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Continuing extreme weather has caused deaths of 16 people, evacuation of thousands and destruction of homes
Portugal is under pressure to draw up plans to adapt to the climate emergency as the country continues to be lashed by an unprecedented series of storms that have killed at least 16 people and left tens of thousands without electricity.
More than 3,000 people were evacuated from the Coimbra area of central Portugal on Wednesday as the Mondego River reached critical levels, while part of the country’s main motorway, the A1, collapsed after a dyke on the Mondego gave way under the weight of flood water.
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A pilot scheme in Brooklyn is giving businesses batteries to form an electricity storage network – part of a growing number of innovative DIY energy ideas around the world
In the back of Black Seed Bagels in northern Brooklyn is a giant catering kitchen filled with industrial-size containers of condiments and freezers full of dough. A tall, silver electric oven named the Baconator stands in a far corner, cooking thousands of pounds of meat every week to accompany Black Seed’s hand-rolled, wood-fired bagels. The Baconator is connected to a battery the size of a carry-on suitcase, which is plugged into the wall.
While the morning rush is under way, the 2.8-kilowatt-hour battery can directly power the commercial oven to reduce the company’s reliance on the electric grid, Noah Bernamoff, Black Seed’s co-owner, explained recently at the company’s Bushwick shop. Two more batteries are paired with energy-intensive refrigerators in the front.
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Doyne Farmer says a super-simulator of the global economy would accelerate the transition to a green, clean world
It’s a mind-blowing idea: an economic model of the world in which every company is individually represented, making realistic decisions that change as the economy changes. From this astonishing complexity would emerge forecasts of unprecedented clarity. These would be transformative: no more flying blind into global financial crashes, no more climate policies that fail to shift the dial.
This super simulator could be built for what Prof Doyne Farmer calls the bargain price of $100m, thanks to advances in complexity science and computing power.
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The government has not made enough of a dent in emissions, but global trends and a shambolic opposition offer a rare opportunity to act
There is good news out there, even if it feels like scraps in a world on the brink. Some came last week – with plenty of caveats – when analysts at the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) found coal-fired power generation decreased in both China and India last year.
This is a potentially big shift. Among other things, it exposes the hollowness of arguments in Australia that there is no point doing anything about the climate crisis because the big Asian economies are building endless new coal plants.
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Marineland Antibes, the French government and animal welfare groups all agree on the need to rehome the listless killer whales but no one can agree where
In a sprawling aquarium complex in south-eastern France that once drew half a million visitors a year, only a few dozen people now move between pools that contain the last remaining marine mammals of Marineland Antibes. Weeds grow on walkways, the stands are empty and algae grows in the pools, giving the water a greenish hue.
It is here that Wikie and Keijo, a mother and son pair of orcas, are floating. They were born in these pools, and for decades they performed in shows for crowds. But since the park’s closure in January 2025, they no longer have an audience. When they are alone, they “log”, or float at the water’s surface, according to a court-ordered report released last April.
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Torcross, Devon: 2026 has been defined by storms here. My job of repairing a thatched roof is simple compared with the wider recovery
During the storm, the waves sounded like bombs going off under the house, Bonni Breeze Lincoln tells me. She lives on the seafront of Torcross, a Devon village that is accustomed to weathering storms, but even she is not used to waves shattering her storm shutters, or sending seawater down the chimney.
I’ve come to Torcross to repair the thatch on Bonni’s roof. Up the ladder, I tie bundles of reed, called “wads”, to pack them into the holes; the thatch is riddled with shingle, fragments of seaweed and even limpet shells. Looking down the seafront to torn up paving slabs and slate roofs that yawn open to the sky, it’s clear that this house – the oldest in the village – has come off comparatively well. The soft, springy nature of thatch allows it to absorb even the impact of breaking waves.
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Continued global heating could set irreversible course by triggering climate tipping points, but most people unaware
The world is closer than thought to a “point of no return” after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said.
Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish “hothouse Earth” climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would also be very different to the benign conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilisation developed.
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Stuart Vevers wants the luxury brand to keep championing upcycled materials and reduce landfill waste
Stuart Vevers, the British designer of the American mass luxury brand Coach, is working to keep sustainability in the spotlight at New York fashion week. Not an easy task, when environmental concerns are slipping down the global agenda and fashion, perennially a mirror to the world we live in, has reverted to putting profits first.
“I’m an optimist, but it’s not a blind optimism. There’s a lot of tension in optimism, because the world is challenging and I am not ignoring that. My optimism comes from believing that the young people of today are going to make this world better,” he said before Wednesday’s show, held in the historic Cunard building in downtown New York.
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Intricate ice formations can grow on frozen lakes and seas when relatively warm ice is exposed to still air
Intricate fern-like “frost flowers”, said to be painted on windows and windscreens by Jack Frost, are a familiar feature of British winter. In Arctic regions there is an even prettier three-dimensional version.
These frost flowers are typically 3-4cm across and whole gardens of them grow on frozen lakes and seas. Like the window version, they are the result of ice crystals growing in a slow, orderly fashion.
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Emissions have plunged 75% since communist times in the birthplace of big oil – but for some the transition has been brutal
Once the frozen fields outside Bucharest have thawed, workers will assemble the largest solar farm in Europe: one million photovoltaic panels backed by batteries to power homes after sunset. But the 760MW project in southern Romania will not hold the title for long. In the north-west, authorities have approved a bigger plant that will boast a capacity of 1GW.
The sun-lit plots of silicon and glass will join a slew of projects that have rendered the Romanian economy unrecognisable from its polluted state when communism ended. They include an onshore windfarm near the Black Sea that for several years was Europe’s biggest, a nuclear power plant by the Danube whose lifetime is being extended by 30 years, and a fast-spreading patchwork of solar panels topping homes and shops across the country.
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