Environmental campaigners have warned a move to open up new areas of the North Sea for exploration by oil and gas firms is “dangerous”.

While the UK government has recently committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) – which became a government company in 2016 – announced the latest round of licensing applications.

A total of 768 blocks or part blocks are being made available for exploration in different areas of the UK Continental Shelf.

Emergency

While the OGA argues oil and gas will “remain an important part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future”, WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said the move undermines efforts to tackle the climate emergency and is “totally irresponsible”.

He said: “We instead need to see a just transition that enables us to harness the engineering skills currently deployed in the oil and gas industry and apply them to supporting a range of cleaner forms of energy production.

“The science is clear. To reduce the risk of dangerous global climate change, the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground unburned.”

That message was echoed by a spokesman for the Scottish Green Party, who said: “Given the UN have said we have 11 years before climate change becomes irreversible, this decision is unsustainable and dangerous.

“If we are serious about tackling the climate emergency head-on, a just transition needs to start right now, not after we’ve extracted every last bit of oil and gas.

Basin

“There needs to be an acknowledgement from Government and industry that maximum economic extraction of oil and gas cannot happen if we’re going to turn this around. That means investment in the alternatives and securing jobs has to step up immediately.

“We can’t burn all the reserves we already know about, and we should not kid ourselves on that further exploration is a responsible option.”

But Jo Bagguley, principal regional geologist at the OGA, said the “latest release of carefully targeted, value-adding data demonstrates the OGA’s continued commitment to supporting industry in its efforts to revitalise exploration”.

As part of the licensing process, the OGA is making a “significant amount” of data available, with this having involved collaboration with 11 companies, and including details from more than 90,000 geochemical samples from 2,700 wells.

She added: “We’re particularly excited about the geochemical database and the release of the Southern North Sea megasurvey and look forward to seeing these, and the other released data packs, being used to good effect to support both 32nd licensing round applications and ongoing exploration activity in the basin.”

This Author

Katrine Bussey is the PA Scotland political editor.

Environmental campaigners have warned a move to open up new areas of the North Sea for exploration by oil and gas firms is “dangerous”.

While the UK government has recently committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) – which became a government company in 2016 – announced the latest round of licensing applications.

A total of 768 blocks or part blocks are being made available for exploration in different areas of the UK Continental Shelf.

Emergency

While the OGA argues oil and gas will “remain an important part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future”, WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said the move undermines efforts to tackle the climate emergency and is “totally irresponsible”.

He said: “We instead need to see a just transition that enables us to harness the engineering skills currently deployed in the oil and gas industry and apply them to supporting a range of cleaner forms of energy production.

“The science is clear. To reduce the risk of dangerous global climate change, the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground unburned.”

That message was echoed by a spokesman for the Scottish Green Party, who said: “Given the UN have said we have 11 years before climate change becomes irreversible, this decision is unsustainable and dangerous.

“If we are serious about tackling the climate emergency head-on, a just transition needs to start right now, not after we’ve extracted every last bit of oil and gas.

Basin

“There needs to be an acknowledgement from Government and industry that maximum economic extraction of oil and gas cannot happen if we’re going to turn this around. That means investment in the alternatives and securing jobs has to step up immediately.

“We can’t burn all the reserves we already know about, and we should not kid ourselves on that further exploration is a responsible option.”

But Jo Bagguley, principal regional geologist at the OGA, said the “latest release of carefully targeted, value-adding data demonstrates the OGA’s continued commitment to supporting industry in its efforts to revitalise exploration”.

As part of the licensing process, the OGA is making a “significant amount” of data available, with this having involved collaboration with 11 companies, and including details from more than 90,000 geochemical samples from 2,700 wells.

She added: “We’re particularly excited about the geochemical database and the release of the Southern North Sea megasurvey and look forward to seeing these, and the other released data packs, being used to good effect to support both 32nd licensing round applications and ongoing exploration activity in the basin.”

This Author

Katrine Bussey is the PA Scotland political editor.

Environmental campaigners have warned a move to open up new areas of the North Sea for exploration by oil and gas firms is “dangerous”.

While the UK government has recently committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) – which became a government company in 2016 – announced the latest round of licensing applications.

A total of 768 blocks or part blocks are being made available for exploration in different areas of the UK Continental Shelf.

Emergency

While the OGA argues oil and gas will “remain an important part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future”, WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said the move undermines efforts to tackle the climate emergency and is “totally irresponsible”.

He said: “We instead need to see a just transition that enables us to harness the engineering skills currently deployed in the oil and gas industry and apply them to supporting a range of cleaner forms of energy production.

“The science is clear. To reduce the risk of dangerous global climate change, the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground unburned.”

That message was echoed by a spokesman for the Scottish Green Party, who said: “Given the UN have said we have 11 years before climate change becomes irreversible, this decision is unsustainable and dangerous.

“If we are serious about tackling the climate emergency head-on, a just transition needs to start right now, not after we’ve extracted every last bit of oil and gas.

Basin

“There needs to be an acknowledgement from Government and industry that maximum economic extraction of oil and gas cannot happen if we’re going to turn this around. That means investment in the alternatives and securing jobs has to step up immediately.

“We can’t burn all the reserves we already know about, and we should not kid ourselves on that further exploration is a responsible option.”

But Jo Bagguley, principal regional geologist at the OGA, said the “latest release of carefully targeted, value-adding data demonstrates the OGA’s continued commitment to supporting industry in its efforts to revitalise exploration”.

As part of the licensing process, the OGA is making a “significant amount” of data available, with this having involved collaboration with 11 companies, and including details from more than 90,000 geochemical samples from 2,700 wells.

She added: “We’re particularly excited about the geochemical database and the release of the Southern North Sea megasurvey and look forward to seeing these, and the other released data packs, being used to good effect to support both 32nd licensing round applications and ongoing exploration activity in the basin.”

This Author

Katrine Bussey is the PA Scotland political editor.

Environmental campaigners have warned a move to open up new areas of the North Sea for exploration by oil and gas firms is “dangerous”.

While the UK government has recently committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) – which became a government company in 2016 – announced the latest round of licensing applications.

A total of 768 blocks or part blocks are being made available for exploration in different areas of the UK Continental Shelf.

Emergency

While the OGA argues oil and gas will “remain an important part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future”, WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said the move undermines efforts to tackle the climate emergency and is “totally irresponsible”.

He said: “We instead need to see a just transition that enables us to harness the engineering skills currently deployed in the oil and gas industry and apply them to supporting a range of cleaner forms of energy production.

“The science is clear. To reduce the risk of dangerous global climate change, the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground unburned.”

That message was echoed by a spokesman for the Scottish Green Party, who said: “Given the UN have said we have 11 years before climate change becomes irreversible, this decision is unsustainable and dangerous.

“If we are serious about tackling the climate emergency head-on, a just transition needs to start right now, not after we’ve extracted every last bit of oil and gas.

Basin

“There needs to be an acknowledgement from Government and industry that maximum economic extraction of oil and gas cannot happen if we’re going to turn this around. That means investment in the alternatives and securing jobs has to step up immediately.

“We can’t burn all the reserves we already know about, and we should not kid ourselves on that further exploration is a responsible option.”

But Jo Bagguley, principal regional geologist at the OGA, said the “latest release of carefully targeted, value-adding data demonstrates the OGA’s continued commitment to supporting industry in its efforts to revitalise exploration”.

As part of the licensing process, the OGA is making a “significant amount” of data available, with this having involved collaboration with 11 companies, and including details from more than 90,000 geochemical samples from 2,700 wells.

She added: “We’re particularly excited about the geochemical database and the release of the Southern North Sea megasurvey and look forward to seeing these, and the other released data packs, being used to good effect to support both 32nd licensing round applications and ongoing exploration activity in the basin.”

This Author

Katrine Bussey is the PA Scotland political editor.

Back-to-back heatwaves in the central Indian Ocean killed more than two-thirds of corals in two years, a study has shown.

But the research by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) suggests some corals were more resilient to the high sea temperatures, which could provide hope for the important habitat as the planet warms.

Scientists studied reefs in the remote Chagos Archipelago of the British Indian Ocean Territory before and after two ocean heatwaves with unusually high sea temperatures, which came 12 months apart.

Killed

Surveying of the seafloor between 2015 and 2017 found that the high sea temperatures led to the loss of 70% of the hard corals, the study published in the journal Coral Reefs suggests.

In 2015, seawater temperatures around reefs in the territory were unusually high for nearly eight weeks, and the seafloor surveys before and after the heatwave saw live healthy coral cover fall by 60 percent.

Before the corals could recover, they were hit by another ocean heatwave in 2016, lasting for more than four months.

Although researchers were unable to assess the impact of the second heatwave across all the islands of the archipelago, data from the Peros Banhos Atoll show 68% of the remaining corals were bleached and 29 percent died.

This suggests around 70 percent of hard corals were lost between 2015 and 2017. But while the second heatwave lasted longer, fewer of the surviving corals were killed.

Compromised

Researchers suggest the remaining corals are more resilient to rising temperatures and their ability to survive may be key to protecting reefs from rises in sea temperatures driven by global warming.

Hard corals are the building blocks of reefs which provide a home for around a quarter of all marine species and food, protection and income for some 500 million people worldwide.

Similar coral death and changes to the make-up of species in the reef were seen in the Chagos Archipelago following global coral bleaching in 1998, from which recovery took 10 years, the study said.

The relatively rapid recovery suggests the reef is highly resilient and the lack of disturbance it has from humans – as a result of the UK’s controversial removal of local people to make way for a US military base – increases the probability the reefs will recover again over time.

But as these kinds of heatwaves become more frequent, the ability to recover will become “increasingly compromised”, the study said.

Catastrophic

Marine biologist and lead author, Dr Catherine Head of ZSL’s Institute of Zoology, said: “We know it has taken about 10 years for these reefs to recover in the past but, with global temperatures rising, severe heatwaves are becoming a more regular occurrence, which will hinder the reef’s ability to bounce back.

“Our data shows the event in 2016 was worse than in 2015, but it did less damage.

“We think this is because the 2015 heatwave killed off the more vulnerable species, and those that survived were more tolerant of hotter temperatures.”

She said preliminary reports from April 2019 suggest another period of high sea temperatures has led to further coral bleaching in the British Indian Ocean Territory, though it is not yet known how serious it is.

“It is encouraging that reefs may have some degree of natural resilience, though further research is needed to understand the mechanisms by which some corals are able to protect themselves,” she said. “This may be our best hope to save these vital habitats from the catastrophic effects of climate change.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent agency under the federal government in the United States that focuses on all things related to safeguarding the environment, including enforcing environmental quality regulations. However, some people assert that the EPA falls short in that area.

As a result, individuals, wildlife and entire communities could be at risk for the ramifications that come about when regulations are loose or non-existent. Insufficient rules might also trigger more substantial issues that are not immediately apparent, but severe nonetheless.

It’s common for people to argue that the EPA needs to step up its regulatory efforts without getting into specifics. However, here are a few concrete things that the EPA could do to improve regulations for environmental quality.

More Accountability

The EPA, along with other federal organizations, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) conduct environmental quality inspections and alert organizations to potential hazards. But, evidence suggests that those checks do not happen frequently enough, and perhaps, the EPA downplays the severity of issues that worry residents the most.

A document published by the Office of the Inspector General shows that the EPA did not carry out adequate evaluations to check for asbestos levels in schools from 2011 through 2015. The agency conducted only 13% of the inspections required under the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act during that timespan. The EPA blamed budget cuts for the issue, but in any case, the lack of inspections means the parties to blame are not necessarily held accountable.

On a related note, the EPA conducted soil tests in 2009 and selected North Birmingham, Alabama as a Superfund site, which means it has hazardous waste contamination and got designated by the EPA as a candidate for cleanup due to the risks caused to human health and the environment.

But, residents allege that the EPA isn’t doing enough to check that progress happens in the community. Dozens of residents have chronic health conditions, and even as residents say that environmental conditions are to blame, government reports don’t mention that aspect.

The EPA’s cleanup operation is ongoing, and people say the organization is not cracking down hard enough on the contributing parties. Indeed, if the entities causing the problems don’t receive punishments for their actions, they likely won’t be motivated to change their operations very much, if at all.

Fewer Delays

The EPA also receives criticism due to complaints that regulatory reform takes too long to happen. Concerning improvements to the New Source Review (NSR) air construction permitting process whereby construction projects associated with stationary polluters must receive permits before commencing, small-scale actions initially happened about once per month. But now, the EPA seems to be in a rain-delay period regarding its reform actions in 2019.

Personnel changes and the lessons learned from previous legal pushbacks brought about by environmental groups may be among the root causes of the EPA’s noticeable slowness. Additionally, it’s possible that the EPA would rather issue rules to follow instead of merely giving guidance, and that action takes comparatively more time to implement.

Alarming delays occur for things under the EPA’s control not related to air pollution, too. For example, the EPA will take action on nonstick chemicals that pollute drinking water by the end of 2019, and critics say that timeframe is too generous.

There is also an assortment of state governments trying to take more decisive action to combat climate change. Colorado and California are among the states where leaders set specific climate change mitigation targets in response to the delayed response from the EPA to do so — likely because members of the current Administration deny that global warming is a serious issue.

The lack of prompt action mentioned here is only a sampling of how the EPA is, in the eyes of many, failing to swiftly mandate corrections. If the agency improved in this area, environmental quality issues would almost certainly improve.

Tighter Rules

It’s also worth highlighting some instances where the EPA shows signs of loosening or not enforcing the rules adequately against entities that cause pollution. This matter is similar to the one mentioned in the earlier section about accountability, but it more often allows companies to continue operating in ways that degrade environmental quality without getting penalized.

For example, in June 2019, an EPA chief eased the restrictions on coal-fired power plants initially put in place during Barack Obama’s presidency. This decision happened despite the EPA’s internal analysis that the air pollution from these facilities could result in up to 1,500 more deaths per year by 2030.

Also, researchers compiled a list of more than 80 environmental rules that got rolled back under the Trump Administration. That means coal power plant operators are not the only parties that could potentially cause detrimental effects to environmental quality without officially doing anything wrong.

A study released in February 2019 also suggests that the EPA is less aggressive when polluters do break the rules — and here’s where accountability comes into play again. The research revealed an 80 percent drop in the penalties the EPA brought against offenders. Plus, the amount of injunctive relief — money paid by those at fault to fix issues and stop them from happening again — reached a 15-year low.

The issues brought up here indicate that, in various ways, the EPA is moving in the wrong direction when curbing environmental quality issues. Instead of acting in ways that make violators want to remedy their actions, EPA representatives far too often behave in ways that make the perpetrators believe they won’t face the consequences, perpetuate delays that let years pass before remediation happens and allow the guilty parties to look forward to looser regulations.

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.

As a movement Extinction Rebellion has consciously used the power of nonviolent civil disobedience as an embodied practice of love asking for the needs of the Earth and all its living splendour to be safeguarded.

The work of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and Marshall Rosenberg’s nonviolent communication or peaceful communication, are nourishing reference points for Extinction Rebellion.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Modern politics, religious dogma and culture at large have bred a tremendously violent language. We have become trapped in moralistic judgements implying wrongness or badness on the part of people who don’t act in harmony with our values. In focusing our attention on classifying and diagnosing the behaviour of ‘the other’ to then blame and shame, we have become lost to our feelings and needs and thus our ability to respond to each other with honesty and integrity.

Political discourse

This way of being in the world has created a fortress around our hearts to enable us to cope with the consequent feelings of disconnection, dis-ease, separation and powerlessness. Essentially, we are in constant inner and outer conflict, suffering under micro-violences day after day.

We have hardly noticed how the language of war dominates our ‘peaceful’ campaigns. Let me confess to the struggle and vulnerability within our fledgling movement. We have at times described our collaboration work as building ‘allies’, but then through exploring our truth we have discovered our need for the re-weaving of the whole human family so that actually we are building relatives and embracing our relations.

The roots of the language of our conditioned separation run as deep as the chemicals poisoning our soil and water.

As we shift the Overton window, as per XR strategy, we also seek to shift our current dysfunctional paradigm (encased in a violent language) because in reality there is no fragmentation between the natural, the spiritual and the social. They are one integrated whole.

We cannot shift our value systems for the natural world without moving normal political discourse, and we cannot shift political discourse without shifting the spiritual and moral discourse. We can then no longer act as arbiters of right and wrong and instead we become peacemakers between all that divides us.

Heart lines

What feels as beautifully clear as a dawn chorus, within and around XR today, is that in nurturing our capacity for nonviolent language or compassionate communication as an internal and external process we have been able to cultivate relationships that have opened doors to people’s hearts, including the hearts of policemen and policewomen during our 11 days of mass rebellion.

Not only this, but we also have liberated individual and collective curiosity, imagination and creativity and thus our desire to co-create a language fitting for our transition to what Joanna Macy describes as ‘The Great Turning’.

Whether as witness or arrestee, we are changed by the experience of XR’s nonviolent civil disobedience in both word and deed. The edge of transformation and the nonviolent language this requires are now in sight.

A good example of this is our description of the ‘heart lines’. The rows of people at the edge of disobedience on our sites in London were not the front lines. They were hearts in unison – our heart lines.

When we attached ourselves to Jeremy Corbyn’s fence with our chocolate Easter egg and flowers, we were love-showering, not ‘occupying’ or love-‘bombing’, and as we induct people into the movement and we train our rebels in direct action we learn about the values, principles and practice of nonviolent communication in all we do and say.

Tipping point

Together, we are exploring and ushering in a more comprehensive language of nonviolence. The further construction of this language for disobedience will require a presence of heart intelligence from where we can source our courage to choose to speak this language.

The tipping point, paradigm shift or full turning will involve a profound adoption of nonviolent language.

In this moment as we grieve for being at the edge of the collapse of this civilisation we can also celebrate our joy at reaching the edge of transformation. We are at the edge of the abyss between paradigms and we have started to build the bridge.

Today XR, along with our relatives, has the permission to act as a bridge maker. With nonviolent language as an essential tool, we can accelerate the realisation of our interconnectedness and our remembering of our instinct to protect and nurture what we love and that which loves and sustains us.

This Author

Skeena Finebaum-Rathor is Vision Coordinator for Extinction Rebellion and is a Labour councillor. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Image: Sarah Cresswell.

The empirical data and theoretical literature is both overwhelmingly clear and sobering: there is no evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures on anywhere near the scale needed to deal with environmental breakdown.

This is the conclusion of the new report, Decoupling debunked: Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability.

The authors also explain that there are at least seven reasons to be sceptical about the occurrence of sufficient decoupling in the future: rising energy expenditures, rebound effects, problem shifting, the underestimated impact of services, limited recycling potential, insufficient and inappropriate technological change, and cost shifting.

The fact that decoupling on its own, without addressing the issue of economic growth, has not been and will not be sufficient to reduce environmental pressures to the required extent is not a reason to oppose decoupling (in the literal sense of separating the environmental pressures curve from the GDP curve) or the measures that achieve decoupling.

Quite the contrary, without many such measures the situation would be far worse. In other words, decoupling shifts us from racing down the fast lane to cruising along the slow lane, which is an improvement. But to get off the highway, we need to do more.

The true cause for concern is the predominant focus among policy-makers on green growth as a panacea, with this focus being based on the flawed assumption that sufficient decoupling can be achieved through increased efficiency without limiting economic production and consumption.

Sustained growth is not sustainable

This scientific finding is strongly at odds with the eighth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG8), which aims to “promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth”.

While almost all SDGs have very important goals and targets that humanity desperately needs to achieve, SDG8’s pursuit of the economic growth is undermining the possibly of achieving the others.

The question now is whether governments will be willing to act upon the best available scientific evidence when they review SDG8 on 10 July in New York.

Countries such as Finland have already reacted to this contradiction within the SDGs by downgrading the importance of GDP growth in their plan to achieve the SDGs, but the EU as a bloc has yet to admit that there is a problem with target 1 in SDG8.

Researchers have some ideas about the truly sustainable way forward. The main conclusion of ‘Decoupling debunked’ is that increasing efficiency only makes sense if it is part of a wider pursuit of sufficiency, which is the direct downscaling of economic production and consumption in those sectors where it is needed most.

In the view of the authors and based on the best available scientific evidence, only sufficiency strategies respect the EU’s ‘precautionary principle’.

This Author

Nick Meynen is policy officer for Environmental and Economic Justice at the European Environmental Bureau. He authored several books on the environment and he comments on global environmental and economic issues on Facebook and Twitter.

The report, Decoupling Debunked. Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability, was produced by the EEB, with the support of the German Alliance for Nature Conservation (Deutscher Naturschutzring), in the context of the EEB’s work on economic transition in the context of the Make Europe Sustainable for All (MESA) project. It was released on 9 July and can be downloaded at https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/

London’s climate will be more like Barcelona’s by 2050, according to an analysis which illustrates the impacts of global warming on major cities.

An evaluation of the world’s 520 major cities by the Crowther Lab indicates more than three-quarters will experience a striking change in climate conditions by 2050 compared with today.

It finds more than a fifth, including Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, will experience unprecedented conditions that major conurbations have not seen before.

Beliefs

London’s climate in 2050 will be more similar to Barcelona’s current conditions, while Edinburgh’s will be more like Paris is now, and Cardiff will be more similar to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, it suggests.

The researchers say that pairing up cities in this way can help people visualise the impact of climate change in their own lives.

For example, London could face the kind of extreme drought conditions that hit Barcelona in 2008, with severe implications for the Spanish city’s population and major economic costs from importing £20 million of drinking water.

The research projects what the 520 current cities’ climate will most closely resemble by 2050, under an “optimistic” scenario where action is taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Jean-Francois Bastin, lead author of the research paper, said: “History has repeatedly shown us that data and facts alone do not inspire humans to change their beliefs or act.

Visualising

“The intangible nature of reporting on climate change fails to adequately convey the urgency of the issue – for example, it is hard to envision how 2C of warming, or changes in average temperature by 2100 might impact daily life.

“With this analysis from Crowther Lab scientists, we want to help people visualise the impact of climate change in their own city, within their lifetime.”

The study, published in the journal PLOS One, suggests summers and winters in Europe will get warmer, with average increases of 3.5C and 4.7C respectively – equivalent to a city shifting 1,000km (620 miles) further south.

Commenting on the study, Professor Richard Betts, from the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter, said: “This study helps to put climate change in the context of human experience – and more importantly, shows that many places will see entirely new climates that are outside of current human experience.”

Professor Mike Lockwood, from the University of Reading, said the study was really useful in visualising climate change, but warned against overlooking huge infrastructure issues caused by changes to the climate of the world’s cities.

Rainfall

“For example, bringing Barcelona’s climate to London sounds like it could be a good thing – if you don’t suffer from asthma or have a heart condition, that is – except London clay shrinks and is brittle if it gets too dry and then swells and expands when very wet.

“The greater swings in ground moisture expected in a warmer world would cause massive subsidence problems. As ever, there is destructive and unforeseen devil in the details of climate change.”

Dr Grant Allen, atmospheric physicist at the University of Manchester, said there was also the issue of extreme weather events becoming more frequent, particularly in terms of intense rainfall for the UK.

“While the mean climate may well become much like Barcelona, which presents its own chronic challenges for UK ecosystems and infrastructure, the science concerning the changing chances of extreme weather events is much less certain and recent evidence is a cause for alarm,” he said.

Professor Gabi Hegerl, from the University of Edinburgh, said: “The study considers some aspects of extremes but doesn’t capture individual events like unprecedented heatwaves, droughts and heavy rainfall or flooding. Also, sea level rise will add to the difficulties faced by many of these cities.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent.

Britons could spend more than £2.7 billion this year on tens of millions of summer outfits they will wear only once, a survey suggests.

Consumers are set to spend £800 million on 10 million wedding outfits they will wear once, £700 million on single-use holiday clothes, and millions more on items for events such as barbecues, festivals and balls or other formal events, the poll for Barnardo’s indicates.

Must Read: Climate emergency and creative industries.

It found that one in four people is embarrassed to wear an outfit to a special occasion more than once, rising to 37 percent of 16 to 24-year-olds, with the children’s charity suggesting that “this needs to change”.

Vulnerable

Just 12 percent of over-55s reported feeling any embarrassment over wearing an outfit more than once. More than half of consumers said buying new clothes for a festival or holiday added to the excitement of the build-up.

In response, Barnardo’s is launching an in-store booklet with tips on finding and styling occasion wear from its shops. It is also releasing a short film with tips from experts on sustainable fashion.

The charity is urging people to consider “pre-loved” clothes or visit its shops for second-hand options to cut the estimated 50.3 million single-use outfits expected to be bought this year, warning that current levels of throwaway fashion are “wasteful, expensive and unsustainable”.

Barnardo’s chief executive Javed Khan said: “Choosing to buy pre-loved clothes for a special occasion from a Barnardo’s shop is kinder to the environment and your wallet, getting more wear out of clothes which might otherwise only be worn once and end up in landfill.

“Buying from Barnardo’s also means you will be helping to transform the lives of vulnerable children across the UK.” Censuswide surveyed 2,000 people aged 16 and over online between June 3 and 5.

This Author

Josie Clarke is the PA consumer affairs correspondent.