Awesome, unexpected and unforgettable: a sudden bolt of silver as a tuna jumped clear of the sea. Nobody else saw it, and I (Angus Atkinson) almost thought I was hallucinating. But since I first saw one from a boat just off the south Devon coast ten years ago, Atlantic bluefin tuna have steadily increased in the southwest UK. Last year I even saw them from the shore, and tuna now supports a local fishery.
Tuna is not the only species to make a rapid change in the southwest UK about a decade ago. Blue, thresher and porbeagle sharks suddenly increased dramatically. Spiny lobsters suddenly increased. Meanwhile basking sharks and many important fish species like cod and pollack declined. What is going on?
Fortunately, in the southwest UK, help is at hand. Not only does this peninsula host some of the most complete long-term recordings of observations in the UK, we also have a burgeoning network of marine observers.
This was the brainchild of marine consultant Bob Earll, who 15 years ago set up a network called South West Marine Ecosystems. This links scientists, marine charities, fishermen, conservation trusts, managers and citizen scientists many of whom have natural history skills to match the best. This network enables members to more easily share observations and recordings about marine life.
Alongside established high-tech and long-term monitoring such as at the Western Channel Observatory (a set of sampling sites at sea within a 30-mile-radius from Plymouth), many pairs of eyes are looking at the sea along the entire coast of this peninsula. Each year we meet and put data together to report on the status of everything in the marine ecosystem, whether it swims, crawls or flies, and from nutrients right up to the numbers of stranded whales.
South West Marine Ecosystems’ annual reports and annual conferences put the previous year’s observations into the context of all that has gone before. That includes strange new events such as the 2025 octopus outburst. This near-real time reporting, with everyone comparing notes, provided a lightbulb moment: these species shifts were not continuous but seemed to be concentrated into a short intense period of massive change around 2014 to 2016.
In the southwest UK, tuna have increased to the extent that they support a tightly regulated fishery, with a UK catch quota of 230 tonnes for 2026-28. Fishing is always an emotive subject, and some people say we should be leaving these beautiful animals alone.
Kayakers have a close encounter with tuna while photographing marine wildlife off the coast of Devon in 2024.
A recent announcement by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) offers some hope that tuna fisheries worldwide are moving in the right direction.
The MSC endorses those seafood sources that have been harvested sustainably, meaning that they abide by the rules of well-managed fisheries based on scientific advice, with minimal collateral ecological damage. This most recent announcement shows an important positive result: the proportion of tuna products available with an MSC endorsement has just risen to nearly 50%, compared to less than 20% only five years ago.
Remarkably, tuna has just overtaken cod as the main seafood bought in the UK. This probably reflects the increasing availability of more sustainably-sourced tuna and sharply declining cod stocks.
A state of flux
Managing these fisheries involves treading that tightrope between allowing livelihoods for the fishing industry, but allowing the whole ecosystem to flourish. The challenges of climate change, shifting distributions and fishing pressure combine into a real headache to manage fisheries responsibly.
Abrupt shifts in ecosystems, as we have witnessed in the southwest of the UK, are critical for fisheries management. In just a few years an ecosystem can lurch into a different operating space with different species and links.
Computer simulation models of ecosystems can broadly project how food webs might respond to the average pace of climate change. Importantly, these models are notoriously poor for predicting abrupt shifts, often known as regime shifts, that punctuate the steadier pace of change.
With these challenges, fisheries managers need all the help they can get to understand abrupt ecosystem shifts. The tuna increase was well documented by South West Marine Ecosystems. The success of this network means that similar programmes are spinning up around the other coasts of the UK.
Similar initiatives are underway elsewhere. The Norwegian Institute of Marine Research provides a data network from public reporting of jellyfish increases, which are important for the management of Norwegian aquaculture.
Joined-up science efforts like South West Marine Ecosystems, alongside long-term scientific monitoring studies and, of course, traditional fish stock assessments, will help us know better whether tuna should stay on the menu.
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The Climate Change Committee report called for air conditioning to be installed in all care homes and hospitals within the next 10 years. Photograph: Posed by model; Olezzo/Getty Images
Landmark report calls for widespread air conditioning and says UK temperatures forecast to exceed 40C by 2050
British homes will need air conditioning to survive predicted levels of global heating, the government’s climate advisers have warned in a report, as measures such as drawing curtains, opening windows and growing trees for shade are not likely to be enough.
Air conditioning should be installed in all care homes and hospitals within the next 10 years, and in all schools within 25 years, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which published a major report on adapting to the impacts of global heating on Wednesday.
The government should also set a maximum temperature for working, indoors and outdoors, the advisers said. The UK should prepare for 2C of global heating by 2050, as attempts to limit temperatures to 1.5C above preindustrial levels under the Paris agreement appeared likely to fail.
…
Julia King, the chair of the adaptation subcommittee of the CCC, said of the many climate threats laid out in the report, extreme heat posed the most immediate risk to life. “Extreme heat is certainly the most deadly of the climate impacts on the UK, so we need to see cooling rolled out at scale,” she said.
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Colombian President Gustavo Petro speaks at the First Conference on the Transition Beyond Fossil Fuels | Colombian Ministry of the Environment
Nearly 60 countries launch coalition to accelerate the energy transition against the backdrop of the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz
SANTA MARTA, COLOMBIA — As the US and Israeli war against Iran puts oil at the centre of global concerns, a new intergovernmental coalition is seeking to accelerate the energy transition outside the UN’s climate change convention (COP) system, which has been trying – and failing – to phase out fossil fuels for three decades.
The coalition’s 57 members, who account for almost half of global GDP, met last week in the Colombian coastal city of Santa Marta for the First Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, co-hosted by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said the initiative was established after COP30 ended in November with no concrete resolution on phasing out the use of fossil fuels, which account for 75% of global greenhouse emissions. Since then, it has only been made more urgent by the oil crisis created by the Iran war.
“The ongoing disruptions due to the hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz have underlined that reducing fossil fuel dependencies is critical. It is essential to keep our planet livable, to safeguard energy security, and to build economic resilience to volatile fossil fuel markets,” states the conference’s final communiqué.
Rather than duplicating COPs’ efforts to establish new greenhouse gas reduction targets, the coalition agreed “to advance and accelerate the implementation of agreed goals” by applying pressure and strengthening international alliances within the multilateral negotiations adopted by consensus, the text says.
The conference was significant for its discussions on what “the consequences of decarbonisation” mean for oil exporters, said Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s ambassador for the initiative to create aFossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. It was the first time such conversations have been had at “a diplomatic forum on climate issues”.
“The fact that a country like Nigeria [which depends on crude oil exports] is here at a high level is very important, because they are not necessarily saying we are going to stick with oil until the end, whatever the cost,” she told openDemocracy. “They are recognising the vulnerability of being economically dependent on those exports.”
This need for economic freedom from oil was recognised by President Petro. “Can capitalism adapt to an energy system that is not fossil-based?” he asked an auditorium of delegates from participant countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, France and the European Union as a bloc, as well as small island states in the Caribbean and the South Pacific.
Noticeably absent were representatives of the United States and China – the world’s two biggest carbon emitters – as well as Russia and India, all of whom were deliberately not invited to avoid the kind of deadlocks and obstructionism that led to the blocking of efforts to create a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels at COP30.
“When you make a plan, you first call your closest friends, and then you send the invitation to the rest,” Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama’s Ministry of the Environment’s special representative for climate change, told openDemocracy.
Monterrey Gómez said the initial focus was instead on strengthening a group of countries committed to phasing out fossil fuels. “With this first group, we can have an honest conversation, without administrative roadblocks. This conversation has never taken place before, and that is historic.”
Other attendees had mixed feelings about the invite list.
While Claudio Angelo, an international policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory, a network of Brazilian environmental organisations, agreed that inviting Donald Trump’s climate-denying US administration would have been “unnecessary”, he told openDemocracy: “China should be here, as it supplies renewable energy technology to the whole world.”
‘Oil is nobody’s friend’
As well as the official delegates, the conference was attended by representatives of social movements, academia, multilateral institutions, parliaments, trade unions, Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, women and diverse communities, the private sector, farmers, NGOs, children and young people.
In the days leading up to the event, Santa Marta hosted scientific and civil society debates, where activists and Indigenous peoples urged governments to accelerate the energy transition.
Their calls came as a new report by 350.org, a global grassroots movement to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels, found that consumerspay three times for fossil fuels: through public subsidies, on their bills, and through the natural disasters that are a direct consequence of the climate crisis.
“Oil is nobody’s friend,” said Angelo, noting that the international community has viewed the energy transition more favourably as solar and wind technologies have become more accessible over the past decade. Installed capacity of renewable energy was 50% higher last year than in 2023 and almost all new energy demand is being met by renewable sources, according to thefinal communiqué of the meeting.
Samoan activist Brianna Fruean at a demonstration held at the conference venue | Julián Reingold/openDemocracy
For Colombian environment minister Irene Vélez Torres and Stientje van Veldhoven, the Dutch minister for climate and green growth, the event marked the beginning of a new era of global environmental democracy.
“This new method of dialogue between civil society, parliamentarians and governments represents a new multilateral collective force that is not bound by consensus and is led by women,” Torres said at the conference’s close. Veldhoven agreed, saying the meeting was the first step towards a proactive coalition of governments that do not negotiate, as happens at the UN, but rather collaborate with one another.
At the conference, civil society and governments agreed on steps to address the inequalities in the energy transition, which is taking place primarily in the Global North, rather than in countries where it is most needed but that lack the financing for green energy. These included drafting national road maps for the phase-out of fossil fuels, in addition to the global road map that will be discussed at COP31 this year.
“This is a contribution towards resolving common and interdependent problems through dialogue, discussion and cooperation, rather than through military means,” said Muhamad, who was Colombia’s Environment Minister until early 2025.
Harjeet Singh, the founder and director of the India-based Satat Sampada Climate Foundation that advocates for global climate justice, said the war in Iran has opened people’s eyes to the vulnerability inherent in dependence on fossil fuels.
“In a recent statement, India’s road and transport minister said that the era of diesel and petrol vehicles is over. It’s all about clean fuels, biofuels and electric vehicles,” Singh told openDemocracy.
But this realisation is meaningless without “international cooperation in green finance”, he said, noting that India self-funds 80% of its climate initiatives despite being a part of the Global South – and needs trillions more dollars for its transition away from fossil fuels.
Democracy, climate denialism and the future
Carlos Nobre, a researcher at the University of São Paulo and a member of the scientific panel for aGlobal Energy Transition, highlighted the risk that citizens might elect leaders who deny climate change. This is a particularly pressing worry in Amazonian countries such as Brazil, Colombia and Peru, where far-right parties that deny the climate crisis or are committed to expanding fossil fuels stand a chance of winning presidential elections taking place this year.
“It is not just that the far right seeks to maintain dependence on fossil fuels, but that they also intend to push ahead with deforestation and the removal of protections for indigenous peoples. We must not head towards ecocide, that is, ecological suicide,” said Nobre in an interview with openDemocracy.
Colombia remains the world’s deadliest country for environmental activists – an issue that must be addressed at the election on 31 May and can serve as a gateway to discussing wider environmental policies, says Liberal Party congressman Juan Carlos Losada, a member of Colombia’s Parliamentarians for a Fossil-Fuel-Free Future network.
Losada believes the candidate of the ruling left-wing Historic Pact coalition, Iván Cepeda, “will clearly prioritise the defence of human rights at a local level, and other issues will fall under that umbrella”. Polls currently suggest Cepeda will lead the election’s first round, although most analysts believe he is unlikely to reach the 50% threshold needed to win outright.
The other presidential candidates say “that if they come to power, they’ll go all out to extract every last bit of what exists,” Losada said, referring to the right’s proposals to intensify coal mining and introduce fracking.
“The debate on energy security has changed, and fossil fuels are seen as part of the insecurity issue,” said Brazilian Ana Toni, the executive director of COP30, noting: “It’ll be interesting to see how different actors act from now on.”
Speaking to openDemocracy at a press conference, Toni acknowledged the contradictions facing even climate-conscious governments, such as Brazil’s. “I don’t know if this conference is going to change the mind of Petrobras and its exploration plans,” she said, referring to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, whichlast year obtained permission for new exploration 500 kilometres from the mouth of the Amazon, days before world leaders met to debate the climate crisis at COP30.
“But it is changing the mind of many people in many countries,” she argued, noting that a move away from fossil fuels is becoming more popular as wars, supply shocks and extreme weather events expose the risk of oil and gas dependence. “When we talk about the transition, we do it not just because of climate change but also because of energy and economic security, and peace.”
These risks will be on full display at next year’s conference, where delegates will visit one of the countries most threatened by rising sea levels: Tuvalu, a South Pacific island nation that is co-hosting the second conference with Ireland.
“We, the small Pacific Islands, have no choice but to be ambitious,” said Brianna Fruean, a climate activist from Samoa, at a rally during the Colombian conference. “The next summit in Tuvalu will put faces to our countries and bring world leaders to the frontline of the climate crisis.”
Former British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell delivers the keynote address at the 2026 Canada Strong and Free Network conference in Vancouver. Credit: Canada Strong and Free Facebook page
Is the mask finally coming off the long-delayed Pathways Alliance CCS Project?
For years, Canadian officials and oil industry backers have pitched carbon capture and storage (CCS) as the solution that would allow Alberta’s oil sands — and the nation’s proposed west coast pipeline — to proceed with a lower climate impact. Now, in a speech at this year’s Canada Strong and Free Network (CSFN) conference in Vancouver, keynote speaker and former British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell warned the costly, troubled technology has failed to deliver, undercutting a central justification for billions in public subsidies and new oil infrastructure.
This reporter was there in person at the April 24 CSFN gathering. Formerly the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, the CSFN self-describes as supporting “conservative and libertarian activists and ideas in Canada”. Imagine a MAGA-adjacent gabfest featuring speakers mostly cheerleading extractive industries or fear-mongering about First Nations rights. My already low expectations were not exceeded.
However, there was an unexpected utterance of truth from Campbell, who was the first elected leader in North America to bring in a carbon tax. And what does he think about the technology being touted to clean up ballooning emissions from the Alberta oil sands and justifying a new pipeline to the BC coast?
“It’s time to take off the blinders. Carbon capture and storage is something we’ve talked about in Canada for more than a generation, more than 25 years,” he told the conference. “We’ve invested billions of dollars trying to convince ourselves that carbon capture and storage will work. It doesn’t work. It costs money. And that money is money that we take out of other potential productive resources that we could have for Canadians.”
Campbell was certainly not suggesting that fossil fuel extraction be scaled back. His comments instead pointed out that pretending to solve emissions problems with expensive and ineffective carbon capture and storage is an unwise waste of scarce public resources. This unusual truth-bomb from a public figure stands in stark contrast to the theater playing out in Alberta and Ottawa, where CCS is being heavily promoted and backed by billions in public money as a panacea for oil sands climate costs.
Even a Pathways Alliance co-founder is now publicly coming out against the CCS project in a recent Globe and Mail op-ed, equating long-delayed efforts by the oil patch to limit its massive carbon emissions with a cash-strapped household wasting money on a vacation or meal deliveries. Is Big Oil now pivoting away from a marquee carbon capture project it never intended to build?
Meanwhile the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney claims that the $20 billion CCS project being promoted by the Pathways Alliance will make “Alberta oil among the lowest carbon intensity-produced barrels of oil in the world.” This multi-billion-dollar boondoggle has been offered as a “grand bargain” between Ottawa and Alberta to facilitate a new bitumen pipeline outlined in their now-overdue memorandum of understanding.
This confident public posturing was made despite internal briefing notes accessed by DeSmog showing Pathways had “…few front end engineering (FEED) studies done and initial cost estimates based on very limited project information”.
DeSmog previously reviewed 12 large scale CCS projects around the world and found “a litany of cost-overruns and missed targets, with a net increase in emissions.” Only 50MT of CO2 are sequestered each year by CCS, representing a mere 0.1 percent of global greenhouse gases.
A recent study published in the prestigious journal Nature showed that a shortage of suitable geological formations worldwide limit CCS to mitigating only a puny portion of dangerous emissions. And even if injecting all production emissions underground was somehow perfectly effective, it would do nothing to alleviate the other 80-90 percent of downstream tailpipe greenhouse gases.
Such shaky fundamentals have apparently had little impact on government enthusiasm for throwing billions in public money towards dubious CSS schemes. The federal government has committed to covering half of the $20 billion estimated cost of the Pathways CCS project in tax credits, and the Alberta government is pledging to shovel billions more towards the highly profitable members of the Pathways Alliance.
Pathways Alliance companies — recently renamed as the Oil Sands Alliance — include Canada Natural Resources Ltd, Cenovus, ConocoPhillips, Imperial Oil, MEG Energy, and Suncor, representing 95 percent of Alberta’s bitumen production. These giants enjoyed $37 billion in combined profit in 2023 and will reap billions more in windfall profits with oil above $100 per barrel due to Trump’s war on Iran.
A ‘Generous Transfer Provision’
A good yardstick of whether the Pathways project is credible is revealed in action, not words. Despite years of public spin and lobbying by Pathways members, the largest bitumen producers still stubbornly refuse to pony up any of their own money towards beginning construction even as Canadians struggle with historically high prices at the gas pump.
If carbon capture is so safe, why has the oil patch lobbied to wash its hands of long-term CCS liabilities? In a system unique to Alberta, the province assumes the long-term risks associated with CO2 storage once a closure certificate has been issued, a concession to the oil industry described as one of the most “generous transfer provisions” of any CCS scheme in the world.
Documents obtained by the Narwhal also revealed that Pathways Alliance president Kendall Dilling asked Ottawa for “assurance that the Pathways pipeline, hub and capture projects would not require a federal review under the Impact Assessment Act.”
In Alberta, regulators allowed the largest CCS project in the world to be broken into over 120 separate proposals to avoid triggering a provincial environmental assessment. Does this kind of maneuvering inspire confidence?
Not for local residents facing risks of a potentially deadly CO2 leak from a pipeline rupture, as occurred in Sataria, Mississippi where 49 people were hospitalized in 2020. Rural Albertans living close to the proposed 600 kilometre CO2 pipeline from the oil sands to Cold Lake have recently come together in an unlikely alliance of farmers and Indigenous leaders opposed to the Pathways project called “No CO2 Pipelines.”
“Thousands of Albertans like me live directly in this project’s ‘hazard zone’”, said Penny Fox, No CO2 Pipelines co-founder, in a press release. “In an explosion, people in our communities are facing anything from breathing issues to brain damage to instant death. So I have one question for the Prime Minister: if you wouldn’t live next to this pipeline, why should we?”
“We’re talking about hundreds of kilometers of pipeline that pass directly through areas where we live, hunt, fish and exercise our treaty rights”, Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation has said. “This project endangers our people, our land, our water and wildlife. And yet there has been no consultation, no information sharing, and no formal environmental assessment.”
Gordon Campbell makes a good point. The Pathways project will cost the taxpayers billions and do nothing to contain the vast majority of ultimate oil sands emissions. Other Canadian industries have managed to cut greenhouse gases by one quarter since 2005, while bitumen producers have seen their emissions explode by 143 percent over the same period.
Why should highly profitable oil industry laggards still expect public handouts before cleaning up their own mess?
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