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The Danish drama is piercing in its ordinariness. In the real world, the climate crisis worsens and authoritarians take charge as we calmly look away

The climate crisis has taken a new and frightening turn, and in the expectation of disastrous flooding, the entire landmass of Denmark is about to be evacuated. Effectively, the country will be shutting itself down and sending its 6 million people abroad, where they will have to cope as best they can. Huge numbers of northern Europeans are therefore being turned into refugees: a few might have the wealth and connections to ease their passage from one life to another, but most are about to face the kind of precarious, nightmarish future they always thought of as other people’s burden.

Don’t panic: this is not a news story – or not yet, anyway. It’s the premise of an addictive new drama series titled Families Like Ours, acquired by the BBC and available on iPlayer. I have seen two episodes so far, and been struck by the very incisive way it satirises European attitudes to the politics of asylum. But what has also hit me is its portrayal of something just as modern: how it shows disaster unfolding in the midst of everyday life. At first, watching it brings on a sense of impatience. Why are most of the characters so calm? Where are the apocalyptic floods, wildfires and mass social breakdown? At times, it verges on boring. But then you realise the very clever conceit that defines every moment: it is really a story about how we all live, and what might happen tomorrow, or the day after.

The writer and journalist Dorian Lynskey’s brilliant book Everything Must Go is about the various ways that human beings have imagined the end of the world. “Compared to nuclear war,” he writes, “the climate emergency deprives popular storytellers of their usual toolkit. Global warming may move too fast for the planet but it is too slow for catastrophe fiction.” Even when the worst finally happens, most of us may respond with the kind of quiet mental contortions that are probably better suited to literature than the screen. Making that point, Lynskey quotes a character in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Year of the Flood: “Nobody admitted to knowing. If other people began to discuss it, you tuned them out, because what they were saying was both so obvious and so unthinkable.”

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

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Study finds dietary fiber effectively cuts levels of two most common and dangerous Pfas, with more research planned

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Consuming higher amounts of fiber reduces levels of toxic Pfas “forever chemicals” in human bodies, a new peer-reviewed pilot study suggests.

The research found fiber most effectively reduces Pfos and Pfoa, among the two most common and dangerous Pfas. Each can stay in bodies for years, and federal data shows virtually everyone has the chemicals in their blood.

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As I stood there, awed by how disgusting and wasteful our species is, I realised that everyone needs to see this

Like all the best things in life, this story starts with an argument about bins. Admittedly, I could do better at recycling. I can try to chalk this up to having read too much about how all our plastic waste ultimately ends up in landfill sites in the poorest parts of south-east Asia. But I’m also lazy and so well-acquainted with cognitive dissonance that I could probably cry over the death scene in Bambi while comforting myself by chowing down on a giant haunch of venison.

My partner, Leo, is the total opposite: diligent and principled. Which is why she finally lost it with me for failing to put a plastic yoghurt tub in the recycling. I went on the defensive, citing half-imagined reports about megadumps in the Philippines and inescapable doom. She retaliated by booking us on an educational tour of Southwark Reuse and Recycling Centre.

Eleanor Margolis is a columnist for the i newspaper and Diva

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As an oceanographer, I study how the ocean shapes our world. For Australia and other nations, the lesson is urgent

Antarctica is often viewed as the last truly remote place on Earth – frozen, wild and untouched. But is it really as untouched as it seems?

This vast frozen continent is encircled by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the only current in the world that connects all the oceans, showing how closely linked our planet really is.

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This election result has given the renewable energy industry a three-year window to prove it can provide a viable replacement for coal in our electricity mix. It won’t be easy.

The post What needs to happen to prove the LNP wrong, and the high renewables target right appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Carnegie Clean Energy secures deal to manufacture its proprietary CETO wave energy technology – and signs an MOU to explore projects in America's 49th state.

The post Carnegie eyes Alaska for wave energy potential as Spain CETO project gathers momentum appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The state government is aware of koala welfare problems but says it has ‘no cost-effective’ solutions

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Thousands of koalas are being displaced each year as blue gum plantations are cut down in Victoria, worsening overcrowding in nearby forests and exacerbating the risk of injury and death during bushfires.

An estimated 42,500 koalas live in blue gum plantations in south-west Victoria, data shows. Between 8,000 and 10,000 hectares of plantation are harvested each year, making thousands of koalas homeless.

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There is an appetite in this country for policy that will change lives. What is more fundamental than the water we use and bills we pay?

• Clive Lewis is the Labour MP for Norwich South

In the wake of a brutal set of local election results, MPs from across the Labour party are trying to establish what went wrong. To me, it’s very clear that this was no fluke: it was the entirely foreseeable outcome of my party’s approach to Reform UK. And as the party moves forward and prepares to face Reform at future elections, it’s key that we learn the right lessons.

From flip-flopping on climate commitments to framing disabled people as part of the undeserving poor, Labour thus far hasn’t challenged Reform’s worldview – it has legitimatised it. However, there are some perhaps surprising areas where Labour isn’t copying Reform: public ownership of water for one.

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Sap-sucking insects top list of queries to gardening charity after causing significant harm to plants

Aphids are plaguing gardeners this spring due to the warm weather, with higher numbers of the rose-killing bugs expected to thrive in the UK as a result of climate breakdown.

The sap-sucking insects have topped the ranking of gardener queries to the Royal Horticultural Society, with many of its 600,000 members having complained of dozens of aphids on their acers, roses and honeysuckle plants.

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A coalition of 15 states filed a lawsuit to challenge President Donald Trump’s executive order (EO) declaring a “national energy emergency” on the day of his Inauguration, alleging that the action was unlawful.

Washington’s Department of Ecology’s (ECY) advisory groups this week nudged the agency to consider linkage as it prepares its recommendations surrounding no-cost allocations for Emissions Intensive, Trade Exposed Industries (EITEs).

A Canadian farm workers labour union launched a campaign against Quebec’s carbon trading system, asking to prevent additional costs from being passed on to consumers.

Speculators cautiously raised California Carbon Allowance (CCA), Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), and RGGI allowance (RGA) spread holdings over the week absent firm regulatory guidance, data published Friday by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) showed.

As the US EPA undergoes its formal review of a key rule underpinning several regulations limiting GHGs, legal experts laid out pathways the agency could take to eliminate the rule – each with its own set of obstacles and consequences.

Rhode Island and a group of oil firms led by Chevron debated in court this week the need for discovery of evidence, as the companies looks to fight a suit brought by the state seeking damages for the effects of climate change.

An environmental advocacy group urged policymakers to prioritise forest protection over returns to fund sponsors in the development of Brazil’s $125 billion forest fund, in a policy paper published Friday.

A digital forest monitoring company released a tech tool for afforestation, reforestation, and revegetation (ARR) carbon project developers to build a dynamic baseline ready for validation.

In consultation with the US EPA, the White House issued agency-wide guidance for policy officers to limit considerations of the social cost of carbon (SCC) metric only as required under statute.

A Danish infrastructure investment firm will commit $500 million to expand a US natural gas producer's carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) operations across the nation, according to a Thursday announcement.

A recently signed agreement seeks to link long-term carbon storage with low-carbon fuel production as part of a broader push to scale decarbonisation infrastructure in the Gulf Coast region.