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Every Bonfire Night, people pay for a box of fireworks so their friends and family can enjoy the colourful display. Within a few minutes, it's all over. But the price on the box doesn't reflect the hidden costs. The smoke inhaled by neighbours, the animals disturbed or the public services called out when things go wrong.

It's not a question about whether fireworks celebrations are enjoyable, but whether the people enjoying them are aware of - or actually paying for - their full cost. Economists call this a "negative externality". A purchase benefits the buyer and seller, but some of its costs fall on people outside that transaction. Fireworks offer a particularly visible example because the enjoyment is concentrated in time while the consequences are spread among households, public services and wildlife. As a finance researcher, I think this concept is overlooked in the fireworks debate.

Consider injuries. Figures show that 123 hospital admissions in England attributed to fireworks in 2024-25. That is not a count of everyone injured: cases treated without hospital admission are excluded. Preventing such injuries may not cut the NHS budget, but it can free clinical time for other patients. In an overstretched health service, that is an economic benefit even if it never appears as a saving in the Treasury's accounts.

Pollution creates another unpriced cost. The UK's official air-quality monitoring has recorded short-lived spikes in fine particles around Bonfire Night, although bonfires also contribute and weather affects how quickly smoke disperses. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs assigns a central estimated damage cost of £114,411 per tonne of fine particulate emissions (known as PM2.5), expressed in 2025 prices to account for inflation. This is not a figure for fireworks: calculating that would require information about their emissions and who is exposed. It does show why a product can have an environmental cost that never appears on its receipt.

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Read more: Is it possible to have an eco-friendly firework display?

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Nature belongs on the balance sheet

The damage is not limited to human health. In a peer-reviewed Dutch study, researchers found that approximately 1,000 times as many birds were flying during New Year's Eve fireworks as on ordinary nights. The disruption extended several miles from the displays. The exact scale cannot be transferred to British Bonfire Nights, but the finding challenges the idea that fireworks affect only those who choose to watch.

Birds forced into sudden flight expend energy and lose opportunities to rest. Pets and livestock may also be distressed. Alongside noise and smoke, spent casings and other waste leave a physical footprint. Sustainability means considering these effects, not simply asking how much carbon a celebration emits.

Yet putting nature on an economic balance sheet requires care. The value of healthy ecosystems is real, but we should not invent a monetary figure for fireworks-related wildlife damage when credible national estimates are lacking. Some effects can be quantified; others must still inform decisions even without an exact price.

The key is to ask which forms of celebration produce the most enjoyment with the least harm. Cavan-Images/Shutterstock The price of fireworks

Fireworks also create value. They support retailers, display organisers and cultural celebrations, including Bonfire Night, Diwali and New Year. The UK government's 2026 consultation reports that fireworks imports averaged £27 million a year from 2021 to 2024. That is the value of imports, not total industry sales and certainly not what Britain would save by banning them.

If households bought fewer fireworks, they might spend on a local community event, food or another kind of entertainment instead. They might equally save the money. There is no basis for promising that fewer fireworks would automatically increase jobs, GDP or tax receipts.

But GDP and wellbeing are not the same thing. Treating avoidable injuries and clearing pollution may involve paid work without making society better off. The relevant comparison is between the enjoyment fireworks provide and the harm, resources and opportunities their use consumes.

The practical question is not simply whether to completely ban fireworks and take the joy out of Bonfire Night. It makes more sense to ask which forms of celebration produce the most enjoyment with the least harm. Organised displays, fewer private launches, predictable timings and wildlife-sensitive locations could change that balance. Drone and laser shows might offer alternatives, but they also require electricity and equipment; their sustainability should be assessed, not assumed.

This is especially timely. The government's fireworks consultation closed in October 2026 after receiving more than 140,000 responses from members of the public, businesses, charities and other stakeholders.

Policymakers now have an opportunity to assess the social costs alongside safety, business impacts and cultural value. A credible assessment would be honest about what the evidence shows, and about the nationwide economic savings that cannot yet be calculated. Because when a fireworks celebration leaves a bill for people who never attended, its market price only tells part of the story.

Narmin Nahidi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

A lizard soaks up the sun in Armenia's Zangezur Mountains. bieszczady_wildlife / shutterstock

The UN's main biodiversity summit, held every two years, wrapped up in Yerevan, Armenia, on October 31.

Biodiversity summits don't attract the same fanfare as their climate change equivalents, yet loss of nature threatens food systems, water security, health, livelihoods and cultural traditions. Forests, soils, wetlands and oceans absorb around half the carbon dioxide humans emit, while climate change is itself one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss.

This summit, technically the 17th Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference, or Cop17, was meant to take stock of progress and accelerate action on protecting biodiversity. Back in 2022, the same conference launched an ambitious framework to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, a goal that will require closing an US$700 billion (£520 billion) per year finance gap.

Targets include protecting 30% of land and sea, restoring degraded ecosystems, and halting the extinction of threatened species. Yerevan was the halfway point, and the first time countries formally reviewed how they were doing.

So, how did they do?

The first global review of the framework, State of Biodiversity Action, showed how little progress has been made. Almost 90% of countries have set national targets, but fewer than half are on track. The targets lagging furthest behind - covering business impacts, unsustainable consumption, harmful subsidies and finance - are the ones that need action beyond environment ministries and conservation programmes.

Who pays?

It comes down to money: who should pay for biodiversity protection? The framework calls for US$200 billion a year from all sources by 2030, including US$30 billion per year through international finance.

The latest UN biodiversity summit was held in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Gabriella Santini

Two debates stood out. The first concerned who should manage the funds. Lower-income countries have argued for a new funding mechanism under the CBD's control. Many high-income countries prefer the current Global Environment Facility, which critics say is bureaucratic and hard for local communities to access. Decisions on a new financial mechanism have been pushed to the next summit, Cop18, in Ecuador in 2028.

The second debate was about extending the list of countries expected to provide finance to developing countries. Emerging economies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar resisted, as it would shift their contributions from voluntary to obligatory. In the end, it was agreed that countries that now want to contribute as donors can "signal interest" before Cop18.

The summit presidency announced that more than US$1.8 billion had been pledged from governments, philanthropic organisations and investors. That is welcome, but negligible compared with what is needed. Recent cuts to development aid have made the shortfall even harder to address.

The negotiations looked at alternative ways of valuing nature, such as natural capital accounting or treating nature as infrastructure. "Biodiversity is not just for tree-huggers," said the CBD's executive secretary Astrid Schomaker at a workshop in Yerevan, suggesting it should matter to business.

Cutting or redirecting US$500 billion a year in harmful subsidies would help fund all this. But though this is the framework's target 18, little progress has been made.

Who benefits from genetic data?

So-called digital sequence information, or DSI, was another subject of contention. This is genetic data gathered from plants, animals and microbes, stored in online databases and used by companies to develop medicines, crops and cosmetics. However, the countries and communities where these organisms come from have rarely been paid for their use.

The 2024 biodiversity summit in Colombia created the Cali Fund to change this. Large companies using DSI are expected to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of their revenue to this fund. At least half of the money is meant to go to Indigenous peoples and local communities.

The fund was expected to raise at least US$1 billion a year. By the end of this year's summit, just five companies had committed a total of just US$10,565.

Part of the problem is that contributions are voluntary. Negotiators debated who counts as a user of DSI, whether only large companies should pay, and how to avoid companies being charged twice under national and international schemes. After fraught discussions and delays, many of the key decisions were postponed to the next summit in 2028.

The role of Indigenous people

Indigenous peoples and local communities manage or hold rights over a large share of the world's remaining biodiverse land. In 2024, parties created a permanent body to strengthen their role.

Indigenous campaigners at the summit in Yerevan. Gabriella Santini

In Yerevan, discussions focused on how it should work: who leads it, and who chooses the representatives. Campaigners warned that governments were deciding how Indigenous peoples should be represented instead of letting them decide for themselves. In the 12-hour-long final plenary, the body's rules of operation were agreed, but as an advisory body, its influence will depend on whether governments listen.

Women's rights were another focus. The global progress review found that only about a quarter of countries' national targets address women's land rights or access, leaving women with little power in conservation decisions. The Yerevan summit encouraged governments to embed gender equity into national biodiversity strategies and data collection.

Halfway and behind

Finance, DSI and Indigenous rights may have been separate items on the agenda, but they raise the same questions: who pays to protect nature, who gets to decide, and who benefits?

The agreed Yerevan Pathway urges countries to take faster action on priorities including cutting subsidies that harm nature, providing financial and technical support to developing countries, and aligning national budgets with biodiversity goals. But it leans heavily on commitments already made.

Outside the main negotiations in Yerevan, Indigenous groups, campaigners and non-governmental organisations showcased their work protecting and restoring nature in spite of limited funding. The tension between biodiversity targets and the extractive industries was also visible in protests against a controversial gold mine, which recently began production in south-eastern Armenia.

Governments now need to back their commitments with money that reaches the people doing the work, an end to economic incentives that drive nature loss, and a meaningful say for Indigenous people and local communities.

Gabriella Santini previously received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), and the Parkes Foundation.

Emily Woodhouse and Simon Chin-Yee do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Climate campaigners highlight the threat climate change poses to human health. New research reveals its growing toll on lives worldwide. Joe Kuis/Shutterstock

The evidence that climate change threatens human health has never been stronger. Yet a new report suggests that world leaders are giving less attention to its health consequences in international political debate.

The 2026 Lancet Countdown report estimates that heat was associated with 710,000 deaths worldwide in 2023, with around 71% attributable to human-caused climate change. Researchers calculated this by comparing estimated heat-related deaths at the temperatures actually experienced with those expected in a world without human-caused warming. The difference represents the additional deaths associated with climate change.

Heat can cause fatal heatstroke and worsen existing conditions, including heart and kidney disease. The figure is a statistical estimate of the additional deaths caused by warming, rather than a count of individual deaths directly identified as resulting from climate change.

Meanwhile, the proportion of countries whose leaders discussed the relationship between climate change and health during the United Nations General Debate fell from 66% in 2021 to 26% in 2025. The General Debate is the annual gathering at which world leaders address a broad range of international issues.

Europe's record-breaking heatwaves during the summer of 2026 brought the consequences of rising temperatures into sharp focus. Research examining 854 European cities estimated more than 50,000 heat-related deaths that summer, with around two-thirds attributable to human-caused warming. Using a similar approach, researchers compared the estimated death toll under actual temperatures with the number expected without the additional warming caused by human activity.

Climate change competes with more immediate political concerns, including energy prices, economic pressures and international conflicts. The health benefits of cutting emissions may take time to become visible, while governments face pressure to respond to events unfolding today.

But fewer mentions in UN speeches do not necessarily mean that governments are doing less. The same Lancet Countdown analysis found that 93% of national climate commitments submitted in 2025 mentioned health. Governments may also act through heat-warning systems, cleaner transport or building regulations without repeatedly invoking climate change in international speeches.

The more important question is whether policies deliver measurable protection. Announcing a plan provides little reassurance if vulnerable people remain exposed to dangerous heat or health services lack the resources to respond.

The kidneys reveal a growing health threat

As a kidney physician, I see particular reasons for concern. Chronic kidney disease affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The kidneys help filter waste from blood and maintain the body's balance of water and salts, making them vulnerable when extreme heat disrupts that balance.

Recent research links hot temperatures with increased kidney-related illness. Heat stress and dehydration can contribute to acute kidney injury, particularly among people working in hot conditions and those with existing health problems. Whether repeated heat exposure accelerates chronic kidney disease across the wider population is less certain and remains an important research question.

Air pollution may also affect kidney health. A systematic review found associations between exposure to several common air pollutants and poorer measures of kidney function.

Health benefits that can be felt now

Some climate measures can improve health well before the full benefits of reduced global warming become apparent.

Cleaner energy can reduce harmful air pollution. The Lancet Countdown estimates that declining fossil fuel-related air pollution has helped prevent around 323,000 premature deaths annually across at least 77 countries.

Burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change and air pollution, both of which pose serious risks to human health. Dennis MacDonald/Shutterstock

Trees provide shade and cooling in cities, while restored wetlands can help manage flooding and support biodiversity. A review of research on urban trees found consistent cooling benefits, although their effectiveness depends on local climate and how cities are designed.

The healthcare system also has responsibilities. The sector accounts for around 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing waste and unnecessary resource use can contribute to a more sustainable service, provided patient care is protected.

Biodiversity and the library of life

Human health also depends on functioning ecosystems. The international biodiversity science body IPBES has documented how biodiversity loss is connected with threats to water, food and health. Healthy ecosystems are valuable in themselves, and Indigenous peoples and local communities have long contributed knowledge and stewardship essential to their protection.

Nature is also an extraordinary library of biological solutions developed through evolution. Many medicines have come from natural products or compounds inspired by them. Scientists are now exploring how artificial intelligence can help identify promising compounds from biological data, potentially speeding up early stages of drug discovery. These possibilities are exciting, but translating a promising compound into a safe and effective treatment requires extensive research.

Protecting biodiversity is therefore relevant to both present health and future scientific discoveries. AI may help researchers understand some of nature's complexity, but it cannot restore an extinct species or replace the ecological knowledge held by communities.

The political challenge is to connect the evidence of harm from climate change with practical decisions that protect people. Climate change is already affecting health, and the benefits to human health of protecting the environment are not confined to some distant future.

Destroying the natural systems that sustain health while scientists are still learning how they work would be a costly mistake.

Peter Stenvinkel receives funding from CIMED, Heart and Lung-Foundation, ALF and Westman Foundation.

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Over the next few months, most year nine pupils in England (aged 13-14) will choose their GCSE options. For those curious about the jobs behind the clean energy systems, heat pumps, electric cars and buses now appearing on their streets, the government's new vocational GCSEs will arrive just too late.

The Department for Education announced the new qualifications in September 2026. They will have nationally set content, with assessment and grading regulated by Ofqual, the exams regulator in England. The first are set to be available in some subjects from as early as September 2029.

By then, today's year nines will have sat their GCSEs and today's year eights will be halfway through their courses.

Nevertheless, a good deal of the groundwork for a clean energy career is already taught at GCSE. It is just spread across several subjects, so pupils and parents need to know where to look.

At the University of Salford's Centre for Sustainable Innovation, I lead research on electric cars that can send power back to buildings and the grid. It calls on electricians, engineers, programmers and people who understand energy markets, and the first steps towards each of those jobs are already in GCSE subject content.

Science and geography

The most widely taught material sits in GCSE science, which almost every pupil takes, either as combined science or as separate physics, chemistry and biology. The combined science subject content asks pupils to describe energy sources, from fossil fuels to wind, the tides and the sun, compare how they are used, and tell renewable from non-renewable.

Pupils also learn why the national grid carries power at high voltage, how an appliance's power depends on current and voltage and what the earth wire does in a mains circuit. Much of the physics behind electric cars and heat pumps is there, though neither is named.

Geography, a popular option, adds the human side. Its subject content covers how societies obtain food, energy and water, with a detailed study of one of the three, including its sustainable use and management at different scales.

Design and technology

Design and technology goes a step further. Its subject content requires pupils to understand how energy is generated and stored, so they can choose the right source to power a product, and to apply the basic principles of life cycle assessment, which tallies a product's environmental impact from raw materials to disposal.

Half the marks come from a project in which each pupil designs and makes a prototype. Exam boards set new contexts each year, and the Department for Education's suggested list includes "securing a sustainable future". Pupils write their own design brief in response, so where a context allows, a sustainable energy project is well within reach.

Electronics and engineering

GCSE electronics and engineering come closest to the hardware side, although few schools offer them. The electronics subject content teaches pupils to build circuits that sense, decide and act, to switch power with transistors and to program microcontrollers that respond to sensors. They also learn how diodes turn alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC) - a step needed to charge any battery from the power grid.

For their assessed project, pupils write their own brief and then build a system to meet it. A circuit that switches on a small load only when a light sensor detects sunshine would be a simple version of the diverters that send spare rooftop solar power to a hot water tank.

Students can learn to control systems in GCSE engineering. Halfpoint/Shutterstock

Engineering pupils write programs that monitor and control systems. They also learn that designs must take account of energy production methods, maintenance and end of life, and they study engineering's impact on the environment.

Economics and business

The money questions belong here. GCSE economics covers how supply and demand set prices, which is why some electricity tariffs now charge different rates at different times of day. It also covers externalities, the costs and benefits that fall on people outside a transaction, and the policies governments use to correct them. Economists use the same idea to analyse carbon taxes and clean energy subsidies.

GCSE business includes the impact of environmental considerations on firms, sustainability among them, along with cash-flow forecasting and business start-ups. A pupil who hopes to run an installation business one day would find much of the groundwork here.

Joining the dots

Much clean energy work happens where people live. You cannot install a heat pump in Salford from anywhere else. The government's Clean Energy Jobs Plan expects employment in the sector to double to 860,000 by 2030, with plumbers, electricians and welders among its priority occupations.

Pupils need three things to join the dots: education, exposure and experience. The education is in place. Teachers need no new specification to use a charger or a heat pump as a worked example, and families can ask at options evenings whether coursework can take a clean energy theme. To help families prepare, I have built a free interactive online tool, the Sustainable Local Energy Skills Roadmap, which turns four questions into a personal map from GCSE topics to clean energy jobs.

Exposure means meeting the people who do these jobs. Talks from local installers and visits to university energy labs show pupils what the topics lead to. Experience is where the government's call for 200,000 extra work experience placements for pupils aged 14 to 16 comes in. Installers, network companies and bus operators are natural hosts for this.

Early suggestions for vocational GCSE subjects include digital tech as well as building and construction, both close to clean energy work. The government says local leaders, employers, schools and colleges will help choose the final list, with a consultation due later this year, so clean energy employers and colleges have good reason to respond.

For pupils now in year eight and above, the subjects are already on the timetable. The heat pumps and electric car chargers on their own street are a good place to start connecting them.

Vahid Vahidinasab would like to thank the funding for DriVe2X research and innovation project from the European Commission and the UKRI, with grant numbers 101056934 and 10055673, respectively.

Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire is a city far from the coast, but it will still be affected by the consequences of sea-level rise. Alexey Fedorenko/Shutterstock

Rising sea levels might seem like someone else's problem if you live inland. But, even miles from the coast, changing sea levels can affect the food we eat, the goods we buy, the energy we use and the taxes we pay.

Global sea levels are predicted to rise by between 28 and 55cm by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are significantly reduced. Sea levels could rise by between 63cm and 1m if emissions stay at very high levels. A rise of more than 2m by 2100 cannot be completely ruled out. Here's how sea-level rise is already affecting our daily lives and exposing weaknesses in everything from power supplies to infrastructure:

1. Threat to food crops

The Fens, which spread across Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, hold 48% of England's best agricultural land and contribute over 7% of UK agricultural output, including about a third of England's vegetables. Much of this landscape lies at or below sea level, which leaves it vulnerable to flooding and to contamination with saline water.

The land's productivity depends on an extensive network of drainage channels, pumping stations and flood defences. A breach can destroy crops and leave productive soil unusable for years. As homegrown produce supplies only about 60% of the food the UK eats, losing Fens land alone would not empty shelves, although it would deepen reliance on imports that are themselves exposed to sea-level rise and other effects of climate change.

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Read more: Britain's most artificial landscape may not survive climate change

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Flooding can destroy crops and damage soil. Neil Mitchell/Shutterstock 2. Disruption to port transport

Around 85% of the UK's international freight by weight and more than 80% of world merchandise trade moves by sea. A flooded terminal at Southampton, in Shanghai or on a Caribbean island delays goods bound for shops and factories far inland.

Even if a port isn't directly affected by floods, there can be disruption if the infrastructure connecting it to the rest of the economy is inundated. Railways, roads, warehouses, electrical substations and fuel distribution networks can all be affected by coastal flooding. The resulting shortages and price rises would have serious knock-on effects for households.

Changing sea levels can disrupt the infrastructure associated with shipping and related supply chains. Rob Fuller/Shutterstock 3. Damage to power supplies

The UK has three times more coastal energy facilities than any other European country. These facilities include oil refineries, fossil fuel and liquefied natural gas terminals, and nuclear power stations. Floodwater can inundate electrical equipment, damage control systems, disrupt fuel deliveries and cut off the roads and railways on which workers and suppliers depend, while saltwater can corrode infrastructure and complicate repairs.

Simultaneous damage to several facilities, or a prolonged interruption to a major fuel terminal or electricity connection, could make it harder to maintain reliable supplies. Even where electricity generation continues, damage to substations and other network infrastructure can prevent power from reaching consumers. This has implications for household energy bills, industrial production and the reliability of electricity supplies.

4. Risk to national security

The UK's defence infrastructure is also threatened by sea-level rise. Naval bases, dockyards and other coastal facilities are exposed to rising sea levels and storm surges, potentially affecting access, operations and the infrastructure needed to maintain military capability. Keeping these sites functioning in coming decades will require action that may include relocating some of them.

Sea-level rise could also make the rest of the world a more dangerous place. Population displacement driven by climate pressures, including sea-level rise, places additional demands on humanitarian assistance and international cooperation. It also compounds any existing political and security pressures nationally.

5. Rising costs

The costs of sea-level rise fall on people across the country. Protecting vulnerable communities, subsidising flood insurance and relocating communities and infrastructure from areas that can no longer be defended will require substantial investment.

Meanwhile, the loss of productive farmland could push up food prices, and disruption to ports and transport links could make imported goods more expensive or harder to obtain. Damage to energy infrastructure could add further costs for households and businesses. The cumulative effect would be felt across the country through higher prices, higher taxes and reduced spending on other public services.

What next?

Rapid emissions reductions to keep overshoot of 1.5°C as brief and as low as possible are the safest way to reduce the rate and extent of sea level rise, and the associated costs of adapting. However, current global policies are projected to take us to about 2.8°C of warming. The UN's upcoming climate summit, Cop31 in Turkey this November, will be a chance to close the gap between what has been promised and what is needed.

The world has already warmed by 1.4°C, so continued sea level rise is now inevitable even with rapid emissions reductions. Adaptation is as essential as mitigation. The design of sea defences and infrastructure need to be adapted accordingly as seas rise. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving coastal adaptation will help determine how severely sea level rise affects people, both inland and close to the coast.

Helen Millman sits on the advisory council of the Conservative Environment Network.

Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland has been a dumping ground for soil, fertiliser and wastewater for centuries.

It is the largest body of freshwater in the British Isles and was once surrounded by extensive Atlantic woodlands - woodlands that covered almost all of Ireland between 8,000 and 6,000 years ago.

In recent research I carried out with my co-author - the late Julie Fossitt - we looked at the impact of the removal of those forests.

The last woodlands were cleared in the early 1600s, leaving waterways unprotected and the landscape vulnerable to erosion.

The research also reveals what has ultimately contributed to the ecological vulnerability of Lough Neagh today.

By using palaeoecology (the study of relationships between ancient organisms and their environments across geological timescales) what grew in and around Lough Neagh can be reconstructed from the fossil pollen and other biological remains deposited in the lake sediments.

For the project, I analysed the fossil pollen preserved in the layers of lake sediment from the deepest part of Lough Neagh. Using a microscope, I could see evidence of the different herbs, shrubs and dwarf trees that had colonised the bare soil during the early Holocene period between 11,000-10,000 years ago, after the ice had disappeared in northern Europe.

As well as the pollen I also counted the green alga Pediastrum and particles of microcharcoal. Pediastrum is an indicator of soil erosion from nearby rivers and streams.

As temperatures rose after the last ice age, high levels of Pediastrum revealed how fragile the open landscape had been. But after the Atlantic woodland was established 8,000 years ago, the trees helped stabilise the landscape by helping to build the soil and holding the soil infrastructure together.

Our research shows large-scale native woodland can also significantly reduce runoff and buffer against extremes of droughts and floods. Our second observation is that the Atlantic woodlands of the past did not burn, or not easily, whereas the open landscapes of today are prone to wildfires.

What happened over time

Once the first farmers began to settle in the region over 5,000 years ago, the landscape became vulnerable to erosion again, due to deforestation as farmers removed trees and introduced livestock.

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Read more: Trees discovered at record-breaking altitudes highlight why we should restore Scotland's mountain woodland

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After that clearance period, fertilisers used on the land increasingly entered Lough Neagh. Soil became more fragile and runoff increased, as shown by growing levels of Pediastrum in the samples.

The value of the tropical rainforests in south-central America, central Africa or south-east Asia, is widely recognised as is their ongoing destruction, loss of biodiversity and their importance as carbon sinks and for regulating the global climate.

But in Europe the value of the great Atlantic woodlands, another type of rainforest, is often ignored. Between 8,000-6,000 years ago, these woodlands provided enormous environmental benefits such as stabilising and enriching soil.

British Isles woodland cover 6,000 years ago and today

Simon Crowhurst, CC BY-ND

According to the Woodland Trust, Northern Ireland currently has only 0.04% of ancient woodland remaining, the lowest in the United Kingdom. And even this has been threatened by the commercial planting of spruce trees.

Resurrecting the great woodlands

The question now is how we make use of the knowledge of the value of these ancient Atlantic woodlands.

Increasing global warming and unpredictable rapid swings between dry and wet weather conditions raises the risks of extreme agricultural runoff into waterways. Natural woodland cover in the Lough Neagh catchment area could help mitigate these effects. This is particularly relevant in the light of the completion of the £37 million soil nutrient scheme from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs across Northern Ireland. This is a massive soil sampling programme. This not only sampled up to 650,000 fields looking at soil content, including phosphorus, but also it produced runoff risk maps showing what is leaking from soil into lakes and rivers.

This should help farmers manage fertiliser applications on their fields more effectively and help to protect the environment. Planting and restoring natural woodlands and hedges with appropriate tree and shrub species should form part of the approach at sites particularly vulnerable to runoff and soil erosion.

In 1998, I reviewed scientific papers on climatic crises around 4,000 years ago, particularly droughts that appeared across the world causing famines and societal disruption. Oddly, the British Isles was one of the least effected areas. But at that time there was still significant Atlantic woodland cover to buffer climate extremes.

Many huge Mesolithic and Neolithic log boats have been discovered by archaeologists in the area around Lough Neagh. The size of oak trees required to build them can only be found in the primeval forests of Poland today.

But these give an indication of the size of the trees in those oak Atlantic woodlands and the biodiversity required to support them.

What's happening now?

Lough Neagh has been considered "dying" since 2023 due to toxic blue-green algal blooms and pollution. People are heavily discouraged from swimming in the water and fishing is restricted because of the environmental issues.

This situation has been made worse by agricultural runoff and sewage being brought in from waterways across Northern Ireland. This has also been exacerbated by the shallow water and increasingly warm conditions of Lough Neagh caused by climate change.

But the significant value of large native woodlands in helping to address the ecological problems of Lough Neagh and protect its waterways is being undervalued in current government plans.

Alex Chepstow-Lusty does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

An illustration from the Wellcome Collection of a medieval monk's herb garden. Wellcome Collection

For whatever the land you possess, whether it be where sand
And gravel lie barren and dead, or where fruits grow heavy
In rich moist ground; whether high on a steep hillside,
Easy ground in the plain or rough among sloping valleys -
Whereever it is, your land cannot fail to produce
Its native plants…

These words come the Hortulus: The Little Garden written by Wahlafrid Strabo (c. 808-849), who was a Benedictine monk from the monastery of Reichnau on an island in Lake Constance.

The 9th-century Hortulus is considered one of the most important European historical documents on gardening and plants, combining practical advice with its poetry. It continues to inspire modern gardeners in planting and design. The writings offers a tour of the monastery garden and the qualities of its plants. Twenty-nine plants are named, from Indian pepper to grapes, nettle, pennyroyal and peach. For the most part these are medicinal, though Wahlafrid includes some culinary observations, and a final detail about the rose as a source of soothing oil and symbol of the Virgin Mary.

The descriptions of the fresh and delightful taste of melon and gourds (bottle gourd or calabash) sit alongside longer discussion of the use and preparation of herbs and vegetables for health.

As a flavour of the way in which these observations were made, take the plant Southernwood (Aretemisia Abrotanum), not commonly known these days but common enough in the medieval period. Strabo notes that: "It has power against fevers, banishes stitch, and if your limbs ache with the elusive and mysterious pain of gout, it will bring relief."

Other instructions show how monks used plants as medicine including mixing fennel-root with wine to relieve a rasping cough, and the use of betony as a treatment for a septic wound.

Around 350 years later, in his large work On the Nature of Things, Alexander Neckham, a English Augustinian canon (so, not strictly a monk), wrote a description of a garden, probably recalling his days as a scholar in Paris. His list includes parsley, coriander, savory, cress, sorrel, ponlions, leeks, garlic and purslane, medlars, quinces and citrus fruits. He notes a number of herbs (spices) which do not grow in Europe, including ginger, clove, zedoary and myrrh. Neckham emphasises the importance of hard work in the garden, but also the importance of studying plants and their uses.

This combination of book learning, community knowledge and experience can be found in what is known as "the Herbal", which refers to historical writings on the science and health qualities of plants. These were copied, and added to, by hand. One of the earliest is On Medical Matters compiled by Dioscorides (c.40-c.90 AD), written in Greek and translated into Latin and Arabic.

This became a standard reference text, some with illustrations, in medieval Europe. Much of the focus lies on the medicinal usage of herbs, but also uses in cooking.

Pages from a 15th-century herbal, 1480-1500, translated from a 12th-century Latin manuscript by Matthaeus Platearius (d. 1161) Wellcome Collection

The plant lore of the monastic library might be supplemented by longer traditions of Roman science, for example the Natural History of Pliny the Elder (d.79 AD).

And the tradition continued with authors such as Henry of Huntingdon, a 12-century archdeacon, whose work the English Garden deals with six times the number of plants as Strabo, in a more elaborate literary tour of the garden and its plots.

Works by four other key botanists, Isidore, Bede, Macer, and Dioscorides, are to be found in the mid-12th century catalogue of the monastic library at Durham Cathedral Priory.

Then as now, health and eating were considered closely related. Most monasteries kept gardens. For instance, on the famous ninth-century architectural plan of an idealised monastery layout, known as the Plan of St Gall, a main kitchen garden as well as an orchard are shown.

A famous 9th-century architectural drawing of an ideal Benedictine monastery called the Plan of St Gall. Wikimedia

Knowledge of plant lore was passed down through the centuries by monks. This was part of a wider monastic approach to the natural environment, which has some resonance with gardening movements of today, by combining spirituality and mental health with growing and eating plants.

The 12th-century theologian William of St Thierry describes shady woodland, recognising the idea of spirituality gained from the natural world. He wrote that the "silent valley spoke to them of the simplicity and humility in the buildings, mirroring the simplicity and humility of those living there".

Another order, the Grandmontines, lived in communities of no more than 12. They believed in no excess and a self-sustaining community, which lived on what it grew. This idea of sustainability and self-sufficiency is popular again today.

Looking after their land

Monastic houses managed their land, livestock, mineral rights and waterways. Monasteries also maintained detailed records to pass down knowledge to those that came after them.

These medieval monastic communities also exercised considerable influence over the ecology of their estates, using land and resources carefully.

The valley of the Rie (now Rye) in North Yorkshire, the home of Rievaulx Abbey, is a good example of managed woodlands. It was coppiced and used as foraging grounds for pigs over many years of monastic stewardship. Terracing made the land more usable in the valley. Water channelling ensured sanitation as well as supplying the fulling mill, to help make textiles and clothing, and for the tanning vats, containers used to treat animal skins to make leather.

In Durham monks from the Cathedral Priory were at the heart of a change in the path of the river Wear. Evidence of this emerged in 2009 when heavy rain caused the ancient river's route to come to light. It appears that the river's course had been changed in medieval times to prevent the wooded peninsula of Durham from turning into an island.

A wealth of evidence survives showing just how important gardens and land were to medieval monasteries. While herbals and other historical literature show just how carefully monks used plants in everyday life, many of those ideas, such as sustainability, self-sufficiency and finding spirituality in green spaces, have been absorbed into modern gardening books and are embraced by gardeners today.

Giles Gasper receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK; the John Templeton Foundation; and the Castle Studies Trust.

Sinkholes are opening up across Turkey as farmers look for new sources of water. Yalcin Sonat/Shutterstock

Turkey's central Anatolian plateau is one of the country's most important agricultural regions, producing wheat, maize, sugar beet and other crops. Yet beneath its cultivated fields, the ground is becoming increasingly unstable.

Large sinkholes, some tens of metres wide and deep, have appeared across the Konga basin, swallowing farmland, and threatening nearby roads and settlements.

These collapses can occur suddenly, sometimes in fields that have been cultivated for generations. Around 20 are opening up every year, according to a recent study.

Known locally as obruks, sinkholes are not a new geological phenomenon. They have existed in the Konya basin for thousands of years, but they have become far more frequent over recent decades.

Konya's sinkholes are consequently both a geological hazard and evidence of a wider water-management problem. The cavities beneath the fields are the product of geological processes extending over thousands of years. Their recent instability, however, is occurring within a groundwater system profoundly altered by human activity and increasingly exposed to drought.

As representatives of countries all over the world prepare to head to Turkey to discuss climate change at the UN's Cop 31 conference, Ankara continues to grapple with this escalating environmental disaster at home.

The nation's disaster and emergency management authority (AFAD) has recently documented 684 sinkholes across Konya, Karaman and Aksaray in Turkey's agricultural heartlands.

Why are they there?

The growing number of sinkholes is often attributed to drought and climate change. But intensive groundwater extraction for agriculture can also increase the risk of collapse.

Decades of intensive agricultural irrigation have altered the conditions beneath the basin's surface. Groundwater, which is the layer of water below the Earth's surface, is also not being replenished during long, dry periods, which adds to the problem.

Konya is a closed drainage basin. This means water entering the basin does not flow towards the sea. It is stored underground, and accumulates in lakes and wetlands, or returns to the atmosphere through evaporation and plant transpiration.

Rainfall is relatively low here, and much of it falls outside the main growing season. Groundwater has, therefore, become indispensable to agriculture, particularly for irrigated maize, sugar beet and fodder crops.

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Read more: Subsidence claims: after drought, ground can shrink, swell or even collapse when it rains - causing damage to homes

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The difficulty is that demand for water has grown beyond the rate at which the aquifers, a body of porous rock or sediment saturated with groundwater, can recover. A recent regional study estimated an average annual loss of groundwater storage, equivalent to 3.4 centimetres of water. This figure clearly points to a system under sustained pressure.

Part of the problem is that Turkey experienced its most severe drought for decades in 2025, putting more pressure on farmers.

Farmers often respond by extracting more groundwater, causing underground water levels to fall. This reduces the pressure exerted by water within the pores and fractures of rocks and sediments, potentially destabilising existing underground cavities and increasing the risk of collapse.

The consequences extend beyond water scarcity, because groundwater also puts stress on underground geological formations. The Konya basin contains extensive carbonate rocks, including limestone. Over long periods, groundwater circulating through fractures dissolves minerals and enlarges openings. This process, known as karstification, can produce underground channels, caves and cavities. Sinkholes form when the material above such voids becomes unstable.

Lower groundwater levels can also change the movement of water and sediment through existing underground cavities, allowing loose material to shift downwards. Where the roof of a cavity is already weak, these changes may eventually lead to collapse.

But the response is highly dependent on local conditions. The depth and shape of underground cavities, the thickness and strength of the layers of rock and sediment above them, the distribution of fractures and the history of groundwater fluctuations all matter.

This helps explain an important finding from a study on sinkhole formation in the Konya basin between 2000 and 2024. The researchers identified a sharp increase in the annual formation rate, from approximately three sinkholes a year during 2000-10 to 32 during 2016-19. Yet the rate subsequently declined to around 22 a year after 2020, despite continuing groundwater depletion.

If falling groundwater is responsible, why would fewer sinkholes form while water levels continue to decline? One possible explanation is that the most vulnerable cavities in some areas have already collapsed. Sinkhole formation depends on the number of unstable underground structures, not simply on the volume of water extracted.

Sinkholes are opening up across the agricultural regions of Turkey. Land is breaking down

The basin is also experiencing another type of ground deformation, known as land subsidence, in which the surface gradually sinks as underground sediments compact. This can cause cracks in the ground and damage to roads and buildings, although the sinking is often too gradual to notice without satellite measurements.

Satellite radar measurements revealed widespread land subsidence in the area, of up to 90 millimetres per year. Unlike sudden sinkhole collapse, this can develop as groundwater withdrawal increases stress on the land and compresses sediments in the ground.

The problem is not unique to Turkey. A global analysis estimated that over 6.3 million square kilometres of land are subsiding by more than five millimetres annually. The researchers identified groundwater extraction as the most influential factor worldwide.

In Konya, the pressure on groundwater is closely connected to agricultural production. Farmers cultivate crops for established markets and processing industries, often under policies that have favoured high levels of production, rather than water conservation.

Irrigation provides a way for farmers to maintain yields of crops during dry years, but it also allows production to continue at levels that the basin's renewable water supply may not sustain.

However, restricting how much groundwater is extracted without providing support for farmers could impose substantial economic pressure on them, as well as on the nation's food supply. But continued groundwater depletion could progressively undermine the agricultural production that made the region economically important in the first place.

More efficient irrigation could help, but is not enough. If water saved through improved technology is used to expand the area being irrigated, total groundwater consumption may remain unchanged or even increase.

A long-term response would require reliable monitoring of groundwater levels and withdrawals, enforceable extraction limits, agricultural incentives aligned with local water availability and detailed mapping of geological hazards. Satellite measurements can help identify areas under pressure.

The most immediate danger is that another field, road or building may collapse, putting lives at risk.

Preventing the next sinkhole is difficult. The government could address the problem. But it needs to introduce agricultural policies that treat groundwater as a finite resource, rather than a permanent substitute for rainfall.

Nima Shokri is affiliated with Hamburg University of Technology.

SuxxesPhoto / shutterstock

The UK government has announced that standing charges will be removed from gas bills and that it intends to also remove them from electricity bills. Standing charges are a fixed fee paid by every household, regardless of how much they use. Under the proposed change, the costs they cover would instead be covered through unit rates, thereby ensuring that the costs are spread more fairly among those using more or less gas.

The budget also extends a temporary suspension of VAT on electricity and introduces a one-off payment of £100 to households in council tax bands A-D. Together, these measures might shave around £130 off the average annual energy bill for struggling households.

In principle, this announcement is welcome. But with energy bills expected to increase by £400 annually from January, these measures raise a bigger question: how should Britain pay for the energy system transformation away from fossil fuels? What if more of the costs were covered through taxation rather than bills?

Energy bills don't just reflect the cost of supplying electricity and gas. They also include "policy costs", which fund the greening of the energy system (around 60%) and support for vulnerable households (40%).

These costs add around £300 a year to the average household bill, accounting for around 16% of a typical electricity bill and 6% of a typical gas bill, according to research by Nesta.

Recovering these costs through electricity bills is a political choice that made more sense when electricity generation was mainly coal-fired and highly polluting. Now that the share of renewables is increasing steadily, we should reconsider how these policy costs are paid. Policy costs have roughly doubled in the past decade, making electricity relatively more expensive than gas, which slows the shift to electrified heating and transport.

From bills to taxes

The government has already taken steps towards shifting costs from bills to taxation.

In its 2025 autumn statement, the government moved 75% of the costs of the Renewables Obligation - an old policy support mechanism for renewable energy - into general taxation. It also disbanded a flagship but discredited home insulation scheme entirely. This was expected to lower bills by around £150 per year, before geopolitical turmoil pushed prices up again.

The latest budget provides a further example of this approach. Alongside the announcement to remove standing charges from bills, ministers have scrapped a planned levy on gas bills to fund hydrogen projects, deciding instead to pay for them through government funding.

Wind turbines await deployment in the North Sea. But should electricity bills help pay for this? Sergii Figurnyi / shutterstock

The UK's official advisory Climate Change Committee has also recommended removing policy levies from electricity bills to make electricity cheaper and accelerate electrification.

Energy UK, the industry's main trade body, has gone further, arguing for shifting policy costs off electricity and onto a mix of taxation and gas bills. This would make gas relatively more expensive, encouraging electrification and renewable energy.

Other groups, including parts of the chemical industry, warn that raising gas prices could make the industry less competitive by significantly raising industrial costs.

But who pays?

In principle, shifting costs from bills to taxation moves money between largely the same people. However, the distributional effects are different.

Instead of a flat fee on everyone's bill, a tax-funded system would be "progressive". This means the more you earn, the more you contribute.

By contrast, the current system of levies - with a fixed charge added to everyone's energy bill - is "regressive". Because those charges are the same for everyone, they take a much larger chunk out of a low-income household's budget than a wealthy one's.

This means poorer households not only spend a greater share of their income on energy, but many of the green subsidies funded by the levies - such as support for electric vehicles or heat pumps - disproportionately benefit wealthier households.

But why stop there? Analysts at the New Economics Foundation, a thinktank, argue for funding a basic level of energy use through taxation. The taxpayer would keep your lights on and your fridge running, but you'd think twice before charging your electric vehicle in the more expensive peak hours.

Thinktank E3G's work suggests this could cut household bills by around £300 a year, at a cost of £10-11 billion per year to 2030. Some of this could potentially be covered by higher tax revenues from oil and gas companies during periods of high prices, the thinktank argues.

It would be an intervention on a similar scale to the £40 billion the UK government spent on subsiding bills during the 2022-23 energy crisis sparked by Russia's invasion of the Ukraine.

Another option is a rising block tariff, in which energy use is divided into tiers, or "blocks", and households pay progressively more as their usage increases. Its proponents suggest block tariffs can make energy more affordable while aligning with wider decarbonisation goals.

In practice, however, these tariffs are likely to be regressive, since people on lower incomes are more likely to live in poorly-insulated homes and rely on less efficient electric night storage heating.

The government can do little to influence the effect of geopolitical uncertainty on energy prices, and drilling in the North Sea will do nothing to lower household bills. What it can do is change how those prices are passed on to consumers.

Shifting policy costs to taxation is already under way. But maybe the time is right for a minimum or essential energy use supported through taxation. It is not a simple solution, and many trade-offs need to be considered, but an unprecedented shock to energy markets requires an unprecedented response.

Colin Nolden researches sustainable energy and climate governance at the intersection of markets, policy, places, and people. He is currently funded by the Energy Demand Research Centre (EDRC). Colin also works as a specialist advisor of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, as an expert peer-reviewer for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and as a non-executive director of Community Energy Pathways.

Storm Austen and Storm Boelo swept across the UK in quick succession. Rain lashed windows, river levels rose and the clocks went back. It feels like winter has arrived all at once.

Yet most of England and Wales are still in drought. Parts of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Sussex are in severe drought, the highest level the Environment Agency can declare. South-west and south-east England have had their driest April to September in over 100 years.

But how can this be when it is cold, dark and pouring with rain? Drought tightens or loosens its grip over months, not just a few days. It will be the rainy or dry nature of the months ahead that will decide whether the drought ends, or more worryingly, if it stays into next summer.

Winter should fill the tank

Summer droughts grab the headlines and public attention. When we have a dry period over the summer it's everywhere, with brown lawns, hosepipe bans and cracked reservoir beds. But winter is when the UK refills its water stores.

Between October and March, with shorter and colder days, less water evaporates and plants drink far less, so rain finally has the chance to refill our reservoirs. Rain can soak deep into the ground to top up groundwater, the water held in chalk and sandstone rocks beneath our feet, like a giant sponge. Groundwater supplies much of the drinking water in southern and eastern England, but it fills slowly, over months and years.

Think of it like a bank account. A hot summer is a big splurge with lots of withdrawals. But a dry winter means the deposits needed to repay that spending never arrive. That's why a dry winter can do more damage to our water supplies than a heatwave.

Autumn storms in England, Wales and Scotland caused destruction.

This year the account is badly overdrawn. Southern England has just had its driest April to September in more than a century, alongside record summer heat. The Wimbleball reservoir on Exmoor, which supplies around 400,000 people, was full in March, after an extremely wet winter. Then the weather shifted from wetter than normal to dryer than normal. By October, water levels at Wimbleball were down to about 13%.

How unusual is a winter drought?

Droughts that carry on into winter are rare in the UK. Usually the autumn rain arrives, soil gets wetter and water stores recover by Christmas. Every instinct suggests that a stormy autumn should fix things.

In the 2010 to 2012 drought, two dry winters in a row left groundwater in south and east England so low that hosepipe bans came in during spring 2012. Then the wettest April on record arrived, and parts of the country swung from drought to flood within weeks.

What stands out now is how quickly droughts are stacking up. This is the third drought in England in five years. The stores barely have time to recover before the next one begins.

England and Wales can be in drought and experience flooding simultaneously. After months of dry weather it takes a lot of rain to wet the ground all the way through. Storms such as Boelo and Austen bring bursts of heavy rain. Drains are overwhelmed and rivers rise quickly, sometimes spilling out onto their floodplains. But the reservoirs and groundwater that supply our taps respond far more slowly, and need lots of water to fill up. So the type of winter rains make a big difference.

Floods can hit fast. But the key parts of the water cycle are slow. Rain has to wet the soil all the way through before it can trickle down into the rock, and groundwater can take months to respond. The Environment Agency estimates England needs around 120% of normal rainfall between September and April for every area to come out of drought. We would need half a year with consistently more rain than we would expect at this time of year to break this drought.

If rain falls short across the whole winter, then England could start next summer in drought, with even less room for manoeuvre.

Will winter droughts become more common?

But climate scientists don't expect there will be a dry winter every year, either now or in decades ahead as fossil fuel burning continues to heat the planet. Climate projections suggest UK winters will get wetter on average. But averages can hide the danger.

Summers heated by the burning of fossil fuels dry out the soil and drain reservoirs faster, leaving a bigger hole for winter to fill. Winter rain is increasingly arriving in heavy bursts that are harder to capture and more likely to flood. And natural swings in the weather will still deliver dry winters from time to time. Put those together and the chance of a drought rolling into winter, or across two winters, goes up. This is a trend that will keep getting worse as long as we keep heating the planet.

Preparing starts with how we think about water. It is precious, not endless. Yet we have built a system that lets a wet winter rush away to the sea, then rations what is left through a dry summer.

As with other parts of the UK's water system, we are paying the price now for years of chronic underinvestment. Water companies need to move much faster on fixing leaks, which still waste billions of litres every day. New reservoirs are being planned in England, which will help deliver more storage. But they will take more than a decade to build, cost billions of pounds, and cannot be the whole solution.

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Read more: England's water crisis needs more than just new reservoirs - here's what will help

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There is also a low-tech local answer, that would need regulation and a programme of retrofitting to make a big difference. Rainwater harvesting and water reuse in new and existing homes, sustainable drainage in our towns, and encouraging wetlands and floodplains that hold water like a sponge.

Changes to our landscape and homes can help prevent both problems.

Each of us can help. Take shorter showers, ask your water company about a meter and and fit a water butt to catch rain for the garden. These habits add up.

Autumn storms have started to replenish water reserves, but it's not the finish line. We also need to get ahead of what is likely to happen in years to come.

Hannah Cloke advises the Environment Agency, the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, local and national governments and humanitarian agencies on the forecasting and warning of natural hazards. She is a fellow of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts. Her research is funded by the UKRI Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council, the European Commission and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

These ghost-like glass frogs live in Central and South America. Lukas Gogh/Shutterstock

Around this time of year, elaborate decorations featuring ghosts, vampires, zombies, witches and werewolves adorn front doors, gardens and shop windows across the country.

But you may be surprised to hear that in the animal world, there are many real-life creatures with similar tendencies to these fictional characters of our Halloween nightmares.

The southern grasshopper mouse (Onychomys torridus) howls at the moon to defend its territory and attract mates, a little like werewolves in films. These nocturnal rodents stand up on their hind legs, point their nose upwards, and produce high-pitched sounds.

Grasshopper mice are voracious carnivores, preying upon scorpions, beetles, grasshoppers, and even other mice. They are also immune to the stings of their favourite food - the bark scorpion (Centruroides sculpturatus). Grasshopper mice can block the chemical pathway that transmits the signal from the venom, essentially numbing themselves to the pain. They then bite off the scorpion's tail, rendering their prey defenseless to their fate.

These little rodents are so formidable that they will unhesitatingly attack anything that is appropriately sized and considered to be food, even if it might be dangerous.

Small mammals, like grasshopper mice, play crucial ecological roles in their ecosystems. For example, through digging their burrows, they can act as ecosystem engineers (species that modify the environment) creating microhabitats for other species.

The emerald jewel wasp (Ampulex compressa) is a stunningly beautiful and ecologically important species. Not only do they act as casual pollinators for a range of plant species, they are also an essential biocontrol; an organism that controls the population of a pest species.

Over millions of years they have evolved the morbid ability to sting cockroaches and turn them into compliant zombies upon which they lay their eggs. When these eggs hatch, the larvae devour the zombified cockroach from the inside out.

Vampires and witches

Small birds called oxpeckers (Buphagus species) and large ungulates (hoofed mammals) were considered to have a mutually beneficial relationship. When these birds removed pesky ticks and other parasites from their mammalian companions, they were rewarded with a quick, tasty meal. Oxpeckers are often spotted travelling around on the backs of these larger animals.

However, research has highlighted that this relationship may be more complicated than previously thought. Oxpeckers will pick at open wounds to consume blood and flesh - inflicting injuries, preventing wound-healing, and increasing the risk of infection in their hosts.

Mice howl at the moon and eat scorpions.

Witches are well known for creating magical potions but some insects do this too. Bombardier beetles can blast would-be predators with explosive chemicals discharged from their abdomens at temperatures of 100°C. They do this by mixing hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide within their bodies in a small reaction chamber - their cauldron, if you will - to create this explosion.

Some other insects use chemicals not as a defence mechanism, but to woo a mate. This isn't an elixir of love, but instead the combination of a chemical and an enzyme (Luciferin and luciferase) that causes a beautiful, if slightly eerie, glow.

The fireflies of the family Lampyridae are actually beetles, whose males flash these colours enthusiastically to attract a waiting female from the undergrowth. Beauty and intrigue aside, fireflies are useful throughout their native range. As larvae they feed on many soft-bodied invertebrates, preventing pest outbreaks and maintaining maintaining a natural equilibrium of species in the soil and leaf litter.

Ghostly frogs

Some frogs in the family Centrolenidae are so translucent, or ghost-like, that they have become known as glass frogs.

Found in the tropical forests of Central and South America, these extraordinary frogs spend much of their lives in the trees and play an important role in the ecosystem. They help regulate insect populations through predation and act as prey for a variety of other species, including in aquatic food webs as tadpoles inhabiting streams. In many ways, they occupy multiple levels of the rainforest ecosystem, linking both terrestrial and freshwater environments.

Come Halloween, many people embellish their houses with plastic skeletons and toilet-paper clad mummies. One insect does a similar thing - the aptly named bone-house wasp (Deuteragenia ossarium). Known for hunting another Halloween favourite, the spider, it decorates the nests it makes for its young with a pile of ant corpses. This morbid tableau provides sensory camouflage for the nest, keeping intruders well away.

All these species are important components of their ecosystems - from keeping pest populations in check or being prey themselves for other animals, to acting as ecological indicators allowing us to monitor environmental changes. Ecological indicator species are key species within ecosystems that help us understand more about how our impact on the planet is affecting other species. Animals respond to different things in the environment, so their populations and behaviours can indicate whether the environment is changing for the better or worse.

These animals may have some rather terrifying tendencies, but unlike the fantasy characters of our horror-film nightmares, they don't disappear after All Hallows' Eve. They also have real environmental benefits that endure.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Drones are starting to be used help experts predict winter storms more accurately. 1000 words/Shutterstock

Weather drones are being tested to help update forecasts of extreme weather more quickly, and could help us prepare earlier for upcoming winter storms.

With an unprecedented El Niño increasing the chance of storms and wet weather in Europe this winter, meteorologists will be looking at new and developing tools to help them forecast as accurately as possible.

The ability of new types of weather drones to collect more information ahead of incoming bad weather has already attracted the attention of financial traders.

Energy traders have to buy and sell electricity produced from sources like wind and solar farms. They need to judge the supply and demand as quickly as possible. This means they need updates to weather forecasts so they can predict when clouds might shade solar panels, or if an approaching storm could increase wind turbine generation.

US researchers have recently highlighted that the ability of drones to collect information on air pressure and wind speed, for instance, in real time is proving useful for forecasting extreme weather events faster.

Meanwhile, UK researchers are pushing the technology further by using drones to collect valuable data inside clouds. Clouds are fundamental to many weather effects, including rain, fog, lightning, hail and extreme winds.

A wide-angle camera looks directly up and captures a timelapse of cumulus clouds moving across the sky. wxlabs.co.uk

In 2024, the World Meteorological Organisation hosted its first demonstration of weather drones. These drones measured temperature and wind speed, and focused on the lowest few kilometres of the atmosphere.

This use of drones is being developed with the expectation that they can be used as part of a network of drone stations by meteorological agencies, to complement traditional networks of weather stations.

These drones can be deployed remotely from a dock, allowing routine measurement of the lower atmosphere to inform weather forecasts. This is similar to how weather balloons currently operate. Drones, however, have the potential to provide data at much higher frequency, and more quickly. Data could be collected hourly or more often, and with less waste such as lost weather balloon equipment.

A new research project, Drone Observation Of Clouds (DOOC), led by the University of Leeds, is working out if new kinds of measurement could become part of weather forecasting in the future. They are looking at measuring the most uncertain component of weather and climate, clouds.

Between June and November 2026 DOOC has been flying and collecting measurements at a site in Yorkshire, UK. Leeds-based drone operator, Menapia, has collaborated with University of Leeds to obtain permission to fly in an unusually narrow column of air up to 1,600 metres.

That small section of airspace enables a weather drone to measure temperature, humidity, wind and cloud particles at all heights between the ground and 1,600 metres. At only 30m wide, this narrow piece of airspace only makes sense for a rotor drone that can ascend perfectly vertically.

A particle counter is mounted on the drone and can determine the size and concentration of cloud droplets. It has been developed and tested for almost a decade, honing it to be suitable for drone-based measurement.

The DOOC project will build on recent forecasting advances at the UK Met Office. UK forecasts now use a much more detailed representation of cloud physics to make forecasts more accurate.

Drone-based measurements of weather and clouds could offer the next breakthroughs in the rapidly growing field of AI weather forecasting. AI weather forecasting leans more heavily on data than traditional forecasting methods. So, the collection of routine observations of the atmosphere has become more important than ever.

As US researchers are also finding, one of the greatest challenges is how to work with regulators to enable drone operation for research alongside traditional air users, as well as commercial and military drone users.

Scientists are arguing for new infrastructure investment and regulatory support to make the most of this developing drone technology.

Drone observations have the potential to greatly benefit wider society through the improved weather forecasts, which will mean the ability to prepare better for upcoming extreme weather earlier, and potentially put protection in place.

Declan Finney receives funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

Jessica Girdwood receives funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in addition to the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).

The system of currents that keeps north-western Europe relatively mild is already weakening. (Illustration shows Atlantic surface currents and eddies, with arrows showing the Amoc's warm northward surface flow and cold southward return flow at depth.) Brenden Jongman / NASA and NOAA data / Amoc pathways added schematically

Icelandic government officials recently met to discuss a dramatic scenario: what if the current that circulates Atlantic waters weakened significantly, or collapsed altogether?

The ocean currents are changing, with major implications for climate around the world. Yet our new research suggests most governments are not preparing for this possibility. Of 91 national adaptation plans submitted to the UN climate convention, only two even mention that key Atlantic current, and neither sets out concrete action in response to its possible collapse.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or Amoc, is part of the giant conveyor belt of ocean currents that moves warm surface water northward in the Atlantic and sends colder deep water back south. It plays a critical role in regulating the global climate by redistributing heat around the planet, influencing weather patterns and temperatures far beyond the Atlantic basin.

As the climate warms, the Amoc is weakening, and could continue to do so throughout this century. While a full collapse, in which major ocean currents completely reorientate, is unlikely before 2100, a recent study projected a 50% weakening of the Amoc by the end of the century under an intermediate emissions scenario. A collapse would not be unique in geological history. Studies show that the Amoc has undergone dramatic changes before, including a near-complete shutdown around 17,500 years ago, after the coldest period in the last ice age.

A slowdown or collapse would have major implications for temperature and rainfall around the world. In northern Europe, the loss of the heat Amoc transfers northwards from the tropics could lead to winter cold extremes of -20°C in London.

Climate model experiments in which the Amoc is shut down show an average 29% weakening of the West African monsoons and 19% weakening of the Indian summer monsoon, increasing risks of food and water insecurity in regions that rely on monsoon rains. Other studies suggest an increased risk of severe drought in parts of Central America, West Africa and the Amazon region. Fisheries and sea level would also be affected.

The Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, where the Atlantic meets Europe. Warm ocean currents keep north-west Europe relatively mild. tcacidima / shutterstock

So how can countries prepare for changes in ocean circulation whose timing is highly uncertain? Our research identifies practical steps to incorporate Amoc-related risks into adaptation decision-making.

Most investments assume only gradual change

Of the 91 national adaptation plans reported to the UN climate convention so far, only two mention the Amoc. Brazil's plan devotes a dedicated box to warning that its shutdown could push the Atlantic rain belt southwards, tipping the Amazon rainforest towards collapse. Ireland - which relies on the Amoc to sustain its mild climate - mentions that "reliance solely on adaptation may prove insufficient" in case of Amoc collapse, concluding that no national plan can prepare for such tipping points.

Amoc is a particular challenge for adaptation. It represents a very high impact scenario whose likelihood is very difficult to quantify. And yet if the current were to collapse, some parts of the world could experience climate changes in the opposite direction to those they are preparing for, most notably colder winters in north-western Europe.

This is important because many adaptation investments need to be robust to a wide range of potential changes to be effective. Consider a country planning to build a new reservoir to cope with more variable rainfall amounts under climate change. If instead the rainy season becomes shorter and there is less rain overall, the reservoir may seem like a bad investment.

The effects of an Amoc slowdown would be felt across the world. Jongman & Hall (2026), Nature Sustainability

Similarly, in countries that depend on monsoon rains, a weakening or collapse of the Amoc could mean even less rainfall than is projected under climate change. Along Atlantic coastlines, changes in sea level and ocean temperatures could affect how well coastal defences work. Changes in fish stocks could also threaten communities that depend on fishing.

Many investments made now will remain in use for decades. Investments that perform well under moderate Amoc weakening but poorly if the current weakened much more could expose countries to major losses and damages, especially poorer countries with fewer resources to respond to surprises.

Five ways to prepare for major Amoc weakening

In our study, we outline five ways policymakers can start preparing now.

1. Identify the investments and countries most at risk. Countries that rely heavily on monsoon rainfall, fisheries, or have major investments along the Atlantic coast may be especially exposed, as are countries with limited ability to respond to surprises.

2. Stress-test key investments. This means using computer simulations with Amoc-collapse scenarios to check whether these investments would still achieve their intended purpose under very different conditions, such as changes in temperature, sea level or rainfall.

3. Favour flexible solutions. Choose investments that can be adapted or expanded as conditions change, such as infrastructure projects that are built in stages or are easily upgradeable, or wide diversity of water supply or coastal defence options.

4. Use Amoc monitoring to inform adaptation decisions. Sustained funding for ocean monitoring is needed to track changes in ocean circulation, but governments should also regularly reassess whether their adaptation investments remain effective as our knowledge of Atlantic currents evolves.

5. Reassess global climate projections. Explore the implications of major Amoc weakening or collapse for global climate projections, including estimates of future warming. The Amoc influences how much carbon the oceans absorb from the atmosphere, so changes in its circulation could affect both how countries adapt to climate changes and how much further warming they need to prepare for.

These actions do not require predicting whether or when the Amoc will collapse, and should not take attention or resources away from responding to heatwaves, droughts, floods and other impacts of climate change that already happening. Efforts to rapidly cut greenhouse gas emissions remain crucial.

What countries can do is start testing long-term investments against scenarios involving major Amoc weakening, helping to ensure that infrastructure, water supplies and other adaptations remain effective in all plausible futures.

Brenden Jongman is affiliated with The World Bank and received support from The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery.

Jim Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Right now, people in parts of Indonesia are inhaling what may be the most polluted atmosphere on Earth. As the historically large 2026 El Niño intensifies, parts of south east Asia have been plunged into an air quality crisis of catastrophic proportions.

Smoke from fires has driven concentrations of dangerous and tiny particulate matter, known as PM2.5, to extreme levels - creating a public health emergency threatening millions of lives.

The World Health Organization (WHO) stipulates a maximum breathable "safe limit" of 15 micrograms per cubic metre of PM2.5 across a 24-hour average. In haze affected parts of Indonesia, this year's concentrations have routinely exceeded 500 micrograms, and even 1,000 in places - that's more than 65 times the WHO maximum.

This is not the kind of polluted air you might find on a smoggy day in most parts of the world - it is a toxic atmosphere considered by the US Environmental Protection Agency to be "hazardous". The delayed effects of breathing such air include increased risk of heart attack, stroke and a host of respiratory illnesses.

The roots of the crisis

The catalyst for this year's crisis is a collision between meteorological events and decades of changes to Indonesia's landscape. The historically intense El Niño has brought a punishing dry spell across the archipelago, leaving the landscape parched.

But the weather is only the match; land management practices provide the fuel.

Historically, lowland tropical forests growing on peat soils were naturally resistant to fire because of their moist conditions. However, deforestation for agriculture, forest fragmentation and peatland drainage have drastically altered the landscape and increased its flammability.

The effects can extend beyond the areas directly cleared or drained: even untouched forest close to degraded areas will have lost some of its natural fire resistance. The El Niño-driven drought has supercharged these changes, making it easier for fires to take hold and spread.

The hidden cost of peat fires

Fire is widely used across the region, to help prepare land for agriculture, clear low-lying vegetation, or to burn household waste. Yet, when fires are set during a drought, they can ignite the drained peatland soil and escape into the surrounding landscape.

An orangutan caught in forest fire haze (photo taken by one of the authors on a previous fieldwork trip). Martin Wooster

A peat fire does not simply flame and pass; it also smoulders downwards into the ground, sometimes burning for weeks or months. An alarming consequence of peat fires is the release of ancient carbon—organic matter that has been safely locked away for hundreds of years. This carbon generally won't be reabsorbed by future forest growth, as the land has been repurposed for agriculture. It is a permanent transfer of carbon from land into the air.

This year alone, Indonesia's fires have released an estimated 175 million tonnes of carbon, equivalent to three-quarters of the country's annual fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions and exceeding the combined annual fossil-fuel and industrial CO₂ emissions of the UK and France.

The scale of the 2026 fire and haze marks a setback after some years of progress. There has been a promising downward trend in regional fire activity, due in part to improved fire management and efforts at "re-wetting" peatlands to make them less flammable.

The severity of the current El Niño has interrupted this good work. Satellite analysis indicates more than 120,000 fire hotspot detections across Indonesia so far - fewer than in 2015 (another El Niño year), but seven times as many as in 2025.

The human and economic cost of the resulting haze is staggering, and many will likely perish from the effects of the toxic smoke. The haze has also drifted beyond Indonesia, at times blanketing neighbouring Malaysia, Brunei, southern Thailand and Singapore.

The health effects of wildfire smoke extend around the world. Globally, exposure contributes to a million or more premature deaths each year, including almost one in ten deaths of children under five.

Firefighters in the aftermath of forest fires in Indonesia (photo taken by one of the authors on fieldwork in 2019). Martin Wooster From detection to prevention

Worryingly, the number of fires in Indonesia could actually be underestimated as satellites are less effective at detecting the lower temperatures of smouldering peat fires. New technologies designed to better detect these fires could help authorities identify them sooner and respond more quickly, provided the data can be rapidly delivered to those who need it.

But better detection and fire suppression can only do so much. In many areas, the key action is to restore drained peatlands so they are less vulnerable to fire in the first place. A new national peatland and mangrove management agency is being established with this remit.

For now, the immediate prognosis remains bleak. It is hard to extinguish underground peat fires once they have taken hold, and the 2026 El Niño is projected to intensify until the end of the year. The immediate crisis will eventually end, but reducing the risk of future disasters will require Indonesia to restore and protect its peatlands with renewed vigour.

Martin Wooster receives funding from UK Research and Innovation and the Leverhulme Trust.

Gareth Roberts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Katsiaryna Hurava/Shutterstock

When a company wants to be more sustainable, adding an eco-friendly feature isn't always better than taking something away.

People often favour "more". Studies suggest that statements framed around "more" are easier to process and remember than those framed around "less".

In experiments that involved modifying Lego structures, redesigning miniature golf courses and improving digital grids, it was found that participants routinely overlooked opportunities to improve outcomes through subtraction. People tended to add things rather than remove them, even when subtraction would work better. Recent consumption trends also show this tendency: the size of the average car is growing at a rate of 1cm every two years as larger models have become more popular.

One reason why people favour more is that additions are visible. When people judge a service or a product, they tend to focus on what is in front of them and overlook what is missing. It is easier to notice something a company has added than to value what it has deliberately removed.

One reason why people favour more is that additions are visible. esthermm/Shutterstock

That can distort how consumers judge sustainability. A hotel room with bamboo toiletries, a recycled plastic water bottle and other eco-friendly extras may look greener than a room with fewer items, even if removing unnecessary products means less waste. This tendency is known as the sustainable additive bias: people perceive environmentally friendly additions more favourably than reductions, even when reducing use or waste may bring greater environmental benefits.

This bias occurs because visible eco-friendly additions can signal that a company is making an effort and is committed to sustainability. A reduction leaves fewer obvious eco-friendly cues, so consumers may interpret it as "less effort" rather than as a considered attempt to reduce environmental harm.

We tested this bias across nine studies in different product and service settings in our latest study. In an experiment with 302 hotel guests, rooms with more eco-friendly amenities were judged more sustainable than rooms with fewer. Yet guests in those rooms generated a higher proportion of waste. Across the studies, consumers could recognise the benefits of removing conventional, less sustainable items. The bias arose when they compared adding and removing items presented as eco-friendly.

Why is this problematic? When hotels replace single-use toiletries with refillable dispensers, or companies remove unnecessary items from product bundles to cut waste, they may expect consumers to hail these changes as environmentally responsible. But the opposite may happen. Companies that genuinely want to reduce their impact on the environment may be misjudged.

This does not mean companies should avoid replacing less sustainable products with more sustainable alternatives. The concern is adding eco-friendly items that are unnecessary. Companies should explain why reducing these items benefits the environment, so customers do not mistake using less for making less effort.

So sustainable consumption needs a rethink and a cultural change.

Less is more

Companies should explain why less is more and make the work behind those decisions prominent, explaining the environmental logic: which items or resources are being reduced, why they are unnecessary, and how the change cuts waste or environmental impact.

A food delivery company, for example, could stop automatically including disposable bamboo cutlery and napkins with every order, and instead let consumers request them when needed. The company could explain that it changed its ordering and packing process to avoid sending items many consumers do not use, reducing unnecessary material without changing the meal itself. This helps consumers recognise the effort behind a reduction rather than interpreting it as a lower quality offer or a lack of commitment.

Italian circular-fashion brand Rifó offers an example of making reduction visible: its sustainability report explains how its pre-order model is designed to match production with demand and avoid making garments customers do not need. They also encourage consumers to repair rather than replace with new items.

By emphasising the effectiveness of simple solutions, policymakers can celebrate reduction as a virtue. They can showcase production and consumption practices that use fewer resources, offer fewer unnecessary items or prevent waste - thereby reducing their environmental impact. This approach may benefit consumers too: reducing consumption and materialism can improve people's wellbeing, while minimalism enhances happiness and life satisfaction. Giving positive examples a visible platform can help challenge the assumption that progress always means adding another product or feature.

Sustainable production alone cannot solve the problem of overconsumption. We need to learn that less can be better. We are accustomed to seeing addition as improvement, but removing what is unnecessary does not mean reducing quality. Sometimes it creates a more efficient service and a genuinely better environmental outcome.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Serenity Images23/Shutterstock

As winter approaches, many of us start clearing leaves and tidying up our gardens. But these jobs can remove vital winter habitats for wildlife, particularly with increasingly volatile weather conditions.

Residential gardens cover 4.6% of Great Britain's land area - over three times the size of the UK's National Nature Reserves - so they are important refuges for our biodiversity, particularly in urban areas.

There are many things you can do to make your garden wildlife-friendly, from installing a pond to establishing a compost heap or planting native, flowering plants and trees.

However, research has shown that there are obstacles to householders engaging in wildlife-friendly gardening practices, such as costs and the level of effort or knowledge involved. The effort needed to maintain a garden appears to discourage people to such an extent that almost half (42%) of residential gardens in the UK are now paved over. It even appears a growing number would prefer to cover their gardens in plastic artificial grass rather than (heaven forbid) have an unkempt lawn.

Whether you're motivated by the thought of encouraging more butterflies into your garden next year or just more time curled up on the sofa, wildlife-friendly gardening can involve less effort. Here is my argument for why you should do less in the garden this autumn.

Leave the leaves

Leave some leaf litter, raked into a pile in a quiet corner for hedgehogs to use as nesting material for hibernation. Beetles, spiders, and other invertebrates will also shelter in leaf litter - in turn, providing food for foraging birds like robins and blackbirds.

However, leaf litter doesn't only provide shelter or hunting ground - it can also be an important food source itself. Detritivores, such as woodlice and millipedes, feed on decomposing plant matter and, in doing so, play a crucial role in nutrient cycling.

Winter refuge

Dedicate a patch to fallen twigs or a log pile.

Stacking logs creates nooks and crannies, with the centre and bottom of the pile staying wetter and rotting quicker while the top dries out. Although this does involve leaving the warm embrace of the living room, it could give you an easy place to abandon those leftover wood cuts and sweep loose twigs into.

Ladybirds will appreciate log stacks left out in your garden. Alex Polo/Shutterstock

The damp conditions in a log pile are ideal for beetles and woodlice, while ladybirds and butterflies tend to occupy the drier parts. These invertebrates then act as prey for other species, such as amphibians, small mammals, and birds. In this way, a log pile provides a variety of niches, offering refuge and food for a whole wildlife community.

Deadwood habitats are also vital for Europe's largest beetle: the stag beetle. They spend most of their life as a grub, feeding on rotten wood for several years, before emerging as an adult.

Finding cover as the temperature falls is particularly important for ectotherms, such as amphibians and reptiles, which rely on their surroundings to regulate their body temperature. Frogs, toads, newts, and lizards hide away under log piles, rocks, and vegetation - entering a state of dormancy known as brumation, which is similar to hibernation in mammals.

Procrastinate the pruning

Hang fire on deadheading spent flowers and cutting back perennial stems until the following spring. The seed heads are an important food source for birds, such as sparrows and finches, as well as small mammals like mice and voles. The hollow stems also provide shelter for solitary bees.

Why deadhead the flowers when you can put it off til spring. MargJohnsonVA/Shutterstock

If you're lucky enough to have a fruit tree in your garden, spare a few windfalls. Fallen apples and pears will be eaten by mammals, from small rodents through to badgers, and birds, like thrushes and tits. They are also a late-season source of sugar for butterflies, ants, and other invertebrates.

Resist the urge to tidy the garden on the first sunny day of spring. Many animals only emerge from dormancy once the days start to get longer or temperatures consistently rise. Early gardening may expose over-wintering wildlife to late-season frosts. This could also include delaying mowing the lawn, to leave the dandelions and clover as an early source of nectar for bees.

By simply doing less, we can promote habitat complexity and help increase species diversity in our gardens. So, we should embrace a "messy" garden as the new norm - and feel a little less guilty if we don't get around to ticking the gardening off our weekend chore list.

Kat Hamill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Robert Eggers's historical folk horror Werwulf will be in cinemas this winter. It's set in 1305, when wolves still roamed parts of England. As they vanished from English shores due to sustained hunting, however, the werewolf myth moved abroad. The creature changed from a pitiable victim into a diabolical killer, before being rediscovered and reinvented by the Victorians.

In Eggers's film, a hunter arrives in an English village to enlist local peasants in a wolf hunt declared by the king. The premise has a real historical basis, as the character appears to be inspired by Peter Corbet, a Shropshire baron of the Welsh Marches.

In 1281, Corbet was commissioned by Edward I to hunt and destroy all wolves within a cluster of counties bordering Wales, with the aid of the king's bailiffs. Although the campaign is sometimes explained as an effort to protect England's lucrative wool industry, Edward's orders specified the crown's hunting domains first and foremost. Surviving documentation from medieval Britain often places wolves within forests, chases and parks, where populations of deer were also concentrated.

The wolf population in Britain endured Corbet's hunts, although the last ones are difficult to pin down. Young individuals could have dispersed into already "cleared" areas, and a pack was almost certainly present on the North York Moors at the end of the 14th century. It is thought they may also have lingered in the Scottish Highlands into the 18th century. Animal remains currently being investigated may yet help archaeologists refine that timeline.

The trailer for Werwulf.

Early on in Werwulf, one of the farmers enlisted in the wolf hunt turns out to be a werewolf. Medieval people did believe in this possibility. In his encyclopedic work Otia Imperialia (Recreation for an Emperor), published in 1211, the statesman and writer Gervase of Tilbury described men transforming into wolves in England in accordance with the phases of the moon.

Gervase presented this as a real occurrence, but there were also accounts of fictional werewolves. Texts circulating in England such as poet Marie de France's Bisclavret (circa 1160-1175) and the French folk romance, Guillaume de Palerne (William of Palerne), from around 1350, show werewolves being incorporated into courtly storytelling.

These texts told tales of human nobles trapped in wolf form, more victims than monsters. Yet they drew their imaginative power from landscapes in which real wolves could be seen and heard.

From pitiable victim to devil's agent

Wolves continued to be written about in negative terms long after their disappearance, while werewolves became increasingly associated with foreign lands. But werewolves were also changing character, from victims of misfortune to agents of Satan.

Woodcut of a werewolf attack by Lucas Cranach der Ältere (1512). Ducal Museum Gotha

In 1590, a pamphlet was printed in London which described the life, trial and brutal execution of Peter Stumpp, a German man accused of being a werewolf. Stumpp, a farmer from Bedburg near Cologne, had allegedly made a pact with the devil and acquired a magical belt that enabled him to assume the form of a wolf. The pamphlet was translated and expanded from the German account by the writer George Bores.

Stump was not presented as a sympathetic human trapped in wolf form, but as a murderous sorcerer who killed people and livestock and committed sexual violence, incest and cannibalism. Foreign werewolves were not entirely new. The 12th-century writer Gerald of Wales had placed his compassionate werewolves in Ireland, but Stumpp's diabolical werewolf was a different creature entirely.

The English pamphlet significantly expanded and sensationalised the account it was based on, resulting in a 21-page narrative with an eight-panel woodcut image showing Stumpp's capture, trial and execution. It also went to considerable lengths to establish the credibility of its story, invoking witnesses and correspondence from Germany.

Stumpp's case was one of at least 300 prosecutions of werewolfery which formed an occasional component of the much larger number of witchcraft trials in early modern Europe.

Panels from The Damnable Life and Death of Stubbe Peeter (printed 1590). Lambeth Palace Library

In Britain, wolves were not sufficiently embedded in everyday life to become part of witchcraft prosecutions. In Scotland, however, with its intense witch-hunting culture and a surviving wolf population, a 17th-century court record shows the term being used as an insult, although there were no prosecutions of werewolves. In this respect the presence of wolves alone cannot explain where such accusations arose.

Rediscovering the werewolf

With the end of witch hunting, the werewolf largely disappeared from Britain as a serious supernatural possibility.

Then in the 19th century, writers and antiquarians began recovering and reinventing werewolf lore as part of a wider fascination with the Middle Ages. Priest and hagiographer Sabine Baring-Gould's Book of Were-Wolves (1865) is the best example of this process. He consolidated a huge body of werewolf lore for English-speaking readers, helping to establish the comparative tradition for later popular representations.

Illustration from Sabine Baring-Gould's Book of Were-Wolves (1865). Public Domain Review

Hollywood later drew on this inheritance, but made the werewolf a sympathetic cursed victim again in The Wolf Man (1941), a figure closer to Bisclavret than to Stumpp. In his upcoming film, Eggers has claimed he has hit the reset button on the werewolf, presenting the story of a cursed man seeking salvation through love, a premise that also echoes the werewolves of medieval courtly literature.

Meanwhile, wolves are recolonising parts of continental Europe. There is also an ongoing discussion about their reintroduction to Britain.

What will happen if wolves return as free-living animals after centuries of imagining them through stories? Today we do not fear literal shape changers stalking our forests and moorlands. Yet popular culture gives animals enduring meanings. Just look at the influence of Little Red Riding Hood and the persistent "big bad wolf".

Werwulf could be the next story to shape how we imagine wolves. If they do return, those meanings may influence how we live with them.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Aleks Pluskowski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

PNW Park Ranger / shutterstock

When the clocks go back each October, we gain an hour of sleep and lose an hour of evening daylight. The practice of moving the clocks forward in spring was introduced partly to save energy, by making better use of daylight at the end of the day so there would be less need for artificial lighting.

But the lights in our homes have changed dramatically since the UK first adopted summer time in 1916 - and the change over the past decade or so has been especially rapid. A modern LED bulb can produce as much light as an old-fashioned 100-watt bulb while using a fraction of the electricity. This raises a question: in an age of energy-efficient lighting, does changing the clocks still save us much energy?

The UK introduced the clock change in 1916, during the first world war, to conserve fuel and enhance productivity. Moving the clock one hour forward would delay sunset relative to the time, and hence should save energy by reducing the need for lights after dark.

After a few tweaks in the 1960s and 70s, the current scheme has been in place since 1980, with clocks going forward on the last Sunday in March and reverting to Greenwich Mean Time on the last Sunday in October. Since the mid-1990s, these dates have been harmonised across the EU to reduce any disruption in travel and business.

But whether the clock change delivers the energy savings originally intended remains uncertain. A 2026 House of Commons Library report found that the effects of clock changes on energy demand are inconclusive. The potential savings from reduced lighting use can be offset by changes in heating and cooling demand.

Modern lights use a lot less electricity

Incandescent bulbs, which produce light by passing an electric current through a tungsten filament, are highly inefficient. Most of their energy goes into generating heat - of the electricity they consume, just 5% to 10% or so is turned into light. These bulbs were phased out of the UK market between 2009 and 2012, followed by most halogen bulbs (a similar technology) in 2021.

Those bulbs were replaced by light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, now the most efficient light bulbs in widespread use. An LED bulb producing the same amount of light as a 100-watt incandescent bulb (about 1,520 lumens) would use just 13.5 watts - an electricity saving of around 86%. Almost every light you see today is based on LED technology.

This means that producing a given amount of artificial light now requires much less electricity than it did when daylight saving time was introduced. But that doesn't, by itself, tell us how much energy changing the clocks saves today.

Lighting has historically been only a small percentage of household energy consumption. Today, it accounts for about 4% of household electricity consumption in the UK, or about 1% of overall household energy use (which includes gas for heating), according to government estimates for 2025. However, overall household energy consumption has in general declined since the 2000s, mainly due to the adoption of other energy-efficient measures.

More efficient lighting can also change how people use it. Lower running costs may encourage people to use more lights, especially for decoration, or to leave them on for longer - economists call this a rebound effect.

Cheaper lighting meant people use more lights. Pixel-shot / shutterstock

That's why we can't only look at how efficient light bulbs have become. We have to consider how much electricity the clock change saves across the energy system as a whole.

Only modest energy savings - at best

Modern life is significantly different from when the clock change was introduced in 1916. We have renewable energy, electric cars, and homes and offices packed with electronic and computer equipment.

A study from 2018 that combined 162 estimates from 44 studies found average energy savings of about 0.34% during daylight saving time. A further study from 2025 suggests that the original justification for daylight saving time as an energy-saving measure is increasingly uncertain. Broadly, research suggests reductions in lighting demand are most likely to be balanced by increased heating and cooling demand. Any energy savings are likely to be relatively small and depend on factors beyond lighting efficiency.

The European Parliament voted in 2019 to abolish the twice-yearly clock change, although implementation has stalled because EU countries have not agreed whether to keep permanent summer or winter time.

The move from incandescent bulbs to LEDs has hugely reduced the electricity needed for lighting, weakening one of the original reasons for changing the clocks. But the available research does not offer a simple calculation of how much energy the UK or similar countries would save or use if the system was abandoned.

The original rationale was straightforward: shift daylight into the evening hours and reduce the need for electrical lights. Today, much more efficient bulbs mean that the potential savings from clock changes are smaller than they once were. Whether that makes daylight saving unnecessary depends on the wider effects of changing our clocks - and the evidence on those effects remains inconclusive.

Amin Al-Habaibeh receives funding from Innovate UK, The British Council, The Royal academy of Engineering, EPSRC, AHRC, The British Academy, Th Royal Society, and the European Commission. He is also a member of The Institution of Engineering and Technology (The IET).

Women collect fish and invertebrates from shallow seagrass next to their village in Mozambique. Benjamin Jones/Project Seagrass, CC BY

At least 18 million people living in poverty across the Indo-Pacific fish in seagrass meadows, while around 6.5 million rely on them as their only fishing grounds. For these communities, the underwater habitats are not simply part of the natural environment but a source of food and a means of earning a living.

But these important fishing grounds face growing pressure from coastal development, changes in land use and poor water quality. When seagrass meadows are damaged or lost, the consequences can extend beyond wildlife. The fish and other marine life they support may also be affected, putting food supplies and household incomes at risk.

Our latest research examines the scale of this dependence and how it relates to poverty. The findings highlight a question that conservation efforts need to address: what happens to people whose livelihoods depend on habitats that are under growing pressure?

Seagrasses are flowering plants that grow in shallow coastal waters. They form underwater meadows that support fish and other marine life. People can fish in these habitats using simple nets, traps and lines, or collect shellfish and other marine animals by hand. Unlike some other fishing grounds, seagrass meadows can often be reached without a boat or expensive equipment.

This level of accessibility can be particularly important for households with few resources or alternative ways to earn money. Yet seagrass conservation is often discussed in terms of protecting wildlife and storing carbon. We have known that these habitats support fisheries, but we have had much less understanding of how many people living in poverty rely on them.

Communities across the Indo-Pacific often live adjacent to seagrass meadows. Benjamin Jones/Project Seagrass, CC BY

To investigate this, we analysed data from nearly 2,000 households in more than 150 coastal communities across Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.

We looked at household incomes, fishing activities and the habitats people used to catch fish and collect other marine resources. We then compared the livelihoods of households using different fishing grounds, including those living in poverty.

More than 80% of households in the communities we studied were involved in fishing, either to earn money, provide food or both. Households that relied entirely on seagrass fisheries earned around 23% less than those fishing in other habitats, even after we accounted for differences in household size.

To put this in perspective, if a household earns £7.50 per day, a 23% difference amounts to roughly £52 a month. For a family already struggling to afford food, healthcare or education, this is a substantial amount of money.

Women hunt in seagrass for invertebrates at low tide in Mozambique. Benjamin Jones/Project Seagrass, CC BY

The dependence was especially striking among households living in extreme poverty. Almost half fished in seagrass as well as other habitats, while more than a 25% relied on seagrass alone. This does not mean that seagrass fishing causes poverty. Rather, accessible fishing grounds may be particularly important to people who cannot afford a boat or specialist equipment.

We then combined our household data with estimates of how many people live near seagrass meadows. Across the five countries we studied, we estimate that 10.8 million people living in poverty use seagrass for fishing. Around 5.4 million may rely on it as their only fishing habitat.

The stakes go beyond income. In separate research published earlier this year, we found that fish communities associated with seagrass could provide a wider range of essential nutrients than those associated with coral reefs. Although reefs supported more fish overall, seagrass fish communities had greater potential to supply several important nutrients together.

These include iron, which helps prevent anaemia, zinc, which supports children's growth and immune systems, calcium, which is essential for health bones, and omega-3 fatty acids which support brain development. For families that cannot afford a varied diet, fish, even as a soup or broth, can provide several of these nutrients in a single meal. Losing access to seagrass could therefore not only mean losing income, but also a vital source of nutrition, especially for children and vulnerable family members.

These risks are important considerations because seagrass meadows face pressure globally. Research suggests that around 20% of surveyed seagrass meadow area in the Indo-Pacific has been lost over the past 70 to 90 years, with coastal development and declining water quality among the major threats identified.

Elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific, researchers documented an 84% decline in fish abundance following substantial seagrass loss. For coastal families that depend on these habitats, this means fewer fish available to catch, fewer income opportunities and less food.

Men collect shrimp and prawns by hand in shallow seagrass meadows in Puttalam Lagoon, Sri Lanka. Benjamin Jones/Project Seagrass, CC BY Protecting seagrass means protecting people

Protecting these habitats, however, is not as simple as restricting fishing. Conservation measures that limit access to fishing grounds could harm communities if they depend on them for food or income and have few alternatives. At the same time, local fishers may have little control over other sources of damage, such as pollution from agriculture or development along the coast.

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Read more: Human connections to seagrass meadows date back 180,000 years, study reveals

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Conservation plans therefore need to consider both the health of seagrass meadows and the people who depend on them. Where restrictions on fishing are proposed, decision-makers should assess the probable effects on local incomes and food supplies. They should also consider whether realistic alternatives are available and address damage caused by pollution and coastal development, rather than placing the burden of conservation on fishing communities alone.

In the Philippines, local fishing communities are already helping manage marine reserves that protect seagrass meadows. Some approaches allow fishing and shellfish collection to continue while restricting more damaging activities or protecting smaller areas where marine life can recover.

In Indonesia, years of forest clearance had increased soil erosion, washing sediment into coastal waters and threatening seagrass meadows. In response, local governments, communities and organisations came together to plant more than 4,500 trees along riverbanks to reduce the amount of sediment entering the sea and protecting the seagrass fishing grounds that local families depend on.

Protecting seagrass will not solve coastal poverty on its own, however. But our findings show why conservation policies need to recognise the people who depend on these habitats. Safeguarding seagrass means protecting not only marine life but also an important source of food and income for millions of people.

Benjamin Jones received funding from the Swedish Research Council.

Leanne Cullen-Unsworth and Richard K.F. Unsworth do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Entonox, or gas and air, is widely used for pain relief during labour, but the nitrous oxide it contains is a potent greenhouse gas. J O Atkinson/Shutterstock

The NHS has a substantial carbon footprint. Yet one part of its environmental impact receives relatively little attention: maternity care.

The health service is responsible for an estimated 4% to 5% of England's greenhouse gas emissions. A 2025 report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists estimated that selected maternity care activities in England generated about 205,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) in 2022-23.

CO₂e expresses the warming effect of different greenhouse gases, such as methane, as an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide. The analysis excluded some maternity services, so the total footprint is likely to be higher.

Nearly 29% of the emissions across the activities studied came from Entonox, commonly known as gas and air. It contains nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Using it during regular contractions over four hours has an estimated warming effect of 237kg CO₂e.

Travel to appointments also contributes to emissions. An analysis at the Whittington, a hospital in north London, estimated that a patient's return journey to an antenatal appointment generated an average of 1.23kg CO₂e.

Hospitals also use large quantities of disposable equipment. Ready-to-use formula bottles and teats, single-use cups and clinical waste containers are routinely used once and discarded.

Pregnancy is sometimes described as a "teachable moment", when people may be particularly receptive to health information. Environmental advice could become part of those conversations, including discussions about feeding a baby or choosing pain relief.

Responsibility for reducing emissions

But placing responsibility on parents creates ethical problems. Maternity care in the UK is already under intense pressure. The 2022 Ockenden review documented serious failures in maternity safety, while the 2024 birth trauma inquiry highlighted how women's concerns were dismissed or ignored.

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Read more: Maternity care needs more than answers: it needs change

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Against that background, asking someone in labour to weigh the climate effects of pain relief alongside their comfort and safety could create another burden at an already demanding time.

Measuring emissions can help hospitals improve how services are designed. But carbon targets should not be used to restrict access to caesarean birth or pain relief. Decisions about care should respect each person's needs and informed choices.

In a small interview study involving 12 people who had used nitrous oxide during labour, most wanted environmental information to be available during pregnancy. However, they were unsure whether knowing its impact would change their choice of pain relief. Participants also considered reducing emissions to be primarily the responsibility of healthcare organisations.

Nitrous oxide - commonly known as 'gas and air' or Entonox - is a 50/50 mix of nitrous oxide and oxygen used for moderate pain and anxiety relief during labour. caseyjadew/Shutterstock

A more useful approach is to change how maternity services are delivered while protecting patient choice.

Some NHS maternity services are already doing this. At Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals, a project introduced virtual ward support and care at home for patients with severe pregnancy sickness. By reducing hospital stays, it cut emissions by an estimated 538kg CO₂e over one month. The team projected an annual saving of around 6,462kg if those reductions continued.

Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has introduced technology that captures exhaled gas and air and breaks down the nitrous oxide into nitrogen and oxygen, allowing women to continue using gas and air during labour while reducing its environmental impact.

Other changes involve purchasing and waste. Thousands of ready-to-use plastic formula bottles and teats are used in maternity care. A 2019 letter from Irish researchers published in the British Medical Journal highlighted waste from unconsumed formula and discarded packaging. Reducing this could lower emissions without restricting access to formula for those who need or choose it.

Similar questions apply to disposable products throughout maternity wards. Clinicians work in systems designed around single-use equipment and established waste procedures. Changing those systems is likely to be more effective than expecting individual clinicians to improvise greener alternatives.

At the midwife-led White Horse birth centre in Swindon, staff have replaced plastic containers used to dispose of placentas with alternatives made from 96% paper, reducing plastic use and costs.

Breastfeeding illustrates how complicated individual responsibility can become. Compared with exclusive formula feeding, exclusive breastfeeding for six months has been estimated to have a carbon footprint 95kg to 153kg CO₂e lower per baby.

But feeding decisions depend on health and personal circumstances, including the support available to parents. A more useful approach would be to provide effective support for anyone who wants to breastfeed, while reducing unnecessary waste and emissions from the way formula is purchased, prepared and supplied by maternity services.

Better care, lower emissions

The Green Maternity Challenge, part of a programme led by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, brought together nine NHS teams to test ways of reducing emissions while improving maternity care. Several projects involved redesigning services to make treatment easier to access or reduce unnecessary hospital stays.

Better care and lower emissions can go together. But treating sustainability only as a fortunate side effect risks overlooking opportunities to design maternity services deliberately around lower-carbon care.

Hospitals should examine where their emissions come from and give staff the knowledge and resources to reduce them. Changes to purchasing and waste systems, alongside suitable lower-emission technologies, can help services become greener while protecting safe care and informed choice.

Childbirth will always carry an environmental footprint. Health services have the responsibility and practical means to reduce the impact through changes to how care is organised and delivered. Those changes should protect choices without placing additional burdens on the person giving birth.

Alice Craggs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Coffelatte91/Shutterstock

This year's El Niño, the natural weather phenomenon that drives variations in temperature and winds across the Pacific, has prompted the UK government to pledge £15 million to help vulnerable countries such as Malawi, Kenya and Zambia prepare for droughts, floods and food shortages.

But the UK's economic response will go beyond international aid. The Bank of England has identified El Niño as one of the key factors that could increase food inflation in 2027.

This connection between a climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean and supermarket prices (and possibly interest rates) in the UK is a clear demonstration of how extreme weather is an economic issue as well as an environmental one.

Environmentally speaking, the effects of El Niño can be devastating, bringing severe drought to some regions and severe flooding to others. And a stronger El Niño has a larger influence on global weather patterns than a weaker one.

This year's event, already the strongest on record, is expected to peak later this year, and could cause global economic problems if it has a negative effect on major agricultural producers or transport routes.

Poor harvests can cause international agricultural prices to rise. Higher energy costs can simultaneously make fertiliser, processing and transportation more expensive.

The UK is particularly exposed to climate-related disruptions because of the international nature of its food supply (about 42% of its food is imported).

But these effects are rarely immediate. Many food manufacturers and retailers use risk management techniques to limit their exposure to sudden changes in prices, which can initially shield consumers from international shocks.

The Bank of England made this point explicitly, saying the potential effects of El Niño are likely to emerge gradually, rather than causing widespread food shortages or dramatic price rises.

And the central bank of Spain found that the effect of El Niño varies according to commodity, time period and agricultural policy.

For the most part, disasters with regard to food supply can be avoided with the right kind of human intervention. Businesses adapt. Farmers change production decisions. Trade shifts towards alternative suppliers. Governments intervene.

El Niño should therefore be viewed as a potential source of risk and volatility, rather than as a confident prediction that UK food prices must rise.

Everything everywhere

But what happens when several external shocks occur together?

The Bank of England has considered this possibility too, warning that a strong El Niño alongside renewed energy disruption could put much greater pressure on UK food prices.

If extreme weather also affects major shipping routes, the effects on import prices could become stronger still. This is where a climate event potentially becomes a monetary policy problem, as central banks treat El Niño as a factor that may cause them to raise interest rates.

In a recent meeting, the Bank of England's monetary policy committee identified severe El Niño conditions as one possible source of additional pressure on agricultural prices, alongside energy markets and other global supply risks.

And this perhaps explains the thinking behind the UK government's plan to help countries prepare for El Niño. The £15 million pledge announced in September 2026 is based on the idea of "anticipatory action": releasing money before a predictable emergency rather than waiting until the economic damage has occurred.

The government says around 35% of humanitarian shocks can be predicted in advance, while less than 1% of global humanitarian funding currently goes towards anticipatory action.

Weather or not

There is a broader financial principle at work here.

If climate forecasts contain economically useful information, financial decisions can respond before losses actually occur.

So food importers can reconsider commodity and currency strategies to guard against shocks. Banks can incorporate weather-related supply disruption into their financial evaluations, and companies can stress-test supply chains against simultaneous commodity, energy and transportation shocks.

Storms ahead. Wirestock Creators/Shutterstock

Governments can connect climate forecasting more closely with food security and planning for economic resilience.

And while they may not be able to predict exactly what El Niño will do to the price of a shopping basket, they can certainly act in a way that recognises the fact that information about future weather has financial value.

The UK government has shown that it is using weather forecasts to release humanitarian finance before disasters happen overseas. Those forecasts no longer provide key information just for meteorologists, farmers and fishing boats.

Increasingly, they contain vital financial data.

Narmin Nahidi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Ceri Breeze/Shutterstock

Climate change is increasing flood risk across the UK. As floods become more frequent and intense, communities are increasingly encouraged to become resilient and "live with water". Yet in some flood-prone areas, residents are rejecting these calls, concerned that resilience is less about helping communities and more about transferring responsibility from institutions to citizens.

Resilience is often considered to be a positive idea. It suggests that people can adapt to uncertainty, to prepare for disruption, and recover quickly when floods strike. But my research suggests many communities are deeply uncomfortable with this messaging. Some reject it altogether.

My research with three flood action groups in north-west England drew on 17 semi-structured interviews and extensive participant observation over a five-year period.

One resident told me rather bluntly: "Resilience offers hope. But for me it's false hope. A way of telling people, you'll flood. What are you going to do about it?"

Debates about resilience reveal more fundamental concerns: who should bear responsibility for managing the consequences of climate change? And how much can reasonably be expected of citizens and communities?

Expert Paul O'Hare explains the meaning of climate resilience.

For much of the 20th century, flood management was dominated by efforts to protect people and property through engineered defences, embankments and complex drainage systems. Though this approach continues to this day, governments and policymakers now also encourage people to "live with water", accepting that some degree of flooding is inevitable. Property owners are advised to install flood doors, change flooring and fit water-resilient furniture and kitchens. They're also encouraged to sign up for warnings, arrange adequate insurance cover and develop action plans for when the waters rise.

On the surface, this seems sensible. Who would not want communities that can recover quickly from disasters? Yet it can sit uncomfortably with many of those expected to become more resilient.

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Read more: Driving through water is the biggest cause of death during floods - here's how it can happen

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Many participants in our research expressed concern that resilience agendas shifted responsibility away from institutions onto communities. Several people I spoke to rejected the language of resilience because it implied they should adapt to repeated flooding and recover independently. As one participant reflected: "Resilience? It's safe to say I'm not a fan. It's all about you (pointing a finger at themselves). You're the one with the problem."

Some residents were particularly sceptical about interventions such as property level resilience measures, which have become increasingly important for community flood risk management. Many viewed these measures as sticking plasters rather than solutions to the underlying causes of recurring flood risk. As one flood action group leader explained, "people want to see spades in the ground. They want to see defences going in".

Resilience is becoming politically contested

Though often presented as a technical solution, resilience has become a source of contestation and debate. Rather than accepting expert advice at face value, many residents challenged authorities, questioned planning decisions, and demanded greater accountability and investment in flood protection.

Such concerns do not occur in a vacuum. Many flood-affected communities have experienced prolonged pressure on public services and local government budgets. Against this context, calls to become more resilient can be interpreted as yet another expectation that communities manage problems that were once addressed collectively.

In particular, many objected to resilience when it appeared a substitute for investment, protection and institutional responsibility. As one interviewee put it: "All these agencies and the council, they're telling us to be resilient. But what are they doing to help us be resilient and protect us? What are they doing to be resilient themselves?"

Adaptation is essential. But if the notion of resilience is to receive public acceptance, it can't become a substitute for public investment and institutional accountability. Communities are more likely to embrace resilience when it's a collaborative effort involving local authorities, agencies and community organisations. Resilience then becomes a shared responsibility, rather than an expectation placed upon residents.

Communities are not rejecting adaptation. But they are questioning approaches that ask them to live with water while feeling increasingly alone in dealing with its consequences.

Paul O'Hare does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Two Moths, Two Chyrsalides, and Other Insects by Joris Hoefnagel (1575-1580). Rawpixel/Shutterstock/Canva

Moths seem to be made for Halloween. They're largely nocturnal, often outlandish in appearance and bear creepy names such as Lunar Thorn, Cloaked Carpet, Bordered Gothic and (best of all) Puss Moth.

The webs of the ermine moth caterpillar cover trees like ghostly shrouds, while the hairy caterpillars of the oak processionary moth release rash-inducing toxins.

Spookiest of all is the Death's-head Hawk-moth, which bears a skull-like mark on its thorax and can squeak like a mouse. This is the moth that appears, albeit in altered form, on the poster for the film The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Two historical prints held at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam speak to the long-held suspicion of moths within European society. In one work by the printmaker C. Galle, a group sets out with lamps to destroy moths before they can eat the crops (or produce caterpillars that do). In another, by Jan Luyken, women inspect the holes that moths have made in fabric. The Old English origins of the word "moth" denote a primarily destructive, parasitical creature.

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Read more: The Silence of the Lambs introduced the world to forensic entomology - but how much has the science changed since?

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Hunting for Moths by C. Galle (1594). Rijksmuseum Meeting with moths

Unlike butterflies (who doesn't like butterflies?) humans have always found moths hard to love. I certainly didn't give moths much consideration until this year, when I started researching representations of moths and spending time with the moths themselves. I've since become something of a moth evangelist.

From March of this year my son and I set up a Skinner moth trap in our small suburban garden in Leicester, rising early every morning to identify the moths that visited during the night. My expectations were low, especially in the first few weeks, when we caught little. But then May and June came, and every morning brought new gifts. My son took charge of the counting and by September we had identified a hundred different species.

If you think moths are all small, brown creatures, think again. Even in the UK, and despite their rapidly decreasing numbers, moths are astonishingly diverse and outstandingly beautiful, ranging widely in size, colour and temperament. Some of them - most famously, the luminously pink and green Elephant Hawk-moth - are disarmingly cute and docile and will happily sit on your hand.

The art of moths

The magic of moths has attracted artists for centuries. A good place to start is the Flemish artist Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1601), whose delicate watercolour sketches of moths remain astonishingly lifelike. I especially like his depiction of the furry Hummingbird Hawk-moth: one of a few day-flying moths and one of a few species benefiting from recent rises in temperature.

Even more astonishing is the work of the pioneering German naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), who published three books detailing the metamorphosis of butterflies and moths (or what she called "summer-birds" and "moth-birds"). Merian's elegantly composed images were the first to situate moths within their wider environment, identifying which species preferred which plants.

Metamorphosis of a Small Emperor Moth on a Damson Plum by Maria Sibylla Merian. Smarthistory/flickr, CC BY

Outside of the world of natural history, moths have tended to be given a marginal role. However, some artists have been as drawn to moths as moths are drawn to light. In 1959, for example, the Scottish artist John Maxwell (1905-1962) painted a series of colourful, abstracted moth paintings, including Night Flowers and Garden at Night (Moth).

Moths are especially well served by contemporary artists. The Peruvian contemporary artist Lorena Solís Bravo has considered the moth through the lens of queer ecology. Their 2024 film myth, moth, mother celebrates the mystery and transformative power of moths. The Devon-based printmaker Sarah Gillespie, meanwhile, has created a series of mesmerising mezzotint prints of moths. "I wasn't looking for moths when I started drawing them around ten years ago," Gillespie has explained "they came and found me. Their numbers may be in appalling decline but for me their presence has become ever more insistent".

More recently, the artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg unveiled The Length of a Moment, three public sculptures at Oxford North, which visualise the flight of a moth interacting with the scent of a flower. Situated in an area rich with historic meadows, this artwork draws attention to diminishing moth populations and the need for better environmental management.

An Orange-Headed Ground Thrush and a Death's-Head Moth on a Purple Ebony Orchid Branch by Shaikh Zain al-Din (1778). The Met

My favourite moth in art, however, comes courtesy of the 18th-century Indian artist Shaikh Zain al-Din. The moth that appears in his 1778 watercolour is the famous Death's-head Hawk-moth. Here, however, it lacks the sinister and spectral nature of the moth from The Silence of the Lambs. Instead Shaikh Zain al-Din gives us a moth just going about its everyday (or every night?) business.

This isn't the moth as a symbol of death, or as a muncher of clothes or crops (of the circa 2,500 species of moth found in the UK, only two actually eat clothes). This is a moth doing what moths do well: feeding from and pollinating plants, providing food for birds and looking rather beautiful while doing so. This image is a timely reminder that moths are much less weird and way more wonderful than most people think.

Samuel Shaw has previously received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council

For the first time, UK ministers have had to weigh the emissions from burning gas extracted from a North Sea field before approving its development. The way they did so for Jackdaw says a good deal about how the far larger Rosebank oil field is likely to fare.

Coverage of the decision to approve the Jackdaw gas field has focused on energy security and household bills. But the decision also marks an important test of the legal rules governing new fossil fuel projects. Jackdaw, about 150 miles, or 250km, east of Aberdeen, could send gas ashore from as early as the end of October. Yet the project was first approved in 2022, only for a court to strike that approval down. What happened in between explains why the much larger Rosebank oil field will find the same test far harder.

How a government elected on a promise of no new oil and gas licences can approve new drilling turns on a distinction that rarely makes the headlines. A licence gives a company exclusive rights over an area of seabed, but it does not, on its own, allow anything to be built or any oil or gas to be produced. The regulator must also consent to the project, with the energy secretary's agreement following an environmental impact assessment. Jackdaw had its licence, but lacked a consent that could survive in court.

The case that changed the rules

That process was transformed by a dispute over a modest oil site at Horse Hill in Surrey, where campaigner Sarah Finch argued that the environmental assessment should have counted not only the emissions from drilling but also those released once the oil was refined and burned as fuel. In June 2024 the Supreme Court agreed by a majority of three to two, reasoning that since the whole purpose of extracting oil is to burn it, those emissions are an effect of the project itself. As The Conversation reported at the time, the ruling's effects were always likely to reach well beyond Surrey.

Jackdaw and Rosebank had both been approved without any such calculation, and in January 2025 the Court of Session in Edinburgh, hearing challenges brought by the campaign groups Greenpeace and Uplift, quashed both approvals. Construction continued, but neither field could produce anything until ministers decided again. After the government published new guidance in June 2025, the developer, Adura, went back to the regulator with fresh information.

What the minister weighed

The decision document shows those rules at work for the first time. Jackdaw's total emissions, including those from burning its gas and the liquids produced alongside it, are put at up to 36.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over the field's life, with only about 2% coming from production itself. The energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, accepted that those emissions are likely to have a significant effect on the environment, and then approved the field anyway.

That is exactly what the Finch ruling allows, since it requires decision makers to face the climate cost openly rather than refuse every project that carries one. Fahnbulleh set what her decision calls "moderate adverse weight" on the emissions against "significant positive weight" for energy security. Because most of Jackdaw's gas will be burned in the UK, she measured its emissions against the country's legally binding carbon budgets, of which they would make up no more than 1.32% in any single period, and concluded that they would not stop the UK reaching net zero by 2050.

It is worth stressing, though, that Jackdaw's approval does not set a precedent that ministers can simply apply to every new field. Each project must still be assessed on its own merits, with its emissions weighed against its claimed benefits. That balance could look very different for Rosebank, an oil field whose output is far less likely to be used in the UK than Jackdaw's gas.

Greenpeace says the approval shows the "grip fossil fuel lobbyists still hold over energy policy", although it has not so far announced a fresh legal challenge. Any challenge would most likely return to the Court of Session, where applications for judicial review normally must be made within three months. Judicial review asks whether a decision was taken lawfully rather than whether it was the right one, so campaigners would need to show that the minister misread the law or left something important out.

Why Rosebank is a harder test

Rosebank, about 80 miles (130km) north west of Shetland, is the UK's largest undeveloped oil field. Its operator's own assessment puts the emissions from burning its oil and gas at up to 249 million tonnes over the life of the field, nearly seven times Jackdaw's total. Fahnbulleh has already called it a different proposition, because its oil would be exported while Jackdaw's gas flows straight into the UK system, and with only four refineries left in the country, much of it is expected to be refined in Europe.

This goes to the heart of the legal reasoning, because the Jackdaw decision leaned heavily on its gas being burned at home, within carbon budgets the government is bound to meet. That story is much harder to tell about oil sold on world markets, especially as the government's guidance expects effects to be judged globally. A report by UCL researchers published last year argued that more UK oil means more global emissions, and any minister minded to approve Rosebank will need a persuasive answer.

The courts have not shut down the North Sea, then, but they have forced ministers to set out their climate reasoning in public before they say yes. Rosebank will reveal whether that reasoning still holds once the oil is shipped abroad.

Robert Hargreaves does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Though the announcement that the UK government will move ahead with the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea was anticipated, it has generated a wave of criticism from around the world. This will have significant implications for the UK's international standing on climate change.

The UK's debate over new drilling has focused on job creation, energy security, emissions and the UK's climate commitments, and the claim that the gas field was already licensed by the previous government.

Researchers and advocacy groups have poured cold water on these justifications, questioning the scale of the economic benefits of a project that will meet just 2% of UK gas demand for ten years - and that's if none is exported.

The original consent for Jackdaw was quashed in 2025 for failing to account for its total emissions footprint - including those generated when the gas is actually burned. The field is owned by Adura, a joint venture between Shell and Norwegian energy giant Equinor. The developers had to submit a fresh environmental assessment, and the government had to decide again whether to approve the project in light of the full emissions assessment. That means this is not an inherited decision: the government must own it outright.

Moving in the wrong direction

As more countries commit to phasing out fossil fuels and publish plans to do so, the UK government has moved in the opposite direction. By approving this project, the UK is showing that similar projects around the world are permissible, leaving its government with no grounds to object to fossil fuel projects elsewhere.

At the UN's Cop30 climate summit in Brazil last year, the then energy secretary Ed Miliband said he was "fighting" for an outcome that contained a roadmap for moving away from fossil fuels. The UK joined over 80 countries in calling for the roadmap, acting in solidarity with countries already suffering the impacts of climate breakdown. Now the government is giving new drilling the go ahead. "That double standard", said Mohamed Adow from the thinktank Power Shift Africa in response to the Jackdaw news, "will not go unnoticed".

This blow to the UK's credibility on climate was not inevitable. Despite the incredibly challenging backdrop of energy price shocks and supply bottlenecks, many governments are leaving fossil fuels in the ground. Our research shows that these policies range from bans and moratoriums on specific types of extraction or in certain areas, to fossil fuel subsidy reforms and restrictions on export credit. Many governments have begun working together on these policies as part of "climate clubs", sharing best practice and pooling leverage.

Indeed the UK has pioneered many of these initiatives. It played a leading role in founding the Powering Past Coal Alliance and the Clean Energy Transition Partnership, which grew out of a UK policy. It was the first G7 nation to enshrine net zero into law and has made climate diplomacy a perennial feature of foreign policy across both Conservative and Labour governments.

What's more, North Sea production is in long-term decline, with assets approaching retirement and employment declining for years. Meanwhile, renewable energy is making an increasing contribution to growth. If the UK can't hold the line on new fossil fuel production and manage the phase-down of existing operations, what hope do less wealthy, less economically diversified countries have?

A global shift away from fossil fuels

A more fitting question is perhaps where true leadership is coming from. In 2027, governments will gather for the Second Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels - a process launched this year in Santa Marta, Colombia, and attended by countries representing one-third of global fossil fuel consumption and one-fifth of global production. Co-hosted by the governments of Ireland and Tuvalu, a low-lying island nation whose very existence is threatened by climate change, the conference offers a forum to develop coordinated measures to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, beyond the constraints of the annual UN climate summits where everyone gets a veto. In a world where multilateral cooperation is increasingly difficult, these governments are actively building a new geopolitics.

They are also facing down the reality of falling global demand for fossil fuels, with high-cost projects in declining basins like the North Sea most at risk when demand falls. The International Energy Agency expects peak demand for fossil fuels within four years. As sales of solar panels and electric vehicles accelerate at a dizzying pace in the wake of yet another global energy crisis, peak demand may come sooner than expected.

The legal ground has shifted too. The International Court of Justice produced an Advisory Opinion clarifying that failing to protect the climate through fossil fuel exploration and production may constitute an internationally wrongful act. Though the UK government's own decision document rejects this, the Jackdaw decision is likely to trigger legal challenges.

The UK government now faces two challenges in quick succession. A decision on Rosebank, the UK's largest untapped oil field, is still pending. And in early November, Andy Burnham and the UK delegation will arrive at the next UN climate summit, Cop31 in Antalya in Turkey.

Rejecting Rosebank may let the government draw a line under new production and recoup some semblance of leadership. But if Rosebank is approved, the UK will be providing a blueprint that any fossil fuel producer - established or prospective - can follow. Countries suffering from climate upheavals today, and upping the momentum to phase-out fossil fuels, will not let the UK forget it.

Freddie Daley receives funding from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as part of the SUS-POL Project at the University of Sussex.

Peter Newell receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Research Council for the SUS POL project at the University of Sussex.

Tverdokhlib/Shutterstock

There was a time when decorative wreaths appeared on front doors in December, stayed on front doors for a few weeks, and then disappeared.

Now red and gold autumn wreaths and Halloween wreaths are popping up everywhere. These seasonal displays are part of a wider social media fashion for "doorscaping".

It is easy to see the appeal. A wreath introduces colour, foliage and a little seasonal personality without much effort. But this enthusiasm for decorating the front door raises an interesting possibility: could it encourage people to pay more attention to the garden immediately below?

Choosing a wreath and choosing plants for a front garden can both be ways of making the entrance to a home more attractive. A study of 1,000 people in England found that creating something beautiful was one motivation for front gardening. People motivated by appearance also tended to have greener front gardens.

That does not mean wreath enthusiasts will necessarily become gardeners. But the same interest in seasonal colour and decoration could encourage some to try planting around their front door.

And British front gardens could benefit from more planting.

The Royal Horticultural Society's 2025 mapping estimates that 55% of front-garden space in Britain is paved, compared with 36% of back-garden space. Earlier RHS research found that the proportion of completely paved front gardens tripled between 2005 and 2015, although subsequent surveys suggested some recovery in planting.

Parking is one reason. An Ipsos survey found that, among people with largely paved front gardens or driveways, 28% said they needed the space for cars, while 45% thought it was too small for plants. Front gardens also have to accommodate access, bins and the everyday demands of domestic life.

But the cumulative effect of paving matters. One driveway can seem negligible. A street of them is a landscape.

This is where the appeal of seasonal decoration becomes useful. The seasonal colours and foliage that make a wreath attractive could also be found in plants growing around the front door. Someone who enjoys decorating their entrance might also be tempted to extend that interest into the garden.

A reused container, a few bulbs or a hardy perennial can be an inexpensive starting point. The RHS recommends containers for completely paved spaces, as well as climbers for walls and plants for otherwise unused corners.

Living plants do require some care. Pots need watering, and not everyone has the time, confidence or physical ability to maintain a garden. But starting with a few manageable plants offers a way to try growing something without committing to a complete redesign.

The seasonal colours and foliage that make a wreath attractive could also be found in plants growing around the front door. New Africa/Shutterstock

There may also be opportunities to go further. A strip beside a driveway or an unused corner could provide space for plants. Where practical, a few paving slabs could also be lifted to make room for planting. Parking and greenery do not have to be mutually exclusive.

These changes offer more than decoration. Flowers can provide nectar for insects, while shrubs and hedges offer shelter for wildlife. Larger plants, particularly trees and climbers, can provide shade and help keep buildings cooler in summer. Unlike impermeable paving, exposed soil and properly designed permeable surfaces can also help rainwater soak into the ground.

A study of more than 900 sites in front and back gardens and streets across England and Wales assessed combinations of grass, hedges, trees, shrubs and container plants. It found that mixtures of different plants generally performed better across several environmental measures, such as cooling or flood control, than just one type.

A pot of flowers cannot provide all these benefits, but it can still support insects and introduce planting where paving and parking have left little growing space.

Those decisions matter for new housing too. The 2026 Building for a Healthy Life design toolkit, a government guide to the design of housing developments, encourages space for planting in the front of houses.

But having space for plants is only part of the picture. People also need a reason to grow something. And this brings us back to the wreath. Its appeal lies in how easily people can add colour and character to the front of their homes.

If even some of that enthusiasm extended from the door to a pot, a border or a climbing plant, our streets could become more attractive and better for wildlife. If that interest grew to include more trees, shrubs and planted ground, it could also help our neighbourhoods cope better with heat and heavy rain.

What starts as a little seasonal decoration might become a lasting interest in growing plants.

James Simpson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Warming stripes for Poland (1901-2021). Ed Hawkins/University of Reading, CC BY

When a climate disaster happens, people thousands of miles away may encounter it through numbers: how many people died, how many were displaced, how many homes were destroyed and how much infrastructure was damaged. But for the people living through it, the disaster is not a dataset. It is a home, a family, a livelihood and a place.

Billions of people around the world live in places and situations that are highly vulnerable to climate change, such as parts of Africa, Asia and small Pacific islands.

Data visualisations have become an important way of communicating climate change. Warming is represented through colours, emissions through lines and bars, and floods and fires through maps and animations. These visualisations can make an enormous and complicated problem easier to understand, but they can also shape how people feel about it.

Crucially, some visualisations don't tell the full story.

I explored this in my new research with 34 social media users in the UK and Poland. I showed participants climate data visualisations and asked them how they felt and what they did with the information. Participants described worry, fear, sadness, anger and concern, but also curiosity, surprise and pleasure suggesting that visualisation can make unpalatable data more enjoyable.

The warming stripes for Poland (above) is a visualisation that shows temperature changes through coloured stripes. One participant said this visualisation looked "so pretty, nice and interesting". But once they understood what the colours represented (red for warm temperatures; blue for cooler temperatures), their reaction changed, and the image became upsetting. The visualisation did more than show climate change: it changed how the participant experienced it.

What data visualisation leaves out

One of the most revealing moments in my research came from a meteorologist from Tonga who used to live in the UK. They first saw the warming stripes visualisation shared on social media, but Tonga was not shown as a location. They commented on the visualisation, asking whether stripes could be created for Tonga. They wanted to see what was happening at the scale of individual islands. They then went to the interactive version, where users can select locations to create their own stripes, but they could not create one for Tonga because the data wasn't accessible for specific islands.

The visualisation showed temperature changes across broad regions, including the Pacific. But the participant wanted to see what was happening at the scale of particular islands. That visualisation prompted them to think about what could be done. They shared it with colleagues, and they decided to reproduce something similar using their own data.

Temperature changes around the world (1901-2021). Ed Hawkins/University of Reading, CC BY

The problem was not that the global visualisation was inaccurate. It was that accuracy at a global scale did not guarantee visibility at a local one. For communities such as those on Tonga (an island that contributes only a fraction of global emissions yet bears the brunt of climate change), this local visibility matters.

So who are visualisations making climate change "visible" for? For the participant from Tonga, climate change is closely connected to land, the sea, community and everyday life. They explained that data visualisation needs to reflect local context yet engage audiences more widely to convey an urgent need for climate action.

What happens after seeing the data

Climate data visualisation is not just a technical exercise. Researchers usually ask whether a graph is accurate, clear and easy to understand. But we should also ask who is represented, who is missing and whose experience the data allows us to see.

What people see can shape how they feel about climate change and what they believe they can do about it. My research found that emotional responses could lead people to share information, discuss it with others, change their everyday practices and sometimes inspire more formal political engagement.

But strong emotions did not automatically lead to action. People were more likely to describe taking direct climate action when they also felt there was something they could actually do at a local or national level. A sense of agency can help determine what happens after people encounter climate information.

The challenge for climate communication is not simply to find better and more accurate ways of showing the scale of the crisis. It is to ask whether, when climate change gets transformed into data, audiences are still able to see the people behind the numbers - and whether what is being shown gives people not only a reason to care, but a sense of what they can do.

Making climate change visible is only the first step. The harder and more critical challenge is considering whose experiences we see, whose are left out, and what happens after we see them.

Monika Frątczak receives funding from UKRI/ESRC.

Magdalena Teterdynko/Shutterstock

The arrival of cooler weather following a summer of heatwaves, is a timely reminder that the UK electricity system must be resilient to the effects of temperature extremes at both ends of the thermometer.

The Royal Meteorological Society has released a new report that highlights how recent weather conditions have influenced electricity generation, demand and the infrastructure that connects them.

Authored by experts from the society, the Met Office and multiple UK universities, the State of the Climate for the UK Energy Sector Report 2025-26 shows that more energy is being provided by weather-dependent renewable sources. But high and low temperatures will continue to put the energy grid's capacity and infrastructure to the test.

Data from the National Energy System Operator (Neso) shows that renewable energy formed a higher percentage of overall energy generated in the UK over the reporting period (April 2025 - March 2026) than any other year on record. The proportion coming from the combination of solar and wind increased, providing more than 38% of the nation's electricity. The proportion of gas-powered generation reduced to 25%.

However, the report highlights how extreme weather tests the resilience of the grid. The conditions that lead to very high and low temperatures create different challenges through increasing electricity demand, limiting generation and damaging network infrastructure. The UK's energy network is having to adapt to cope with increasingly extreme temperatures. In cold conditions, the network is put under strain due to increased heating demand. This requires more energy at short notice, increasing reliance on non-renewable sources.

For those responsible for balancing the electricity system, including Neso, these weather extremes can create operational challenges. This makes it harder to match energy supply with demand.

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Read more: How the new Great British Grid could help households benefit from abundant and cheap renewable power

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In early January 2026, strong northerly winds brought cold Arctic air, snow and ice into large parts of the UK. Initially these winds provided up to 20 gigawatts (GW) of power towards the system, a significant proportion of the demand.

But as the freeze reached its peak on the evening of January 6, the wind died down and wind generation fell to less than a quarter of the levels seen in the preceding days. Simultaneously, electricity demand peaked, with the increase in heating needs seeing demand peak an additional 5GW higher than the previous day.

Electricity supply and demand have to be kept in balance in real time. When demand rises or available generation falls, the energy system operator can maintain that balance by using additional generators to increase their output, for example. On this occasion, gas-powered electrical generation filled the gap by providing more than 25GW to the system at it's peak.

Renewable energy formed a higher proportion of energy generated in the UK from April 2025 to March 2026 than any other year on record. Rabbitmindphoto/Shutterstock

This meant the demand was comfortably met, but this was an expensive strategy that meant the operator was paying up to £700 per megawatt-hour (MWh) for this generation. This was due to the higher cost of turning to gas generation, and the need for additional generation at short notice which costs more than generation that can be planned further in advance. This compares to the usual rate of just over £100 per MWh for the rest of January.

At the other end of the spectrum, hot temperatures are increasingly becoming more of a concern for the sector.

The summer of 2025 was the warmest on record at the time, with temperatures 1.51°C higher than average. During warmer temperatures, the network operator often limits the amount of power that transmission lines carry around the country to prevent components overheating. This reduces the risk of lines expanding more with heat which would make them sag and potentially short out on nearby vegetation or structures beneath.

Nevertheless, several faults in the network were attributed to heat causing infrastructure damage, leading to power cuts across parts of England, especially during two periods of heatwaves that occurred at the end of June and start of July.

In Europe, where temperatures also spiked, nuclear power plants were forced to limit output or shut down altogether because the water used to cool them with, taken from nearby rivers, was too warm. Increased temperatures and below-average rainfall also increased fire risks. The largest area lost to wildfire burning in the UK since satellite records began included a "mega-fire" in Scotland. Several of these fires led to localised power cuts across the country.

Preparing for future extremes

The UK's new grid upgrade plan from the government, which aims to expand and modernise the British grid system to allow for connections to new generation sources and upgrades of current infrastructure, needs to consider the consequences of extreme temperatures. This includes ensuring that upgraded infrastructure can withstand the extreme heat we are now seeing more regularly in UK summers, as well as ensuring that capacity for transmission of electricity from generation sources to population centres is increased.

Delays to electricity grid upgrades risk higher consumer bills as the operator is required to pay wind farms to stop generating because electricity produced cannot be be carried to where it is needed, replacing it with more local gas-powered generation instead.

The resilience of the UK grid has stood up well to the challenges it faced from the weather in the past year. But maintaining that resilience requires continued investment and adaptation as the climate, energy needs of the nation and profile of energy generation all continue to change.

James Mollard is also an employee of, and receives funding from Royal Meteorological Society.

Matthew Wright does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Menhaden are a small, silver, oily fish often caught to be turned into fish meal for use in aquaculture. SNEHIT PHOTO/Shutterstock

Small fish such as sardinella are an affordable source of protein and essential nutrients for millions of people across West Africa.

Some of these fish are increasingly exported or processed into fishmeal and fish oil for aquaculture feeds used in high-income European countries and across East Asia, particularly China. As nutrient deficiencies are common in people living in parts of West Africa, retaining more fish for local consumption could help improve diets and address dietary health problems.

Aquaculture is one of the world's fastest-growing food production sectors. Despite its growth in the last three decades, global wild fish catches for marine ingredients have declined overall. Production has increased in some regions, including West Africa, but the overall decline is mainly due to improved fishery management that allows recovery of fish stocks.

Marine ingredients continue to play an important role in the diets of some aquaculture species.

Globally, a quarter of wild-caught fish are processed into fishmeal and fish oil, and only a small share originates from West Africa. Most is used in animal feed, with aquaculture accounting for the largest share. These provide valuable nutrients, particularly in early-life-stage diets and for carnivorous species such as salmon and shrimp, while contributing to the relatively low carbon footprint of farmed seafood.

Figure 1: Total global catches (million tonnes) from 1990-2020 of anchovies, different mackerel species, herring and other (including blue whiting, menhaden, capelin, sprat, sandeel, boarfish, and sardines) forage fish used for reduction into fishmeal and fish oil (FAO, 2026), alongside the proportion (%) of fish processing by-products used in aquafeed (IFFO, 2026). CC BY

The supply of marine ingredients is highly regulated and fairly stable but should not be taken for granted. Climate change and warming periods such as El Niño can weaken the upwelling of nutrient-rich waters from the deep sea. This reduces the availability of plankton and fish and limits the supply of marine ingredients required for aquaculture.

This means we need to make the best use of the resources already available. Fish processing by-products (including heads, guts and skeletons) are playing an increasingly important role, accounting for 34% of global fishmeal production and 54% of fish oil supply in 2024.

A new era of supply chain risk

Marine ingredients from potentially unsustainable sources have slipped through the net despite responsible sourcing claims. One 2025 investigation found that certified Turkish-farmed seabass sold by major retailers in Europe was fed fishmeal sourced from three factories in Senegal that have been linked to food insecurity and job losses in local communities.

One way to reduce risk in aquaculture feed supply chains is to source ingredients domestically. But this is easier said than done. Aquafeed supply chains are dependent on the global trade in marine and terrestrial ingredients and thus face challenges related to scale, cost, nutritional quality and environmental sustainability.

While marine ingredients can be sustainably sourced and continue to be essential to the global food system, it's important to use them in efficient ways that maximise their contribution to human nutrition. Certification programmes currently focus on ensuring that fish are caught or farmed responsibly. The environmental and social safeguards include stock status, environmental footprint and making sure workers are treated fairly.

The certification programmes pay less attention to food security and critics argue they favour export markets and corporations over local communities. As a result, calls are growing for broader measures of what constitutes truly sustainable and ethical seafood.

Use nutrients wisely

Some scientists argue that fish, such as anchovies and mackerel, provide more essential nutrients when eaten directly rather than used as feed. Most species used in the marine ingredients industry have low market appeal and limited consumer demand, meaning that diverting fish from feed to food does not automatically improve food security.

Peru's anchoveta fishery is the world's largest fish stock used to produce marine ingredients. Despite its scale and nutritional value, there has been low demand for anchoveta as a food fish within Peru. Factors such as low demand, short shelf life, limited logistics and strong economic incentives to process fish into fishmeal and fish oil have often hindered the development of markets for some fish as food. Strategic use of some fish as feed can help convert marine resources into nutritious and accessible seafood.

Small-scale fishing for anchoveta is widespread in Peru. Christian Vinces/Shutterstock

To make the most of limited marine resources, the aquaculture industry could improve how it tracks fish and nutrients as they are transformed into farmed seafood. We have developed a novel peer-reviewed performance tool that provides a common sustainability language. At the heart of the tool is the Fish In: Fish Out (Fifo) ratio, a measure of how efficiently fish, and the omega-3 fatty acids they contain, are converted into farmed fish.

Efficiency can be improved by increasing the use of fish processing by-products that are not normally eaten by people and by strategically replacing certain marine ingredients with alternatives such as algal oil and insect meal. The tool is currently being used by a variety of organisations like feed and ingredient companies, farmers, environmental charities, and researchers.

Applying the tool in our latest study already challenged conventional thinking about marine ingredient use in aquaculture. Although Faroese salmon is often viewed as a major consumer of marine ingredients, we found it was actually a net producer of edible omega-3 fatty acids. This was achieved by upcycling valuable nutrients from inedible sources (fishery by-products) into a nutritious farmed product, without increasing the need for fish that could be consumed directly by humans.

Making the most of limited marine resources is important, but decisions made in one country can affect food availability and affordability elsewhere. Therefore, harmonising nutrition-sensitive policies across local, national and regional levels is crucial to achieve meaningful outcomes. Traceability systems can play an important role, but they must do more than track supply chains.

They can only make a meaningful difference when they empower local communities through greater participation in decision-making and improved market access. They should support those closest to the resource, rather than treating them simply as sources of data for downstream companies. In West Africa, this could include retaining a proportion of the catch for local consumption and improving the cold chain to support its distribution.

These approaches would enable the marine ingredients and aquaculture industries to operate effectively. They would also contribute more to global food security, the economy and the supply of nutritious seafood to consumers.

Wesley Malcorps is Co-Founder and CEO of Blue Food Performance and provides consulting services to the seafood sector, including the development of sustainability assessments, strategies, dashboards and tools. As part of his academic work, he also receives funding from a variety of sources that support research and innovation activities.

Richard Newton is a founder of BFP and advisor on sustainability assessments. He has previously received funding from the EU, CIEL and IFFO to work on aspects of improving circular aspects of marine ingredients production.

Umair Choksy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Stock1987/Shutterstock

The UK government has just approved the Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea, clearing the way for production to begin as early as this winter.

Jackdaw, around 150 miles east of Aberdeen, could account for roughly 6.5% of UK North Sea gas production at its peak and will connect to existing infrastructure at the Shearwater platform.

But what will this actually mean for households and public finances? Will Jackdaw lower energy bills? Probably not by any noticeable amount.

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Read more: Granting a new gasfield licence does not guarantee energy security

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Producing more British gas may sound as though it should lower prices. But North Sea gas is not reserved for British consumers at a special domestic price. It is sold into a market connected to Europe and influenced by international gas prices. This was clear following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Britain continued producing gas domestically, yet consumers were still exposed to soaring international wholesale prices.

According to one analysis, even if Britain maximised North Sea production and returned all resulting government revenues to households, the average annual saving would be no more than £82. Jackdaw is one field, so its effect would be small.

Will this new gas field licence improve energy security? Here the case is stronger.

Britain consumes more gas than it produces and increasingly depends on imports as older North Sea fields decline. Jackdaw will not make Britain energy independent, but additional domestic production can reduce imports.

There is an important distinction between security of supply and protection from high prices. Jackdaw can contribute to the first, but not the second while consumers remain exposed to international gas prices.

In terms of how much tax Jackdaw will generate, North Sea taxes are currently charged on profits, not total sales. Investment reliefs (tax breaks that allow companies to deduct certain investment costs) can reduce those taxable profits.

Companies can generally deduct day-to-day operating costs when calculating taxable profits. They can also claim tax relief for certain development costs, investments to reduce emissions and, eventually, the costs of dismantling the field.

For Jackdaw, development investment will be in the region of £2.1 billion according to Adura, the UK North Sea's largest independent oil and gas producer. Yet using the developer's production forecast which estimates of how much gas and other products Jackdaw will produce each year, and the UK government's Office for Budget Responsibility's March 2026 oil and gas price assumptions, we estimate Jackdaw would generate only around £1.5 billion to £1.6 billion in gross sales by the end of 2029. Around £1 billion would come from gas, with the remainder from condensate and natural gas liquids (these are the liquid products extracted alongside natural gas that are sold separately).

A new gasfield won't guarantee cheaper energy prices. Kub The Shadow Simple Man/Shutterstock

Based on this simple comparison, gross sales through 2029 would still be below the project's implied development investment, even before operating costs are taken into account.

This does not mean Jackdaw will pay no tax. Public information does not reveal how much investment qualifies for tax relief, when allowances will be used or how Jackdaw fits into the operator's wider North Sea tax position. Adura estimates that Jackdaw and the much larger Rosebank project together could generate around £1.4 billion in tax by mid-2029 but does not say how much of that would come from Jackdaw.

There is another complication. The energy profits levy (a temporary 38% tax on oil and gas profits) is due to end by March 2030. It will be replaced by the oil and gas revenue levy, a new tax that would apply when oil and gas prices rise above specified levels. Unlike the current windfall tax, this would charge 35% on revenues above specified price thresholds, regardless of a field's costs. My research suggests the same revenue threshold can affect high- and low-cost fields very differently.

What Jackdaw really changes

Jackdaw will not give Britain cheap gas or make the country energy independent. Its significance is more limited: it can replace some imported gas and support economic activity, but Britain will remain exposed to international gas prices.

The financial picture is similarly complicated. A 78% headline tax rate does not mean 78% of Jackdaw's revenues will reach the Treasury. Investment reliefs can reduce tax in a field's early years, while jobs and supply-chain activity generate other tax revenues and eventual decommissioning costs can also qualify for tax relief.

These benefits must be weighed against the emissions and environmental costs of further fossil-fuel production, and against investing instead in renewables, storage and other ways of reducing dependence on gas.

By producing a little more of its own gas, Britain can marginally improve its security of energy supply, but this won't lower prices or guarantee an immediate tax windfall.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Human-killing tigers are more likely to be culled in the wild than in zoos. Liz Miller / shutterstock

When an Amur tiger recently killed a man at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in northern England, the park announced that the tiger would not be killed.

Days later, a 71-year-old fisherman was killed by an alligator in Florida in the US. This time, the animal was captured and killed.

Two fatal attacks, but two very different responses. The distinction is not simply between a tiger in captivity and an alligator in the wild. It is about whether killing an animal can prevent further harm.

Sometimes removing a dangerous animal is necessary to protect human life. More surprisingly, it can also protect other wildlife, by preventing people retaliating against animals who weren't involved in the original attack.

A tiger attacking someone who enters its enclosure is behaving like a tiger, and killing it would achieve nothing. Removing an animal posing an ongoing threat is different. But in Yorkshire, the tiger remains behind barriers designed to keep people safe. The fatal encounter needs investigating, but the problem was that a person got in, not that a tiger got out. Killing the tiger would not address any potential failures in enclosure security.

When killing is justified

The Florida alligator presents a different problem. There is no good evidence that crocodilians develop a particular taste for human flesh after an attack, but they can become accustomed to people and learn to associate human activity with food, potentially increasing the risk of further encounters.

Where an animal poses a continuing threat, removing it may be justified on safety grounds, although a fatal attack alone does not establish that killing it was necessary. For communities that depend on crocodile-inhabited rivers for fishing, washing or collecting water, simply telling people to avoid them may not be realistic.

In Borneo, a fatal attack by a false gharial, a large and threatened relative of crocodiles, prompted a search for the animal responsible. A large male was killed, but examination of its stomach failed to establish that it was responsible.

Following another fatal attack, a second false gharial was killed, this time with the victim's remains in its stomach. No further crocodilians were killed following that incident.

The consequences of indiscriminate retaliation can be devastating. In 2018, after a man was killed by a crocodile at a breeding facility in West Papua, Indonesia, an angry crowd entered the facility and killed all 292 crocodiles kept there, including hundreds of animals that had played no part in the attack.

The danger of retaliation

When people fear that a dangerous animal remains a threat, the pressure to act can be considerable. If authorities fail to respond, communities may take matters into their own hands, killing animals uninvolved in the attack. Identifying and removing the responsible individual can sometimes prevent this escalation and protect other wildlife.

But targeted removal is not straightforward, not least because identifying the right animal can be difficult. In addition, involvement in a fatal attack does not necessarily mean an individual is unusually dangerous. The circumstances may explain what happened, and killing the animal may do little to prevent another attack.

Such retaliation is not confined to crocodiles. In India in 2024, villagers near Ranthambore tiger reserve killed a tiger following the death of a shepherd. That year, a leopard that injured four people in Karnataka, south-west India, was beaten to death by a crowd, despite wildlife officials attempting to capture it.

Retaliation also occurs when lions kill livestock. In Kenya in 2015, herders poisoned a cow carcass after lions killed their cattle. Three lions from the famous Marsh Pride died, along with 11 vultures.

The incident illustrates how livestock conflict can become a wider conservation problem. A timely, targeted response may be preferable to allowing fear and anger to escalate into indiscriminate killing.

Preventing conflict

Often, better barriers, safer access to water or changes in how people encounter wildlife offer more lasting solutions. Providing safe water, for example, reduces the need to enter crocodile-inhabited rivers. Killing an animal should never be a substitute for addressing the circumstances that made an attack possible.

For people living alongside dangerous wildlife, these are not abstract conservation dilemmas. Expecting communities to tolerate serious risks without effective protection is neither reasonable nor fair. Those communities also need a meaningful say in how dangerous animals are managed. Decisions made solely by distant authorities or conservation organisations can overlook both the risks people face and the practical options available to them.

Equally, killing an animal does not necessarily make anyone safer. Decisions should depend on whether removal is likely to reduce danger and protect other wildlife. Sometimes killing a dangerous animal is justified, not despite conservation concerns, but because of them.

Adam Hart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Yada's Room/Shutterstock

A crack appears beside a window after weeks of scorching weather. As much as you might hope the ground beneath your house will recover with the first rain, the effects of a dry summer can continue long after temperatures fall.

The UK is recovering from the hottest summer on record. The drought, however, has not simply disappeared. According to the Environment Agency, south-east England received 61% of its normal September rainfall, leaving its soil moisture deficit around twice the seasonal average.

The financial consequences are staggering. After the UK's 2022 heatwave, insurers recorded 18,000 claims from homeowners in the second half of that year for subsidence (the gradual sinking of the ground surface).

In 2025, domestic subsidence payouts reached £307 million, 10% above 2024 figures. Between April and June 2026, the average paid claim reached £20,000. Although payouts include repair costs, the amount shows the scale of the damage to houses by climate change.

Clay-rich soils commonly lose water and contract during drought. If that happens unevenly beneath a foundation, one part of a house may settle further than another, producing cracks in its walls. Trees may intensify local drying as their thirsty roots extract water from the ground.

When rain replenishes moisture, some clays swell again, potentially pushing foundations upward. The recovery, however, is neither complete nor instantaneous. A heavy shower may wet the surface without restoring moisture several metres below ground, and different parts of a building may move at different rates.

Cycles of drought and rain can displace salt and sticky clays within sandy soils and clay-like silty soils. While that displacement generally makes these soils stiffer, it can also make them susceptible to sudden subsidence when large volumes of water flow through the pores opened up after the summer drought, weakening the contacts holding the grains apart.

Clay-rich soils often lose water and contract during drought. Andriy Solovyov/Shutterstock

These soils can show problems normally associated with "collapsible soils", which are explored in my 2019 study of English loess, a fine, wind-blown silty sediment that's very porous. My research shows that seemingly similar silty soils can behave quite differently, depending on how they formed and how their particles became arranged and bonded over time. Some layers are better at supporting loads than others.

Where soils are susceptible to collapse once wet, rapid subsidence may be further escalated by a leaking drain or poorly sited soakaway (an underground drainage system that collects surface rainwater, stores it and allows for it to slowly seep out). That is one of the principal reasons the British Geological Survey (BGS) advises maintaining water pipes and keeping soakaways further from buildings where loosely cemented soils and soluble rocks may be present.

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Read more: Floods and droughts are both signs of water insecurity - they show up in these four places

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Two houses on the same street may not respond in the same way. Their foundations may reach different depths or sit on different soil layers. The ground beneath one garden may be shaded by trees, while the next has been paved over. Rainwater can be diverted by a driveway, concentrated by a leaking pipe, or drawn away by roots.

A geological map can flag a potential hazard, but it cannot tell a homeowner whether a particular crack is caused by ground movement. The building, soil and local water conditions all affect that.

Soil is not simply a platform for foundations. Its pores store nutrients and water for plants, lock carbon, carry rain towards groundwater and provide habitats for roots, fungi and earthworms.

Roots are part of the soil's plumbing. They create pathways for water and hold particles in place. If drought damages fine roots or kills vegetation, the ground may absorb rainfall differently, while its surface becomes more exposed to erosion.

A 2025 review of drought-affected soil studies by the BGS describes how drying may reduce microbial and earthworm activity, weaken soil structure and expose bare ground as plants die back. This makes some soils at a greater risk of erosion by the runoff when rain returns. Soil staying wet for a long time, combined with intense rainfall can increase the erosion risk.

Soil degradation, loss and erosion can affect the food security. In the 2026 harvest survey, UK wheat yields were around 11% below their five-year average and spring barley around 17% below. Some crops like oilseed rape, enjoyed higher yield. The contrasting yields mark why one harsh summer does not produce one uniform outcome across the landscape.

When should you worry?

So what should homeowners do to manage the problem? Many fine plaster cracks are cosmetic. New or widening diagonal cracks, cracks visible inside and outside, suddenly sticking doors or distorted floors merit closer attention. Photograph them with a ruler and date, check that gutters and drains are sound, and seek advice from your insurer and a qualified surveyor if movement appears to be progressing. Do not rush to remove a mature tree: it may change the moisture balance and create a different problem.

The longer-term outlook makes better ground management urgent. The BGS estimates that, by 2070, more than 1.8 million British properties could be in areas where clay is particularly prone to shrinking and swelling. This figure assumes a medium level of future greenhouse gas emissions. If emissions remain high, the number could rise to 4.2 million properties are at risk. This does not mean all these homes will suffer damage. The figures identify potentially vulnerable ground, rather than predict actual subsidence. They also exclude other hazards, such as the sudden collapse of some soils once flooded.

Protecting homes is not just about building stronger foundations. It calls for careful drainage, sensible land and tree management plus healthy soils that can retain and carry water without creating new hazards elsewhere.

Arya Assadi Langroudi receives funding from Royal Academy of Engineering.

Southworks/Shutterstock

Most people who have an electric car have access to a driveway or private parking. In England, 90% EV owners can park easily and charge theirs from home. But roughly 40% of UK households don't have off-street parking, so the question is how they would charge an EV and would easy access to home-charging influence their decision to acquire one.

The practical problems are well documented. In a block of flats or a tenement, installing an EV charger may not be an option due to the cost and the legal consent required from third parties who may have no interest in giving it. In a block of flats, installing an EV charger can also be difficult because it may require running cables from the flat's electricity supply to a shared parking space, if one is available, or to the street where the vehicle is parked.

This can involve drilling through walls, installing cables through shared areas of the building and altering existing electrical infrastructure. Such work is generally more complex (and costly) than in a detached house, where a charger can usually be installed on an external wall close to the property's electricity supply.

According to the Electric Vehicle Association, a non-profit representing EV drivers in England, 87% of EV owners with driveways say their car is cheaper to run than a petrol or diesel equivalent. Among those without, only half say the same because they have to default to more expensive public chargers.

As a researcher exploring effective designs for urban environments, I've been looking at whether fixing this home-charging gap would solve the problem of access. I found that the driveway divide is really less about infrastructure and actually more about wealth in disguise.

My colleagues and I looked at data on Scottish households. Our latest study suggests that having a driveway does not get you into the electric car market - money does. A driveway only helps once you are already in.

We linked nationally representative Scottish household and housing data sets, capturing variables such as income, work, dwelling home type and age, and whether anyone there already owns or intends to buy an EV. Then we built a causal model: think of it as a map of factors that genuinely influence each other.

Wealthier households are far more likely to live in a house that comes with a driveway and to also have the financial means to buy an electric car. A standard statistical model cannot tell those two things apart. It will simply report that driveways and electric cars "go together" or correlate, leaving researchers like me to guess why.

Our approach let us ask a question you cannot normally answer from survey data: what would actually change if a household suddenly had a private driveway, holding everything else the same? The answer surprised us.

Having a driveway does make a difference. It raises the probability of owning an electric car by 70%, a substantial jump for a group (the EV owners) that is relatively small to begin with. Immediate intent to buy an EV rises too, but almost all of that effect lands on households already thinking about buying an electric car at some point in the future. A driveway pushes people along a journey they had already started.

Having a driveway does make it easier for people to own an EV but it's not the only deciding factor. iSky Media/Shutterstock

For the roughly half of Scottish households not considering to buy an electric car at all, a driveway changes almost nothing. Income, on the other hand, is different: when we simulated what would happen if a household earned more, the share of households not considering buying an electric car fell by 23%, that is more than ten times the apparent driveway effect on that group.

The contrast is stark: money opens the door, a driveway walks you to the till. The two factors operate at different stages, which explains something that has puzzled researchers. Electric car uptake has been slowest among people in flats and tenements, and the natural conclusion has been that home charging is the problem. Our findings suggest that is only true for people already considering to buy an EV, whether sooner or later.

A Glasgow tenement household that has decided to go electric but has nowhere to charge from home faces a real infrastructural barrier. For a household on a modest income that has never seriously considered buying an electric car, the main barrier may instead be the upfront cost. Although average advertised prices for new EVs have recently fallen below those of petrol cars, this does not mean that comparable cars cost the same. At the more affordable end of the market, new EVs still tend to be less affordable than new petrol or diesel cars.

Making street charging more accessible or public charging cheaper could help households who can afford an EV. It would not, however, solve the problem of being able to afford one in the first place.

Possible solutions

All of this points to a two-track policy response. For households outside the EV market, the priority is affordability: a stronger used electric car market, and financial support aimed at those who need it rather than those already buying in. For households already intending to buy but stuck without a driveway, home-charging access is the binding constraint.

Scotland is already piloting cross-pavement charging, which runs a cable gully under the pavement so a car parked on the street can be charged from the house. The Scottish government has also consulted on relaxing planning rules to make on-street charging easier.

The driveway divide is real, but it also involves a wealth divide. Any equitable transition needs to tackle both. Investing in home-charging infrastructure alone will mainly benefit the people who were already going to buy an electric car anyway.

Bernardino D'Amico does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

For decades, data has told the story of our ecological crisis. Scientists track carbon emissions, map deforestation and log biodiversity loss. Yet data alone cannot make humanity feel the reality of a changing planet. True impact hinges on a shift in language - a vocabulary that dissolves the border between the human and the living world.

Phoebe Giannisi embodies this shift. Poet, classicist, performer, architect and environmentalist, Giannisi has produced one of the most radical bodies of eco-poetry in contemporary literature. Her work blends ancient Greek myth, site-specific performance, video poems and field recordings to offer a long-lasting lesson in what it means to coexist on a vulnerable earth.

Giannisi's environmental message is anchored in the chimera. In classical mythology, the chimera was a fire-breathing monster, part lion, part goat, part serpent. For Giannisi, this creature is not a monstrous abstraction but a biological and ethical reality.

In her collection Chimera (2024), Giannisi bridges ancient myth with modern genetics, drawing a line from Homer's legendary she-goat chimera to the scientific phenomenon of microchimerism - the way cells from one organism can live permanently inside another. Humans are, her poetry suggests, inherently collaborative creatures. As she writes in the poem Chimera II:

Call me Chimera.

A being composed of

other beings

A being with different genetic codes

incorporated.

Various genes connected

in one body.

Multiple body.

Giannisi's poetry challenges the delusion that humans stand apart from nature, either as masters or saviours. Instead, she invites her readers to recognise that we are composite creatures, physically and ecologically tangled with the world around us. To harm the landscape is to tear apart our own multi-species body.

This philosophy comes to life through Giannisi's use of multiple voices. Her poems, now collected in Goatsong (2025), abandon the solitary narrator to thrive as living ecosystems where human and non-human voices hold equal weight. In her second poetry collection, Cicada (2022), the protagonist is the eponymous insect. Giannisi layers ancient texts by Plato, Archilochus and the Japanese poet Bashō, alongside observations of the insect's life cycle and its droning mating calls. Its song becomes environmental testimony - a non-human language demanding the reader's attention.

Giannisi's focus deepened in Chimera, her third collection. In it, she tracks the ancient traditions of northern Greece's Vlach herding communities, who move their livestock seasonally between mountain and valley pastures.

Rather than romanticising pastoral life, Giannisi constructs an archive of shared survival, reassembling state archives, regional oral histories and her own field recordings. In her live performances, Giannisi loops the cries of shepherds alongside the bellowing of the herd, the roar of a passing motorcycle and the grinding crunch of a cement mixer.

This acoustic space forces listeners to inhabit the modern industrial world and the ancient, animal landscape simultaneously. It is an ecology of sound that captures both the beauty of shared life and the vulnerability of an environment under threat.

Language as a material path

Trained as an architect, Giannisi conceives of language as a physical path to be walked, tasted and felt. When I hosted Giannisi at the Center of Hellenic Studies, Harvard in October 2023, I watched this spatial approach to poetry take shape in the room. There is an intimate, architectural precision to how she moves language off the page and into a shared physical space.

For her 2017 installation Aigis II at the Panourgias Museum in Amfissa, Greece, Giannisi inscribed her poetry onto semitransparent goatskin parchment. On one side, she traced traditional migration routes and on the other, she wrote lines of verse. As I observed viewers handling the parchment, the written word and the geography of the earth ghost one another through the animal hide.

In this method of composition, the human body becomes the primary medium for environmental memory. In her performances, Giannisi routinely blocks her own sight with a cloth or basket, intentionally de-centering her own human gaze to open up a vulnerable, sensory relationship with her surroundings. Her poems are filled with the taste of an earthy cicada, the sting of sea salt and the pungent smell of animal secretions.

This late autumn, that physical performance of environmental memory is coming to the University of Bristol. I will join Giannisi and her poet-translator, Brian Sneeden, to see how these ancient textures resonate inside a new architectural space, letting our contemporary landscape and classical myth collide once again.

Grounding her poetry in these realities allows Giannisi to create a space where human and environmental forces spill into one another. This strategy carries a subtle political edge, positioning her work as a defence of the "commons", the shared resources currently being dismantled by economic profit. Her collaborative projects, including acoustic explorations of marine soundscapes, bear witness to the devastating loss of biodiversity driven by climate change and industrial expansion.

In the boundary crossing tradition of poet and translator Barbara Köhler and the 2026 Nobel prize winner Anne Carson, Giannisi dissolves the divisions between myth, scholarship and creativity, turning them into vital tools for navigating our difficult era.

Surviving the ecological crisis requires an entirely new framework of imagination. We are called to view our world not as resources to exploit, but as a vast, connected web where every creature's song breathes life into the whole.

Laura Jansen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Walk into a British supermarket and you will see prawns from south-east Asia, salmon from Norway, lobster from Canada and tuna from the Indian Ocean.

Seafood is among the most traded foods globally, yet around 80% of the seafood British consumers eat comes from just five species groups: cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and prawns.

It's tempting to assume Britain has long been a nation of cautious fish eaters with a few trusted favourites. Histories of certain species, such as cod (the mainstay of the national dish, fish and chips) and herring (kippers on toast, anyone?) can reinforce that narrative. But my new research exploring a century of recipes from one of Britain's longstanding domestic magazines suggests a different story.

Records of which fish people cooked at home are surprisingly patchy. Retail data are mostly short term and commercially owned, while long-running household surveys rarely record fish to species level. National statistics track what is landed and traded, but the home kitchen, where food choices are made and lifelong habits are formed, leaves far fewer traces.

Recipes offer a window into this hidden past. They don't measure what people ate, but they do show which fish readers were expected to recognise, be able to buy and want to cook. Britain's fish supply and trade have changed dramatically over the past century, so I wondered whether the fish in recipes had changed too.

British Good Housekeeping magazine was first published in the 1920s and continues today as Good Housekeeping UK. Its focus on home life and steady output of recipes make it well suited to tracking changing food culture. Sampling several years per decade, I collected 1,192 fish and shellfish recipes published from 1923-2025.

Recipes published in the 1920s reflect a broad and flexible fish culture. Sole, oysters, shrimp and salmon appeared alongside halibut, lobster and herring, in dishes such as oyster cocktails with olives, kipper cream and halibut steaks in milk. Almost a third of recipes included suggestions for substitute species. Some recipes (such as fish baked in custard) simply called for fish or white fish, probably because supply was not always predictable.

Smoked kippers were a staple in 20th-century Britain. Simon Baylis/Shutterstock

From the 1950s, that flexibility gave way to more standardisation. Recipes increasingly assumed prepared fillets rather than whole fish, and frozen products became common.

The 1970s marked a turning point. From then on, cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and prawns accounted for the most species mentions each decade, while sole, herring, oysters and lobster appeared less often. My research shows the number of fish species represented in recipes in each decade didn't collapse, but attention became concentrated on fewer of them.

Shifting staples

What explains the shift? Supply matters, but the picture is more complicated. Cod declined in British waters but remained a recipe staple, as distant water fleets and then imports kept it on sale. Herring and oyster populations also declined but did not disappear from markets entirely, yet they faded from the magazine's pages. What stayed familiar depended less on what our local fleets caught than on increasingly globalised supply chains and marketing.

Within this glossy monthly magazine, at least, fish recipes are more globally adventurous than ever: recent examples include gochujang sticky cod and miso prawn skewers. Yet the fish remain largely the same five. Britain's cooking globalised, but the range of fish within these pages stayed narrow.

British boats, including many small vessels, land a diverse mix of locally caught fish and shellfish, but much of that is exported. In contrast, most of the fish eaten today is imported.

Seabass is not one of the 'big five' fish. New Africa/Shutterstock

Britain's narrow appetite for fish is often assumed to be a long-standing cultural norm. These recipes suggest otherwise. Viewed through this lens, modern preferences look less like an enduring national trait and more like an outcome of changing supply, trade and food retail. This raises the intriguing possibility that eating habits may be more open to change than previously thought.

One magazine can only reveal so much. Good Housekeeping was written for a particular readership. Its recipes show what was visible and aspirational, not what was prepared and eaten. But unlike specialist fish cookbooks, which are aimed at people already keen on fish, a mass market magazine shows which fish were put in front of ordinary home cooks.

A century ago, British cooks expected the fish on offer to change with the seasons and the catch. Reviving that flexibility, and a taste for local, sustainably caught seafood (such as sardines, pollack or mussels) could benefit our seas and coastal communities. Some suppliers are already pioneering this approach, but it needs to reach the mainstream.

Recipes written with versatility in mind won't secure the future of Britain's fish stocks and fishing communities alone, but, combined with thoughtful choices by suppliers and shoppers, they could be a (very enjoyable) step in the right direction.

Ruth H. Thurstan works for The University of Exeter. She received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 856488).

Late last year, scientists in Germany published some remarkable findings on a second world war munitions dump in the Baltic Sea. Some may dismiss the dump as hazardous waste, but to marine biologists it was something far more exciting: a thriving ecosystem.

Over the decades, the dump has become home to mussels, crustaceans, fish and marine plant life, creating a full community under the sea. It's a perfect example of an accidental reef, highlighting nature's ability to reclaim even dangerous human detritus.

Around the UK coast, there are thousands of famous wrecks. I have had the pleasure of diving on many of them, witnessing first hand how sea creatures turn rusting hulls into habitat. Further afield, deliberate artificial reef projects, from Australia to the Caribbean, are evidence that where structures sink, life follows.

But let's not romanticise our wrecks. While these structures offer a foothold for life, they can also leak toxic compounds into the oceans.

Scuppered ships

Not all reefs are born from disaster. Around the world, governments, scientists and conservation groups have deliberately sunk ships, concrete structures and even old underground train carriages to create new marine habitats. These artificial reefs are designed to mimic the ecological functions of natural reefs, boosting biodiversity and providing refuges for overfished species. They also draw scuba divers and recreational fishers, providing economic incentives for people who live nearby.

In the US, the decommissioned aircraft carrier the USS Oriskany was famously sunk to create a tourist attraction off the Florida coast: the "Great Carrier Reef". In November 2026, an even bigger ship will be sunk nearby: the SS United States, an ocean liner larger than the Titanic.

Future reef: the USS United States in the dock in Philadelphia in 2024. PTS Aerial Services / shutterstock

In Japan, concrete blocks have been used extensively to stabilise coastlines and provide habitat for fish. In Australia, the "rigs-to-reefs" initiative means old oil rigs - too costly to remove - are being left in place to create new ecosystems.

But there's a fine line between "marine habitat creation" and simply "dumping unwanted stuff". Poorly planned projects have often done more harm than good.

Perhaps the most infamous case is the Osborne Reef off Florida. In the 1970s, millions of used vehicle tyres were sunk to create a massive reef. But the steel clips holding them soon corroded, and many tyres broke loose and started scouring the seafloor and battering a nearby natural coral reef during storms.

The expensive lesson is that artificial reefs can at best supplement conservation, but they are not a substitute for protecting natural habitats.

A less visible legacy

Shipwrecks and artificial reefs also bring with them a less visible legacy of metal pollution.

The vast majority of wrecks are made of steel, iron, copper and various other alloys that slowly corrode in seawater. This releases dissolved metals into the surrounding environment, and while iron and steel often rust away harmlessly, other metals can be more problematic.

Copper, zinc, lead, tin and aluminium can leach from hull coatings, machinery, or electrical components. These trace metals and toxic chemicals don't just wash away. Instead, they accumulate in surrounding sediments and, more worryingly, in the tissues of marine organisms. This is particularly concerning for filter feeders such as mussels and oysters, which can concentrate pollutants and pass them up the food chain to predators - and potentially humans.

In high enough concentrations, these substances become toxic, affecting growth, reproduction and survival. For instance, for many years ship's hulls were coated with the chemical tributyltin (TBT) to prevent barnacle growth which slows vessels down. However, TBT also caused serious environmental damage: some female dogwhelks developed male sexual organs, for instance, disrupting reproduction cycles in these key coastal molluscs.

The issue is magnified for wrecks that still contain fuel or munitions. Corroding shells and tanks not only release components of explosives but also heavy metals such as mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium and TNT degradation products.

The Baltic Sea munitions, for example, are slowly leaking toxicants into an already fragile semi-enclosed sea. If fish are still there, how bad can the contamination really be? The problem is that presence does not equal a safe zone. Many toxic metals and explosive residues cause sub-lethal effects that do not immediately drive fish away or kill them outright. Instead, these substances accumulate through the food web. Fish may continue to hang out in contaminated areas while suffering impaired reproduction, altered behaviour, suppressed immune systems, or developmental defects. These effects are ultimately largely invisible without detailed study.

In a semi-enclosed system like the Baltic Sea, limited water exchange exacerbates the problem: contaminants persist longer, sediments act as long-term reservoirs, and chronic exposure becomes unavoidable. What looks like ecological resilience can therefore mask a delayed population collapse, and increased risk to predators, including humans, who potentially consume the fish.

We know that organisms can tolerate pollution in the short term. The question is whether ecosystems can remain functional and safe under decades of continuous, low-level toxic exposure.

Supplement not substitute

The urgent need to create artificial habitats is heightened by the crisis facing natural coral reefs from climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing and pollution. Rising sea temperatures are already triggering mass coral bleaching events.

In this context, wrecks and artificial reefs also serve as accidental laboratories. They show how quickly life will colonise and exploit a new habitat, providing lessons for restoration work elsewhere. But the answer to the reef crisis isn't simply "sink more ships".

Artificial reefs should never be seen as a licence to pollute or a shortcut for true conservation. They must complement, not replace, efforts to protect and restore natural habitats. We can't "offset" destroying an ancient coral reef by sinking an old ship. Conservationists rightly stress the focus must remain on marine protected areas, reducing ocean acidification, tackling overfishing and pollution.

The Baltic Sea munitions "reef" is an accident of history rather than a model for the future. Yes, marine life has flourished there, but it swims in a sea filled with heavy metals and toxins.

Nicholas Ray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The European rabbit is a common sight in the British countryside today. Yet it was not always so. They are not native to the British Isles and are one of the most devastating invasive species.

The early history of rabbits in the British Isles tells the captivating story of social change in medieval England. From a rare luxury gifted by kings and the Norman aristocracy, rabbits became more commonplace after the living standards of the poor improved in the years after the Black Death (1346 to 1353).

The satirical depictions of rabbits found in medieval books reveal a gallows humour for social inversion that would not feel out of place today.

Gifts of kings

Once thought to have been introduced by the Normans, archaeologists have since uncovered a rabbit bone from Roman Britain. However, documentary evidence of rabbits in the British Isles has only been found from the Norman period onwards.

One of the earliest references survives from the Scilly Isles in the form of a tithe, which was a tenth of produce given to the church as an offering. In 1176, the landowner Richard de Wyka admitted that he had withheld paying tithes on his rabbits because he had believed that "tithes were not payable on things of this kind". His confusion suggests that rabbits were a novelty.

Rabbits continued to be sufficiently rare to warrant the king's care and attention in the 1200s. In 1235, Henry III gave a gift of ten live rabbits to Geoffrey Despenser, the English landowner and Lord of Martley in Worcestershire, out of his park at Guildford.

A few years later, the king sent men to catch 30 or 40 rabbits in his Guildford park. They were told only to collect them if the warren was well stocked, indicating that the king didn't want the colony to be depleted.

At the time, rabbits were kept for their meat and fur. Henry III sent out orders for the supply of venison, boars, fish, swans, peacocks, hens, eggs, and hares for various feasts in the early 13th century. It had not been until his Christmas feast of 1240 that he added rabbits to his requisition list.

Rabbits were an expensive delicacy, costing four or five times as much as chickens. Their owners guarded their warrens against poaching and predators to the point that watchtowers and stone lodges were built to protect them.

Social change

Yet rabbits did not remain the preserve of the aristocracy. The Black Death (1346 to 1353), which killed between a third and two-thirds of the European population, led to improving living standards for the survivors. Land became more freely available. Labourers could also charge more for their work. And many adopted the lifestyles of those higher up the social ladder.

Legislation was introduced in 1363 to restrict what people could wear according to their social status. Its introduction was explained because of "the excess of dress of people beyond their estate, to the very great destruction and impoverishment of the land."

Rabbits reflected this social change. They became more commonplace during the 14th and 15th centuries as their meat was eaten by wealthier peasants and their furs worn by aspiring craftsmen.

The fur of the common grey rabbit was used for warmth, but some warrens specialised in rarer silver-grey or black rabbits. Rabbits were still fit for a king and Henry VII had night attire tailored with black rabbit fur.

As rabbit numbers increased through breeding, so too did the number of complaints about the destruction caused by them. Manorial accounts included repeated protests about the loss of crops and damage to land caused by the lord's rabbits.

At the same time, hunting rabbits and other game was seen as potentially subversive. In 1390, following the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, parliament introduced legislation against poaching and hunting by labourers and artisans. It was feared that, under the guise of hunting, such people would "make plots and conspiracies of rebellion" against the king.

The king consented to the legislation, extending the ban to the use of "hounds and ferrets, hays, nets, hair-pipes, cords and all other devices to take or destroy beasts of the forest, hares or rabbits, or other sport of gentlefolk".

Satirical imagery

Rabbits and hares also reveal the satirical humour of medieval society. The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, the fictional and deceptively deadly rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), is but a modern adaptation of this ironic imagery associated with medieval rabbits.

Rabbits adorn the margins of medieval manuscripts. Playful portrayals of rabbits jousting on the backs of snails point to a gentle self-mockery that pervades medieval culture - in this case of chivalric ideals. More in line with the killer rabbit myth, some went even further, depicting rabbits as violently attacking people and seeking retribution.

Rabbits capture, try and execute a hound in The Smithfield Decretals from the 1340s. British Library

The Smithfield Decretals, a manuscript illuminated in London in the 1340s, contains one of the most elaborate of such examples. In it, rabbits are portrayed as turning the tables on their hunters, capturing them, holding them trial, and then executing their human and greyhound hunters.

Such examples fit well within the medieval culture of inverting society - the world turned upside down - for comedic relief. Similar examples include the practice of electing a boy as the bishop for the day in Durham or electing a "lord of misrule" during May Day games.

By 1555 the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner could write that "there are few countries wherein coneys (rabbits) do not breed, but the most plenty of all is in England".

Alex Brown is currently the Principal Investigator of a Leverhulme Trust funded project on 'Modelling the Black Death'.

urbanbuzz / shutterstock

Could a cheap roll of duct tape help protect your home from flooding? New research suggests it could make a surprisingly big difference.

In controlled tests, correctly applied duct tape on the outside of a household door reduced water leakage by 97-98%. The findings suggest that a simple low-cost measure could substantially reduce the amount of water entering a home during a flood. This is important as one of the key lessons from flood resilience research is that the best time to protect a property is before floodwater arrives.

The UK government's 2025 FloodReady Review called for practical, affordable measures that help households understand their risks and to prepare for flooding. And one potential contribution to this agenda might sound unlikely, at first glance.

Duct tape is more commonly associated with household repairs than flood protection. However, tests colleagues and I conducted at the University of Hull demonstrated how much water can enter a property through an unprotected doorway during a flood.

Three doors, ready for flood-testing. Stuart McLelland

Inside our laboratory we tested modern wooden, uPVC and composite household doors, installed by trade professionals. We captured any water that leaked through the door in a sealed enclosure behind the door, as we increased water depth in 5cm increments to a maximum depth of 60cm. We pumped out any water that leaked through the door and continuously measured the rate of water leakage to evaluate the performance of doors and different types of protection applied to them.

When testing sandbags we stacked 54 sandbags with plastic sheeting between the door and the sandbags. For tape, the same person applied the tape for all tests to minimise any bias. It took about 10-20 minutes to apply the tape to each door.

For unprotected doors, leakage often reached thousands of litres per hour at 60cm water depth. Applying duct tape across the external door reduced that leakage by 97-98%. Specialist sealing tapes achieved even greater reductions.

Duct tape v sandbags

For decades, sandbags have been portrayed as the go-to emergency response to flooding. But sandbags have practical limitations. They are heavy to transport, labour-intensive to deploy and difficult to dispose of after contact with contaminated floodwater. And of course people don't keep a supply of sandbags ready to deploy.

Water leaking through an unprotected door in the lab tests. Stuart McLelland

In our tests, sandbags provided less effective protection against leakage through tested doorways compared to the tape-based sealing methods. Their performance varied with water depth and at their most effective only reduced leakage by 70% compared to an unprotected door at the same water depth.

The cost difference is striking. A household may already have duct tape or be able to purchase a roll for £10 or less, while finding and deploying sandbags involves significant additional costs, transport and effort.

Duct tape is not a substitute for professionally designed flood doors, barriers or a property-specific flood resilience plan. It is a temporary measure that may reduce water entering through particular gaps; it cannot guarantee a dry home or prevent water entering through other routes, including walls, floors, and drains.

Its effectiveness will depend on the condition of the door and frame, the surfaces to which the tape is applied, the quality of the seal and flood conditions. For properties at significant flood risk, professionally assessed protection remains important. For others, low-cost temporary measures could provide an additional layer of protection, though they cannot guarantee a property will remain dry.

Resilient households think ahead. They know whether they are at risk, sign up for flood warnings and have a plan for protecting valuables, moving vehicles and shutting off utilities if necessary. Adding duct tape to an emergency flood kit can be another small step in that process.

The wider lesson is that flood resilience does not have to start with a major investment. A £10 roll of duct tape cannot stop a flood. But our research suggests it could help keep out some of the water entering through a doorway. And that makes it a useful part of a wider plan to be prepared before the water arrives.

Stuart McLelland receives funding from Flood Re who funded this study. Stuart McLelland is a member of the PFR Roundtable, the DEFRA PFR Technical Group and the Flood Performance Certificate Oversight Group.

nicemyphoto/Shutterstock

From the clear covering on your microwave meal to the flimsy bread bag lying on the kitchen counter, plastic film is notoriously tricky to recycle. But what if those annoying bits of plastic waste could be put to better use?

This hard-to-reycle plastic could be transformed, potentially into a source of fuel, but the UK's current recycling rules make it difficult for companies to innovate and experiment.

The main legal barrier is the definition of recycling itself. Under the rules UK waste law is built on, recycling cannot include turning waste into anything that will be used as fuel. A separate category for the plastics that are the hardest to recycle, recognising fuel made from waste that would otherwise be burned, would give companies more scope to experiment with new ways to process it.

As a legal researcher, I study how the law decides what counts as recycling. My work raises a simple question. If the rules allowed it, could dealing with one problem, plastic waste, also help ease another, our dependence on imported fuel?

In Darlington in north-east England, a chemical recycling company has received planning permission for what it describes as the UK's first large-scale plant for recycling plastic film. The company, Endolys, plans to take up to 120,000 tonnes a year of waste plastic film, such as bread bags, wrappers and pouches, and turn it into so-called pyrolysis oil, subject to an environmental permit from the Environment Agency being granted.

Pyrolysis involves heating plastic to a very high temperature without air. With no oxygen, the plastic cannot burn, so it breaks down into pyrolysis oil along with some gas and solid residue. It is a little like making charcoal, where wood is heated without being allowed to catch fire.

Recycling waste plastic film in this way has had mixed results around the world. In Texas, US, ExxonMobil now processes more than 70,000 tonnes of plastic waste a year this way. But in the Netherlands, a Rotterdam pyrolysis plant with a deal to supply Shell never reached its planned capacity and has now closed for good. In Japan, a plant using a related process with very hot, pressurised water opened in 2025, and can process 20,000 tonnes of waste plastic a year.

Plastic film is one of the hardest materials to recycle. SGr/Shutterstock

What happens to the oil? Plastic doesn't go in one end and come out as diesel. Pyrolysis oil is closer to crude oil. It has to be cleaned and refined before it can become fuel, or it can be used to make new plastics. The new facility at Darlington expects to produce around 80,000 tonnes of pyrolysis oil a year.

There is a catch for energy security. Endolys has agreed to sell all of that oil to a global trader for European refineries. A plant only strengthens the UK's own supply if the oil stays in the UK.

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Read more: Soft plastic recycling laws have been delayed - an expert explains why

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At the moment, most of this kind of plastic is burned in incinerators. Burning plastic can produce dioxins, toxic chemicals linked to cancer, although modern incinerators filter out most of them, and must meet strict limits.

Because pyrolysis works without air, fewer of these chemicals should form. An Italian study comparing the two found the health risks from pyrolysis were low. For people living near an incinerator for many years, it put the cancer risk close to one extra case in every million people, the level the researchers treated as acceptable and a common benchmark in health risk assessments.

A German study found that turning plastic into oil rather than burning it could cut the greenhouse gas emissions from dealing with the waste by more than half, and by up to 94% as Germany's electricity becomes cleaner.

Pyrolysis plants often burn some of their own gas to keep running, and that part is regulated much like an incinerator. Inks, food residue and chlorine from some plastics can end up in the oil and need removing. When the oil is finally burned as fuel, its pollution and carbon are released then. And in Darlington, some residents have petitioned against the plant over health fears.

Rules matter

UK waste policy tries to keep plastic in use as plastic, recycled into new bottles, trays and packaging. Turning plastic into fuel generally doesn't count as recycling.

That makes sense for plastic that can be recycled. But plastic film is one of the hardest materials to deal with. Councils in England were due to start collecting it from every home by March 2027, but the government has pushed that back to 2030, partly because there aren't yet enough places to recycle it. Meanwhile, much of it is burned to generate a little electricity.

For those genuinely leftover plastics, I believe that the line between recycling and fuel deserves a second look. At the moment, the rules do little to encourage plants like Darlington to sell their oil in the UK, so the energy security benefit goes elsewhere. Rules that rewarded keeping this oil at home could change that.

Plastic waste will never replace imported oil. On its own, Darlington's 80,000 tonnes of oil a year would match only about 0.1% of the 61 million tonnes of oil products the UK used in 2025. That's roughly half a day's worth. But Darlington is one plant.

England's rubbish still contains around 4.2 million tonnes of plastic a year. If half of that were turned into oil at Darlington's rate and kept in the UK, it could meet a little over 2% of the country's oil needs. With the right rules, a small, steady supply from bread bags and food wrappers in our bins could help the UK be a little less exposed to future fuel shocks.

Robert Hargreaves does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Green Party members determine policies in votes at conference each year. A-Akram / Shutterstock

The Green Party of England and Wales' prospects have fluctuated dramatically in recent years. At times, it has appeared on the cusp of becoming a major force at Westminster.

During this period, the Greens have had to balance their belief in internal party democracy while operating in a modern media and electoral environment.

Around the 2015 general election, the party's membership and broader popularity surged, before the Labour Party picked Jeremy Corbyn as its leader and its subsequent move to the left stalled much of the Greens' momentum.

Keir Starmer's time as Labour leader allowed the Greens to once again successfully court progressive voters. They gained a record four MPs at the 2024 election, and their poll rating grew after Zack Polanski became leader in 2025.

But their popularity has slumped once again recently, something seemingly confirmed by their second-place finish in the recent Holborn and St Pancras byelection. They did, though, register their second-highest vote share in a byelection.

Over this period the Green Party of England and Wales and its sister parties in the rest of the UK have managed to consistently gain political representation at various levels, even if the Greens' popularity and prominence have oscillated.

Dilution of democratic principles

Green parties are strongly associated with internal democracy. Many green parties have therefore had to manage this commitment once they have achieved national prominence and electoral success, at times leading to some dilution of democratic principles in the name of professionalisation. This was implied by Michels' idea of the "iron law of oligarchy": political parties tend towards hierarchical structures in the name of efficiency.

The Green Party of England and Wales is a pretty typical case. Historically, it had a strong, early commitment to the idea that it would not just seek to implement policies different from those of other parties, but approach politics in a distinct manner, including through participatory and democratic decision-making processes. There were numerous arguments over this within the Greens, reflecting the "fundi-realo" divide seen in Green parties in other countries.

In the early 1990s there were factious disputes over the "Green 2000" proposals for a more centralised organisational structure, with the reforms ultimately being adopted. Subsequently, a Rubicon was crossed in 2007 when the Greens voted to create the position of leader, replacing the previous shared principal speaker roles.

Nonetheless, the Greens have remained highly democratic compared to most other parties in the UK. Their policies are decided by votes at the party conference, which then provides the "foundation" for election manifestos and political programmes.

Challenges of democracy

The Greens' commitment to members deciding policy has created challenges for it as the party has become more prominent. At times members have voted for policies which have proved controversial, including the "Zionism is racism" motion which was recently passed at its conference. This has been widely criticised, with various Green figures distancing themselves from it.

The leader's role is somewhat ambiguous as the party's policy foundation is decided by conference votes and a leader may end up defending a position they may not agree with. Polanski said that he would have voted against the Zionism motion.

Journalists have often picked up on policies in areas such as migration, drugs and defence which have been agreed at Green conference, but can be awkward for party leaders to explain in media interviews. This is partly a product of the system where the party provides an underlying body of policy, but a different manifesto is put forward at elections.

The most likely route for the Greens to enter the UK government would be via a coalition. This is increasingly plausible given the British party system's fragmentation. However, Westminster's culture is not used to this type of arrangement and larger parties can face pressure to rule out working with controversial partners.

Indeed, Labour figures recently ruled out future cooperation with the Greens after the Zionism motion, and some Labour MPs even involved the police. Green leaders may also require their party members' approval during any future coalition negotiations, which for most other UK party leaders would be unnecessary.

The Greens have, additionally, been grappling with practical issues. The party has grown, reaching over 200,000 members, meaning it is difficult for more than a small proportion of members to attend conferences and vote on policy.

System here to stay

There are reports that the current Green leadership has been looking at ways to amend its system of policymaking in light of its enlarged membership. Polanski has argued in the aftermath of the Zionism debate that "our party democracy must now evolve". It seems very unlikely, however, that this will lead to a full-scale jettisoning of the party's democratic structure.

Political parties' roots and principles shape and constrain them, which means that they are often not totally free to make choices even if they consider them to be in their immediate tactical interest, and the Greens' commitment to internal democracy runs very deep. None of the challenges which have been outlined here are necessarily insurmountable either.

Nonetheless, the Zionism motion has highlighted some of the tensions within a party, which is increasingly prominent in British politics, deciding its policy democratically.

Mitya Pearson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Flooding in Muara Angke, a fast-sinking area in north Jakarta. Kevin Herbian / Shutterstock

Cities worldwide are sinking at alarming rates, but that doesn't mean the ground is sinking at the same rate everywhere. Some neighbourhoods may be far more affected than others close by, with serious consequences for their residents.

Land subsidence - the gradual sinking of the ground surface - is a global urban problem. Rapid development often drives excessive groundwater extraction, which can cause underground sediments to compact and the land above to sink. The risk of flooding is exacerbated by rising sea levels and more intense rainfall associated with climate change.

One recent study estimated that about 71% of the global coastal population lives in subsiding regions, many of which are densely populated and already threatened by sea-level rise.

Advances in satellite monitoring now allow researchers to measure subsidence across cities at fine spatial scales. In a new study in Nature Cities a team of Chinese scientists used nine years of these satellite images to assess 465 large cities worldwide. They found cities in Asia are subsiding fastest, and that cities in developing countries are generally sinking faster than those in wealthier countries.

But citywide patterns can conceal big differences within individual cities, with important implications for where flood protection is most needed.

Jakarta - among the world's fastest sinking cities

We have become very aware of this in our own research in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. Now the world's most populous city, Jakarta has for many years been the poster child for sinking cities. Significant areas already lie below sea level and continued subsidence could put more of the city below it. Some areas in Jakarta are sinking more rapidly than others: the city's northern coastal area, for instance, sinks up to 7cm a year according to our model for 2016-24.

Subsidence rates in Jakarta 2016-2024, showing regions in the north west sinking the fastest. (Left = sinking rates across all Jakarta; right = only the most reliable and high-confidence data points) Shabrina et al (2026)

As a low-lying delta city in the tropics, crossed by 13 rivers, Jakarta is already vulnerable to floods from both rivers and tides. Land subsidence makes these floods more frequent and severe. In coastal northern areas such as Muara Angke, where informal settlements are common, flooding can occur every other day. This affects some of the city's most vulnerable communities.

Land subsidence is a planning problem

To protect the city, Jakarta has constructed a network of seawalls, water gates, polder systems, dykes, and pumping stations. Something similar is needed in many other subsiding coastal cities on Java, the world's most populated island, and there are now plans to construct a giant sea wall across much of northern Java.

Yet flood defences alone won't be able to cope and protect Jakarta or other Javanese cities from flooding without changes to the overall planning system.

Land subsidence had not been fully integrated into Jakarta's flood management planning until recently. Groundwater extraction regulations were introduced in 2021 and implemented in 2023, despite land subsidence being discussed for more than three decades.

A core problem remains the lack of a reliable piped water supply, making it desirable for residential and large commercial buildings to extract their own groundwater. Enforcement has improved but remains challenging: groundwater is notoriously difficult to manage as it is a hidden or "fugitive" resource.

Fortunately, land subsidence from excessive groundwater extraction can be reversed. When groundwater is replenished, the land surface may rise again. That being said, even immediately stopping groundwater extraction would not halt sinking abruptly.

Long-term adaptive management is urgently needed, supported by a comprehensive policy framework that combines groundwater regulation, extraction control, and overall water supply management.

Injecting water into the ground to replenish the aquifer has proven effective in managing subsidence in places such as Las Vegas and Shanghai. But the same approach is not straightforward in Jakarta, where land subsidence is driven by a combination of factors, including water loss deep below ground. Addressing this is technically complex and expensive, making regulation and piped water essential to tackling the problem.

Subsidence may be a global problem, but it is driven by locally specific factors and can only be addressed with an understanding of local patterns. This is because the causes and impacts of land subsidence are shaped by urban development, water management, and all the other policies and decisions in the making of the city.

As cities worldwide continue to sink, we need to continually examine these changes at the local scale. Averages across a whole city can tell us how big the problem is, but knowing where the land is sinking fastest - and who lives there - is essential to deciding how best to respond.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

AndriiKoval/Shutterstock

We're living in an age of constant information: tweets, headlines, reels, reports. It's everywhere, all the time. But here's the challenge: not all of it is true. Some of it is intentionally misleading. A lot is AI-generated. From outright climate denial to more subtle greenwashing, disinformation is not just a digital nuisance - it's a real threat.

Disinformation is false, fabricated or manipulated information that intends to deceive, while misinformation is false or misleading information shared without the intent to deceive.

AI is playing an increasingly powerful role in how information and disinformation spread. AI bots are software programmes designed to simulate human behaviour online. They can generate content, post on social media, chat with users and operate at massive scale. AI tools can create realistic-looking fake articles, images, even deepfakes of experts. Bots can amplify these messages to manipulate public opinion - especially during key moments such as elections or climate summits.

Michael Mann, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has broken down climate disinformation into five key groups. Here's how to spot those five forms of disinformation and counter them with scientific evidence.

1. Downplay

Minimising the seriousness of the climate crisis involves classic comments such as "it's not that bad" or "climate change is natural - it's always happened". Downplaying creates complacency. It dulls public urgency, delays policy action and makes the problem seem less immediate than it is.

But science shows that this has been the warmest decade on record and global temperatures will continue to increase every year due to greenhouse gas emissions. In 2025 there were 157 incidences of extreme weather around the world with significant consequences for more than 100 million people.

2. Delay

This type of disinformation acknowledges climate change as real but argues that action can wait. Comments include "we should wait until the technology is better", "let's not rush into drastic policies", "innovation will solve this - eventually" or "we need more research before acting".

Delay equals denial in slow motion. It gives the illusion of concern while justifying inaction, letting emissions continue and narrowing the window for meaningful action.

It also means that the public and politicians ignore the urgency of climate change and are not preparing. For example, many countries, including the UK, are not even planning to adapt to the changes that are already occurring - such as sea level rise, more frequent heatwaves, drought, wildfires, floods and storms.

3. Deflection

Deflection shifts attention away from systemic solutions and toward other issues, often to avoid responsibility or blame someone else. You might hear people say things like "individuals need to do more - stop blaming companies", "until big polluters act, nothing we do matters", "aren't there more urgent problems to focus on?" or even "what about China?".

Deflection diverts energy from collective action and structural change. It stalls progress and divides public support.

The science clearly shows that the world must decarbonise the entire economy and reach a point by 2050 at which no additional greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere. So every country and every company has to change - and as quickly as possible.

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Read more: On the origins of environmental bullshit

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4. Division

Division aims to create distrust and polarise the conversation. This turns climate action into a political or cultural wedge. You might hear phrases like "climate change is just a leftist agenda", "scientists are part of a global conspiracy", "they want to take away your freedom in the name of climate", "net zero will make your energy prices go up" and the classic "they're just trying to control you".

Division aims to create distrust in science and institutions. afry_harvy/Shutterstock

Division undermines trust in science, institutions and each other. It fuels tribalism, making cooperation harder when it's needed most. The fossil fuel industry and lobby invented and used the carbon footprint approach to blame individual consumption instead of admitting that the problem is about the global supply of energy.

The latest approach involves blaming climate scientists for not communicating effectively and not making the public and politicians aware of the true risks.

5. Doomism

Doomism promotes the idea that the climate crisis is already beyond saving, leading to apathy instead of action. You might hear comments such as "we're past the tipping point — it's hopeless", "the planet is doomed no matter what we do", "why bother trying?" and "it's too late - nothing we do matters".

Doomism paralyses people with despair, just as much as denial. It discourages solutions, undermines collective action, and hands victory to the status quo.

Yet there are so many positive solutions that exist which not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also make peoples lives better. A global switch to renewable energy creates local energy security, reduces energy costs and reduces harmful air pollution generated by burning fossil fuels.

Getting people to switch to more plant-based diets makes everyone more healthy, reduces healthcare costs and reduces deforestation.

How to spot red flags

Encouraging critical thinking is a powerful antidote to disinformation. Certain red flags can help you spot disinformation that might be misleading or wrong.

If a post is designed to provoke outrage or fear, take a moment before reacting. Emotion is often used to bypass critical thinking.

Messages that pressure you to "share now" or "spread this before it's deleted" are classic manipulation tactics.

Does an article cite reliable data or expert opinion? If there aren't any credible sources, avoid amplifying it. And if there's no transparency about the source, proceed with caution and be wary of anonymous authors.

If you spot even one of these signs, pause, verify and think before you share.

This article was inspired by the Climate Change Disinformation talk given by Shooka Bidarian at EarthFest and the five categories defined by Prof. Michael Mann (University of Pennsylvania). Mark Maslin is Pro-Vice Provost of the UCL Climate Crisis Grand Challenge and the Lead for Climate, Health and Security at the UNU. He is the Chair of the Carbon Trust Scheme Owner Impartiality Committee. He is a member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. He is an advisor to Sheep Included Ltd, Lansons, NetZeroNow and has advised the UK Parliament. He has received grant funding from the NERC, EPSRC, ESRC, DFG, Royal Society, DIFD, BEIS, DECC, FCO, Innovate UK, Carbon Trust, UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Research England, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust, CIFF, Sprint2020, and British Council. He has received funding from the BBC, Lancet, Laithwaites, Seventh Generation, Channel 4, JLT Re, WWF, Hermes, CAFOD, HP, Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, John Templeton Foundation, The Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, Quadrature Climate Foundation and Back Market.

Mike Fuchslocher/Shutterstock

When a massive environmental disaster strikes, do societies simply collapse and disappear? Or do people find a way to adapt, rebuild and recover?

As a researcher studying ancient societies and their environments, these aren't just academic questions to me - they can also offer useful perspectives on our own climate-threatened future.

To understand how human communities handle cataclysmic shocks, my colleagues and I looked back 7,300 years. We investigated what happened to the prehistoric Jōmon hunter-gatherer populations after they were hit by the Kikai-Akahoya eruption in Japan - the largest volcanic eruption since the end of the last ice age.

This enormous underwater volcanic eruption was utterly devastating, blasting out of the seabed without warning, battering the Japanese islands with powerful earthquakes and massive tsunamis. The eruption pumped volcanic ash high up into the atmosphere which then rained down and blanketed the landscape in metre-deep layers of toxic dust.

This volcanic ash choked coastlines, destroyed inland rivers and killed off lush forests for decades. Near the epicentre of the eruption, the environmental destruction lasted for centuries, utterly destroying local food systems. For the Jōmon hunter-gather people who relied on harvesting natural resources in the wild, this had catastrophic and enduring shocks on their food security.

For a long time, archaeologists have debated what happened to communities during the aftermath. Some have argued that it led to a total apocalypse where all human life abruptly ended. Others have insisted on total continuity, suggesting people just pushed through.

Our new research moves past this rigid, binary debate. By tracking population levels across different regions of Japan before and after the blast, we uncovered a much more complex and fascinating story.

We initially assumed that thicker ash meant higher population declines. The data partially backed this up, showing major loss of life near the eruption. But our research has revealed some real surprises.

Forager populations closest to the epicentre were actually already declining before the volcano ever blew. So the disaster compounded preexisting vulnerabilities among these small groups of people who survived by moving around a lot to gather sufficient resources, such as plants, nuts and wild game.

In contrast, population levels actually boomed after the eruption in certain areas quite close to the destruction. Survivors didn't just sit there and perish; they migrated away from the worst-hit zones into safer regions.

Inland survivors quickly moved to coastal areas where marine ecosystems recovered faster, shifting their entire economy to survive. The Jōmon people appear to have reacted and also adapted quite rapidly.

Paradoxically, populations living far away from the volcano (where people should have been safe) stagnated or declined after the eruption. This was probably due to a volcanic winter, where ash clouds blocked the sunlight, reducing plant growth and also animal numbers on which the Jōmon hunter-gatherers relied on for their main food supplies.

Surviving the apocalypse

What do these prehistoric responses mean for us today?

The core insight of our research is the vital role of human agency. True resilience isn't about perfectly maintaining the status quo or seamlessly continuing as if nothing happened. Rather than causing total collapse, this ancient disaster triggered a complex mix of migration, adaptation and recovery.

Survivors chose to move. They forged entirely new social networks, innovated new economies, and found creative, resourceful ways to thrive in a permanently altered world.

By studying these ancient disasters, we generate a more dynamic vision for modern resilience. Survival is not a fixed state. The lessons of the Jōmon people remind us that our future in the face of climate shocks and other disasters won't only be decided by environmental conditions, but also by our collective social actions and capacity for making decisions.

Peter Jordan receives funding from the Swedish Research Council (VR) and European Research Council (ERC)

The UK could be in for a wet and stormy autumn followed by a colder, calmer winter - and an unusually powerful El Niño may be partly responsible.

El Niño is a natural climate pattern in the tropical Pacific, but its effects can be felt around the world. This year's event is already the strongest on record, and is expected to strengthen further before peaking later this year.

El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, a natural cycle involving the tropical Pacific Ocean and the atmosphere. During El Niño, unusually warm sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific reverse the direction of certain winds, affecting weather patterns far beyond the region. A stronger El Niño has a larger influence on global weather patterns than a weaker one.

So how does a climate pattern thousands of miles away affect the weather in the UK and Europe?

How El Niño reaches Britain

The link between El Niño and weather in the UK is complicated and not direct. Weather systems in different parts of the world can influence one another through links known as teleconnections. El Niño has teleconnections both in the troposphere, the part of the atmosphere we live in, and the stratosphere, the part of the atmosphere just above us.

Through these teleconnections, El Niño is linked to the North Atlantic oscillation, a weather pattern which involves differences in air pressure over the ocean. El Niño is associated with the oscillation's negative phase, when this pressure difference is less than usual. This tends to weaken the winds that bring mild air from the Atlantic to the UK, increasing the chance of colder, calmer weather in late winter.

El Niño can also affect the stratospheric polar vortex, a band of strong winds that circles the Earth high above the Arctic. It has been found to weaken the vortex which then can disrupt the jet stream - the high moving body of air that is a driver behind much of the UK's weather. This can increase the chances of storms and wetter and potentially colder weather in the autumn and early winter.

Vortex weakening is also linked with an increase in sudden stratospheric warming events, when parts of the atmospheric layer above ours warm up rapidly. These events are one driver of some cold snaps in the UK as they can alter the jet stream and allow colder air to reach the country. However, not all of these events result in cold weather in the UK.

These links are relevant to the UK's latest seasonal forecasting from the Met Office. This forecast shows autumn is likely to bring wetter and stormier weather followed by colder, calmer weather in winter.

Colder, calmer weather in UK winters is known to present a challenge for energy production from renewable sources, especially when it is also cloudy. Wind power generates 40% or more of the UK's electricity during winter, and cold, calm periods can require more gas power to make up for lower wind generation and increased demand for heating.

El Niño also improves our ability to [predict weather at long lead times] because of its links with major drivers of different weather patterns. This includes for winter weather but also in some cases summer heatwaves. There are limits, however: we cannot tell when a particular heatwave or storm will occur. We cannot predict the associated impacts in detail. We can only say whether a certain season is more likely to be hotter or drier or colder or wetter, and identify related trends in impacts.

It is important to remember that two things happening at the same time do not mean they cause one another. In the case of El Niño and the weather in the UK, the response is non-linear and not direct.

There is little evidence yet about whether human-induced climate change is causing more intense or more frequent El Niños. But it certainly amplifies the warming effect of climate change. Some research suggests that it can also amplify climate whiplash, where some regions flipflop from wet weather to hot-dry weather either within seasons or in one season after another.

Chloe Brimicombe receives funding from the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC) and she is a heat ambassador for Shade the UK.

Abstract/Shutterstock

For cash-strapped councils, turning away much-needed income by restricting adverts for junk food, fossil fuels or other harmful products might seem like a policy they can ill afford.

But a new report, published by the advocacy alliance Sustain and carried out by our team at the University of Portsmouth, suggests otherwise.

Our report found no evidence that councils introducing healthier food advertising policies lost advertising revenue when compared to places without such a policy. The finding held for councils across the UK with different advertising sites (from bus shelters to benches), locations and contract arrangements.

For our analysis, we sent freedom of information requests to all local councils in the UK. From the 360 responses received, only 38 councils provided enough data on the annual percentage change of revenue (between 2019-23) to allow for comparison. Three of those 38 councils had introduced healthier food advertising policies during that five-year period; the rest (35) did not have those policies.

By comparing the revenue of local governments that implemented a healthier food advertising policy to those without, a statistical model assessed whether council revenues were now below what would have been expected had they not implemented a healthier foods advertising policy. The findings show that councils did not lose potential revenue from implementing this policy.

Concern about lost income has been one of the practical arguments made against stronger advertising policies. Yet restricting harmful products does not mean leaving billboards and bus shelters empty. Advertising space can instead be filled by more socially beneficial campaigns, such as healthy products, while companies affected by the rules can switch to promoting products that comply with them.

This can also reduce the financial pressure on other public services. Transport for London's restrictions on advertising foods high in fat, salt and sugar have been associated with households purchasing around 1,000 fewer calories from unhealthy foods each week. Modelling of the policy estimated that resulting health benefits could save the NHS and social care system £218 million over the lifetime of the current population.

Now councils are beginning to apply the same thinking beyond junk food.

Public bodies are extending the principle already applied to tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food to fossil fuels and other high-carbon products: that publicly controlled advertising space should not be used to promote forms of consumption that undermine public health or environmental goals.

More than a dozen UK councils including Sheffield and Edinburgh have adopted some form of restriction on high-carbon advertising, covering products and services such as fossil fuels, flights and non-electric cars.

And the boundaries continue to expand.

Bristol City Council recently became the first UK council to restrict advertising for ultra-fast fashion (brands that launch new designs on a daily or weekly not seasonal basis, leading to accelerated overproduction and waste) on council-owned sites, alongside new curbs on promoting fossil fuels, SUVs, airlines and cruises. The move brings an industry associated with high levels of production, consumption and waste within the scope of councils' environmental advertising policies.

In another UK first, Portsmouth City Council included single-use plastics in its list of restricted products, alongside fossil fuels, non-electric cars and unhealthy food. Their inclusion signals a recognition of the environmental costs of disposable plastic packaging - and that an advert for a product packaged in single-use plastic is, in effect, an advert for both.

Radical restrictions

These decisions point towards a change in thinking. By expanding policies to include ultra-fast fashion and single-use plastics, UK councils appear to be recognising a wider range of environmental harms associated with the products advertised in public spaces, from the resources used to produce them to the waste they leave behind.

It also raises a broader question about whether council-owned advertising space should encourage forms of consumption that conflict with councils' own commitments on public health, climate and waste.

However, developments outside the UK suggest this approach could go further. In May, Amsterdam became the first capital city to introduce legally binding restrictions on public advertising for fossil-fuel products and services. Those include flights, cruises and petrol and diesel cars, as well as meat. The inclusion of meat extends restrictions beyond products directly associated with fossil fuels to another major source of consumption-related environmental impacts.

What exactly is a carbon footprint?

The question for UK councils, then, is not simply whether these policies work, but how much further they are prepared to go. Until now, the prospect of losing advertising income has provided an economic argument for caution. Our new research weakens that argument.

If local authorities can set stronger standards without sacrificing advertising revenue, they have more room to align their advertising estates with the public health and environmental goals they are already spending money to achieve.

The shifts in both Bristol and Portsmouth show that the boundaries of acceptable advertising are already shifting in the UK. The evidence from our new report suggests councils may be able to afford to be bolder about where those boundaries are drawn.

Kate Whitman was a research consultant to Sustain for this project.

Alan Leonard was a research consultant to Sustain for this project.

Helen Thompson-Whiteside does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Richard Casebow, CC BY-NC-SA

A hidden threat is making it harder for bees, butterflies and other pollinators to do their job: air pollution is scrambling the floral scents they use to find flowers.

Colleagues and I have just published research showing that ground-level ozone and nitrogen oxides (two pollutants strongly linked to fossil fuel use) significantly impair pollinators' ability to locate and feed from flowers.

The good news? The global shift away from fossil fuels, including the rise of electric vehicles, could eventually ease this pressure. But timing matters. Things may get worse before they get better.

Flowers release complex cocktails of volatile organic compounds, essentially their perfume, to attract pollinators. These scents act like a GPS for bees and other insects.

But when ozone and nitrogen oxides (NOx) react with these compounds, they break down or alter the chemical signals. The result is that pollinators struggle to find the flowers they need.

This isn't just a problem for wild plants. Almonds, apples, oilseed rape, strawberries and many other important crops depend on insect pollination. When pollinators can't forage efficiently, yields and quality can suffer.

What the evidence shows

We analysed 22 experimental studies, mostly from Europe, that tested how elevated levels of ozone and NOx affect pollinators' ability to find and feed from flowers, as well as their overall abundance.

On average across the studies, elevated ozone reduced pollinator performance by 42%, while NOx reduced it by 46%. When the two pollutants occurred together (as they do in the real world), the average reduction was 68%.

However, only a small number of studies tested the pollutants both separately and in combination. In those comparisons, the additional impact of combining the two pollutants was relatively modest.

Pollinators' searching efficiency - the ability to locate flowers - was hit hardest, dropping by 67% on average. Feeding efficiency and overall abundance were less affected.

This suggests the main problem with the pollution is that it disrupts pollinators' ability to find flowers, rather than being directly toxic to the insects themselves.

The coming ozone peak - and why it happens

There is a complication, however. NOx and ground-level ozone are linked chemically, so cutting NOx emissions will not necessarily reduce ozone immediately. In fact, under a middle-of-the-road emissions scenario, global low-level ozone levels are projected to keep rising until around 2050, even as NOx emissions begin to fall.

This is partly because ozone and NOx interact in the atmosphere. NOx can react with and destroy ozone. When NOx levels are high, as they often are near roads or in cities, this "quenching" effect helps keep ozone concentrations down.

So, as we cut NOx emissions from diesel vehicles and other sources, this quenching effect weakens. With less NOx around to break it down, ozone concentrations can actually climb. Other ozone-forming pollutants, such as methane, also remain high for longer in this scenario.

Only after this mid-century peak do sustained reductions in NOx and other precursors drive ozone levels down again. Under this middle-of-the-road scenario, ozone is projected to fall back below present-day levels after 2050. Faster decarbonisation would bring that recovery sooner.

Why diesel emissions matter

Diesel vehicles, especially heavy-duty trucks and agricultural machinery, are among the largest sources of NOx emissions.

In many regions, heavy-duty diesel vehicles alone account for more than 70% of on-road NOx. These emissions not only directly harm pollinators. Through their effects on ozone, they also alter the chemical environment around flowers.

Electric vehicles produce zero tailpipe NOx. Replacing diesel vehicles with electric alternatives, particularly in freight, construction and farming, would cut an important source of NOx and, over time, help reduce the ozone pollution that interferes with floral scents. The benefits would be even greater as electricity generation becomes cleaner.

Our analysis shows that the rate of pollinator recovery will depend heavily on how quickly we reduce these emissions. Delaying the phase-out of diesel vehicles would prolong the mid-century ozone peak and delay the ecological recovery we all need.

Before 2050, nitrogen oxides and ozone concentrations degrade floral odours (volatile odours), impairing pollinator foraging success. After 2050, declining ozone due to sustainable energy transitions is expected to facilitate long-term recovery. Created in BioRender. Ryalls, J. (2026) What needs to happen now

Protecting pollinators should be considered a co-benefit of clean air and climate policy. Accelerating the transition from diesel to zero-emission vehicles, especially in heavy-duty and agricultural sectors where diesel remains important, would reduce a major source of NOx.

We also need better monitoring and research. Our evidence mostly comes from European studies on bees and a few other pollinator groups. We urgently need more research in high-pollution, biodiversity-rich regions, and on a wider range of pollinators including moths, flies and beetles.

The timing and location of pollution reductions could also matter. Measures that reduce exposure during peak flowering, for example, could help limit the disruption to pollinators before longer-term reductions in ozone kick in.

The fossil fuel transition is not just about carbon and climate. It is also about restoring the chemical cues that pollinators depend on as they search for flowers.

If we move quickly enough, we can shorten the difficult mid-century period and give bees, butterflies and the crops they support a genuine chance to recover.

The science is clear: cleaner air means healthier pollinators and more resilient food systems. Electric vehicles are one powerful tool in that toolkit. The sooner we deploy them at scale, the better the outlook for the insects that help feed us all.

James Ryalls has received funding from The Royal Society, British Ecological Society and UKRI.

Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock

As temperatures broke records this summer, sales of air conditioning units soared. But this technology can compound climate change.

Air conditioners pump a gas, known as a refrigerant, around a sealed loop to carry heat out of (and sometimes into) the room. Some of that gas inevitably leaks out over the unit's working life and when it is scrapped. Unfortunately, many refrigerants are potent greenhouse gases. Worldwide, leaked refrigerants account for roughly one-third of the climate impact of cooling, with electricity used to run the equipment responsible for the rest.

Air conditioning units have different labels. One that has recently been installed in a house or office probably says "R-32", a type of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC). Older units often say "R-410A", which is a blend of HFCs. Kilogram for kilogram, R-410A traps around 2,000 times more heat than carbon dioxide. R-32 is still a potent greenhouse gas, but only about a third as warming as R410A.

Scientists have been concerned about these refrigerants for decades. But if you wind the clock back to the 1970s and 1980s, they were more worried about the fact that they harmed the ozone layer than about their impact on the climate. Around this time, researchers discovered that the most widely used refrigerants back then, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were damaging the stratospheric ozone that shields us from the ultraviolet radiation that causes skin cancer.

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Read more: There's something you can do now to cool your home next summer - and it's far cheaper than air conditioning

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Following the discovery of a "hole" in the ozone layer over Antarctica, nations agreed to sign a landmark environmental treaty known as the Montreal protocol in 1987.

This protocol and its later amendments phased out the CFCs, but allowed, as an interim measure, compounds called hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) that were less harmful for the ozone layer. During the 1990s, HCFCs began to be replaced by HFCs, which don't deplete ozone at all.

Without the Montreal protocol, studies suggest that ozone holes could have developed over the Arctic as well as Antarctica. Instead, the ozone layer is starting to recover.

Problem solved? Unfortunately not. HFCs, like CFCs and HCFCs, are incredibly potent greenhouse gases. Projections suggest that, without controls, they could add 0.3-0.5°C to global temperatures by the end of this century, a substantial fraction of the roughly 1.2°C of warming caused by human activities.

On October 15 2016, the parties to the Montreal protocol came together in Kigali, Rwanda. They agreed to phase down HFC production in favour of gases with lower global warming potentials (a measure of how potent the gas is relative to carbon dioxide). For the first time, this protocol was used to control gases purely because of their effect on the climate.

Despite the apparent early success of Kigali, the atmospheric data indicates that complacency is not an option. Mariola Gutierrez/Shutterstock

In 2014, two years before the Kigali amendment to the Montreal protocol was agreed, the EU adopted rules to phase down HFCs. These rules enable Europe and the UK to meet their Kigali commitments. Since January 2025, new small split air conditioners (units that heat or cool a single room) sold in the UK can no longer use R-410A, an HFC with high global warming potential. Portable units have been barred from using gases with high warming potential since 2020. The EU now aims to phase out HFCs almost entirely by 2050.

Beyond looking at labels on air conditioners, how do scientists like us know whether the Kigali amendment is working? The most direct test is to measure the atmosphere.

At Mace Head, an atmospheric research station on the windy west coast of Ireland, instruments have been measuring these gases continuously since 1987. Mace Head is one of a handful of stations around the world measuring these gases at concentrations of just a few parts per trillion.

In 2019, these measurements helped pinpoint the source of renewed global production of CFCs, years after the Montreal protocol's ban. After a crackdown on illegal CFC production for use in insulating foams, emissions dropped.

The atmospheric data shows that the abundance of HFC compounds has increased substantially in the last decade. But overall growth in their emissions has slowed, and HFC emissions are substantially lower than those projected before the Kigali amendment was agreed.

A 2025 study projected that the climate impact of air conditioning could be similar to, or lower than, its impact today, even with a major increase in demand. But this depends on us meeting or exceeding our Kigali commitments, making air conditioners more efficient, expanding the use of zero-energy cooling measures (such as shading) and switching to low-carbon electricity.

Keeping a close eye on concentrations

Despite the apparent early success of the Kigali amendment, the atmospheric data show there can be no room for complacency.

Last year, scientists showed that emissions of a waste gas called HFC-23, the most potent climate warmer of all the HFCs, are far higher than the emissions of the gas officially reported by signatories to the Kigali amendment. Because HFC-23 is such a strong greenhouse gas, the discrepancy equates to just over half of the UK's annual greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers and governments are now trying to figure out the reasons for the unexpected emissions.

The contents of air conditioners and fridges have been shaped by the Montreal protocol for almost 40 years. We know where it has worked, and where it needs closer scrutiny, only because researchers keep measuring the atmosphere. The challenge now is to maintain and expand that monitoring, so that the Kigali amendment can continue this remarkable legacy.

Matt Rigby receives funding from UK Research and Innovation and Horizon Europe. He is a Professor at the University of Bristol and a visiting Senior Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lucy Carpenter receives funding from UK Research and Innovation and Horizon Europe. She is a Professor at the University of York and co-chair of the Scientific Assessment Panel of the Montreal Protocol.

An 'automotive city' near Tangier. laabiraid/Shutterstock

China now makes more than seven in ten of the world's electric cars. In 2024 it produced over 12 million, 1.25 million of which were exported, mainly to Europe.

The EU is worried about this - alarmed by cheap, state-subsidised Chinese vehicles flooding its market and threatening the 13 million jobs which depend on its own auto industry. So the bloc has spent the past two years building a system of tariffs and rules to keep Chinese cars at bay.

In 2024, it imposed extra duties of up to 35% on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), on top of an existing 10% import tariff. So far though, the EU's tactics have yielded limited results.

Chinese vehicle sales in Europe nearly doubled between 2024 and 2025.

And much of this sales volume is being driven by the EV powerhouse that is developing at speed in Morocco.

Chinese firms producing cars in Morocco avoid exposure to those EU tariffs, and have announced US$6 billion (£4.5 billion) of investment in battery and electric car component plants in the country.

As a production base, Morocco has plenty of other advantages too. Its deep-water port in Tangier is the largest in Africa and the Mediterranean. It is also surrounded by state-sponsored industrial zones built specifically for carmakers and their suppliers.

Like its neighbours, Morocco has a free trade agreement with the EU, but is the only north African country which has one with the US.

And crucially, it has a good supply of the critical minerals needed for making batteries for EVs, including around 70% of the world's phosphate reserves and plenty of cobalt.

Nor is Morocco starting from scratch in the car manufacturing business. Cars are the country's biggest export. Many Moroccan workers have been trained in automotive assembly thanks to two major car companies.

Renault and Stellantis (the owner of 14 car brands including Peugeot, Fiat and Alfa Romeo) form a manufacturing base in Morocco that exported US$17 billion in cars and parts in 2024. This made Morocco one of the EU's largest automotive trading partners ahead of China.

Electric dreams

Of the 560,000 vehicles Morocco produced in 2024, the vast majority were petrol and diesel models. Only around 50,000 were electric.

But a new wave of investment can help the industry shift to green. Recent multi-billion-euro commitments from Stellantis and Renault will expand EV and hybrid capacity. At the same time, Chinese investment is filling domestic gaps in cathode and battery cell production.

This transformation did not happen to Morocco by chance. The government has spent two decades laying the groundwork.

It has built "free zones", areas where businesses can import, manufacture, process and re-export goods without paying normal taxes or customs duties. These include automotive "clusters", including the Tanger "automotive city".

This year, Morocco introduced a carbon tax to keep its exports compliant with EU rules.

So Morocco has been positioning itself to benefit from the EU tariffs. Whether Morocco actually gains from this boom depends on what kind of production Chinese firms undertake.

They could treat Morocco as a mere transit hub, sending goods through Morocco with minimal processing purely to evade tariffs. Brussels has already caught one such case, ruling in 2025 that aluminium wheels shipped from Morocco were being unfairly subsidised by Beijing.

Tangier's port. Pierre-Yves Babelon/Shutterstock

Or they could do the opposite: build real factories, share technology, train local engineers and buy from Moroccan suppliers. This is what would turn the current boom into lasting green industrialisation, of the type that the African Union wants to encourage, linking African mineral reserves to clean-energy manufacturing.

But there are potential stumbling blocks which could prevent Morocco from benefiting from this new wave of investment in the long term.

First, the EU rules themselves may not last. Its tariffs on Chinese electric cars are set for only five years, and legal challenges are already underway. Second, the technology may remain in Chinese hands. And third, the geopolitical and climate context is so volatile that business plans could change very quickly.

On the plus side, Morocco has an established manufacturing footprint and government support. So the unintended consequences of EU trade policy could end up producing one of the biggest green industrialisation stories of the next decade.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Is AI a climate change villain, whose insatiable hunger for electricity will roast the planet? Or will it help predict where the next climate disaster will strike and what to do about it?

In order to weigh these questions up, a good starting point is with AI's energy consumption.

The 2015 Paris agreement was a deal among almost 200 countries to keep "the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels" and pursue efforts "to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels".

Training and deploying AI models takes place in large data centres which use a lot of power. A typical AI-focused data centre consumes as much electricity as 100,000 households. That's why energy use is at the heart of this question about how AI will affect climate change.

Data centre use rises

But AI's energy consumption is increasing fast. According to the International Energy Agency, the power used to train large language models (LLMs) and to run them has risen roughly tenfold since ChatGPT was launched in November 2022. And AI data centres of the future will consume far more electricity than they do today, perhaps 20 times more.

Use of AI has grown very fast, and is still growing. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet which is Google's parent company, recently said that Google's monthly usage of its AI products has increased sevenfold to 3.2 quadrillion tokens (the units of data AI models read and process) since last year.

However, power consumption per AI task is going down. So efficiency is growing. The problem is that our demand for it is also growing. Economists know this as Jevons's paradox: where technological gains can wipe out efficiencies as they create more use.

AI consumes about 155 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, based on IEA figures, and a third of the energy used by data centres overall. That is a lot. But it is still only about 0.5% of the world's electricity, and around 0.1% of its total energy use (when we also consider oil, gas and carbon).

However, other factors are also significant. Data centres cluster, and in places where they do, such as Ireland and northern Virginia, they already strain local grids.

How AI is driving energy use. Can AI help with climate change?

But what about AI's potential to help with climate change? In 2025, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts put an AI model into use, AIFS, which produces forecasts that improve on traditional physics-based models. It cannot tell you whether rain will fall on your street 30 days from now, but it can assess the probabilities of extreme weather events with much more geographical detail and offer more time to plan ahead.

This massively improves the possibility for insurers to assess risks as well as for government departments to put plans in place to avoid, or mitigate, disasters. It also significantly uses less energy than other physics-based weather forecasting systems.

The bigger prize lies beyond forecasting. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the scientific pillar of the UN's climate machinery, exists "to give governments at all levels the information they need to make policy". Its reports take years, and not everybody seems convinced that its conclusions are fully independent.

AI could be a powerful lever for the IPCC to better serve its mission. A public AI model (similar to the AIFS) could potentially reduce biases, if used well. And it could do more than forecasting. It could suggest actions as well as describe risks; cover adaptation as well as mitigation; and reach not only government departments but city councils, farmers and households. This would turn global science into a decision-supporting system about which crop to plant or whether to insulate a roof as well as the policy decisions on how to manage energy transition.

That will not happen by itself. We need incentives to make the use of AI more energy efficient.

Here lies the most striking contrast between the two sides of the argument over AI and climate change. The world has a governance mechanism for climate change, however imperfect: the Conference of the Parties (COP), which has met almost every year since 1995. But AI has little more than voluntary codes, occasional summits and a UN scientific panel created only last year.

Could AI's energy use be less than feared?

A new paper by Vision, the thinktank I direct, has tried to measure both sides of the ledger for AI on climate change. Its findings will feed into Vision's fifth conference on the global governance of climate change, to be held in Venice from October 15 to 17.

The work suggests that AI's appetite for energy could be smaller than feared, and its potential is larger. But concludes that neither will matter much unless we learn to govern it.

Whether AI warms or cools the planet could depend less on its chips than on the institutions we build around AI, and how we use it.

Francesco Grillo is Director of the Italian think tank Vision.

Two giant pandas recently landed in Atlanta, a week after Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Washington.

The summit produced no immediate breakthrough on trade deals, Taiwan or AI, but it did produce something cuddly for the American public: a pair of giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, which are on a ten-year loan to Atlanta's zoo. Both were born in 2020 at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, the showpiece of a decades-old conservation effort.

China treats the giant panda as a national treasure and retains ownership every one it lends abroad. Sending a pair is a mark of favour: the bears draw crowds and signal Beijing values the relationship. When relations cool, the loans often seem to lapse and the pandas return to China. This is panda diplomacy.

From gifts to rentals

Some trace the practice to the Tang dynasty, when Empress Wu Zetian is said to have sent a pair of bears, believed to be pandas, to Japan, between 624 and 725 AD. The better-documented history begins in 1941, when Chiang Kai-shek's government sent a pair to New York's Bronx zoo as thanks for American aid.

But it was Mao Zedong who turned the gesture into policy. In 1957 he sent a panda, also called Ping Ping, to the Soviet Union, and by 1982 China had given away 23 pandas to nine countries. The most famous pair, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, were sent to Washington to commemorate Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to Beijing. They drew more than 20,000 people to the Smithsonian national zoo on their first day and an estimated 1.1 million in their first year.

Under Deng Xiaoping's reforms, gifts became rentals in 1984, and pandas went on short, lucrative tours. The Los Angeles zoo paid US$100,000 (£75,500) a month for a pair during the 1984 Olympics.

Not everyone was charmed. Conservation groups such as The New York Zoological Society viewed the tours as money-making ventures. In 1988, when the Toledo zoo hosted a pair for 100 days it attracted protests. A judge barred the zoo from charging visitors extra to see them. In 1993 the US Fish and Wildlife Service stopped issuing new import permits. When it resumed in 1998, the new rules said a significant share of the money should protect wild pandas in China.

The result is today's arrangement: long-term "research" loans, usually for ten years and up to US$1 million a year, with any cub born abroad remaining Chinese property. The rules changed, but the loans still follow Beijing's interests. University of Oxford researchers found that loans after 2008 often coincided with trade deals. Malaysia received Xing Xing and Liang Liang in 2014 to mark 40 years of ties. And as relations with Washington soured, its pandas flew home in November 2023.

Mei Lun and Mei Huan were the first giant panda twins born in the US. A conservation story

China set up its first panda reserves and banned hunting in the early 1960s. When a mass die-off of bamboo happened in 2005 and pandas starved, rescuers brought many into captivity. The Chengdu base opened in 1987 with six rescued wild pandas.

A national panda programme followed in 1993. Today there are 67 reserves and a Giant Panda National Park. Wild numbers rose from 1,114 in the mid-1980s to 1,864 by 2014, and in 2016 pandas were moved off the endangered list.

The Chengdu base, a tourist magnet, breeds pandas for display and diplomacy. Releasing them is the job of a separate state body, the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda (CCRC). Its scientists say releases are replenishing fragile wild populations. they claim that this makes every zoo panda, including those lent abroad, a lifeline for wild ones. Some are sceptical about this claim.

Two decades of releases

The CCRC began moving pandas to the wild in 2003. Its first, Xiang Xiang, was found dead within a year. Of the dozen released since then, ten have survived, while more than 700 remain in captivity.

The only permanently released panda known to have had a cub, Luxin, was born wild.

Since 2017, previously captive females moved to the forest temporarily to mate with wild males, then returned to captivity, have produced 14 cubs, 12 of them surviving.

Bears for summits

Chinese scientists say the pandemic slowed its rewilding project, but its lack of success has drawn criticism from those who believe it should have had more emphasis and investment.

So far the attempts to replenish the wild panda population have not been as successful as many had hoped, and only small groups of giant pandas survive.

On the other hand China's attempts to mix trade and conservation in zoos continues to create significant public relation successes. Each new announcement of new pandas heading to a foreign zoo attracts international attention and symbolises a renewed trading and foreign policy relationship between two nations. Something that Beijing will no doubt want to keep building on.

Chee Meng Tan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.