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Inaction and self-interest are built into climate summits. Instead, we need a voting system that can’t be subverted by fossil fuel producers

Let’s face it: climate summits are broken. The delegates talk and talk, while Earth systems slide towards deadly tipping points. Since the climate negotiations began in 1992 more carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels has been released worldwide than in all preceding human history. This year is likely to set a new emissions record. They are talking us to oblivion.

Throughout these Conference of the Parties (Cop) summits, fossil fuel lobbyists have swarmed the corridors and meeting rooms. It’s like allowing weapons manufacturers to dominate a peace conference. This year, the lobbyists outnumber all but one of the national delegations. And they’re not the only ones: Cop28 is also heaving with meat and livestock lobbyists and reps from other planet-trashing industries. What should be the most important summit on Earth is treated like a trade fair.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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Planning approval given for 2,000 MWh battery in Collie that could double in size and will be used to soak up solar and shift it to the evening peaks, replacing coal.

The post Planning approval given for Australia’s biggest battery to soak up solar and replace coal appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Food and agriculture firms have sent three times as many delegates to the climate summit as last year

Lobbyists from industrial agriculture companies and trade groups have turned out in record numbers at Cop28, with three times as many delegates representing the meat and dairy industry as last year.

Representatives are present from some of the world’s largest agribusiness companies – such as the meat supplier JBS, the fertiliser giant Nutrien, the food giant Nestlé and the pesticide company Bayer – as well as powerful industry lobby groups.

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Compliance entities and speculators moved in opposite directions with their California Carbon Allowance (CCA) and RGGI holdings, while both groups reduced their Washington Carbon Allowance (WCA) positions over the last week, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data showed Friday.

The UN climate talks turn to oceans and a Pacific islander is here to fight for her home.

California's free carbon allowance distributions to industrials will rise for 2024, with petroleum and hydrogen production accounting for the highest year-on-year climb, according to data from state regulator ARB published on Friday.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruling in favour of small refineries' arguments for exemptions for ethanol blending under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) against the EPA could cause a renewable fuel supply glut, two industry experts agreed.

In the context of increasing reports of forest carbon-related cooperative approaches under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, Parties should apply strive to ensure that all credits transacted are of the highest quality by applying guidance developed by leading environmental and Indigenous organisations, writes the Wildlife Conservation Society and other groups.

Deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado region was the worst on record last month, according to government data.

A global network of forest mapping and monitoring actors on Friday launched the development of a biomass reference system in an early step towards a free, independent, and public system for the validation and calibration of forest carbon stock data. 

Remains of baby dinosaurs inside another dinosaur reveal what a young predator ate 75m years ago.

Oil and gas interests are fighting hard to prevent decarbonisation, as they always have done

It was never really in doubt. But the first week of Cop28, which ended with a rest day on Thursday, made one crucial fact impossible to ignore: the fossil fuel industry is not planning to go quietly. Far more of its lobbyists are in the UAE than have attended UN climate talks before. One analysis counted 2,456 of them – nearly four times the number registered last year in Egypt.

The battle is hotting up over what next week’s report on progress towards the Paris goals, known as the global stocktake, will say. Fossil fuel interests – both corporate and national – are pushing hard to avoid references to the phase-out that would signal the end of their business model and vast profits. They don’t want an energy transition that leads to their demise.

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Xpansiv's spot carbon credit exchange CBL is set to introduce a new fee in January for access to its platform, although charges will be waived for customers that meet minimal trading thresholds, the company announced this week.

Blast in Sidcup not being treated as terrorism but counter-terror officers are leading investigation

The London mayor’s office has condemned a “grotesquely irresponsible” attack in which a camera enforcing the city’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) was damaged with what appeared to be a homemade bomb, saying lives were put at risk.

There was no immediate reaction on the incident from Downing Street or the Home Office, with No 10 saying it could not comment amid a police inquiry, but that it condemned “criminality more generally”.

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Norway-based utility Stakraft has signed a long term offtake agreement for African cookstove emissions reduction carbon credits, although the company's focus is set to switch to removals over time, the company revealed to Carbon Pulse.

Two more carbon-counting methodologies have been added to the French government’s carbon credit certification programme, the ministry of ecological transition said this week.

A US-based carbon crediting start-up for smallhold farmers has partnered with a Nigerian non-profit, as it looks to scale its operations in the new year, its co-founder told a side event at COP28 in Dubai Friday.

The next replenishment of the World Bank's International Development Association, its concessional financing arm for the poorest countries, needs to be the "largest of all time", according to World Bank President Ajay Banga speaking Thursday in Zanzibar as part of the IDA20 Midterm Review.

Canada’s patchwork system of carbon pricing, particularly relative to US incentives, threaten the competitiveness of Canadian trade-exposed sectors, say representatives of the nation’s oil and gas economies.