Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Our wildlife series Young Country Diary is looking for articles written by children, about their autumn encounters with nature Once again, the Young Country Diary series is open for submissions! Every three months we ask you to send us an article written by a child aged 8-14. The article needs to be about a recent encounter they’ve had with nature – whether it’s a hedge full of berries, a beetle on the move, or a nervous deer. Continue reading...

Alpine regions in Europe experiencing extreme glacier collapse due to heat-trapping effects of fossil fuel pollution Switzerland has lost almost one-fifth of its ice in just five years, research has found, in a dramatic reshaping of the Alpine country whose big white glaciers have been reduced to moonlike rock deserts, scientists say. Swiss glaciers shrank by 5.5% in the first eight months of 2026, according to an annual monitoring report, after a summer of scorching heatwaves that followed a winter with little snow. The reduction in ice volume falls just shy of the record set in 2022 and brings the total loss of glacier ice since 2021 to 19.4%. Continue reading...

There is no greater treachery than this failure to face up to the climate crisis. How can we now fend off despair? The Independent Planning Commission’s published reasons for approving the largest coalmine in New South Wales history in the context of mounting death, disaster and despair brought on by global heating reads like a hostage statement. In its decision, the commission accepts that the extension of the Hunter Valley Operations’ mine for a further 19 years – resulting 809m tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution – will materially worsen global warming. The panel members cite CSIRO’s finding that climate change is having a growing effect on the lives and livelihoods of all Australians and that the severity of that impact “will depend on the speed at which global greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced”. They reject the idea that keeping HVO’s coal in the ground would make no difference to global warming. Continue reading...

Sunday’s general election is too close to call, with the incumbent president facing the son of the man who attempted a coup against him Sunday’s election in Brazil could hardly be a clearer-cut choice – nor a closer call. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, is neck and neck in the polls with Flávio Bolsonaro, the son and champion of the jailed far-right former president Jair. Mr Bolsonaro senior is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup to “annihilate” democracy after losing the last election. Brazil is Latin America’s largest democracy, but military dictatorship is in its recent past. Mr Bolsonaro wants to free his father and those who rioted in his support in 2023. The senator has campaigned as a less crass and temperamental version of his father, but he is no less extreme. For many on both sides, this is a vote against a man they detest more than an endorsement of their own candidate. Most voters disapprove of both men. 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...