A windfarm off the Cumbrian coast. The crown estate commands hefty option fees from developers to secure areas of the seabed to build windfarms. Photograph: Rob Arnold/Alamy
Environmental group accuses king’s property management company of ‘milking for profit’ its monopoly ownership of seabed
Greenpeace is threatening to sue King Charles’s property management company, accusing it of exploiting its monopoly ownership of the seabed.
The environmental lobby group alleges the crown estate has driven up costs for wind power developers and boosted its own profits, as well as the royal household’s income, due to the “aggressive” way it auctions seabed rights.
The crown estate, as the legal owner of the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, is responsible for auctioning offshore wind rights. It has benefited from the huge growth in the industry, commanding hefty option fees from renewable energy developers to secure areas of the seabed to build their windfarms.
Will McCallum, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, said the estate should be “managing the seabed in the interest of the nation and the common good, not as an asset to be milked for profit and outrageous bonuses”.
“We should leave no stone unturned in looking for solutions to lower energy bills that are causing misery to millions of households,” he said.
Nicholas Stern, pictured, led a review that concluded climate action would cost less than the damage caused by inaction. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images
Lord Stern says fossil-fuelled growth is futile as the damage it causes ends in economic self-destruction
Investment in climate action is the economic growth story of the 21st century, while growth fuelled by fossil fuels is futile because the damage it causes ends in self-destruction, the economist Nicholas Stern has said.
The plummeting costs of clean technologies, from renewable energy to electric cars, plus the healthier and more productive societies they enable, meant investments could simultaneously tackle the climate crisis and faltering economic growth, and bring millions of people out of poverty, he said.
This requires big changes in policies and levels of investment and Stern, at the London School of Economics, acknowledged that the geopolitical environment was currently difficult but he said making the rational argument was vital. The US president, Donald Trump, recently called climate change a “con job” and is backing fossil fuel companies to “drill, baby, drill”.
“I’d say to Trump: ‘You’ve got children and grandchildren – think about the science, think about the risks,’ and I’d give examples about the wildfires in California,” said Stern. “I’d point out to him that his place in Florida is going to be extremely vulnerable to more intense hurricanes, sea level rise and storm surges. The people and places he loves are under severe risk.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.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 £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Flood waters surrounding houses in Wraysbury, Berkshire in January 2024. Greater London and Yorkshire and the Humber are two regions at particular risk in the coming years. Photograph: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images
Every constituency projected to be at greater risk, with many areas likely to be uninsurable, Guardian investigation finds
Millions more homes in England, Scotland and Wales face devastating floods, and some towns may have to be abandoned as climate breakdown makes many areas uninsurable, a Guardian investigation has found.
New analysis from the insurance industry, seen by the Guardian, reveals the extent of concern in the sector, with bosses warning that large swathes of housing and commercial property in densely populated areas will be at greater risk.
Separately, experts have said that some towns may need to be abandoned as homes and businesses struggle to get insurance in areas repeatedly battered by storms and rising sea levels.
Densely populated areas including London, Manchester and parts of north-east England, are likely to be worst hit. Experts also say London’s flood defences need to be updated urgently to protect the capital from devastating floods.
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Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.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 £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Police arrest supporters of Palestine Action taking take part in a civil disobedience protest in Trafalgar Square, London, 4 October 2025. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/EPA
The rights we enjoy in the UK, and the movement the PM purports to lead, were built on protest. Those rights are in dire peril
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The Labour party arose from a long wave of protests by workers against capital, calling for workers’ rights and for sweeping democratic reforms. These protests and their organisers came to be known as the labour movement. Its early actions included the radical war in Scotland, the Merthyrand Newport risings in south Wales, the Swing riots in England and the General Strike of 1842. No such protests would have meant no such movement. No such movement would have meant no such party.
Yet somehow, the party that arose from protest has formed, in terms of our rights to free expression and democratic challenge, the most illiberal government the UK has suffered since the second word war. This Labour government would have banned the labour movement.
Any government that fails to contest and reverse this trend, even if it did nothing to add to this bleak legacy, sides with illiberalism. Far from doing so, Starmer’s has already gone further than the Conservatives dared, by classifying a civil disobedience group – Palestine Action – as a terrorist organisation and banning it. It has also (so far with remarkably little resistance) inserted a clause into its crime and policing bill enabling the police to stop demonstrations “in the vicinity of a place of worship”. As our towns and cities are so richly endowed with religious buildings, that means almost any urban area.
But its latest proposal is even worse. The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has announced that the police should be able to stop protests that have a “cumulative impact”, by recurring in the same place. She will also consider “powers to ban protests outright”.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’.
