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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 more 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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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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Exclusive: Economic harm of CO2 pollution from Rosebank and Jackdaw forecast to far outweigh any boost to UK
The climate damage caused by developing the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields under consideration by the UK government would destroy their economic benefits many times over, according to an analysis.
It estimates the economic damage caused by the carbon pollution from the oil and gas produced would be between £119bn and £336bn in the coming decades, compared with the £28.7bn in value to the UK estimated by Adura, the fossil fuel company promoting the new fields.
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Jack Klein takes heat readings, gives fans to overheated passengers and lugs big jugs of water into the stations
On a recent August day in the subterranean furnace of New York City’s subway, one bearded, curly haired man was studying his phone for different reasons than the other wilting passengers – to track the soaring temperatures and ponder how underground train stations can cool down in an era of climate crisis.
Jack Klein, a 31-year-old construction site manager, has in the past two years taken it upon himself to become a sort of guerrilla subway heat operative, sticking teardrop-shaped thermometers to steel beams in seven of the hottest Manhattan stations and posting social media videos of the hades-like summer temperatures that commuters have to endure.
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Robert Corrigan has been dealing with the ‘smart’ rodents all his life – and believes there are better solutions to deal with the growing infestation in the world’s cities
“The rodents have paid for every single bill I’ve ever had – every mortgage, every car payment, every pint of Guinness,” says Dr Robert Corrigan. “It’s been a great ride and I’m still at it.”
New York-based Corrigan is one of the most respected voices in the world of rodentology. Now in his 70s, he has devoted his entire adult life to studying rats and our relationship with them.
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There are countless initiatives around the world that can inspire people and spur them into action. Amid the devastation of the climate crisis, our journalists strive to highlight these stories of hope
The news is very often about the bad things (especially if you’re on the Guardian’s environment desk). Wildfires, floods, tipping points, billionaires making huge profits and buying themselves island refuges for the apocalypse … And yet, ticking along beside that is the steady pulse of what the rest of humanity is doing in response to the climate crisis. From housing developments with no cars to buildings made out of hemp, all over the planet people are ploughing ahead and changing their neighbourhoods and cities and the world.
But as news stories typically need to be about new developments or things people didn’t previously know about, it can be hard to cover all those brilliant initiatives being undertaken in the background – no matter how cheering they are. Which is why, back in 2023, we decided to ignore the usual rules about what constitutes “news” and start writing about them anyway. Readers, we knew, would like to hear about them.
Climate campaign 2026: help us reach 30,000 acts of support
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