The fragility of the global food system fills me with dread – and the war with Iran has exposed just how close to collapse it is
The fate of environmentalists is to spend their lives trying not to be proved right. Vindication is what we dread. But there’s one threat that haunts me more than any other: the collapse of the global food system. We cannot predict what the immediate trigger might be. But the war with Iran is just the right kind of event.
Drawing on years of scientific data, I’ve been arguing for some time that this risk exists – and that governments are completely unprepared for it. In 2023, I made a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into environmental change and food security, with a vast list of references. Called as a witness, I spent much of the time explaining that the issue was much wider than the inquiry’s scope.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
03/25/2026 - 02:00
03/25/2026 - 00:00
I had to deal with the energy shock in Germany after Putin invaded Ukraine. The solution now is the same: buy ourselves out of the fossil fuels trap
Yes, there are big differences between the war of aggression that Russia has now been waging against Ukraine for four years and the war the US and Israel launched against Iran. The biggest difference: the US is still a democracy. Even a president who considers himself all-powerful is not. From scathing press coverage to anger over high oil prices, fear of the midterm elections and – the capitalist form of democracy – falling stock prices, what people think makes a difference. That is why the US president is occasionally forced to change his mind. That is not the case in Russia.
Vladimir Putin had a clear plan: Russia wanted to occupy the whole of Ukraine and turn it into a satellite state or annex its territory. Putin was preparing for this war for years, in my view; this included a cheap energy trap into which he successfully lured Germany through the construction of Nord Stream 2 and the purchase of gas storage facilities and refineries by Gazprom and Rosneft.
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03/24/2026 - 11:18
Advocates say Lee Zeldin’s EPA has rolled back protections and cut staff and funding, putting health at risk
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More than 160 environmental and public health organizations on Tuesday called for Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, to resign or be fired.
“No [EPA] administrator in history – Democratic or Republican – has so brazenly betrayed the agency’s core mission,” the groups wrote in an open letter. “EPA’s foremost purpose is to protect human health and the environment. With Administrator Lee Zeldin at the helm, EPA has abandoned its mission, creating damage that will take decades to address.”
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03/24/2026 - 10:54
GB Energy’s Jürgen Maier says production could bring economic benefits and give supply chains ‘time to transition’ to renewables
The head of the UK’s national green energy champion has joined other high-profile renewable energy leaders in making the case for more North Sea oil and gas production as the government braces for an energy cost crisis.
The GB Energy boss, Jürgen Maier, used a social media post on LinkedIn to reject the claim that more North Sea oil and gas could help to bring down energy costs, which have soared as the war in Iran has escalated.
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03/24/2026 - 09:00
Some residents moved amid threat of flooding are under public guardianship due to reduced mental capacity. NT public guardian says they ‘would have been very frightened’
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Frail aged care residents were forced to shelter in an open-sided basketball court in Katherine, sleeping in makeshift conditions as authorities scrambled to prepare for major river flooding triggered by ex-Tropical Cyclone Narelle.
Residents from Rocky Ridge and Katherine Hostel aged care facilities were evacuated to MacFarlane primary school where many spent the night at a covered basketball court, with rain blowing into the open-sided shelter, as the deep tropical-low swept through the region.
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03/24/2026 - 07:42
Conservationists celebrate second twin birth just two months after another set discovered in Virunga national park
A second set of mountain gorilla twins has been born in Virunga national park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in what conservationists are celebrating as an “extraordinary” event for the endangered primates.
Just two months after tiny twin mountain gorillas were discovered by rangers in the Virunga massif, in eastern DRC, another rare twin birth has been found by park wardens. This time, an infant male and female have been spotted in the Baraka family, a troop of 19 mountain gorillas that roam the region’s high-altitude rainforests.
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03/19/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 20 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00191-4
Science challenges and solutions to support implementation of the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement
03/18/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 19 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00192-3
Balancing the blue economy and multiple stressor management in marine spatial planning at the land-sea interface
03/18/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 19 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00190-5
Rethinking high seas allocation: should vessels pay to fish on the high seas?
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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