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Genetic data released by China three years after it was gathered has provided 'the best evidence' of how the pandemic started, scientists say.

Australia Museum says 20-year-old collection will help understand and conserve threatened animals, which are sensitive to climate change

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As floods devastated Lismore, a group of ecologists waited anxiously for a break in the weather so they could move an important scientific collection of “spectacular” spiny crayfish to a new home at the Australian Museum.

The samples of the crayfish were collected more than 20 years ago from deep within the rainforests of north-eastern NSW and southern Queensland by Dr Jason Coughran, a freshwater ecologist.

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Compliance entities picked up California Carbon Allowance (CCA) holdings and RGGI Allowances (RGA) over a two-week stretch in March, while financial players eased net length across the North American carbon markets over the period, data from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) showed this week as the agency caught up with backlogged Commitments of Traders (COT) reports.

A summary of legislative, regulatory, and policy action on carbon, clean fuel standard, and clean energy markets at the US federal and subnational levels this week, including the failure of several state low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) bills and a discussion of how California’s programme might be negatively influencing these proposals.

Discussions on introducing 2030 and 2040 greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets for the global shipping sector at this week’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO)’s closed-door working meeting reached an impasse as the session broke on Friday.

A start-up tech company plans to target small to mid-sized project developers with an online service that streamlines and structures the process needed to attract upfront investment in one platform.

Adult fall-run Chinook salmon returned to California’s rivers in near record low numbers in 2022

As drought dried up rivers that carry California’s newly hatched Chinook salmon to the ocean, state officials in recent years have resorted to loading up the fish by the millions on to trucks and barges to take them to the Pacific.

The surreal and desperate scramble boosted the survival rate of the hatchery-raised fish, but still it was not enough to reverse the declining stocks in the face of added challenges.

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Exclusive: Labour decries ‘climate vandalism’ as launch plans signal intention to boost fossil fuel industry

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The government is planning to launch its revamped net zero strategy from the UK’s oil and gas capital, Aberdeen, in a clear signal of its intention to boost the fossil fuel industry while cutting key green measures, the Guardian has learned.

Next week’s launch was originally called “green day” in Whitehall, but has been rebranded as “energy security day” and will focus on infrastructure. Campaigners have called the move a travesty.

Ministers will refuse to force oil and gas companies to stop flaring by 2025, as recommended in the review of net zero by Chris Skidmore earlier this year.

Ofgem will not gain important powers to include the net zero target in its regulation of the energy sector, effectively defanging the regulator.

No overarching new office for net zero, as recommended in the Skidmore review.

No compulsion on housebuilders to fit rooftop solar to new housing.

No comprehensive nationwide programme for insulation of the UK’s draughty housing stock, as green groups have been calling for. Instead, the strongest insulation measure is likely to be a consultation on the private rented sector.

The Treasury, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and the Department for Business and Trade are at war over whether to introduce carbon border taxes.

Major roles for carbon capture and storage technology and hydrogen, which could boost the oil and gas industry with questionable gains for the environment.

The potential licensing of a massive new oilfield, Rosebank, under cover of investing in carbon capture and storage technology, which campaigners warn is “greenwash”.

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Low and middle-income countries should receive $300 billion in concessional payments by 2030 to phase out coal power, scale engineered removals, and stop deforestation, with the money potentially stemming from corporates via the voluntary carbon market (VCM), according to an international think-tank.

The owner of Paloma salon in Paddington has organised seminars for hairdressers across Sydney to instruct them on how to talk to their clients about climate action. Owner Paloma Rose Garcia started the A Brush with Climate workshops – navigating how to discuss science and solutions with clients – after she 'really understood that there is a unique opportunity that hairdressers have to hold meaningful conversation and assist the community with understanding more about climate and what they can do in their everyday life'

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The owner of Paloma salon in Paddington has organised seminars for hairdressers across Sydney to instruct them on how to talk to their clients about climate action. Owner Paloma Rose Garcia started the A Brush with Climate workshops – navigating how to discuss science and solutions with clients – after she 'really understood that there is a unique opportunity that hairdressers have to hold meaningful conversation and assist the community with understanding more about climate and what they can do in their everyday life'

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European carbon prices dropped sharply after the weekly German EUA sale, giving up the week's gains since Monday as attention switched back to the resilience of Europe's banking sector amid a significant jump in Deutsche Bank credit default swaps.

Thérèse Coffey reveals proposals for England far less ambitious than those set out in first draft of environment document

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The UK environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has disappointed campaigners after revealing that an ambitious hedgerow plan for England was in fact a typographical error.

At the end of January, environment groups were delighted when Coffey revealed the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan would include aims to plant 30,000 miles of new hedgerows a year by 2037 and 45,000 a year by 2050.

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Six KCs among more than 120 mostly English lawyers to sign pledge not to act for fossil fuel interests

Leading barristers have defied bar rules by signing a declaration saying they will not prosecute peaceful climate protesters or act for companies pursuing fossil fuel projects.

They are among more than 120 mostly English lawyers who have signed a declaration vowing to “withhold [their] services in respect of supporting new fossil fuel projects and action against climate protesters exercising their right of peaceful protest”.

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Pie-in-the-sky fantasies of carbon capture and geoengineering are a way for decision-makers to delay taking real action

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, one of which dropped yesterday, are formidably researched and profoundly important, but they mostly reinforce what we already know: human-produced greenhouse gases are rapidly and disastrously changing the planet, and unless we rapidly taper off burning fossil fuels, a dire future awaits.

The message is far from hopeless – “Mainstreaming effective and equitable climate action will not only reduce losses and damages for nature and people, it will also provide wider benefits,” said the IPCC chair, Hoesung Lee, in the press release. “This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.”

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China’s emissions market saw a second straight week of barely any trades amid lingering negative sentiment, with observers saying the world's largest carbon market by tonnes of CO2 covered might repeat the late-rush pattern of the previous compliance cycle.

The Australian government has launched a process to recognise so-called other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) in a bid to increase available options to meet its biodiversity targets, a move considered by many nations worldwide as they ponder how to comply with the 30x30 target in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including a rescued sloth, a baby nutria and a patient frog

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Biodiversity is becoming an issue of increasing importance to investors, a global survey released this week has found, with nearly half stating that addressing the issue was either at the centre of, or a significant factor in, their respective investment policies.

South Korea's latest electricity policy is not ambitious enough for the country to get itself aligned with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target, given its planned slow fossil phase-out, a report has found.