The environmental and economic dilemmas he faces are formidable but, with a bold plan, he could set an example for leaders around the world
For politicians of the centre-left especially, it’s the great dilemma of the age. How do you do what everyone can see is essential to save the planet from boiling – even as your voters demand action to get the economy growing and to make life more affordable? Plenty of activists will tell you there’s no contradiction, that tackling the climate crisis makes economic as well as ecological sense and, in the long term, you know they’re right. But you don’t live in the long term. You’re running the government right now and facing several unavoidable, binary choices.
Andy Burnham is a prime example. This week, he addressed the Cop summit in Antalya, promising “a new era of British leadership” in the struggle against global heating. It’s important to him to talk that way: his political strategy relies on shrinking the appeal of the Green party, whose electoral success earlier this year helped remove his predecessor. But talk only takes you so far. Eventually the words have to be matched by action.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/13/2026 - 12:10
11/13/2026 - 12:05
Exclusive: Report says restricting cars and freeing up pavement space could be a cheap way to bring shoppers back
The long decline of the high street is a problem that has gripped British governments for years. But what if there was a solution no one had considered before – doing it all on the cheap?
Spending less money is, admittedly, just one element of a report led by the urban thinktank Create Streets. But it does argue that rather than multimillion-pound revamps, a better answer could be smaller changes aimed at making town and city centres more appealing.
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11/13/2026 - 12:00
António Guterres says climate action central to every aspect of UN’s work, as leaders depart Cop31 and talks go on
Tackling the climate crisis is central to all of human life and must be at the forefront of global governance, the outgoing UN secretary general has said in an emotional farewell address at the Cop31 climate summit.
“You cannot build peace on a burning planet,” António Guterres said at his final climate press conference as secretary general on Friday. “You cannot eradicate poverty when climate disasters keep throwing people back into it. You cannot promise young people a better future while destroying the natural systems on which that future depends.”
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11/13/2026 - 11:31
Newsom is the most prominent US politician at Cop31, a process the Trump administration continues to boycott
The leader of the world’s fourth biggest economy, California governor Gavin Newsom, has explicitly endorsed a global phase out of the fossil fuels that drive climate breakdown.
Newsom told the Guardian that California is “100%” behind the efforts of the so-called Santa Marta coalition, a group of more than 50 countries that includes many of the world’s largest economies, to transition away from oil, gas and coal toward solar, wind, batteries and other non-carbon energy sources.
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11/13/2026 - 10:27
Exclusive: Government in ‘private meetings’ about removing cost cap protections under Aarhus convention
The government is considering stripping back legal protections that limit the costs community groups face when challenging planning decisions that threaten nature.
The Aarhus convention, an environmental treaty that was signed into law by the UK in 2005, guarantees the legal right to participate in democratic processes on environmental matters – such as sewage pollution, new roads or datacentre developments.
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11/13/2026 - 09:00
Siberian rubythroat was thousands of miles off course from its route to winter in south or south-east Asia
A bird that flies south from its breeding grounds in Siberia to winter in south and south-east Asia has been found thousands of miles off course in Cumbria. Regrettably, it was found by a cat.
Chris Hind, Cumbria’s county recorder for birds, said it was “extraordinary” that a Siberian rubythroat was found on his patch, albeit dead. There have been only 17 recorded instances of the bird in the UK, 15 of those in the northern Scottish isles.
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11/13/2026 - 08:37
Increase reported by Aviva after Hastings Direct said claims were up 140% in August and Axa said it had been a ‘surge year’
The UK’s largest insurer has been hit by a rise in subsidence claims after an extremely hot summer left households across the country grappling with the fallout from the growing climate crisis.
Aviva said on Friday it had experienced the jump amid an industry-wide surge in households filing subsidence claims with their insurers to cover repairs, which typically are needed to address cracks, sloping floors, and off-kilter doors and windows.
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11/13/2026 - 07:30
One company is proposing elongating the life of the dump, pungent smell and all, several more decades
As a visual representation of how New York is running out of places to put its waste, the largest active landfill in the state is a striking one. The hulking Seneca Meadows landfill is already the height of the Statue of Liberty and its operators are seeking to raise it even further, to the consternation of nearby residents.
The landfill, situated in the scenic Finger Lakes region in the northern reaches of New York state, has grown since the 1980s to now sprawl across 350 acres of deposited trash, mounded up to the height of around 300ft – roughly the same height of the Statue of Liberty.
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11/13/2026 - 07:13
Delegations outnumber those of some countries most vulnerable to climate impacts, such as Nepal, which suffered glacier collapse
Cop31 live – latest updates
More than 100 corporations and industry groups linked to fossil fuel interests have sent delegations to the UN climate talks in Turkey, according to an analysis.
The Cop31 climate summit in Antalya is thought to be the largest ever in the three decades of the annual gatherings, with more than 92,000 delegates registered to attend talks aimed at shifting the world away from the fossil fuels that are dangerously overheating our planet.
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11/13/2026 - 07:00
Water temperatures are climbing the charts, high tides are swallowing the shoreline and vital parts of the food web that feed ocean diversity are disappearing
On a picturesque autumn afternoon last week, the beaches of California’s Monterey Bay were teeming with life and death.
A cadre of shorebirds charged and retreated in a synchronized dance with the raging surf. Nearby, the receding tides had deposited lifeless bundles of feathers and bone, tangled in piles of glistening kelp. Swollen sea lion carcasses, their teeth bared in a quiet grimace, dotted the sand as beach picnickers and dog walkers enjoyed the warm, cloudless day.
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