Ministers must take steps now to ensure that all homes are built to the most efficient low-carbon standards, or risk locking households into higher bills and greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come, a group of MPs and experts have urged.

The government is mulling changes to the building regulations in England to bring in a “future homes standard” that would require all new homes to be built with low-carbon equipment such as heat pumps and solar panels.

But key elements of the standard face stiff opposition from the housebuilding industry. The Guardian has learned that lobbyists from the industry are telling ministers that it will be impossible to meet the government’s flagship target of building 1.5m new homes in this parliament if they are required to meet stringent low-carbon standards.

Low-carbon building experts disagree. A recent study from the MCS Foundation found that equipping homes with heat pumps, solar panels and battery storage would save households living in a typical three-bedroom house more than £46,600 on energy bills over the course of a 25-year mortgage.

Experts have also said that installing such equipment is straightforward, and that the building industry could easily invest in the skills needed for its workforce. Retrofitting would cost up to five times as much, and the cost would fall on the householder rather than the builder.

As plans for the 1.5m new homes get under way, concerns over the future homes standard are mounting. It was consulted on under the Conservative government, which scrapped the previous draft version of the regulations, then known as the zero carbon homes standard, in 2015.

In a letter sent to the housing and planning minister, Matthew Pennycook, on Wednesday and seen by the Guardian, a group of MPs from most of the main parties, low-carbon industry experts and civil society groups call on the government to hold fast to the necessary low-carbon standards and publish the new future homes standard without delay.

The signatories – 28 MPs, three peers and 12 industry bodies and civil society organisations – write: “The future of buildings standards in England could have a huge impact on household energy bills, UK carbon emissions and the domestic renewable energy sector. With the government promising to build 1.5m new homes by 2029, it is essential that these homes are built to standards that ensure low bills and minimal carbon emissions.

“We should not be building houses in the next five years that will have to be retrofitted, at much greater cost, five or 10 years later. The UK’s existing housing stock already contributes 17% of total carbon emissions, and new homes should help to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Moving away from fossil fuels would also be a crucial step towards ensuring long-term energy security.”

David Cowdrey, the acting chief executive of the MCS Foundation, which coordinated the letter, said: “Mandating developers to put solar panels and heat pumps in all new build homes will not only save households thousands of pounds, it will also massively boost the domestic renewables workforce at no cost to the Treasury.”

Failing to make the regulations as stringent as possible would be a mistake, he said: “Years of delay and uncertainty has held back the shift to clean energy and heating. We should not be building homes next year and the year after that will have to be retrofitted in ten years’ time, and so the government must now introduce the long-awaited future homes standard, with a mandate for renewable technology, without delay.”

The Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, Max Wilkinson, is also bringing forward a private members’ bill that would require the installation of solar photovoltaic generation equipment on new homes and set minimum standards so developers are not able to skimp on panels.

Wilkinson said: This “‘sunshine bill’ is a vital step in creating a brighter future, tackling the climate crisis while also saving British households money on their bills. It is madness that new homes are being built without solar panels, when we know solar helps to bring down energy costs and reduce emissions. It’s a win-win.”

The British photojournalist Paul Lowe has been fatally stabbed on a hiking trail in California and his teenage son arrested for murder, according to police.

Lowe, who covered conflicts including the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, was found dead on 12 October in the San Gabriel mountains.

The 60-year-old had been stabbed in the neck, records at the Los Angeles medical examiner’s office said.

Lowe’s 19-year-old son Emir was charged with one count of murder and was due to appear on Wednesday at the West Covina courthouse, the Los Angeles county district attorney’s office told the PA news agency.

The Los Angeles county sheriff’s department told PA: “The homicide bureau presented the case to the Los Angeles county district attorney’s office for filing considerations today.

“The district attorney’s office filed one count of murder on suspect Emir Lowe for the murder of his father Christian Paul Lowe. There is no additional information at this time.”

According to police, the incident happened at about 3.28pm at Mount Baldy Road, near Stoddard Canyon Falls. A statement from the sheriff’s department said officers responding to a report of an assault with a deadly weapon found a “white male adult suffering trauma to his upper torso”.

“San Bernardino fire department personnel responded and pronounced the victim dead at the scene.

“A white male adult was seen driving away from the scene and was subsequently involved in a solo traffic collision a few miles away. The male was detained pending further investigation.

“The investigation is ongoing and there is no additional information at this time.”

King’s College London, where Lowe was a visiting professor in war studies, said the award-winning photojournalist would be “deeply missed”.

A statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, read: “It is with deep sadness that we received the news of Professor Paul Lowe’s passing.

“Paul was a visiting professor in the department of war studies, a professor of photojournalism at the University of the Arts London, and an award-winning photojournalist with VII Academy. A friend, colleague and collaborator whose work had a huge impact in shining a spotlight on the siege of Sarajevo and addressing its legacy, we were privileged to work with him on several projects related to art and reconciliation.

“His boundless energy, warmth, creativity, initiative and enthusiasm were contagious and uniquely inspiring. He will be deeply missed. We send our deepest condolences to his family at this difficult time.”

Lowe in August 2022 discussed his work in besieged Sarajevo for the Guardian photography series My best shot: “There was a sense of incredulity that this could be happening in a European capital city.”

With the Press Association

What if reducing your energy bill and cutting your home’s climate impact was as simple as using a different appliance?

More than a quarter of Victorian households with both gas ducted heating and reverse-cycle air conditioners could start saving money immediately by using their split systems for heating instead of gas.

The scenario – saving between $999 to $2,215 a year – was one of four cost-effective options for shifting from gas to electric heating modelled by not-for-profit organisations Renew and Environment Victoria.

Kat Lucas-Healey, Environment Victoria’s senior climate and energy advisor, said many people didn’t realise reverse-cycle systems could heat as well as cool and were a “much more efficient technology, that will save people a lot of money and add extra comfort”.

Decommissioning the gas system – removing the furnace and ducts, and blocking outlets – was an extra step, costing about $800. The energy savings would recoup that in five to 10 months, the report said, depending on the age of the house and its location.

Nearly half (44%) of Victorian households had ducted gas heating but no air conditioning. The added cost of replacing those gas heaters (at end-of-life) with three new reverse-cycle split systems would be recouped in three to five months, according to the report.

The annual savings in this scenario – between $969 to $1,927 – also covered cooling in summer, which Lucas-Healey said was a “win-win” for comfort and cost of living.

“When homes go electric, they’re not just heating more efficiently, they’re getting the ability to cool as well,” she said.

Household gas use – mostly for heating – comprised half of Victoria’s overall gas demand. The report calculated costs and savings of going electric for typical households in five different climate zones was based on research about appliances installed in Victorian homes and how they were used.

The small proportion (7%) of homes still reliant on gas space heaters could switch to a split system and save between 27% to 56% on their energy bills, while gaining the ability to cool in the warmer months, the groups said.

Chris Barnes, a household expert at consumer advocacy group Choice who was not involved in the modelling, said heating and cooling comprised “a large chunk” of Australian energy bills.

Many people heated with gas out of habit, he said, even though the running costs were generally higher than reverse-cycle systems.

“Once people take stock of it and realise what the price of gas is these days and what the running costs of an air conditioner actually are, there’s hopefully a pleasant surprise waiting for a few people,” he said.

Replacing a worn-out appliance or renovating was a good opportunity to consider getting off gas altogether, Barnes said. “Then you can disconnect gas from your home, so you’re not paying the standing fee for having a gas connection.”

Rory Sackville recently renovated his family home in Melbourne’s south-east, replacing the ducted gas with reverse-cycle heating, supplementing three existing units with three more.

Sustainability, cost and comfort, as well as the installation of new solar panels, drove the switch. “We were going to be generating our own electricity. So why not electrify the things that we had in our house?” he said.

“I wouldn’t call us off-grid eco warriors,” Sackville said. “We’re just a normal, typical family.”

Two boys recently died at separate Halloween-themed haunted hayride attractions in tractor accidents, authorities said.

The first boy died about 10.45 pm on 11 October at the Haunted Hilltop Halloween event in Hamilton county, Tennessee. A group of children at the event were playing near a path through which hay ride tractors drove, the Hamilton county sheriff’s department said.

A chaperone for the group told sheriff’s deputies that the children were “behind some bushes trying to scare some hay riders”. One of them appeared to have tried jumping on the trailer but slipped, falling under the tractor’s wheels.

“Apparently a young kid hid in the bushes and crossed over a barrier and when the hayride trailer went by he jumped out and attempted to get on the side of the trailer and was ran over by the trailer,” the attraction said on Facebook, imploring the community to give the boy’s family time to grieve.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press identified the victim as Samuel Jessen, 12. A GoFundMe was organized to help the Jessens with funeral costs.

A similar tragedy unfolded just before 8pm on 12 October at the Harvest of Horror Haunted Hayride attraction in St Augusta, Minnesota. Alexander Mick, 13, appears to have been run over by a wagon that was pulled by a tractor, the Stearns county sheriff’s office said in a statement.

While attendees and first responders tried to save the boy’s life, he died at the scene. His mother, Teri Mick, reportedly described her late child as “an amazingly unique child who loved Jesus with all his heart”.

“He was full of life, a junior black belt in taekwondo, played drums for the worship team, he was in band, sang in choir, in robotics and soccer and almost was an Eagle Scout,” she told CBS News.

The attraction said in a statement on its website that they’re “cooperating fully with the authorities and are grateful for their support”.

“We are deeply shaken by this event and are asking for thoughts, prayers and support for the family and friends of the individual involved and all those affected by this tragedy,” they said.

Out of respect to the family involved, the organizers made the decision to cancel the remaining nights of the 2024 Harvest of Horror.

Hayrides grew popular in the late 19th century with urban families increasingly partaking in leisure travel, according to the Northern Kentucky Tribune. Tourists decamping cities for the countryside had read “idealized accounts of hayrides in children’s books” and countryside farmers acted on this, pitching authentic hayrides, per the publication.

These rides, which involved spreading hay in a wagon, were a popular pick for farmers. There was more money to be made offering rides to “summer people” compared to selling the hay outright.

While there are voluntary safety standards for hayride operators, meaningful regulation remains scant, the Tribune notes. White Hutchinson, a company that consults in agritourism, said in 2023 that US hayride accidents have caused a minimum of 24 deaths and 204 injuries since 2000.

A 17-year-old girl died at a haunted hayride in Maine 10 years ago after it slipped down a hill and struck a tree, for example. More than 20 others were injured in the incident, per the Associated Press.

The estate of Leonard Cohen has issued a cease and desist order to Donald Trump, after a recording of Rufus Wainwright singing Cohen’s song Hallelujah was played at a bizarre campaign event.

Wainwright has also condemned Trump’s use of the song at the town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania. The singer characterised Hallelujah as “an anthem dedicated to peace, love and acceptance of the truth. I’ve been supremely honoured over the years to be connected with this ode to tolerance. Witnessing Trump and his supporters commune with this music last night was the height of blasphemy. Of course, I in no way condone this and was mortified, but the good in me hopes that perhaps in inhabiting and really listening to the lyrics of Cohen’s masterpiece, Donald Trump just might experience a hint of remorse over what he’s caused. I’m not holding my breath.”

The song was one of a number Trump played during a Q&A session in Oaks, where numerous audience members needed medical attention amid high temperatures. Trump first joked about the heat – “Personally, I enjoy this. We lose weight. We could do this, lose four, five pounds” – and then switched to playing music such Luciano Pavarotti’s recording on Ave Maria, saying: “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music.”

As well as Hallelujah, Guns N’ Roses’ epic power ballad November Rain was also played, alongside James Brown’s It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World, the Village People’s YMCA and Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O’Connor.

Trump later wrote on Truth Social: “The Q and A was almost finished when people began fainting from the excitement and heat. We started playing music while we waited, and just kept it going. So different, but it ended up being a GREAT EVENING!”

Kamala Harris captioned a clip of the event with the words: “Hope he’s okay.”

It has become common for artists to oppose their music being played at Trump campaign rallies and events. In August, Beyoncé blocked the use of her song Freedom – a licensed soundtrack for the Harris-Walz campaign – after it appeared in a Trump campaign video. Earlier that month the estate of the late Isaac Hayes opposed the use of the Hayes-penned Sam & Dave hit Hold On, I’m Comin’.

So many other artists have opposed him, from Rihanna to the Rolling Stones, that there is a Wikipedia page dedicated to the phenomenon.

Hallelujah, meanwhile, remains a modern pop standard, performed by dozens of artists since its initially overlooked release by Cohen in 1984. The most famous version was recorded by Jeff Buckley in 1994, but that was inspired by John Cale’s 1991 version, while Wainwright’s followed in 2001, recorded for the soundtrack of Shrek.

Alexandra Burke’s version reached Christmas No 1 in the UK in 2008 after she won The X Factor, while Bob Dylan, Bon Jovi and Bono are among the other artists with renditions.

George Monbiot rightly eviscerates the government’s foolish plan to waste nearly £22bn on the carbon capture and storage (CCS) venture (Labour’s carbon-capture scheme will be Starmer’s white elephant: a terrible mistake costing billions, 11 October). But he only hints at a worse aspect of the plan: that it is entirely unproven to work on the scale needed to be effective, as many studies have shown.

A study of the health and climate impacts of carbon capture, in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, found that only 10.8% of one such plant’s CO2-equivalent emissions and 10.5% of the CO2 removed from the air is captured over 20 years, and only 20 to 31% is captured over 100 years. In addition, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis finds that “CCS is an expensive and unproven technology that distracts from global decarbonisation efforts while allowing oil and gas industries to conduct business as usual.”

This spells out exactly why the oil and gas extraction firms are so strongly in favour of CCS: it allows them to continue making their obscene profits at our expense – and of that of the future of the planet.
Dr Richard Carter
Putney, London

The government’s carbon capture and storage proposal shows either their ignorance of the advice from all independent scientific experts (that CCS is quite the least energy-efficient way to get carbon out of the atmosphere) or that they are in the pockets of the fossil fuel lobby to which they are throwing a lifebuoy. Carbon dioxide only makes up a tiny proportion of the atmosphere (0.04%), so capturing it requires a lot of electricity. Best just to stop generating emissions.

A much more far-sighted investment would be to release Britain’s unrivalled potential for tidal-power generation, now a mature technology, by extending the electrical distribution network down our coastlines. The jobs created would utilise Britain’s marine and electrical engineering skills, provide reliable generation, thereby eliminating the argument for further nuclear power stations and hasten the day when we are free of all reliance on fossil fuels.

Catching and burying carbon dioxide emissions from power stations, oil and gas fields and steel and cement plants has been ongoing for 20 years, but it has spectacularly failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, its only clear successes involve enhanced oil recovery: carbon dioxide is used to drive oil out of geological formations that are otherwise difficult to exploit.

With astonishing chutzpah, some oil companies have claimed the small amount of carbon that remains trapped in the rocks as a climate benefit.
Kate Macintosh
Winchester

I was disappointed but perhaps not surprised to read Rachel Reeves’ celebration of the government’s funding of carbon capture as the start of their “green revolution”. She might as well have said the government was investing £22bn of our taxes in bitcoin over the next 25 years. The environmental impact would be similar, as would the efficacy of the technology.

The only proven carbon capture is the fossil fuel industry’s capture of our media and politicians, as evidenced by this new form of fossil fuel subsidy. If they wanted to invest in unproven technology, the government could have chosen any of the new forms of bulk energy storage that we will need to develop to make our grid resilient to the intermittent nature of renewable generation. But no, we get fossil-fuel snake oil instead.
Edric Brown
London

Donald Trump over the weekend told supporters of his campaign for a second presidency that his Democratic opponents want to ban cows and windows in buildings, inviting another round of questions about his mental fitness.

“They just come up, they want to do things like no more cows and no windows in buildings,” the Republican White House nominee said during a campaign event with Hispanic voters in Las Vegas on Saturday. “They have some wonderful plans for this country.

“Honestly, they’re crazy, and they’re really hurting out country, badly.”

Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign subsequently reacted to the remarks on social media by writing, “a confused Trump goes on a delusional rant”.

Other Trump critics echoed the Democratic vice-president’s observation, describing the rant as “stunningly senile” and “incoherent”.

Nevada’s Democratic party also criticized the former president, writing “Trump came to town and questioned Nevadans’ values and rambled about cows and windows”.

Saturday was not the first time that the former president has accused Democrats of wanting to get rid of cows.

During a rally earlier this summer, Trump said that Harris would pass laws to outlaw red meat if elected. He added: “You know what that means – that means no more cows.”

Trump has also said over the last several years that the Green New Deal, an expansive climate plan introduced and supported by progressive Democrats, would “take out the cows”.

The Green New Deal, he said in 2020, “would crush our farms, destroy our wonderful cows”

“I love cows. They want to kill our cows. You know why, right? You know why? Don’t say it. They want to kill our cows. That means you are next,” he said.

The Green New Deal, introduced in part by progressive Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, outlines broad principles of a plan to fight inequity and tackle climate change while aiming to begin reducing the US’s reliance on fossil fuels that are fueling destructive global warming.

The resolution does not call for eliminating animal agriculture. But it calls for “working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible”.

Though it suggests reducing emissions from agriculture, that “doesn’t mean you end cows,” Ocasio-Cortez said in 2019.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, about 10% of total American greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, including cows, soils, and rice production.

Trump’s confusing comments about Democrats wanting to get rid of cows and windows on buildings on Saturday came just two days before another bizarre moment from this campaign cycle.

On Monday, at a town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, Trump stood on stage swaying and bobbing his head for about 30 minutes while music played after medical emergency-related interruptions.

At the same event, although his election against Harris is on 5 November, he told the crowd to get out and vote on “January 5 or before” – prompting critics online to again comment on Trump’s cognitive health.

Harris released a medical report which found that the most notable aspects of her health history were seasonal allergies and hives. “She possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency” if she is elected in November, the report said.

A senior aide to Harris, 59, stated that the vice-president’s advisers saw the release of her health report and medical history as a chance to call attention to questions about Trump’s physical fitness and mental acuity.

On Sunday, more than 230 doctors, nurses and healthcare providers, called on the 78-year-old Trump to release his medical records, arguing that he should be transparent about his health as he seeks to become the oldest president elected.

“With no recent disclosure of health information from Donald Trump, we are left to extrapolate from public appearances,” the doctors wrote in a public letter. “And on that front, Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity.”

Trump has consistently declined to disclose detailed information about his health during his public life. On Tuesday, the former president went on his Truth social media platform and published a post claiming his health “IS PERFECT – NO PROBLEMS!!!”

Opposition outrage over Donald Trump’s rabble-rousing demagoguery turned to bewilderment after the Republican nominee spent 40 minutes swaying to his favourite songs at a rally near Philadelphia, prompting Kamala Harris to express apparent concern for his mental state.

“Hope he’s okay,” Harris, the US vice-president and Democratic nominee, posted on social media, accompanying footage of a performance that many observers agreed was bizarre, even by Trump’s standards.

The ad hoc music fest in the Pennsylvania suburb of Oaks happened after two members of the audience at an indoor rally fainted, apparently because of the heat.

When Trump requested air-conditioning, the event moderator, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, tried to keep things strictly political with a joke alluding to high inflation. “They probably can’t afford it, sir, in this economy,” she said.

Trump then decided to switch tack.

“Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he said.

A nine-song playlist ensued, that included standard Trump rally favourites such as James Brown’s It’s A Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World, the Village People’s YMCA, Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O’Connor, and Luciano Pavarotti’s rendition of Ave Maria, all played as the candidate stood mid-stage swaying or gently bouncing on his heels, with Noem joining in to mimic his movements.

Eventually, Trump concluded: “Those two people who went down are patriots. We love them. And because of them, we ended up with some great music, right?”

The resort to music in place of angry, provocative rhetoric was not without its ironies. A long list of musical artists – including Celine Dion, Abba, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen – have denounced or taken legal steps to stop the Trump campaign playing their songs at rallies. Rufus Wainright – whose cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah Trump also danced to at the rally – said in 2016 shortly before the election that he would not sing it again unless Trump lost.

It also came at a time when Harris was calling on the media and voters to play special attention to the much darker themes that are more frequently featured at Trump rallies to illustrate the threat to freedom she says he would pose if he was returned to the White House.

At a rally of her own in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Harris took the unusual step of playing footage from Trump’s rallies of him excoriating opponents as “the enemy within”, saying it showed him to be “unstable and unhinged”.

“He considers anyone who doesn’t support him or who will not bend to his will an enemy of our country,” Harris said after playing a clip of the comment on a giant screen. “This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America, and dangerous.”

Trump’s interlude recalled the days of his relative youth in the 1970s and 1980s, when he was a fixture at New York’s Studio 54 nightclub and rubbed shoulders with celebrities like Mick Jagger and Diana Ross. Despite the former president’s professed enthusiasm for vintage hits from the era, the venue’s founder told the Guardian in 2018 that he never saw Trump dance when he was in the club.

Trump’s staff depicted the episode as a joyful “lovefest” – perhaps subconsciously trying to imitate the theme of “joy” that Harris proclaimed in the early stages of her campaign.

“Total lovefest at the PA townhall! Everyone was so excited they were fainting so @realDonaldTrump turned to music,” Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, wrote on X. “Nobody wanted to leave and wanted to hear more songs from the famous DJT Spotify playlist!”

Karoline Leavitt, another spokesperson, posted simply: “DJ Trump.”

Other social media users were less impressed. “Donald Trump is not well,” wrote one. “He ended his town hall early and then stood on the stage awkwardly for nearly 30 minutes while random music played over the PA.” Another called it “absolutely INSANE. This was supposed to be a Town Hall.”

When Project 2025 began making headlines this summer, it was largely for the ways the conservative “wish list” of policies for a future Trump administration would restructure the entire federal bureaucracy, deepen abortion restrictions and eliminate the Department of Education.

But the document – a proposed mandate for the next Republican president authored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank – also outlines steps that would radically transform food and farming, curtailing recent progress to address the excess of ultra-processed foods in the United States. Among those: weakening the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), ending policies that consider the effects of climate change – and eliminating the US dietary guidelines.

“This is a deregulatory agenda,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and food policy at New York University. “And what we know historically from deregulation is that it’s really bad for consumers, it’s bad for workers, it’s bad for the environment.”

Project 2025 proposes changes to the country’s food assistance programs, like Snap and the Women, Infants and Children supplemental nutrition program (Wic), that Nestle believes are intended to dismantle such programs. It also calls for ending support for school meals.

But one of the most notable of its proposals is calling on the next Republican president to eliminate or reform the dietary guidelines. Those guidelines form the basis for all federal food policies, from school meals to Snap, Wic and other programs.

“There is no shortage of private-sector dietary advice for the public, and nutrition and dietary choices are best left to individuals to address their personal needs,” the document reads.

The food industry has long pushed the idea that chronic, diet-related health conditions, like diabetes and obesity, are the result of individual choices – like not exercising enough. Today, nearly 42% of adults in the US are obese and about 12% have diabetes. But nutritionists emphasize that those conditions are not the result of a moral failing, but rather conditions caused by the ingredients and policies (like aggressively advertising to children) pushed by food companies.

Nestle sees that as one of many pro-business policies outlined in Project 2025’s agricultural provisions that trusts companies to prioritize public health over profit.

“There’s twice as many calories available in the food supply as the country needs on average. So the food industry is enormously competitive in selling calories,” she said. “Republicans want to deregulate, and give those food businesses every opportunity to make as much money as they possibly can, regardless of the effects on health and the environment.”

Experts also fear the way Project 2025 could undermine the work being done by the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture to limit the flow of ultra-processed foods in the US food supply.

Today, ultra-processed foods make up 73% of the US food supply, according to Northeastern University, and provide the average US adult with more than 60% of their daily calories. While the science is still emerging, researchers are increasingly linking UPFs to a range of health conditions including diabetes, obesity, depression and certain cancers.

At the FDA, work is currently under way to develop a front-of-package label that corporations would be required to print on the fronts of products indicating when an item is high in sugar, fats, sodium or calories (the exact label has not yet been made public). Although the label wouldn’t specifically indicate when a food is ultra-processed, it would likely apply to a high percentage of UPFs in the food system because many contain large quantities of those nutrients.

And at the USDA, members of the US dietary guidelines advisory committee are currently meeting and will give their recommendations for the 2025-30 dietary guidelines later this year. As it considers the advice it will issue to the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services, the committee has been tasked with also evaluating research related to UPFs. It’s unclear what they’ll recommend – and whether that advice will make it into the 2025 dietary guidelines – but it’s a significant development for the committee to even consider ultra processing.

But while Project 2025 makes no specific references to front-of-package nutritional labels like those currently under consideration at the FDA, Lindsey Smith Taillie, a professor of nutrition and co-director of the Global Food Research Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says that eliminating the dietary guidelines will inevitably affect those.

“It’s almost like they’re removing scientific evidence from federal food policy,” she said.

Even if Trump isn’t elected next month, Philip Kahn-Pauli, director of legislative affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says he is “already seeing the impact of the policy proposals in Project 2025 in Congress today”.

While approving funding for government agencies in 2025, the Republican-controlled House considered a bill that would “fundamentally change” the dietary guidelines process, he said in an emailed statement. The budgetary bill would have, among other things, nullified the currently in-process 2025 dietary guidelines. Although that bill was abandoned in favor of a continuing resolution to fund the government, Kahn-Pauli said, “the fact that there was such a partisan attack” on the dietary guidelines “signals a new focus on undercutting evidence-based policy”. He expects to see more attacks on the guidelines in the new year.

Across the food system, Nestle says, Project 2025 would promote industry over climate, public health or welfare concerns: “The basic principle here is: don’t do anything that’s going to reduce industry profits.”

The number of sites identified as potentially having been polluted with banned cancer-causing “forever chemicals” in England is on the rise, and the Environment Agency (EA) says it does not have the budget to deal with them.

A former RAF airfield in Cambridgeshire and a fire service college in the Cotswolds have joined a chemicals plant in Lancashire and a fire protection equipment supplier in North Yorkshire on the agency’s list of “problem sites” for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

In total, according to a report compiled for the agency, there could be more than 10,000 locations in England contaminated with PFAS – substances that have been linked to a wide range of diseases including cancers, and which do not break down in the environment, earning them the nickname “forever chemicals”. But to date the agency is only taking action on four sites.

Banned PFAS were widely used in firefighting foams, which could explain why the area around the former RAF base, now the Fire Service College in Moreton-in-Marsh in Gloucestershire is on the agency’s “problem site” list. Elevated concentrations of PFAS in the surface water are being investigated by the EA.

Also on the list is Angus Fire, a fire protection equipment supplier in Bentham, North Yorkshire, where high levels of PFAS have been found and where the company says it has been testing for a number of years. Angus has said: “We no longer manufacture or test any PFAS-containing foam products at Bentham, or anywhere else in the world.”

The EA is also inspecting the Imperial War Museum at Duxford in Cambridgeshire, which used to be an RAF base, at the request of South Cambridgeshire district council. In 2022 the Guardian revealed drinking water in the area had been contaminated with PFAS.

A museum spokesperson said no banned substances were knowingly used anywhere across the estate. “We are tested and checked by Cambridge environmental health services and our firefighting team no longer trains with foam as we are aware of the sensitivity of the aquifer that sits below IWM Duxford. We continue to support the relevant water companies and agencies as they monitor the water supplies near the Duxford site.”

Investigations are also under way at the site of AGC Chemicals in Thornton-Cleveleys in Lancashire, after the Guardian and Watershed Investigations’ work uncovered very high concentrations of a banned PFAS called PFOA in effluent discharging into the protected River Wyre. AGC has said it does not “use or manufacture PFOA … any PFOA in the effluent may have come from historical usage at the site”.

Correspondence between the EA and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), seen by the Guardian and Watershed, reveals the agency’s “fear” about not being able to afford the investigation and risk assessment work at the four sites.

In an email sent to Defra in May, the agency says there are “funding pressures this year to take on all the inspection work we have been asked to do” relating to “PFAS and the two new potential site inspection requests we have accepted for AGC and Duxford”.

“These are the first requests we have had for many years and the very high cost of analysing for PFAS is beginning to get frightening,” the agency wrote. The “ballpark estimate of costs to carry out … investigations on four PFAS problem sites … has just come out at between £1.8m-£2.7m. We aren’t planning to spend anything like [that], certainly not immediately but it does put the total value of our contaminated land budget of £300k plus £200k from [the chemicals funding stream] into context.”

These figures do not include estimates for cleaning up the sites, which would only fall to the EA if the polluters cannot be found and current landowners are not held liable.

Dr Shubhi Sharma from the charity Chem Trust said: “It is quite right that the Environment Agency is flagging their lack of resources and the huge costs of monitoring for PFAS across what could be thousands of PFAS-contaminated sites across England. These costs do not even consider the further expense of removing these forever chemicals from our soil and water.

“The Environment Act sets out the importance of the polluter pays principle. The chemical industry in England should be putting its hands into its pockets and financially contributing to the vast costs that society and nature are facing. We must also make sure that we stop adding to this pollution burden, and the UK government needs to urgently act to ban these chemicals at the source.”

Historic landfills make up the bulk of the 10,000 sites that could also be causing pollution, according to the agency’s report, followed by wastewater treatment works, heavy industry, and fire stations and airports where PFAS-laden firefighting foams were also widely used.

Unused foams containing banned PFAS are stockpiled around the country. According to data obtained by the Guardian and Watershed from the previous government, the EA has registered more than 800 tonnes of PFOA- and PFOS-containing foams stockpiled in England.

A spokesperson for Defra said the government had “already begun investigating whether to restrict PFAS in firefighting foams and will set out more detail in due course”, adding that it had “recently announced a rapid review of the environmental improvement plan to deliver on our legally binding targets to save nature and this includes how best to manage chemicals, including the risks posed by PFAS.”

An EA spokesperson said the agency was undertaking a “multi-year programme to better understand sources of PFAS pollution in England. We are collaborating with several partners, including local authorities, to improve our evidence base and to assess and manage any environmental risks.”

The Fire Service College did not respond to requests for comment.