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European carbon prices bounced back on Wednesday, closing at a 2.5-month high and resuming their uptrend as data showed investors continued to build long positions.

Boris Johnson is set to unveil plans for world-leading emissions UK cuts - but are they enough?

The UK is considering announcing a major hike in its near-term climate ambition when it hosts world leaders next week, a move that could strengthen the country’s post-Brexit carbon pricing plans due to be rolled out in January.

The health of five World Heritage sites in Australia has worsened, according to a sobering report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Jon C. Day, PSM, Post-career PhD candidate, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University Scott F. Heron, Associate professor, James Cook University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

It reveals in alarming detail how gas emissions are cancelling out the gains won by Australia's renewables boom, and uncovers misleading claims underpinning our gas-led economic recovery. Tim Baxter, Fellow - Melbourne Law School; Senior Researcher - Climate Council; Associate - Australian-German Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Two major UK land-based domestic offsetting standards have merged as voluntary market demand for their carbon credits soars.

A Georgia man pleaded guilty in US federal court on Tuesday to defrauding seven individuals in a million-dollar carbon credit scandal, having told the victims their investments in non-existent offsets would be realised through California carbon allowance auctions.

The European Council has suggested strengthening the EU ETS as a way of convincing poorer member states to raise the bloc’s 2030 emissions reduction target to at least 55%, according to draft conclusions circulated ahead of a key summit next week.

Exclusive: Letter obtained under FoI shows Frydenberg wanted to change Ramsar protections but maintain ‘ecological character’

The former federal environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, proposed removing protections from an area of internationally significant wetlands after he was lobbied by a developer wanting to build 3,000 apartments at Moreton Bay in Queensland.

A letter, obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws, shows Frydenberg wrote to the Queensland government in 2017 about Walker Corporation’s proposed Toondah Harbour apartment and retail complex to suggest the two governments jointly create a proposal to delist part of the Moreton Bay Ramsar wetland.

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Russian gas producer Novatek has opened its first carbon-neutral LNG fuelling station in Europe, offsetting the related emissions using voluntary credits.

US biofuel credit (RIN) values rose this week as the EPA missed a statutory cut-off date to finalise next year’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) quotas, while a lack of sellers also pushed biodiesel-based credit prices to a three-year high.

Campaign demonstrates butchery skills amid fears glut will go to waste due to smaller gatherings

Consumers are being urged to buy large turkeys – suffering a slump in demand due to smaller festive gatherings – in order to avoid a glut of Christmas birds going to waste.

Research from the Too Good to Go national food waste app reveals 30% of Britons are planning to buy a smaller turkey than normal, with two-thirds opting for compact and easy-to-carve turkey crowns for their Christmas table. Only 17% of shoppers are planning to buy larger birds, the research found, raising fears that many fresh ones could remain unsold or be needlessly wasted.

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The robotic Chang'e-5 probe starts work to gather lunar samples it can send to Earth for study.

Joining China and other big polluters, Biden’s pledge of ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050 brings the Paris agreement goals ‘within reach’

This article originally appeared in the Nation and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global consortium of news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. The Guardian is the lead partner in CCN.

“The way we are moving is a suicide,” United Nations secretary general António Guterres said in an interview on Monday, and humanity’s survival will be “impossible” without the United States rejoining the Paris agreement and achieving “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, as the incoming Biden administration has pledged.

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António Guterres lists human-inflicted wounds on natural world in stark message

• World is ‘doubling down’ on fossil fuels despite climate crisis – UN report

Humanity is facing a new war, unprecedented in history, the secretary general of the UN has warned, which is in danger of destroying our future before we have fully understood the risk.

The stark message from António Guterres follows a year of global upheaval, with the coronavirus pandemic causing governments to shut down whole countries for months at a time, while wildfires, hurricanes and powerful storms have scarred the globe.

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Production must fall by 6% a year to avoid ‘severe climate disruption’ but Covid-19 funding is supporting increases

The world’s governments are “doubling down” on fossil fuels despite the urgent need for cuts in carbon emissions to tackle the climate crisis, a report by the UN and partners has found.

The researchers say production of coal, oil and gas must fall by 6% a year until 2030 to keep global heating under the 1.5C target agreed in the Paris accord and avoid “severe climate disruption”. But nations are planning production increases of 2% a year and G20 countries are giving 50% more coronavirus recovery funding to fossil fuels than to clean energy.

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The discovery is expected to advance medical research in treating disease.

Industry bodies seek scheme to guarantee provenance of green hydrogen produced in Australia and prevent "green-washing" in the booming new industry.

The post Green hydrogen or green-wash? Industry-led scheme to guarantee origin of supply appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The outlook for Australian sites including the Blue Mountains and the Gondwana rainforests has deteriorated, report says

The outlook for five Australian world heritage sites including the Great Barrier Reef, the Blue Mountains and the Gondwana rainforests, has deteriorated, according to a global report that finds climate change is now the number one threat to the planet’s natural world heritage.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the official advisory body on nature to the Unesco world heritage committee, has found in its world heritage outlook that climate change threatens a third of the world’s natural heritage sites. The outlook has been published every three years since 2014.

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Provisional figures indicate that 2020 will be one of the hottest in a record dating back to 1850.