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Researchers discover coastal species living on debris miles from their natural surroundings.

Even species ‘superbly adapted’ for Australia’s harsh conditions suffered, with up to 60% of trees dying in some areas

• Secret document urges native logging halt in NSW regions hit hard by black summer bushfires

The drought and heatwaves that seared eastern Australia in the lead-up to the 2019-20 black summer bushfires killed as much as 60% of the trees in some areas that escaped the fires, according to new research.

While Australian species are typically hardened to extreme conditions, the record heat and dryness of 2019 pushed some common tree varieties beyond their thresholds, potentially threatening whole ecosystems if they don’t grow back.

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Climate campaigners claim the government is giving billions of pounds in subsidies to oil and gas producers

Environmental campaigners will this week ask the high court to rule that the government’s fossil fuel strategy is unlawful, in a case that could undermine the UK’s claim to be leading the fight against climate change.

The campaigners will argue that the government is effectively subsidising oil and gas production with billions of pounds in handouts, which conflicts with its legal duty to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

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Grouse moors are not known for being friendly places for birds of prey – but the Swinton estate has a fresh attitude

In the trees beside the heather-clad, snow-smattered moorland is an elusive creature that to some conservationists is as mythical as a unicorn: a gamekeeper looking after endangered birds of prey.

“Two hen harriers coming in now,” said Gary Taylor, head keeper on the Swinton estate in North Yorkshire. Taylor is sitting in a hide he built himself overlooking one of the country’s best hen harrier roosting sites – in the middle of his boss’s grouse moor.

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Researchers say conservative estimate shows importance of wooded areas to wellbeing, with street trees also beneficial

Walks taken by people in UK woodlands save £185m a year in mental health costs, according to a report.

Spending time in nature is known to boost mental health, but the report by Forest Research is the first to estimate the amount that woodlands save the NHS through fewer GP visits and prescriptions, reduced hospital and social service care, and the costs of lost days of work. The research also calculated that street trees in towns and cities cut an additional £16m a year from antidepressant costs.

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

California regulator ARB should increase the 2030 carbon intensity (CI) reduction target for the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) as well as add a 2035 target, an academic told a conference Friday.

Compliance entities massively reduced their California Carbon Allowance (CCA) holdings over the past week following the publication of Q4 WCI auction results, while financial players bolstered their net long position, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data published Friday.

California’s free carbon permit distributions to industrials dropped by roughly one third for 2022 after the coronavirus pandemic throttled production from some facilities, according to data from state regulator ARB published Friday.

Labor has cancelled out the massive increase in renewable potential by allowing for greater emissions in transport, industry and agriculture.

The post Labor has produced a brilliant renewables plan wrapped up in a terrible climate plan appeared first on RenewEconomy.

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US biofuel credit (RIN) values tumbled to two-month lows on Friday after several news outlets reported the EPA is slated to soon release lower Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) quotas in line with leaked volumes this fall.

With nature-based credits valued at a growing price premium to other types of carbon offsets, scrutiny over the process is also on the rise, with even forest protection standards that are said to be raising the bar on quality finding criticism for lacking environmental integrity.

After a bumper wet season, huge flocks of budgerigars are on the move in the deserts of the Northern Territory

The humble budgerigar has transformed the red centre into a sea of green and gold.

A massive murmuration – the phenomenon of thousands of birds flocking together – has swarmed the Northern Territory.

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Heavy police tactics, punitive bail conditions, private lawsuits and anti-protest laws are being used to silence dissent, human rights advocates say

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As protesters obstructed coal trains bound for the Port of Newcastle for days, the local environment centre kept its distance.

But after two weeks of disruptions caused by Blockade Australia, police officers arrived at the Hunter Valley Environment Centre on a Friday afternoon last month with a warrant to search the premises and a nearby sharehouse.

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Britain won’t convince anyone else to ditch fossil fuels when it won’t do so itself

Does the decision by oil giant Royal Dutch Shell to pull out of the Cambo oilfield mark the end of oil and gas investment in the North Sea? For the planet’s sake, one would hope so. However, it may be more realistic to see Shell’s act as a first victory in a longer war to keep hydrocarbons in the ground. Campaigners say that there are dozens more offshore oil and gas fields coming up for approval in the next three years. To keep the climate safe and limit global temperature rises to 1.5C, none ought to go ahead. Oil majors have lost the battle for public opinion in Scotland and this has dramatically altered the calculations for the ruling Scottish National party, which for decades ran on oil. Without supportive politics, and with the science against them, oil majors – this time – bowed out.

Despite that, and despite brandishing its credentials as a climate champion at Cop26 in Glasgow last month, the UK government still wants extractive industries to suck the seabed dry. Rather than joining an alliance of nations – led by Denmark and Costa Rica, and including France and Ireland – which have set an end date for oil and gas production and exploration, Boris Johnson will allow companies to keep exploring the North Sea for new reserves.

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The December RGGI auction settled at a new all-time high for the fourth straight sale, partially draining volume from the power sector cap-and-trade programme’s Cost Containment Reserve (CCR) for the first time in six years, according to results published Friday.

The sudden emergence of Klima DAO and increasing interest in the carbon market from the crypto community has created some excitement over the opportunities for climate finance, but is also generating concern over legal and environmental integrity issues.

New initiatives could give bankers the tools to help their clients fund and manage the green transition

The recent United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop26) in Glasgow was, it seems, a historic success. We have this on no lesser authority than that of the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, who happened to be the meeting’s host. The Cop26 president, Alok Sharma, also was upbeat afterward regarding the 2015 Paris climate agreement’s target of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. “We set out by saying we wanted to keep 1.5C within reach,” Sharma said. “We did do that.” And Johnson claimed that there was little difference between the proposed Cop26 agreement to “phase out” coal usage and the final text, which pledged only to “phase down” coal.

Others took a different view. Perhaps predictably, the teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg described the conference categorically as “a failure”. Climate Action Tracker projects that even if all the Cop26 pledges stretching into the future are met, the planet is on track to warm by at least 2.1C. And India is phasing out in the particular sense of phasing in, with coal-powered electricity generation expected to increase by almost 5% a year this decade. The Financial Times’s Martin Wolf hedged his bets. For him, Cop26 “was both triumph and disaster.”

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EUAs broke through the €80 barrier for the first time at the start of trading on Friday but failed to hold on to the new level as some profit taking emerged, while energy prices were mixed for a second day.