Around The Web

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

Compliance entities and speculators took a less aggressive bidding approach to the November WCI current vintage auction because of the market's growing allowance surplus and limited ability or desire to hold that length, numerous traders told Carbon Pulse.

One of the largest projects in California’s offset programme saw its invalidation period shrink to three years as California and Quebec issued a total of 338,000 new offsets this week, according to state data.

Critical water supplies will become harder to manage, as droughts and flooding continue to intensify

• Key findings No 2: some pollution action is far better than none
  
• Key findings No 1: air pollution kills

The Trump administration published a major report on climate change the day after Thanksgiving. We will explore the key findings each day this week.

Donald Trump doesn’t believe his own government’s major report on climate change – which the administration tried to bury over the Thanksgiving break. It warns that rising temperatures are already harming America and will cause huge damage globally.

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The UK aims to get its first big carbon capture, storage and use (CCSU) facility operational in the mid-2020s, but the government was coy on how the facility would be funded.

Radical overhaul in farming and consumption, with less meat eating, needed to avoid hunger and climate catastrophe

The global food system is broken, leaving billions of people either underfed or overweight and driving the planet towards climate catastrophe, according to 130 national academies of science and medicine across the world.

Providing a healthy, affordable, and environmentally friendly diet for all people will require a radical transformation of the system, says the report by the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP). This will depend on better farming methods, wealthy nations consuming less meat and countries valuing food which is nutritious rather than cheap.

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US biofuels credits under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) received a boost on Tuesday after a media report said the Trump administration was temporarily halting the issuance of compliance waivers for an agency review.

The European Commission adopted an updated climate strategy on Wednesday, outlining a “realistic” pathway to net zero emissions by 2050 without the use of international credits.

42.6C temperature in Cairns broke a November record that has stood since 1900 by 5.4C

A record-breaking heatwave in north Queensland will further increase above-average marine temperatures, heightening the risk of another coral bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef next year, scientists say.

Dozens of record November temperatures have been recorded in the region, most along the reef coastline, this week.

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Specialist diving group teams up with British conservation charity to lower impact of scuba tourism on threatened reefs

The threat posed to coral reefs by scuba diving in Egypt and Thailand is so serious that officials have banned certain operators or suspended the sport altogether, but now moves are afoot to make diving tourism more sustainable.

A partnership between the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (Padi), the world’s largest training group, and the UN-backed Reef-World Foundation, a British conservation charity, will encourage the industry to sign up to the Green Fins scheme, which helps dive centres to reduce their environmental impact and mitigate the damage the burgeoning sport causes to coral reefs worldwide.

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EU carbon prices briefly tumbled below €19 on Wednesday after a bumper UK auction cleared at a record discount, but some traders said there may be more to the bearish result than weak demand.

The European Union says it wants to become the first major economy to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Should the state government in Western Australia decide to reinstate obligations for the LNG industry to offset its greenhouse gas emissions, that could drive demand for 15-60 million carbon credits each year, a report said Wednesday.

England's largest grey seal colony, in Norfolk, could see record numbers this pupping season.

Migratory shorebirds populations down by average of 70% from 1985 to 2015

Populations of threatened bird species in Australia halved in the past 30 years, according to a new national Threatened Bird Index.

The index is the first part of a large data consolidation project being undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub, along with the University of Queensland and Birdlife Australia.

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Analysis suggests 116m tonnes of dairy products are wasted globally, with almost half lost before they even reach a store

One in six pints of milk produced around the world is lost or wasted, according to research conducted at Edinburgh University for the Guardian.

Sixteen percent of dairy products – 116m tonnes – is lost or discarded globally each year, according to Prof Peter Alexander, a member of the newly formed Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Security. He calculated that retailers, distributors and consumers are responsible for half of this waste, throwing away roughly 60m tonnes of dairy a year.

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Government scrapped £1bn plan in 2015 but now aims to build project within a decade

The UK wants to build its first project to capture and store carbon emissions from industry within the next decade, as part of a rebooted push by ministers to support the technology.

The government scrapped a £1bn carbon capture and storage (CCS) competition in 2015, with the then-chancellor George Osborne saying it was too costly. Earlier efforts had also collapsed.

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Top of the to-do list of AEMO's Integrated System Plan is to replace Australia's ageing coal fleet – a task, says Audrey Zibelman, that "absolutely needs to get done under any circumstance," and with least regrets.

The post Coal power on way out, sooner rather than later, says AEMO appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Snowy Hydro refuses to identify the winning bids for the "game changing" wind and solar tender, and argues that the transmission costs of its proposed pumped hydro plan should not be subject to normal regulatory review.

The post Transparency lost as Snowy Hydro fights for its future appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Bushfires across Queensland are fanned by high winds pushed north by a strong low in NSW. Claire Yeo, Supervising Meteorologist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.