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Unless urgent action is taken life will be fundamentally altered for the ancient communities who live on its banks
As a leader of one of the oldest gnostic religions in the world, Sheikh Nidham Kreidi al-Sabahi must use only water taken from a flowing river, even for drinking.
The 68-year-old has a long grey beard hanging over his simple tan robe and a white cap covering his equally long hair, which sheikhs are forbidden from cutting. He says he has never got ill from drinking water from the Tigris River and believes that as long as the water is flowing, it is clean. But the truth is that soon it may not be flowing at all.
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Ten years after I first followed the proposed route, I retraced my steps to see what life was like along the world’s most expensive, heavily delayed railway line
Ten years ago, I walked the route of HS2, the 140-mile railway proposed to run from London to Birmingham, to discover what lay in its path. Nothing had actually been constructed of this, supposedly the first phase of a high-speed line going north. The only trace was the furtive ecological consultants mapping newts and bats and the train’s looming presence in the minds of those who lived along the route. For many, it was a Westminster vanity project, symbolising a country run against the interests of the many to line the pockets of the few. People whose homes were under threat of demolitionwere petitioning parliament, campaigning for more tunnels or hoping the project would collapse before their farms, paddocks and ancient woodlands were wiped out.
The line, we were told a decade ago, would be completed by 2026. Like many of the early claims about the longest railway to be built in Britain since the Victorian era, that fact no longer stands. The fast train is running – very – late. The official finish date of 2033 was recently revised upwards. “The best guess is that it will begin with a ‘4’ when you can catch a train,” one well-informed observer told me. There’s similar uncertainty about its cost, but one thing is sure: it is catastrophically over budget. When complete, HS2 will almost certainly be the most expensive railway in the world. Nearly 20 years ago, HS1, the line from the Channel tunnel to St Pancras, was completed on time and on budget for £51m per mile (£87m in today’s prices). It was criticised for being twice as expensive as a high-speed route constructed in France. HS2 may cost almost £1bn per mile.
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The oil and gas industry must be legally bound to cut methane emissions. With climate tipping points approaching, time is running out
• Mia Mottley is the prime minister of Barbados
The timing is brutal. Just as the world celebrates the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Paris climate agreement this month, new evidence shows that the world is crashing through the main defence that was constructed against climate catastrophe.
The three-year temperature average is – for the first time – set to exceed the Paris guardrail of 1.5C above preindustrial levels. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2025 will join 2023 and 2024 as the three warmest since the Industrial Revolution, reflecting the accelerating pace of the climate crisis.
Mia Mottley is the prime minister of Barbados
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Hogshaw, Derbyshire: They’re in our paintings, in our folklore. A little opportunistic planting and I’ve got them in my garden
As I cleared our garden of dead vegetation, including many old teasels, I realised that the latter were still shedding seeds and luring goldfinches to them. Not wishing to deprive winter birds of food, or myself of opportunity, I planted the stalks in a single grove, and set up a mobile hide. Within minutes, a kind of magic unfolded. Sulphur wings twittered as old plants swayed with their featherweight burdens and the pointed pink beaks jabbed relentlessly for food.
Of all European birds, goldfinches are surely those best able to illustrate the survival of magical thinking in our world. Throughout the middle ages and the Renaissance, more than 300 artists across 486 works – including those of Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo – painted Madonna and Child images with goldfinches secreted in them.
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Climate crisis forecast to wipe out thousands of glaciers a year globally, threatening water supplies and cultural heritage
Glaciers in the European Alps are likely to reach their peak rate of extinction in only eight years, according to a study, with more than 100 due to melt away permanently by 2033. Glaciers in the western US and Canada are forecast to reach their peak year of loss less than a decade later, with more than 800 disappearing each year by then.
The melting of glaciers driven by human-caused global heating is one of the clearest signs of the climate crisis. Communities around the world have already held funeral ceremonies for lost glaciers, and a Global Glacier Casualty List records the names and histories of those that have vanished.
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Only 10,000 out of economic bloc’s 6m trucks are electric and are more likely to be operating on short routes
The chances of the European trucking industry hitting zero emissions targets are “dire”, an industry body has warned, as it emerged that only a tiny amount of lorries delivering goods in the EU are electric.
Speaking as the European Commission prepares to water down electric car targets, the boss of the association for commercial vehicles called on the commission to commit to an urgent review of the sector, tackling problems including a lack of public charging points, a lack of tax breaks for trucks and high energy costs.
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RHS predicts big shift in gardening habits as green-fingered Britons adapt to climate breakdown
Bouquets of cut flowers will be swapped for tabletop vegetable plants next year, the Royal Horticultural Society has said, as the UK charity announces its top plant trend predictions for 2026.
Mini-planters of aubergines, chillies, peppers and tomatoes will be displayed in homes instead of flowers, as breeders develop dwarf varieties that are decorative and capable of supplementing the weekly shop, the RHS says.
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Despite billions in investment and backing from the federal government, carbon capture and storage technology ‘should be in no way treated as a climate solution’, critics say
The US energy company Chevron describes it as the world’s largest industrial carbon dioxide injection project of its kind. But it has a problem. It still isn’t working as promised and the results are getting worse.
The $3bn Gorgon carbon capture and storage (CCS) development, on Barrow Island off Western Australia’s Pilbara coast, was supposed to start operating in 2016, backed by $60m in federal government funding. Chevron and its partners in the project, including Shell and ExxonMobil, said it would capture up to 4m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from an underwater gas field each year and inject it in a reservoir more than 2km beneath the island.
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Jessica O’Bryan puts the $60,000 Musso EV through its paces in suburban Sydney and finds some pluses, some minuses – but no charging points
When I am handed the keys to Australia’s first affordable fully electric ute, to say I feel nervous is an understatement.
I’ve been driving a 2014 Volkswagen Polo for the past four years, and before that, a Holden Astra that was older than me.
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The watershed summit in 2015 was far from perfect, but its impact so far has been significant and measurable
Ten years on from the historic Paris climate summit, which ended with the world’s first and only global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions, it is easy to dwell on its failures. But the successes go less remarked.
Renewable energy smashed records last year, growing by 15% and accounting for more than 90% of all new power generation capacity. Investment in clean energy topped $2tn, outstripping that into fossil fuels by two to one.
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