The Guardian

If Starmer and Reeves really want a greener, cleaner, wilder nation, then why attack vital state bodies that are already on their knees?

This might sound astonishing, but the UK government’s core programme now appears to be the same as Donald Trump’s: dismantling the administrative state. There’s less theatre, but the results could prove harder to contest. Absurd? Consider the evidence.

Take the government’s brutal expulsion of the chair of the Competition and Markets Authority, Marcus Bokkerink. His crime, it seems, was to take his role seriously, seeking to prevent the formation of corporate monopolies. He has been replaced with the former manager of Amazon UK, a company widely accused of monopolistic practices. This is pure Trump: kick out the regulator and insert someone from a company they were seeking to regulate.

Government cranks handle again for group owning Yorkshire power plant because cheaper generating capacity not in place

• UK halves subsidies for Drax and says it must use 100% sustainable wood

Surprise, surprise, a mighty £7bn of subsidies since 2012 have not been enough to get Drax to stand on its own feet. More bungs are required to keep the wood fires burning at the enormous power plant in North Yorkshire – this time an estimated £1.8bn from 2027-31.

The energy minister Michael Shanks at least sounded embarrassed. He railed against the “unacceptably large profits” Drax has made, said past subsidy arrangements “did not deliver a good enough deal for bill payers” and vowed that that the definition of a “sustainable” wood pellet would be tightened. But the bottom line is that the government has agreed to crank the subsidy handle once again, just at a slower rate.

Pesticide-backed proposed law that opponents call ‘Cancer Gag Act’ pits Iowa farm groups against each other

Pesticide company efforts to push through laws that could block litigation against them is igniting battles in several US farm states and pitting some farm groups against each other.

Laws have been introduced in at least eight states so far and drafts are circulating in more than 20 states, backed by a deluge of advertising supporting the measures.

Birds observed going to lengths to flavour food, with particular penchant for blueberry-flavoured soy yoghurt dip

Whether you savour Ottolenghi’s recipes or prefer a feast from Nigella’s cookery books, humans enjoy mixing flavours and textures when preparing food. Now research suggests some cockatoos do too.

Researchers have previously discovered that some of the birds dunk dry rusks in water before eating them, just as some people enjoy dunking a biscuit in tea, apparently reflecting a penchant for a soggy texture.

Mixed reaction from campaigners as ministers impose reduced subsidies and stringent conditions on Yorkshire wood-burning plant

• UK halves subsidies for Drax and says it must use 100% sustainable wood

Burning wood is a terrible way of producing electricity. Chopping down trees destroys habitats for wildlife, and growing new trees cannot replace the biodiversity of old-growth forests. There is also a decades-long time lag between the carbon dioxide released from the burning, which fuels the climate crisis now, and the uptake of equivalent carbon from the air by replacement trees.

So when the government announced on Monday that it would continue billpayer subsidies for biomass burning at the Drax power station, beyond 2027 when the current payments end, the news appeared a blow to green campaigners.

Secondhand market thrived as sales of new EVs also reached highest levels to date, SMMT trade body says

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A record number of used electric vehicles (EVs) were sold in the UK last year, as prices eased and the choice of cars widened, according to industry data.

Total sales of used cars rose by 5.5% in 2024, as 7.6m vehicles changed hands, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). Sales rose in every month last year, as they did in 2023.

A tropical low known as 18U will bring strong winds, heavy rain and storm surges to the north of the country

The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a tropical cyclone alert for the north coast of Western Australia. This alert concerns a tropical low known as 18U, which has been spotted near the coast of Kimberley, situated in the north-west of the state. Strong winds, heavy rain and storm surges will affect northern Australia starting on Sunday night, with a flood warning also being issued. Under current forecasts, 18U will continue to push south-westwards along the warm water off Western Australia into the new week and is expected to strengthen to a tropical cyclone, which will be named Zelia. By the end of the week, the cyclone is expected to make landfall around the Pilbara region, bringing about 150mm-250mm (5.9in-9.8in) of rain locally, alongside wind gusts of about 100mph.

Meanwhile, Canada has once again been experiencing a severe cold spell after polar air moved in from the north, allowing temperatures to fall 5C-10C (41C-50F) below the seasonal average. Western Canada is particularly badly affected, with the cities of Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon potentially experiencing maximum daytime temperatures of between -10C and -15C this week, while overnight temperatures will often reach -20C to -30C. Temperatures as low as -35C are possible, which is around 10-15C below the seasonal average. For more context, the town of Saskatoon lies at the same latitude as Cambridge in the UK, which has a record low temperature of -13C.

Jesse Noakes, 36, and Matilda Lane-Rose, 20, and Emil Davey, 23, fined a total of $6,500 after pleading guilty to unlawful damage and trespass

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A group of climate activists have been fined over a foiled protest at the Woodside Energy boss’s family home.

About 10 counter-terrorism police were waiting for Jesse Noakes, 36, and Matilda Lane-Rose, 20, when they arrived at the Perth home of Woodside chief executive, Meg O’Neill, in August 2023 with paint, water balloons and a bicycle lock.

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The mass death of once-endangered olive ridley turtles in January has prompted an increase in wildlife patrols and a crackdown on fishing boats

More than 1,100 dead olive ridley sea turtles have washed ashore on the beaches of Tamil Nadu state in southern India this January.

“I never heard [of] such large numbers of turtles stranded at any beaches of Tamil Nadu at least in the last three decades,” Kuppusamy Sivakumar, an ecology professor at Pondicherry University said.

Storm brings hail to Harden in NSW – video

Bureau of Meteorology warns severe conditions will continue as parts of NSW coated in hail

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Thunderstorms across New South Wales and eastern Victoria on Monday brought flash flooding, destructive winds and hail, as the Bureau of Meteorology warns severe conditions would continue.

A major storm rolled across the Sydney CBD around midday on Monday, bringing dark skies and heavy rainfall. The city had recorded 40.6mm of rain at Observatory Hill since 9am, according to the BoM.

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There’s no point trying to make plans around the whims of Trump. The PM instead needs to turn to Europe

To Elon Musk, I say this! To perform one Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, might be considered a misfortune. To perform two Nazi salutes at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, begins to look like carelessness.

I didn’t write that joke. I have cannibalised it from one by the gay Irish Victorian Oscar Wilde, a typical diversity hire who would have achieved nothing had his work not been promoted by the famously woke 19th-century British establishment. Luckily, Wilde was dead long before he had the opportunity to emigrate to the US and take an air traffic controller job from a more deserving straight white male, where his gayness would have caused planes to crash.

Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf this year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk

Heading off the environmental crisis and growing the economy are not at odds. They are two sides of a coin – as our politicians should realise

If you care about the world we are handing on to future generations, the news on Thursday morning was dramatic. This January was the warmest on record; temperatures in 18 of the past 19 months have exceeded pre-industrial averages by 1.5C. There can be no comfort that the epoch-changing climate crisis is 20 or even 10 years away. It is already upon us.

Temperatures should have been moderated this winter by cooler air over the Pacific; it did not happen. Scientists are bewildered and scared. James Hansen, doyen of climate crisis research, believes that, unless this pace of deterioration is reversed, warm ocean waters flowing from the southern to the northern hemisphere will be trapped as vast sea currents cease. Sea levels will rise to impose a civilisational threat. It is a global imperative to dial down the rate of carbon emissions.

Keir Starmer’s rhetoric against green campaigners appears to have taken a playground turn

Before the last election, in what was billed as his “most personal interview yet”, Keir Starmer said: “I’m not in the habit of bandying insults around”. It was once part of his appeal, or meant to be, that his speech was polite, even to the point of colourless, in contrast to the ugly gibberish streaming out of Boris Johnson, then Liz Truss. When the Tories went low, Starmer went sorrowful headteacher. “I don’t think Boris Johnson is a bad man,” he said in one speech, “I think he is a trivial man.”

His favourite word, these days, is “nimbys”. Starmer uses it so freely he’s personally breathed new life into the original acronym (“not in my back yard”), revealing along the way its largely unexplored potential to create national disharmony. Why restrict such a genius jibe to arguments about ring roads and executive homes? Last week’s headlines about his plan for nuclear power expansion – typically, “Starmer to ‘push past nimbyism’ in pledge to expand nuclear power sites” – are only the latest in which Starmer demonstrates how any opposition to any scheme with environmental consequences can be represented, by a skilled litigator like himself, as nimbyism: purely selfish, irrational and against the common good. Unlike the visionary tech overlords such as Google, Meta and Amazon, which Starmer invited, in the same speech, to profit, with their data centres, from the UK nimbys’ certain defeat. His government’s pro-nuclear press release featured praise from similarly patriotic, non-nimby-infested corporations, such as EDF and Microsoft.

Leading climate group warns of damage to green agenda if giant project goes ahead

Keir Starmer will do huge damage to the global fight against climate change if he gives in to political pressure and allows the development of a giant new oilfield in the North Sea, according to an analysis by the country’s leading environmental institute.

Chaired by Nicholas Stern, the Grantham Institute on Climate Change will fire a warning shot to ministers not to give the green light to the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, after suggestions that the Treasury is now in favour of allowing drilling to maximise economic growth.

Sometimes a branch grows so low and bushy that it blocks access to my room. I diligently cut it back

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In the late 1970s when my parents built the house I still live in, there was no forest. The property was a disused cow pasture, full of scrappy grass and weeds. My parents began planting trees before they began the house build, and now – in my lifespan, 47 years – it has grown into a forest. When I was a child, we called my parent’s plantings “the garden”, implying a place managed by us. Cultivated, civilised. Somewhere along the way we renamed it “the forest”. A self-managed ecosystem we occasionally impinged upon – cutting back, cleaning up debris – but only when it made incursions into our actual house.

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The party’s agenda is about energy security, lower bills, economic growth and good jobs

• Ed Miliband is the Labour MP for Doncaster North and secretary of state for energy security and net zero

During four years in opposition and in the seven months since this government came to office, we have been clear: smart climate policy means not only protecting future generations from the biggest existential threat we face, but fighting to make working people better off today, growing our economy and confronting the economic injustices we face.

In a world where climate policy is being questioned, this government’s message to those in the Tory and Reform parties who say that we should go backwards on climate is simple: you are wrong, and this government is going to speed up, not slow down, the clean energy transition, because that is how to grow our economy and fight for working people through our Plan for Change.

Ed Miliband is the Labour MP for Doncaster North and secretary of state for energy security and net zero

Scotland’s botanic gardens suffer ‘unimaginable’ loss of rare specimens

For more than a century, whenever winter came to Scotland, they stood tall against the wind and rain and snow. But last month, battered by Storm Éowyn, hundreds of rare and historic trees in the living collection of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh were lost.

The charity has four sites in Scotland. Its tallest tree in Edinburgh, a 166-year-old Himalayan cedar, fell during Éowyn’s gusts of up to 80mph, while Benmore Botanic Garden on the west coast has suffered “unimaginable” devastation.

Developing countries urge biggest polluters to act as Trump’s return to the White House heightens geopolitical turmoil

The vast majority of governments are likely to miss a looming deadline to file vital plans that will determine whether or not the world has a chance of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown.

Despite the urgency of the crisis, the UN is relatively relaxed at the prospect of the missed date. Officials are urging countries instead to take time to work harder on their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and divest from fossil fuels.

Exclusive: Analysis suggests development in flood regions result of Labour push for 1.5m new homes in five years

More than 100,000 new homes will be built on the highest-risk flood zones in England in the next five years as part of the government’s push for 1.5m extra properties by the end of this parliament, Guardian analysis suggests.

Building on areas with the highest risk of serious flooding is supposed to be discouraged. Experts say development should be avoided unless absolutely necessary because there is a significant chance of regular deluges, which will flood the properties, cause hundreds of millions of pounds of economic damage and make homes uninsurable.