Power struggle: Andy Burnham has promised to take on “unaccountable power” and the “Whitehall machine” as he pursues greater devolution. But, asks Phil Tinline, does he really understand the forces he seeks to confront, and what it will take to dismantle them? In a climate special, novelist Melissa Harrison writes from Suffolk on the devastation to local wildlife from a summer of drought and wildfires; Ellen Halliday argues that, with the political consensus on net zero ended, the true cost would lie in further delay; and Isabel Hilton visits the Oxfordshire startup attempting to install solar panels in space. Plus, Sasha Mudd unpicks The Odyssey’s moral maze; Mark Damazer considers how the Israeli government lost support across the US; and Peter Hoskin interviews star physicist Carolo Rovelli. In culture, Heather Brooke writes on Big Tech’s assault on our attention spans, Tom Clark reviews Francis Fukuyama’s autobiography and Sukhdev Sandhu uncovers the life of Daniel Farson, eccentric extraordinaire.