Around The Web
California LCFS balance will tighten after 2020, but GHG target achievable – analyst
EU Market: EUAs recover after finding support on way down to €24
Australia's tax system still 'unsustainable': Ken Henry
US meteorite adds to origins mystery
Indigenous group warns against scrapping Murray-Darling Basin Plan
COP25: With the rules still in flux, governments and businesses scramble to pioneer Paris carbon markets
NA Markets: California prices sink after auction, RGGI slides into Q4 sale
Nature conservation is in danger as experts quit | Letters
Caroline Lucas (Journal, 5 December) is right to say that nature and wildlife should be issues for voters and points to the need for a national policy. Our statutory conservation agencies are not mentioned.
For many years after the creation of the Nature Conservancy in 1949, Britain led the world in its nature conservation policy. Our 334 reserves were a model for other countries and our experts were held in high esteem.
Continue reading...Outdoor lessons and pocket parks proposed in 'new deal for nature'
Report also recommends protections for front gardens and rewilding hospital grounds
An hour a day of outdoor learning for primary school children and tighter restrictions on paving over front gardens are two of 80 nature policies proposed in a report commissioned by the Green party.
The recommendations set out in A New Deal for Nature are designed to protect wildlife and put biodiversity at the centre of government policy. Other suggestions include turning 20% of Britain into national parks and helping farmers devote 15% of their land to nature.
Continue reading...South Africa finalises offset rules under new national carbon tax
Voluntary carbon market doubles to near-record volume in 2018, though prices flat -report
Climate crisis is 'challenge of civilisation', says pope
Pontiff calls on COP 25 leaders to show political will to safeguard healthy planet
The climate emergency is a “challenge of civilisation” requiring sweeping changes to economic systems, but political leaders have not done enough, the pope has said in a message to governments meeting at the annual climate summit in Madrid.
“We must seriously ask ourselves if there is the political will to allocate with honesty, responsibility and courage, more human, financial and technological resources [to the climate crisis],” he said, in the pontifical message, which was welcomed by activists.
Continue reading...Hungry North Pole explorers Horn and Ousland near end of epic trek
Biodiversity in 2020: the biggest threats and opportunities
Scientists and conservation professionals predict mosquito-killing fungi and a kelp crisis could be among the trends affecting living things next year
What are the biggest emerging opportunities and threats the coming year holds for efforts to conserve biodiversity? Nearly two dozen scientists, conservation professionals and future scanners recently came together to answer that question as part of an annual “horizon scan” led by Cambridge University conservation biologist William Sutherland.
The group narrowed a list of 89 issues to 15 emerging or anticipated trends that have a strong potential to benefit or harm living things but are not yet on the radar for most conservationists. Here are their top picks, published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
Continue reading...Genetics can play key role in saving trees
Plastic pollution has killed half a million hermit crabs, study says
China ETS allowances could balloon to over 4 bln tonnes in first year -analysts
The Sitka tribe's struggle to save Alaskan herring – photo essay
Dwindling numbers of the fish have led indigenous people to sue the Alaskan government for failing to protect the fishery
• Photographs by Pieter Ten Hoopen
Every spring, the herring arrive in the cold Alaskan waters of Sitka Sound to spawn. But as those waters have warmed, their numbers have fallen drastically.
Tribal leaders in Sitka have long called for better protection of herring, a fish that holds cultural as well as economic significance for the people here. To demand protection of the sac roe herring fishery on which their way of life depends, they are taking the Alaskan government to court.
Continue reading...