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The EU's new carbon market for road transport and buildings (ETS2) risks significantly deepening economic inequality across Europe — hitting parts of Eastern and Southern Europe the hardest — unless it is accompanied by strong redistribution measures, according to EU-funded research published on Wednesday.

The ability of the influential Platform on Sustainable Finance (PSF) to fulfil its mission of helping to enhance the EU Taxonomy, in areas including biodiversity, is hindered by its reliance on volunteer labour, a member of the group has told Carbon Pulse.

The UK government announced Wednesday it has allocated £55.7 million to expand a Scottish port, enabling it to become the first in the country to produce floating offshore wind turbines on site and at scale.

A French asset manager announced this week that it has secured €300 million for an impact fund investing in solutions to mitigate biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change.

A cloud service provider with market cap exceeding €1 billion is evaluating nature-based carbon projects in France, with an eye to potentially buying more credits in future if it deems the quality of these projects high enough.

Ireland could face compliance costs between €8 billion to €26 bln if it fails to meet legally binding EU climate targets, according to a report released Tuesday.

Sweden and Ghana have struck two Article 6 deals that are expected to cut the equivalent of 450,000 tonnes of CO2 in the West African country by 2030.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) failed to agree a timeline for the publications of its seventh assessment cycle report (AR7) after “contentious talks” during its latest meeting, which the US failed to attend, the panel said Wednesday.

The Kenyan chair of the African bloc of climate change negotiators recently visited Moscow to discuss international challenges including trade barriers such as the EU's carbon border fee, and the outlook for the global carbon market, the group announced on Wednesday.

European carbon prices enjoyed a healthy boost from a strengthening gas market on Wednesday morning after the European Commission was reported to be planning to extend its gas storage mandate to 2027, but not to set any interim targets before the annual Nov. 1 goal of reaching 90% full.

He is surrounded by people who have grandiose plans and dreams beyond our planet. Vengeful nihilism is a big part of the Maga project

In thinking about the war being waged against life on Earth by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their minions, I keep bumping into a horrible suspicion. Could it be that this is not just about delivering the world to oligarchs and corporations – not just about wringing as much profit from living systems as they can? Could it be that they want to see the destruction of the habitable planet?

We know that Trump’s overriding purpose is power. We have seen that no amount of power appears to satisfy his craving. So let’s consider power’s ultimate destination. It is to become not only an emperor, but the last of the emperors: to close the chapter on civilisation. It is to scratch your name indelibly upon a geological epoch. Look on my works, ye vermin, and despair.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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WWF has launched a fund that seeks to galvanise collective action to tackle Brazilian deforestation and land degradation in leather supply chains with a target raise of $10 million.

The market for durable CO2 removals is expected to expand significantly in the coming years, but high costs and regulatory uncertainty remain key barriers to scaling adoption, according to a new survey.

Study on cancer data in US agricultural heartland finds children more at risk than if exposed to just one pesticide

Exposure to multiple pesticides significantly increases the risk of childhood cancers compared with exposures to just one pesticide, first-of-its-kind research finds, raising new fears that children are more at risk to the substances’ harmful effects than previously thought.

The study’s authors say they are the first to look at the link between exposures to multiple widely used pesticides and the most common childhood cancers. Most research considers pesticides’ toxicity on an individual basis, and the substances are regulated as if exposures occur in isolation from one another.

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The European Investment Bank (EIB) has teamed up with a Paris-based consultancy firm to help scale voluntary biodiversity credit transactions in France, with a view to backing the market uptake across the EU.

New ancient DNA research on Adélie penguin poo in Antarctica shows how several species respond to environmental change over time, including southern elephant seals. Jamie Wood, Senior Lecturer in Ecology and Evolution, University of Adelaide Theresa Cole, Postdoctoral technician in environmental DNA, University of Adelaide Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

A UK waste-to-energy operator is moving ahead with the next phase of its carbon capture technology programme, installing the only active carbon capture and storage (CCS) pilot in Wales and a new pilot plant in West Yorkshire.

By allowing owners of electric vehicles in Europe to store excess electricity, and to sell it back to the grid, the bloc could boost uptake while they save considerably, an EU industry association has said.

Another day, another health scare. I’m struggling to know which dangers I should take seriously

If you want to stir up online controversy, wooden spoons are the perfect tool with which to do so. Every few years, influencers go viral with warnings about how the wooden spoons in your kitchen are covered in disgusting gunk and if you don’t boil them immediately you will poison yourself and everyone you love.

In 2023, for example, a woman called Lulaboo Jenkins posted a TikTok video of her boiling spoons. Millions of people watched the water turn brown and it triggered a deep-cleaning craze. The Guardian’s Tim Dowling had a go, detailing the results in an article that prompted more than 1,000 comments. Who knew spoons could inspire such a feverish response? (Well, Jenkins, I suppose.)

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A Singapore industry group is working with stakeholders to develop a sustainable claims guidance for the carbon industry that it hopes can be applied to the broader Asia-Pacific region.