“To cover up 1 high level report … looks odd,” remarked Caroline Lucas, the former leader of the UK’s Green Party. “To cover up 2 looks like a pattern.” Lucas was commenting on reporting in the Guardian revealing that the Labour government was again burying an explosive report by UK military and intelligence leaders warning that the global collapse of ecosystems poses grave threats to the UK’s security and food supply within as little as five years.
The UK “has no future” if it cannot “restore the natural world on which we rely for our food, water, and clean air,” said Chris Hinchliff, who is among the members of parliament pressing the government to release the full report, rather than a shorter, redacted version. Even that version, which was obtained by The Guardian’s Fiona Harvey, “paints a devastating picture of severe food shortages, price rises, migration, political destabilisation, and possible war, resulting from the collapse of ecosystems, fuelled by the human-induced climate crisis and over-exploitation,” Harvey wrote.
Meanwhile, massive wildfires in France and Spain have been forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate — and prompting forthright counter measures from governments. In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the fires were effects of the “climate emergency.” For the second year in a row, the prime minister responded to ferocious wildfires by calling on political parties across the ideological spectrum “to reach an agreement, a State pact, to address the climate emergency.”
As if to validate the UK spy chiefs’ report in real time, food production in Europe is already suffering from the extreme heat of recent weeks, which has been “sucking soils dry.” France’s maize harvest is the lowest in 50 years; across Europe, nine million tons of grain have been lost. Such losses are of particular concern for the UK, which imports much of its food.
The UK report is notable for highlighting not only climate change but the related problem of biodiversity loss and collapsing ecosystems. For example, scientists have warned that continued logging and high temperatures are pushing the Amazon rainforest toward an irreversible shift into a savannah. That would drive further climate chaos as the Amazon transforms from an absorber into an emitter of carbon.
Aides to former Labour prime minister Keir Starmer twice quashed plans to release the UK report, Harvey reported, allegedly for fear that the climate denying Reform UK Party would attack Labour for putting climate concerns ahead of the cost of living. Climate denial persists in the UK media as well: Even as wildfires scorched Europe, the front page of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times (of London) featured a rant against the net-zero emissions goal that scientists say is essential to preserving a livable planet. And across Europe, most news outlets are still not reporting that climate change is what is driving these fires and heatwaves, even as the outlets illustrate their stories with “fun in the sun” images of people at the beach. “The pictures do not convey the severity of the moment Europe finds itself in,” observed Al Jazeera English.
Andy Burnham, who replaced Starmer as prime minister on July 20, has yet to speak publicly about the buried report or climate change in general. He has said, however, that he remains open to approving increased drilling for oil and gas of Britain’s coast in the North Sea. This, as the smoke from wildfires in France and Spain — and in Scotland in the UK — is estimated to cause “well over 100,000 excess deaths globally,” according to Dr. Theodore Keeping of Imperial College London.
Covering Climate Now’s 89 Percent Project spotlights the reality that 80 to 89% of the world’s people want their governments to take stronger climate action. In this summer of smoke and fire, the public is waiting for their politicians and their press to respond. “Voters are much more tuned into this than most of our [elected] representatives are,” author George Monbiot said on the UK’s Channel 4. “And indeed than most of the media is.”
From Us
RSVP! Climate Blueprint: Don’t Underestimate the Impact of Climate Stories. Join CCNow and Solutions Journalism Network on Tuesday, August 4, at 12pm US Eastern Time (4pm UTC) for a special conversation about tracking the impact of reporting by connecting with audiences, based on the collaborative Climate Blueprint project.
RSVP! CCNow Basics: Three Pillars. Join us on Wednesday, August 12, at 10am US Eastern Time (2pm UTC), for a training session on CCNow’s Three Pillars approach to covering climate change: humanize, localize, solution-ize. All journalists, especially early-career reporters, are welcome!
Apply: The Covering Climate Now Academy. The CCNow Academy gives journalists real tools, real stories, and real support. From misinformation to heat, and from tech to justice. We’re now accepting applications for our free three-month training program that runs from September to December 2026. Apply by Tuesday, August 11.
Watch: Wildfires & Climate: Experts Help You Get the Story Right. In this live conversation, moderated by Sammy Roth of Climate-Colored Goggles, panelists discussed the role climate change is playing in making wildfires bigger and more severe, how the press is covering the story, and how to identify the many contributors to wildfire activity.
Radar Clima: ¿Es plantar árboles la solución al cambio climático? En la última edición de nuestro boletín en español para periodistas de todas las áreas, te damos las claves para cubrir la reforestación con precisión: cuánta tierra hay realmente disponible, qué revelan los datos satelitales sobre los grandes programas nacionales y por qué conservar suele ser mejor que plantar. Échale un vistazo a las ediciones anteriores y suscríbete para recibir el boletín los miércoles.
Noteworthy Stories
Weather whiplash. A rapid shift from wet to dry weather, a signature of climate change, helped fuel the southern European wildfires that have displaced more than 300,000 people, say scientists. Wet winter weather increased forest vegetation and record-low spring rain followed by summer heatwaves turned it into kindling. From Yale360…
- Typhoons and extreme rainfall brought flash flooding across Asia last week, collapsing houses and wiping out entire villages in Afghanistan and Bangladesh, destroying crops in Taiwan, and triggering landslides in Japan and Vietnam. By Natasha May and Jonathan Watts for The Guardian…
Investment risks. The CEO of Morgan Stanley Capital International has issued a warning to CEOs and investors blinded by short-term profit lust: Take climate change into account, or your investment failures will be your own fault. By Alastair Marsh and Ruth David for Bloomberg Green…
- Also this week, Emiliya Mychasuk writes in the Financial Times’ Moral Money newsletter about European investors divesting from US funds that have abandoned ESG pledges.
Farmers devastated. “In Zimbabwe, I see firsthand how rising temperatures have killed crops and animals, spread disease, and destroyed the lives of entire communities. We need action on climate change now.” By Andrew Mambondiyani for Current Affairs…
Talking climate. New polling from The 2035 Initiative, a climate policy research center at UC Santa Barbara, suggests that the Democratic Party’s “climate hushing” is not a winning strategy and that US voters would welcome candidates talking about climate action. By Kate Yoder for Grist… (Note: This story is republishable for partners, via our Sharing Library.)
Landmark book. Dorceta Taylor, the Wangari Maathai professor of environmental sociology at Yale University, has spent decades refuting the idea that caring about the environment “wasn’t a Black thing.” Now, she’s helping rewrite the history of environmental justice as the editor of a new, landmark encyclopedia, out this month. By Jenae Barnes for The 19th News…
Quote of the Week
“As we watch, the climate is changing our planet in ways we are only just beginning to comprehend, giving us a glimpse of our planet’s future that eventually may be unrecognizable. The sooner we replace fossil fuels with renewables, the more likely we are to have a planet in 2100 that still resembles the one we know and love today.”
– Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University
On the Beat
HEATED’s founder, Emily Atkin, talks with Future Earth Catalog about why she left mainstream journalism to be able to write authentically about climate, the problem with fossil fuel advertising, the right-wing billionaire takeover of US media, and finding joy in individual climate action.
POLITICO announces Surge, a new global energy newsletter focused on the politics and policy of rising electricity demands.
Resources & Events
- RSVP: “Digital News Report 2026: North American Edition Webinar” with Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism TODAY, Thursday, July 30 at 12pm US Eastern Time (4pm UTC).
- “Mid-2026 Update: U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters” (Climate Central)
- “Taking Stock 2026: US Energy and Emissions Outlook” (Rhodium Group)
- “Increasingly hot Europe faces more severe droughts and growing challenges for water and land management” (World Weather Attribution)
- “Polling: Politicians Shouldn’t Hide From Climate” (UC Santa Barbara’s The 2035 Initiative)
- “Americans Now Overwhelmingly Oppose New Data Centers Near Them” (Heatmap Pro poll)
- “Canada’s 2023 wildfire smoke caused a 2.8 percent drop in solar power generation, costing two billion dollars” (Nature Communications Earth & Environment)
- “The Best Time to Post on LinkedIn in 2026: 4.8 Million Posts Analyzed” (Buffer Report)
- RSVP: “The Cost of Cooling: How Rising Heat is Raising Energy Bills” with Climate Central, on Wednesday, August 5, at 12pm US Eastern Time (4pm UTC)
- RSVP: “Communicating through change: Policy, perception, and growth in the clean energy transition” with Latitude Media, on Wednesday, August 12, at 12pm US Eastern Time (4pm UTC)
Jobs, Etc.
Jobs. The Globe & Mail is hiring an Energy Reporter (Ottawa, Canada). Fuller is contracting a Commissioning Editor for nine months of maternity leave cover (with the possibility of extension to 12 months, remote). The Santa Barbara News-Press is hiring a Climate, Environment & Water Reporter (Santa Barbara, Calif.). The Texas Tribune is hiring an Immigration, Environment, and Climate Editor (remote in Texas).
Fellowships & Grants. Earth Journalism Network has a number of grant and workshop opportunities; various deadlines. The Metcalf Institute is accepting applications from New England journalists for its Climate Ready Newsrooms Fellowship for Local Journalism; apply by July 31. Climate Tracker and Oxfam are offering five $500 reporting grants for stories about women and just transition in Latin America for journalists from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil; apply by August 2. The Pulitzer Center is accepting applications for its Climate Storytelling Accelerator; apply by August 14. Investigative Reporters & Editors is accepting applications for The Chauncey Bailey Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship; apply by September 1.