Miliband at the UN security council on Wednesday. The UKās foreign secretary later briefed fellow foreign ministers about the UK climate report.Ā Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images
El NiƱo poses critical threat to nationsā defences, says Ed Miliband in presentation to global foreign ministers
The UK has warned countries around the world that the climate and nature crises and the coming El NiƱo threaten their national security and defence, presenting foreign ministries with the findings of an explosive report suppressed under Keir Starmer.
Ed Miliband, the UKās foreign secretary, made a presentation to the foreign ministers of the EU as well as Kenya and other countries on Wednesday night at a private meeting during the UN general assembly in New York, based on the report by the UKās spy chiefs that found the collapse of natural systems around the world would lead to conflict, migration and food shortages.
Miliband told the meeting, the first such discussion among foreign ministers, that the coming El NiƱo, which has been supercharged by climate breakdown, would test the worldās food systems as never before.
āWe face an El NiƱo that is already set to be the most intense in living memory,ā he said. āThis will intensify climate shocks that compound and cascade across borders, threatening food and water security, displacing communities, putting pressure on markets and scarring economies.ā
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With the backing of Andy Burnham, the UK prime minister, Miliband presented the research that found the collapse of global ecosystems such as in the Amazon and Congo rainforests, driven by the climate crisis and the destruction of nature, would have impacts on national security around the world.
Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received Ā£Millions and Ā£Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Aviation is on track to be responsible for 80% of the UKās carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050, according to theĀ Climate Change CommitteeĀ (CCC).
Emissions from flying have more than doubled since 1990 ā driven by rising passenger numbers ā even as the climate impact of every other sector in the UK economy has fallen.
The UK does not have ācredibleā policies in place to reverse this trend of rising emissions, says the CCC in new advice to the government on future aviation policy.
Yet, even without Heathrow expansion, the CCC says aviation emissions are on track to be higher in 2050 than they are today ā reaching 38m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2).
As the chart below shows, this would account for most of the remaining CO2 from the UK economy, all of which would need to be removed from the atmosphere in order to meet the legal target of net-zero emissions.
Expanding Heathrow would add another 2.4MtCO2 in 2050, amounting to around 5% of all the UKās emissions. (This would increase to 4.5MtCO2 when expansion is complete in 2054.)
With a final decision on Heathrow expansion expected by 2029, the government asked the CCC for its advice on whether the plan is compatible with the UKās climate targets.
The CCC has concluded that the UK simply lacks sufficient policies to reduce aviation emissions and āexpanding Heathrow would compound the problemā. In a press briefing, CCC chair Nigel Topping told journalists:
āThe UK does not currently have a credible plan to reduce [aviation emissions] in line with net-zero, so that creates a serious challenge for meeting our climate commitments.ā
The ājet-zero strategyā, launched by the previous Conservative government in 2022, set out plans to cut aviation emissions. However, the Labour government has since accepted that the strategyās expectations for SAFs, electric planes and fuel-efficiency improvements were unrealistic.
The CCC says a ācredible and robust net-zero policy framework for aviationā should be set out in a revised strategy, which is planned for 2027. Only then could Heathrow expansion be aligned with the net-zero goal, adds the committee.
As part of this new strategy, the CCC says the āaviation sector needs to take responsibility for its emissionsā. It says policies should be designed based on the āpolluter paysā principle, requiring the aviation industry to fund its own SAFs and CO2 removal.
Specifically, the committee says funding will be needed for āengineered removalā technologies, such as direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS).
These technologies are currently ānot yet available at the scale requiredā, but are vital for the kind of permanent CO2 removal needed to mop up aviation emissions, says the CCC.
(āNatural solutionsā such as tree planting are the other main way CO2 is expected to be removed from the atmosphere. However, the CCC envisages these removals offsetting the remaining methane emissions from livestock agriculture in the UK, whereas it says āengineered removalsā would be required to remove and store CO2 from flights.)
The CCC acknowledges that placing decarbonisation costs on airlines would likely lead to higher ticket prices. It estimates that this could mean an increase, in 2024 prices, of around Ā£150 for a return trip to Alicante, Spain, and Ā£400 for a return trip to New York by 2050.
However, it says this is preferable to a public spending approach, which would result in the roughly 50% of the population who do not fly paying for flight-related CO2 removals.
In addition, the committee notes that higher costs would help to manage demand for flights, which would otherwise be expected to increase considerably over the coming decades.
Her youth-led group has raised more than Ā£180k to fund the lawsuit.
Greta Thunberg and Swedish youth climate organisation Aurora are suing the Swedish government over its failures to tackle the climate crisis.
While Sweden has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions at a rate faster than the EU average, the country is not on track to meet its own target of net zero by 2045.
Thunberg said on Monday that Aurora has filed a second lawsuit, arguing that Sweden is failing in its legal duty to protect its citizens ā especially children and the young ā from the effects of climate change.
The group is demanding that Sweden take action to limit global warming to 1.5C by cutting emissions and protecting ecosystems like forests. A third demand involves accounting for emissions that it says are currently excluded from government calculations such as burning imported biomass.
āSweden, as a rich country with high historical and current emissions, has a legal duty to lead the climate transition,ā the group wrote in its fundraiser. āA safe and just world is still possible, but only if rich, high-emitting states like Sweden stop violating their duty to protect people from the devastation of the climate crisis, and start transforming their societies before 2030.ā
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received Ā£Millions and Ā£Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appears before the House Armed Services Committee on April 29, 2026. | Rod Lamkey Jr. / AP
UNITED NATIONSāThere are reasonable grounds to believe the United States, under the leadership of the Trump administration, has committed war crimes in theĀ illegal bombing of Iran, one of which targeted aĀ childrenās school in the city of Minab and a sports center in Lamerd, according to experts with the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The bombs in question were used in two separate strikes that reportedly murdered 178 civilians, including women and children, at the beginning of a joint military operation between the U.S. and Israel.
In February of this year, what began as any other day in the city ofĀ Minab, Iran, turned bloody when munitions likely fired by the United States Armed Forces struck Shajareh Tayyebeh school, devastating the Iranian people and sparking a military response from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
āFollowing the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects,ā the UNHRC experts said in a statement.
While the Trump administration accused Iran of the bloodshed, fragments recovered at the scene indicate that a U.S. Tomahawk Land Attack Missile was used in the bombingāmunitions that Iran does not utilize or possess.
To date, the United States has not confirmed the allegations, nor released the findings from the Pentagon regarding its investigation into the unauthorized war and subsequent bombings in Iran that initially killed 178 people, 26 of them being adult teachersāthe rest children. Many argue that the continued denial of any wrongdoing and challenging the credibility of the UNās findings is a reflection of the same tactics used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) under the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
After the bombing in Manab, a second strike occurred hours later that targeted the Shahid Haj Khalil Naimi Cultural and Sports Complex in Lamerd, also in Southern Iran, killing 22 people. The final death toll and reported casualties included the murder of four children and varying degrees of injuries to over 100 people.
The Trump administration faces several legal hurdles regarding the war in Iran, including Rep. Thomas Massie putting Secretary of War Pete Heseth on notice with articles of impeachment, prompting the Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to send everyone home until after the midterms. It is still unclear whether the impeachment will succeed, but the early send-home could signal the kind of trouble the administration faces.
Recent polls make it clear that public approval of Trump and the Republican Party is sinking. This has resulted in the party becoming more defensive and subsequently offensive in its posturing, attempting to control the narrative surrounding hot-button political issues such as genocide in Gaza, Trumpās illegal kidnapping of the president of Venezuela, and more, leaving many to speculate if this is the end of the Trump regime that has consistently taken its insecurities out on the working class and oppressed people of the United States.
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