English references

Europe is full of buried explosives left over from 20th century wars, and wildfires are now reaching them more regularly.

If you’re always above average, it’s probably time to redefine what’s normal. The new normal for Earth’s climate is systematically rising temperatures.

Climate and geopolitical shocks – from El Niño, global heating or wars – hit a food system which already magnifies environmental and social vulnerabilities.

Around 153 BCE, Cato the Elder, one of Rome’s most prominent senators, began ending every single one of his speeches with the same words: “Carthago delenda est”, or “Carthage must be destroyed”.

By the end of this century, parts of Africa could face heatwaves for 250-300 days a year, which will make it difficult for people to survive.

Newborn babies are particularly vulnerable to hot conditions. They have a limited ability to control their body temperature.

Like living beyond your financial means, using more water than nature can replenish can have catastrophic results.

Glacial earthquakes are a special type of earthquake generated in cold, icy regions. First discovered in the northern hemisphere more than 20 years ago, these quakes occur when huge chunks of ice fall from glaciers into the sea. Until now, only a very few have been found in the Antarctic. In a new study soon to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, I present evidence for hundreds of these quakes in Antarctica between 2010 and 2023, mostly at the ocean end of the Thwaites Glacier – the so-called Doomsday Glacier that could send sea levels rising rapidly if it were to collapse.

The UK has announced much harsher rules for asylum seekers including the prospect of more deportations for those whose applications fail. The US is trebling the size of its deportation force. The EU is doubling its border budgets. And in the coming decades, hundreds of millions of people might be displaced by ecological changes.

Budgets are now climate policy. But mainstream media hasn’t caught up.

Around 56 million years ago, Earth suddenly got much hotter. Over about 5,000 years, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere drastically increased and global temperatures shot up by some 6°C.

Gates recently called for a ‘strategic pivot’ in climate strategy. That appears to have hit a nerve.

Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. Rushkoff’s work explores how different technological environments change our relationship to narrative, money, power, and one another. He coined such concepts as “viral media,” “screenagers,” and “social currency,” and has been a leading voice for applying digital media toward social and economic justice. In the conversation we talk about the power of ideas, our disconnection from reality, going meta, ancestral fears, tech billionaires mindset and how they are preparing for the apocalypse. We also reflect on the urgent need to be more human and reconnect with what is essential.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has described her plan to “maximise extraction” of the UK’s oil and gas from the North Sea as a “common sense” energy policy. Politicians are using language like this increasingly often – calling themselves “pragmatic” on climate change and invoking “common sense”. It sounds reasonable, reassuring, and grownup – the opposite of “hysterical” campaigners or “unrealistic” targets.

The vast ice of Antarctica has long seemed impregnable. But sudden changes are arriving – from shrinking sea ice to melting ice sheets and slowing ocean currents.

Our modelling of European fish species shows a patchwork of winners and losers as sea temperatures rise.

Farming seaweed, changing ocean chemistry, breeding corals and restoring mangroves could help fight climate change – if assessed and managed responsibly.

Real world measurements of how much extra heat the Earth is trapping are well beyond most climate models. That’s a real problem.

When people reflect on how their actions shape the future, they are more likely to support solutions to present-day issues like poverty and inequality.

Anti-environmentalism is gaining ground. Attacks on the net zero goal and hostility to conservation measures and anti-pollution targets are becoming more common. And, as recent election results have shown, these tactics are reshaping politics in Britain and across the west.