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The REDD+ market needs root and branch reform and a non-market funding mechanism, warns a green activist group that finds there is very little evidence the sector in its current guise has caused meaningful reductions in deforestation and degradation, abated global emissions, or contributed to the development of forest peoples.

Officials are baffled by the remarkable behaviour of a large pod of pilot whales that grouped together in a heart shape before stranding themselves on a remote Western Australian beach on Tuesday evening.

By Wednesday morning, more than 50 whales lay dead on the shore, with volunteers, government workers and scientists fighting to save 46 more

• ‘We have never seen this’: scientists baffled by behaviour of pilot whales before WA mass stranding

• ‘What is the sea telling us?’: Māori tribes fearful over whale strandings

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British professor elected chair of UN’s expert panel, which warned in March that 1.5C threshold could be hit in 10 years

The British professor Jim Skea has been elected to head the UN’s climate expert panel, taking the helm of the organisation charged with distilling the best science to guide global policy in a crucial decade in human history.

Skea, who is a professor of sustainable energy at Imperial College London and who co-chaired the report on solutions in the panel’s latest round of publications, said in a statement he was “humbled” to have been elected chair at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Nairobi, Kenya.

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EU steel association Eurofer has lowered its 2023 consumption forecast for the 27-nation bloc, citing high energy prices, war-related disruptions, and sluggish demand prospects as resulting in a deeper-than-expected 3% recession for the ETS-covered sector, relative to 2022 levels.

The Australian’s latest adventure – two years traversing oceans and ice caps – aims to promote ‘carbon neutral exploring’

Geoff Wilson has spent much of his adult life exploring the planet. He has completed the only wind-assisted crossing of the Sahara and the fastest unsupported crossing of Greenland, south to north. He has stood atop Tanzania’s Mt Kilimanjaro with his father and spent a year sailing the world with his wife and three children. He holds the record for the longest solo unsupported polar journey in human history.

Wilson is the definition of a modern-day adventurer – a recipient of the Australian Geographic Society’s highest honour, the “lifetime of adventure” award. Having devoted decades to redefining what human beings are capable of, he is next seeking to prove that adventure doesn’t have to come at the expense of the planet.

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A new paper says its collapse could be imminent, but other scientists have serious reservations.

Applications for new connection agreements continue to jump sharply, but registrations and commissioning continues to drag.

The post Another 4GW of wind and solar sought grid connections in last quarter appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The growing uptake of rooftop solar PV – driven in part by the huge jump in wholesale electricity prices and retail bills in the past year – has taken the biggest bite yet out of the fossil fuel industry’s energy lunch. In an ironic twist to the cartel-like behaviour of the fossil fuel industry in […]

The post Rooftop solar takes biggest bite yet out of fossil fuel industry’s energy lunch appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Hungary could raise hundreds of millions of euros from its recently adopted carbon tax and free allowance transaction fee policy on operators that receive high volumes of EU carbon permit handouts, analysts told Carbon Pulse, though they do not believe it likely that other nations in the bloc will introduce similar regulation given the expected competitive disadvantage and costs for affected firms in the country.

European carbon prices rose to their highest in five weeks before giving up most of the gains as position data showed investment funds had boosted their net long position to the most in more than three months, while natural gas prices continued to gyrate, gaining as much as 5.2% before falling back.

South Korea has set a temporary price floor for the domestic emission trading scheme (ETS) to stabilise the market, as allowance prices have crashed to unprecedented new lows.

Drone footage showed the scale of devastation in Algeria's northern Bouria region after deadly wildfires spread through mountain ranges on Tuesday, killing at least 34 people. About 8,000 firefighters battled blazes in 15 provinces, leading to the evacuation of more than 1,500 people. The Algerian online news site TSA quoted the National Meteorological Office as saying that temperatures had soared to about 50C (122F) in some areas

• ‘Like a blowtorch’: Mediterranean gripped by wildfires as blazes spread in Croatia, Portugal

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It often seems that people are searching harder for evidence we’re defeated than that we can win

Stanford engineering professor and renewable energy expert Mark Z Jacobson tweeted the other day, “Given that scientists who study 100% renewable energy systems are unanimous that it can be done why do we hear daily on twitter and everywhere else by those who don’t study such systems that it can’t be done?” A significant percentage of the general public speaks of climate change with a strange combination of confidence and defeatism: confidence in positions often based on inaccurate or outdated or maybe no information; defeatism about what we can do to make a livable future. Maybe they just get their facts from other doom evangelists, who flourish on the internet, no matter how much reputable scientists demonstrate their errors.

They’re surrendering in advance and inspiring others to do the same. If you announce that the outcome has already been decided and we’ve already lost, you strip away the motivation to participate – and of course if we do nothing we settle for the worst outcome. It often seems that people are searching harder for evidence we’re defeated than that we can win. Warnings are a valuable thing, given with the sense that there’s something we can do to prevent the anticipated outcome; prophesies assume the future is settled and there’s nothing we can do. But the defeatists often describe a present they assert are locking in the worst outcomes.

Rebecca Solnit’s most recent books are Orwell’s Roses and the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, co-edited with Thelma Young Lutunatabua

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Australian think-tank Climateworks Centre on Wednesday released the Natural Capital Measurement Catalogue (NCMC) as a consistent reference source for companies to measure, manage, and report on their natural capital assets.

A Tokyo-based climate startup has launched a carbon exchange to vitalise the creation and distribution of carbon credits, with plans to set up offices in Southeast Asia and South America, it announced Wednesday.

International rules regulating wildlife trade overlook some 40% of plants and animals at risk from such trade because there is no established methodology to identify them, a study has found.

Australian supplies and knowledge of its native seeds are inadequate for the scale and demand necessary for the government’s proposed voluntary biodiversity credit market, according to experts. 

Environment minister says way pod crowded tightly together 150 metres offshore before becoming beached is ‘unique and pretty incredible’

• Race to save almost 50 pilot whales stranded in WA after dozens die
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Officials are baffled by the remarkable behaviour of a large pod of pilot whales that grouped together in a heart shape before stranding themselves on a remote Western Australian beach.

Drone footage captured the moment a pod of almost 100 long-finned pilot whales moved tightly together before stranding themselves at Cheynes beach about 60km east of Albany on Tuesday evening.

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Our world is grappling with technological advances, shifts in geopolitical and economic power, globalisation backlash and climate change

Today we face four megatrends that are driving rapid and disruptive changes, and which will greatly affect our nation, the region and the world.
These pre-date Covid and are likely to continue well after the pandemic. They are technological advances, shifts in geopolitical and economic power, backlash against globalisation and climate change.

The first, the technology revolution – or what is also called the fourth Industrial Revolution – has already had a profound effect on our lives, our work, and how we connect with each other.

Yet experts predict the most disruptive technologies are yet to come, including quantum computing, genetic engineering and more.

To determine just how much this is driving the next wave of change, I went directly to the source and asked Chat GPT about the implications of AI.

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Jon Jutsen on the challenges facing householders going all-electric, and what's needed to scale up.

The post SwitchedOn Australia Podcast: Difficult, confusing, annoying, expensive appeared first on RenewEconomy.