4 h. ago The Guardian view on the collapse of environmental talks: petrostates blocked a global plastics deal, but we must not despair | Editorial

The failure of UN talks in Geneva should anger us all. The increasing threat to our health, our environments and wildlife must be addressed. By ensuring the collapse of UN talks seeking the first legally binding agreement on tackling plastic pollution, blockers in Geneva have failed the next generation. Most states are willing, even determined, to act. But the US joined petrostates obstructing action. Their children too will live to regret that.To say that plastics are part of our lives from cradle to grave is an understatement: microplastics have been found in placentas, as well as blood and breast milk. While we can’t yet be certain of the full impact of the substances, we know that many have been linked to health effects and that foetuses, infants and young children are highly vulnerable. Microplastics have been shown to damage human cells in laboratory experiments, and a review published this month documented how exposure is associated with increased risks of miscarriage, stillb...

Economics

4 h. ago The Guardian view on France’s wine crisis: the answer to claret could be clairet | Editorial

Consumers are drinking less red wine than ever. Producers need to revive the fresher and lighter vintages that their medieval ancestors once harvestedThese are always anxious weeks in the Bordeaux vineyards, where 15% of France’s wine is grown, including in celebrated places like Chateau Latour and Chateau Mouton-Rothschild. In earlier years, this ritual anxiety among the region’s winegrowers had a pleasingly folkloric quality. In the middle of August, the grapes would ripen and their colour start to turn. About 45 days from now, tradition dictates, it will be time to start picking the 2025 vintage. As the wine writer Edmund Penning-Rowsell put it: “To pick or not to pick is the most momentous decision in the winemaking year in Bordeaux.”This once timeless rhythm is now collapsing. Part of the problem is the climate crisis. Bordeaux still benefits from its moderate Atlantic climate. But south-west France is getting much hotter and drier. Even in the Gironde region, maximum temperatu...

Events

4 d. ago The Guardian view on RFK Jr’s vaccine cuts: an assault on science from a politician unfit for his office | Editorial

The decision by the US health and human services secretary to remove mRNA research funding is ill-informed and dangerousScience is not black and white. It’s more complicated and more exciting. It’s a constant process of exploration. An adventure into the unknown. Scientists come up with theories about what might be going on, and then test them. They don’t always get it right. Far from it. But inch by inch, testing, failing and trying again, they make progress.Robert F Kennedy Jr, during Senate confirmation hearings for the role of secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), seemed to get that. Those who feared what a vaccine sceptic might do in that role breathed again. “I’m going to empower the scientists at HHS to do their job and make sure that we have good science that is evidence based I’m not going to substitute my judgment for science,” he said.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to...

Politics

5 d. ago The Guardian view on attacking the ECHR: the real target is judicial independence and the rule of law | Editorial

The populist right sees the European convention as a soft target in a longer campaign to degrade democratic checks and balancesMost British citizens have little contact with human rights law, which is as it should be in a mature democracy. Widespread anxiety about basic freedoms is a feature of more repressive regimes.Many people will only have heard of the European convention on human rights (ECHR) in the context of the last Conservative government’s failed attempts to dispatch asylum seekers to Rwanda, or in a handful of incidents where convicted criminals or terrorist suspects have avoided deportation to jurisdictions where they might face inhumane treatment. Such cases are amplified by politicians who are hostile to the whole apparatus of human rights law. The Strasbourg court that adjudicates on breaches of the ECHR is denounced as an enemy of British sovereignty. Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago The Guardian view on climate finance: crumbling under a second Trump presidency | Editorial

Voluntary climate commitments were supposed to be a step towards progress. A change in political climate has revealed their weaknessesEarlier this month, as Nordic countries were hit with an unprecedented heatwave and wildfires in the US began spurting “fire clouds”, Barclays pulled out of the net zero banking alliance. The story may have seemed less alarming than extreme weather, but it has existential implications, as the finance sector quietly surrenders its former climate commitments.The initiative forms part of the Glasgow Finance Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a voluntary network of banks that Mark Carney, formerly the UN’s special envoy on climate action and now Canada’s prime minister, launched in 2021. At the time, the alliance, which encourages banks and asset managers to work towards the goals of the Paris agreement, seemed like an optimistic step in the right direction. Mr Carney described it as a “breakthrough”. Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago The Guardian view on Israel’s Gaza takeover plan: a destructive act that must be stopped | Editorial

Benjamin Netanyahu has embarked on an operation that guarantees fresh miseries and will solve absolutely nothingIsrael’s planned takeover of Gaza would be an act of destructive futility. It would solve absolutely nothing. It will merely pile fresh military, humanitarian and political problems on to the mounds of those already created in the conflict. It will make every human agony worse, not better. Governments around the world must do whatever they can – the US above all – to stop it.There is still time. The plan announced on Friday is for an operation to take military control of Gaza City, home to a million displaced Palestinians. They will be forcibly evacuated, yet again, to the southern Gaza Strip over the coming weeks. Aid distribution is certain to be a secondary consideration, logistically challenging and woefully inadequate for a population where malnutrition is already severe. The threat to life in Gaza, including to the remaining Israeli hostages captured on 7 Octobe...

Politics

9 d. ago The Guardian view on Putin’s propaganda: the strongman myth hides great strategic weakness | Editorial

The Russian president had a friend in Donald Trump but a paranoid addiction to war prevents him doing a dealFor a quarter of a century, Russian media have cultivated a myth of Vladimir Putin’s inspired leadership. State propaganda allows no hint of presidential fallibility. When things go wrong, official news ignores the setbacks. When problems cannot be downplayed, Mr Putin is portrayed as the wise corrector of errors made by underlings.Foreign perceptions of Mr Putin have been shaped by this image. It has been boosted online by Kremlin influence operations and embraced by nationalist politicians who admire the Russian president’s methods of domestic control and contempt for the rule of law.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago The Guardian view on the London Stock Exchange: its struggles are symptoms of a broken growth model | Editorial

The Guardian view on the London Stock Exchange: its struggles are symptoms of a broken growth model | Editorial  The Guardian

Politics

1 week ago The Guardian view on asylum myths: when truth loses, scapegoating takes over Britain’s migrant debate | Editorial

Labour’s cautious fixes for immigration and asylum policy face a toxic public mood shaped by fear, falsehoods and far-right provocationIn politics, numbers rarely speak for themselves. They must be framed and interpreted. They are often weaponised. In Britain’s increasingly toxic debate over asylum and migration, the question isn’t just how many asylum seekers arrive on small boats. It’s what those numbers are made to represent – and why polls suggest a large proportion of the public now believes things that are simply untrue.Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has staked her political credibility on restoring a sense of grip over the asylum system: reducing the backlog by processing cases, accelerating returns of those with no legal claim to stay and launching an as yet small-scale “one in, one out” returns deal with France. In balancing operational realism with symbolic reassurance, Ms Cooper walks a knife-edge between policy and perception. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago The Guardian view on plastic pollution: global action is desperately needed to deal with this scourge | Editorial

Delegates at UN treaty talks must not allow negotiations to be derailed again by fossil fuel interestsPlastic pollution has reached the most remote and inaccessible parts of our beleaguered planet. It has been found in Greenland’s ice cap, near the summit of Mount Everest, and in the deepest depths of the western Pacific Ocean. Nature programmes have sounded the alarm over a human-made crisis that has become an environmental scourge and a serious threat to our health. Yet global production of plastics is on course to triple to more than a billion tonnes a year by 2060, after increasing by more than 200 times over the past 75 years.This gloomy backdrop should inject a sense of urgency into UN-convened talks in Switzerland this week, aimed at agreeing a binding global plastics treaty. In 2022, when 173 countries committed to work towards such an accord, there was widespread relief that at last a multilateral route was to be taken towards solving a quintessentially global problem. Sadl...

Economics

1 week ago The Guardian view on Berlin’s ailing club scene: a unique inheritance needs protecting | Editorial

The likely closure of one of Germany’s most famous gay dance venues is a depressing sign of the times, as cherished institutions struggle to stay afloatReflecting on his burst of musical creativity in 1970s West Berlin, David Bowie reportedly said that recording albums in a studio close to the Wall gave him a “sense of being on the edge I need the dangerous level, emotionally, mentally and physically”. During the 1970s and 80s, Bowie was not alone. The divided, fascinating city was famously a magnet for young people drawn by a music and club scene unique in Europe.Sadly, living on the edge has these days taken on a different meaning for Berlin clubs struggling to survive in altered times. In a sobering dispatch at the weekend, the Guardian reported that one of Germany’s oldest and most important gay dance clubs has just declared itself bankrupt. Founded in 1977 – the year Bowie brought out his classic Low album – SchwuZ became a pioneering presence in the development of Berlin’s LGB...

Politics

1 week ago The Guardian view on an EU army: leadership and unity remain elusive | Editorial

Calls for a European fighting force grow louder, but decades-old divisions, political hesitancy and reliance on the US persistThe Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called for the creation of a European army earlier this year, suggesting that, this time, the continent might finally be serious. Defence budgets are rising. Threats are mounting. The US is distracted. Surely now is the moment. Except, of course, it isn’t.For all the political soundbites that rattle sabres with increasing confidence, Europe is probably no closer to fielding a unified military force than it was when the French rejected the European Defence Community in 1954. The problem is not one of capacity. Europe, including the UK, collectively boasts about 1.5m active military personnel, and some of the world’s most successful defence firms. The problem, as ever, is politics. Or more precisely: who leads? Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago The Guardian view on the green transition: renewables are the future – but countries’ actions must catch up with their promises | Editorial

To counter attacks on net zero, challenges including the need for grid upgrades will have to be graspedWith net zero policies under attack from elected far-right populists as well as autocratic petrostates, and another summer of record-breaking temperatures in Europe, the failure to decarbonise the world’s power supply is as gravely concerning as ever. But the UN secretary general, António Guterres, struck an optimistic note in a recent speech in New York. The world, he said, “is on the cusp of a new era The sun is rising on a clean energy age.” Pointing to falls in the cost of onshore wind and solar, and the risk of further gas-price shocks in future, he called on big technology companies – whose datacentres are one reason for soaring energy use – to adopt a target of 100% low-carbon electricity by 2030.Given US president Donald Trump’s personal hostility to renewable energy, Mr Guterres may be right that it makes more sense to demand action from US businesses at this point. In Sco...

Politics

2 w. ago The Guardian view on statues: new monuments reflect changing values and reinvigorate the public realm | Editorial

It is refreshing to see women’s achievements celebrated, and statuary become more representative of a diverse nationEfforts to ensure that modern values are reflected in public sculpture began well before the Black Lives Matter protests five years ago. Those demonstrations saw the statue of the Bristol slave trader Edward Colston dragged from its pedestal and dumped in the harbour, while multiple Confederate monuments were removed from cities in the southern US.Statues in Britain have gradually reflected evolving social values. A statue of the suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst was unveiled in Westminster in 1930, two years after women were finally granted the vote on equal terms to men. Nelson Mandela joined Winston Churchill in Parliament Square in 2007. The nurse Mary Seacole became the first named black, Caribbean woman to be honoured with a UK statue in 2016. In the same year, the Monumental Welsh Women campaign was established. It set itself a target of five statues, and ha...

Politics

3 w. ago The Guardian view on Europe’s failing economic orthodoxy: social contracts cannot be renewed through cuts | Editorial

The French prime minister, François Bayrou, has become the latest leader to target the less well-off in order to balance the booksAs European politicians begin to pack their suitcases and head to the beach, they do so against a domestic backdrop that begins to look distinctly ominous. In Britain and France, nationalist populist parties consistently lead in the polls. In Germany, the particularly extreme Alternative für Deutschland is neck and neck with the conservative CDU. Specific dynamics might vary but the unsettling pattern is the same – large swaths of voters increasingly identify with authoritarian and often xenophobic political forces.Prolonged post-industrial malaise, wage stagnation and austerity have precipitated this wave of disaffection with the mainstream, especially among the less well-off. Yet in London, Paris and Berlin, governments of the centre-left and centre-right seem intent on alienating disillusioned electorates still further. During his visit to London last ...

Economics

3 w. ago The Guardian view on mitochondrial donation: IVF innovation leads to a cautious genetic triumph | Editorial

UK research has brought real hope to families suffering from one of the most common inherited disorders, with a breakthrough that’s been years in the makingEight babies have been born free of a disease that can lead to terrible suffering and early death, thanks to pioneering scientists in the UK employing a form of genetic engineering that is banned in some countries, including the US and France. Ten years ago, when the government and regulators were considering whether to allow mitochondrial transfer technology, critics warned of “Frankenstein meddling” that would lead to three-parent children. It’s hard now to justify such hostility in the face of the painstaking work carried out by the scientific and medical teams at Newcastle, resulting in these healthy babies and ecstatic families.Mitochondria, like tiny battery packs, supply energy to every cell of the body. Their DNA is handed down in the egg from mother to child. In rare instances, there are genetic mutat...

Politics

4 w. ago The Guardian view on Maga and Jeffrey Epstein: the truth about Donald Trump and conspiracy theories | Editorial

The US president is struggling to close down speculation about the case that those close to him have promotedDonald Trump has thrived on conspiracy theories – “birtherist” lies that Barack Obama was born outside the US; the lunacies of the Q-Anon movement; false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. All centred on the idea that the “deep state” was lying to, and thus cheating, ordinary people. Mr Trump was their tribune.It’s hard not to feel schadenfreude now that he’s at the sharp end of a theory that he at times encouraged and allies eagerly pushed: claims that the prison death of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein might not be suicide after all, and that wealthy and well-connected associates were trying to hush up connections to the financier. Mr Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, promised that “truckloads” of documents would help reveal the truth and claimed that a client list was “sitting on my desk right now”.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this ...

Politics

last month The Guardian view on the Afghan leak superinjunction: a dangerous precedent is set | Editorial

In an era of mistrust in politics, the government now has a duty to bring maximum transparency to a very opaque scandalOne of many extraordinary features of the data breach that put tens of thousands of Afghan lives in jeopardy is the length of time between the original leak and the government taking action. The email containing a highly sensitive dataset was sent from a Ministry of Defence computer in February 2022. Ministers were not aware of the problem until August 2023.The fact that the MoD’s systems were lax enough for the error to have been made is worrying enough. The delayed response is more alarming still. And then there is the disturbing mechanism by which the whole scandal was kept from the public eye.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Politics