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ONS data shows rising toll of climate crisis, with officials warning this summer on track to set further records
More than 40,000 extra people died on the hottest days in England between 1988 and 2025 than would be expected in normal temperatures, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday.
The figures do not include this summer, when England has sweltered under a succession of heatwaves and is on track to record its highest ever number of heat-related deaths. The UK Health Security Agency announced on 30 July that an estimated 2,877 people had died in the May and June heatwaves alone. The total is almost double the figure for the whole summer in 2025.
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Ocean Conservancy says last year’s cleanup collected 13.9m pieces of rubbish from beaches and rivers worldwide
More than 1.3m plastic bottles were collected from beaches, rivers and waterways last year during the world’s largest single-day volunteer ocean cleanup.
About 630,000 people took part in the International Coastal Cleanup in 2025, removing almost 13.9m pieces of rubbish from more than 15,000 miles of coastline and waterways.
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Civil society groups argue climate crisis means transport sector needs to urgently reduce its carbon emissions
Dozens of civil society groups have demanded the UK government do more to promote cycling and walking, after this summer’s extreme heat exposed the desperate need to decarbonise transport.
This summer’s heatwaves and wildfires were “immediate, real-world manifestations of the climate emergency”, the groups said, making reform of transport – responsible for more carbon emissions than any other sector in the UK – an urgent priority.
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Research finds demand has more than doubled since 2000 and 80% of current demand comes from Asia
A booming demand for concrete has resulted in sand and gravel being extracted from riverbeds faster than nature can replenish it. A study published in Reviews of Geophysics shows that the demand for sand and gravel has more than doubled in the last two decades, with overextraction leading to weaker riverbanks, lower groundwater levels, coastal salt intrusion and poorer water quality.
In 2024, city-building and infrastructure projects around the world turned 28bn tonnes of sand and gravel into concrete. Researchers reviewed data on sand and gravel extraction going back to 1974 and have shown that since 2000 demand has more than doubled, with more than 80% of current demand coming from Asia, supporting urban development and road-building across China and India in particular. They found much of the material was being extracted from rivers across Asia and Africa. Data on extraction is scarce but where it does exist the researchers showed that extraction often exceeded natural sediment replacement severalfold.
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Even low levels of traffic noise can negate the benefits of listening to natural sounds, researchers say
Hearing the trill or whistle of a bird while going about daily life is well known to boost people’s mood. But a new study suggests the psychological benefits of hearing birdsong are being threatened by traffic noise.
Researchers found that even low levels of traffic noise negatively affected the benefits to wellbeing that could otherwise be derived from listening to natural sounds.
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Protests and petitions planned amid growing concerns over impact of climate crisis on numbers of Alpine rodent
Animal rights campaigners are gearing up for protests and petitions aimed at persuading the French government to ban the hunting of Alpine marmots.
Open season on the rodents, members of the squirrel and groundhog family, begins in September, a few weeks before they go into a long winter hibernation.
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Asturias, Spain: Wild Finca is thrilling in its ecological abundance, and was created in just eight years despite countless obstacles
On a rocky 13-hectare pocket in the foothills of the Picos de Europa, Luke Massey and Katie Stacey are raising children, dogs, cattle, chicken, ducks, geese and eyebrows. In their eight years here, the farm they call Wild Finca has become a mass of scrub, with scattered large trees and dozens of clearings that Luke calls fields, but which look more like tiny irregular glades, riddled with trails and hemmed all around by the blackthorn, gorse and bramble that has sprung up around the tumbled remains of drystone walls.
If Wild Finca is a forever home to the Massey-Staceys, it is a whole world to nature. Witness the butterflies and wasp spiders, the snakes, lizards, hedgehogs and sparrows, and the thousand-piece cricket orchestra that performs each evening as the glow-worms light up. It offers denning and roosting sites for foxes, pine martens, badgers and 17 species of bat, feeding opportunities for roe deer and wild boar, several species of eagle and vulture, and a pit stop for others such as the nightingale I heard singing in early morning mist.
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Our buildings are monuments to extraction and extreme emissions. But what if we turned from destructive concrete to timber?
I travelled to Oslo in the early autumn. It felt like arriving into the future. Or, at least, a fragment of a possible future. I drove north in the quiet digital bubble of my electric rental car. In 2024, Norway became the first country in the world where electric cars outnumbered petrol cars.
A smooth, pristine motorway unfolded between farmlands and low hillsides of dense green forest. Long tunnels carried the route up above the banks of Lake Mjøsa, Norway’s largest lake. After a little more than an hour, the road curved downward to run parallel to the lakeshore.
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Lethal temperatures and wildfires have exposed a widening gulf between voters demanding action and politicians unwilling to confront the long-term choices global heating requires
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The climate crisis means “we’re going to have to change everything – the way we live, the way we produce, the way we trade,” France’s veteran radical-left firebrand, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, told the summer congress of his France Insoumise party last weekend.
The term “climate change”, said Mélenchon – the most likely rival to Marine Le Pen in next year’s presidential run-off, according to one poll this week – may sound “almost reassuring”, but its actual impact will feel like “landing on another planet whenever we leave home”.
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A magical corner of Oregon has the highest US rate of wildfire smoke deaths. How do residents live with the haze – and grief?
Driving into the county, you can’t miss the sign.
“IT’S THE CLIMATE”.
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