FRANCE has experienced its hottest year since records began, the country’s national weather service said on Wednesday.
This comes as temperatures across the globe continue to soar to dangerous levels.
Extreme weather has devastated communities across the globe this year, including sweltering heat and drought conditions across Europe.
France saw temperatures surge repeatedly in successive heat waves from May and into October, accompanied by extreme events like wildfires in areas like north-western Brittany.
“[This year] will be the hottest year recorded in France since measurements began, so since at least 1900, that is a certainty, even if December is very cold,” said Matthieu Sorel, a climatologist at Meteo France.
After a summer marked by drought, massive wildfires and the war in Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a stark speech on Wednesday at the first cabinet meeting following the summer holiday break, warning of tough months ahead as the world faces a possible “end of abundance”.
“I believe that we are in the process of living through a tipping point or great upheaval. Firstly because we are living through… what could seem like the end of abundance,” said Macron, 44.
The speech appeared designed to prepare the country for what promises to be a difficult winter ahead, with energy prices rising sharply and many families struggling with inflation.
“The moment we are living … may seem to be structured by a series of crises, each more serious than the other,” Macron said, referring to the drought, fires and storms that have hit France during the summer as well as the Ukraine war and disruptions to global trade.
“Freedom has a cost,” Macron said, urging his ministers to be ambitious and the French to accept new policies adapted to current circumstances. “The battles we have to fight … will only be won through our efforts.”
Government plans to reduce sewage spills in English waters fail to include hundreds of storm overflows into estuaries and the sea, according to new analysis.
In the government’s draft storm overflow discharge reduction plan the only coastal overflows that must cut spills are those near designated bathing sites, but it’s not clear what distance is classified as “near” one, according to the Marine Conservation Society.
Its analysis found that around 600 coastal sites therefore won’t have to reduce the number of times they spill sewage into the sea, some of which could be near Marine Protected Areas.
Meanwhile, for inland waters and designated bathing waters water companies must not discharge sewage more than an average of 10 rainfall events per year by 2050, according to the draft targets. A rainfall event is up to 12 hours of rain.
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By 2050? Looks like UK government shits are quite content with UK swimming in shit. I suppose it’s only poor, insignificant people after all. Rich people can swim at European beaches of course …
Britain’s “despicable” dumping of raw sewage into the sea threatens human health, fishing grounds and marine life in the English Channel and the North Sea, says a French MEP leading a campaign to sue the British government.
Stéphanie Yon-Courtin told i that she was shocked by the surge in cases of Britain’s sewage overflows seeping directly into the sea, which “reflects the image of the government.”
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“reflects the image of the government.” = full of shits
Raw sewage dumped into England’s rivers 375,000 times last year – BBC News
The Tory leadership frontrunner, Liz Truss, was responsible for cutting millions of pounds of funding earmarked for tackling water pollution during her time as environment secretary, the Guardian can reveal.
Truss, who was in charge at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) between 2014 and 2016, oversaw “efficiency” plans set out in the 2015 spending review to reduce Environment Agency funding by £235m.
This included a £24m cut from a government grant for environmental protection, including surveillance of water companies to prevent the dumping of raw sewage, between 2014-15 and 2016-17, according to the National Audit Office.
French climate activists have filled golf course holes with cement in protest against a water ban exemption on greens across the country during a severe drought.
The group, part of the Extinction Rebellion organisation, targeted courses near the city of Toulouse, calling golf the “leisure of the most privileged.”
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In a petition, the local activists said the exemption showed that “economic madness takes precedence over ecological reason”.
“At a time when the greatest drought ever observed in France since the beginning of meteorological readings is raging, while the drying up of rivers is accelerating in our regions, at a time when 93 departments out of 96 are placed under water use restrictions, resulting in total bans on irrigation for certain market gardeners and for agriculture; a sector concerning a tiny fraction of the population seems to enjoy a privilege worthy of another world in these times of crisis; golf,” the group said in its online petition.
