state’s Democratic leaders and the federal government over energy production.
Per federal law, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) is required to conduct reviews of federally approved coastal management programs, which take into consideration “the extent to which the State of California has implemented and enforced the program approved by the [commerce] Secretary”.
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06/29/2026 - 07:00
Underwater expedition by Florida-based team supports possible therapeutic use of bacterial toxins from sea squirts
Researchers at a Florida university say bacterial toxins produced by tiny marine organisms they have studied in Antarctica could become an effective treatment for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
A team from the University of South Florida (USF), Desert Research Institute (DRI) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) recently returned from a six-week expedition to one of the world’s remotest regions in which they collected samples of ascidians, invertebrates known as sea squirts that thrive in the icy waters.
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06/29/2026 - 05:00
Research suggests 41,800 premature US deaths in 2024 were attributable to road pollution
Roughly five Americans die every hour due to exposure to toxic road vehicle pollution, a new study has found.
It’s the latest warning showing fossil-fueled transit is a major driver of mortality.
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06/29/2026 - 00:45
In today’s newsletter: Last week’s extreme weather should galvanise the political response to global heating. But the sad paradox is that it could bolster support for climate-sceptical parties
Good morning. You could be forgiven for thinking that last week’s heatwave in Europe would be a galvanising moment for action on the climate crisis. At one point, more than 150 million Europeans sweltered in temperatures above 35C (95F) – with several parts of the continent soaring past 40C. A heatwave of this magnitude has never been recorded this early in the year.
When scientists finish their calculations, the death toll will probably number in the thousands. Spain, one of the few countries that produces real-time statistics on excess deaths linked to heat, has recorded more than 100 per day since Wednesday. French authorities said that at least 1,000 additional deaths had been recorded between 24 and 27 June, a figure that is likely to rise. They include four toddlers who died in incidents linked to the heat. A three-year-old boy in a Paris suburb was found dead last week after climbing into a car and becoming trapped.
Iran | The sudden eruption of fresh hostilities in the Gulf – just 10 days after Iran and the US signed a memorandum of understanding to end the conflict – threatens to put the two countries back on the path to war.
Europe heatwave | Germany, Czechia, Poland and Hungary reached record temperatures of more than 40C on Sunday as a heatwave linked to hundreds of deaths in western Europe spread east.
UK politics | Andy Burnham is the most popular man at Westminster right now, and Labour MPs, the unions, Whitehall civil servants, political advisers and thinktanks are all battling for the ear of the next prime minister.
UK news | One pound in every £11 of UK government spending on contractors went to private equity-controlled companies last year, research shows, including key services such as transport, waste management and healthcare.
Royal family | The Duke of Sussex fears his children will not meet King Charles in the coming days after their UK visit was “pulled out from under their feet at the 11th hour”.
Today | Andy Burnham will give his first major speech since winning the Makerfield byelection and becoming Labour leader in waiting, setting out his economic vision and plans for radical devolution.
Tomorrow | The Amos review into NHS maternity services will be published.
Wednesday | The review into the sentences in the Fordingbridge rape case, which shocked the country and prompted a debate about leniency towards young offenders, will be heard in the court of appeal.
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