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With anger stoked by Channel 4’s drama Dirty Business, we look at what has happened to some of the main players
Water companies have been in the public eye for the wrong reasons again recently. South West Water was in the dock pleading guilty to supplying water unfit for human consumption, while the regulator fined South East Water £22.5m for repeated supply failures that affected more than 280,000 people over three years.
As the full scale of the sewage pollution scandal has been revealed to the public over the past six years, key figures working for the regulators and the privatised companies have been heavily criticised. Channel 4’s drama Dirty Business has focused attention on individuals at the heart of the scandal.
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This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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As energy prices tripled in the 1970s due to Middle Eastern wars, Scandinavia, France and the Netherlands sped up green transition
When Middle Eastern wars sparked an oil crisis in the 1970s, tripling energy prices and throwing economies into chaos, some countries looked beyond short-term solutions. The French made nuclear the pillar of their power system. Scandinavians insulated buildings and funnelled waste heat into homes. The Dutch built bike lanes where others wanted motorways. The Danes developed wind turbines.
Such steps cleaned filthy air and cut imports from autocrats but took a back seat when Russia invaded Ukraine half a century later. Europe raced to buy gas from the US and Middle East. Policies to roll out renewables by cutting red tape helped reduce dependence, but calls to use less energy and reduce waste were muted. Industry lobbying and populist backlash have since sabotaged efforts to phase out petrol cars and fossil boilers.
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A project in London is helping hundreds of people, providing a genuine alternative to traditional treatments
“What you’ve got there from the sun on your face is a massive boost of serotonin!” says Alison Greenwood, founder of Dose of Nature, the charity successfully prescribing time outside as a treatment for mental health.
Greenwood is striding round Pensford Field, a tiny patch of wildness tucked behind houses in south-west London. The bright day is illuminating the early blackthorn blossom, gleaming off the pond where a heron watches tiny froglets and shadows of birch trees on a wood-chip path. “All these trees and plants are giving off phytoncides, and they’re good for your immune system too,” the former NHS psychologist says.
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Exclusive: Campaigners call for government to introduce right-to-roam bill that allows people to walk around their local woodlands
Nearly three-quarters of England’s woods are off-limits to the public, buried government documents show.
The study by Forest Research, which is a government-funded quango, found that 73% of English woodland is publicly inaccessible.
This article was amended on 13 March 2026 to make clear that the inaccessible trees are recorded by the Woodland Trust, but not necessarily on their land.
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US also experiences severe convective storms, while record-breaking heat recorded in parts of South Africa
On Monday 9 March, severe thunderstorms affected parts of southern France, with several departments including Hérault, Var, and the Alpes-Maritimes put under yellow alert for heavy rain.
Some of the heaviest rainfall totals came from a cell that passed over the Var department. Examples of high rainfall totals taken from some private weather stations come from the towns of Carqueiranne and Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer, where 104.4mm was recorded in seven and a half hours, and 92.7mm in three hours respectively. However, as these are private weather stations, they may contain measurement errors.
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While tailings dams are meant to last for ever, extreme weather events are making many unstable – with devastating consequences for nature and humans
As soon as the barrier broke, a flood of poison brought death to the river. Gushing through the fragile wall built to hold back mining waste in Zambia’s copper belt in February 2025, more than 50m cubic litres of acid and heavy metals poured into the Chambishi stream – a tributary of the Kafue River, the country’s longest waterway.
Thousands of lifeless fish rose to the surface as a plume of acid floated downriver, leaving dead crocodiles and other wildlife in its wake.
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As the QuitGPT movement gains momentum, should people concerned about the environmental impacts of AI consider opting out?
Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint
Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com
It’s only a few years on from the release of ChatGPT but the race to plug artificial intelligence into everything has sparked a surge in datacentres, with escalating environmental costs.
Globally, datacentre power demand is growing four times faster than all other sectors, according to the International Energy Agency, and is on track to exceed Japan’s electricity use by 2030.
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In this week’s newsletter: In the wake of the DHS secretary’s firing, staff from the Federal Emergency Management Agency share how her tenure has left the US less able to the respond to the climate crisis
Donald Trump made his first cabinet-level firing last week when he expelled Kristi Noem. In her one year leading the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Noem sparked widespread criticism for overseeing inhumane immigration policies and avoiding questions about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers’ shooting of protesters in Minneapolis. She even earned the nickname Ice Barbie.
“Good riddance,” Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey wrote on social media about her ousting.
Bombing of Iran’s oil infrastructure to have major environmental fallout, experts warn
‘A sobering preview’: extreme heat now affects one in three people globally, study finds
Reaching net zero by 2050 ‘cheaper for UK than one fossil fuel crisis’
Good riddance to Kristi Noem. Her replacement won’t be an improvement | Moira Donegan
How Trump’s EPA rollbacks give US states new tools in climate suits
‘The perfect storm’: Trump has left the US less prepared for natural disasters, experts say
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We do not generally get epic tornadoes, sandstorms or avalanches, but we may get splashed by a bus on the road
Puddles, small and temporary pools of water typically formed by rainfall, hold a special place in British culture. They are the embodiment of the national weather’s tendency to produce mild inconvenience rather than drama. We do not generally get epic tornadoes, sandstorms or avalanches, but we do get wet feet, or splashed by a bus driving through a puddle.
The story of Walter Raleigh spreading his velvet cloak over a puddle so Queen Elizabeth I could cross while keeping her fine shoes dry is probably apocryphal. But Raleigh’s gallant if pointless gesture is typical of the low-stakes difficulty presented by puddles.
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Rezultati kliničkog ispitivanja faze 3 koje su vodili znanstvenici Mass General Brigham pokazuju da lijek romiplostim može učinkovito spriječiti kemoterapiju da uništi stanice koštane srži koje proizvode trombocite, čestu komplikaciju poznatu kao trombocitopenija inducirana kemoterapijom. Romiplostim pojačava sposobnost koštane srži da izdrži napad kemoterapije tako da primatelji lijeka mogu nastaviti proizvoditi trombocite koji su potrebni za sprječavanje krvarenja.
Kronična bubrežna bolest (CKD) pogađa oko 10 do 12 posto odrasle populacije u Hrvatskoj, ali veliki dio oboljelih toga nije svjestan. Upravo zato je rano otkrivanje presudno – jer kada bolest prepoznamo na vrijeme, njezino napredovanje često možemo znatno usporiti ili zaustaviti, izjavio je prof. dr. sc. Ivan Bubić, predsjednik Hrvatskog društva za nefrologiju, dijalizu i transplantaciju Hrvatskog liječničkog zbora, povodom obilježavanja Svjetskog dana bubrega.
Rezultati nove studije pokazuju da dodavanje badema u svakodnevnu prehranu odraslih osoba s pretilošću može poboljšati profile upalnih citokina i kvalitetu prehrane, čak i bez gubitka težine. To ističe jednostavnu prehrambenu strategiju koja može pomoći u rješavanju upale povezane s pretilošću.
Švedski znanstvenici identificirali su protein povezan s povećanim rizikom od metastaza i recidiva raka pluća, što otvara put novim pristupima precizne medicine, posebno za starije pacijente.
Prvo kliničko ispitivanje koje je izravno usporedilo dva uobičajeno korištena lijeka za liječenje venske tromboze pronašlo je jasnog pobjednika: iako oba lijeka dobro djeluju u sprječavanju ponovnih krvnih ugrušaka, apiksaban je sigurniji od rivaroksabana, s manje komplikacija krvarenja.
Raniji početak prvog obroka u danu može promijeniti dnevni ritam glukoze u tijelu i smanjiti razinu glukoze tijekom noći kod gestacijskog dijabetesa, ističući vrijeme obroka kao potencijalni faktor načina života koji vrijedi istražiti u skrbi za trudnoću, ukazuje nova studija.
Tretmani antibioticima mogu dugo utjecati na sastav bakterijske zajednice koja živi u crijevima, poznate kao crijevni mikrobiom. Nova studija pokazuje da se određene vrste antibiotika mogu povezati s promjenama u crijevnom mikrobiomu čak četiri do osam godina nakon liječenja.
Crijevni mikrobiom - bilijuni bakterija i drugih mikroba koji nastanjuju gastrointestinalni trakt - pokreće proces ključan za zaštitu debelog crijeva od ozljeda tkiva, pokazuje nova studija. Smatra se, da ovo otkriće ima važne implikacije za razumijevanje kako se može razviti širok raspon crijevnih poremećaja. Naime, ovo istraživanje otvara vrata tretmanima koji se usredotočuju na obnavljanje ključnih molekularnih signala u osjetljivim dijelovima debelog crijeva.
Američki znanstvenici otkrili su da novi biomarker na bazi krvi može predvidjeti rizik od razvoja demencije kod žene čak 25 godina prije pojave simptoma. Naime, studija, objavljena u JAMA Network Open, pokazuje da su više razine fosforiliranog tau 217 (p-tau217) - proteina povezanog s promjenama u mozgu koje se vide kod Alzheimerove bolesti - bile snažno povezane s budućim blagim kognitivnim oštećenjem i demencijom kod starijih žena koje su bile kognitivno zdrave na početku, što znači na početku studije prije nego što su otkriveni bilo kakvi problemi s pamćenjem ili razmišljanjem.
Vrsta crijevnih bakterija znana kao Roseburia inulinivorans specifično je povezana s ljudskom mišićnom snagom i poboljšanim mišićnim performansama kod miševa, otkriva nedavno objavljeno istraživanje. Naime, pokazalo se, da R. inulinivorans mijenja određene metaboličke procese u mišićima i pretvara mišićna vlakna u brzotrzajuća (tip II) - dizajnirana za kratke intenzivne pokrete, poput sprinta i dizanja utega.
