The corporate-financed backlash to calls for global climate progress has been greatly empowered by the Trump administration. It’s never been more critical to challenge the misinformation that could turn a crisis into a catastrophe
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A little over a decade ago I published a book, This Changes Everything, which explored the reality of the climate crisis as a confrontation between capitalism and the planet. For a few years after the book came out, it seemed like we might just win a breakthrough. A cascade of large and militant mobilisations pressed the case for keeping warming below 1.5C as global calls for a green new deal grew louder and louder. Countries across the world announced long-term plans to reduce emissions and to hit net-zero targets; so did some of the largest corporations on the planet.
And then … well, we all know what happened. A corporate-financed backlash on all fronts. In the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, his administration took more than 140 actions to roll back environmental rules and push for greater use of fossil fuels. He signed executive orders to ease restrictions on their extraction and export, filled his cabinet with oil industry supporters, gutted federal agencies on the forefront of the climate crisis, and cancelled life-saving environmental justice projects.
Join George Monbiot and special guests on 16 September for a special climate assembly to discuss the growing and dramatic political and corporate threats to the planet. Book tickets – in person or livestream
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/12/2025 - 06:00
09/12/2025 - 06:00
Joint response by 25 bodies says proposals to speed up approval of new power plants weaken protection for public
A coalition of civil society groups is warning of the dangers of cutting safety regulations as the government pushes to “rip up the rules” to accelerate the construction of new nuclear power stations.
The 25 groups from communities neighbouring nuclear sites have submitted a joint response to a consultation by the nuclear regulatory taskforce, saying its proposals lack “both credibility and rigour”.
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09/12/2025 - 04:52
Devastating twister packs gusts of up to 168mph, injuring 89 people and leaving trail of destruction
Japan has experienced the strongest tornado in its recorded history after a devastating twister tore through Shizuoka prefecture.
Classified as a JEF3, level 3 out of 5 on Japan’s tornado intensity scale, the tornado packed wind gusts of up to 168mph last Friday, injuring 89 people and leaving a trail of destruction. The hardest hit areas included Makinohara and Yoshida, where vehicles were overturned and more than 1,200 structures were damaged. Since records began in 1961, Japan has experienced 13 level 3 tornadoes, but none have reached level 4.
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09/12/2025 - 01:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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09/12/2025 - 00:00
Exclusive: Leachate is tankered to treatment works where it mixes with sewage and industrial effluent
More than 750,000 tonnes of liquid from landfills are mixed with sewage at water treatment works and spread on farmland across England each year, it can be revealed.
Generated by hundreds of landfills across the country, leachate – the liquid that drains through landfill waste carrying a cocktail of chemicals – is regularly tankered to sewage treatment works, where it mixes with domestic sewage and industrial effluent to create sludge, also described as “biosolids”.
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09/11/2025 - 23:00
Authorities revoke building licence for cascading hotel complex on one of Greece’s most photographed shorelines
Environmental campaigners have welcomed a decision to halt construction of a disputed five-star hotel on a Greek beach known for its outstanding natural beauty.
Local authorities on the Cycladic island of Milos said a building licence for the resort on the world-renowned “moon beach” had been revoked by the municipality’s planning department after falling short of inspection standards.
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09/11/2025 - 13:00
DNA analysis of endemic specimens in museums finds 79% of ant populations in Pacific archipelago are shrinking
Island-dwelling insects have not been spared the ravages of humanity that have pushed so many of their invertebrate kin into freefall around the world, new research on Fijian ant populations has found.
Hundreds of thousands of insect species have been lost over the past 150 years and it is believed the world is now losing between 1% and 2.5% a year of its remaining insect biomass – a decline so steep that many entomologists say we are living through an “insect apocalypse”. Yet long-term data for individual insect populations is sparse and patchy.
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09/11/2025 - 12:07
Experts unconvinced by Roberto Gualtieri’s mooted timescale for river to be reopened for public bathing
Rome hopes to welcome swimmers back to the River Tiber within five years, the city’s mayor has announced, drawing inspiration from Paris, where the Seine was reopened for public bathing this summer for the first time in a century.
During a visit on Thursday to the Osaka Expo in Japan, Roberto Gualtieri said a working group had been set up to study the feasibility of the clean-up project.
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09/11/2025 - 09:23
Children as young as three will have lessons on wildfires and flooding under 10-point emergency response plan
Spanish children will be taught how to respond to floods, wildfires, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in a drive to help prepare them for the growing impact of the climate emergency.
The plan was unveiled on Thursday after a summer of forest fires killed four people and less than a year after catastrophic floods claimed more than 220 lives in eastern parts of the country.
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09/11/2025 - 09:15
Kent council condemned by opposition parties, which say county is ‘at the forefront of climate impacts’
Plans by Reform UK to “rescind” the declaration of a climate emergency at one of the English county councils it now controls have been condemned by opposition parties.
Hundreds of local authorities across Britain have made the declarations, which serve as acknowledgments that they need to act on the causes and impacts of climate change and are linked to efforts to achieve net zero targets.
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