Across the globe, oil, gas and coal companies use an ever-widening set of tactics to crush competition and opposition. With the world’s most powerful man helping them at every turn, it’s critical we reveal their full impact
Today the Guardian launches its annual environment support campaign. To back our vital climate journalism, please click here
Why does capital love fossil fuels? It’s not hard to explain. They exist in a small number of discrete locations, where the right to exploit them can be owned and monopolised. Most can be extracted commercially only at scale, excluding small competitors. They can be stored and traded all over the world, allowing prices to be optimised across time and space. Renewable energy, by contrast, can be generated almost anywhere, by almost anyone with a small amount of money to invest.
Renewables might now be cheaper than fossil fuel in the vast majority of cases, but this makes them less attractive to capital, not more. Fossil fuels are uncompetitive and highly profitable. Renewables are highly competitive and not very profitable.
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
08/26/2025 - 06:00
08/26/2025 - 03:37
Activists claim Anant Ambani’s Vantara facility has no plan to return its endangered species to the wild
India’s supreme court has ordered an investigation into a vast private zoo founded by the son of Asia’s richest person over allegations of illegal wildlife imports and financial misconduct.
Home to a reported 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, Vantara in western Gujarat state describes itself as the “world’s biggest wild animal rescue centre”. It is run by Anant Ambani, a son of Mukesh Ambani, the billionaire head of the conglomerate Reliance Industries, and was one of the venues for his extravagant wedding celebrations last year, where celebrities were encouraged to wear “jungle fever” outfits.
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08/26/2025 - 00:43
In today’s newsletter: Extreme heat, droughts and floods are proving disastrous for farmers on the frontline of climate change, and consumers in the supermarket, too
Good morning. My mum is a livestock farmer in Kent. This year her hay crop was down by 50% because the spring rains never came. She’s not alone – up and down the UK, farmers have watched their fields turn brown and their hay crops collapse.
Hay keeps animals alive over winter (when there is no fresh grass outside) and some farmers are already selling off cows because they can’t guarantee they will be able to feed them. From extreme drought to biblical floods, more than 80% of UK farmers are worried wild swings in weather are affecting their ability to earn a living.
Israel-Gaza war | Israel bombed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Monday and then struck the same place again as rescuers and journalists rushed to help the wounded, killing at least 20 people including five journalists, health officials said.
UK news | Schools will need to give democracy lessons to children from the age of 11 and ask teachers to leave their politics at the classroom door to help prepare for votes at 16, the head of the UK elections watchdog has said.
Health | People using the weight loss jab Mounjaro have been warned against switching to black market sellers or bulk buying after its manufacturer announced the UK will get a significant price rise this autumn.
US news | Some national guard units patrolling the US capital at the direction of Donald Trump have started carrying firearms, an escalation of the president’s military deployment that makes good on a directive issued late last week by his defence department.
UK news | Ministers are introducing a clearer legal definition of “honour-based” abuse in an attempt to catch more perpetrators and protect women and girls from violence and coercion.
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08/26/2025 - 00:00
Views of forward-thinking artist and writer who lived off land in national park celebrated at museum in Glastonbury
She was considered an eccentric by some, eking out a frugal existence on a wild English moor, surviving off the land and exchanging her sketches of the countryside for meals.
But the first museum exhibition on the life and work of the largely forgotten nature writer and artist Hope Bourne highlights that her views on the environment, recycling, access to the countryside – even rewilding – were ahead of her time.
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08/25/2025 - 23:00
Report finds regenerative approach could yield economic benefits while helping to meet environmental targets
The degradation of nature in the UK will lop nearly 5% off the country’s GDP if the private sector does not make a greater effort to halt the decline, experts have warned.
Conversely, investing in nature can produce economic returns for companies in a range of sectors, from manufacturing and construction to food, according to a report from the Green Finance Institute (GFI) and WWF.
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08/25/2025 - 18:01
Customers to get £5 vouchers for donating M&S clothes to Oxfam, which will get 15% of profits from eBay sales
Marks & Spencer is opening a secondhand clothing store on eBay to find new homes for “old favourites” as the household name taps into booming demand for preloved clothing.
The retailer has collected 36.5m secondhand clothes since it launched its “shwopping” clothing recycling scheme – now called Another Life – over a decade ago. Most of that clothing has been resold by charity partner Oxfam.
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08/25/2025 - 16:02
Workers say president’s attacks on the agency and lack of qualified leadership could lead to deadly catastrophe
Donald Trump’s attacks on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) risk exposing the US to another Hurricane Katrina, staff at the agency have warned Congress in a withering critique that also takes aim at its current leadership.
Writing in the run-up to this week’s 20th anniversary of the devastating 2005 storm that killed 1,833 people and caused widespread destruction in New Orleans and the Gulf coast, more than 180 current and former Fema employees say the Trump administration’s policies are ignoring the mistakes that led to it.
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World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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