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Hawaii: footage emerges of houses in Lahaina being burned to the ground – video
At least 55 people have died after wildfires engulfed the historic town of Lahaina on Maui island, Hawaii. Experts say rising global temperatures and drought have fanned the flames in one of the deadliest fires in modern US history. The devastation was exacerbated by strong winds from a nearby cyclone. Wildfires in Hawaii are burning through four times the area of previous decades, studies show
Continue reading...Shell, KNOC join Korea-Malaysia CCS supply chain venture
Of course Greta Thunberg is right to call out greenwashing, but the reality can be messy | Charlotte Higgins
Her withdrawal from the Edinburgh book festival was a blow to the event, and raises questions about how best to demand change
The Edinburgh international book festival opens on Saturday. I will be there, but it will go ahead without its headline event, one that would have seen 3,000 climate activists and readers gather to hear Greta Thunberg speak. The environmental campaigner cancelled just over a week before she was due to appear, after a piece in the Scottish online investigative journal the Ferret pointed out that the festival’s main sponsor, fund manager Baillie Gifford, invests in companies connected with fossil fuels. “Greenwashing efforts by the fossil fuel industry, including sponsorship of cultural events, allow them to keep the social licence to continue operating,” she said in a statement.
It points to a wider narrative: the story of many cultural organisations across the UK over the past decade has been an increasing reliance on sponsorship and donors – especially in England, where private funding has been touted by Tory ministers as the answer to the ideologically motivated austerity cuts of 2010 onwards, a situation that has become more acute since the depredations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The result, though, has been problem piled upon ethical problem. Some organisations have found themselves rapidly untangling themselves from Russian money. (Tate, for example, severed ties last March with sanctioned Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, removing the former donor from an honorary position after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.)
Continue reading...UK renewable energy investment lagging behind rest of world, data shows
Figures reveal capacity has fallen to an average rise of 4.45% in past three years, compared with 9.67% globally
The UK’s investment in renewable energy has lagged significantly behind the rest of the world in recent years, according to an analysis of global data.
The latest government figures reveal the UK’s renewable capacity has fallen to an average increase of 4.45% in the past three years, compared with an average 9.67% annual increase globally.
Continue reading...UPDATE – US government announces largest-ever investment in engineered carbon removal
Euro Markets: Midday Update
TNFD study calls for global nature-related public data facility
CN Markets: CEA price climbs to fresh all-time high, liquidity increases after emissions verification deadline
Britain’s surging deer population is causing an ecological disaster. I have a solution: wolves | George Monbiot
Humans have failed to keep numbers down. Reintroduce these predators, and let them get on with the job
What’s missing from this picture? I mean the picture of rural Britain many of us hold in our heads, whether it be a thatched and mullioned idyll, or the bare hills fetishised by naive nature writers? Well, quite a lot. Trees in the uplands; soft boundaries between habitats (ecotones) that are crucial for thriving food webs; dead wood, of which there’s a dearth in this country; scrub (a vital but derided habitat); undrained wetlands; and wild, healthy rivers. But there’s something else, something whose absence is less visible but just as important. Wolves.
Not just wolves, but any large or middling terrestrial predators. We talk here of wolves and lynx as “top” predators. But our native top predators, until modern humans finished them off, were lions, hyenas, bears and scimitar cats. Wolves and lynx would better be described as mesopredators. The wolf that didn’t howl helps solve the mystery of how this country, for all its love of nature, remains one of the most ecologically barren places on Earth.
Continue reading...Ravaged orange crop in Florida raises fears of surge in US juice prices
Extreme weather fuelled by climate crisis and bacterial disease have led to ‘dramatic decline’ in orange crops
Orange juice prices are expected to rise further in the US after a bacterial disease and extreme weather intensified by global heating ravaged this season’s crop of the citrus fruit.
Last year Florida, which produces more than 90% of the US’s orange juice supply, was hit by Hurricane Ian, Hurricane Nicole and freezing conditions in quick succession, devastating orange producers in the Sunshine State.
Continue reading...ANALYSIS: China’s long-suspended voluntary market moves one step closer to relaunch, confidence returns
Weather tracker: floods, storms and wildfires in Europe
North of continent records unusually wet and windy summer conditions while Portugal and Spain battle flames
Floods struck northern and central Europe last week. Some areas of Slovenia recorded more than 200mm of rain in 12 hours on Thursday and Friday, causing extensive flooding across two-thirds of the country. Many buildings and roads were damaged, at an estimated cost of €500m (£432m), and six deaths were reported.
Storm Hans hit the Baltic region a few days later. Hans originated as an area of low pressure over eastern Europe, but quickly deepened as it travelled northwards towards the Baltic Sea. The low was unusually deep for a summer storm, and led to daily rainfall totals of 80 to 100mm in parts of southern Norway and Sweden earlier this week.
Continue reading...NZ business, climate groups call for urgent clarity on ETS reform proposals, outcomes
Scientists unearth two new types of mole in eastern Turkey
DNA technology confirmed Talpa hakkariensis and Talpa davidiana tatvanensis as distinct from other moles
Scientists have identified two types of mole that they believe have been living undiscovered in Turkey.
DNA technology confirmed the creatures were biologically distinct from other moles. Both inhabit mountainous regions in eastern Turkey and can survive in temperatures of up to 50C (122F) in summer and under 2 metres (about 6ft) of snow in winter.
Continue reading...Advisor International Carbon Policy & Markets, Carbon Growth Group – Sydney/Melbourne/Hong Kong
How to protest climate change nicely, with Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin | First Dog on the Moon
We need a croc in every pool. An orca in every marina!
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The week in wildlife – in pictures
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including a waving seal pup, a hi-tech turtle and an overheated barn owl
Continue reading...‘Huge’ coral bleaching unfolding across the Americas prompts fears of global tragedy
Scientists stunned by unprecedented heat-stress event say they can only hope it ‘motivates and unites people’
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Corals across several countries are bleaching and dying en masse from unprecedented levels of heat stress, prompting fears that an unfolding tragedy in Central America, North America and the Caribbean could become a global event.
US government scientists have confirmed reefs in Panama, Colombia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Mexico and six countries in the Caribbean, including the Bahamas and Cuba, are suffering significant bleaching, alongside corals in Florida that began turning white almost a month ago.
Continue reading...Underwater vision shows 'unprecedented' mass coral bleaching event in the Americas – video
A mass coral bleaching event has hit reefs in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. Scientists in the region have told Guardian Australia's environment reporter Graham Readfearn they have never seen anything like it before. The tragedy is unfolding early in the season and in areas not usually affected by coral bleaching, sparking fears it could become a global event
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Continue reading...It’s time for a new climate populism, to show how the super rich got us – and the planet – into this mess | Andy Beckett
From air-purified penthouses and private jets, a wealthy anti-green lobby feigns common cause with ‘ordinary people’. Let’s expose that
In Britain and far beyond, anti-environmentalists have a new favourite argument. No longer able to claim the climate crisis isn’t happening, they have switched from denial to class warfare. They argue that green policies and innovations from electric cars to heat pumps, low emission zones to eco-taxes and levies, are all unaffordable for working-class and many middle-class people, yet are being imposed regardless by an out-of-touch elite of politicians, bureaucrats and wealthy “woke capitalists”.
Most of the people making these arguments in the rightwing media were never previously much troubled by the financial struggles of what they now piously call “ordinary people”. But shamelessly shifting position is a familiar activity for the modern right. Meanwhile the cost of living crisis has given its anti-green message more force.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
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