Ed Miliband has a rare chance to do for the climate what Nye Bevan did for health: create something future generations will be proud of
It looks unlikely that Labour will emerge as the largest party at the next general election (though it’s by no means impossible). If just one term is Labour’s destiny, what legacy will it leave behind? There is already in the making one great success that can’t be reversed, the transition to homegrown clean energy. This is a true “taking back control” escape from the clutches of febrile oil and gas markets. Indeed it might become such a political success that it could rescue Labour’s electoral fortunes.
Historically it may come to be recognised as equivalent to the 1948 creation of the NHS, with Ed Miliband the Nye Bevan of our day. He has fought his cause in much the same ruthless way Bevan did. He faces the same ferocious (and politically deranged) opposition from the right, who will have to eat their hats over rejecting renewables. Just as the NHS is a prime reason for pride in Britain, we can expect the same national pride in homegrown energy independence, freeing us from rollercoaster markets and mercurial foreign oil and gas dictators: Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump or ayatollahs.
Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here or at guardian.live
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/21/2026 - 00:00
04/21/2026 - 00:00
Exclusive: Report finds Natural England has created no new SSSIs, which protect areas from development, since 2023
The government’s wildlife watchdog for England is failing to save nature because it has stopped giving protection to rare wildlife and habitats, according to a new report.
No new sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) have been designated by Natural England since 2023. SSSIs are nationally or internationally important places for rare wildlife and habitats. Without the designation, endangered species can be at risk of being lost to development.
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04/20/2026 - 14:22
Advocates expressed alarm as new project drills deeper into ocean bed, pointing to company’s failures at Deepwater Horizon spill
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Environmental groups have sued the Trump administration over its approval of BP’s huge new ultra-deep oil drilling project in the Gulf of Mexico, 16 years to the day since the company’s Deepwater Horizon disaster caused the worst oil spill in US history.
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04/20/2026 - 10:00
Fish swam further and dispersed more widely after exposure to environmental levels of drug and main metabolite
Traces of cocaine that pollute rivers and lakes may accumulate in the brains of salmon and disrupt their behaviour, according to researchers who warn of unknown consequences for fish populations.
Juvenile Atlantic salmon that were artificially exposed to the drug and its main breakdown product swam further and dispersed more widely across a lake, suggesting the substances can affect where the fish go, what they eat and how vulnerable they are to predators.
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04/20/2026 - 10:00
River ecologist says ‘classic bureaucratic tangle’ led to government agency stopping flows to Gwydir wetlands region in March
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A leading scientist has criticised an “appalling” New South Wales government agency decision to stop water flowing to wetlands in the state’s north-west, saying it was “absolutely crazy” that researchers had to scramble to save animals buried in drying mud.
Guardian Australia reported on Saturday that turtles, waterbirds, frogs and sheep had died after WaterNSW abruptly stopped flows to the Gwydir wetlands region near Moree in March.
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04/20/2026 - 09:00
Climate leaders say Democrats need to extol clean energy as a way to cut costs for Americans as war roils oil markets
Democrats should get louder in championing clean energy’s affordability and resilience from global shocks, according to some of the party’s leading voices on the climate.
As the Iran war roils economies by raising the cost of oil and gas, countries are aiming to accelerate their shift to cleaner energy. But in the US, Donald Trump has sought to kill off any alternative to fossil fuels while opposing Democrats have been reluctant to tie the conflict to any action on the climate crisis.
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04/20/2026 - 06:25
Data shows 224,000 new EVs were registered in March, with Norway leading way in terms of switching
Sales of electric cars soared 51% in continental Europe last month, amid a rise in petrol and diesel costs driven by the Iran war.
Data shows that 224,000 new electric vehicles (EVs) were registered in March, and 500,000 across the first three months of the year – a 33.5% increase on a year earlier, according to analysis of national sales data in 15 countries by New AutoMotive and E-Mobility Europe, a trade body.
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04/20/2026 - 04:00
Research casts doubt on plans by UK government to offer subsidies for carbon capture attached to the power source
Burning wood for power generation can be worse for the climate than burning gas, even when the resulting carbon dioxide emissions are captured and stored, new research has shown.
The findings cast doubt on plans by several governments, including the UK, to offer subsidies or other financial support for carbon capture attached to wood-burning power.
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Fuel eating microbes, chemicals and fire: the race to discover new ways to contain Arctic oil spills
04/20/2026 - 03:00
As the rising number of vessels in the icy waters increases the risk of environmental disaster, scientists are scrambling to find potential solutions
Last winter, inside the subarctic Churchill Marine Observatory in Canada, scientists embarked on an experiment they hoped would result in a gamechanging remedy for polluted Arctic waters. They released 130 litres of diesel into an ice-covered pool filled with raw seawater pumped in from Hudson Bay and added oil-eating microbes. The technique had been used successfully during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the scientists wanted to see if they could break down oil in colder waters.
The microbes were sluggish in response and the population showed little change after the first three weeks, says Eric Collins, a microbiologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, who led the project. But that did not last. “When we went back eight weeks later, we saw that there was a big change,” Collins says. “One particular bacterium grew to a very high abundance in the tanks and it was clear that it was feeding on the oil.” But two months is too long to wait should an oil spill occur. Time is of the essence.
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04/20/2026 - 02:30
Sarah Finch is among six recipients of the Goldman Environmental prize, awarded to honour grassroots activists around the world
The woman whose campaigning set a legal precedent in the UK that stopped thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions has been awarded one of the world’s most prestigious environmental prizes alongside five other women from around the globe.
A supreme court ruling in a case brought by Sarah Finch has been cited in decisions against new oil concessions in the North Sea, the UK’s first new deep coalmine for 30 years and even plans for new large-scale factory farms.
Iroro Tanshi, a Nigerian conservation ecologist who launched a successful, community-led campaign to protect endangered bats from human induced wildfires;
Borim Kim, a South Korean activist who won the continent’s first successful youth-led climate litigation, finding her government’s climate policy to be in violation of the rights of future generations;
Alannah Acaq Hurley, a leader of the Yup’ik Indigenous people led a campaign that stopped what would have been the continent’s largest open-pit mine, in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region;
Yuvelis Morales Blanco, a youth activist who mobilised others in her Afro-descendant community in Puerto Wilches against two drilling projects, preventing the introduction of commercial fracking into Colombia;
Theonila Roka Matbob, of Papua New Guinea, whose campaign forced Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mining company, to sign an agreement to address devastation caused by its Panguna mine.
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