Imagine the UK with a 20-year investment plan, with green homes and fast transport. We already have the tools to make it happen
You’ve just left school. What’s your future?
I know a physics graduate making flat whites; a 30-year-old living in his childhood bedroom who feels like a failure; a lad in Blyth who turned down a job 15 miles away because there’s no bus, and for young people his age car insurance is almost £2,000 a year. Britain’s young people are our greatest resource, and we are failing them because capital markets won’t allocate investment where it is needed. Saying “hope” in a conference speech sounds warm. But people need a plan.
Jamie Driscoll is a Green party councillor on Newcastle city council and former North of Tyne mayor
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/02/2026 - 08:01
10/02/2026 - 03:58
Up to 300mm of rain could fall in places, while extreme downpours bring landslides and deaths in Nepal
Torrential rain and potentially damaging flooding are forecast in eastern Spain over the coming days, as cold upper air moves over the warm, humid surface air of the Mediterranean Sea, fuelling violent, slow-moving thunderstorms near Spain’s east coast. The weather pattern, known as a Dana, occurs most often in autumn.
Models show more than 100mm of rain could fall across the region on Friday, with 200-300mm possible in some areas. Cities including Valencia and Castelló de la Plana, are most at risk. Valencia has experienced several damaging floods in recent years. Catalonia has now put three towns under lockdown and Valencia has shut schools for nearly half a million children.
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10/02/2026 - 02:00
This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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10/02/2026 - 00:00
‘Day-to-day’ symptom of harmful emissions, which in turn can disrupt sleep, can be overlooked, say researchers
New research has found that increased air pollution is associated with more night-time coughing, leading to disturbed sleep.
Most air pollution research looks at symptoms that are severe enough for people to seek medical help, but day-to-day symptoms can be overlooked. Prof Cecilia Mascolo, who led the study from the University of Cambridge, said: “I come from an area in Italy with very high pollution and I am very aware of its not-talked-about effects.”
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10/01/2026 - 21:00
EU Copernicus report shows surface air temperatures from June to August were 2.5C above decadal average
The scorching heat that persistently baked western Europe this summer was the worst on record, a report has found, with more than half the continent seared by “very strong” heat stress that felt hotter than 38C.
Surface air temperatures in western Europe from June to August were 2.5C above the recent decadal average, according to an update from the EU’s Copernicus climate monitoring service on Friday, while milder but still deadly heat across the rest of the continent made the summer Europe’s third hottest on record.
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10/01/2026 - 17:24
Democratic-led coalition says gutting key protections will set US back decades and worsen climate crisis
States and cities sued the Trump administration on Thursday for repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas.
Twenty-one states, led by New York, are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant rule. The Democratic-led coalition also includes Pennsylvania’s governor, the District of Columbia, New York City, Chicago and the city and county of Denver. They argue that “gutting one of the country’s most significant climate protections” will set the nation back decades and worsen the climate crisis.
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10/01/2026 - 10:55
Lake Mead is at its lowest level since it was filled nearly 90 years ago, Lake Powell also at a historic low
It was 42C (108F) degrees as we motored across Nevada’s Lake Mead in our rented pontoon boat. Colby Pellegrino with the Southern Nevada Water Authority wanted to show us something we shouldn’t have been able to see. She pointed toward a rock island where a large metal pipe was sticking out of the water.
“That is the first intake that was built to bring municipal water into the valley in 1970,” Pellegrino said.
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10/01/2026 - 10:00
Exclusive: Climate Change Authority chair says planning commission did not account for climate-related economic damage in NSW
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A senior Albanese government climate adviser has challenged the state approval of the largest coalmining development in New South Wales’s history, arguing “climate change isn’t someone else’s problem”.
Matt Kean, the chair of the Climate Change Authority and a former NSW treasurer and energy minister, questioned why the state Independent Planning Commission had not weighed the economic cost of climate change caused by burning the coal from the Hunter Valley Operations mine before giving it the green light to run until 2045.
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10/01/2026 - 08:00
As the midterms approach, Americans’ digestive health has become a bizarre talking point
Donald Trump seems to spend an unusual amount of time thinking about toilets.
Back in 2019, he bizarrely claimed: “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once.” He repeated this claim at a Michigan rally the following year. “Ten times, right, 10 times,” Trump complained. “Not me, of course not me, but you,” he added while pointing at an unfortunate audience member.
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10/01/2026 - 07:00
Records show Vineland facility in New Jersey emitted health-harming pollution before regulators stepped in
DataOne, the Microsoft-linked New Jersey datacenter recently hit with a $1m fine for running unpermitted generators, emitted large amounts of health-harming air pollution for nearly a year before state regulators stepped in, according to public records obtained by Floodlight.
The Vineland facility’s 62 gas-fired generators became public in August after a Floodlight/Guardian visual investigation found them operating without permits. The New Jersey department of environmental protection last week fined the company over the fleet but did not disclose how long the generators had been operating nor how much air pollution they had released into the surrounding community over the past year.
This story is from Floodlight, a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here
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