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Dry pattern seen among entire ‘lower basin’ of the Colorado River, including Arizona and desert cities such as Las Vegas

Dramatic rainstorms earlier this month brought more than 6in of rain to the California mountains – a full month’s worth of rain in little more than a day – but the deluge wasn’t enough to reverse a worsening drought trend that is set to intensify further in the coming weeks and months.

Along the iconic Pacific Coast highway in Malibu, where just weeks earlier flames leveled hundreds of oceanside homes, a Los Angeles firefighter was washed out to sea, and later rescued.

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President gives warning at conference dominated by row with government over planned inheritance tax changes

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Farmers are warning of a “cashflow crisis” that has left many in the agricultural sector wondering how they will make it to the end of the year.

At the annual meeting of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) of England and Wales, its president told members that “bad policy, geopolitics and unprecedented weather” had left some sectors of UK farming “in the worst cashflow crisis ever”.

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A carbon rating agency launched a service on Wednesday to give customers a broader ‘estimated’ score for the quality of credits issued to a project.

The global biomass energy industry is set to triple by 2030, posing unprecedented threats to intact tropical forests worldwide, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has called on the EU Commission to introduce a standard to accelerate the development of compliance and voluntary nature credit markets in Europe.

India’s approach of adopting unit-specific targets rather than sector-wide benchmarks in its domestic carbon market, a legacy of the Performance, Achieve, and Trade (PAT) scheme, aims to address its diverse industrial landscape to ensure fair and effective compliance.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports are increasingly being seen as a “potential negotiating or bargaining chip” to avoid trade tariffs with the US, with significant upside for the sector, said an industry expert.

European carbon prices weakened during a quiet morning's trading on Tuesday as natural gas also retreated, with traders focusing on geopolitical developments that could boost gas supplies to Europe.

Imminent new supply of carbon credits eligible for Phase 1 of CORSIA is poised to provide a long-awaited boost to the market, after some 8.7 million units were verified as ready for issuance under the ART TREES standard.

The COP16 UN biodiversity conference resumed on Tuesday in Rome after talks were abruptly halted in November, with negotiators facing increasing pressure to hammer out a deal on nature finance amid fears that long-standing political divisions may prove too challenging to bridge.

Carbon removal (CDR) buyers’ coalition Frontier this week launched the application process for its 2025 pre-purchase agreements.

Protesters who tried to disrupt completion of Mountain Valley pipeline to defend themselves in Virginia court

Climate activists who tried to disrupt the completion of a fossil-fuel pipeline through Appalachian forests will appear in court in Virginia on Tuesday to face serious criminal charges that they vehemently deny.

The Mountain Valley pipeline (MVP) was pushed through by the Biden administration in mid-2023 – overriding court orders, regulatory blocks and widespread opposition to the 300-mile (480km) fossil fuel project. Biden’s decision triggered a wave of non-violent protests and civil disobedience against the pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia as work crews rushed to finish construction of the pipeline through sensitive waterways and protected forests.

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A British biochar company has cancelled plans to build a carbon removal project close to London after nearly 100 objections from officials and the public, local media reported Saturday.

The government of Japan has approved several revisions to current regulations to legalise the country's planned emissions trading scheme, in a latest attempt to add legal clout to the carbon market.

The European Commission put forward new draft rules on Monday introducing a common method to compare the CO2 performance and fuel consumption of heavy-duty trucks placed on the EU market, including those running purely on electricity or hydrogen.

The best chance to see as many as possible will be after sunset on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Technology improvements have historically driven CO2 cuts across Europe’s chemical sector, but for the first time emissions are now going down because of factory closures, the industry has warned, calling for some urgent measures to be adopted under the EU’s upcoming Clean Industrial Deal initiative.

The expected market size for India’s upcoming voluntary carbon offset mechanism will be at similar levels to that of the compliance market, an official told a conference in New Delhi this week.

One of China's pilot emissions markets will add more participants in the future, as the regional government is set to lower the mandatory threshold for emitters.  

Environment secretary will hope move can reset relations with farmers after inheritance tax row

The environment secretary, Steve Reed, is to announce a five-year extension of the seasonal farm worker scheme in an attempt to reset relations with farmers after fury over inheritance tax.

Making his pitch to farmers at the National Farmers’ Union conference in central London on Tuesday, Reed will also announce the opening of a new national biosecurity centre to tackle diseases including foot-and-mouth and bluetongue.

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