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The 54 nations signed up to the Energy Charter Treaty struck a provisional agreement on Friday that would enable European nations to limit protections for fossil fuel projects as they strive to cut emissions, though green groups said the deal was riddled with loopholes.

Campaigners call to prioritise grain for human consumption over its use as a fuel

The US will press ahead with biofuels production, the deputy secretary for agriculture has said, despite increasing concerns over a global food crisis, and calls from campaigners to prioritise grain for human consumption over its use as a fuel.

Jewel Bronaugh, the deputy secretary of agriculture, said US farmers could continue to produce biofuels without harming food production. “We are keeping food security top of mind, but at the same time we also want to remain steadfast in the support and promotion of biofuel,” she told journalists in London, where she met the UK government to discuss a possible trade deal and cooperation on food issues.

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1994 agreement allows investors to sue governments for changes in energy policy that harm their profits

Climate activists have said that a deal to update a “dangerous” energy treaty has failed to make the agreement compatible with the urgency of the climate crisis.

After more than four years of talks, 52 countries and the EU on Friday struck a deal to “modernise” the energy charter treaty, a 1994 agreement that allows investors to sue governments for changes in energy policy that harm their profits.

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The US Navy ship sank off the Philippines during a ferocious WWII battle with the Japanese fleet.

Government generosity meant industry could pollute for free, and airlines were left with 900,000 excess permits they could keep or sell

The UK government gave airlines nearly a quarter of a billion pounds in free pollution permits in a single year, enough for the entire industry to dodge a carbon emissions cap and trade scheme entirely, according to research.

In 2021 the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS), which charges polluters per tonne of carbon emitted, handed airlines 4.4m free allowances and the industry only surrendered 3.4m back. In effect, UK taxpayers covered the entire cost of aviation industry emissions, plus some to spare.

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EUAs eased slightly on Friday morning, trading in a narrow range as traders awaited clarity on Germany's plans to ease its gas supply concerns. 

The writer expected climate change and surveillance but not the wreckage of the entire global system, or our willing submission to monitoring

So many of the worst things of our time would not have been particularly shocking in the time of George Orwell. After all, he and his contemporaries lived through the rise of the Third Reich, the swift corrosion of the Russian revolution into Stalinist authoritarianism, Franco’s brutalisation of Spain, Mussolini’s reign in Italy, and masses ready to cheer on all the villains, drink up the delusions and lies they spread, and even serve as their butchers. The kleptocratic Trump, the totalitarianism-aspiring Putin, Kim Jong-un in North Korea, Lukashenko in Belarus and the rest of the rogues’ gallery of demagogues and dictators are nothing new. The invasion of Ukraine echoes the Stalinist regime’s brutality there in the 1930s.

Ahead of an opening lecture at the Orwell festival of political writing, I have been thinking about what his mindset might have been, and it occurs to me that two things in our time would have shocked him. One of them is climate change. That human beings had wrecked bits and pieces of the natural world was perfectly evident in the coal-mining districts that Orwell had visited in 1936 for his research for his book about the working class and their conditions, The Road to Wigan Pier. That there was much that was filthy and poisonous about industrial capitalism and fossil fuel was clear from the smogs of Pittsburgh and London, where the air quality then was more or less comparable to the air quality of New Delhi and Shanghai now, and just as deadly.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist

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The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a rare albino otter, a wild toki bird and a big-eared opossum

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The government of Seychelles has released a roadmap for developing its untapped blue carbon potential which aims to protect its seagrass and mangrove ecosystem assets as a key part of the country’s strategy to address climate change.

Various government officials are offering different accounts on whether Indonesia’s pilot ETS and carbon tax will be delayed or not, with some market watchers not expecting the scheme to kick off until 2023.

Allowances in China’s carbon market inched up marginally over the past week, while news of a high-level government meeting on CCER reform sparked hopes that a relaunch of the national offset scheme might draw nearer, with some talking about potential links to Belt and Road initiative countries.

Cancelling poor nations’ historic debts would allow their governments to channel money into climate adaptation

It has proved too easy to stop people uniting around the crucial issues of our time. Those who demand better pay and conditions for workers and justice for poor people have been pitched by demagogues and corporate lobbyists against those who demand a habitable planet.

For years, we have struggled with the question of how to overcome this division and create a social and environmental justice platform that could unite vast numbers of the world’s people. Only one thing was clear: any such campaign had to be led by activists from poorer nations. Now, I believe, the breakthrough has arrived.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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‘Fortress’ game reserves displaced the Maasai but ignore the pastoralists’ role in maintaining wildlife and biodiversity

The recent violent evictions of Maasai in Loliondo, Tanzania, to make way for a luxury game reserve is the latest in a long list of examples of community owners of land suffering under a “fortress conservation” model adopted in the heyday of colonialism. And what for? So that others, be they wealthy tourists or royalty, can use swathes of land as their playgrounds.

Tanzanian authorities, and other African governments, shoulder the unenviable “duty” of seeing to it that the pursuit of such fun is not jeopardised or hindered by the desire of thousands, if not millions, of people to reclaim their rights to land and to survive on that land.

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Conservationists who re-established the raptors in the UK with birds from Spain are now returning the favour

When red kites were reintroduced in England more than 30 years ago, young birds were brought over from thriving populations in Spain. Now the carrion-feeding raptor is doing so well that English chicks – with distant Spanish ancestry – are being flown back to Spain to boost ailing numbers there.

Fed on culled grey squirrels and meticulously checked by vets, 15 chicks collected from nests in Northamptonshire are this week travelling to southern Spain where they will be held in special aviaries in the countryside until they are mature enough to be set free.

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After Russia’s rejected agreed catch limits, Britain unilaterally licensed boats to hunt toothfish near Antarctica – a move the US says breaches international rules

A diplomatic row has broken out between the UK and the US over efforts to conserve a deepwater species of fish near Antarctica, as Russia obstructs attempts to set catch limits.

Last year, amid tensions with the west over Ukraine, Russia rejected catch limits for Patagonia toothfish – also known as Chilean seabass – set by a 26-member fishing regulatory body, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

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Paying generators for available capacity could lock in higher emissions, deter new entrants and add substantially to already high household power bills.

The post Why using a capacity mechanism to prop up coal and gas generators is a really bad idea appeared first on RenewEconomy.

CS Energy to build 400MWh big battery near Brisbane as part of the state's "battery blitz" following the explosion at the Callide coal plant.

The post Biggest battery unveiled in Queensland as part of post Called battery blitz appeared first on RenewEconomy.

ASX-listed ReNu Energy says it has secured a site for a green hydrogen production facility, just outside of Hobart.

The post Site secured for Tasmanian green hydrogen facility, aiming to fuel hydrogen bus trial appeared first on RenewEconomy.

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

A warmer atmosphere can hold more water – and that makes floods harder to predict. To help, we improved one common tool used to predict floods. Sally Thompson, Associate professor, The University of Western Australia Anneliese Sytsma, Postdoctoral fellow, Colorado School of Mines Dana Ariel Lapides, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Simon Fraser University Mary H. Nichols, Research scientist, International Institute of Tropical Forestry Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.