Feed aggregator

Sultan Al Jaber’s claim that green policies damage economic growth is wrong and highly damaging

For months Sultan Al Jaber, the president of the Cop28 climate negotiations in Dubai, has been insisting that there is no conflict with his day job, chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) state oil company.

Instead, he argued, the dual role enabled him to persuade fossil fuel companies to change. And some early successes in the talks provided some credibility to that claim.

Geoffrey Lean is a specialist environment correspondent and author

Continue reading...

EUAs weakened steadily on Monday morning as they came under renewed selling pressure after Friday's rally, while gas prices fell back amid milder weather forecasts and observers predicted that carbon prices appeared likely to remain under pressure for at least another week.

Bhutan launched its national carbon registry at COP28 on Monday, also integrating itself with the Climate Action Data (CAD) Trust, the first country to do so.

Australia’s current carbon prices via its Safeguard Mechanism are not sufficiently high to drive down the price of hydrogen, but that may be about to change, a report said Monday.

Several international organisations including the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), the VCMI, and the ICVCM came together to establish an 'end-to-end' integrity framework that they say provides consistent guidance on decarbonisation including the use of carbon credits for residual emissions, as announced at COP28 on Monday.

The Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, held a press conference after the Guardian's report on his comments claiming 'there is no science out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuels is what's going to achieve 1.5C'. Al Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company, Adnoc, said he had been misrepresented and gave an impassioned defence of his background and belief in science. He then went on to say 'the phase-down and the phase-out of fossil fuels, is essential' and accused those who reported his initial comments of 'undermining' his message

• Cop28 live – latest updates

• Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels

Continue reading...

The UK's polar research vessel visits A23a, an iceberg that's more than twice the size of London.

"Everything we do is centred behind the science," the head of the UN climate talks in Dubai says.

New analysis published by climate finance experts on Monday called for all countries to commit to a substantial rise in investment to deliver the goals of the Paris Agreement.

A taxpayer-funded drive for ‘blue’ hydrogen is good news for fossil-fuel lobbyists, but bad news for the climate crisis

With the impacts of the climate crisis so apparent for all to see, it is becoming ever harder for governments to fob off voters with promises of action tomorrow. At Cop28 we’ll see increasingly overt action by fossil fuel companies and petrostates to preserve their traditional power. But it is just as important to scrutinise emerging so-called green or low-emission solutions, which sound plausible, but are often simply big oil’s business-as-usual in a new guise.

The UK’s much touted low carbon hydrogen standard (LCHS) is an example of this. While hydrogen can be a low-emission fuel, the UK’s plan is quite clearly a fig leaf for “blue” hydrogen – which is made from fossil fuels – and according to one study, is even more at odds with our commitment to limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C than burning coal.

Kevin Anderson is professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester. Simon Oldridge is an independent researcher

Cop28: Can fossil fuel companies transition to clean energy?
On Tuesday 5 December, 8pm-9.15pm GMT, join Damian Carrington, Christiana Figueres, Tessa Khan and Mike Coffin for a livestreamed discussion on whether fossil fuel companies can transition to clean energy. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

Continue reading...

Indigenous Peoples and local communities need to be at the heart of developing an effective and equitable biodiversity market due to the key role they play as stewards of biodiversity-rich land, while the introduction of a credit price floor could help ensure an equitable approach here, said speakers from the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits at COP28 today.

The Coal to Clean Credit Initiative (CCCI) signed Monday an agreement for the early phaseout of a Filipino coal plant, and is working with the COP28 presidency to garner buying interest in the resulting carbon credits issued from its draft methodology, which it says will be eligible for transaction under the Paris Agreement.

Summit negotiations continue in wake of Sultan Al Jaber’s claim there is ‘no science’ indicating a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C

• Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels

John Kerry, the US special envoy for climate was just asked on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme in the UK what he thinks of Damian Carrington’s scoop that Sultan Al Jaber said there was ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels.

He was very diplomatic in his response and appeared to give the oil chief and Cop28 president the benefit of the doubt.

“What you have to do is clearly reduce the emissions. They have made it clear we need a 43% minimum reduction in emissions by 2030, and we need net zero 2050 in order to meet the goal of keeping 1.5. We’ve got all kinds of ways of getting there. Renewables are the one technology we really know we can deploy today and it has the impact we need.”

“We are not only signed up to that, president Biden on behalf of the US voted to join the g7 where we said we must phase out unabated fossil fuel. We have to do that yes otherwise you cannot reach net zero by 2050. What we are trying to figure out is how we can capture those emissions, or reduce those emissions, or not make those emissions in the first place.

“I think the only question here is not whether or not you are going to reduce emissions, it’s what means are you going to use to go at this to provide the energy you want for your country but also keeping faith with the reduction of the emissions that are creating the climate crisis.”

Continue reading...

Exclusive: Labour leader tells Guardian at Cop28 that Britain is wanted back in ‘leading role’ as he accuses Sunak of retreating

The UK will come back strongly to the world stage to “lead from the front” in tackling the climate crisis under a Labour government, Keir Starmer has pledged, after meeting world leaders at the Cop28 summit in Dubai.

“There’s an overwhelming feeling here among world leaders that they want to see the UK back playing a leading role,” he told the Guardian at the UN climate talks. “That’s why our statement of intent that under a Labour government we will be back playing a leading role has been really well received.

Continue reading...

It isn’t just our planet’s future that’s at risk: soon the artefacts buried deep in our soil may be lost for ever

A remarkable discovery was made 50 years ago at Vindolanda, the Roman fort below Hadrian’s Wall. Four metres down, the archaeologist Robin Birley and his team came upon a mass of black, damp and stinky organic material. Miraculously preserved in this anaerobic time capsule were pieces of leather, including Roman shoes, some fragments of textile and numerous pieces of wood. These included a couple of thin, postcard-like, wooden leaf-tablets, less than 2mm thick, with strange marks on the surface that turned out to be cursive Latin written in ink.

The very first tablet discovered was a fragment of a letter, telling an unnamed soldier that socks and underpants had been dispatched, presumably in response to a plea for additional protection against the very damp and cold that would later preserve the note deep below ground. Now, the climate crisis is irreversibly altering these conditions, destroying Vindolanda’s buried treasures faster than archaeologists can get to them.

Continue reading...

It's Day 5 of COP28, and climate finance is the catchphrase of the day – although tensions on 1.5C and the fossil fuel phaseout are bubbling. In our daily running blog, Carbon Pulse will report relevant or useful updates throughout the day. Timestamps are in local time (Gulf Standard Time, GMT+4).

Consumers left angry and dismayed when they found out the truth about these terms, says Advertising Standards Authority study

Plastic bottles, takeaway cups and food packaging that could take an unlimited amount of time to break down are being advertised as “biodegradable”, with the advertising regulator calling for more clarity on such claims from businesses.

British consumers believe they are making green choices while disposing of waste when they are often not, according to a new report. The study, from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), based on extensive interviews with consumers, found widespread misunderstandings around common terms such as “biodegradable”, “compostable” and “recyclable”, leaving participants angry when they discovered what they meant.

Continue reading...

The focus on individual choices has left us frustrated. Now an EU-led ‘climate club’ is our best hope of systemic action

Something flipped last summer in both the visibility of the climate crisis and in the space the media devotes to it. Apparently, all it took was for the air to turn orange and unbreathable above Wall Street and for smoke to smother holidaymakers in Greece.

And yet, despite the fact that the conversation finally feels like it is approaching the level of ubiquitousness that the crisis merits, the solutions being proposed leave me deflated. And that’s not merely because of the lunatic hypocrisy of holding the Cop28 in Dubai, where it will be presided over by the CEO of the world’s 12th-largest fossil-fuel company.

Alexander Hurst is a Guardian columnist. He is a France-based writer and an adjunct lecturer at Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies

Continue reading...

Dakar’s nine-mile-long Hann Bay used to be known as one of West Africa’s most beautiful, lined with traditional fishing villages, villas and tourist attractions. But for the last 20 years it has been at the centre of the city’s industrialisation, with 80% of the city’s industry nearby. Today it is one of Dakar’s most polluted areas, with canals spilling raw sewage and chemicals on to the beach and into the sea

Continue reading...

I’m still recovering from the glittering spectacle of Cop27

• Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are published
• Get all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints

Continue reading...