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Sixty percent of Ghana's water bodies are now polluted, largely due to illegal mining operations.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Scott Morrison and Angus Taylor are blaming the developing world for the world's climate problem. That approach is both ignorant and cruel.

The post Bad faith: Morrison blaming Global South for climate change is beyond belief appeared first on RenewEconomy.

California Carbon Offset (CCO) discounts are remaining close to historic highs despite a flood of speculators in the California Carbon Allowance (CCA) market this year, with participants saying credits are decoupling from permit values due to diverging buying interest.

Commodity price reporting agency S&P Global Platts announced the launch of four new voluntary carbon offset assessments on Tuesday, differentiating some credits between GHG reductions and removals while adding a tech-based category.

To many people, Australia’s spider diversity is a source of fear. To arachnologists, it’s a goldmine, with most Australian spider species still yet to be discovered. Mark Harvey, Curator of Arachnology at the Western Australian Museum, Adjunct Professor, The University of Western Australia Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Researchers develop a robot that changes colour in response to its background.

Climate campaigners say dire landmark findings mean the federal government must abandon gas basin and coalmine expansions

Australian politicians are facing calls to accept the era of new fossil fuel investments should end immediately after a major report on the climate crisis confirmed it was already causing havoc across the planet, with worse to come.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said on Tuesday the sixth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on climate science, confirmed the “serious implications for Australia of what’s happening globally”.

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Politicians around world continue to respond to report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Food production around the world will suffer as global heating reaches 1.5C, with serious effects on the food supply in the next two decades, scientists have warned, following the biggest scientific report yet on the climate crisis.

Rising temperatures will mean there will be more times of year when temperatures exceed what crops can stand, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its sixth assessment report published on Monday.

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A Houston-based environmental trader has joined a US-headquartered bank to lead their environmental desk, as more financial firms look to expand into the compliance and voluntary carbon markets, Carbon Pulse has learned.

Czech utility CEZ saw its coal power output further decline in the first half of 2021, as a result of divestment of assets and a “deterioration of medium-term market conditions” following the increase in the EU’s climate ambition and a potential phaseout of Czechia’s coal-fired generation.

The head of European carbon research at BloombergNEF is leaving to join the trading desk of a large energy company, Carbon Pulse has learned.

The world seems to be on the verge of collapse – yet I have just brought a baby into it

“Babe, look!” my wife said excitedly, as we sprawled on the grass reading on one baking hot afternoon. She passed me her book: “Read this – this person is just like you!” I read the paragraph she was pointing to. A clearly distraught character was fulminating about poorly designed roundabouts; she kept going on and on and on about them. To be clear, I don’t have any opinions about roundabouts. Not a single one. I curtly informed my wife of this. “Yeah,” she said. “But you do have, you know, certain rants you keep coming back to. Like, incessantly.”

I couldn’t argue. While I have always been a committed pessimist, recently I’ve gone into full-blown Chicken Little mode with existential obsessions. I’ll wake up, look at the latest terrifying news on my phone and immediately launch a diatribe about how we are almost certainly going to experience climate emergency-induced societal collapse in our lifetimes. “Have you seen what’s happening in Greece/northern California/Turkey?” I’ll screech. “Have you seen how many billionaires are fleeing to New Zealand to avoid the imminent apocalypse? The weather is out of control! Joe Biden and his woefully inadequate infrastructure bill aren’t going to fix anything! We are all doomed! DOOMED!”

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*PREMIUM LISTING – A Senior Program Officer will coordinate and help implement our climate projects that help to shape climate policy in Asia.

Following the unequivocal IPCC climate report, we must all put pressure on governments to end the fossil fuel era

The sixth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is no ordinary publication. Its 4,000 pages were written by hundreds of independent scientists from 66 countries. It was commissioned by 195 governments and all of them signed off on the conclusions after reviewing them line by line and word by word. These governments, whether supportive, ambivalent or hostile to climate action, now own the messages in the report. So what does it say?

The report concludes that there is now “unequivocal” evidence that human actions are changing our climate. Behind this are alarming findings. The burning of fossil fuels and deforestation has led to levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that are higher today than at any time in the past 2 million years. Alongside methane and other greenhouse gases, this has driven Earth to be warmer than at any point in the past 125,000 years. The impacts of this can be seen in the loss of Arctic sea ice, accelerating sea level rise, hotter and more frequent heatwaves, increased and more frequent extreme rainfall events and, in some regions, more intense droughts and fires.

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Climate Investment Partners LLC is seeking a Project Associate and/or Project Manager of Natural Climate Solutions to lead feasibility and project development of nature-based carbon offset projects for the voluntary carbon market.

Analysts at a major investment bank have raised their EUA price forecasts for the period from 2022 through to 2030, citing a “rapidly tightening system leading to structural shortage" of allowances later in the decade.

If the Evia fire ferry video seems extraordinary, it’s not only because of what it shows but because of how it shows it

To have lived through the last few decades is to have, in our minds, an all too accessible video library of historical nightmares. The assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK. The collapse of the Twin Towers. Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck. The 6 January insurrectionists swarming the Capitol building. We can call up these scenes whenever we choose. They haunt us, uninvited.

The latest grim addition to that ineradicable collection is a video that surfaced, days ago, of a tourist ferry sailing across the water from the raging fire incinerating the Greek island of Evia.

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Newcomer on dairy alternative scene is vegan, sequesters carbon and increases biodiversity

I’m sitting in my kitchen, about to try my first sip of a milk that is vegan, sequesters carbon and increases biodiversity. Dairy milk has a high carbon footprint. Soy is linked to deforestation, almond to high water use. But how does the new kid on the scene – hemp seed milk – measure up for taste?

An Innovative Farmers project coordinated by the Soil Association is investigating how industrial hemp production could aid the transition to a low-carbon economy. In collaboration with scientists at Cranfield University and the British Hemp Alliance, research will quantify the environmental benefits of growing hemp. In farm trials that launched last month, five farmers are helping to investigate this plant’s ability to sequester or store carbon, improve soil health and increase biodiversity.

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The last three months have seen European power generation economics upended, as margins for gas-fired generation have been driven so low that not even a strong carbon price can restore them.