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Struggles remain on enacting 2015 Paris accord despite more clarity on emissions

The UN met on Saturday in Poland to discuss a draft agreement on climate change, which sources said was likely to pass, as exhausted delegates made compromises on some key issues but left other contentious problems to be resolved next year.

The result will not be the breakthrough campaigners and some countries were hoping for, but will keep discussions alive on formulating key aspects of the implementation rules for the 2015 Paris accord.

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Governments look set to resume talks next year on a framework for international emissions trade under the Paris Agreement’s Article 6, as negotiators seek to postpone the issue rather than risk collapsing the entire Paris rulebook, numerous sources close to the process told Carbon Pulse in the early hours of Saturday.

Rows continue over the issue of paying poorer countries for damages caused by rising temperatures.

Small bits of plastic packaging from waste food make their way into animal feed as part of the UK’s permitted recycling process

Plastic traces in animal feed could pose a risk to human health and urgently need to be the subject of more research, experts have told the Guardian.

Their comments came after British farmer Alex Rock contacted the Guardian, having noticed plastic shreds in his animal feed. Rock was told by the suppliers that this was a legal part of the recycling process that turns waste food, still packaged, into animal feed.

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As Australia transitions to renewable energy, there is growing need for trained people to design, operate and maintain large solar and wind farms in regional areas.

Kim Dowling at Federation University Australia studies arsenic in the environment, the interaction between soils and rocks and impacts on human and ecosystem health.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Numerous delays from ongoing Paris rulebook negotiations have pushed the culmination of the UN climate summit past its scheduled conclusion on Friday, with talks slated to go at least through Saturday morning.

Report finds more than 95% chance of hydrological changes to Belyando River Basin from mines including Carmichael

Coalmines planned in the Galilee Basin – including Adani’s Carmichael mine – understated the likely impacts on surrounding water resources, a federal government scientific report has found.

The bioregional assessment report into the cumulative impact of coalmine proposals was published quietly last week. It was compiled by experts from the CSIRO, Geosciences Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology and the federal environment department.

The report modelled information from seven of 17 proposed coalmines in the Galilee and found there was a greater than 95% chance that they would cause hydrological changes to the Belyando River Basin.

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We are seeking a motivated and talented individual to join our EU Carbon analyst team to undertake research and analysis on the European Carbon Markets.

Poet Nancy Campbell spent seven years living in artists residences connected with research institutions, learning and writing about ice.

Chile has been named as the location of next year’s UN climate summit after Brazil withdrew its offer to host.

Oregon’s cap-and-trade programme may include a set-aside account that would help utilities during poor hydroelectric generation years.

With nothing to pump from the local weir, Walgett, NSW is the latest town forced to go underground for water, a move that health experts say could have potentially serious health implications.

Christmas tree growers are busy getting their trees off to market; shellfish reefs return to Pt Phillip Bay; we make wooden spoons from timber off-cuts; and jump on board the 'Savannahlander'

Slow progress on 2015 Paris agreement comes as scientists warn of need to get on track

Negotiators at the climate conference in Poland have inched closer to an outcome, as the official deadline for finishing a deal ran out.

The conference was meant to approve a rulebook which would govern how nations put into action the goals set in the landmark Paris agreement of 2015, when the world resolved to hold global warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, with an aspiration to limit temperature rises to no more than 1.5C.

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At the COP24 conference, leaders lack the urgency felt by communities on the frontlines of a global threat

As wildfires burn, as temperatures rise, as the last remaining old-growth forests in Poland are logged, world leaders are in Katowice to negotiate the implementation of the Paris climate agreement. To outsiders, UN climate talks may seem like a positive step. Unfortunately, this is COP24.

For 24 years, world leaders have annually talked at each other instead of to one another in hopes of reaching an agreement on how to mitigate the climate crisis. In all that time, they have barely scratched the surface of an issue that the world’s top climate scientists say we now have 12 years to stop – and that is an optimistic estimate.

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European carbon prices extended this week’s rally on Friday, hitting a three-month high near €24 amid lighter volume and drying up supply.

Fiona Gomersall on ecological damage caused by Christmas trees, Rachel Kennerley on richer nations bearing the greatest burden, Sandy Irvine on population pressures and John Hobson on a carbon-added tax. Plus letters from Daniel Scharf, and Dr Stephen Brien of the Legatum Institute

Your article about which Christmas trees to buy (Fake or real: which ones look best – and won’t cost the Earth?, 8 December) failed to make some important points that need seriously considering if all environmental consequences are to be taken into account when making an informed decision about choice of tree.

In the uplands of south-west Shropshire, Christmas trees are grown on increasingly shrinking moorland habitat, home to threatened and severely declining species like curlew, snipe, kestrel and barn owl. Your photograph showed a Christmas tree plantation on heather moorland, which proves my point. Heathland, one of the UKs priority habitats and home to many iconic species, has declined by as much as 90% over the last 200 years.

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It took five weeks of round-the-clock treatment to keep Benedicte alive after her mother died.