Days after finalizing a rule that would eliminate climate rules for power plants, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was sued by groups who say the EPA’s repeal was shockingly short-sighted and risked leaving the country’s single largest source of industrial climate pollution unchecked.

On Thursday, the American Lung Association, the American Public Health Association (APHA), the Clean Air Council, Clean Wisconsin, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a petition requesting that the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit review if the EPA’s action conflicts with the Clean Air Act.

“Clean air is a basic human right,” APHA CEO Georges C. Benjamin said.

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Unite is one of the UK’s largest trade unions, representing over 1 million workers in a range of sectors. Its general secretary – Sharon Graham – is one of the most prominent figures in the labour movement, having first been elected in 2021 and comfortably re-elected this summer.

Under her leadership, Unite has sought to assert its influence on the political scene in order to deliver policy change for its members, while maintaining a relentless focus on workplace organising over issues of pay, terms and conditions.

During her time in office, she’s butted heads with governments of various flavours. With Andy Burnham now in Number 10 and leading a new-ish administration, LFF spoke to Graham at this year’s TUC Congress about what she makes of his early days in government and what her union wants him to deliver for workers.

“At the moment the working class feel that their best days are behind them”, Graham told LFF, adding: “They don’t believe their children will have better jobs. They don’t believe their children are going to be able to buy a home. And actually they feel that everything that was there is almost in the past, not the present.”

She went on to say that Burnham needs to “crack the code” to ensure that “the working class could feel that their better days are ahead of them”. She said his “analysis has been good”, but that there needed to be “meat on the bones”.

What would this look like? Graham’s initial answer comes with a proposed contrast to the early days of the Keir Starmer government. Within months of coming to office, Starmer and his chancellor Rachel Reeves proposed major cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, a move vociferously opposed by many in the trade union movement.

Graham told LFF that Burnham needs to deliver a “Winter Fuel in reverse”, arguing that “he has to something positive and clear”, and that this should be “immediate”.

With the budget coming up in October, the government has an opportunity to deliver this. For Graham, there are some clear policies it could adopt that would improve the lives of workers and begin to rebalance the economy.

First up is tax thresholds, which Graham argues should be un-frozen. “It’s one of these hidden things that’s happening that most people don’t even realise”, Graham told LFF. She added that in: “2022, they were frozen by the Tories, continued on by Labour. But if that had not happened, the £12,500 band would be £16,000, and the 40% tax threshold at £50,000 would be £66,000. We’ve got low paid members and pensioners going in too early on the 20%, and you’ve also then got tanker drivers, nurses, teachers coming in at the 40% bracket when they shouldn’t be in at the 40% bracket at all.”

Graham continued: “So even though that’s something that in a way is really hidden, I think the signal it would give is: work pays.”

Alongside this, Graham has called for the government to use the budget to ‘ease’ the pressure on people around energy costs.

But Graham and Unite are looking for a more extensive set of economic changes than this. At this year’s TUC Congress, delegates backed a Unite motion which called for an “ambitious industrial strategy to deliver good well-paid jobs and reindustrialise Britain”, an end to public sector austerity through taxing wealth, and a loosening of the government’s ‘fiscal rules’ to allow more direct investment in jobs.

Graham told LFF that “since the 2008 crash and Covid, it’s been workers and communities that have paid the price for the entirety of it”, and called for the government to say that “workers and communities aren’t going to pay anymore”, arguing that they should instead be “going to the exceedingly rich” and the “banks who we bailed out” to fund the economy.

Alongside this, Graham said she wants to see a substantial “package of investment in British industry”, the “reindustrialisation” of the UK, and for the government to begin taking energy into public ownership. She told LFF: “In an average house bill of £1,700, £500 pound is profit. It’s a bit of a no-brainer. At some point we need to take this back into public hands.”

Graham acknowledged that “we might not get everything”, but argued that “if the package shows this is a Labour government fighting for the working class and making sure that everyday people are not paying the price – they’ve done that since 2008 – I think he [Burnham] will get a good hearing.”

On that economic package, how the government addresses the climate emergency and decarbonises the economy is a central interest for trade unions. How that transition is managed is a key area of debate within the trade union movement.

Unlike some within the movement and the wider left, Unite does not oppose the expansion of oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.

Graham told LFF that Unite’s support for continued drilling in the North Sea is in order to buy time to deliver a fair and just transition for workers into a net-zero economy.

“Everyone I speak to wants net-zero”, Graham said, adding: “But you cannot have one part of the equation, which is the target, if you don’t have the other part of the equation, which is how the jobs are going to be replaced and what those industries are”. She went on to say that continuing to extract oil and gas from the North Sea “just buys time for us to be able to hopefully convince a government that they have to invest in these new industries”, arguing that “The problem we’ve got at the moment – there isn’t any transition”.

For Graham, the transition to a decarbonised economy is a massive opportunity for the country and for workers, but one that is not currently being taken. “We led the first industrial revolution. We’re nowhere as far as this is concerned with the fourth industrial revolution”, Graham told LFF.

Later in the interview, she went on to say that this transition could be ‘transformational’ for the country. She said: “It could be something transformational on par with the 1945 Labour government if they got it right. I mean, imagine if there was a plan to nationalise our energy at the same time that we were building new industries in Britain for the first time. It’s an unbelievable package.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Trade unionists are gathering in Brighton this week at the annual TUC Congress. At the Congress, delegates have been debating the trade union movement’s position on major political and economic issues.

High on the agenda has been the climate emergency and its impact on workers. On Tuesday 15 September, delegates backed a motion calling for increased investment in climate resilience.

The motion called for the TUC to campaign for “government investment to make critical infrastructure, schools, hospitals and public transport, climate resilient, inclusive of reversing cuts to maintenance and renewals budgets on the railways”.

Alongside this, the motion also called for the introduction of a maximum working temperature, funding for the installation of solar panels on all public buildings, and funding for “community hubs in public spaces with active cooling measures to offer refuge in extreme heat and shelter from the cold in winter”.

Elsewhere, the motion condemned “the increase in anti-net zero rhetoric being exhibited by populist parties such as Reform UK and the impact such policies would have on the climate”, arguing that this would lead “to more extreme temperatures and ultimately the worsening of working conditions and job losses”.

As a result, the motion committed the TUC to “continue to publicly call out the dangers of climate change denial and the anti-net zero rhetoric, with a focus on the impact such policies will have on workers.”

The motion was proposed by the National Education Union.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Paul Nowak – the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) – has hit out at what he described as the ‘flat-earthers in Reform and the Tory party’ over their views on the climate emergency.

Nowak made the comments in his keynote address to the TUC Congress taking place this week in Brighton.

He told delegates: “We are at the end of the hottest summer on record, a summer that scorched our landscape.

“Now, the flat earthers in Reform and the Tory party might pretend it’s got nothing to do with climate change. And Richard Tice might say we should just ‘enjoy the heat’.

“But I dare him – dare him – to to say that to the firefighters battling wildfires, to railway workers and passengers injured when tracks buckle in the heat, to nurses fainting in hospitals, to bus drivers trying not to pass out behind the wheel.”

Nowak went on to use his speech to call for a maximum legal working temperature.

He told the hall: “So let me say it clearly: Climate change is real and we need to act. That means bold climate action, underpinned by good, unionised jobs. And it means keeping our workplaces safe. It is time for a maximum legal working temperature.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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The public wants the government to take stronger action on climate change following this summer’s heatwaves, wildfires and record temperatures, a new poll has revealed.

The More in Common polling, commissioned by investigative climate NGO Global Witness, revealed high levels of concern about the impact of the extreme heat on public services, including schools and the NHS. 

Three quarters (75%) of those surveyed were concerned about how extreme heat impacts the NHS’ ability to treat patients, while 63% were worried about its impact on schools’ ability to teach pupils. 

In addition, 75% of people supported the installation of solar-powered air conditioning in schools and hospitals.

An overwhelming majority (69%) of people backed a new legal maximum indoor working temperature of 30°c. 

Global Witness says NHS doctors have told the NGO that hospital temperatures became so high during this summer’s heatwaves that MRI scanners and CT machines cut out, with waiting times and patient flow affected. 

Teachers told Global Witness that staff and students fell sick during the extreme heat this summer and reported a lack of clear guidance on school closures or maximum working temperatures.

Global Witness provided some schools with thermometers to measure their classroom temperatures during the heatwave in mid-June.

Several teachers reported temperatures between 30 and 38 degrees – well above the recommended maximum classroom temperature of 26°C set by the National Education Union.

To mitigate the impact of climate change, Global Witness is calling on Andy Burnham to fairly tax the oil and gas industry, which has raked in big windfalls from the Iran war this year, after making bumper profits following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Global Witness senior campaigner, Flossie Boyd, said: “It’s scandalous that as people’s lives were put at risk this summer, the oil giants turbo-charging extreme heat were raking in sky-high profits, pushing for more dirty drilling and lower taxes.

“The climate crisis is here, and bold action is needed to keep people safe. If Burnham wants to stand up for families and working people, he should stand up to oil giants, tax them fairly and use the proceeds to fund the climate preparedness Britain desperately needs – like solar-powered AC to protect the most vulnerable.”

Image credit: Neil Thomas

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Every few years, El Niño or its cool counterpart, La Niña, shifts rainfall across the tropics, dries out Australia, floods parts of Peru, and rearranges the weather on most of the planet. The two are the warm and cold swings of a single system, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, and that system is the largest source of year-to-year climate variation on Earth. Its swings sit atop the steadily rising temperatures driven by global warming.

But we didn't know whether global warming was making it stronger. It’s possible that the added energy in the atmosphere and oceans was causing its swings to be more dramatic.

“We've been seeing some very strong El Niño events in the late 20th and early 21st century, and what we didn't know was how unusual those are,” said Julie Cole, an environmental scientist at the University of Michigan. Because models disagree with one another and the instrumental data are too short to separate a trend, Cole’s team reconstructed a thousand-year-long ocean surface temperature record by analyzing fossilized Galápagos corals.

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The leader of Reform UK-run Derbyshire County Council has been criticised for denying that climate change is man-made, as the authority rolls back policies aimed at tackling its causes.

Alan Graves defended the council’s decision to scrap its climate change committee and remove references to climate targets and net zero as priorities in its environmental strategy.

The comments came after a summer of extreme weather, with Graves telling BBC Radio Derby he believed the decision to abolish the committee was justified because he does not “actually believe that it is man-made.”

“But more importantly, the UK is responsible for less than one percent of the world’s global environmental problems. So whatever we do it will impact very, very slightly. I also believe the country is doing a great deal about climate change,” he said.

John Whitby, Labour MP for Derbyshire Dales hit back, noting how climate change is a huge concern for the people of Derbyshire.

“The climate crisis is the biggest concern for my constituents. We’ve all seen the devastating impact extreme weather has had on our farming communities.

“Addressing man-made climate change must be a priority for all politicians. To ignore the facts is a dereliction of duty in public office. Reform can’t be trusted on the climate.”

Graves’ remarks also drew plenty of ridicule online, with many questioning the basis for his rejection of the overwhelming scientific evidence that human activity is driving global warming.

One commenter wrote: “He’s done all his research from one YouTube clip we’ll be thrilled to know. What’s his plan to grow food on an over heating planet…. A move to Mars perhaps.”

Another asked: “What resources does he have that are better than those of the scientists who study climate change? Do we think that the fact his party gets huge donations from fossil fuel providers might influence his claims?”

Another joked: “Is he a flat earther too?”

“Blind leading the blind,” one person wrote.

A further comment accused Reform of promoting a position that serves the interests of the fossil fuel industry, saying: “They know climate change is real. However it conflicts with their fossil-fuel funded narrative. Even Richard Tice stated he believes climate change is happening, but says we should see the positives rather than ‘doom and gloom’, such as we could beat the French in wine-making!”

The controversy comes as Derbyshire County Council reshapes its approach to environmental policy following Reform UK’s takeover of the authority.

The council’s new strategy removes climate change from the centre of its policy-making. The authority has also scrapped its dedicated climate change committee.

Councillor Carol Wood, who has overseen the new strategy, has also seen her cabinet title changed. A role that previously included responsibility for net zero has been streamlined to cabinet member for environment, while continuing to cover areas including clean energy.

Let’s not forget that this is the same county that, in August 2019, became the focus of international news. Following an unprecedented amount of rainfall that experts put down to climate change, a dam wall at Toddbrook Reservoir in the Derbyshire village of Whaley Bridge collapsed. Fifteen hundred residents were evacuated, as the authorities told them their homes were at risk of being washed away if the rest of the dam failed. Derbyshire Police declared it an “unprecedented crisis.”

Indeed, as John Whitby MP says, climate change is a leading concern for the people of Derbyshire.

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Britons are increasingly feeling the effects of a changing climate, but many believe the government is failing to respond with the urgency the crisis demands. New polling shows that three in four people are concerned about climate change, while a growing majority expect the extreme heat experienced this summer to become a recurring feature of British life.

The findings also expose a widening divide between public concern and political rhetoric. While 74% of Britons are concerned about climate change, the radical right continues to downplay its dangers, even as extreme weather is disrupting people’s everyday lives and placing new pressures on households.

A new Ipsos poll of 1,085 adults across the UK found that 87% believe Britain will experience severe heatwaves like those seen this summer in future summers. More than half of British adults (56%) say extreme summer weather has disrupted their ability to carry out normal daily activities, including working, exercising and sleeping.

Yet despite this growing public concern and direct experience of extreme heat, many Britons believe the government is falling short. 37 percent say the Labour government has done a “bad job” dealing with climate change since coming to power in July 2024, compared with just 13 percent who say it has done a “good job.”

The figures suggest a clear disconnect between the scale of the challenge facing the country and the public’s assessment of the government’s response. With extreme heat already affecting people’s ability to work, sleep and go about their daily lives, climate change is no longer simply a long-term environmental concern. It’s becoming an immediate political and public policy challenge.

The poll also highlights the political consequences of failing to meet that expectation. When asked which alternative parties would do better or worse on climate change, the Green Party is most positively viewed, 35 percent saying a Green government would do a better job dealing with climate change, compared with 24 percent who say it would do worse, while 37 percent expect it to do about the same.

55 percent believe a Reform-led government would do a worse job on climate change, while 39 percent say the same of a Conservative government.

The findings confirm a definitive divide between public concern about the climate and the rhetoric of the radical right, which continues to minimise the severity of climate change despite the crippling effects of extreme weather.

“While over half of British adults report that their daily routines were disrupted by the heat, we see a distinct gap between public concern and practical action,” said Raquel de Luis, head of energy and environment at Ipsos in the UK.

“A significant portion of the public feels the Labour government is falling short on climate response, yet individual households are struggling to adapt independently, with affordability standing as a primary barrier to installing effective home cooling measures.

“Moving forward, the key challenge for Westminster will be delivering accessible, cost-effective infrastructure and adaptation support that enables households to build resilience against recurring summer heat without adding to their financial burdens.”

In response to the poll, civil society campaign group Best for Britain said: “The radical right downplays the dangers of climate change – or flat-out lies about them. They are not in line with the British public. We need to take urgent action now.”

The findings point to a growing expectation that the government needs to do more. As extreme heat becomes a more familiar feature of British summers, the public appears increasingly concerned not only about climate change itself, but about whether the government is responding with the urgency, investment and practical support the situation demands.

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For the nation’s 2.4 million farmworkers, climate change is poised to exacerbate the harms of pesticides, a growing body of research shows.

Heat stresses the body, making it more vulnerable to pesticides and other toxicants, and protective clothing worn in the heat only adds to this stress. Hotter temperatures can also lead to higher evaporation rates, increasing farmworkers’ exposure as more pesticides are applied to crops. And heat can boost rates of chemical transformation of pesticides into more toxic compounds.

“When it’s in the air, you are inhaling it through your nose. You are exposed to it through your other organs like skin. Your skin can absorb some of the pesticides [that are] in the air, and also when you’re sweating as part of doing your work you are increasing the pore size of your skin,” said Omanjana Goswami, a scientist in the food and environmental program at the Union for Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. “It is awful. There is no other word for it.”

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Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice has been branded “out of touch” for telling the public to “enjoy” and “celebrate” the recent heatwaves.

As the UK emerges from its fifth heatwave so far this summer, and is set to have a sixth next month, Tice said at a press conference yesterday “when it’s a bit warm, let’s enjoy it.”

Tice said that “the smarter thing to do is to adapt to it [the extreme heat]” rather than “think arrogantly that you can stop it”.

The Reform politician said people should focus on the benefits of a warmer climate, such as better English wine. 

“I think when it’s a bit warm, let’s enjoy it. And if it means that English wine and sparkling wine gets better and better then fantastic, that means we can take on the French. Fantastic,” he said.

He added: “Let’s celebrate some of these things rather than just be doom and gloom about it.”

Responding to Tice’s remarks, Danny Gross, climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “If Richard Tice wants to live in a world of make believe, that’s his call. But telling people to enjoy the heat after the scenes we’ve seen in the last week… how out of touch do you need to be?

“Homes burnt to a cinder and the military drafted in after wildfires raged uncontrollably. Farmers at their wits end because weeks without rain have made for yet another brutal harvest. 

“And the more than 1,000 lives needlessly lost during this summer’s heatwaves thanks to global heating. It’s an insult – particularly to their loved ones – to suggest the weather extremes we’re seeing are cause for celebration.

Gross also noted that Tice’s comments are at odds with Reform supporters’ views. 

He said: “Last week, our polling showed 87% of people think the UK is unprepared for extreme weather events like heat and drought – including 81% of Reform UK supporters. Failing to acknowledge the real-world consequences of our changing climate may not be as easily forgiven as he thinks.” 

Bridget Phillipson, the Labour Party chair, called the Reform MP’s comments “tone deaf”.

“Wildfires are affecting people’s lives. Drought threatens our water supplies and food security. All the while, Richard Tice is having a laugh.

“These comments raise serious questions about his judgement and expose where Reform UK’s interests really lie.”

Campaign group Labour Future wrote on X: “Kids sent home because classrooms were boiling, public services under pressure, water shortages and wild fires, harvest failures-  but we should do nothing about all that according to Reform. Just sit back and enjoy.

“Ridiculous and frankly mad.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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In 1965, a presidential advisory panel issued a report warning that pervasive chemical and carbon pollution was harming environmental health and changing the climate. Five years later, President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act.

Since that 1970 law and its amendments were passed, combined emissions of a half-dozen harmful air pollutants from vehicles and industrial sources have decreased by nearly 80 percent.

But mounting evidence shows that pollution from wildfire smoke is eclipsing those air-quality gains. The unchecked burning of fossil fuels is creating warmer, drier conditions that make wildfires more intense and destructive, and blanket communities in toxic smoke that is more harmful than pollution from other sources.

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Environmentalist Feargal Sharkey has pointed to what many will see as an unfair contradiction in England’s growing water crisis; millions of households are being asked to restrict their water use, while private schools and golf clubs can continue irrigating their grounds.

Sharkey posted an image on X showing a golf course in north London being watered by sprinklers.

“So while 26 million people in England and Wales are living under a hosepipe ban last night this is happening on a golf club in north London. What am I missing?” he wrote.

It’s a reasonable question.

Following back-to-back heatwaves, almost half of England and the whole of Wales are now in drought. Nearly 26 million people are facing restrictions on hosepipe use, with South West Water the latest supplier to introduce a ban, joining eight other water companies across southern England and Wales.

Yet exemptions mean some sporting facilities, including golf courses and private-school playing fields, can continue to water their grounds.

That’s where questions about privilege become difficult to ignore.

In Barnes, south-west London, the playing fields of St Paul’s School, where annual fees can reach around £57,000, have remained notably green against the surrounding dry landscape.

In Kent, Royal St George’s Golf Club at Sandwich Bay, one of Britain’s most prestigious golf clubs, has similarly maintained its lush playing surfaces.

Membership at Royal St George’s is by recommendation, while visitors can play on selected days for around £400.

For someone who has been told they cannot use a hosepipe to water their garden or fill a paddling pool for their children, seeing an expensive golf course being watered is naturally going to raise questions about fairness.

There are legitimate reasons for some of these exemptions. Golf courses and other sporting facilities can have sophisticated irrigation, water-storage and rainwater-management systems. Maintaining their grounds may therefore have a different impact on the water supply than millions of individual households using mains water.

But that doesn’t remove the wider question of fairness.

If wealthy institutions can invest in infrastructure that allows them to maintain immaculate green playing surfaces during extreme drought, why has similar investment not been made in the country’s wider water infrastructure?

And why should an ordinary family face restrictions while an exclusive sporting club can continue to maintain grounds that are, ultimately, a luxury rather than an essential service?

That’s the contradiction Sharkey is pointing towards.

It’s not an argument that golf courses are responsible for England’s water shortages, or that every exemption is necessarily unjustified. It’s an argument about priorities and public trust.

Climate change is making extreme heat and prolonged drought more likely. Britain cannot control the weather, but it can decide how prepared it is for it.

The debate sparked by Sharkey’s post is therefore about more than golf. It’s about how Britain manages an increasingly scarce resource, who is allowed to use it during a crisis, and whether those decisions are seen as fair.

Because when the message is conserve water, but some of the greenest places are those that can afford the infrastructure to keep them that way, it is reasonable to ask: conserve it for whom?

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The Daily Mail has been rebuked after it ran a front page story yesterday claiming that ‘eco-dogma’ and ‘rewilding’, not climate change, has caused the record number of UK wildfires this summer.

New figures released on Wednesday by the National Fire Chiefs Council reveal that England and Wales have suffered 1,017 wildfires so far this year, already matching last year’s record-breaking total.

The Mail article quotes a spokesperson for landowners and a rewilding critic, who say ‘Labour’s rewilding drive’ and the restrictions on controlled vegetation burning, have turned “swathes of countryside into tinderboxes”, causing the wildfires.

Rewilding is where vegetation is left to grow naturally with minimal human intervention, helping ecosystems to recover and supporting greater biodiversity.

Another figure quoted in the article was Andrew Gilruth from the Moorland Association, who said: “Rewilding sounds like a good idea, unless you end up facing a wall of flames.”

He also claimed that there is “far, far too much vegetation covering our landscapes” and until rewilding is reversed “the wildfires will get worse and worse”. 

The article does mention that temperatures have reached 38 degrees this week, but it doesn’t mention climate change or the role that rising temperatures play in wildfires spreading.

Climate science shows that higher temperatures driven by climate change dry out plants and make them more flammable. Scientists also maintain that most fires are started by humans.

There is also evidence that rewilding captures carbon dioxide and helps create a variety of vegetation and healthy water-retaining soils, reducing the likelihood of wildfires. 

Reacting to the Daily Mail’s claims about rewilding causing wildfires, Rachel Millward, deputy leader of the Green Party, told Left Foot Forward: “This is another deeply irresponsible headline from a deeply irresponsible newspaper. 

“As usual The Daily Mail is turning reality on its head and denying its readers the facts about climate change. The Mail seeks to blame the climate crisis on anything other than its main cause – burning fossil fuels.

“Alongside cutting down our fossil fuel use, rewilding is one of key things we can do to slow global warming. It draws down planet-warming carbon dioxide, provides shade and cools the land, helps prevent flooding, and starts to restore the huge variety of wildlife and plant life that we have been losing.”

Friends of the Earth’s senior nature campaigner, Sienna Somers, also called out the Mail’s claims, stating: “The reason vast swathes of Britain are burning is climate change, not rewilding – and it’s ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

“Without tougher action to protect communities and curb the emissions that are driving the climate crisis, things will only get worse.”

Somers added: “Decades of degrading our land have helped create this situation. Rivers have been straightened and wetlands drained, creating tinder-dry conditions for wildfires to rip across our landscape.

“Rewilding and restoring nature at scale should be treated as national infrastructure. We need to invest in transforming our degraded peatlands, rivers, wetlands and woodlands so they can hold and store water, provide shade, reduce the risk of fire and drought, and help protect communities from flooding.

“Restoring nature and rewilding are part of the solution – not the problem.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Global warming is leading to more extremely hot weather. There is perhaps no more obvious consequence of climate change. But changing how we analyze this problem can still help scientists think about it in a different way that may yield surprises.

Generally, studies on heat extremes work with some combination of daily minimum, maximum, and mean temperatures. Sometimes they focus on multi-day heatwaves using those metrics, since the discomfort and health impacts increase for longer events. There are different thresholds you can use to define extreme heat in these analyses, either based on past statistics or on the human body’s physiological limits.

A new study led by Weilin Liao and Xuanzong Zhang at Sun Yat-sen University tried breaking down heat extremes to the hourly level instead, which reveals some interesting nuances.

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Mount Toba was the biggest volcanic eruption in the last 2.6 million years, and some have suggested it nearly wiped out humanity. Around 74,000 years ago, a caldera on what is now Sumatra emptied thousands of cubic kilometers of magma in about two weeks, roughly a thousand times more than Mount Pinatubo spewed out in 1991. “People thought it might have caused massive cooling of the planet, and hence threatened the survival of our ancestors,” says Jinheum Park, a geoscientist at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

Park and his colleagues went looking for the records of that catastrophe in the mud taken from the bottom of a small crater lake on the Kenya-Tanzania border. They found instead that the effects of the Mount Toba eruption lasted under two years and amounted to perhaps half a degree of cooling.

Muddy calendars

Volcanic eruptions inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it becomes a haze of tiny droplets that reflect sunlight back into space. Bigger eruptions eject more sulfur dioxide and, in principle, cause more cooling. But this trend stops working when the eruption exceeds a certain magnitude. “Bigger sulfate aerosols settle quickly, because they are heavier,” Park explains. This quick settling makes them less effective in scattering incoming solar radiation.

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The Telegraph has been criticised after attempting to link the devastating Suffolk wildfires to ‘rewilding’ rather than the extreme weather conditions that experts say have dramatically increased fire risk.

Rewilding, alongside organisations such as the National Trust and the RSPB, has long been a favourite target of the right. Few episodes illustrate that better than the controversy surrounding Sir David Attenborough’s series on wildlife in 2023, when the BBC chose not to broadcast an episode examining the destruction of nature on its main channels amid concerns about a political backlash.

Senior BBC sources  told the Guardian that the decision was taken partly to avoid criticism from Conservative politicians and the right-wing press. At the time, the Telegraph had attacked the BBC for creating the series and for taking funding from “two charities previously criticised for their political lobbying” – the WWF and RSPB.

It was hardly surprising therefore to see the newspaper publish the headline this week entitled: “Rewilding blamed for Suffolk wildfire.”

The article is focused on the 371-acre blaze that began on the RSPB’s Minsmere reserve before spreading to the National Trust-owned Dunwich Heath. It claims residents and experts believe the area had become a “tinderbox” because of the RSPB’s “rewilding agenda.”

One of the principal opponents cited is an anonymous local resident who criticised the RSPB’s land management and alleged its “green projects” had put nearby communities at risk. The piece also quotes Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, an organisation that has consistently opposed rewilding, who said the RSPB should “follow the evidence.”

“Refusing to manage upland vegetation because of political ideology or an obsession with rewilding is completely irresponsible,” Bonner added.

“As the Countryside Alliance has pointed out repeatedly, organisations that manage land should listen to science and evidence, and put landscapes, nature and livelihoods first. The RSPB are playing with fire.”

Only towards the end of the article were readers presented with responses from the organisations responsible for managing the land.

The RSPB said this summer’s fires had been “unprecedented in scale, driven by drought and prolonged heat exacerbated by climate change”.

A spokesman said: “While we work hard to reduce risk, it is important to recognise that wildfires are indiscriminate; they can ignite and spread quickly across a range of landscapes – from heathlands, grasslands and peatlands, to farmland, woodlands and areas close to homes and communities – particularly in hot, dry and windy conditions.

“We carry out ongoing habitat management across our reserves to reduce fire risk, including cutting firebreaks, rewetting peatlands, restoring bogs and wetlands, and improving water retention across vulnerable areas.

“We also run public awareness campaigns urging people not to use disposable barbecues, light campfires, or leave litter that could spark a blaze.”

The National Trust confirmed that assessment, pointing instead to prolonged drought and exceptionally low rainfall across England and Wales.

A spokesperson said:

“Our Suffolk colleagues are part of the local community and care deeply for Dunwich Heath and have long worked to reduce fire risk – maintaining fire breaks and regularly cutting heather.

“When the fire broke out, our team, neighbours, local agencies and the wider community rallied immediately, working alongside emergency services to cut additional breaks and help contain the blaze.

“Evidence shows healthier, wetter landscapes are more resilient to fire, which is why we prioritise nature restoration over routine burning.

“The wider issue is clear: climate change is accelerating, and we urgently need national leadership to help protect people, places and nature as we face a long recovery together.”

While the Telegraph’s headline suggested rewilding itself was responsible for the blaze, both conservation organisations pointed to the growing scientific consensus that hotter, drier conditions driven by climate change are creating unprecedented wildfire risks across many different landscapes.

The article prompted a backlash online. Celia Richardson, the National Trust’s director of communications, wrote on X:

“Some of the oldest surviving heathland in the UK burns in unprecedented temperatures and Telegraph headline says “rewilding” is to blame.”

Many readers accused the newspaper of using an environmental disaster to advance an ideological argument. One commenter wrote: “Who would want to advertise or buy this out-of-date, once-quality newspaper?”

Another said: “The truly jaw-dropping fact is that the Telegraph is still regarded as a serious newspaper.”

Others noted that catastrophic wildfires have also occurred on intensively managed land, including Scotland’s first recorded “megafire” at Dava, a managed grouse moor, last year. Critics argued that presenting rewilding as the primary cause of wildfire ignores both the wider evidence and the increasingly central role that climate change is playing in driving extreme fire conditions.

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In his major speech on the climate crisis yesterday (August 6), Green Party leader Zack Polanski made the case for taking water back into public ownership as part of a suite of policies he wants to see implemented to mitigate against the impacts of extreme heat.

He said: “privatised water companies – they’ve failed to build a single new reservoir since 1992, [and] are losing nearly three billion litres of water a day from leaky pipes”, before later adding: “To secure our water supply, prevent drought and protect our food system – we need to bring water back into public hands. Right now, money is flowing out of our hands into the pockets of shareholders – just like water is flowing out of those companies’ leaky pipes in the middle of a drought.”

That call has been welcomed by water campaigners. Anti privatisation group We Own It – who have long campaigned for taking water into public ownership in order to lower bills and invest in infrastructure – said Polanski was “absolutely right” about privatisation threatening water security.

Sophie Conquest, lead campaigner at We Own It told Left Foot Forward: “Polanski is absolutely right to blame privatised water companies for threatening our water security while the climate collapses. 

“Water companies create profit by siphoning our money – as billpayers – out into the pockets of faraway shareholders and banks. This means that, for decades, our water infrastructure has been starved of the investment it so desperately needs. Leaky pipes and a lack of reservoirs are inevitable outcomes of privatisation. 

“It is appalling that we’ve just had the wettest winter on record, and now more than half of the country is in drought. This is a crisis that could and should have been avoided through public ownership of our water

“As Polanski correctly observes, ⁠⁠only under a publicly owned water system will all of our money as billpayers be directly invested into fixing infrastructure so that the public can be protected as temperatures get hotter.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Green Party leader Zack Polanski has branded the climate crisis the ‘biggest threat to this country since the Second World War’ in a major speech today (August 5).

Polanski’s intervention comes off the back of a series of scorching heatwaves in the UK which have seen record-breaking temperatures and wildfires across the country.

He said at an event at Church House in Westminster: “Today, I’m delivering a reality check. We are facing the biggest threat to this country since the Second World War. I’m setting out what prime minister Burnham can do now to tackle the crisis and I am challenging him to act with the urgency we need.”

In his speech, Polanski argued that the scale of the climate crisis was risking people’s safety, threatening food and water security, and putting the UK’s way of life in jeopardy.

Polanski told the event: “Alost 3,000 people have died from the effects of extreme heat this summer – and we know that older people, and those with pre-existing conditions are particularly at risk from these dangerous temperatures.”

He went on to say: “Meanwhile, wildfires have seen hundreds evacuated from their homes while many thousands more wait anxiously with flames on the horizon and smoke in their lungs.”

On food and water security, Polanski said that flooding and drought have “decimated crops”, that “food production is grounding to a halt”, and that eight water reservoirs were “at risk of running dry”. He blamed the latter on the privatisation of water, saying “privatised water companies – they’ve failed to build a single new reservoir since 1992, [and] are losing nearly three billion litres of water a day from leaky pipes.”

He concluded his description of the crisis by saying that there was a threat to “our very way of life”. Polanski warned that parents are “unable to take their children to the playground because the slides are so hot they could burn their skin off”, that people were being kept “inside for days for the sake of our health” turning cities into “ghost towns”.

Later in the speech, Polanski accused the government of a response which is “to pretend none of this is happening”, and argued this was an “astonishing dereliction of duty” to keep the public safe.

As a result, Polanski called for the prime minister Andy Burnham to introduce a ‘full-scale emergency response’.

What should that response look like? Polanski said that there were three key policy proposals Burnham should adopt.

First, Polanski said there needs to be significant mitigation against the impacts of extreme heat on people, including through introducing “a free accessible cool space in every local” and “financial support for households so they can heat proof their homes”.

Second, Polanski called for a “robust wildfire prevention strategy”. According to Polanski, this means a “fire service with the resources it needs to tackle blazes when they come”, including “firefighting helicopters”, funded by increased taxation on fossil fuel firms, which Polanski accused of “profitting from fuelling these infernos”.

Finally, Polanski used his speech to repeat his call for water to be brought back into public ownership. He said: “To secure our water supply, prevent drought and protect our food system – we need to bring water back into public hands. Right now, money is flowing out of our hands into the pockets of shareholders – just like water is flowing out of those companies’ leaky pipes in the middle of a drought. Every single penny households pay for their water needs to go back into strengthening our infrastructure, building new reservoirs and protecting us from the droughts of the future.”

Later in the speech, Polaski also went on to call for the government to rule out any new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, including at the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields.

He said: “If we are to secure a livable future for our children and for our grandchildren, there can be no new drilling for oil and gas. On this, the science is crystal clear. As politicians, we have a moral responsibility to do what is right for the people we serve even when it’s not politically convenient.”

He then added: “I hope you will have the courage to be truthful, be brave and hold firm to your party’s commitment to no new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, including both Rosebank and Jackdaw.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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As devastating wildfires continue to sweep across Spain, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes and scorching hundreds of thousands of hectares, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has renewed his attack on climate scepticism, accusing political opponents of undermining efforts to confront what he described as a worsening climate emergency.

Speaking at a press conference this week, Sánchez appealed once again for opposition parties to support Spain’s National Pact on the Climate Emergency, a strategy finalised in December 2025 after an extensive public consultation involving civil society organisations, environmental NGOs and scientists.

The pact outlines 15 priority measures aimed at improving Spain’s resilience to climate-related disasters. These include the creation of climate refuges for people displaced by extreme weather events, reforms to forest management to reduce combustible vegetation, and stronger prevention and emergency response systems.

Announcing that the areas devastated by the latest fires would be designated disaster zones, Sánchez argued that Spain could no longer afford political division over climate policy.

“The climate emergency is worsening year after year, and we are required to be united to fight against fire, as well as in prevention and reconstruction,” he said, adding:

“Therefore, I make an explicit request, a single appeal to all regional governments: Climate denial is the worst fuel for the fight against the climate emergency.”

European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) figures confirm more than 207,000 hectares have burned in Spain since the beginning of 2026. The country has already experienced one of its deadliest wildfire seasons in recent years, including a blaze in Andalusia in early July that claimed 13 lives.

The latest fires around Madrid have triggered one of the largest civilian evacuations in modern Spanish history. More than 56,500 people have been evacuated since the fires erupted last week, while a further 27,797 residents have been ordered to remain indoors. Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso described the fires as “the biggest natural catastrophe in the history of Spain.”

Sánchez has repeatedly called for cross-party backing for the climate pact after every major wildfire, but those appeals have consistently been rejected by the conservative People’s Party (PP).

Ester Muñoz, who represents PP’s parliamentary group in Congress, dismissed the prime minister’s calls, saying that the claim that “climate change kills” had become “a mantra the left keeps repeating to avoid taking responsibility” for what she characterised as the government’s poor management of the crisis.

Other PP figures have also argued that the recent fires were caused not by climate change but by negligence and human activity. The party’s position mirrors that of the far-right Vox party, with which the PP governs in several autonomous communities, including Castile and León, Extremadura and Aragón. Vox leader Santiago Abascal has repeatedly denounced what he calls “climate fanatics” for linking increasingly frequent heatwaves and more destructive wildfires.

The rejection of Sánchez’s appeal has provoked criticism from climate scientists, who say the evidence connecting climate change to worsening wildfire conditions is now undeniable.

“We have enough evidence to say, independently, that it is climate change that is causing these ever more devastating fires,” said biologist Maria José Sanz, director of the Basque Centre for Climate Change and a former member of the IPCC team that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

“It is urgent for society to understand that we must organise differently, with better prevention and improved administrative coordination, both in Spain and at the European level.”

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