I’ve spent six years writing about environmental justice. The uncomfortable truth is that we’re not all in it together – but people power is reshaping the fight
It’s been another year of climate chaos and inadequate political action. And it’s hard not to feel despondent and powerless.
I joined the Guardian full time in 2019, as the paper’s first environmental justice correspondent, and have reported from across the US and the region over the past six years. It’s been painful to see so many families – and entire communities – devastated by fires, floods, extreme heat, sea level rise and food shortages. But what’s given me hope during these six years of reporting as both an environmental and climate justice reporter are the people fighting to save our planet from catastrophe – in their communities, on the streets and in courtrooms across the world.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/31/2025 - 09:00
12/31/2025 - 09:00
Albanese will face a crucial test on the economy while the Coalition deals with existential questions after an election drubbing
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Before 14 December, Anthony Albanese was enjoying the most successful year of his long parliamentary career.
A landslide election win delivered Labor 94 lower house seats and crushed its political opponents.
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12/31/2025 - 07:30
Environmental advocates notched key wins at local and state levels this year despite Trump rollbacks
As 2025 draws to a close, environmental advocates across the US find themselves weighing a year marked by both setbacks and successes.
Despite major environmental reversals taken by the Donald Trump administration including loosening fossil fuel rules and weakening endangered-species safeguards, conservationists, lawmakers and researchers still notched key wins at local and state levels.
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12/31/2025 - 07:00
The challenges and strains have been almost too much to take. But in 2025, words of depth and courage have been an antidote to numbness
I once saw a young glassblower in Istanbul, still new to his craft, shatter a beautiful vase while taking it out of the furnace. The artisan master standing by his side calmly nodded and said something that I still think about. He told him: “You put too much pressure on it, you kept it unbalanced and you forgot that it, too, has a heart.”
The year we are leaving behind has been plagued from the start by a series of social, economic, environmental, technological and institutional challenges, all happening with such speed and intensity that we are yet to fully comprehend their impact on our lives, let alone on future generations. As the overwhelming strain of domestic and geopolitical changes continues to build up, I cannot help but remember the man’s words. Too much pressure. Unstable, uncertain and replete with deep inequalities. This could well be the year we forgot that the Earth, too, has a heart. It definitely feels like the year when the world was broken.
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12/31/2025 - 06:00
The bioscience startup has attracted billions in investment – and a flurry of criticism, but founder tells the Guardian plans to bring back the woolly mammoth will not be derailed
Death and taxes are supposed to be the things we can depend on in this life. But in 2025, the American entrepreneur Ben Lamm sold much of the world on the idea that death did not, after all, need to be for ever.
This was the year the billionaire’s genetics startup, Colossal Biosciences, claimed it had resurrected the dire wolf, an animal that disappeared at the end of the last ice age, by tweaking the DNA of grey wolves. According to the company, it had also edged closer to bringing the woolly mammoth back from the dead, with the creation of genetically engineered “woolly mice”.
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12/31/2025 - 01:00
From moules marinière to scallop, bacon and garlic butter rolls, here’s how to cast your culinary net wider and embrace more sustainable species
For a nation surrounded by water, Britain’s seafood tastes are remarkably parochial – we mostly eat cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and prawns. But with a huge range of species out there, making the decision to swap the “big five” for more sustainable options could be a good new year resolution to aim for. Here are five species to consider – and if you’re worried these won’t taste as good as cod and chips, we’ve rounded up a selection of top chefs to tell you how to make the best of what could be on your plate in 2026.
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12/31/2025 - 00:00
Bereaved relatives say delays over risks at village churchyards are causing distress and call for council action
Families of people buried in graves vulnerable to coastal erosion say indecision over how to tackle the problem is causing them avoidable anguish about the final resting places of their loved ones.
North Norfolk district council (NNDC) has identified three church graveyards in the villages of Happisburgh, Trimingham, and Mundesley as being at risk of being engulfed by the sea in the coming decades.
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12/31/2025 - 00:00
Law’s original author points to removal of obligations for downstream traders to verify origin of commodities
It was hailed by campaigners around the world as a game-changing piece of legislation that would help stop deforestation.
But when a bullet-ridden version of the EU’s deforestation regulation, once supposed to be the crown of the Green Deal, finally limped across the legislative line this month, not even its architect was smiling, and one politician said it had been pretty much “dismantled”.
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12/30/2025 - 18:53
Water stored as snow during the winter months feeds waterways in the summer and supplies cities and farms
A series of December storms delivered a welcome boost to California’s snowpack, scientists said on Tuesday in a closely watched assessment of the state’s water resources for the year ahead.
The snowpack survey recorded a snow depth of 24in (61cm), said Angelique Fabbiani-Leon, state hydrometeorologist at the California department of water resources’ snow surveys and water supply forecasting unit. The survey was conducted at the Phillips station in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range that covers the eastern part of the state.
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12/30/2025 - 08:13
Meteorological office reports high temperatures across country and record measured at Seyðisfjörður in east
Record temperatures of almost 20C were reached in Iceland on Christmas Eve, the local meteorological office has confirmed.
Seyðisfjörður, a small town in the east of Iceland, hit 19.8C on 24 December. Average December temperatures in Iceland are between -1C and 4C.
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