2 h. ago Joe Rogan claims study shows Earth cooling – but report’s authors say he’s wrong

Scientists say ‘old-school denier nonsense’ isn’t helpful as podcaster repeatedly airs false claim on his showFor months now, the popular comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan has been telling his vast audience of a study that shows Earth is cooling – even though this research states the complete opposite.Rogan’s false claim about the climate crisis, which he has repeatedly aired on the Joe Rogan Experience, one of the world’s most popular podcasts, has exasperated the scientists who authored the research. Continue reading...

Culture

3 h. ago ‘As more join, it gets less risky’: how Greta Thunberg’s lone strike turned into a movement

In an extract from his new book, Tim Lenton explains how Fridays for Future challenged climate inaction to reach a positive tipping pointIn August 2018, Greta Thunberg was sitting alone on the ground outside the Swedish parliament with a placard reading “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (School strike for climate) and a bunch of pamphlets under a stone.An older woman stood over her and asked: “Why are you on strike? You have to go to school.” Greta retorted: “Why would I need an education if there is no future?”Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate Crisis is published by Oxford University Press Continue reading...

Events

31 h. ago This was the hottest summer on record. If it happens again next year, Britain’s ecosystems won’t cope | Lucy Jones

A future of extreme heatwaves, drought and collapsing habitats awaits if we continue to ignore the danger signsWhat does British summertime mean to you? Blackberries? Picnics? Festivals? Ticks? This summer has been the hottest on record in the UK. As human-caused climate breakdown intensifies, the outdoor areas we spend time in are changing – and so, too, are our relationships with the land and the ecosystems we live in.My home is in the south of England, near beautiful woodlands. Since moving there in 2016, the number of ticks my family has picked up in the woods has increased each year, but this summer has been astonishing. For a few weeks, our four-year-old came home from nursery with a tick almost every day. I’ve had many: some tiny nymphal ones that could be easily missed. We spend time in Scotland, too, and find ticks often when we go there now.Lucy Jones is a journalist and the author of Losing Eden and The Nature Seed Continue reading...

Politics

34 h. ago ‘You need solidarity and consistency’: Pedro Sánchez on the EU, Trump and fighting the far right

Spanish PM insists ‘migration is an opportunity’ and is not afraid to discuss what he considers Europe’s recent failuresWhen Pedro Sánchez and Keir Starmer meet in Downing Street on Wednesday it will be the first such bilateral summit between a Spanish prime minister and his British counterpart for more than a decade, an interregnum explained by Brexit and the now healed sore of Gibraltar.The absence of highest level diplomacy has become more glaring given the two men are the leading social democratic leaders of Europe, facing similar problems of migration, souring populist parties, the climate crisis and divisions over how to minimise the damage caused to the European global influence by Donald Trump’s erratic unilateralism. Continue reading...

Politics

45 h. ago Argentina couple under house arrest amid search for painting stolen by Nazis

Daughter of former Nazi official and her husband to be questioned after raid on home failed to find masterpieceA federal court in Argentina has ordered house arrest for the daughter of a former Nazi official and her husband after a raid failed to locate a painting stolen from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam.Authorities raided a home in the coastal city of Mar del Plata last week after a Dutch newspaper identified a painting seen in a real estate photo as an Italian masterpiece registered on a database of lost wartime art. Continue reading...

Events

51 h. ago African nation bans homosexuality with threats of prison terms and fines

It joins over half of Africa’s 54 countries that have laws banning homosexuality

Events

52 h. ago Burkina Faso bans homosexuality with prison terms and fines for offenders

Burkina Faso’s parliament has passed a law banning homosexuality

Events

53 h. ago Daughter of Nazi who 'stole' missing painting is put under house arrest in Argentina as police hunt for work continues

Patricia Kadgien, the daughter of Nazi Friedrich Kadgien, has been put under house arrest after police searched her home last week in the hunt for a painting allegedly stolen from a Jewish collector.

Events

2 d. ago From Potomac golf course to government paint jobs: Inside Trump’s renovation plans for White House and DC

The former Manhattan real estate mogul has reportedly been producing daily remodeling plans, including a proposed ‘Washington National Golf Course’

Politics

2 d. ago ‘A common enemy beyond ideologies’: Spain’s PM announces plan to tackle climate crisis

Pedro Sánchez says country’s deadly August wildfires show society needs to mobilise and take immediate actionSpain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has announced a 10-point plan to prepare the country for the climate emergency, warning that “if we don’t want to bequeath our children a Spain that’s grey from fire and flames, or a Spain that’s brown from floods, then we need a Spain that’s greener”.Sánchez said August’s heatwave-fuelled wildfires – which killed four people, burned through an area six times the size of Ibiza, and required “the biggest human and technical deployment” ever seen in Spain – showed immediate action must be taken to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Events

2 d. ago Climate change kills, Spanish PM tells deniers at launch of plan to tackle crisis

Pedro Sánchez says country’s deadly August wildfires show society needs to mobilise and take immediate actionSpain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has announced a 10-point plan to prepare the country for the climate emergency, warning: “If we don’t want to bequeath our children a Spain that’s grey from fire and flames, or a Spain that’s brown from floods, then we need a Spain that’s greener.”Sánchez said August’s heatwave-fuelled wildfires – which killed four people, burned through an area six times the size of Ibiza and required “the biggest human and technical deployment” ever seen in Spain – showed that immediate action must be taken to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Events

3 d. ago ‘Beware of 419!’: how a playwright delved into Nigerian scams – and what it taught him about money

When Inua Ellams, writer of Barber Shop Chronicles, went to Lagos, he became aware of how much fraud suffused the city – so he decided to tell the story of its consInua Ellams was walking through the streets of Lagos, the bustling former capital of Nigeria, when he began noticing a recurring phrase, spray-painted on to the sides of homes. “This house is not for sale,” it read. “Beware of 419.”The number refers to section four, chapter 19 of the Nigerian criminal code, which specifically deals with fraud – obtaining goods or property by false pretences – and the warnings were painted on houses to deter conmen who would access empty properties and sell them without the owner’s consent. Now the criminal code reference has become a catch-all term for Nigerian cons and illicit financial activity. Continue reading...

Events

4 d. ago Below the Clouds review – a ghostly yet luminous cinematic mosaic of Naples crowns a superb trio

Venice film festivalThere is a real end-of-days quality to Gianfranco Rosi’s utterly distinctive documentary of war, violence, cynicism and the climate crisis in an uneasy cityGianfranco Rosi has made a movie that could be thought of as the last of a conceptual trilogy about normal life and spiritual life in Italy: the first was his Sacro GRA from 2013 about Rome, for which Rosi won the Venice Golden Lion; the next was Fire at Sea about the migration crisis as experienced in Lampedusa in Sicily. Now there is Below the Clouds, in luminous black-and-white. It’s another of his brilliantly composed docu-mosaic assemblages of scenes and tableaux, shot from fixed camera positions without any camera narration.The title is taken from Jean Cocteau: “Vesuvius makes all the clouds in the world.” Rosi reports from Naples, a city uneasily preoccupied with the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions for which it is famed, and with the great catastrophe of AD79 that buried nearby Pompeii. We see the ar...

Politics

6 d. ago Heatwaves, wildfires and the hot summers that could change how we holiday

With rising temperatures causing chaos worldwide, what does it mean to be a tourist in a world on fire?• Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here to get the newsletter in full“Where shall we go on holiday?” would not, ideally, be a stressful question.But the world in 2025 is far from ideal, and summer breaks in Europe and North America are no exception. Holiday hotspots are being ravaged by heat, fire, floods and drought as fossil fuel pollution warps the climate – and travelling to reach them in planes or on cruise ships spews far more planet-heating gas than anything else you and I are likely to do. (Rocket enthusiasts such as Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos, I assume, have not yet subscribed to Down to Earth.)‘We cannot do it the way our fathers did’: farmers across Europe struggle to adapt to the climate crisis‘Unlike any other kind of fear’: wildfires leave their mark across SpainEurope scorched by wildfires – pictures from space Continue reading...

Events

6 d. ago Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low likelihood, study finds

Scientists say ‘shocking’ discovery shows rapid cuts in carbon emissions are needed to avoid catastrophic falloutThe collapse of a critical Atlantic current can no longer be considered a low-likelihood event, a study has concluded, making deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions even more urgent to avoid the catastrophic impact.The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system. It brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. The Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago ‘It’s a warning, set to a dance beat’: Jon Batiste on his new song urging climate action 20 years after Katrina

The global music star, whose home town of New Orleans was devastated by the hurricane in 2005, says ‘people power’ can change the worldTwenty years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged his home town of New Orleans, Jon Batiste has released a new song imploring people to take action against climate change “by raising your voice, and insisting, and voting the right people into office”.“As an artist, you have to make a statement,” the global star said in an interview on Tuesday with the international media collaboration Covering Climate Now. “You got to bring people together. People power is the way that you can change things in the world.” Continue reading...

Events

9 d. ago Old master painting looted by Nazis spotted in Argentinian property listing

Dutch newspaper AD says it has traced Giuseppe Ghislandi’s Portrait of a Lady to house near Buenos AiresMore than 80 years after it was looted by the Nazis from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam, a portrait by an Italian master has been spotted on the website of an estate agent advertising a house for sale in Argentina.A photo shows the painting, Portrait of a Lady (Contessa Colleoni) by the late-baroque portraitist Giuseppe Ghislandi, also known as Fra’ Galgario, hanging above a sofa in the living room of the property, in a seaside town near Buenos Aires. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago The senate race in Iowa that could signal a blue wave for the 2026 midterms

A win for Democrat Catelin Drey over far-right Christopher Prosch would hamstring the state’s Republican governorHe has compared abortion access to the Holocaust and pushed conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 2020 presidential election and climate crisis. Christopher Prosch is betting that Maga still rules in the US heartland.On Tuesday, the far-right Republican will take on Democrat Catelin Drey in a special general election for Iowa state senate district 1 after the previous incumbent, Republican Rocky De Witt, died in June. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago ‘We cannot do it the way our fathers did’: farmers across Europe struggle to adapt to the climate crisis

As wildfires rage in southern Europe and crop losses only set to increase in the coming years, producers are getting creative to beat the heat“I’m not ready to change jobs,” says Stellios Boutaris, a wine producer with vineyards in Naoussa and Amyndeon in northern Greece, as well as on the island of Santorini. But, he adds, “we cannot do it the way our fathers did.”Boutaris is determined to keep producing in the region and keep the family business going but says “the curve is not looking good” as the climate crisis puts pressure on producers across the Mediterranean. Continue reading...

Society

1 week ago Dining across the divide: ‘I was really hardline about immigration – but her struggles softened me a bit’

Illegal immigration and the climate crisis were hotly debated by the novelist and the former tram driver. But did they end up on the same track?Sunyi, 38, WakefieldOccupation Novelist Continue reading...

Politics