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Exclusive: Bosses who signed letter eight years ago now highly critical of PM’s plans to roll back net zero policies

Business leaders who warned against Ed Miliband in 2015 have now turned on Rishi Sunak, criticising the prime minister’s plans to roll back net zero policies.

Some of Britain’s top entrepreneurs have told the Guardian that the plans have caused uncertainty for business, reduced the country’s international standing and punished investors who made early decisions on net zero based on the original timeline.

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Behold the slug and you behold a teenager, in all of her magic and power

Slugs have not inspired much poetry – though this line from Brian Swann is nice: “Turn them over, they’re the soles of new shoes, / pale and unmarked as babies.”

Virginia Woolf insulted her enemies, herself and the perfectly nice city of Brighton with slug name calling. In an essay called Spiralling around Snails and Slugs in Virginia Woolf Miscellany, Elisa Kay Sparks lists these insults. “Poor creature! He knows he’s but a slug”; a “white and voluble slug”; “Brighton a love corner for slugs”. When she is lonely, Woolf writes, “I relish the commonest animated slug”; when she is sick: “I turned over like a slug and slept the month of February out”.

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Even if the 2050 goal is still met, postponing action – as the UK has done – will cause more heat and damage

Postponing action and taking a slower route to net zero emissions by 2050 will worsen the climate crisis even if the goal is still reached by that date, the new chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned.

Prof Jim Skea also said that approving new oil and gas fields only increased the already large amount of reserves that will have to be kept in the ground if global heating limits are to be reached.

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Global companies need clearer guidance on what 'beyond value chain mitigation' is and which claims they can make make based on their actions, according to a consultation process carried out by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

European carbon fell on Monday morning, dropping to an eight-day low as demand appeared to be retreating amid growing expectations that fossil burn will remain weak even at the start of the winter demand season, while energy prices also retreated as North Sea gas supply improved.

Wetland conservation has the highest potential impact for mitigating climate change when compared with alternative ocean-based solutions, according to researchers at a British university, with the report proposing cost-per-tonne levels across different activities to ensure the protection of such ecosystems.

An alliance of more than 20 organisations and companies has urged the Australian government to design a national restoration plan with targets and funding mechanisms to turn the tide as the nation’s ecosystem degradation and decline continue at scale.

Companies in England and Wales want to charge up to £84 a year more in 2025, rising to £156 extra by 2030.

The UAE has offered to host the UN climate summit for a second consecutive year with Russia blocking Armenia and Azerbaijan's proposals for the 2024 event, according to media reports, as the Middle Eastern nation's state oil company doubles its carbon capture goal, and major oil and gas firms are said to have agreed at a summit in Abu Dhabi to rally around a 2050 net zero target.

The new space observatory sees pairs of Jupiter-sized objects floating free between the stars.

Financial institutions should use more diversified approaches and metrics to ensure an adequate evaluation of transition finance for the hard-to-abate sectors, an expert group of major Japanese banks has argued.

You might think that nature, being free, is available to all – but there are huge racial disparities in access to the outdoors

• Haroon Mota is a mountaineer and the founder of Muslim Hikers

The British countryside is often perceived as universally accessible, a tranquil escape open for all to enjoy. But is this truly the case? From my experience as a member of and advocate for minority communities in the UK, it has become increasingly evident that time in the natural world is far less accessible to some of us than we would hope.

I’ve been adventuring in the outdoors for nearly 20 years now, and from the very beginning I noticed that I wouldn’t bump into people like myself in rural spaces, despite my city being very diverse.

Haroon Mota is a mountaineer and the founder of Muslim Hikers and Active Inclusion Network

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The renewable energy subsidiary of Indonesian state oil company Pertamina over the weekend struck a "green economy" agreement with a provincial government that includes plans to identify and develop nature-based solutions (NBS) to generate carbon credits.

The government of Japan has established three working groups to promote its nationwide decarbonisation initiative, including a task force to discuss the eligibility of carbon credits, laying the foundation for the world's fifth-largest CO2 emitter to improve an emerging domestic carbon market.

Plibersek approves 600MW solar farm in central Queensland, and uses media release to criticise the Greens for rejecting the CPRS in 2009.

The post Plibersek approves new 600MW solar farm in central Queensland appeared first on RenewEconomy.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) has defended its move to introduce annual fees per hectare of forest and a range of service charges in the ETS, arguing the funds accrued will be essential to maintain the integrity of the scheme.

Rooftop solar smashed more records over the "grand final" long weekend, sending coal output and network demand to new lows as the grid continues to be reshaped.

The post Rooftop solar smashes more records, sending coal output and grid demand to new lows appeared first on RenewEconomy.

For all of the doom-saying, Australia is putting the building blocks in place to get to net zero faster.

The post The road is long and time is short, but Australia’s pace towards net zero is quickening appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) lacks the expertise to create standards for the voluntary carbon market (VCM), a member of the industry’s private sector governance body argued, while some experts were not convinced the Council’s upcoming Core Carbon Principles (CCP) labelled credits will be the silver bullet the sector anticipated.

Vietnam has taken further steps towards a more comprehensive voluntary carbon market as tech and real estate firm CT Group launched the ASEAN Carbon Credit Exchange Joint Stock Company (CCTPA) in southern business hub Ho Chi Minh City.