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Climate change: Time running out to stop catastrophe - Alok Sharma
Climate change: Low-income countries 'can't keep up' with impacts
Dixie fire: eight missing in largest single wildfire in California history
Judge demands information from PG&E utility as investigators seek cause of blaze spanning 698 sq miles
At least eight people were missing on Saturday as what has become the largest single wildfire in California’s recorded history continued to scorch through northern communities, forest and tinder-dry scrub in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
People in the scenic region were already facing a weekend of fear as the huge Dixie fire threatened to reduce thousands of homes to ashes.
Continue reading...Attorney general’s department advised Coalition Toondah Harbour development could breach wetlands convention
Josh Frydenberg’s office allowed proposed Queensland development to go to assessment despite legal advice it was ‘unacceptable’
The Coalition government decided a controversial apartment complex and marina proposed for Queensland’s Moreton Bay should proceed to the next stage of the assessment process, despite legal advice from the federal attorney general’s department warning it was unacceptable because of the risk it posed to internationally listed wetlands.
The government was advised that a development inside the Ramsar site could put Australia in breach of its international obligations before Josh Frydenberg, who was environment minister at the time, recommended his department proceed with an assessment of the Walker Corporation’s long-proposed Toondah Harbour.
Continue reading...‘We are going to lose these birds’: the quiet fight to save the golden-shouldered parrot
Nearly a century after the extinction of the paradise parrot, a tiny team is trying to protect its cousin – by using land clearing
In 1922, Cyril Jerrard captured the first and only photographs of the paradise parrot, the only Australian bird to be officially declared extinct since European colonisation. Jerrard was well aware he was looking at one of the last of its kind: “The one undisguisable fact [is] that the advent of the white man has spelled destruction to one of the loveliest of the native birds of this country,” he wrote in 1924.
The last accepted sighting of a paradise parrot – also by Jerrard – was in 1927, near Gayndah in the Burnett River district of southern Queensland.
Continue reading...Lockdown job losses are not as bad this year, but that’s cold comfort to Australians put to the test again | Greg Jericho
NSW is now the worst performing state for the first time in the pandemic, with nearly 210,000 jobs gone in just three weeks
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By all economic indicators the current lockdowns are nowhere near as damaging as those last year and yet that small comfort is small indeed, as this week millions of Australians are again put to the test.
Last week’s payroll job numbers showed a sharp drop in the first three weeks of July. Jobs fell 2.6% across the nation, with every state recording falls.
Continue reading...Get a grip: government censured for gaffe after gaffe in run-up to Cop26
Alok Sharma’s air miles made the headlines, but missteps by his colleagues may be more damaging to the crucial talks in Glasgow
Alok Sharma stepped off the plane from Brazil on Friday, the latest stop in a punishing travel schedule that has taken him to 30 countries in seven months, and into the eye of a media storm.
“The height of hypocrisy,” screamed the Daily Mail’s headline, slamming the UK president-designate of the Cop26 UN climate talks, to be hosted in Glasgow in October and November. Sharma’s crime? No quarantines, having taken advantage of the rare exemptions offered to ministers, and 200,000 air miles in the pursuit of climate diplomacy.
Continue reading...We’re on the brink of catastrophe, warns Tory climate chief
Cop26 meeting is last chance, says Alok Sharma as he backs UK’s plan for new oil and gas fields
The world will soon face “catastrophe” from climate breakdown if urgent action is not taken, the British president of vital UN climate talks has warned.
Alok Sharma, the UK minister in charge of the Cop26 talks to be held in Glasgow this November, told the Observer that the consequences of failure would be “catastrophic”: “I don’t think there’s any other word for it. You’re seeing on a daily basis what is happening across the world. Last year was the hottest on record, the last decade the hottest decade on record.”
Continue reading...‘Greece has burned’: thousands flee Athens suburb as wildfire spreads – video
Thousands of people were forced to flee Thrakomakedones, a suburb of the Greek capital, after strong winds spread wildfires that burned down homes.
More than 50 wildfires are burning across Greece as the worst heatwave in more than 30 years has hit the country.
Tens of thousands of acres of forestland, homes and buildings have been destroyed and the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has promised a radical shift in the country's approach to the climate emergency.
Continue reading...Study reveals effects of extreme heat on tens of millions of Americans
Research shows more than a quarter of US population suffered ill health last summer, and it’s likely to get worse
The summer of 2020 brought fear of Covid-19, social distancing – and heat-related health problems that affects tens of millions of Americans.
Related: Last month was worst July for wildfires on record, say scientists
Continue reading...Climate change: New report will highlight 'stark reality' of warming
Queensland crocodile attack: two army personnel mauled north of Lockhart River
Soldier in his 20s, who was swimming in croc-infested waters, and friend who went to help, suffer serious injuries
A soldier has head, chest and arm injuries after being mauled by a crocodile that also attacked an army colleague who went to his aid in far north Queensland.
The men, who were reportedly swimming in croc-infested waters north of the Lockhart River on Friday afternoon when the attack occurred, have been airlifted to Cairns with serious injuries.
Continue reading...Monday's IPCC report is a really big deal for climate change. So what is it? And why should we trust it?
Mayflower 400 years: How many people are related to the Mayflower pilgrims?
The activist entrepreneurs running zero-waste shops
CP Daily: Friday August 6, 2021
Emitters bolster CCA holdings as July contract expires, financial firms keep positions steady
‘Low point’ in world heritage committee history as politics ‘tramples’ human rights of the Karen people
An ‘unholy pact’ and several politically fuelled decisions have UN advisers to Unesco concerned the committee is not acting to protect the world’s most special places
Along Thailand’s border with Myanmar, in rich forests filled with rare plants and animals, the indigenous Karen people are fighting for the right to live on their traditional land.
Last month, the UN’s human rights agency said the Karen continued to be forcibly evicted from the Kaeng Krachan forests. Thailand’s application to inscribe the forests as a world heritage site must be denied, the agency said.
Continue reading...Tech sector seen paying above $100/t for offsets to help scale removals
UK ministry with climate remit took 612 domestic flights since 2019
FoI request shows BEIS employees and ministers took the flights after signing of net zero emissions target
Employees at the government department responsible for tackling climate change have taken 612 domestic flights since June 2019, when the UK signed the net zero emissions target into law, figures show.
Of the total flights taken – which are single journeys and do not include travel to Northern Ireland – by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), 34 of them were by government ministers.
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