Scottish Water boss says average Scot uses 40% more water than people in Yorkshire partly due to mistaken belief water is abundant in Scotland
Scottish households are being urged to cut back heavily on their water use and instead treat it as a precious resource due to the growing threat to supplies from climate heating.
Alex Plant, the chief executive of Scottish Water, said the average Scot used 40% more water than consumers in Yorkshire, partly because there was a widespread but mistaken assumption that water was abundant in Scotland.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
07/10/2025 - 08:00
07/10/2025 - 08:00
Guardian makes legally mandated gold standard report widely available after administration deleted website
The future of the US government’s premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades.
Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life.
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07/10/2025 - 07:47
Terms like ‘deglobalisation’ have become commonplace, but what we need is true multilateralism. Erecting walls won’t bring us peace and prosperity
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the president of Brazil
The year 2025 should be a time of celebration, marking eight decades of the United Nations’ existence. But it risks going down in history as the year when the international order built since 1945 collapsed.
The cracks had long been visible. Since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the intervention in Libya and the war in Ukraine, some permanent members of the security council have trivialised the illegal use of force. The failure to act vis-a-vis the genocide in Gaza represents a denial of the most basic values of humanity. The inability to overcome differences is fuelling a new escalation of violence in the Middle East, the latest chapter of which includes the attack on Iran.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the president of Brazil
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07/10/2025 - 06:59
Dr Christina Propst apologizes after Blue Fish Pediatrics said she was ‘no longer an employee’ because of post
A pediatrician who is no longer working for a chain of clinics affiliated with a prominent Houston hospital system after a social media post that wished voters in a Donald-Trump supporting county of central Texas “get what they voted for” amid flash flooding that killed nearly 120 – including many children – has publicly apologized.
“I speak to you as a mother, a neighbor, a pediatrician, and a human being who is deeply sorry,” Dr Christina Propst wrote after Blue Fish Pediatrics announced Sunday she was no longer an employee there because of a social media post that the clinic said did “not reflect the value, standards or mission” of the chain. “I take full responsibility for a social media comment I made before we knew that so many precious lives were lost to the terrible tragedy in central Texas.
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07/10/2025 - 06:00
High levels of Pfas stemming from the base have tainted water, damaged crops and poisoned cows in the area
The state of New Mexico is suing the US air force over its refusal to comply with orders to address extremely high levels of Pfas pollution stemming from its base, which has tainted drinking water for tens of thousands of people, damaged crops and poisoned dairy cows.
Though the military acknowledges Pfas-laden firefighting foam from Cannon air force base is the source of a four mile chemical plume in the aquifer below Clovis, New Mexico, it has refused to comply with most state orders to address the issue.
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07/10/2025 - 05:44
Critics say change in biodiversity protections would harm environmental recovery and make scheme ineffective
Plans to weaken environmental regulations for small housebuilders would allow developers in England to build on an area the size of the Yorkshire Dales in the next 10 years without replacing the nature they destroy, according to analysis.
Labour wants to remove the requirement for small housebuilders – those whose sites are under a hectare (2.5 acres) – to replace the nature they destroy under existing rules known as biodiversity net gain.
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07/10/2025 - 04:30
There’s no shortage of ideas for how to make air travel greener. But it has to start within the industry – and with workers
George Hibberd appears alongside fellow pilot Todd Smith in the Guardian documentary Guilt Trip
I love flying. I’ve wanted to be a pilot since I was young. I grew up in Chichester, West Sussex, under a flight path used by Gatwick airport planes, and used to watch as they traversed the sky. In 2019, once I had qualified as an airline pilot, I began working for easyJet. Aviation connected me to my extended family in Canada, exposed me to different cultures and gave me an unforgettable career. But in November 2022, I handed over my airport ID card for the last time. I had grown increasingly anxious about the effect that our industry was having on the planet and, deep down, I knew that my concern for the climate crisis meant being an airline pilot was damaging my mental health.
Despite no longer working in the industry, my love of aviation has driven me to protect our ability to fly for future generations. It inspires me to address the uncomfortable realities and decisions our industry now faces. Everyone knows that aviation has a gigantic emissions problem. In 2022, the UK’s domestic and international flights produced 29.6m tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions, accounting for about 7% of total UK greenhouse gas emissions. This is projected to increase to 11% by 2030, because while other sectors are decarbonising, aviation emissions will remain stable or even increase.
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07/10/2025 - 04:28
Commercial pilots George Hibberd and Todd Smith grapple with the reality of their dream jobs, torn between childhood ambitions of flying and the impact of their industry on the world beneath them. From the cockpit, they witness first-hand the climate crisis unfolding below and decide to take drastic measures. As part of Safe Landing, a community of aviation workers who want the industry to do better for the climate, they begin to transform their eco-anxiety and guilt into action. With an estimated 1.2 million passengers in the sky at any time, they ask when will society confront the urgent need to reimagine aviation - before it's too late
To read more on how former Easyjet pilot George Hibberd thinks the aviation industry can be transformed, click here.
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07/10/2025 - 04:00
Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island gives 300th climate speech on the US Senate floor
The Democratic party and the climate movement have been “too cautious and polite” and should instead be denouncing the fossil fuel industry’s “huge denial operation”, the US senator Sheldon Whitehouse said.
“The fossil fuel industry has run the biggest and most malevolent propaganda operation the country has ever seen,” the Rhode Island Democrat said in an interview Monday with the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now. “It is defending a $700-plus billion [annual] subsidy” of not being charged for the health and environmental damages caused by burning fossil fuels. “I think the more people understand that, the more they’ll be irate [that] they’ve been lied to.” But, he added, “Democrats have not done a good job of calling that out.”
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07/10/2025 - 03:04
Proposal to vary electricity charges in England, Wales and Scotland based on supply and demand dropped in favour of ‘fair and affordable’ single price
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The government has abandoned plans for “zonal pricing” that would have charged electricity users in the south-east of England more than those in Scotland, saying that a single national price would help ensure the system was “fair, affordable, secure and efficient”.
The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, had been considering proposals for zonal pricing that would mean different parts of England, Wales and Scotland being charged different rates for their electricity, based on local supply and demand.
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