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China pledges to stop building new coal energy plants abroad
The announcement is the country's latest climate pledge and a major step forward to address emissions.
22 September 2021, 5:23am
Climate reporting reaches melting point
A trip to a melting glacier will shape how the BBC's new climate editor reports on climate change.
21 September 2021, 2:08am
COP 26: How much is the developing world getting to fight climate change?
Are rich countries living up to their climate promises to the developing world?
21 September 2021, 4:24pm
Life at 50C: Heat hitting home in Australia
Cities like Sydney are already experiencing extremely hot days because of climate change.
22 September 2021, 12:09am
Climate change: UN warning over nations' climate plans
Climate plans of more than 100 countries show we're heading in the wrong direction, the UN says.
17 September 2021, 4:21pm
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Vanuatu to seek international court opinion on climate change rights - The Guardian
Vanuatu to seek international court opinion on climate change rights The Guardian
26 September 2021, 4:25am
Global climate strike: thousands join coordinated action across world - The Guardian
Global climate strike: thousands join coordinated action across world The Guardian
24 September 2021, 3:52pm
The climate crisis has made the idea of a better future impossible to imagine - The Guardian
The climate crisis has made the idea of a better future impossible to imagine The Guardian
25 September 2021, 7:59pm
This haunting vision of climate change could concentrate minds at Cop26 - The Guardian
This haunting vision of climate change could concentrate minds at Cop26 The Guardian
25 September 2021, 10:15pm
Climate funding target for poorer countries ‘likely to be met’ by 2022 - The Guardian
Climate funding target for poorer countries ‘likely to be met’ by 2022 The Guardian
24 September 2021, 1:01pm
Climate issues highlighted in Bridport Great Big Green Week | Bridport and Lyme Regis News - Bridport and Lyme Regis News
Climate issues highlighted in Bridport Great Big Green Week | Bridport and Lyme Regis News Bridport and Lyme Regis News
26 September 2021, 5:00am
Climate change is intensifying the US border crisis. It will only get worse - News-Daily.com
Climate change is intensifying the US border crisis. It will only get worse News-Daily.com
26 September 2021, 9:02am
Climate change: World now sees twice as many days over 50C - BBC News
Climate change: World now sees twice as many days over 50C BBC News
13 September 2021, 8:00am
Cop26: Women must be heard on climate, say rights groups - The Guardian
Cop26: Women must be heard on climate, say rights groups The Guardian
25 September 2021, 7:02am
Climate change: UN warning over nations' climate plans - BBC News
Climate change: UN warning over nations' climate plans BBC News
17 September 2021, 8:00am
Boris Johnson: Humanity is reaching a turning point on climate change - BBC News
Boris Johnson: Humanity is reaching a turning point on climate change BBC News
23 September 2021, 2:14pm
Why can’t we tackle Covid and climate heating? Nationalism and stupidity - The Guardian
Why can’t we tackle Covid and climate heating? Nationalism and stupidity The Guardian
25 September 2021, 10:15pm
Vanuatu to push international court for climate change action - Al Jazeera English
Vanuatu to push international court for climate change action Al Jazeera English
25 September 2021, 8:42am
Unlocking Access to Climate Finance for Pacific Islands Countries - International Monetary Fund
Unlocking Access to Climate Finance for Pacific Islands Countries International Monetary Fund
24 September 2021, 11:33pm
Prince Charles launches climate change channel on Amazon Prime - The Independent
Prince Charles launches climate change channel on Amazon Prime The Independent
25 September 2021, 9:35pm
Fridays for Future global climate strike – in pictures - The Guardian
Fridays for Future global climate strike – in pictures The Guardian
24 September 2021, 4:30pm
Climate crisis: history will judge failure to act, Johnson says at UN - The Guardian
Climate crisis: history will judge failure to act, Johnson says at UN The Guardian
20 September 2021, 7:44pm
Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg takes swipe a New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern - Daily Mail
Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg takes swipe a New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern Daily Mail
26 September 2021, 8:12am
Icelanders Vote in Volatile Election With Climate in Mind - The New York Times
Icelanders Vote in Volatile Election With Climate in Mind The New York Times
25 September 2021, 10:39pm
US north-east faces rapid warming amid global climate crisis - The Guardian
US north-east faces rapid warming amid global climate crisis The Guardian
23 September 2021, 4:00pm
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We need to go big to solve the climate crisis
The environmental integrity of emissions reductions depends on scale and systemic changes, not on sector of origin of the emissions We urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions far beyond current climate pledges, even if these were fully attained. But there’s a completely doable way to make major progress, near to hand. Natural climate solutions […]
21 September 2021, 3:13pm
What We’re Watching in Reconciliation: Regular Updates from EDF
Through the process known as budget reconciliation, Congress is now crafting a bill that could include significant investments in climate action that will drive economic and job growth. There are going to be a lot of moving parts over the next few weeks, which is why EDF will be weighing in regularly in this space […]
10 September 2021, 3:24pm
What We’re Watching in Reconciliation
Through the process known as budget reconciliation, Congress is now considering significant investments in climate action that could supercharge economic and job growth. With so many moving pieces, it can be difficult to know what to watch for, which is why we’ve homed in on four key questions to ask as the process unfolds. EDF […]
8 September 2021, 5:52pm
Congress: It’s Time for Ambitious Action on Climate Change
Congress is building momentum toward bold clean energy policies that will create millions of jobs, accelerate clean energy and fight climate change. The bipartisan infrastructure deal the Senate passed in August was a positive and necessary first step. And now, we are looking forward to ambitious action that will help tackle the broad scope of […]
2 September 2021, 6:33pm
A revamped cost curve showcases the biggest carbon-cutting opportunities
President Biden has raised the bar for U.S. climate ambition, setting targets to cut economy-wide emissions 50-52% by 2030 and achieve net-zero by 2050. As the administration, federal lawmakers and state and local leaders work to make these goals a reality with strong climate policies and investments — including in climate-focused infrastructure and reconciliation packages […]
31 August 2021, 11:50am
Western Climate Initiative auction hits a new record, raising over a billion in proceeds for California
The results of the Western Climate Initiative’s August auction were released today and all current and future vintage allowances sold at record-high allowance prices. This news follows two other key climate updates from this summer: The release of the 2019 California Emissions Inventory which looks back at the state’s encouraging emissions progress, and the launch […]
25 August 2021, 9:15pm
With the Climate Crisis Act, California can lock in a safer pathway to net-zero emissions
The new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes clear what Californians already know: the climate crisis is upon us. Impacts like ever-more-extreme wildfires, intensifying drought, and the growing threat of sea-level rise are accelerating, and the widespread damage are only going to intensify unless we take bold, swift action to slash greenhouse […]
16 August 2021, 10:54pm
Oregon’s Climate Protection Program must live up to its name
As Oregon faces another out of control wildfire season, the state’s lead environmental agency, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), just released regulatory language for its Climate Protection Program, a program intended to be a pillar of the state’s strategy to meet the ambitious climate goals Governor Brown committed the state to in 2020. The […]
11 August 2021, 7:16pm
LIVE: World leaders pledge to power humanity with clean energy
How can the world come together to radically change the way it produces and uses energy, as part of efforts to hold back climate change and to ultimately give humanity a more secure future on planet earth? That’s the question that over one hundred countries, organizations and businesses will be discussing at the United Nations on Friday at the High-level Dialogue on Energy, the first meeting of its kind in 40 years.
24 September 2021, 1:41pm
UN chief: Window to avert devasting climate impacts ‘rapidly closing’
No region is immune to climate disasters the UN chief told the Security Council on Thursday, warning that “our window of opportunity” to prevent the worst climate impacts is “rapidly closing”.
23 September 2021, 3:35pm
World’s two largest economies commit to climate action – Guterres
UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday welcomed important commitments made towards climate action by the world’s two largest economies, as the 76th High Level Debate began in New York.
21 September 2021, 11:05pm
Call for ‘decisive action now’ to avoid climate catastrophe
Speaking alongside the UK Prime Minister in New York on Monday the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has called on world leaders for “decisive action now to avert climate catastrophe.”
20 September 2021, 7:55pm
‘Tipping point’ for climate action: Time’s running out to avoid catastrophic heating
The temporary reduction in carbon emissions caused by global COVID-19 lockdowns did not slow the relentless advance of climate change. Greenhouse gas concentrations are at record levels, and the planet is on path towards dangerous overheating, a multi-agency climate report published on Thursday warns.
16 September 2021, 8:15am
Climate action: Guterres hails Latin American and Caribbean leadership
The UN chief on Wednesday commended the leadership of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on climate action.
8 September 2021, 5:43pm
Drop coal or climate change will ‘wreak havoc’ across Australian economy
Climate change will “wreak havoc” across the Australian economy if coal is not rapidly phased out, a senior UN official warned on Monday.
6 September 2021, 4:11pm
Air quality improvements from COVID lockdowns confirmed
COVID-19 lockdowns brought rapid and “unprecedented” improvements in air quality in some parts of the world - but not enough to halt climate change caused by global warming, UN weather experts said on Friday.
3 September 2021, 3:38pm
Improving air quality ‘key’ to confronting global environmental crises
With environmental events becoming increasingly interconnected, a new global report on air pollution published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on Thursday underscores that improved air quality is “key to tackling the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste”.
2 September 2021, 6:02pm
Climate and weather related disasters surge five-fold over 50 years, but early warnings save lives - WMO report
Climate change and increasingly extreme weather events, have caused a surge in natural disasters over the past 50 years disproportionately impacting poorer countries, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) said on Wednesday.
1 September 2021, 8:35am
Climate solutions, changemakers, and celebrities: major UN podcast series launched
The UN launches No Denying It, a new 10-part climate action podcast, on Thursday, featuring interviews with inspiring young activists, and the voices of internationally renowned celebrities, such as actors Ed Norton and Michelle Yeoh.
25 August 2021, 11:19pm
COVID, natural hazards and climate crisis in Asia and the Pacific expand ‘riskcape’
The convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic with natural hazards, made worse by climate change, has reshaped and expanded the disaster “riskscape” in Asia and the Pacific, according to a new report published on Wednesday by the UN’s regional commission there.
25 August 2021, 5:29pm
Race is on to limit extreme weather impact on most vulnerable: Guterres
As the global aid community marked World Humanitarian Day on Thursday, UN chief António Guterres paid tribute to all those who help people in need and urged support for the day’s #TheHumanRace campaign, which aims to protect the most vulnerable people from the climate emergency.
19 August 2021, 3:57pm
UN weather agency: millions affected by climate change and extreme weather in Latin America and Caribbean
Climate-related and geophysical events resulted in the loss of 312,000 lives and directly affected more than 277 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, a new report released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) revealed on Tuesday.
17 August 2021, 3:05pm
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Hotter summers and wetter winters will bring new challenges and opportunities. The UK Climate Resilience programme, a collaboration between UKRI and the Met Office, brings a wide range of researchers to help in this effort.
Collaboration to beat climate change
With climate change having a huge impact on the decisions and policies we make, collaboration is key – and at the forefront is the NERC and Met Office collaborative Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme.
Scientists are currently marooned onboard the icebreaker RV Polarstern due to the COVID-19 lockdown; we hear first hand how they are coping, what life is like on the ship, and what ongoing experiments can reveal about climate change in this fascinating region.
The Southern Ocean is one of the hardest places on Earth to carry out scientific research – but there is a growing realisation that in the era of climate change, we need to understand it better.
From rising sea level impact on coastal ecosystems to exciting new ways to reduce greenhouse emissions, marine scientist Dr Judith Wolf describes her research into the effect of climate change on the world’s oceans.
Soils are critical to the health of our planet and essential for human, animal and plant life – but are at risk from changes in climate and land use.
The Arctic is beautiful and awe-inspiring. It is also a vital element of the Earth's climate system, helping to regulate global temperatures.
Q&A: How did climate change feature at the UN Food Systems Summit?
The two-day UN Food Systems Summit concluded this week with around 150 countries announcing voluntary...
The post Q&A: How did climate change feature at the UN Food Systems Summit? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China weekly digest. We handpick and explain the most important climate and...
The post China Briefing, 23 September 2021: Xi’s ‘no overseas coal’ pledge; More orders on domestic coal; ‘Ball in China’s court’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: How to assess regional climate information for adaptation planning
From heatwaves and wildfires, to floods and rainfall-induced landslides, the northern-hemisphere summer of 2021 has...
The post Guest post: How to assess regional climate information for adaptation planning appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China weekly digest. We handpick and explain the most important climate and...
The post China Briefing, 16 September 2021: Xi and Biden discuss climate; Johnson’s ‘last-ditch’ talks with Xi; Advice for China’s carbon goals appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: The climate-change gaps in the UK school curriculum
While the impacts of global warming are already being felt across the world, the decisions...
The post Guest post: The climate-change gaps in the UK school curriculum appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China weekly digest. We handpick and explain the most important climate and...
The post China Briefing, 9 September 2021: Sharma’s Tianjin trip; Steel production ‘could increase’; ‘Most stringent control’ for ‘dual high’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Australia is ‘more and more isolated’ on climate, former EU trade commissioner says
Cecilia Malmström warned climate change is an urgent global crisis and Australia, as a big economy and big emitter, needs to do more
The former European Union trade commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, has warned Australia is becoming “more and more isolated” on climate action at a time when floods, fires, droughts, and the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows global heating “is created by humanity”.
Malmström told a webinar hosted by the progressive thinktank the Australia Institute on Wednesday climate change was “the most urgent global crisis we are finding ourselves in – and we don’t have much time”.
Related: German ambassador joins calls for Morrison government to take more ambitious climate action
Related: Voters in Sydney’s Liberal ‘heartland’ more worried about climate than Covid, polling suggests
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Continue reading...Is democracy getting in the way of saving the planet? | Kate Aronoff
Our climate is in crisis, but authoritarians and technocrats don’t have the answers
What the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report confirmed this month is that the stable climate many of us grew up with is gone and has been replaced by a fundamentally unstable one. Sea levels will almost certainly rise and storms will get more intense. Amid a drumbeat of depressing news and decades of inaction, there’s a sort of folk wisdom emerging that liberal democracy might just be too slow to tackle a problem as urgent and massive as the climate crisis. It’s an enticing vision: that governments can forgo the messy, deliberative work of politics in favour of a benign dictatorship of green technocrats who will get emissions down by brute force. With a punishingly tiny budget of just 400 gigatonnes of CO2 left to make a decent shot of staying below 1.5C of warming, is it time to give something less democratic a try?
It would be easy to look at the longstanding stalemate around climate policy in the US, the world’s second biggest emitter and embattled superpower, as evidence that something more top-down is needed. Yet the failure isn’t one of too much democracy but too little. The US Senate empowers West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – a man elected by fewer than 300,000 people – to block the agenda of a president elected by more than 80 million. Climate-sceptical Republicans, backed by corporate interests, have attempted to gerrymander their way to electoral dominance, halting progressive climate action in its tracks. The fossil fuel industry can engulf lawmakers with lobbyists and virtually unlimited campaign donations to sway their votes. And as the Republican party’s leading lights flirt with authoritarians like Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, comprehensive bipartisan climate action remains a pipe dream.
Kate Aronoff is a writing fellow at In These Times
Continue reading...National Trust to give staff siestas in summer
Staff and volunteers in south of England will get more Mediterranean hours because of climate change
The National Trust is giving its workers siestas in summer due to increasingly hot weather because of climate change.
Staff and volunteers in the south of England will be given more Mediterranean working hours, with a long lunch break and the day starting earlier and finishing later. This will allow them to avoid the hottest part of the day, as people already do in countries such as Italy and Spain.
Continue reading...Blue whales returning to Spain’s Atlantic coast after 40-year absence
Some experts fear climate crisis is leading creatures back to area where they were hunted almost to extinction
Blue whales, the world’s largest mammals, are returning to Spain’s Atlantic coast after an absence of more than 40 years.
The first one was spotted off the coast of Galicia in north-west Spain in 2017 by Bruno Díaz, a marine biologist who is head of the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute in O Grove, Galicia.
Continue reading...California Caldor fire burns thousands of hectares in weekend surge – video
The owner of a cabin which became surrounded by flames near Kyburz, California, managed to escape the Caldor fire after filming the first part of this footage. The fire has burned more than 40,500 hectares (100,000 acres) in the north of the state since it started on 14 August, and more than 12,000 in just two days.
More than 500 structures were destroyed over the weekend by wildfire fuelled by warm winds and drought-stricken vegetation
‘It’s just unbelievable’: Tennessee surveys wreckage after floods kill 22
Succession of thunderstorms deposited record-breaking 17in of rain in some parts of state
Tennesseans were surveying the mangled wreckage of towns and communities across the middle of the state on Monday, after a record-breaking deluge caused flash flooding that swept away houses, shattered lives and left at least 22 people dead and many more missing.
Related: A midwestern town moved uphill to survive climate crisis. Can others do the same?
Continue reading...Climate crisis made deadly German floods ‘up to nine times more likely’
Study reinforces the hard evidence that carbon emissions are the main cause of worsening extreme weather
The record-shattering rainfall that caused deadly flooding across Germany and Belgium in July was made up to nine times more likely by the climate crisis, according to research.
The study also showed that human-caused global heating has made downpours in the region up to 20% heavier. The work reinforces the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s landmark report this month that there is “unequivocal” evidence that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main cause of worsening extreme weather.
Continue reading...Voters in Sydney’s Liberal ‘heartland’ more worried about climate than Covid, polling suggests
Delta may be gripping the city and dominating headlines but global warming is still the number one issue for many
Voters in three Liberal-held federal seats in metropolitan Sydney remain worried about climate change despite the pressing frustrations and uncertainties associated with the Delta outbreak, according to new electorate-level polling commissioned by an activist group.
New seat polls commissioned by Climate 200, an organisation supporting independent political candidates committed to achieving a science-based response to climate change, suggest global heating is the number one issue of concern for voters in the electorates of Wentworth and North Sydney.
Related: Major climate changes inevitable and irreversible – IPCC’s starkest warning yet
Related: Two Liberal MPs urge Morrison to set 2050 net zero target before UN climate conference
Related: Scott Morrison tells states they need to honour Covid ‘deal with all Australians’ to reopen
Continue reading...Climate-conscious individual choices are good – but not nearly enough to save the planet. More than personal virtue, we need collective action
Personal virtue is an eternally seductive goal in progressive movements, and the climate movement is no exception. People pop up all the time to boast of their domestic arrangements or chastise others for what they eat or how they get around. The very short counterargument is that individual acts of thrift and abstinence won’t get us the huge distance we need to go in this decade. We need to exit the age of fossil fuels, reinvent our energy landscape, rethink how we do almost everything. We need collective action at every scale from local to global – and the good people already at work on all those levels need help in getting a city to commit to clean power or a state to stop fracking or a nation to end fossil-fuel subsidies. The revolution won’t happen by people staying home and being good.
But the oil companies would like you to think that’s how it works. It turns out that the concept of the “carbon footprint”, that popular measure of personal impact, was the brainchild of an advertising firm working for BP. As Mark Kaufman wrote this summer:
British Petroleum, the second largest non-state owned oil company in the world, with 18,700 gas and service stations worldwide, hired the public relations professionals Ogilvy & Mather to promote the slant that climate change is not the fault of an oil giant, but that of individuals. It’s here that British Petroleum, or BP, first promoted and soon successfully popularized the term “carbon footprint” in the early aughts. The company unveiled its “carbon footprint calculator” in 2004 so one could assess how their normal daily life – going to work, buying food, and (gasp) traveling – is largely responsible for heating the globe.
Say you have a certain amount of time and money with which to make change – call it x, since that is what we mathematicians call things. The trick is to increase that x by multiplication, not addition. The trick is to take that 5 percent of people who really care and make them count for far more than 5 percent. And the trick to that is democracy.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses
Continue reading...Hypocrisy rules as we prepare to host Cop26 and Boris Johnson prepares to approve a new oilfield off Shetland
Just months before hosting the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, the UK government will decide whether to approve a massive new oilfield 75 miles north-west of Shetland. Boris Johnson has hinted at a likely go-ahead. The Cambo field, being developed by private-equity-owned Siccar Point and Shell, would produce 170m barrels of oil – oil the world cannot afford to burn.
The Cambo decision is the government’s first test since the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned against developing new oil and gas fields. In a landmark report this year, the IEA found that that already-operating fields will produce more oil and gas over the coming decades than can be consumed if global heating is limited to 1.5C.
Related: Foreign control of North Sea oil licences threatens UK’s net zero goal
Greg Muttitt is senior policy adviser at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and co-author of the report Sea Change: Climate emergency, jobs and managing the phase-out of UK oil and gas extraction.
Continue reading...‘Nothing to eat’: Somalia hit by triple threat of climate crisis, Covid and conflict
Overlapping crises have pushed the fragile east African country to the ‘cusp of humanitarian catastrophe’, with one in four facing food insecurity
Such was the horror that erupted in her village earlier this year that Fadumo Ali Mohamed decided she had no choice but to leave. Through the Lower Shabelle region of Somalia, she walked for 30 kilometres, along with her nine children, eventually getting help to reach the capital by car.
Now in Mogadishu, she is one of more than 800,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in the capital living in cramped, informal settlements with limited access to food, water and healthcare. She doesn’t like to recall the violence she fled.
Related: The world has a vested interest in Somalia. Will it act to stop its collapse? | Vava Tampa
We only eat once a day; water is for sale here and we cannot afford to pay for it
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