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Freshwater quality is one of New Zealanders’ biggest concerns – water-trading 'clubs' could be part of the solution
Australia should wipe out climate footprint by 2035 instead of 2050, scientists urge
The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering says ministers must ‘make up for lost time’ with more ambitious policy
Australian engineers and technology scientists have urged the Albanese government to “make up for lost time” and set itself a “monumental challenge” by setting a target to wipe out the country’s climate footprint by 2035 – 15 years earlier than currently proposed.
The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, representing nearly 900 leading engineers and scientists, called on the government to set a goal of reaching net zero emissions in just 12 years, arguing it could be achieved with existing mature, low-carbon technology.
Continue reading...Could Rishi Sunak's green review threaten UK net zero?
Cynical Rishi sells net zero targets down the river to appease the right
There’s nothing long term about the prime minister diluting green policies in the hope of clinging on to power
You could sense the panic when news was leaked of Rishi Sunak’s plans to water down some of his climate change targets. Instead of a controlled speech later in the week – probably somewhere with green connections: Rish! never knowingly undersells the irony – we got a hastily arranged press conference. In the very same Downing Street media centre where No 10 staff had joked about having illegal parties during the pandemic. Call it karma. Stay calm and carry on taking the piss out of the country.
And breathe. Sunak strode into the room and stood in front of a lectern with a sign reading “long-term decisions for a brighter future” on the front. Gaslighting the country again. It’s getting to be a habit. He then opened his mouth. RishGPT can’t really help the entitled, nasal whine. But this time it came soaked in contempt. This wasn’t just patronising, it was the most cynical speech from a prime minister in years. Deep down Sunak must know that he has sold his soul for the chance of remaining in office a while longer. There was a comedy to Liz Truss. At least she believed the mad things she was saying. Plus when all’s said and done she only destroyed the economy. But Rish! doesn’t believe any of this. He can’t be that stupid and deluded. And he’s hellbent on taking down the whole planet. The dishonesty was breathtaking. He lied and he lied and he lied.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak’s government risks looking incapable of honouring a commitment | Nils Pratley
Net zero rollback could be a disaster for business confidence, with cars policy looking particularly perverse
One can understand why Rishi Sunak sees political opportunity in watering down a few climate policies. Previous soundbites about “the economic opportunity of the 21st century” may be correct in the round, but voters have also noticed that heat pumps are expensive and that the path to net zero by 2050 involves costs as well as opportunities. A strategy that claims, in effect, that net zero can be delivered more gently is not absurd for a party that is miles behind in the polls.
The problem, though, is the one highlighted by the furious reaction from some carmakers, in particular, to Sunak’s flip-flop. Any realistic route to net zero involves winning, and keeping, the broad confidence of businesses that will be overhauling the infrastructure. At one level, hitting the 2050 target requires an enormous public-private effort to rewire the entire economy. The whole point of setting interim targets is to make it more likely that you hit the main end goal. Presented with a legally binding commitment, the government risks looks incapable of delivering a plan that it can stick to.
Continue reading...Extreme weather shows need for early warning systems, says Spanish minister
Teresa Ribera calls for alert systems in every country by 2027 after spate of natural disasters across the world
The latest spate of natural disasters – from the floods in Libya, Greece and Spain to the wildfires in Hawaii and Canada – has further underscored the need for early warning systems to help the world cope with the realities of the climate emergency, Spain’s environment minister has said.
Speaking to the Guardian as she prepared to travel to New York to take part in the UN’s climate ambition summit and sign a landmark treaty to protect the high seas, Teresa Ribera said the calamities laid bare the challenges the planet faced.
Continue reading...Sunak’s big green gamble: the story behind the PM’s decision to U-turn
With PM’s electoral options narrowing, strategists came to conclusion policy could help create dividing line with Labour
Isaac Levido, the strategy guru behind Boris Johnson’s 2019 victory, has spent much of the summer working on the overhaul of Rishi Sunak’s green policies.
One of the goals has been to find that elusive political property: a dividing line with Labour that Tory strategists believe will present voters with a clear choice at next year’s election.
Continue reading...The Guardian view on diluting net zero targets: bad economics dictated by cynical politics | Editorial
The PM has chosen to put a narrow, divisive electoral calculation ahead of serious statecraft and responsible government
It takes a special kind of cynicism to assert that long-term planning must have primacy over short-term expediency while defending a policy choice that does the exact opposite. Rishi Sunak’s decision to postpone deadlines for the transition to low-carbon technology is the very definition of tactical partisanship trumping strategic statecraft. That the prime minister sought to present it otherwise in a televised address to the nation on Wednesday shows contempt for anyone who understands the urgency of the climate crisis.
The prime minister veils his ploy in economic terms. The claim is that measures designed to accelerate the switch to low-carbon technology – a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, for example, and a deadline for phasing out the installation of new gas boilers by 2035 – heap the cost of transition on consumers. Downing Street insists the commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 stands, but will be reached by “more proportionate” means.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak rolls back net zero targets in reset of UK climate policies – video
The prime minister has announced the scrapping or watering down of some of the UK's net zero targets, pushing back a ban on diesel and petrol vehicles from 2030 to 2035 and weakening a plan to phase out the installation of gas boilers by 2035
UK net zero policies: what has Sunak scrapped and what do changes mean?
‘We need more investment, not less’: UK voters on Sunak’s net zero rollback
‘We need more investment, not less’: UK voters on Sunak’s net zero rollback
‘Red wall’ constituents critical of prime mininster’s plan to water down climate commitments
“Rishi likes to jump on his little jet. I don’t have a car, I don’t fly on planes.”
In the opinion of Claire Savage, the manager of the Ironstone Miner pub in Guisborough, the prime minister’s plan to water down net zero commitments that he says impose a direct cost on consumers is disingenuous.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak confirms rollback of key green targets
UK prime minister delays ban on sale of new petrol and diesel cars as he pushes back net zero goals
Rishi Sunak has announced a major rethink of his government’s climate policies, rolling back some of the UK’s most important green targets in one of his biggest policy U-turns in office.
At a press conference in Downing Street, the prime minister announced the UK would no longer plan to end the sale of new gas boilers by 2035, and would push back the deadline for selling new petrol and diesel cars by five years.
Continue reading...What green finance needs to speed the global transition to a net zero economy
Cop28 offers an opportunity to rethink how we can develop investments that are profitable, liquid and easily accessible
As we move from UN climate week to Cop28 in Dubai later this year, we must stop the “greenwishing” and “greenwashing” and start thinking about the instruments that will enable the private sector and private investors to channel more capital toward climate resilience and sustainable development. While the public sector has an important role to play in this respect, scalable solutions require significant commitments of private sector resources. With the climate crisis already wreaking havoc on poor and rich countries alike, unlocking this largely untapped pool of capital has become an urgent priority.
Yet as matters stand, many investors associate climate-centric investments with “social impact” and reduced profitability. While sophisticated investors have the means to deploy their capital profitably toward decarbonisation, the energy transition and other climate-related sectors, such investments tend to be illiquid. They remain tightly wound up in private equity funds, and thus inaccessible to the ordinary investors and savers who are most exposed to climate-driven food, water and energy insecurity.
Continue reading...See Sunak’s green retreat for what it is: a ruthless short-term electoral gamble | Martin Kettle
The PM has calculated that he can gain points with his party membership and skew byelection results. But at what cost?
Rishi Sunak’s retreat from the government’s net zero pledges triggers large- and small-scale conclusions alike. These range from a message about the future of the planet’s place in the prime minister’s priorities, at one extreme, to the anxiety it betrays about how to manage his way through his first party conference as Conservative leader, next month, at the other.
Nevertheless, Sunak’s move should be seen as a short-term electoral gamble rather than a massacre of the entire net zero agenda. That does not mean that it isn’t damaging to the net zero credibility established imperfectly by previous Tory prime ministers, let alone to Britain’s longer-term reputation on climate action. It is all these things. If it is electorally successful, the shift could also become more fundamental and more lasting.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Half-million-year-old wooden structure unearthed in Zambia
Fast, beautiful, mates for life: why I am voting peregrine in Australia’s bird of the year 2023 | Imogen Dewey
My favourite bird, the fastest in the world, calls to something in me
- The Australian bird of the year poll launches on 25 September 2023
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The peregrine is the fastest animal in the world. It drops on its prey from above, a 300km/h shard of death. This path, sky to ground, is called a hunting line – a phrase I first saw in JA Baker’s The Peregrine – my favourite book (also Werner Herzog’s, turns out), probably my favourite possession. Book and bird have been indistinguishable to me since: a talisman of what is beautiful and wild.
“They are killers,” Baker wrote in 1967. “That is what they are for.” To find one, look up. See it, as he did, “remote as a star … a small dark knuckle in the flawless sky”. Before it drops:
He seemed to split in two, his body shooting off like an arrow from the tight-strung bow of his wings. There was an unholy impetus in his falling, as though he had been hurled from the sky. It was hard to believe, afterwards, that it had happened at all.
Continue reading...Sunak’s net zero U-turn is so toxic that it’s united Green MPs and car manufacturers against him | Caroline Lucas
With climate change a top priority for the public, surely time is up for a prime minister who couldn’t seem to care less?
- Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion
It’s quite a moment when a Green party MP finds herself on the same side of an argument as the chair of Ford UK – but here we are. Claims reported by the BBC yesterday evening that Rishi Sunak is planning to weaken some of the government’s key climate commitments have managed to unite businesses, the energy sector, car manufacturers, environmental groups and the general public against him.
His leaked programme appears not to be a couple of minor delays here and there but instead a coordinated, calculated and catastrophic roll-back. According to the leak, energy efficiency targets for private rented homes will be dropped; the ban on new petrol and diesel cars will be pushed back to 2035; the phasing out of gas boilers will be delayed; plans for taxes to discourage flying ditched; recycling schemes cancelled.
Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion
Continue reading...Galápagos Islands tightens biosecurity as avian flu threatens unique species
Scientists confirm three birds have died from virus as park authorities redouble efforts to protect islands’ endemic birds
National park authorities on the Galápagos Islands have heightened biosecurity measures to protect the archipelago’s unique fauna from the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza after scientists confirmed that three birds had died from the virus.
“From preliminary tests of the five specimens, three of them have tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza,” Danny Rueda, director of the Galápagos national park told the Guardian. Two frigate birds and one red-footed booby were confirmed to have died from the virus on Tuesday, after samples were sent to Guayaquil on the Ecuadorian mainland for examination.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson warns Sunak he ‘cannot afford to falter’ on net zero commitments
Former prime minister says ‘businesses must have certainty’ to invest in green technologies
Boris Johnson has waded into the row over Rishi Sunak’s plans to U-turn on some of the government’s net zero commitments, warning his successor that he “cannot afford to falter now” or “lose our ambition” for the country.
The former prime minister, who oversaw the introduction of many of the targets during his tenure, said “businesses must have certainty” about the UK’s net zero commitments, as companies reacted with alarm to the potential policy shift.
Continue reading...E.ON boss hits out at Sunak’s plan to row back on net zero policies
PM accused of delaying vital work on transforming UK economy as car industry leaders also condemn plans
The boss of one of Britain’s largest energy suppliers has criticised the government’s plan to row back on net zero policies, including the planned phase-out of gas boilers, as a “misstep on many levels”.
Accusing Rishi Sunak of delaying the “vital work of transforming our economy”, the chief executive of E.ON UK, Chris Norbury, said there was no “green v cheap” debate. He said delaying some environmental targets to reduce pressure on household budgets during a cost of living crisis was a “false argument”.
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