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Fears many Australians will abandon home insurance as premiums jump 50% in high-risk areas
Median premiums across all areas rose 28% in the year to March, and actuaries warn climate disasters are driving them to unaffordable heights
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Home insurance premiums have climbed by 50% in high-risk parts of Australia as global heating increases the frequency and cost of climate disasters, a new report has found.
The Actuaries Institute’s research on home insurance affordability and funding for flood costs, released on Monday, found median home insurance premiums rose by 28% in the year to March, sitting at an average of $1,894 across all states.
Continue reading...As temperatures soar and wildfires burn abroad, summer dread is returning to my body
As the Australian summer approaches, my apprehension is both a daily shock and uncannily normalised – and I know I’m not the only one feeling it
These days, when I come back into the house after being out on the land, it’s dust that I drop, not the mud I carried in on my boots and clothes during the past three years when the rain kept everything, and everyone, sodden most of the time. The rain that also kept at bay the feeling of impending disaster that now attaches itself to the arrival of an Australian summer.
Not that La Niña was safe, as all of those whose homes and habitats were washed away know. But in the early months of 2023, as if the weather gods had snapped a finger, soaked turned to parched, and I find myself here again. Borne by news of soaring temperatures and wildfires in the northern hemisphere, the shift from a medium to a high likelihood of the arrival of El Niño to the official declaration of its onset, and the feeling of hardening earth under my feet, summer dread is returning to my body.
Continue reading...Carbon-capture gold rush an ‘insult’ to locals in emissions-hit Louisiana
US government plans to roll out carbon capture rather than phase out fossil fuels prompts outcry in heavily industrial state
Millions of dollars of investments in new carbon capture projects in Louisiana – with more announced this week, are unwelcome developments to some environmental activists in the state.
“We’ve been trying to fix the oil and gas damage, while at the same time trying to push the transition away from it,” said Monique Hardin, director of law for the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak ‘will rue his green group attacks come election time’
Academics – and polls – say majority of voters back action on climate change and will punish Tories for ‘weak tactic’
The prime minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to intensify attacks on green groups and exploit opposition to environmental protests could rebound badly for his party at the next general election, academics have warned.
They argue that public support for achieving net zero emissions by 2050 in the UK is now entrenched and unlikely to be overturned. This view is backed by opinion polls, which show that 71% of the British public support moves that will lead to curtailment of the country’s fossil fuel emissions.
Continue reading...Companies pay almost €800m for right to build offshore wind farms in German tender
Investors have agreed to pay €784 million $A1.32 billion) for the right to build wind farms in four locations in the North Sea in Germany’s latest offshore wind tender.
The post Companies pay almost €800m for right to build offshore wind farms in German tender appeared first on RenewEconomy.
‘An utter disgrace’: 90% of England’s most precious river habitats blighted by raw sewage and farming pollution
Observer investigation reveals the shocking state of the country’s protected freshwater sites of special scientific interest
More than 90% of freshwater habitats on England’s most precious rivers are in unfavourable condition, blighted by farming pollution, raw sewage and water abstraction, an Observer investigation reveals.
None of the approximately 40 rivers with protected habitats in England are in overall good health, according to an analysis of government inspection reports. These include the River Avon in Hampshire, the Wensum in Norfolk and the Eden in Cumbria.
Continue reading...Prospectors hit the gas in the hunt for ‘white hydrogen’
The zero-emission fuel may exist in abundant reserves below ground. Now large sums are being invested to look for it
For more than a decade, the village of Bourakébougou in western Mali has been powered by a clean energy phenomenon that may soon sweep the globe.
The story begins with a cigarette. In 1987, a failed attempt to drill for water released a stream of odourless gas that one unlucky smoker discovered to be highly flammable. The well was quickly plugged and forgotten. But almost 20 years later, drillers on the hunt for fossil fuels confirmed the accidental discovery: hundreds of feet below the arid earth of west Africa lies an abundance of naturally occurring, or “white”, hydrogen.
Continue reading...Sunak’s anti-green drive tells us this: we’re heading for the stupidest general election yet | Zoe Williams
Lacking policies or ideas, today’s Tories sow division and spread hopelessness in a bid to disrupt the unity of progressive voters
As Rishi Sunak transforms himself into the driver’s champion and rightwingers savage net zero targets as a fascist plot of the wokerati, get ready for the thing you thought impossible: a general election even stupider than the last. Essentially, it’s looking as if it will be a referendum on whether climate change exists. What better time for such a dumb question, than right when we can all see it?
It won’t always be expressed so simply. Sometimes it will be: “Who will stand up for the humble driver of diesel cars, already squeezed in so many directions, in ways that I, not even quite a billionaire, can totally understand?” Other times it will be: “What can we do about Just Stop Oil protesters, who pose an existential threat to society with their vile and undemocratic tactics?” Probably only at the Faragist fringes will people openly repudiate the goal of net zero, while the Conservative core picks more contestable battles on low-traffic neighbourhoods, oil and gas licences, heat pumps.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Global heating likely to hit world food supply before 1.5C, says UN expert
Water scarcity threatening agriculture faster than expected, warns Cop15 desertification president
The world is likely to face major disruption to food supplies well before temperatures rise by the 1.5C target, the president of the UN’s desertification conference has warned, as the impacts of the climate crisis combine with water scarcity and poor farming practices to threaten global agriculture.
Alain-Richard Donwahi, a former Ivory Coast defence minister who led last year’s UN Cop15 summit on desertification, said the effects of drought were taking hold more rapidly than expected.
Continue reading...When it comes to the climate crisis, no man is an island | Fiona Katauskas
Although some wish they were
Continue reading...CP Daily: Friday August 11, 2023
Brazil incorporates cap-and-trade in $346 bln plan to bolster economy
Emitters lift CCA, RGA net length as financial players take profits
Experts fear US carbon capture plan is ‘fig leaf’ to protect fossil fuel industry
Critics concerned energy department decision on fledgling technology will undermine efforts to phase out fossil fuels
The US energy department has announced it is awarding up to $1.2bn to two projects to directly remove carbon dioxide from the air, a fledgling technology that some climate experts worry will distract and undermine efforts to phase out fossil fuels.
The process, known as direct air capture, does not yet exist on a meaningful scale, and the move was being seen as the US government taking a big bet coming after July was confirmed as the hottest month ever recorded on its surface.
Continue reading...Why the Maui wildfires spread so devastatingly fast – video
Unprecedented wildfires burning on the Hawaiian island of Maui have killed at least 53 people, displaced thousands of residents and destroyed parts of a centuries-old town. The disaster is one of the deadliest US wildfires in recent years. The fast-moving fires, fanned by the winds of a distant hurricane, exploded overnight and moved so quickly that some residents jumped into the ocean to escape the flames and smoke. Crews are continuing to battle the blazes, which have burned through multiple neighbourhoods, including the historic town of Lahaina
Continue reading...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.
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