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How crows can use a vending machine
EU Market: EUAs slip back to €15 to leave rally in stall mode
US Paris targets off track even if clean energy costs keep falling -report
What the fire near Saddleworth Moor means for wildlife
Biodiversity is the "infrastructure that supports all life"
Dr. Cristiana Pașca Palmer has a big job ahead of her: planning the 2020 UN Biodiversity Convention in Beijing. As the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Pașca Palmer is in charge of forming new goals with governments for the natural world post-2020. At the same time, a growing group of scientists are calling for a serious consideration of the Half Earth idea – where half the planet would be placed under various types of protection in a bid to prevent mass extinction.
Do you support the Half Earth model? What tweaks would you make to it?
Continue reading...Scientists call for a Paris-style agreement to save life on Earth
Conservation scientists believe our current mass extinction crisis requires a far more ambitious agreement, in the style of the Paris Climate Accord. And they argue that the bill shouldn’t be handed just to nation states, but corporations too.
Let’s be honest, the global community’s response to the rising evidence of mass extinction and ecological degradation has been largely to throw crumbs at it. Where we have acted it’s been in a mostly haphazard and modest way — a protected area here, a conservation program there, a few new laws, and a pinch of funding. The problem is such actions — while laudable and important — in no way match the scope and size of the problem where all markers indicate that life on Earth continues to slide into the dustbin.
But a few scientists are beginning to call for more ambition — much more — and they want to see it enshrined in a new global agreement similar to the Paris Climate Accord. They also say that the bill shouldn’t just fall on nations, but the private sector too.
Fund Climate Trust Capital ties with green group on Maine forest project
Deepwater Horizon disaster altered building blocks of ocean life
Oil spill disaster reduced biodiversity in sites closest to spill, report finds, as White House rolls back conservation measures
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster may have had a lasting impact upon even the smallest organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have found – amid warnings that the oceans around America are also under fresh assault as a result of environmental policies under Donald Trump.
Lingering oil residues have altered the basic building blocks of life in the ocean by reducing biodiversity in sites closest to the spill, which occurred when a BP drilling rig exploded in April 2010, killing 11 workers and spewing about 4m barrels of oil into the Gulf.
Continue reading...How trees secretly talk to each other
Meet America's new climate normal: towns that flood when it isn't raining
In this extract from Rising, Elizabeth Rush explains ‘sunny day flooding’ – when a high tide can cause streets to fill with water
I spend the afternoon in Shorecrest, a neighborhood a couple of miles north of downtown Miami. To get there I leave the beach behind and drive past Arky’s Live Bait & Tackle, Deal and Discounts II, Rafiul Food Store, Royal Budget Inn, Family Dollar and Goodwill. As I continue north, the buildings all lose their mirrored glass and their extra floors, until most are single story and made from stucco.
Related: Flooding from sea level rise threatens over 300,000 US coastal homes – study
Continue reading...South Korea to make deeper CO2 cuts at home, scales down plans to buy international offsets
UK falling short on GHG targets, shouldn’t use offsets to meet them -adviser
Housing and car industries should be ‘ashamed’ of climate record
Failure to build energy-efficient homes and clean cars risks UK missing its carbon targets, says government’s climate adviser
The homebuilding and carmaking industries “should be ashamed” of their efforts to tackle global warming, according to the UK government’s official climate change adviser.
Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), said housebuilders were “cheating” buyers with energy-inefficient homes and that motor companies were holding back the rollout of clean cars.
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