Jack Graham

As Britain's general election nears, the campaign trail has been dominated by issues such as immigration, the health service and a major insider betting scandal.

But one thing that has barely been discussed is the climate, according to data from the audience strategy consultancy AKAS shared with Context.

A big wedge issue dividing the parties fighting Britain's July 4's general election is how to tackle climate change.

Five years ago, the country signed a legally binding target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which scientists say is crucial to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

From popstar Taylor Swift's jetsetting on tour to billionaire Elon Musk's fleet of planes, the use of private jets by the rich and famous has drawn increasing criticism as concern grows over air travel's role in global warming.

Yet few events attract more polluting private flights than next week's World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos, where heads of state, business leaders and others will discuss pressing issues including geopolitical instability and climate change.

A sodden British winter that battered wheat crops during weeks of flooding has prompted renewed calls for urgent action to shore up the country's long-term food security from extreme weather linked to climate change.

Research published this week estimated that the record floods could reduce Britain's ability to feed itself by nearly 10% due to a reduced crop area and poor yields.

As Formula One's leading driver Max Verstappen racks up wins across the globe, scientists say the world is losing another race: to cut planet-heating greenhouse gases and avoid climate change's worst impacts.

Transport accounts for around a third of global emissions and no other sport is more associated with high emissions in this sector than F1, adored by fans as the pinnacle of motorsport.

A year of record temperatures and extreme weather - from floods to fires - is due to a deadly cocktail of man-made climate change mixed with cyclical El Niño weather, scientists say.

A spate of recent heatwaves in West Africa, for example, would not have happened without climate change and was made still worse by the El Niño event, scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group found in a new report. 

Governments are meeting in Ottawa, Canada, this week for the next round of global talks over a treaty to end plastic pollution, as the world struggles with more than 400 million metric tons of plastic waste produced each year.

Producing plastics, from Barbie dolls to water bottles, generates large amounts of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, while the accumulation of plastic products in the environment pollutes lands and oceans.

Clothing factories that supply H&M and Zara are buying cotton linked to environmental destruction and land-grabbing in Brazil's Cerrado - a biodiversity hotspot where deforestation is soaring, research by the Earthsight nonprofit has found.

While global concern has focused on the impact of beef and soy farming in the Amazon, deforestation alerts in Brazil's lesser-known Cerrado tropical savannah jumped 44% in 2023, data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) shows.

As African countries race to build homes for their soaring populations, material shortages and under-investment threaten to limit the scope of a green revolution in the continent's construction industry.

The building boom presents a huge opportunity to turbocharge Africa's clean energy transition by adopting green design techniques and climate-friendly materials to slash the emissions caused by building houses.

Millions of people have joined tree-planting campaigns through the decades - hoping to slow global warming and counteract mass deforestation - but a new study suggests the overall climate benefit has been overstated.

The potential for reforestation projects to mitigate climate change depends largely on where they are located, according to the research, published in the journal Nature Communications.