Breaking Waves: Ocean News

The run-up to 2016 shows ‘common sense’ isn’t enough. Even ignorant, reactionary arguments must be properly countered Kemi Badenoch’s speech on climate this week was not interesting of itself: she said net zero couldn’t be achieved by 2050 “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”. She has no expertise in climate science, no background in renewables or apparent familiarity with the advances made in their technology, no qualification in economics – just about the only bit of that sentence she knows anything about is bankrupting us. Yet even if Badenoch can take its particulars and shove them, the fact of its existence is interesting for a number of reasons. First, this attack on net zero has been predicted, not secretly by new-Conservative fellow travellers, though conceivably them too, but by progressives – and for years. Among the first was the Cambridge academic David Runciman, who predicted a backlash against action on the climate crisis as the new galvanising issue on the radical right after it had moved on from Brexit. On his Talking Politics podcast, he was in conversation with Ed Miliband, who took that point but said he hoped Runciman was wrong. He was not wrong. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Researchers cite £2.4bn annual cost of flooding and say a third of England’s critical infrastructure is at risk Spending on flood defences will fall off a cliff edge next year, a report warns, calling on the chancellor to commit at least £1.5bn a year in the spending review to protect the economy and the public. Nearly 2 million people across the UK are exposed to flooding every year, which is equivalent to the combined populations of Birmingham, Sheffield and Newcastle upon Tyne. Continue reading...

Labor will push the contentious bill through parliament next week despite concerns about the extinction of the Maugean skate Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Anthony Albanese plans to rush through contentious legislation next week to protect Tasmania’s salmon industry from a legal challenge over the industry’s impact on an endangered fish species. The future of the salmon industry on the state’s west coast has become a sharp political issue centred on whether it can coexist with the Maugean skate, a ray-like species found only in Macquarie Harbour’s brackish estuarine waters. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

German coal giant is one of world’s biggest polluters and should contribute to flood defences, says farmer in Peru A Peruvian farmer’s home is in “concrete danger” from climate change, a court has heard, in the resumption of a decade-long legal battle to get German coal giant RWE to contribute to flood defences in the Andes. Lawyers for Saúl Luciano Lliuya, who say his home is threatened by rapidly melting glaciers, told the upper regional court in Hamm on Wednesday that the risk of extreme flooding represented a breach of civil law. Continue reading...