Breaking Waves: Ocean News

UK ministers should update the public on the outlook for bills as the price of overhauling the system is adding up The government’s decision on zonal pricing for electricity – the issue that divides the energy industry like no other – is due any day. Whichever way ministers jump, it would be a good moment to update consumers on the outlook for their bills in the “sprint” to decarbonise the UK’s electricity system by 2030. Does the government still think cleaner energy means cheaper energy? If so, when and how? It deserves an answer for two reasons. First, because the costs of turning down gas-fired generation in favour of renewables are clearer than a year ago – and current trends, sadly, are not encouraging. Second, because promising consumers “up to £300” off their bills by 2030 via clean energy, as Keir Starmer and the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, have done, risks handing a political gift to anti-net zero opponents if the savings do not materialise. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Defra warned three years ago of farmland contamination by water firms’ sewage-derived product Government ministers have ignored Environment Agency pleas to tighten rules on the use of sludge fertiliser for three years, despite the regulator having said that water company attitudes towards the substance are “akin to fly-tipping on to agricultural land”, it can be revealed. Sludge, sometimes referred to as biosolids, is a byproduct of the sewage treatment process that is sold by water companies to farmers as a low-cost fertiliser. Continue reading...

‘Maha’ promised to tackle ultra-processed foods – but is it hijacking the food movement instead? Over the space of the last year, Robert F Kennedy Jr. has made the term “ultra-processed foods” something of a household phrase. Once a term only used by nutritionists and food policy researchers to describe the most processed foods in the supply chain (think: chips and sodas, packaged bread, microwave dinners and even some yogurts), ultra-processing has become a calling card of the “Make America Healthy Again” (“Maha”) movement. Continue reading...

Experts scrambling to understand losses in hives across the country are finally identifying the culprits. And the damage to farmed bees is a sign of trouble for wild bees too Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers. Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. “Every time I went out to the beehive there were less and less,” says Adee. “Then a week later, there’d be more dead ones to pick up … every week there is attrition, just continually going down.” Continue reading...