Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Vegan restaurants are closing, RFK Jr is sounding the drum for carnivores, and the protein cult is bigger than ever. But eschewing animal products helps me ward off a sense of impotence – and despair Let’s get this out of the way, because I’m itching to tell you (again): I’m vegan, and this is our time, Veganuary! Imagine me doing a weak, vitamin B12-depleted dance. Unlike gym-goers, vegans are thrilled when newbies sign up each January, for planetary and animal welfare reasons, but also, shallowly, for the shopping. This is when we can gorge on the novelties retailers dream up: Peta’s round-up for this year includes the seductive Aldi pains au chocolat and M&S coconut kefir. I need retail therapy, because Veganuary has become quite muted and that’s part of a wider inflection point in vegan eating that I’m sad about. “Where have all the vegans gone?” Dazed asked in November, and now New York Magazine has investigated, with the tagline: “Plant-based eating was supposed to be the future. Then meat came roaring back.” It details a wave of vegan restaurant closures (plus the high-profile reverse ferret performed by formerly vegan Michelin-three-starred Eleven Madison Park to serving “animal products for certain dishes”), declining sales of meat substitutes and a stubbornly static percentage of people identifying as vegan (around 1%). It’s not new (rumours of veganism’s demise have been swirling around since at least 2024) and it’s not just a US phenomenon; many UK vegan restaurants have closed this year, including my lovely local. Continue reading...

Guardian analysis shows electricity bills were up 6.7% last year, and much higher in some states, and gas bills up 5.2% Trump’s failed energy bill pledge leaves US households struggling: ‘It’s obscene’ Donald Trump has comprehensively failed to meet a key election promise to slash Americans’ energy bills in half within the first year of his presidency, with power prices instead surging across the US. The average household electricity bill in the US was 6.7% more expensive in 2025 compared with the previous year, according to a Guardian analysis of data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Department of Energy’s statistical arm. The increases meant that, on average, US households paid nearly $116 more across 2025 than they did in 2024. Continue reading...

As international treaty comes into force, bill to make it law in Britain is moving at ‘glacial pace’ through parliament The UK risks being shut out of a historic oceans summit because parliament has failed to ratify the UN’s high seas treaty, environmental charities and campaigners have warned. The high seas treaty, formally known as the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, comes into force on Saturday, after two decades of talks. Continue reading...

Todolí foundation produces varieties from Buddha’s hands to sudachi and hopes to help citrus survive climate change It was on a trip with a friend to the east coast of Spain that the chef Matthew Slotover came across the “Garden of Eden”, an organic farm growing citrus varieties he had never heard of. The Todolí Citrus Foundation is a nonprofit venture and the largest private collection of citrus in the world with more than 500 varieties, and its owners think the rare fruit could hold the genetic secrets to growing citrus groves that can deal with climate change. The farm yields far more interesting fruit than oranges and lemons for Slotover’s menu, including kumquat, finger lime, sudachi and bergamot. Continue reading...