Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Efra committee calls for emergency legislation enabling government to take public control of the company Andy Burnham is under further pressure to take control of ailing Thames Water from a cross-party group of MPs who are calling for ministers to break off talks with the US hedge funds who are effectively running the company. Adding their voices to demands that the prime minister takes public control of the company, which has debts of £20bn and is being controlled by a group of 100 hedge funds and distressed-debt investors, the MPs said in a report that ministers should consider emergency legislation to take control of its financial affairs to stabilise the company. Continue reading...

New research links last month’s disaster to fossil fuel pollution. Supporting disaster-hit countries must be at the centre of climate politics Following a familiar pattern, coverage of the glacier collapse on the Nepal-Tibet border three weeks ago has subsided with the initial shock. But while the world’s attention has shifted, Nepal remains in the midst of an appalling tragedy. As well as at least 1,300 people who are known to have been killed, more than 5,000 are missing, some of them trapped in tunnels linked to the 13 hydropower plants that were damaged by the floods. On Wednesday four bodies were recovered from one of these tunnels, with searches ongoing. Families of the missing people are desperate for news. Last week the country’s foreign minister, Shisir Khanal, said that it would ask the UN’s loss and damage fund for $20m (£15m) towards a total rebuilding cost of around $5bn (£3.75bn) – including the replacement of up to 20,000 homes. The first academic study linking the disaster to the climate crisis will now be added to that application. Scientists at Imperial College London, along with international collaborators on the World Weather Attribution project, found that a number of drivers of the glacier fall had been made worse by atmospheric heating. While not the sole cause, fossil fuel pollution was judged to have destabilised the geology of the mountain environment. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Here are 26 images by the shortlisted artists who submitted works for the 21st William and Winifred Bowness photography prize. Tamara Dean has been named the winner. The judges says her photograph is ‘operatic and poetic: an opus that is the culmination of a sustained body of work evident not only in its conception and process but also in its exquisite execution and presentation’ Continue reading...

With nearly £30m of funding, I’m giving communities power over local energy. They know the gravity of global heating, and they want to be part of the solution Andy Burnham: UK must fully commit to reaching net zero by 2050 On the day I became prime minister, I pledged to bring power to every postcode. Today, we begin to make good on that promise in the most literal sense. With nearly £30m of funding for People’s Power projects, communities across every nation of the UK will soon have the chance to build and control their own clean energy supply. This investment means villages, towns and cities can harness the natural resources around them with solar panels on libraries, publicly owned windfarms, hydro schemes in their rivers, or whatever else works for them. The purpose is to put money back in people’s pockets while giving them a direct role in tackling the climate crisis. Andy Burnham is prime minister of the United Kingdom Continue reading...