The Guardian Opinion

At this point of the crisis in our relations with the natural world, we’ve got to protect these creatures – and we are running out of timeRead more from the Guardian’s invertebrate of the year 2026Too many animals are regarded as “bugs”. And, if anything is a bug, it is a short step to it becoming a “pest”. Too many of us have a learned fear – it’s not innate – of anything with six legs or antennae.I’m a big fan of the invertebrates and I love the Guardian’s invertebrate of the year competition

It’s simple, says the SpaceX boss – according to something called the ‘Kardashev scale’, we just have to move energy production ‘off-planet’Next time the weather gives the UK 61 days without rain and we wonder idly if this is the end, there is a term we may whistle up to soothe us. Like murmuring the rosary, or putting our fingers in our ears and humming, this phrase is to be mumbled on repeat – “the Kardashev scale, the Kardashev scale” – a buzzy concept in tech, much favoured by Elon Musk, and

This punishingly hot and dry summer will probably be followed by another wet winter. But it’s nothing compared with what Britain will endure in years to comeThis summer could be the hottest, driest and deadliest in English history. Successive heatwaves have so far claimed almost 3,000 lives. Nearly three-quarters of England and all of Wales is in drought, while key reservoirs are parched. Across this brown and stickily unpleasant land, from Grimsby down to St Ives, hosepipe bans are in force, wh

For most of modern history, technology sought to imitate humans. Humans increasingly seek to imitate technologyTwo faces that appeared on my Instagram feed in recent months gave me pause. One belonged to John Travolta at Cannes. The other to Carla Bruni on a date night with her husband, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Both looked recognisably themselves, yet, they both also looked oddly unfamiliar. Their looks have provoked speculation about cosmetic enhancement, though never acknowledg

The Trump administration’s ‘America first’ approach has contributed to the scale of the crisis now unfolding in one of the world’s poorest countriesFor months health experts have warned that the scale of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) could surpass the one that swept west Africa in 2014-16. This week, the authorities in the DRC announced that a grim milestone has already been passed: at least 2,325 people have died from the virus, making it the deadliest of the

Victims received less compensation than shareholders in the company behind its flammable cladding. Parliament must make corporations pay for harm causedThere is something profoundly wrong when the company behind Grenfell Tower’s flammable cladding paid more compensation to its shareholders than to victims of the disaster. Of Arconic’s £86m in Grenfell-related settlements, all but £1.5m was covered by insurers. Hardly enough to make a multinational think again. The company whose product the inqui

Local community food-growing could be best line of defence, writes Dan Farag, while David E Alexander says the government must be more open about its emergency planning, and Antony So says we need to look beyond stockpiling foodGeorge Monbiot is right that Britain has become dangerously complacent about food security (Britain’s scorched fields mean a food crisis – and the government is ignoring the one measure that would help, 13 August). A country facing climate shocks, disrupted trade routes a

Dismissing screen use entirely fails to recognise the crucial role modern technology plays in equity, accessibility and basic school operations, says Charlotte BleakleyYour article buries the real story beneath the headline (‘Our children are less cognitively capable,’ says neuroscientist who wants to cut screen use in schools, 16 August). Even Jared Cooney Horvath’s own data, cited mid-article, shows that moderate school device use is associated with better outcomes than no device use at all –

The medical system is biased against women, says Carole Kendall, pointing to the very different way men who have colonoscopies are treatedI fully endorse everything Anna Moore writes in her excellent article on the lack of pain relief for hysteroscopies (‘It was barbaric. I was crying my eyes out’: why are so many women left in agony by routine womb examinations?, 16 August).I have had three of these barbaric procedures, two of them being associated with being on hormone replacement therapy (HRT

Online ratings | School holiday scam | Back-row kisses | Barking | Champagne populismTo Stuart Heritage’s excellent list of words to describe our tech dystopia (18 August), can I add “iRate”? This is when you make an online purchase and, even before you’ve had time to remove the packaging, receive an email asking “How was it for you?”, followed by another a few days later if you fail to review every detail of the transaction, and then another, and another, until you’re left wanting to throw your

LBC’s Nick Ferrari can’t see what is stopping people buying a cheap toothbrush, but the grinding reality of living in poverty creates its own prioritiesI don’t listen to Nick Ferrari on LBC very often. His antagonistic way of dealing with complex problems gets me screaming at the radio far too easily. Last month was a perfect example. Someone from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was on discussing research showing that about 7 million people are struggling to afford basic essentials, including too

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The party’s deputy leader Richard Tice says we should stop worrying about extreme heat and enjoy it. This dangerous nonsense will wreck our finances and the planetSo now we know: the smart response to the UK’s summer of record temperatures is to do precisely nothing. According to Richard Tice, Reform UK’s deputy leader, the climate crisis is just one of those things. Nothing can be done about it, so we should simply bask in the sunshine.It is reasonable to assume Tice would not have said anythin

Now that Jared Kushner and the Saudi Investment Fund have bought The Sims’ publisher, EA, it’s unlikely to remain a game celebrating diversity and inclusivitySometimes it feels as though horrific world events and the malicious entities behind them are reaching into every aspect of our lives, from heatwaves that keep me shut away indoors, to generative AI that makes it increasingly difficult to trust what I read online. I can no longer even retreat into my favourite video game without funding hum

Amid the grief and rage at a tragic loss, it’s right to differentiate between those who fought a culture war and others who just sought the truthEven now it is very difficult to process the scale of tragedy that engulfed Jason Arday and those who loved him. The unbearable sadness at his death; the wretched knowledge that the very public onslaught against him began with the malign machinations of a self-defined “race realist” – who believes that, in an ideal world, black people would “disappear f

Today we begin our drive to get everyone in for Christmas. And it will be for local communities up and down the land to decide how best to do itBurnham launches ‘national drive’ to get rough sleepers off streets by ChristmasI’ve always thought you can tell something about a country by what it learns to walk past. And, somewhere along the way, we’ve got used to seeing people sleeping rough on our streets.We see people bedded down in doorways and sat outside stations, carrying their lives in rucks

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani shows Britain’s Andy Burnham that confronting billionaires need not mean the end of cooperation with Donald TrumpIn November, Californians will vote on a one-off 5% levy on residents worth more than $1bn. The union-backed plan could raise $100bn, more than enough to replace federal healthcare funding stripped away by Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. About 200 very rich people would pay. But the referendum is becoming a test of whether extreme wealth can bu

The Wordsworth Trust has acquired a second home. Cherished authors including George Eliot don’t even have oneInterest in all things Jane Austen remains high, following the celebrations of her 250th anniversary. In September, the museum based in her former home in Chawton, Hampshire, will host a Persuasion festival. But a less obvious beneficiary of this spike in interest is a museum dedicated to two writers she never met: William and Dorothy Wordsworth. The success of the BBC television series T

A movement with safety, dignity and equality at its heart may now be blamed for the rightwing backlash. But within it were principles worth carrying forwardsEvery once in a while, the discourse gods send a tablet down to the people, announcing that a previous era is dead and a new age is upon us. Recently, it was the “vibe shift” – a post-pandemic change in culture that encompassed everything from fashion to politics. The vibe shift consolidated with Donald Trump’s second election, a harbinger o

New species and regional instability are factors – but decisions made in the US and Britain are also costing livesDid you know that there is a major Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and it’s on track to be the deadliest ever? It is already the second-worst Ebola outbreak in history, with the fastest community transmission we have ever seen. It’s estimated that there have been at least 4,900 cases and more than 2,300 deaths, giving a mortality rate close to 50%. The situati