The Guardian

Utility’s head says demand for drinking water has risen 20% since pandemic, outpacing supply

A water company has blamed more people working from home post-pandemic for a new hosepipe ban.

South East Water, which supplies more than 2m homes and businesses, will impose the first hosepipe ban of the summer on Monday, affecting households across Kent and Sussex.

Changes to the World Bank could unlock developing states access to loans and to the means of staving off disaster

The Netherlands has almost the same amount of solar generating capacity as the whole continent of Africa. That must be, in part, because the interest on a loan to set up a windfarm in Africa is about 17% more than one to do the same in Europe.

Many poor countries enjoy vast natural resources of wind and sun yet struggle to access renewable energy because of the crippling cost of capital imposed on them. Private sector companies perceive far greater risk in poor countries, penalising most heavily the countries in greatest need of investment.

What happens when the chill of our seas turns to a soupy stew? Fragile ecosystems will be destroyed and food sources for wildlife will disappear

Last weekend, at the very easternmost edge of England, tens of thousands of people of all ages gathered at a beach festival in Lowestoft to celebrate the sea joyously. To dance to trance music and listen to Linton Kwesi Johnson recite his poetry, and to hear marine scientists explain to seven-year-olds exactly why the sea smells the way it does. It was an idyllic scene. From dusk to dawn and back again, everyone was drawn to the vast and glorious element that connects us to the rest of the world.

But then, amid the revelry, a solemn procession appeared. Two dozen festivalgoers carried a series of blown-up photographs into the sea. They were portraits by the artist Gideon Mendel of people, many of them from the global south, standing amid the floods that had overturned their lives. Suddenly, in the face of their fates, the sea seemed not so benign after all. It was a reminder that sea levels are rising around the world; and that here in the UK we face our own potential disaster – the drastic sudden warming of the sea off Britain and Ireland.

Committee on Climate Change report likely to recommend ending road-building programme

The government should halt all new roads unless there are exceptional circumstances, the government’s climate advisers are likely to say next week.

On Wednesday the Committee on Climate Change will publish its latest report on the UK’s progress in dealing with the climate crisis. Speaking at Glastonbury on Friday, the climate change committee chair, Lord Deben, said new roads inevitably increased traffic and emissions.

Passengers aboard the sub lost on a dive to the Titanic became characters in a tragic drama. The rest of us were spectators

Finally, we know. The discovery of debris on the seafloor – confirming that the missing OceanGate Titan submersible probably disintegrated in an instantaneous implosion on the same day that it disappeared – brings to a bleak end the mystery that has horrified and mesmerised people across the globe.

The plight of the five passengers – the British adventurer Hamish Harding, the businessman Shahzada Dawood and his teenage son Suleman, the French veteran explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate’s CEO, Stockton Rush – has dominated front pages everywhere and spurred an international response that involved four countries and may have cost millions of dollars.

Bryony Clarke is an assistant letters editor at the Guardian

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A yacht competing in the Ocean Race had a close encounter with orcas on their approach to the strait of Gibraltar on Thursday, when the animals began nudging at its rudders. There were no injuries to the crew or damage to the boat. The Ocean Race said that ‘orca attacks’ on boats in the area around Gibraltar, where an individual or pod of orcas ram into a boat's hull or rudders, have become more common with boats being significantly damaged in some cases

Almost 40 leaders to present plans for overhaul of public financial institutions including World Bank

Questions over a tax on global shipping and other big sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and how countries should go about setting up a loss and damage fund continue to be the subject of fierce discussion, as governments meet in Paris to prepare an overhaul of global development and climate finance.

Nearly 40 heads of state and government and a similar number of ministers and high-level representatives will finalise a roadmap for the reform of the world’s public finance institutions, including the World Bank, and of overseas aid and climate finance.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including busy bees, a peregrine falcon and wild horses

It’s the age old battle between the NIMBYs and the YIMBYs!

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Nearly 50% of US bee colonies died off last year, although efforts have helped the overall bee population remain ‘relatively stable’

The US’s honeybee hives just staggered through the second highest death rate on record, with beekeepers losing nearly half of their managed colonies, an annual bee survey found.

But by using costly and herculean measures to create new colonies, beekeepers are somehow keeping afloat. Thursday’s University of Maryland and Auburn University survey found that even though 48% of colonies were lost in the year that ended 1 April, the number of US honeybee colonies “remained relatively stable”.

Poll also reveals increasing cynicism over environmental claims made by companies

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Australians are confused and cynical about the environmental claims made by companies and greenwashing is making people ever more sceptical, a latest survey of people’s attitudes to nature and climate change has found.

The research also points to a radical change in the expectations of Australian consumers and voters, with younger generations strongly rejecting the notion that humans have the right to use nature for their own benefit.

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As the planet continues to heat, politicians will go to greater and greater lengths to suppress popular outrage

So NSW’s premier, Chris Minns, thinks social media platforms like Meta should prevent climate activists from broadcasting their protests.

Scientists tell us that temperatures in the sea and air are spiking; a new study warns about global ecosystems collapsing sooner than predicted. Yet governments everywhere display more determination in suppressing protest than combating warming. As Greta Thunberg notes, “activists all over the world are experiencing increased repressions just for fighting for our present and our future”.

Jeff Sparrow is a Guardian Australia columnist

Settlement will provide funds to US municipalities over 13 years to test for and treat PFAS contamination in public water systems

3M Co has reached a $10.3bn settlement with a host of US public water systems to resolve water pollution claims tied to “forever chemicals”, the chemical company announced on Thursday.

The company said the settlement would provide the funds over a 13-year period to cities, towns and other public water systems to test for and treat contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

The Paris conference shows the climate crisis is no time for the tranquillising drug of gradualism

The International Energy Agency in 2021 had an unambiguous message: developing new fossil fuel resources is incompatible with restricting global heating to below 1.5C, a threshold beyond which the most disastrous climate impacts lie. Yet the oil and gas industry isn’t listening. Last year it committed half a trillion dollars for new capital expenditure on future drilling and extraction, while making outrageous profits of $4tn. Business as usual will destroy life as we know it.

Energy is fundamental for development and meeting basic needs. But producing it from coal, oil and gas is simultaneously the cause of the climate emergency. Clearly the issues of climate, energy and development must be addressed in an interconnected way. This is very difficult against a post-Covid backdrop when poor nations have record levels of debt. In the wake of the Ukraine invasion, rising interest rates have caused the dollar to surge – raising the cost of meeting loan repayments which are often denominated in the US currency. African nations spend up to five times their health budgets on debt obligations.

Move at Paris summit on global finance will only apply to repayments on new loans

Poor countries will be able to pause their debt repayments if hit by climate disaster, under plans announced by the World Bank at the finance summit in Paris.

The international development organisation said it would insert new clauses in any agreements with developing countries, allowing them to suspend debt payments in the case of extreme weather events, starting with some of the poorest and most vulnerable nations.

Amazon rainforest and other ecosystems could collapse ‘very soon’, researchers warn

Ecological collapse is likely to start sooner than previously believed, according to a new study that models how tipping points can amplify and accelerate one another.

Based on these findings, the authors warn that more than a fifth of ecosystems worldwide, including the Amazon rainforest, are at risk of a catastrophic breakdown within a human lifetime.

Exposure to nature in inner Melbourne has left her with stories, experiences and life skills before she starts school next year

The first time I dropped off my three-year-old at bush kinder, she was in a T-shirt and sandals. In hindsight, it was such a rookie error. Of course she needed long sleeves and closed shoes. The teacher explained that long sleeves provided better protection. If there were any cuts or nicks, a bit of coverage could make a difference.

I never made that mistake again. There was a lot to learn at bush kinder, a kindergarten program held in the parklands of inner Melbourne. The theory behind it was great: nature play improves children’s wellbeing, social and emotional development, cognitive language and physical skills – a string of nice words that I definitely wanted for my daughter. But really I was mainly glad she was outside. No screens. No toys. No equipment. Just what she needed after two years of lockdowns.

Research allays fears that rapid scaling back of production would hit people’s savings and pensions hard

A rapid reduction in fossil fuels, essential to avoid devastating climate breakdown, would have minimal financial impact on the vast majority of people, new research has shown.

Urgently cutting back on fossil fuel production is essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate breakdown and the economic and social turmoil that would ensue. However, some opponents of climate action claim it is too expensive. They argue that rapidly scaling back fossil fuel production would leave billions of pounds of “stranded assets”, leading to an economic slump that would impoverish the public through a fall in the value of savings and pension funds.

Scientists have warned that a marine heatwave off the coasts of the UK and Ireland poses a serious threat to species. Sea temperatures, particularly off the north-east coast of England and the west of Ireland, are several degrees above normal, breaking records for late spring and early summer. The Met Office has said that according to records dating to 1850, global sea surface temperatures in April and May reached an all-time high, and June is likely to follow suit. A professor of Earth sciences, Daniela Schmidt, said 'the extreme and unprecedented temperatures show the power of the combination of human-induced warming and natural climate variability like El Niño'. Experts said marine heatwaves have a similar impact on the environment as wildfires on land, destroying organisms that store carbon such as kelp. The damage caused is also harmful to humanity, which relies on oceans for oxygen, storm protection and food

• ‘Unheard of’ marine heatwave off UK and Irish coasts poses serious threat

Court has been told states are legally responsible for tackling sector’s emissions as IMO talks loom

Governments are coming under growing pressure to tackle the huge climate impact of the shipping industry, ahead of a key International Maritime Organization (IMO) meeting in the summer.

With talks about regulating the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions looming, the world maritime court has been told that states are legally responsible for tackling the climate impact of shipping.