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Elon Musk, one of the brightest minds of his generation, is saying it, so it must be true

Women, eh? They’re simply not to be trusted. Eve ate that apple; Pandora opened that horrible little box; and now women are to blame for the devastating wildfires in California. I know that sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, but it’s what Elon Musk, one of the brightest minds of his generation – and one of the most powerful people on Earth – is saying, so it must be true.

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We fell in love with the power and speed that fossil fuels brought us. But the price being paid in California, and around the world, has become too high

Zero per cent contained. In layperson’s terms, that means “out of control and burning at will”. It’s a common designation for a wildfire – in the wild. But when a fire like this enters an urban area such as Los Angeles County, the most highly populated metropolitan area in the US, it becomes an exploding bomb, and this one has been detonating since last Tuesday.

By now, the energy release from this wind-driven, drought-fuelled firestorm turned urban conflagration is into the megatons, and the nuclear-scale destruction is there for all to see: block after block and neighbourhood after neighbourhood levelled – roughly 12,000 structures destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, 55 sq miles of city and mountain burnt, nearly 200,000 residents evacuated – so far. There is more to come.

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Common Wealth thinktank warns that communities and taxpayer may have to pick up pieces when production ends

North Sea oil and gas must be brought under greater public control to avoid a cliff-edge collapse of the industry and secure a sustainable future for workers and communities, according to a report.

Under the current private ownership model the inevitable end of North Sea oil and gas production – whether through government action or the lack of viable oilfields – will lead to private companies abruptly abandoning the basin, leaving frontline communities and the state to deal with the social and economic consequences, the authors predict.

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Every barrel of oil, every cubic meter of gas, and every ton of coal burned brings us closer to environmental catastrophe

Apocalyptic flames and smoke are raging through southern California in the worst fire in Los Angeles county’s history. At least seven people have died. Thousands of structures have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes. The private forecaster AccuWeather estimates initial damage and economic loss at more than $50bn and has the potential to be the costliest wildfire disaster in American history. The impacts of the disruption and loss faced by community members is incalculable.

While some media outlets are discussing the link between the LA fires and climate crisis, the president-elect Donald Trump and rightwing media are using this devastating event to foster misinformation including denying the role of climate crisis.

Tzeporah Berman is a Canadian environmental activist, campaigner and writer

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The US Department of Treasury and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on Friday released highly anticipated guidance on the 45Z Clean Fuels Production Credit (CFPC), but industry members remained disappointed over its lack of detail.

Replacing traditional building materials with carbon-storing alternatives could sequester more than 16 billion tonnes of CO2 annually, potentially offsetting half of global emissions, a new study reveals.

Coal plants are expected to retire at a quicker rate by 2040 than the EPA anticipates based on the impacts of the federal agency’s power plant GHG emissions rules, according to new modelling by non-profits published on Thursday.

The US DOE announced on Friday the launch of three projects totalling $18.6 million in funding under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that will align best practices to reduce emissions in hard-to-abate industrial sectors.

An Alberta-based carbon capture and storage (CCS) project faces rising costs and weak revenue potential, jeopardising the viability of bringing the oilsands CO2 storage hub to fruition, a think-tank published Thursday.

Electricity rates in California are among the highest in the US, in part driven by the state’s climate-related initiatives coupled with wildfire-related costs and varying utility structures, according to the state’s nonpartisan agency.

The Secretariat of the ART TREES standard on Friday announced it had added Bhutan’s jurisdictional REDD+ concept note to the ART Registry, wherein the Himalayan country has also committed to following protocols to issue Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) under the Paris Agreement.

The US DOE is doling out more than $130 million to dozens of projects to reduce emissions, energy demand, and advance decarbonisation technology in its core industrial base, keeping up with global markets.

Preliminary US data for 2024 is expected to show declines in the country’s oil, gas, and industrial sector emissions, while total emissions dipped slightly, according to a report published Thursday.

A forestry-focused endowment issued a request for proposals Tuesday to distribute $6.5 million in funds to projects that improve the resilience of US working forests and forest-based communities.

Noaa says last year was the warmest since records began in 1850 and Nasa concurs: ‘The long-term trends are very clear’

It was the hottest year ever recorded for the world’s lands and oceans in 2024, US government scientists have confirmed, providing yet another measure of how the climate crisis is pushing humanity into temperatures we have previously never experienced.

Last year was the hottest in global temperature records stretching back to 1850, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa announced, with the worldwide average 1.46C (2.6F) warmer than the era prior to humans burning huge volumes of planet-heating fossil fuels.

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Events in California reveal how political obstruction is deepening a climate crisis that needs urgent action to prevent it becoming an irreversible disaster

The wildfires ravaging Los Angeles have killed at least 10 people, displaced 180,000 and scorched about 40 square miles – an inferno driven by fierce winds and severe drought in what should be California’s wet season. It is a sobering reminder that the climate crisis is driving wildfires to become more frequent, intense and destructive – leaving ruined lives, homes and livelihoods in their wake. The US president Joe Biden responded by mobilising federal aid. By contrast the president-elect, Donald Trump, a convicted felon who was criminally sentenced on Friday, used the disaster to spread disinformation and stoke political division.

The climate crisis knows no national borders. Deadly floods in Spain, Hawaii’s fires and east Africa’s devastating drought show nowhere is safe from its effects. Countries must work toward the global common interest and beyond their narrow national interests. The scale of the climate emergency is such that there is a case to view all crises through a green lens. Instead Mr Trump’s denialism works to foment distrust about the science. He’s not just aiming to delay the onset of truth. He wants to demolish it. It’s a familiar playbook: the fossil fuel industry knows the reality of the climate emergency but chooses profit over responsibility, effectively deceiving the public while the planet burns.

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New Zealand garden takes first prize in global competition designed to promote water conservation

A sun-scorched patch of lawn near Christchurch, in New Zealand, has been crowned the ugliest lawn in the world.

Now in its second year, the World’s Ugliest Lawn competition rewards lawn owners for not watering their parched yellow grass and patchy flowerbeds.

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The first auction of Suriname forestry conservation credits under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement has been delayed until a post-COP29 review has been completed, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN) told Carbon Pulse.

Environmentalists condemn unauthorised releases as ‘reckless’ and ‘highly irresponsible’

For a brief moment this week, lynx have been roaming the Scottish Highlands once again. But this was not the way conservationists had hoped to end their 1,000-year absence.

On Wednesday, Police Scotland received reports of two lynx in a forest in the Cairngorms national park, sparking a frantic search. That episode ended in less than a day. Both animals were quickly captured by experts from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and taken to quarantine facilities at Highland wildlife park.

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Only 23 out of 180 firms from highly impacting sectors have so far reported sufficiently detailed and transparent commitments on nature to allow third-party verification of whether their targets have been met, a pre-print study released Friday found.