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Temperatures in Europe in 2020 broke the previous high mark by a worrying margin say scientists.

Female activists claim police officers trampled them as they rushed to secure cordon

Extinction Rebellion protesters have blocked Oxford Circus in London, the site of one of its most famous occupations, as women took the lead on the third day of its latest campaign of UK protest.

Just before 2pm, protesters swarmed into the middle of the intersection between Regent Street and Oxford Street, London’s busiest shopping district, and erected a pink structure and sound system.

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Statement calling for significant cut in antimicrobial drug usage is ‘real missed opportunity’, say critics

Animal health experts and UN leaders have called for a significant reduction in antimicrobial drug usage in food animals, which is already causing a “silent pandemic”.

But critics say the statement is “a real missed opportunity”, pointing to its failure to set reduction targets or even call for a ban on the use of antibiotics for animal growth promotion.

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Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and Environment (MoE) ministries have signed off on separate interim plans for a carbon pricing mechanism, with the former’s proposal based around a voluntary baseline-and-crediting scheme as well as access to offsets generated home and abroad appearing to be the frontrunner.

Sweden has teamed up with carbon project certifier Gold Standard to support its work procuring international credits under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Reinsurance giant Swiss Re has agreed to pay $10 million to be supplied with carbon removals units over ten years from Swiss-based direct air capture (DAC) specialists Climeworks, the companies said on Wednesday.

German exchange EEX will begin selling allowances on Oct. 5 under the country’s domestic emissions trading system for transport and buildings (nEHS), according to the Leipzig-based bourse.

Carbon prices slipped back from early gains above €57 on Wednesday, following a key court decision on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

The municipal government in China’s northeastern city of Shenyang expects to launch trading in its local emissions trading scheme next month, but with compliance obligations from the beginning of 2020, it said Wednesday.

It’s not enough for Greens to have bold ideas, to deliver them we need to be in power. This deal could be a turning point

• Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion

No one gets into politics to be in opposition for ever, especially people in a hurry. And the Greens have every reason to hurry. We believe other parties have neither the ideas nor the resolve to handle the interlocking crises we face. Crucially, we understand that – as the environmentalist Bill McKibben once said – “winning slowly is the same as losing”.

The impacts of the climate emergency that we feared might occur in the second half of this century are happening now. But the other parties are still only prepared to tinker around the edges of what is needed. The British government’s policies on the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis fall far short of what’s needed to avert environmental breakdown or mass extinction.

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By boosting dominant species such as great tits, human-provided food can make life harder for many woodland birds

Feeding birds is hard-wired into our national psyche. The apocryphal Victorian “tuppence a bag” for seed for the Trafalgar Square pigeons has morphed into a national pastime, with an estimated 17m households spending £250m a year on more than 150,000 tonnes of bird feed – enough to feed the entire breeding population of the 10 most common feeder-using bird species year-round three times over.

The habit has been enthusiastically encouraged by environmental NGOs, which recognise it as a way for people to connect with nature. This was brought into sharp relief during the pandemic, with many of us discovering the joy of attracting birds to our own gardens after losing access to wildlife and wild spaces. So we know that bird-feeding can be good for humans, but what about for birds?

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Approvals for new coal power facilities in China fell 78.8% year-on-year in H1, an NGO report published on Wednesday found, but provincial governments continue to seek funding for new plants.

Our climate is in crisis, but authoritarians and technocrats don’t have the answers

What the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report confirmed this month is that the stable climate many of us grew up with is gone and has been replaced by a fundamentally unstable one. Sea levels will almost certainly rise and storms will get more intense. Amid a drumbeat of depressing news and decades of inaction, there’s a sort of folk wisdom emerging that liberal democracy might just be too slow to tackle a problem as urgent and massive as the climate crisis. It’s an enticing vision: that governments can forgo the messy, deliberative work of politics in favour of a benign dictatorship of green technocrats who will get emissions down by brute force. With a punishingly tiny budget of just 400 gigatonnes of CO2 left to make a decent shot of staying below 1.5C of warming, is it time to give something less democratic a try?

It would be easy to look at the longstanding stalemate around climate policy in the US, the world’s second biggest emitter and embattled superpower, as evidence that something more top-down is needed. Yet the failure isn’t one of too much democracy but too little. The US Senate empowers West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – a man elected by fewer than 300,000 people – to block the agenda of a president elected by more than 80 million. Climate-sceptical Republicans, backed by corporate interests, have attempted to gerrymander their way to electoral dominance, halting progressive climate action in its tracks. The fossil fuel industry can engulf lawmakers with lobbyists and virtually unlimited campaign donations to sway their votes. And as the Republican party’s leading lights flirt with authoritarians like Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, comprehensive bipartisan climate action remains a pipe dream.

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APA reports mixed earnings from its wind and solar farms, but is keeping wary eye on the proposed Copperstring project in Queensland.

The post Profits from wind and solar farms fall, as APA keeps wary eye on Copperstring appeared first on RenewEconomy.

They are blamed for damage to crops but numbers are falling due to predators and disease

The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is perhaps the most often seen mammal in the British countryside. It is also a favourite food for foxes, badgers, weasels, stoats and various birds of prey, especially buzzards, whose numbers often fluctuate depending on rabbit populations.

Yet the rabbit is classed as an invasive species. It was first imported by the Romans from its native habitat in the Iberian peninsula in about AD43. It did not thrive and was reintroduced again by the Normans before becoming established in England. It was so valued as a winter food source that the landed gentry had to have special permission to create a carefully guarded warren and the peasants were kept well away.

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The government is launching a consultation on more reintroductions to the wild after a successful trial in Devon

Beavers will be released into the wild under government proposals to support a “cautious” return of the semi-aquatic mammals to English rivers.

The native animals will also be given legal protection in England, making it an offence to deliberately capture, kill, disturb or injure them, or damage their breeding sites or resting places, as part of efforts to support their recovery.

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Labor to ramp up scrutiny of energy minister's involvement in $21 million Beetaloo gas grants, but won't back Greens call to abolish the program altogether.

The post Labor to target Taylor’s role in grants given to gas company with Liberal Party links appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Up to $US68 billion of US coal and gas assets could end up stranded as mix of federal and state policy incentives drive rapid shift to renewables.

The post Lessons from the US, where politically boosted renewables leave coal and gas in dust appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Announcing its annual result, NZ renewables gen-tailer confirms ongoing review of Australian businesses, due to significant political and regulatory uncertainty.

The post Meridian confirms possible exit from “highly politicised” Australian energy market appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Vast majority of big utilities, battery storage, inverter and software suppliers say AEMO's proposed reforms could kill market for virtual power plants.

The post “Backward step:” Industry warns VPPs could be killed by AEMO metering changes appeared first on RenewEconomy.