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The grim negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, have shown the need for reform of the UN annual global climate talks

‘Global emissions continue to increase, carbon sinks are being degraded and we can no longer exclude the possibility of surpassing 2.9C of warming by 2100.” It is a bleak assessment of our planet’s future and could have been made by just about any environmental organisation on Earth.

In fact, they are the views of an international group of climate experts that highlight, in sharp detail, the manifest failings of the UN’s annual Cop climate summits, whose 29th iteration is now being staged in Baku, Azerbaijan. These talks, they said last week, are no longer fit for purpose and need an urgent overhaul.

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New data reveals an extra 5,000 tonnes of waste is sent to landfill or incineration from November to March

Plastic bottles are reviled for polluting the oceans, leaching chemicals into drinks and being a source of microplastics in the human body.

They even cause problems with recycling. When plastic bottles are mixed with cardboard in recycling bins, in the wet winter months the sodden cardboard wraps around the plastic bottles and trays, causing havoc at recycling plants.

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Piles of loo paper, a years worth of tinned good and snake-proof boots. No wonder prepping has become a lifestyle choice

Prepping – I’m coming round to it. I’ve had Prepare, the old government website that Oliver Dowden launched this spring, open on my laptop in a quivering tab for a while now, and this week I’ve been dipping in every now and then to remind myself of “how to prepare for an emergency”. How many bottles of water we may need, tweezers, a sage reminder about the fact of tinned meat.

I’ve dabbled in prepping before, without really realising what I was doing. A fear in the early 2000s that Rimmel might stop making my favourite eyeliner led to me dashing to Boots to buy five. Which is fairly normal, I think? On the spectrum of normal? Sensible probably, when so many, as you’ll know, have brushes too fine or ink that disappears in rain. In the grip of lockdown, as supermarket deliveries were increasingly scarce, when I was blessed with a Tesco slot I would focus not on toilet paper or flour, but on treats. I’d stockpile the good biscuits, and, in my naivety, Biscoff spread. I remember there were very large gift bars of Galaxy chocolate on offer for a while, bars the size of a small dinghy which I would buy in bulk, nibbling away at the corners like a parasite. That was when we started decanting our pulses. Still, beside the microwave sits a proud wall of oversized Tupperware, carefully labelled in my six-year-old daughter’s handwriting: “spageti”, “green lenttles”, “ryce”. It felt good. I felt prepared, but for what, was unclear.

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Prices and rents will fall under Rachel Reeves’ plans, enabling a younger generation with new ideas to enter the field

One of the baleful dimensions of our times is the way that the conversation about what constitutes the good society is framed by the rich and their interests. A conception of the common good withers; instead it is replaced by the existential importance of private wealth, private interests and private ownership to societal health. Nowhere is this more exposed than in the debate over taxation, and in particular the taxation of inherited wealth – as the debate over the past fortnight has dramatised.

Half a million people die every year. Under the reforms to inheritance tax relief on agricultural land proposed in the budget, about 500 individuals who inherit land worth more than £2m (£3m if they were married to the deceased) will join the rest of society and have inheritance tax levied on their bequest – albeit at half the rate, with an enlarged exemption and 10 years to pay it, concessions not made to the rest of us. How fortunate and privileged are they?

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Conservationist Jane Goodall on the urgent need to turn the tide on climate change and nature loss. 

Donald Trump selects oil and gas CEO, a loud fracking advocate and climate denier, to head the US energy department, to the delight of the fossil fuel industry.

The post Fracking hell: Donald Trump selects oil and gas CEO and climate denier to be energy secretary appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Conservation group warns species threatened by exploding populations of grey squirrels who carry lethal virus

Red squirrels will soon disappear from England unless the government funds a vaccine against squirrelpox, one of the biggest groups set up to protect the species has warned.

Conservationists say the English population of non-native grey squirrels has exploded this year, triggered by warmer winters which enable mating pairs to feed and breed all year round, and estimate that 70% are carrying squirrelpox, a virus which is lethal only to red squirrels.

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On the eve of a G20 meeting in Rio do Janeiro on next week, business groups and a Brazilian national official called for developing countries to submit ambitious national climate plans to elicit greater investment, while observers said the summit in Brazil could ease parallel finance negotiations at the UN climate summit in Baku. 

Republican members of Congress arrived at COP29 in Baku Saturday to pitch US natural gas and nuclear energy as decarbonisation solutions for the world, arguing that exports can help increase energy security and decrease costs.

With deforestation compromising Brazil’s hydropower generation capacity, REDD+ projects are one way to address the threats to electricity supply, according to a study presented at COP29.

The federal government of Pakistan unveiled its international carbon market regulations at COP29 in Baku on Saturday following two years of work, including fee structures for international credit transactions, and is expected to launch a national carbon registry by Q1 2025.

The COP29 climate finance text was still a mess midway through the summit, as several delegations described difficulty in engaging with key elements of the current draft, and observers suggesting they do not expect a strong outcome in Baku for the headline objective of the summit.

Sustainable sources of carbon will be necessary in a net-zero economy – chiefly in petrochemicals and steelmaking – paving the way for green sources of CO2 derived from biomass to scale up negative emissions after 2050, the Dutch vice-minister for climate said at the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Water company claims information is not in the public interest despite widespread pollution of UK waters

• ‘It’s a national disgrace’: fury at sewage-filled Windermere over toxic algae and dead fish

One of the UK’s biggest water companies is fighting a legal battle to block public access to data on treated sewage it is discharging into Windermere in the Lake District.

United Utilities initially claimed that data from phosphorus monitors at sewage treatment works at the lake “was not environmental information”. It later claimed the information on phosphorus – which can pollute watercourses when at high levels – was “internal communication” and exempt from disclosure.

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A group of Brazil-based nature-based solutions (NBS) project developers and the nation’s export agency signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Friday to promote the sale of carbon credits abroad.

The SBSTA UN advisory body has laid out final exit protocols for the Kyoto-era Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), predecessor to the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM), at COP29 in a draft text.

While the election of US President Donald Trump is expected to generally stifle US momentum on climate action, there may exist avenues for increased voluntary carbon market (VCM) enthusiasm under his leadership, market participants told Carbon Pulse on the sidelines of COP29.

Captive coal-fired power plants (CFPPs), a large and growing source of emissions in Indonesia, will be covered under the country’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) from next year, according to the head of its Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) secretariat.

Prime minister hails ‘path of change’ in Wales and Westminster at Welsh Labour conference in Llandudno

Keir Starmer said he would defend the budget “all day long” at the Welsh Labour conference, amid protests by farmers outside the venue.

In his first address to the Welsh Labour conference since taking power, the prime minister went on to hail a “path of change” with Labour governments in Wales and Westminster.

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Climate negotiators are struggling to agree on how to move forward with last year’s milestone commitment to transition away from fossil fuels, with emerging economies pushing to keep any reference out of this year’s COP29 agreement.