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The programme of the UN Ocean Conference is missing three crucial points on industrial fishing, fossil fuels, and protected areas, a group of NGOs has said.

A study on corporate reporting in the Asia-Pacific region has found that only a quarter of surveyed companies believe biodiversity issues impact their business, with South Korea, Vietnam, and China among the countries with the biggest gaps in nature-related disclosures.

Global heating means atmosphere can drive both extreme droughts and floods with rapid switches

Climate “whiplash” between extremely wet and dry conditions, which spurred catastrophic fires in Los Angeles, is increasing exponentially around the world because of global heating, analysis has found.

Climate whiplash is a rapid swing between very wet or dry conditions and can cause far more harm to people than individual extreme events alone. In recent years, whiplash events have been linked to disastrous floods in east Africa, Pakistan and Australia and to worsening heatwaves in Europe and China.

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Prices for Californian credit allowances (CCAs) and EU ETS allowances will rally 19-20% this year, despite surpluses in the former and balanced fundamentals in the latter, a bank predicted on Wednesday.

An ecological consultancy has endorsed the English government’s proposals for centralising its nutrient credits scheme, while highlighting potential risks with its approach regarding the impact on species.

Expert says the planet parade will be best viewed around 21 January and recommends downloading a sky map app to help spot them

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Stargazers are being treated to a rare “planet parade” this month, with most of the planets visible in the night sky at the same time.

Astrophysicist Dr Rebecca Allen, co-director of Swinburne University’s space technology and industry institute, said it would be a rare opportunity to see so many planets lined up above the horizon, especially outer ones like Neptune.

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Korean researchers believe they may have found a lower cost approach to make hydrogen from natural gas and then liquefy it for export with the same carbon profile than hydrogen made from water and renewable energy.

An Iceland-based carbon registry on Wednesday announced it has partnered with a sustainability software provider to integrate its carbon offsets into the firm’s corporate platform.

The consequences of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss are seen as the greatest global risks over the next decade among experts across the private and public sectors, according to a report released Wednesday by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Australians lead the world in rooftop solar uptake, but a new study finds negative messaging and misinformation are drowning out the broader renewables success story.

The post Study finds major public knowledge gaps on renewables – and they’re being filled with misinformation appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Review could lead to bans on plastic chemicals including vinyl chloride, compound at center of 2023 Ohio train wreck

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is launching a formal review of five highly toxic plastic chemicals, including vinyl chloride, the notorious compound at the center of the East Palestine, Ohio, train wreck fire. The move could lead to strong limits or bans on the substances.

Vinyl chloride is most commonly used in PVC pipe and packaging production, but is also cancerous and highly flammable. For about 50 years, the federal government has considered limits on the substance, but industry has thwarted most regulatory efforts, hidden the substances’ risks and is already mobilizing against the new review.

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Exclusive: Newly uncovered documents reveal chemicals giant was aware ‘environmentally neutral’ products did not biodegrade

The multibillion-dollar chemicals company 3M told customers its firefighting foams were harmless and biodegradable when it knew they contained toxic substances so persistent they are now known as “forever chemicals” and banned in many countries including the UK, newly uncovered documents show.

From the 1960s until 2003, 3M made foams containing PFOS and PFOA (perfluorooctane sulfonate and perfluorooctanoic acid), synthetic chemicals that can take tens of thousands of years to degrade in the environment and have been linked to cancers and a range of other health problems such as thyroid disease, high cholesterol, hormonal problems and fertility issues.

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Adventure centre projects will promote interest in natural world, boosting young people’s wellbeing

A £150,000 initiative to tackle the “teenage dip” in nature connectedness will involve the Scout Association introducing rewilding to its adventure centres across the UK.

The funding, announced on Wednesday by the environmental charity Rewilding Britain, will support 11 projects aimed at putting young people at the heart of nature restoration. Several focus explicitly on reversing the sharp decline in young people’s engagement with the natural world during adolescence.

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US President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House and an upcoming EU review are raising uncertainty about whether the UN Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) will be implemented by enough countries to take a bite out of the sector's rising emissions.

Front-December European carbon prices rose to their highest in just over a year on Wednesday morning as an opening spike amid reports of Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure was sustained by Commitment of Traders data that showed investment funds now hold their largest total long position in EUAs in more than three years.

The scope of the Cop26 net zero banking alliance may have been limited, but the exodus of six US banks signifies a seismic political shift

Last week, as flames began tearing through greater Los Angeles, claiming multiple lives and forcing more than 100,000 people to evacuate, JP Morgan became the sixth major US bank to quit the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) since the start of December. A smaller story, certainly, but the departure of top US banks from the NZBA in the weeks since Donald Trump’s re-election nonetheless speaks to a seismic political shift prompting major financial institutions to turn away from the climate-related commitments they made in the optimistic years after the Paris agreement.

The NZBA is a voluntary network of global banks committed to “align lending and investment portfolios with net zero emissions by 2050”. It is part of the umbrella Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which counts among its membership dozens of “alliances” covering the various segments of global finance. For its part, the NZBA requires new members to submit science-aligned targets within 18 months of joining, alongside disclosing plans for and status updates on meeting them.

Adrienne Buller is director of The Break Down and the author of The Value of a Whale: on the illusions of green capitalism

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Iraq signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the British government on Tuesday that would support carbon market development, among other decarbonisation aims, according to the Iraqi Prime Minister’s Office.

A large-scale floating solar PV plant has been completed at a former industrial site and will now generate electricity equivalent to the needs of over 7,000 homes.

The post Floating solar project converts former gravel pit into 20 MW power generating pond appeared first on RenewEconomy.

France and Czechia support a reform of the Market Stability Reserve (MSR) to prevent price spikes on the EU’s incoming Emissions Trading System for road transport and heating fuels (ETS2), with Prague going a step further by calling to delay the scheme by one year, Carbon Pulse has learned.

I feel like I am safe in saying that we are not thriving on our changing planet – and we will not in the coming decades

My house in Altadena burned down in the wildfires on Wednesday. It all happened quickly. On Tuesday around 7pm, my wife and daughters went to a hotel as a precaution. I left the house with the dogs when the mandatory evacuation order came in around 3am. As best as I can put the timeline together, our home burned down around the same time that the sun came up, and I was able to drive in and see the damage around 2pm.

Neighbors that went in after said it looked like a “war zone”. I have never been in a war zone thankfully, but I didn’t think so. There was nothing violent or chaotic about it. No one stopped me from driving in. There were no sirens. I stood alone – no one else around – in front of my house that was at that point just a fireplace and chimney. The house across the street was about halfway done with burning down, and the house behind ours had just started to burn.

Benjamin Hamlington is a research scientist at Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a team lead at Nasa Sea Level Change team

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