Laurie Laybourn
Laurie Laybourn is an award-winning researcher, author and strategist who writes for The Guardian on how accelerating climate and nature risks can destabilise societies and economies. His coverage is driven by systemic climate “doom loops” and the feedback between environmental shocks, political decisions and economic stress, rather than by weather events or single-issue environmental stories. He brings a research-led, scenario-based lens to climate reporting, shaped by his work on strategic climate risks and oversight of initiatives that study compounding crises.
Climate ‘doom loops’ and political leadership
Laybourn’s Guardian commentary on climate policy uses political leadership as the entry point to systemic risk, as in his analysis of how Andy Burnham’s decisions on climate action could lock governance into a “derailment” doom loop if they fail to keep pace with rising impacts. He treats leaders’ choices as part of wider feedback systems in which inadequate action deepens crises, erodes public trust and narrows future options.
His tone is analytical rather than campaign-led, focusing on the structures and incentives that shape climate decisions and how these can be redesigned to avoid self-reinforcing failure.
Economic systems under climate stress
Laybourn engages closely with economic modelling of climate risk, contributing analysis on how traditional models underplay worst-case outcomes and could leave the global economy exposed to abrupt shocks. He draws out the gap between what macroeconomic frameworks currently assume and the cascading disruptions that climate change and nature loss can realistically produce, arguing that this gap poses direct risk to financial stability and policy planning. His work on COP26 and health connects climate policy to health systems, setting out how the pace of decarbonisation and adaptation remains too slow to prevent mounting health burdens from extreme weather and environmental degradation. Across these pieces, he treats economic and health systems as intertwined and vulnerable to the same chains of climate-driven disruption.
Food, energy and cascading security risks
Laybourn repeatedly explores cascading climate risks across food and energy systems, highlighting how regional instability and extreme weather can ripple through supply chains to drive price shocks and threaten food security.
He uses examples such as Middle Eastern instability and projected hits to global agricultural production to show how climate hazards can transmit through logistics networks, commodity markets and geopolitical tensions to create further crises. In commentary on the vulnerability of food systems to climate impacts, he draws attention to the gap between current preparedness and the scale of disruptions projected for agricultural production and key commodities, including the potential for sharp price spikes across staple and cash crops.
These strands of his work situate climate change as a core driver of economic and security risk rather than a separate environmental issue.
Overshoot, nature loss and strategic risk analysis
Beyond newspaper commentary, Laybourn researches, writes and speaks on how climate change and nature loss accelerate systemic risks, mapping how multiple crises can interact and compound. He wrote and narrated the Overshoot podcast documentary, which examines living in a world that has already exceeded key planetary boundaries and the societal consequences of that overshoot; the series was recognised as a podcast of the week by The Guardian and ranked among the most shared shows globally on Spotify. He leads the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative and holds fellowships at several research institutions, and this work feeds directly into his journalism by grounding pieces in scenario analysis and stress-testing institutions and policies against plausible chains of climate shocks.
His writing across outlets is consistent in treating climate and nature loss as drivers of complex risk systems, with The Guardian columns translating that strategic perspective into accessible analysis of politics, economics and public policy.
4 more environment journalists.
Abby Wallace
Abby Wallace covers where energy, climate and politics meet, with a focus on how net zero, power markets and extreme weather affect people and institutions. She is an energy and climate reporter at POLITICO, covering U.K. energy policy, climate targets and the transition from fossil fuels. Her subjects include government and opposition debates over net zero, decarbonization, support schemes, infrastructure, public spending and climate adaptation. She also reports on energy companies, household bills, labor standards, supply chains and corporate accountability. Her work connects technical policy choices to jobs, competitiveness, public services and voter sentiment. She uses polling, expert voices and political analysis to examine public attitudes and government response to extreme weather. Before POLITICO, she worked on the companies desk at the Financial Times and the business news desk at Insider. She has also freelanced on politics, business and climate.
Adam Fulton
Adam Fulton is a digital news producer focused on fast-moving global stories where environment, conflict and politics meet. He works on the Guardian’s Australian operation, using rolling live blogs to cover geopolitical crises, climate-linked disasters and wars with clear structure and context. His Middle East coverage, including the Gaza peace plan, tracks tension between political messaging and on-the-ground realities, tying leaders’ statements to military movements, diplomatic reactions and humanitarian reports. His disaster reporting, such as on Nepal–Tibet floods, links rising tolls and missing people to infrastructure damage, rescue strain and cascading environmental threats. His Ukraine war blogs treat resource scarcity, especially water and energy, as strategic factors and track how infrastructure damage shapes the conflict. A former entertainment and arts reporter and senior editor at major Australian newspapers, he applies careful pacing and narrative arcs to collaborative, time-stamped live coverage.
Alec Luhn
Alec Luhn is an environment reporter whose work follows climate change at its extremes, frontiers and human consequences, often reporting directly from places where warming, instability and displacement intersect. He covers climate, conflict and migration, showing how abstract climate trends turn into risks for communities, infrastructure, health and preparedness. He reports for New Scientist on climate breakdown, extreme events, El Niño, limits of models, melting glaciers, warming seas and adaptation to heat, mixing scientific explanation with lived experience. A defining strand of his work is reporting from remote icy and mountainous regions on Arctic sea ice loss, permafrost, polar bears, pollution and fragile ecosystems. He has a long record on conflict and security, including the Skripal poisoning case. His reporting appears in New Scientist and major international outlets, with work across print, digital, audio and television and recognition from climate and journalism awards.
Amy Lyall
Amy Lyall is a regular contributor to The Connexion, and her work stands out for turning French rules, services and the built environment into clear, usable advice for everyday readers. She covers housing, energy use, resident obligations and the practical steps behind things like getting air-conditioning approved for flats. Her beat also includes national and local schemes, insurance and legal conditions for lending a car, mobile network coverage, mosquito-borne diseases, water filters, fruit harvests and emergency drones with defibrillators. She writes news, practical guides and magazine-style features, using plain language to explain technical topics and official systems. She also writes explainers on French words and phrases and occasional culture pieces on unusual sites such as Maison Picassiette.