Breaking Waves: Ocean News

While Nigel Farage promotes retro plans to reopen coalmines, will he really tell thousands of clean energy workers to leave their well-paid, local jobs? This government is bad at proclaiming what it’s for. But to find out, follow the money. Its boldest investment is in green energy, designed to create prodigious returns in economic growth, employment, training, climate action and more. So far it has been hard to sell. Wafty talk of greenness passes most people by, and “whose growth is it, anyway?” is a realistic question in a country of stagnant pay and public decay. But, this week, Ed Miliband put flesh on the green words, making jobs and projects concrete. A very big number of green jobs – 400,000 by 2030 – are set to be created in 31 “priority occupations”, from welders to production managers, plumbers and joiners, everywhere from Centrica’s £35m state-of-the-art training academy in Lutterworth to Teesside’s net-zero decarbonisation cluster. This is what a Labour industrial strategy should look like. Nigel Farage’s retro campaign for this week’s Caerphilly byelection promises to reopen Welsh coalmines. But well-paid, clean, green-energy jobs within their home districts are what Miliband’s Doncaster North constituents want, the minister tells me, not sending young people down reopened mines. Government figures show wind, nuclear and electricity jobs pay more than most – the average advertised salary in the wind sector is £51,000 a year, against an average £37,000. Unions, once sceptical and fearful of losing jobs in unionised industries, now sign up with guarantees that any new plant getting grants must “support greater trade union recognition” and a fair work charter. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Homeowners urged to use more robust planting and permeable materials to help mitigate flood risk Nearly half of the UK’s garden space is paved over, a new study has found. The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has conducted the largest ever audit of the UK’s gardens, and found that they are an untapped – and until now, mostly unmeasured – potential resource for nature. Continue reading...

After speculation and conflicting pressures, prime minister will attend climate summit next month Keir Starmer will travel to the Amazon rainforest for the UN climate summit next month, Downing Street has confirmed, after weeks of speculation that he would not. No 10 said on Monday the prime minister would fly to Belém, in Brazil, for what experts say will be the most significant Cop meeting since Paris in 2015. Continue reading...

A burst of recent climate-themed cultural output suggests views of the topic as too depressing or dull may be changing Despite (or perhaps because of) its overwhelming awfulness, the climate crisis has been oddly underrepresented on stage and screen. Humanity’s greatest challenge has often been deemed too much of a downer, too complex or too dull a topic to spawn shows and movies. A burst of recent climate-themed cultural output, however, suggests this may be changing. Weather Girl, a one-woman play about the unraveling of a TV meteorologist who can no longer bear to gloss over climate breakdown in California, has just closed in New York City to upbeat reviews. Continue reading...