As survivors and experts reflect on the storm 20 years on, fear is growing that the US is just as unprepared to take on extreme weather amid cuts to Fema
Darren McKinney grew up in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward. When Hurricane Katrina struck 20 years ago this week, he watched his neighborhood wash away. From his second floor apartment, he saw flood waters rise up to his window.
“I had no food at all, no water, no electricity,” he recounted one rainy day this month, while taking a break from his job leading home restoration in the neighborhood as field operations director of the non-profit lowernine.org.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/26/2025 - 06:30
08/26/2025 - 06:00
Across the globe, oil, gas and coal companies use an ever-widening set of tactics to crush competition and opposition. With the world’s most powerful man helping them at every turn, it’s critical we reveal their full impact
Today the Guardian launches its annual environment support campaign. To back our vital climate journalism, please click here
Why does capital love fossil fuels? It’s not hard to explain. They exist in a small number of discrete locations, where the right to exploit them can be owned and monopolised. Most can be extracted commercially only at scale, excluding small competitors. They can be stored and traded all over the world, allowing prices to be optimised across time and space. Renewable energy, by contrast, can be generated almost anywhere, by almost anyone with a small amount of money to invest.
Renewables might now be cheaper than fossil fuel in the vast majority of cases, but this makes them less attractive to capital, not more. Fossil fuels are uncompetitive and highly profitable. Renewables are highly competitive and not very profitable.
Join George Monbiot and special guests on 16 September for a special climate assembly to discuss the growing and dramatic political and corporate threats to the planet. Book tickets – in person or livestream
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08/26/2025 - 03:37
Activists claim Anant Ambani’s Vantara facility has no plan to return its endangered species to the wild
India’s supreme court has ordered an investigation into allegations of illegal animal imports and financial misconduct at a vast private zoo set up by the son of Asia’s richest person.
Vantara, which describes itself as the “world’s biggest wild animal rescue centre”, is run by Anant Ambani, a son of Mukesh Ambani, the billionaire head of the conglomerate Reliance Industries.
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08/26/2025 - 00:43
In today’s newsletter: Extreme heat, droughts and floods are proving disastrous for farmers on the frontline of climate change, and consumers in the supermarket, too
Good morning. My mum is a livestock farmer in Kent. This year her hay crop was down by 50% because the spring rains never came. She’s not alone – up and down the UK, farmers have watched their fields turn brown and their hay crops collapse.
Hay keeps animals alive over winter (when there is no fresh grass outside) and some farmers are already selling off cows because they can’t guarantee they will be able to feed them. From extreme drought to biblical floods, more than 80% of UK farmers are worried wild swings in weather are affecting their ability to earn a living.
Israel-Gaza war | Israel bombed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Monday and then struck the same place again as rescuers and journalists rushed to help the wounded, killing at least 20 people including five journalists, health officials said.
UK news | Schools will need to give democracy lessons to children from the age of 11 and ask teachers to leave their politics at the classroom door to help prepare for votes at 16, the head of the UK elections watchdog has said.
Health | People using the weight loss jab Mounjaro have been warned against switching to black market sellers or bulk buying after its manufacturer announced the UK will get a significant price rise this autumn.
US news | Some national guard units patrolling the US capital at the direction of Donald Trump have started carrying firearms, an escalation of the president’s military deployment that makes good on a directive issued late last week by his defence department.
UK news | Ministers are introducing a clearer legal definition of “honour-based” abuse in an attempt to catch more perpetrators and protect women and girls from violence and coercion.
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08/26/2025 - 00:00
Views of forward-thinking artist and writer who lived off land in national park celebrated at museum in Glastonbury
She was considered an eccentric by some, eking out a frugal existence on a wild English moor, surviving off the land and exchanging her sketches of the countryside for meals.
But the first museum exhibition on the life and work of the largely forgotten nature writer and artist Hope Bourne highlights that her views on the environment, recycling, access to the countryside – even rewilding – were ahead of her time.
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08/25/2025 - 23:00
Report finds regenerative approach could yield economic benefits while helping to meet environmental targets
The degradation of nature in the UK will lop nearly 5% off the country’s GDP if the private sector does not make a greater effort to halt the decline, experts have warned.
Conversely, investing in nature can produce economic returns for companies in a range of sectors, from manufacturing and construction to food, according to a report from the Green Finance Institute (GFI) and WWF.
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08/25/2025 - 18:01
Customers to get £5 vouchers for donating M&S clothes to Oxfam, which will get 15% of profits from eBay sales
Marks & Spencer is opening a secondhand clothing store on eBay to find new homes for “old favourites” as the household name taps into booming demand for preloved clothing.
The retailer has collected 36.5m secondhand clothes since it launched its “shwopping” clothing recycling scheme – now called Another Life – over a decade ago. Most of that clothing has been resold by charity partner Oxfam.
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08/25/2025 - 16:02
Workers say president’s attacks on the agency and lack of qualified leadership could lead to deadly catastrophe
US politics live – latest updates
Donald Trump’s attacks on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) risk exposing the US to another Hurricane Katrina, staff at the agency have warned Congress in a withering critique that also takes aim at its current leadership.
Writing in the run-up to this week’s 20th anniversary of the devastating 2005 storm that killed 1,833 people and caused widespread destruction in New Orleans and the Gulf coast, more than 180 current and former Fema employees say the Trump administration’s policies are ignoring the mistakes that led to it.
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08/25/2025 - 12:00
A fad for consuming high-protein, high-fat food, while avoiding vegetables, has taken off online. Followers are doing themselves no favours
Once, it seemed that much of the world was intent on drastically cutting back on meat for health and environmental reasons. Vegetarian and vegan options appeared on restaurant menus and the very idea of a bloody red steak became almost unthinkable in liberal circles. And yet the carnivore diet is now all over Instagram and TikTok, prompting health bodies to start issuing warnings.
Followers of this diet eat meat, fat, seafood, eggs and butter, avoiding all vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes as if plants were, as Paul Saladino, an advocate of this diet alleged, “poison”. Dr Saladino is a US psychiatrist and health influencer with a range of supplements called Heart and Soil that contain dried animal organ meat. He appears shirtless on social media, denouncing vegetables, which he says will harm us. Other Instagrammers tuck into plates of huge steaks and seven or more eggs for breakfast. It’s not just for weight loss.
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08/25/2025 - 10:00
Exposure to high temperatures could result in long-lasting damage to health of billions of people, scientists warn
Repeated exposure to heatwaves is accelerating ageing in people, according to a study. The impact is broadly comparable with the damage smoking, alcohol use, poor diet or limited exercise can have on health, the researchers said.
Extreme temperatures are increasingly common owing to the climate crisis, potentially causing widespread and long-lasting damage to the health of billions, the scientists warned.
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