EPA Saves Climate Cash; UK Crops Wilt
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- UK harvest: Cereal and oilseed yields down as much as 2.5m tonnes — a £390m revenue hit for arable farmers — on what could be the worst harvest on record.link ›
- UK food prices: Wholesale tomatoes up 60%+, iceberg lettuce 90%+, potatoes 40%+ as drought compounds with a possible super El Niño threatening imports.link ›
- London buses: Drivers plan a strike later this month over cab temperatures near 40°C; Mayor Sadiq Khan declared conditions unsafe.link ›
- AHDB: Reports the UK's earliest cereal harvest on record, with wheat and barley yields below the 10-year average as farmers run combines at night.link ›
- EPA climate grants: D.C. Circuit split decision revives $20B in frozen Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants; EPA has 7 days to appeal to the Supreme Court.link ›
- Geely Galaxy 700: Debuts in Milan with a 1,113 hp PHEV powertrain, CATL 41.7 kWh LFP battery, and 50 factory accessory-mount points.link ›
- Wildfire smoke: PM2.5 from wildfires is up to 10x more toxic in the short term than regular particulate pollution; Canada's 2023 fires caused ~82,000 early deaths.link ›
Britain's third straight bad harvest is now a multi-system failure: cereal and oilseed yields projected down as much as 2.5 million tonnes — a £390 million revenue hit for arable farmers — with wholesale tomato and iceberg-lettuce prices up 60% and 90%+, respectively. London bus drivers plan to strike later this month over cab temperatures near 40°C, a Bristol judge told jurors to follow proceedings via Zoom because the dock was unusable in the heat, and southern England rail operators imposed speed limits on heat-warped rails. The defining development of the week isn't a policy announcement; it's the visible absence of one in a country that still has no legal maximum workplace temperature. In Washington, the D.C. Circuit revived $20 billion in frozen Biden-era climate grants — a separate, procedural win that won't feed anyone this winter.
The stories behind this week
Appeals Court Says E.P.A. Cannot Block Billions in Climate GrantsEight nonprofit groups regain access to $20 billion in Biden-era climate grants for renewable energy projects, pending the EPA's seven-day window to appeal to the Supreme Court. Columbia's Michael Gerrard called it "screamingly good news" for recipients but warned the legal process is likely to drag on regardless of outcome.
Buick Electra L7: 376 hp, 436-Mile Range, $25K in ChinaAt under $25,000, GM is putting a 376-horsepower, 436-mile-range EV on Chinese roads — a price-performance combination that would undercut most compact cars in the US market, where comparable long-range EVs start well above $40,000. That gap is enabled directly by the SAIC-GM joint venture, a cost structure GM has no equivalent of domestically.
UK Heatwave Cripples Buses, Rail, Farms, and CourtsWith a third bad harvest in a row costing arable farmers £390m and no legal cap on workplace temperatures, the UK is absorbing simultaneous shocks to its food supply, transport reliability and worker safety that fall hardest on frontline staff and shoppers now paying 60-90% more for fresh produce.
‘The obsession with endless growth can only end in tears’: your questions on extreme weather this summer answeredA reader's question pushed the reporters onto terrain most coverage skips: 40-70% of European heatwave deaths trace to carbon-driven warming, yet building codes, evacuation planning, and firefighting budgets still determine who actually survives. That tension forces climate journalism to assign blame more precisely—to Big Oil for the heating and to local governments for the unpreparedness—rather than treating the two as substitutes.
UK faces food shortages as drought slashes harvestsWith cereal yields down and a third of British farmers already losing money, the compounding impact of climate extremes and subsidy cuts threatens the viability of domestic food production—putting food security and long-term agricultural resilience at risk without immediate policy intervention.
Solnit: Summer Has Become a Climate WarzoneBy naming summer's cultural loss — the freedoms and pleasures stripped by smoke-choked skies and lethal heat — alongside concrete tolls like 20,000 European deaths and France's 220,000-person evacuation, Solnit repositions climate advocacy from infrastructure defense to reclaiming the conditions of everyday life.
Geely Galaxy 700 Debuts With 1,113 HP PHEVGeely originally positioned the Galaxy 700 against the Range Rover and Land Cruiser, but the 1,113 hp output and Ferrari/McLaren performance estimates put a three-row family SUV into exotic-car territory — an unusual pitch that could reset buyer expectations for large Chinese plug-in hybrids. The 20% monthly sales rebound also ends a five-month slide for the Galaxy brand, giving Geely momentum behind the launch.
‘I couldn’t breathe’: the deadly health burden of wildfire smokeWith roughly 10% of the UK's fine particulate pollution already originating from foreign biomass burning and wildfire PM2.5 proven up to 10 times more toxic than ordinary pollution in the short term, the death toll from climate-driven smoke events is structurally underestimated. As fire weather intensifies and smoke routinely crosses borders, tens of millions in major cities face health-damaging air with limited warning systems or adaptive infrastructure, while political responses (like Trump's sanctions threats against Canada) target the wrong causes.
Why it matters: A third straight failed UK harvest with no legal cap on workplace temperature means the next heatwave arrives as a labor and food-security crisis, not a weather story.
