Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Exclusive: Chris Bowen says key to next UN climate summit will be ‘engagement, engagement, engagement’ with countries such as Saudi Arabia Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Chris Bowen wants to use his stint as the world’s chief climate negotiator to lobby Saudi Arabia and others to stop resisting progress at UN summits, heeding calls for a “hard-nosed” approach in dealing with big emitters obstructing the transition. Appointed “president of negotiations” for Cop31 under the deal that handed Turkey hosting rights for the conference, Australia’s climate change and energy minister has told Guardian Australia a focus ahead of the summit would be talking to countries “with whom we don’t traditionally agree”. Continue reading...

npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 10 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00179-6 Reimagining coral reef futures

Catherine says she feels deeply grateful in final instalment of Mother Nature series a year on from cancer treatment The power of nature has been a huge theme for the Princess of Wales in the year since her announcement that she was in remission from cancer. Now, on her 44th birthday, she has embraced it again, reflecting in a short video on how deeply grateful she is, how important it is to be at one with nature and its power to heal. Continue reading...

We’ve already geoengineered the planet through the careless release of greenhouse gases. Now we need a plan to manage the risks we’ve set in motion A few months ago, Marjorie Taylor Greene, then a Georgia representative, held a hearing on her bill to ban research on “geoengineering”, which refers to technological climate interventions, such as using reflective particles to reflect away sunlight. The hearing represented something of a first – a Republican raising alarm bells about human activity altering the health of the planet. Of course, for centuries, people have burned fossil fuels to power and feed society, emitting greenhouse gases that now overheat the planet. Unfortunately, her hearing waved past an urgent debate that policymakers are confronting around the world: after centuries of accidental fossil-fuel geoengineering, should we deliberately explore interventions to cool the planet and give the energy transition breathing room? Craig Segall is the former deputy executive officer and assistant chief counsel of the California Air Resources Board. He is also former senior vice-president of Evergreen Action and a longtime climate advocate. He has academic seats at the University of Edinburgh, New York University, and the University of California at Berkeley The opinions in this piece are his own. Baroness Bryony Worthington was created a life peer in 2011, giving her a seat in the UK’s House of Lords where she served as shadow energy minister She has over 25 years of experience working on climate, energy and environmental policy in the NGO and public sectors, and in the private sector. Continue reading...