Exclusive: Campaigners argue news channel’s attacks on climate action ‘work in financial interests’ of Sir Paul Marshall
The hedge fund run by the co-owner of GB News almost tripled its investments in fossil fuel companies in the first quarter of 2026 to $2.8bn (£2.1bn), the Guardian can reveal.
Critics have accused Sir Paul Marshall of “cashing in on climate chaos” and have claimed the news channel, which frequently attacks climate science and action, was “working in its owner’s financial interests”.
Workers proud of their efforts to grow renewable energy say US president pursuing ‘personal vendetta’ at their expense
Donald Trump has blamed everything – from “national security” issues, the deaths of birds and whales, and cancer – in his decades-long campaign against windfarms. But as the Trump administration continues to undermine the industry, what worries workers most are their jobs.
Since taking office for a second term, Trump has issued an executive order aiming to halt all wind-energy leases and permits, attempted to issue stop-work orders on wind projects under construction, and paid more than $2.6bn in settlements to buy out wind energy leases. And hundreds of workers have been affected.
Our national parks are a haven for humans, plants and animals alike.
Protected areas such as national parks are a cornerstone of our efforts to conserve nature. But these unique ecosystems can still bear the scars of past fires, floods and other natural disturbances.
Our new study examines how repeated bushfires have changed, and continue to change, one of Australia’s iconic national parks.
Located on Australia’s southernmost tip, Wilsons Promontory or “the Prom” is one of Victoria’s most popular national parks, famous for its wombats, rosellas, mountains and coastlines.
But in the first half of last century, the Prom was repeatedly burnt by intense bushfires. This pushed thousands of hectares of eucalypt forests towards collapse. And as our climate changes, bushfires will only become more frequent and severe.
The history of the Prom may provide a preview of what our forests could look like in a warmer, more fire-prone future. It could also give us clues about how to protect them.
Fire and forests: a delicate balance
Over millions of years, Australia’s eucalypt forests have evolved to both survive and recover from bushfires.
Even so, resprouting eucalypts need time to recover before they can withstand another fire. If they’re burnt by back-to-back bushfires, eucalypts may start to die.
At its most severe, this can lead to “ecosystem collapse” – where an area loses all forest cover and only patches of dense, short shrubs remain.
This has serious consequences for the entire ecosystem, including less habitat for wildlife, less carbon storage and potentially increased bushfire risk. But we still don’t fully understand how long these changes last, and what the longer-term implications may be.
After multiple successive bushfires in the early 1900s, the Prom’s eucalypt forests failed to recover and resprout, and became “collapsed forests”. They have stayed that way for the past 70 years.
Our study compared areas of collapsed forests with nearby areas of “intact forests”, where eucalyptus trees are still growing, at the Prom.
We found collapsed forests had 97% fewer large trees and were dominated by shrubs. Large trees provide areas for birds to build nests and possums, gliders and microbats to shelter in hollows.
We also found collapsed forests have 40% fewer fallen trees and trunks, compared with intact forests. These logs act as shelter for native ground-dwelling mammals such as the long-nosed potoroo and the pookila, also known as the New Holland mouse. They also provide food and other resources for various types of fungi and insects.
Collapsed forests store 60% less carbon than intact forests. In collapsed forests, carbon is mainly stored in short, dense shrubs. This type of vegetation is more likely to be burnt up in future fires, meaning any carbon they store is released back into the atmosphere.
So, what can we do?
Given these collapsed forests have persisted for 70 years, the only way they may be restored is if we intervene. This is possible through forest management strategies such as reforestation or reseeding.
But before we try to restore these forests, we must consider several questions:
how much should we intervene in national parks? Is it our responsibility to reforest these areas, or should we expect to see more collapsed forests in protected areas?
should we restore these collapsed forests to what they were in the 1900s, or prepare them for a more fire-prone future by introducing more drought- and fire-tolerant trees?
These are complex questions. We need more research to know how to best protect our national parks and other vulnerable ecosystems from future fires, floods and other natural disturbances. We must also ensure our national parks are reliably funded.
The Prom shows us forest collapse is not inevitable. But it’s an urgent reminder of the importance of actively managing and investing in our national parks, particularly as the warming climate threatens their very survival.
Aaron Heap has received funding from Parks Victoria to support his PhD research at The University of Melbourne to better understand the implications of forest collapse.
Tom Fairman has received funding from the Victorian government to undertake forest and fire research. Tom is also a member of the Gippsland Forest Dialogue and Forestry Australia.
But the ruling also highlights a longstanding controversy about how the product’s use is approved, including in New Zealand.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has judged glyphosate “not likely” to cause cancer, while the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) describes it as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.
The two agencies weigh the evidence differently. IARC uses only publicly available studies and tests animal data for dose-response trends, while the US EPA leans heavily on unpublished studies commissioned by the manufacturer itself.
As a small country, New Zealand cannot itself conduct full risk assessments of thousands of chemicals in use, and leans on findings from bigger agencies overseas.
In the case of glyphosate, New Zealand’s approval process is based on several reviews shaped by Monsanto. But I argue this is no longer tenable, as one of them has now been retracted and two are under investigation.
Compromised evidence in regulatory decisions
Monsanto-produced evidence has a questionable track record. Its early tests during the 1970s and ‘80s were conducted in contract laboratories that have since been convicted of fabricating data.
In this context, ghostwriting is the practice of putting names of independent scientists on work produced by employees of the company. It is explicitly prohibited under the standards of scientific practice.
Faced with the divided evidence, New Zealand’s Environmental Protection Authority (NZ EPA) commissioned its own report in 2016. It concluded glyphosate is “unlikely to be genotoxic or carcinogenic to humans”.
New Zealand scientists objected at the time. In 2018, six New Zealand public-health researchers, several of whom have connections to IARC, challenged the authority’s report.
They listed many concerns, including reliance on unpublished industry studies and ghostwriting. None of this moved the authority’s position. In 2024, it again found no grounds to reassess the use of glyphosate. A High Court challenge to this decision was unsuccessful.
However, the ground beneath this debate is shifting.
We found they had been effective in their intended purpose of convincing people and regulators of glyphosate’s safety.
We called for them to be retracted
because the first was written by Monsanto and signed by outside academics. An internal email describes the practice of writing the sections so the named authors “would just edit & sign their names”.
The journal retracted this review in November 2025, noting Monsanto employees “may have contributed […] without proper acknowledgement as co-authors”, among other issues.
A recently disclosed memo shows the US EPA’s own investigator reached the same conclusion that the paper “hid Monsanto’s role as an author”, but the agency kept citing it.
Another review published in 2015 discredited a study that had found glyphosate caused a significant rise in malignant lymphoma in mice, instead invoking a “viral infection”. But subsequent independent reanalysis found no evidence of this in the original study.
Bayer continues to reject the ghostwritingcharacterisation, saying Monsanto’s involvement was appropriately cited in the acknowledgments which thanked the company’s scientists for “significant contributions”.
NZ should reconsider glyphosate regulation
Institutional trust varies significantly. US EPA emails from 2025 show Bayer promising the agency “a small thanks” for updating its glyphosate webpage.
By contrast, the judge in Australia’s 2024 Roundup class action warned that a company dealing with regulators cannot be assumed to “play with a straight bat,” and said the evidence gave him “concerns about accepting anything from Monsanto at face value”. Yet the 2015 review was used by the applicant’s own statistician.
New Zealand’s 2016 report also leans on these three reviews. But now, in 2026, it is much harder to treat them as legitimate evidence in an honest scientific debate about glyphosate’s safety.
When New Zealanders are told dietary exposure sits well under 1% of the “acceptable level”, they should keep in mind two things.
First, this level is based on industry-sponsored studies. Second, an average hides how unevenly exposure falls on sprayers, rural communities and people with particular diets. These factors should be weighted in, but New Zealand holds almost no exposure data.
The costs of using them should be estimated explicitly: an uptick in illnesses, strain on the healthcare system, harm to the environment and lost quality of life.
The intellectually honest process would be to assess risks with broad scientific consultation and acknowledgement of where evidence is compromised or plainly missing.
For New Zealand to keep avoiding a comprehensive reassessment of glyphosate is to make wilful ignorance a matter of national policy.
Sasha (Alexander) Kaurov is affiliated with Motu Economic & Public Policy Research and his research on this topic has been partially funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund. He co?authored an unpaid amicus brief in the US Supreme Court case involving Bayer.
