Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Devastating blaze near Sizewell B nuclear power station in Suffolk among a record 624 wildfires in July this year This July was the worst on record for wildfires in England, provisional data shows, with England experiencing a clear upward trend in the total number of wildfires recorded. This summer has been a stark reminder of the vulnerability of the UK to climate breakdown, after punishingly hot and dry weather turned large parts of the countryside into a tinderbox. Continue reading...

The UK state is dumping its responsibilities on our doorsteps, while green-lighting policies that lead us closer to crisis Would you mind fixing the NHS? And while you’re at it, could you please build an anti-missile system in your garden? Then regulate the banks, replace the water mains, tax the very rich and use the proceeds to rebuild our schools. Well, come on people: what are you waiting for? I exaggerate, but this isn’t very far from the approach taken by the government’s Prepare campaign. Crucial functions, way beyond the scope of individual action, are dumped on our doorsteps while those in power fail to act. As a result, our national resilience is arguably lower than at any time since the second world war. At the Labour conference last week, Andy Burnham promised “a Britain where people feel the country has got their back again”. To make good on that pledge, he will have to change almost everything. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The Norwegian government has given a permit to a mining company to release waste into Førde fjord despite a 17-year battle by campaigners and a supreme court ruling against it Shortly after the Norwegian stock market closed on 17 June 2026, a few dozen local people from the small west coast town of Vevring crowded around a laptop in a school. Surrounded by children’s drawings and windows looking out over Førde fjord, they listened as news arrived from Oslo. Norway’s supreme court had ruled against its government: a permit to release mining waste directly into the fjord two miles upstream was illegal, the court said. The moment marked the end of a 17-year fight, one of Norway’s most protracted environmental battles in living memory. In Oslo, Ingvild Fonn Asmervik, the project leader for Naturvernforbundet (Friends of the Earth Norway), compared the joy she felt to giving birth to her child. For Anne-Line Thingnes Førsund, a third-generation fisher living on the banks of the fjord in Vevring and a volunteer for the charity’s local branch, it was more of a relief. Like a mountain lifting off her shoulders, she said. Continue reading...

Hundred-and-fifty-year-old Wych elm in Newcastle, Co Down has grown sideways owing to strong winds The “astonishing and bizarre” Bendy Tree in Northern Ireland has been crowned the winner of this year’s tree of the year competition. The wych elm tree, located in Newcastle, County Down, owes its name to its near horizontal trunk, which has grown sideways owing to the strong seaside winds coming off the Irish Sea. Continue reading...