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We’ve been back twice a week since that first morning. It’s still freezing and we’re still slow, but the shock of it has gone

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When my mum died in 2012, I found a box of her old life-saving medals that she’d been awarded as a teenager. She grew up in public housing in Williamstown, with a full-time working mother and a father who never really returned postwar. She used to say swimming saved her. It gave her a purpose, a sense of place, somewhere to belong when life at home was hard. Later she taught my brother and me to swim, and then my children, instilling in each of us a love of the water that has never gone.

My grandmother stayed in her one-bedroom high-rise tower flat facing the Williamstown beach until she had to move into an aged care home. For her, the smell of the salty sea drifting across land to her window on the fifth floor made her feel home. Gran wasn’t a swimmer, but she was a great supporter of the life saving club, earning lifetime membership in 1961. And when I checked, her name is still on the honour roll.

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The entrepreneur claims agency exaggerated the costs of the Coalition plan despite it using best-case scenario South Korea as the benchmark

High-profile entrepreneur Dick Smith entered the ongoing radioactive debate on nuclear energy this week, accusing government agencies of misleading ministers over the costs of reactors and the practicalities of renewables.

But Smith’s complaints about what the Australian Energy Market Operator’s plan for the future of the grid says, or how CSIRO calculated the costs of nuclear, are themselves misleading.

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Two Argentine developers have partnered with a Switzerland-headquartered foundation to launch separate biodiversity credit projects in two South American forests over 11,000 hectares, with plans to market them at the upcoming COP16 summit, Carbon Pulse has learned.

The Austrian government is looking at the reforms needed to enable carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the country in an effort to tackle hard-to-abate emissions from sectors like steelmaking and cement.

UK-headquartered nature platform provider Natcap announced Wednesday it has secured $10 million in a Series A funding round to scale its technology for supporting companies in assessing nature-related risks and opportunities.

The EU ETS could end its current phase in 2030 with a total surplus of 1.7 billion allowances, including 900 million permits in various reserves, but progress in reaching targets for green hydrogen could alter this outlook, according to a new study.

Light pollution acts as ‘midnight fridge’, drawing in young fish, then predators, according to tests in French Polynesia

Artificial light shining from coastlines around the world is acting like “a midnight fridge” full of tasty snacks, threatening young fish who can be drawn to it and who are then eaten by predators also attracted by the brightness, according to a study.

It has long been established that light pollution hampers people’s ability to see the night sky and harms migrating birds, insects and other animals. But its impact on marine ecosystems has rarely been taken into account, said Jules Schligler, the lead author of the study at the international coral ecosystem research centre in Mo’orea, French Polynesia.

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Beryl is the earliest category five Atlantic hurricane on record, fuelled by exceptional sea warmth.

Voters and politicians now know slow, incremental change just won’t cut it. The next government must be bold and brave

• Caroline Lucas is a former Green MP

When I entered parliament back in 2010 as the first Green MP, I used every possible trick in the book to push the environment up the UK’s political agenda. In the early days, progress was agonisingly slow. Simply making the case that Britain should be powered by renewables, not fossil fuels, was a daily battle. Every single budget, I would stand up and ask the same question: what about the climate? And then, quite quickly, things finally began to change.

I’ll never forget the moment I realised the environment movement had finally entered the political mainstream. The shift dawned on me during the school strikes five years ago, which brought over a million people worldwide out on to the streets in protest. I stood on top of a makeshift platform on a fire engine outside parliament and saw a vast crowd of young people, stretching as far as the eye could see, demanding climate justice and action.

Caroline Lucas is an environmental activist and former Green MP

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Nature-related law cases focused on rights and corporate responsibility are set to increase in the next few years, the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) said on Tuesday in a report.

The UK appears set to enter a new era of stronger, better coordinated climate policy and diplomacy under a Labour government  - although some changes will be soft, and still fall short of what’s needed to gain ground on the country's goal for net zero emissions by 2050.  

EU carbon prices were marginally higher at midday on Wednesday after a fairly volatile morning characterised by strong volume, as an EUA rally after the daily auction appeared to be a reaction to another increase in speculators' net short positions and was not matched by a recovery in natural gas, casting further doubt on the recent correlation between the two markets.

Next government urged to have a proper plan for food security, as UK’s climate becomes more unpredictable

UK fruit and vegetable production has plummeted as farms have been hit by extreme weather.

The country suffered the wettest 18 months since records began across the 2023-24 growing year, leaving soil waterlogged and some farms totally underwater. The impact on harvests has been disastrous. Data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shows that year-on-year vegetable yields decreased by 4.9% to 2.2m tonnes in 2023, and the production volumes of fruit decreased by 12% to 585,000 tonnes.

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A tree-planting startup has raised €5 million seed investment to expand its voluntary carbon project development pipeline across Europe.

The US state of New York has drafted a plan to advance efforts towards protecting 30% of its land and sea by 2030, saying an additional 1.2 million hectares must be conserved to achieve this target.

A materials science company and a research institution based in Saudi Arabia have announced a year-long research and development partnership focused on CO2 removal via concrete, aimed at generating voluntary carbon credits.

European shipping emissions dropped sharply by 15% in 2023 compared to the previous year, in large part due to a reduced demand for energy and general goods from the EU, according to preliminary emissions data published this week. 

A carryover mechanism introduced in China's draft permit allocation plan may help boost liquidity and reduce oversupply in the national carbon market, though the arrangement could result in great selling pressure among Chinese emitters. 

The federal government introduced its Future Made in Australia legislation to parliament Wednesday, designed in part to unlock some A$22.7 billion ($15.1 bln) in public funding over the next decade to drive investment into industries that will transition the country to net zero emissions and, the government hopes, turn it into a renewable energy superpower.

A group of Japanese companies will pilot a technology that captures CO2 in urban spaces and uses it to grow vegetables and other plants that can be sold on the spot at places like railway stations in one of the country’s biggest cities.