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The EU shifted against a longstanding deadlock at UN climate talks on Thursday by proposing to establish a loss and damage fund for the most vulnerable countries, using money that could be raised partly by a levy on aviation, shipping, or fossil fuels.

A group of seven East African nations are successfully using Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) activities to generate climate finance, however the sheer scale of new finance required raises questions on how to expand and transition to Article 6, according to a report launched at the COP27 conference on Thursday.

Community members and campaigners have hailed the move as a win for vulnerable marine ecosystem and wildlife

Canada has rejected a mine expansion project in the Arctic after years of uncertainty and fierce protest, in what community members and campaigners say is a win for the vulnerable marine ecosystem and wildlife.

Baffinland Iron Mines’ planned expansion to its Mary River site would have seen it double output to 12m tonnes of iron ore. To bring the ore to market, the mine also said it needed to build a 110km railway to a port near the community of Pond Inlet as well as doubling its shipping.

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Four dams on California-Oregon border to be decommissioned on Klamath River, which fish use to reach spawning grounds

A US agency seeking to restore habitat for endangered fish gave final approval on Thursday to decommission four dams straddling the California-Oregon border, the largest dam removal undertaking in US history.

Dam removal is expected to improve the health of the Klamath River, the route that Chinook salmon and endangered coho salmon take from the Pacific Ocean to their upstream spawning grounds, and from where the young fish return to the sea.

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We’ll need clear and well updated information to gauge flood risk as climate change intensifies floods. Mark Gibbs, Adjunct Professor, Queensland University of Technology Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Major new policies are still needed to accelerate the road transport transition. There’s good news, however: Australian motorists have been promised more choice soon. Hussein Dia, Professor of Future Urban Mobility, Swinburne University of Technology Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

With only one full day of official talks left, there are no clear agreements on key issues including funding for loss and damage

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has flown to the attempted rescue of troubled climate talks in Egypt, warning of a “breakdown in trust” between rich and poor governments that could scupper hopes of a deal.

He urged countries reaching the final day of the Cop27 UN climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh to find common ground. “There has been clearly, as in past times, a breakdown in trust between north and south, and between developed and emerging economies,” he said. “This is no time for finger pointing. The blame game is a recipe for mutually assured destruction.”

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The count of countries committing to global action to address methane emissions has risen to 150, according an event at COP27 on Thursday, an increase of 50 nations over the initial signatories made during last year’s UN climate talks, but yet to include some large emitters such as China.

A new nature-based carbon removal initiative for Asia was launched at COP27 on Thursday, starting with an initial $15 million investment in the Philippines that will restore 33,000 hectares of land and capture more than 4 mln tonnes of CO2.

All but a few of the power generators regulated under the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) carbon market hold permits in excess of their compliance obligations, even as CO2 output under the in-state cap-and-trade programme has shot up this year, according to a report published Wednesday.

An Ontario nuclear power generation facility plans to develop a nuclear power offset protocol with a technical advisory firm and registered with a Canadian standards body, the company announced on Tuesday.

Meat-rich wet food causes eight times more emissions, giving some dogs the same carbon footprint as a human

Wet cat and dog food is far more environmentally damaging than dry pet food, according to a new study. It found that wet food results in eight times more climate-heating emissions than dry food.

The analysis found that a wet food diet for a typical dog resulted in an “ecological pawprint” for the animal that was the same as for its human owner. There are estimated to be 840 million cats and dogs in the world and, with numbers rising, the impact on the environment of feeding them is under increasing scrutiny.

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Developing countries demand agreement on loss and damage fund as leaders criticise gaps in climate draft

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Several nations on Thursday launched an alliance of countries developing carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects, with participating countries committing to building a 1,000+ tonne a year CDR project by 2025 and vowing to collaborate to share the resulting knowledge and data to help scale the technology.

Environment secretary dashes hopes Sunak government will reverse policy to help reach net zero targets

• Cop27 live – latest news updates

The de facto ban on solar farms will be continued by Rishi Sunak’s government, the environment secretary has signalled.

Thérèse Coffey, fresh from her visit to Cop27, suggested to parliament that she would be continuing with policy plans initiated under the former prime minister Liz Truss, which would block solar power from most farmland.

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The European Commission released guidance to member states this week to help them update their 2021-2030 national energy and climate plans (NECPs), calling on governments to raise their renewable targets and consider the changed global circumstances since the plans were last updated in 2019.

Australia’s carbon offset market is seeing rapid growth, Clean Energy Regulator data showed Thursday, with oil and gas firm Chevron’s pledge to make up for its CCS shortcomings and expected changes to the Safeguard Mechanism the main factors.

Attacking art works that are safely encased in glass does nothing to further the activists’ cause – if anything it makes a case for climate complacency

As an art historian, my job is to look askance at words such as “masterpiece”, and to question the canon of “great art”. In my spare time, I have also sprayed chalk paint on civic structures in protest at the lack of action on climate. So at first I expected to view the latest attacks on art as shocking but justifiable. After all, do these attacks not also reveal the fragility of what we hold dear? Do they not make us think about what we want to save for the next generation? Yet the answer to these questions, I decided, is mostly no. Instead, these attacks feel part of a helpless careering towards climate chaos.

As splash after splash of acidic liquid hits the glass casings of art works by Van Gogh, Monet, Klimt, and now Emily Carr, everyone around the world who sees the photographs and footage is going through the same mental process: an astonished intake of breath, followed by the realisation that everything is actually fine. The art work is safe behind glass, tightly sealed by expert conservators. What looks dangerous is a mere spectacle, not a reality.

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Ansto chief says it may not be able to keep producing nuclear medicine if it runs out of waste storage space at its Lucas Heights facility

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Australia’s peak nuclear organisation has warned it could be forced to cease production of life-saving cancer medicine if a controversial nuclear waste dump, planned for South Australia, is scrapped.

The chief executive of Australia’s Nuclear Science Technology Organisation (Ansto), Shaun Jenkinson, said the federal government organisation would not be able to keep producing nuclear medicine if it ran out of waste storage space at its Lucas Heights facility.

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Communities in NSW have faced flash flooding and heavy rains this week, causing extensive damage in Molong and Eugowra

• ‘We saved the cat’: flood-hit NSW town of Forbes could be divided for days
• ‘Utterly terrifying’: the moment a ‘wave of biblical proportions’ destroyed NSW town of Eugowra
• Why is so much of Australia flooding right now?

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