58 h. ago ‘Global red alert’: Wildfires drive record forest loss in 2024, alarming data reveals

Fires emitted 4.1 gigatonnes of greenhouse gases, more than four times the emissions from all commercial air travel in 2023

Events

64 h. ago No Straight Road Takes You There by Rebecca Solnit review – an activist’s antidote to despair

Hope is no casual platitude in this inspiring collection of essays; it’s the realistic mindset with which to approach challengesAccording to Rebecca Solnit, a lot of us are suffering from something called moral injury. She describes this as the “deep sense of wrongness” that can infiltrate our lives when we realise we are complicit in something seriously bad.The first time I experienced this in relation to climate change, I was changing my baby’s nappy soon after one of the worst Australian wildfire seasons on record in 2020. The nappy featured a smiling cartoon koala on the front. I immediately recalled the scene of a singed, parched koala being fed water from a plastic bottle by a human as it fled the inferno. A disposable nappy takes up to 500 years to decompose. I felt disgust and despair at the degree of consumption, waste and exploitation that even a modest lifestyle in a high-income country seems to entail. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago ‘People are buying crossbows faster than I’d like’ – how prepping went mainstream in Britain

Once, getting ready for the apocalypse was for the paranoid. Now, in the face of cyber-attacks, climate breakdown and nuclear threats, the UK government recommends it. Should everyone have a survival kit?This is a great time to be a shopkeeper, if that shop is for those worried about the breakdown of civilisation. “It started with Covid, and people weren’t looking for toilet rolls, put it that way,” says Justin Jones, who runs the online UK Prepping Shop, whose stock ranges from emergency food and wind-up radios to crossbows and body armour.Business is booming, as is the British prepping scene – 22,700 members of the UK Preppers and Survivalists Facebook group, 6,000 in the UK Preppers Club Facebook group. The scene is not as well-known as its US and Canadian equivalents, but that’s partly by choice. “Preppers are by nature a little bit secretive,” says Bushra Shehzad, who is researching prepping for a PhD in marketing and consumer behaviour at Newcastle University. “They are scepti...

Politics

4 d. ago ‘People were buying crossbows faster than I’d like’ – how prepping went mainstream in Britain

Once, getting ready for the apocalypse was for the paranoid. Now, in the face of cyber-attacks, climate breakdown and nuclear threats, the UK government recommends it. Should everyone have a survival kit?This is a great time to be a shopkeeper, if that shop is for those worried about the breakdown of civilisation. “It started with Covid, and people weren’t looking for toilet rolls, put it that way,” says Justin Jones, who runs the online UK Prepping Shop, whose stock ranges from emergency food and wind-up radios to crossbows and body armour.Business is booming, as is the British prepping scene – 22,700 members of the UK Preppers and Survivalists Facebook group, 6,000 in the UK Preppers Club Facebook group. The scene is not as well-known as its US and Canadian equivalents, but that’s partly by choice. “Preppers are by nature a little bit secretive,” says Bushra Shehzad, who is researching prepping for a PhD in marketing and consumer behaviour at Newcastle University. “They are scepti...

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3 w. ago Warmest start to May on record amid wildfires and water warnings

Kew Gardens, in south-west London, registered 29.3C on Thursday afternoon.

Events

3 w. ago Warmest start to May on record in UK as temperatures prompt wildfire warnings

Warmest start to May on record in UK as temperatures prompt wildfire warnings  The Guardian

Events

3 w. ago Israel wildfires mapped: Netanyahu declares national emergency as record blaze nears Jerusalem

Fire is being whipped up by strong winds and hot, dry weather

Politics

3 w. ago UK breaks worrying wildfire record: 113 sq miles of land has already been burnt this year

The amount of UK land burnt by wildfires has already smashed the all-time record, just four months into the year.

Events

last month Self Esteem: A Complicated Woman review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

(Polydor)After her big breakthrough and West End fame, Rebecca Lucy Taylor works through her worries in real time on her new album – to fascinating and confusing effectLast week, London’s Duke of York’s theatre played host to an elaborate four-night live staging of Self Esteem’s third album. Devised by Self Esteem herself – Rebecca Lucy Taylor – along with Tony award-winning theatrical director and designer Tom Scutt, it was rapturously received by critics, and seemed to speak of an entirely understandable confidence on Taylor’s part.Since 2017, she has completely reinvented herself, from one half of middle-ranking indie duo Slow Club into an on-her-own-terms pop star. Her second album as Self Esteem, 2021’s Prioritise Pleasure, was a critical and commercial success, shifting her into the realm of breakfast TV interviews and appearances on The Graham Norton Show and Celebrity Bake-Off. She also has a burgeoning career as an actor, having played Sally Bowles in a West End production ...

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