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Warmer weather brings multitudes of largest and noisiest varieties to east coast, with some as loud as 120 decibels

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The east coast of Australia is heading into a big, loud cicada summer.

Prof David Emery, veterinary immunologist and cicada expert, called it a “phenomenal season so far” for green grocer cicadas, which emerged in huge numbers in the Blue Mountains in September and were now making their appearance in Sydney and parts of Victoria.

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Much is unclear about how Donald Trump’s return to power will affect efforts to tackle global heating, but there are a few things we can say

You’ve likely already heard the worst-case takes: that a second Trump presidency is a disaster for the climate, and will almost certainly lead to emissions being higher than they otherwise would have been. There’s obvious truth in that. But it’s also true that Trump 2.0 will almost certainly not play out in line with immediate post-election predictions.

We have been here before. As the writer and analyst Ketan Joshi points out, in 2016 it was projected that Trump’s policies would lead to a steep rise in US emissions – a fork in the road at odds with the decline forecast if Hillary Clinton had won.

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Exclusive: Environmental group says it is ‘concerned’ to hear progress on cleaning up air pollution from diesel-burning may have hit a wall

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Work to regulate one of Australia’s biggest sources of carbon dioxide and other pollutants “has stalled”, despite the project beginning six years ago and comparable nations limiting emissions years earlier, New South Wales government documents have revealed.

State and federal environment ministers agreed in 2018 to examine pollution from non-road diesel engines as part of the national clean air agreement. These machines totalled more than 640,000 – ranging from mining trucks, outboard motors and forklifts to electricity generators – and were forecast to reach 945,000 by 2043.

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Standards body Cercarbono is working hard to be approved for Phase 1 of aviation offsetting scheme CORSIA and expects to receive first assessment by ICVCM for its Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) by year end, while it has also launched a circular economy programme with a first project in Bangladesh.

UN Regional Collaboration Centres (RCCs) channelling funds from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) have played a key role in developing notable Article 6 and carbon pricing initiatives in the Global South, with ongoing projects expected to yield further concrete outcomes in the near and medium term.

Approximately half of China's protected areas (PAs) overlap with priority sites for species preservation, indicating high potential for enhancing conservation efforts across the country, according to a new paper.

New and broader compliance nature markets are needed in the UK to meet the 2030 biodiversity target, as voluntary schemes and existing regulations are not sufficient to drive business investment, a London-based think tank has said.

European carbon prices started the week brightly, catching a boost from rising gas and power but failing to hold on the full extent of the increase even as the energy markets consolidated their gains.

How do you capture the effects of the climate crisis on people right now? We have collected testimonies from around the world

• This is climate breakdown: ‘I heard on the scanner there’s a child in the water’

In March 2024, the Guardian’s environment desk began collaborating on a project that we hope will give voice to the growing number of people around the world living through the daily impact of climate breakdown. Our journalists have worked alongside researchers and humanitarian workers at the Climate Disaster Project (CDP) in Canada and the International Red Cross to compile a series of testimonies from survivors of recent extreme weather events.

CDP is an international teaching newsroom coordinated out of the University of Victoria in Canada that collaborates with disaster survivors. The teams are trained in trauma-informed interview skills, and spent hours speaking with people, listening to their stories and then relaying them in a way that takes us all through the experience. In publishing these testimonies and sharing them with you, we were able to help fulfil the project’s aim of creating “a people’s history of climate change” that would honour the dignity of the survivors.

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Workers face being targets in what could be Environmental Protection Agency’s biggest upheaval since its founding

After several years of recovery after the tumult of Donald Trump’s last administration, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now bracing itself for even deeper cuts to staff numbers and to work protecting Americans from pollution and the climate crisis as Trump prepares to return to the White House.

When he was last president, Trump gutted more than 100 environmental rules and vowed to only leave a “little bit of the EPA” left “because you can’t destroy business”, prompting hundreds of agency staff to leave amid a firestorm of political interference and retaliation against civil servants. An even greater exodus is expected this time, with staff fearing they are frontline targets in what could be the biggest upheaval in the agency’s 50-year history.

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A proposed wind and solar green hydrogen hub in Western Australia will match the country's entire main grid in terms of capacity. Will it get environmental approvals?

The post Australian wind and solar project sized at remarkable 70 gigawatts – as big as the country’s main grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The state-owned oil company (SOCAR) of COP29 host Azerbaijan has made some $8 billion of deals with foreign firms in the year leading up to the talks, according to analysis published Monday.

Chinese legislators have passed the country's first energy law, giving additional legal clout to the development of renewable energy and hydrogen.

The EU does not have a single operational CO2 storage site, but the ambition of storing 50 million tonnes of CO2 a year from 2030, and while oil and gas operators are likely to be responsible for delivering the target, they have less than a year, until June 2025, to confirm how many tonnes they will store and where. 

Voluntary standards proposed at Cop16 focus on local like-for-like habitat projects, while critics call the issue a ‘distraction’

International biodiversity offsetting “doesn’t work”, according to experts aiming to create a nature market that avoids the pitfalls of carbon offsets.

The biodiversity sector has been circling the idea of a credits market that would allow companies to finance restoration and preservation of biodiversity, deliver “net-positive” gains for nature, and help plug the $700bn (£540bn) funding gap.

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Zen Energy lands a new equity investor that will provide capital for two Australian battery storage projects and give it a launchpad into the north Asia market.

The post Garnaut’s Zen plans to supercharge battery storage projects after landing new Taiwan investor appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Two investors on Monday announced they had put an additional $100 million into a Colombian project to earn carbon removal credits from restoring degraded land.

Finance at top of agenda as developing nations call for funding to build protection against extreme weather impacts

Greta Thunberg, the climate activist, has called a protest tonight in Tbilisi, Georgia, where she has been for some time.

It is the closest that the Swede is able to get to Baku, since Azerbaijan has closed its land borders, posing an insurmountable barrier to those who wish to attend the climate talks but do not wish to fly there, due to the carbon impact of aviation.

Join us as we rally against the wave of authoritarianism and exploitation sweeping through the Caucasus. Azerbaijan, using COP29 as a façade, is ramping up control under a false “green” agenda, tightening its grip on power, and escalating regional tensions.

For over 20 years, Azerbaijan’s regime led by Aliyev have kept people oppressed, fostering poverty, fear, and silence. This authoritarian trend isn’t isolated–across the region, people like Ivanishvili, Putin, Erdogan, theocratic regime in Iran are deepening control, stifling dissent, oppressing their own people and using war and ethnic cleansing against Armenians, Ukrainians, Kurds and other ethnic minorities to justify brutal policies. Those who speak out–journalists, activists, scholars–are often met with imprisonment and violence. Under this system, climate action is reduced to corporate profit schemes, leaving people’s needs ignored and communities devastated.

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It is Day 1 at COP29 as some 50,000 diplomats, observers, and other stakeholders descend on Baku, Azerbaijan. In our daily running blog, Carbon Pulse will report relevant or useful updates throughout the day. Timestamps are in local time (GMT+4).

UN’s top climate official warns ‘no country is immune’ from climate disaster as conference begins in Azerbaijan

Businesses in the private sector must stump up cash for the developing world to invest in a low-carbon economy or face the consequences of climate breakdown, the president of the UN climate summit has said.

Mukhtar Babayev, the environment minister of Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s climate conference, wrote in Monday’s Guardian: “The onus cannot fall entirely on government purses. Unleashing private finance for developing countries’ transition has long been an ambition of climate talks.

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