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Researchers find the plants don’t use conventional processes to follow the sun across the sky

With their bright yellow manes and sturdy stems, sunflowers might seem like a simple summer delight. But researchers say the plants are surprisingly enigmatic after discovering they don’t use conventional processes to track the sun across the sky.

Over the course of a day, sunflowers follow the path of the sun overhead – a process known as heliotropism – with their heads tilting progressively westwards as a result of cells elongating on the east side of the stem.

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‘Nothing’s changed’ stance by Murray Auchincloss needs time despite sceptism of investors

• BP plays down takeover speculation after lower than expected profits

“We remain committed to executing our strategy,” said Murray Auchincloss, BP’s stand-in chief executive, for the umpteenth time since Bernard Looney was defenestrated as permanent boss seven weeks ago. Auchincloss’s problem is that repetition doesn’t make it more convincing in the eyes of a sceptical market. Investors were already wondering if Looney would bow to pressure to water down his green transition plans further. Now it’s open season for speculation about BP’s future. Takeover target? Breakup candidate? There is an air of instability.

That is partly because the two biggest US oil majors are seemingly more confident than ever in their hydrocarbons-for-longer strategies. ExxonMobil is buying the US shale group Pioneer for $60bn (£49bn) and Chevron is making a record purchase by paying $53bn for Hess, complete with access to Guyana’s offshore oil reserves. Both deals are a case of doubling down on fossil fuels, which naturally provokes a fresh round of muttering among a few BP investors about whether renewables will ever earn the same returns on capital as oil and gas. BP’s shares are persistently priced at a valuation discount to those of the US majors.

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The relevance of biodiversity was rated as “moderate” by the average financial institution board in the Netherlands, the Dutch Association of Investors for Sustainable Development (VBDO) said in a study.

A twice-weekly summary of our biodiversity news plus bite-sized updates from around the world. All articles in this edition are free to read (no subscription required).

The growing inclination for farmers to generate and sell carbon credits, rather than help their food and agricultural clients achieve their insetting objectives, could hinder supplier relationships in the agricultural sector, a global business association representative told a conference this week. 

When Rishi Sunak granted 27 new North Sea licences this week, he wasn’t thinking about the survival of the living world

Can you see it yet? The Earth systems horizon – the point at which our planetary systems tip into a new equilibrium, hostile to most lifeforms? I think we can. The sudden acceleration of environmental crises we have seen this year, coupled with the strategic uselessness of powerful governments, rushes us towards the point of no return.

We’re told we are living through the sixth mass extinction. But even this is a euphemism. We call such events mass extinctions because the most visible sign of the five previous catastrophes of the Phanerozoic era (since animals with hard body parts evolved) is the disappearance of fossils from the rocks. But their vanishing was a result of something even bigger. Mass extinction is a symptom of Earth systems collapse.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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Governments and business leaders from the Global South have called for a coordinated approach to accelerating growth of carbon markets ahead of the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai, reaffirming their faith in voluntary markets, and calling for the harmonisation of methodologies in relation to the Article 6.4 mechanism of the Paris Agreement.

A Japanese steelmaker is looking at beginning the long path to creating lower emissions steel via a collaboration with ZE Energy and NextCarbon to use biomass coke.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) on Tuesday teamed up with the carbon exchange in Mainland China’s Shenzhen with plans to speed up the development of a carbon market ecosystem spanning Guangdong province, Hong Kong, and Macao.

An outlook on Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) prices has estimated direct cuts in emissions covered under the Safeguard Mechanism are unlikely to be seen until the end of the decade.

European carbon prices set yet another five-month low in early trading on Tuesday but failed to follow up with a breach of the mid-year low, as traders began to speculate over the market's potential to stage its traditional rally in November and energy prices weakened.

A forestry strategy with a nature positive objective in Latin America of $10-40 million is being prepared by asset manager Forest Investment Associates (FIA), Carbon Pulse has learned.

A NASA-backed project aims to map the biodiversity of South Africa using devices that are usually found on the space station to study planets and stars, according to participating scientists.

French banks have financed $154bn to firms running biggest fossil fuel projects since 2015 climate pact

France is Europe’s biggest supporter of “carbon bomb” extraction projects that hold enough fossil fuels to pump out more than a gigaton of CO2 each, the Guardian can reveal.

Since world leaders gathered in the French capital to sign the Paris agreement in 2015 – where they promised to try to stop the planet heating by 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – French banks have financed companies planning or operating carbon bombs amounting to $154bn.

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COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber has acknowledged the challenges he faces.

London mayor says releasing animals into wild is environmentally sound and a Labour vote-winner

• UK politics live – latest updates

Beavers should be released across the country under a Labour government, Sadiq Khan has said.

The London mayor said he was disappointed with recent comments by the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, who said her department would not be legalising beaver releases as she had “other priorities”.

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Operators of CCS networks set to come online around the world in the next few years may be able to reduce CO2 storage liabilities for emitters, thanks to a new partnership between two tech firms that enables network operators to model their entire CO2 network from the point of carbon capture to final injection point.

Vietnam’s Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) is being hampered by a lack of grants and a surfeit of loans with onerous interest rates, according to Reuters.

Exclusive: Projects that risk 1.5C heating target operated by companies receiving financing from European, Chinese and US banks

Banks pumped more than $150bn last year into companies whose giant “carbon bomb” projects could destroy the last chance of stopping the planet heating to dangerous levels, the Guardian can reveal.

The carbon bombs – 425 extraction projects that can each pump more than one gigaton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – cumulatively hold enough coal, oil and gas to burn through the rapidly dwindling carbon budget four times over. Between 2016 and 2022, banks mainly in the US, China and Europe gave $1.8tn in financing to the companies running them, new research shows.

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The hopes for naturally occurring hydrogen received a shot in the arm Tuesday morning as a discovery in a distant part of Australia made by a company worth just over A$35 million ($22 mln) was reported to the nation’s stock exchange.