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COP26: 'Hate tells scientists their work is important'
Prof Phil Jones, portrayed in BBC drama The Trick, says climate scientists must be protected.
18 October 2021, 6:00pm
COP26: Does a climate summit need 25,000 people? And more questions
BBC science correspondent Matt McGrath answers your questions about Glasgow's COP26 climate summit.
18 October 2021, 1:30pm
Climate change: Is the UK on track to meet its targets?
With weeks to go until the UK hosts a global climate summit, is the government on track to meet its own commitments?
19 October 2021, 4:59pm
How energy flexibility can save us money and cut carbon
Making energy supply to homes and businesses more flexible could help the UK meet its climate goals.
18 October 2021, 1:10am
Lords return Environment Bill to the Commons with big changes
The government faces pressure to get the bill passed ahead of the COP 26 climate conference.
13 October 2021, 5:47pm
The climate activists who want Norway to end oil and gas production
The BBC's Nick Beake meets the young climate activists trying to stop Norway drilling for oil and gas.
18 October 2021, 12:13am
© {Copyright: (C) British Broadcasting Corporation, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/rss/4498287.stm for terms and conditions of reuse.}
The climate disaster is here – this is what the future looks like - The Guardian
The climate disaster is here – this is what the future looks like The Guardian
14 October 2021, 10:00am
‘Case closed’: 99.9% of scientists agree climate emergency caused by humans - The Guardian
‘Case closed’: 99.9% of scientists agree climate emergency caused by humans The Guardian
19 October 2021, 5:37pm
‘Climate change is hitting us’: French beekeepers expect worst honey harvest in half a century - The Guardian
‘Climate change is hitting us’: French beekeepers expect worst honey harvest in half a century The Guardian
20 October 2021, 2:16am
Government response to the Climate Change Committee report on progress in adapting to climate change - GOV.UK
Government response to the Climate Change Committee report on progress in adapting to climate change GOV.UK
19 October 2021, 12:42pm
Second Development Partners Climate Group Coordination meeting held in Ashgabat - GOV.UK
Second Development Partners Climate Group Coordination meeting held in Ashgabat GOV.UK
19 October 2021, 4:25pm
Climate change: China does 'not need UK actions to encourage' it to be more ambitious in tackling crisis - Sky News
Climate change: China does 'not need UK actions to encourage' it to be more ambitious in tackling crisis Sky News
19 October 2021, 3:44pm
Committee on Climate Change's 2021 progress report: government response - GOV.UK
Committee on Climate Change's 2021 progress report: government response GOV.UK
19 October 2021, 2:01pm
UN-backed report reveals rising climate change risk across Africa - UN News
UN-backed report reveals rising climate change risk across Africa UN News
19 October 2021, 8:45am
Biden’s Climate Strategy Highlights Importance Of Physical Climate Risk - Forbes
Biden’s Climate Strategy Highlights Importance Of Physical Climate Risk Forbes
19 October 2021, 2:55pm
‘This is our last chance’: Biden urged to act as climate agenda hangs by a thread - The Guardian
‘This is our last chance’: Biden urged to act as climate agenda hangs by a thread The Guardian
18 October 2021, 11:00am
UK university climate targets strongly criticised for lack of ambition - New Scientist
UK university climate targets strongly criticised for lack of ambition New Scientist
19 October 2021, 5:05pm
In the face of chaos, why are we so nonchalant about climate change? - The Conversation UK
In the face of chaos, why are we so nonchalant about climate change? The Conversation UK
19 October 2021, 11:37am
French beekeepers expect worst harvest in decades due to climate change - Reuters
French beekeepers expect worst harvest in decades due to climate change Reuters
19 October 2021, 6:07pm
Climate change: Action on green power 'needed now' - BBC News
Climate change: Action on green power 'needed now' BBC News
19 October 2021, 6:14pm
Britain Outlines Energy Plans Amid Dimming Prospects for Climate Summit - The New York Times
Britain Outlines Energy Plans Amid Dimming Prospects for Climate Summit The New York Times
19 October 2021, 7:57pm
COP26: Does a climate summit need 25,000 people? And more questions - BBC News
COP26: Does a climate summit need 25,000 people? And more questions BBC News
18 October 2021, 1:30pm
Science Museum chooses fossil fuel company as new climate show sponsor - The Guardian
Science Museum chooses fossil fuel company as new climate show sponsor The Guardian
19 October 2021, 8:50pm
Climate change: How UK plans to reach net zero by 2050 - here are the key details - Sky News
Climate change: How UK plans to reach net zero by 2050 - here are the key details Sky News
19 October 2021, 6:26pm
Maldives calls for rapid and immediate action to fight climate change - CNBC
Maldives calls for rapid and immediate action to fight climate change CNBC
19 October 2021, 1:59am
The Nationals' climate position has become symbolic posturing and no longer represents Australian farmers | Clive Hamilton - The Guardian
The Nationals' climate position has become symbolic posturing and no longer represents Australian farmers | Clive Hamilton The Guardian
20 October 2021, 1:31am
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Where the U.S. stands going into COP26
After a year-long delay from the pandemic, COP26 — the next UN meeting aimed at accelerating global action on climate change — is right around the corner. As a newly rejoined Party to the Paris Agreement under the leadership of President Biden, the United States will be arriving under much different circumstances than the last […]
12 October 2021, 3:38pm
Beyond R&D: Climate innovation policy can help the U.S. meet the moment
Together with Third Way, EDF co-hosted a Climate Week 2021 event on how U.S. climate innovation policy can accelerate a cleaner, stronger and more equitable economy. Here are four big takeaways. (Caption: Speakers included Mandela Barnes, Lieutenant Governor, Wisconsin; Chris Deschene, Board Member, National InterTribal Energy Council; Jason Walsh, Executive Director, BlueGreen Alliance; Jetta Wong, […]
27 September 2021, 9:06pm
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 […]
27 September 2021, 4:00pm
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
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
UN-backed report reveals rising climate change risk across Africa
Climate change contributed to mounting food insecurity, poverty and displacement in Africa last year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and partners said in a report published on Tuesday.
19 October 2021, 8:45am
Sustainable transport key to green energy shift: UN Secretary-General
With global transport at a crossroads, government leaders, industry experts, and civil society groups are meeting in Beijing, China, for a UN conference to chart the way forward to a more sustainable future for the sector, and greater climate action overall.
14 October 2021, 5:38pm
Finance Ministers hold key to COP26 success: UN Secretary-General
The COP26 climate change conference must be “a turning point” if countries are to limit global temperature rise in line with the Paris Agreement, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday.
12 October 2021, 9:52pm
With clock ticking, sustainable transport key to Global Goals
From electric cars and buses to zero-carbon producing energy sources, new and emerging technologies along with innovative policy changes, are critical for combating climate change. But to be effective, they must ensure that transport strategies benefit everyone, including the poorest, according to a new UN multi-agency report launched on Tuesday.
12 October 2021, 6:14pm
WHO: Global health community prescribes climate action for COVID recovery
Ambitious national climate commitments are crucial for States to sustain a healthy, green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new UN health agency report launched on Monday in the lead-up to the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
11 October 2021, 5:39pm
UN chief promotes 'enormous' benefits of greener cities
For the UN Secretary-General, the benefits of making cities more environmentally friendly are “enormous”, and include reduced climate risk, more jobs, and better health and well-being.
4 October 2021, 2:35am
7 climate action highlights to remember before COP26
A September to remember, a pivotal month for climate action commitments. From the United Nations General Assembly week to the final pre-COP meeting, last month was an important time to build momentum before the decisive UN Climate Conference COP26 in early November.
3 October 2021, 3:10pm
Brussels mural paints positive picture of ecosystem renewal
A Spanish artist is using a giant 40-metre-high artwork painted on the side of a building in the Belgian capital, Brussels, to pose questions about climate change and the effect it’s having on global ecosystems.
3 October 2021, 3:10am
Climate action: ‘Time is running out’, UN chief tells ministers
With just one month left until the COP26 climate change conference, countries must do more to reduce emissions, finance climate action and support mitigation, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the final official ministerial meeting in Milan, Italy, on Thursday.
30 September 2021, 5:01pm
Keep raising your voices, UN chief tells young climate leaders
With the climate crisis already devastating lives and incomes, young people will be critical to driving global action forward, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told participants attending the Pre-COP Youth Event in Milan, Italy, on Thursday.
30 September 2021, 10:40am
New FAO report highlights urgent need to restore Africa’s degraded landscape
The first-ever stocktake of Africa’s forests and landscapes, which was released on Wednesday finds slow progress in repairing Africa’s degraded lands and urges ramped up efforts for climate action.
29 September 2021, 5:35pm
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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.
State of the climate: Summer 2021 sets new high for average land temperature
The year so far has been one of extremes, featuring record-shattering heatwaves, wildfires and flooding,...
The post State of the climate: Summer 2021 sets new high for average land temperature 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, 14 October 2021: Instructions to tackle power shortages; COP15 opens; Carbon-neutrality standards appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: How power shortages might ‘accelerate’ China’s climate action
As China’s president Xi Jinping stepped up the nation’s climate commitment last month by pledging...
The post Analysis: How power shortages might ‘accelerate’ China’s climate action appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Fossil fuel use ‘will peak by 2025’ if countries meet climate pledges, says IEA
Demand for fossil fuels will peak by 2025 if countries meet their climate pledges, according...
The post Fossil fuel use ‘will peak by 2025’ if countries meet climate pledges, says IEA appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: What 100,000 studies tell us about climate impacts around the world
The rapid growth of climate research provides an unprecedented evidence base for observing the impacts...
The post Guest post: What 100,000 studies tell us about climate impacts around the world appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: An Indigenous peoples’ approach to climate justice
Climate change has been identified as the “defining issue of our time” by many of...
The post Guest post: An Indigenous peoples’ approach to climate justice 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, 7 October 2021: ‘All out’ to beat power shortages; 2050 ‘net-zero’ for airlines; ‘Critical decade” for global warming appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Researchers: The barriers to climate science in the global south
Many researchers from the global south face obstacles towards conducting and publishing high-quality climate research....
The post Researchers: The barriers to climate science in the global south appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Experts: Why does ‘climate justice’ matter?
The term “climate justice” captures the various ways in which global warming impacts people differently...
The post Experts: Why does ‘climate justice’ matter? 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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