Liability lawsuits have held tobacco, oil and pharma companies to account in the past. AI investors won’t ignore this threat
The most basic function of government is to protect people from harm. Two growing phenomena – the climate crisis and AI – pose escalating risks of extraordinary harm.
The climate crisis is already causing floods, wildfires, drought and record heat. AI agents are already escaping super-secure environments to hack into systems they’re supposed to avoid.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
AI and the climate crisis pose existential risks. The law offers a way to reduce them | Robert Reich
10/09/2026 - 06:00
10/09/2026 - 04:59
Storm expected to make landfall on US’s northern Gulf coast with risk of flash floods and isolated river flooding
Isaias has become the first Atlantic hurricane of the 2026 season, with wind speeds of 80mph and a minimum pressure of 975mb. It is expected to strengthen to a category 2 hurricane as it approaches the US’s northern Gulf coast on Friday, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
As a result of the strong El Niño, it has been a notably quiet Atlantic hurricane season. The first hurricane of the season has not formed this late since 8 October 1905, which pre-dates the satellite era (1960s) for tracking hurricanes that has allowed for more non-landfall hurricanes to be discovered.
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10/09/2026 - 02:00
This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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10/09/2026 - 01:00
Exclusive: Badenoch’s flagship conference policy document cites £957bn estimate, twice the total in climate advisers’ data
Kemi Badenoch’s flagship party conference policy document overestimated the cost of net zero by nearly £500bn, seemingly after someone accidentally double-counted figures on a spreadsheet.
The apparent error appears in a chapter on net zero in The Right Way, a 100-page policy document produced for the Conservative conference in Birmingham. Badenoch repeatedly used the phrase in her main speech.
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10/09/2026 - 00:00
Exclusive: Firms made more than £340m last year from processing industrial and commercial wastewater at sewage works that are unable to remove many chemical pollutants
Water companies in the UK made more than £340m in revenue last year by pouring billions of litres of industrial and commercial wastewater into sewage treatment works that experts say are not designed to remove most chemicals, leaving pollutants to pass into rivers, seas and farmland.
Water companies in England are required by law to take industrial wastewater and issue permits called “trade-effluent consents” that allow businesses to send it to sewage works, though water companies can refuse applications.
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10/08/2026 - 23:00
Species with leaves large enough to be seen from space is already critically endangered – and plans are afoot to protect it
A chance social media encounter has led to the race-against-time discovery of a new species of giant waterlily that has until now been hidden in the depths of Colombia’s jungle.
But the plant, which is so huge it is visible from space, is already considered critically endangered.
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10/08/2026 - 12:00
Complaints risks putting defence ministry on collision course with Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
The Ministry of Defence has objected to at least four planned windfarms in the past year over fears the spinning blades could cause “unacceptable interference” with radars used to detect military aircraft.
MoD officials raised concerns in late June over plans for an onshore windfarm in County Durham that could result in aircraft “not being detected” within an RAF Low Flying Area, according to a letter to Britain’s planning authority.
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10/08/2026 - 11:11
Free-roaming Aldabra population far exceeds human population of Seychelles after decades-long recovery programme
A survey of the world’s largest free-roaming giant tortoise population has discovered that the once endangered species is thriving.
A population of Aldabra giant tortoises lives on an island in Seychelles called Aldabra Atoll.
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10/08/2026 - 10:05
A new global biodiversity report strikes an encouraging note. But we cannot rest on our laurels – and resilience is key
The new Living Planet Report is out. Published every two years, it assesses the health of the natural world and, historically, it’s made for gloomy reading.
Take 2024’s report, which showed global wildlife populations had plummeted by 73% in 50 years and that ecosystems were being pushed toward collapse.
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10/08/2026 - 06:00
Claudia Galeno-Sánchez has turned her home into a sanctuary for the insects by planting native milkweed and wildflowers – and sharing her experience
Along the concrete streets of Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, a vividly colored home stands out among the rest.
Over the past few years, Claudia Galeno-Sánchez has transformed her modest family home, which she shares with her husband and two children, into a sanctuary and educational space dedicated to the monarch butterfly.
Galeno-Sánchez painted her home with the help of neighbors, her kids, and the renowned muralist and painter Héctor Duarte.
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