A new prize recognises the power of storytelling to address the biggest issue of our time
No novelist should ignore the climate emergency, Paul Murray, author of the bestselling novel The Bee Sting, told the Observer last year: “It is the unavoidable background for being alive in the 21st century.” In recognition of the vital role of literature in responding to the Anthropocene moment, this week the inaugural shortlist was announced for the Climate Fiction prize.
The five novels include Orbital by Samantha Harvey, set during one day on the International Space Station and the winner of last year’s Booker prize; time-travelling romcom The Ministry of Time from debut novelist Kaliane Bradley; eco-thriller Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen; And So I Roar, about a young girl in Nigeria, by Abi Daré; and a story of migrants in an abandoned city in Téa Obreht’s The Morningside. All the shortlisted authors are women.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
03/21/2025 - 12:50
03/21/2025 - 12:13
Researchers spot orange Maori octopus clinging to back of large shark off coast of New Zealand in December 2023
Footage of an octopus riding a shark has stunned scientists – and delighted marine animal enthusiasts.
Researchers spotted the orange Maori octopus clinging to the back of a large shortfin mako shark in the Hauraki Gulf off the northern coast of New Zealand in December 2023. The University of Auckland research team was searching the ocean for feeding frenzies at the time.
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03/21/2025 - 09:00
PM’s pledge to protect Tasmanian industry will weaken laws already failing to protect natural sites and at-risk species, environmentalists say
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Former Greens leader Bob Brown has urged the minor party not to preference Labor ahead of the Liberal party in Tasmanian seats at the upcoming election if the Albanese government legislates to effectively exempt salmon farming from national environment laws.
Conservationists have sharply criticised Anthony Albanese’s pledge that he will rush through legislation next week to protect the salmon industry in Macquarie Harbour, on the state’s west coast, from the potential results of a long-running legal review.
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03/21/2025 - 07:00
An investigation found thousands of white bags near Monterrey, but aerial footage shows a bigger problem
Revealed: US hazardous waste is sent to Mexico – where a ‘toxic cocktail’ of pollution emerges
Call it the mystery of the white bags. After they were found to be sprawling across acres of land near the Mexican city of Monterrey, authorities ordered their “urgent” removal. Now visual evidence suggests the problem is more extensive than previously known.
An investigation by the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab first identified the bags in January, piling up around a factory that recycles toxic waste imported from the US. Based on this finding, Mexican authorities demanded a cleanup of what they said was 30,000 tons of stored material with “hazardous characteristics”.
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03/21/2025 - 06:11
Broadcaster and nature campaigner claims Labour’s attack on wildlife in push for economic growth is ‘PR disaster’
Bats are being “scapegoated” by Rachel Reeves, Chris Packham has said, after the chancellor suggested the winged creatures were getting in the way of economic growth.
Reeves recently said she wanted businesses to “focus on getting things built, and stop worrying about the bats and the newts”, and this week the press release announcing her shake-up of all the UK’s regulators mentioned bats six times. A very niche directive to Natural England, the nature watchdog, to take advice from the Bat Conservation Trust out of a planning document, became the linchpin of Reeves’s deregulation plan.
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03/21/2025 - 06:03
Campaigners welcome long-delayed proposals to reduce pesticide-related harms to pollinators
The use of pesticides on UK farms is to be reduced by 10% by 2030 under government plans to protect bees and other pollinators.
Campaigners welcomed the news, but said they were disappointed that the target applied only to arable farms and not to urban areas and parks.
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03/21/2025 - 05:00
As Trump pushes ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda, Greenpeace verdict offers startling outlook for environmental activism
A pipeline company’s victory in court over Greenpeace, and the huge damages it now faces, will encourage other oil and gas companies to legally pursue environmental protesters at a time when Donald Trump’s energy agenda is in ascendancy, experts have warned.
On Wednesday a North Dakota jury ruled that three Greenpeace entities collectively must pay Energy Transfer, which was co-founded by a prominent Trump donor, more than $660m, deciding that the organizations were liable for defamation and other claims after a five-week trial in Mandan, near where the Dakota Access pipeline protests occurred in 2016 and 2017.
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03/21/2025 - 04:00
The pumping of sewage into rivers and seas has become a scandal in Britain. Photographer Dylan Martinez has spent years travelling around the country to capture the story of its broken sewage system.
In England, water companies discharged sewage for 3.6m hours in 2023, polluting streams, rivers and coastlines, littering them with sanitary products and condoms, damaging ecosystems and habitats, and scaring away tourists.
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03/21/2025 - 03:00
Water companies let waste disposers, for cash, dump their loads into sewage farms. When it is recklessly used as fertiliser, we are all at risk
If humanity has an epitaph, it might read something like this: “Knackered by the things we missed.” It is true that several existential threats are widely known and widely discussed. But some of the greatest dangers we face appear on almost no one’s radar.
How often have you thought about this one: spreading sewage sludge on farmland? I would guess very few would include it in their top civilisational hazards. Despite the best efforts of a handful of us, it trundles on, unknown to most. Surprising as it may seem, new research suggests that it could help call time on us.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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03/21/2025 - 03:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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