Feed aggregator

These remarkable fish need clean rivers to breed in. Their decline highlights the collapse of environmental regulation

The collapse in the number of wild salmon in England and Wales is deeply dismaying. These fish are widely regarded as wonders of the natural world because of their extraordinary life cycle. This takes them thousands of miles out into the North Atlantic Ocean, before they return to our rivers – swimming and leaping upstream – to spawn.

Climate change and failures of marine conservation have contributed to the decline in numbers across their entire range, which extends from Russia to Portugal. But in Britain, the poor state of rivers is another obstacle to the species’ survival. As well as a warning of the global threat to biodiversity, their dwindling numbers are a reminder of the price paid for the repeated breaking of environmental law.

Continue reading...

California Carbon Allowances (CCA) futures trade surged on ICE after regulator ARB released a notice Tuesday confirming aspects of upcoming changes to the cap-and-trade programme.

A nature-based platform has teamed up with a tech firm to offer combined screening and monitoring of forest carbon projects.

Google has become the first company to sign a corporate power purchase agreement (PPA) to buy nuclear power from small modular reactors (SMRs), the company said on Monday.

Fifteen firms in Germany have been awarded support guarantees in the first round of the country's novel climate contracts for difference (CCfD) scheme, established to help industrials with the transition towards net-zero goals, with payouts linked to EU ETS prices.

There is “huge uncertainty” around what would happen to US carbon markets regulations if the openly-climate sceptic Donald Trump is re-elected in November, according to the co-chair of the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM).

The financial regulatory sector must act swiftly to address the rapid decline of nature, by taking actions including mandating targets, WWF said in a report.

Investing in biodiversity is being held back by a lack of financial materiality and policy impetus, though steps forward on an international carbon market could unlock funding for biodiversity, said analysts at a sustainability ratings agency.

Day trips to the Moon, living on Mars, space elevators… when it comes to the future of space exploration, some possibilities might be closer than we think!

Investors say climate change poses biggest risk to their assets, and urge Albanese government to see the economic dangers of a slow path to net zero

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Institutional investors dealing with portfolios in the trillions of dollars aren’t typically the most vocal climate campaigners. You won’t find many superannuation fund staff, fund managers, asset consultants or brokers with a placard on the streets or on top of a Newcastle coal train.

But you may increasingly find them on a screen you’re watching. Or at least their message.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Continue reading...

The European Union should develop policies in support of “nature-inclusive” solar parks with biodiversity net gain, urged a report commissioned by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) that was published on Tuesday.

A large-scale provincial Argentine jurisdictional REDD (J-REDD) initiative is expected to issue around 10 million credits as early as this year, though some legal and socioeconomic questions remain.

Burning household rubbish in giant incinerators is now the dirtiest way the UK generates electricity after the closure of the last coal-fired power plant in the country, analysis published Tuesday has found.

A French biotech startup has raised €3.3 million in pre-seed funding to accelerate the development of its carbon-negative natural rubber.

A Finnish waste management and circular solutions company has become the world’s first to produce biodegradable plastic from CO2 emissions using carbon capture and utilisation (CCU), the firm announced on Tuesday.

Conservative ‘wish list’ of policies for a future Trump administration goes so far as transforming food and farming

When Project 2025 began making headlines this summer, it was largely for the ways the conservative “wish list” of policies for a future Trump administration would restructure the entire federal bureaucracy, deepen abortion restrictions and eliminate the Department of Education.

But the document – a proposed mandate for the next Republican president authored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank – also outlines steps that would radically transform food and farming, curtailing recent progress to address the excess of ultra-processed foods in the United States. Among those: weakening the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), ending policies that consider the effects of climate change – and eliminating the US dietary guidelines.

Continue reading...

UC San Diego has added an innovative prerequisite to ‘prepare students for the future they really will encounter’

Melani Callicott, a human biology major at the University of California, San Diego, thinks about the climate crisis all the time. She discusses it with family and friends because of the intensity of hurricanes like Milton and Helene, which have ravaged the southern US, she says. “It just seems like it’s affecting more people every day.”

That’s one reason why she is glad that UC San Diego has implemented an innovative graduation requirement for students starting this autumn: a course in climate change. Courses must cover at least 30% climate-related content and address two of four areas, including scientific foundations, human impacts, mitigation strategies, and project-based learning. About 7,000 students from the class of 2028 will be affected this year.

Continue reading...

Verra has released two new tools to assess the additionality of project activities, replacing and updating CDM versions, in a move that will further align the standard body with the ICVCM’s Core Carbon Principle stamp of high integrity approval.

European carbon prices strengthened their correlation to natural gas on Tuesday, falling in line with TTF after the two markets had disconnected early in the month, as the energy complex weakened on easing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Over 300,000 animals are killed or displaced annually in Tasmania, Australia due to logging-related activities, a paper published this week estimated.