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Climate disasters risk pulling society apart. To survive we need solidarity – and only one ticket in the US election offers that

Even as the good people of Florida’s west coast pulled the soggy mattresses from Helene out to the curb, Milton appeared on the horizon this week – a double blast of destruction from the Gulf of Mexico that’s a reminder that physics takes no time off, not even in the weeks before a crucial election. My sense is that those storms will help turn the voting on 5 November into a climate election of sorts, even if – as is likely – neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump spend much time in the next 25 days talking about CO2 or solar power.

That’s because these storms show not only the power of global heating (Helene’s record rains, and Milton’s almost unprecedented intensification, were reminders of what it means to have extremely hot ocean temperatures). More, they show what we’re going to need to survive the now inevitable train of such disasters. Which is solidarity. Which is something only one ticket offers.

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Prof Pedro Arrojo-Agudo says regulator Ofwat ‘complacent’ about water firms putting their shareholders before public

The privatised English water system has been singled out for criticism by the UN special rapporteur on the human right to clean water.

Prof Pedro Arrojo-Agudo said water systems should be managed as a publicly owned service, rather than run by private companies set up to benefit shareholders.

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International transportation, especially aviation and shipping, must be “urgently taxed” as that would raise up to $200 billion a year in revenues by 2035, potentially tripling current global climate finance, a paper released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has found.

The mining tycoon says his iron ore business will stop using fossil fuels by the end of the decade without carbon offsets or carbon capture and storage

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About $45 trillion of global business revenue is covered by corporate “net zero emissions” pledges but iron ore billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest thinks the whole net zero thing is “fantasy”.

“Now is the time to walk away from net zero 2050, that hasn’t been anything really but a con to maintain fossil fuels,” Forrest said last week.

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Emissions from 20 methane leak hotspots could be twice the official number, according to a Canberra-based think tank that has examined the sites using a new satellite measuring tool offering granularity past the self reporting required of emitters under Australian law.

Global energy-related emissions will likely peak in 2024 and start a sustained decline for the first time since the industrial revolution, a new report has revealed.

European carbon allowances rebounded on Wednesday as they looked to snap three consecutive loss-making sessions, eyeing key technical levels to the upside even as TTF gas prices continued to correct lower, while investment funds raised their net short position to the highest level since March.

Energy Consumers Australia CEO Brendan French on why cost-reflective electricity tariffs should not be mandatory – and should not make energy bills more complicated.

The post SwitchedOn Podcast: How time-of-use tariffs could become a recipe for bill shock appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Almost all the UK’s ecosystem assets are at high or medium-high risk, requiring public and private investment, the government’s nature department said in a report published on Wednesday.

Realism, ratings, and relationships are the key ingredients to attract investment in the voluntary carbon market, the buyer of cookstove credits at $35 per tonne told Carbon Pulse this week.

Voluntary carbon market experts Climate Impact Partners and Deloitte launched on Wednesday a programme to unlock financing towards seagrass recovery in the UK, as part of a wider seagrass carbon code currently under development in the country.

India has great potential to be a leader in the global supply of carbon removals credits, but the country is also facing a total lack of domestic demand for such credits, a carbon removals accelerator told Carbon Pulse on the sidelines of a carbon summit this week.

Renewable energy growth will be swift and large but still fall short of the commitment made at COP28 to triple penetration by the end of the decade even as it outpaces nations’ current ambitions, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Wednesday in a renewables report.

The announcement was made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Sweden.

Shanghai has introduced a voluntary methodology for salt marsh restoration to create carbon credits under a regional offsetting programme.

Government criticised over list of potential countries for sourcing biomass, which also includes Afghanistan

A plan by the British government to burn biomass imported from countries including North Korea and Afghanistan has been described as “bonkers”, with critics saying it undermines the credibility of the UK’s climate strategy.

A bioenergy resource model, published in late summer, calculates that only a big expansion in the import of energy crops and wood from a surprising list of nations would satisfy the UK’s plan to meet net zero.

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Australia is finalising an updated battle strategy for its war on feral cats, one of the biggest drivers of native mammal extinctions on the continent, but experts say how the plan is implemented and the funding behind it will be the key to victory.

Australia's growing fleet of big battery projects are rapidly shifting their main revenue source from frequency control to arbitrage. Here's why.

The post Australia’s big battery fleet now making more money from arbitrage than frequency control appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Analysis shows Gulf’s heat that worsened Helene 200-500 times more likely because of human-caused global heating

As Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida, fueled by a record-hot Gulf of Mexico, a new analysis has shown how the Gulf’s heat that worsened last month’s Hurricane Helene was 200 to 500 times more likely because of human-caused global heating.

Helene, one of the deadliest storms in US history, gathered pace over the Gulf before crashing ashore with 140mph winds.

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Selected from a record-breaking 59,228 entries from 117 countries and territories, the winners of the Natural History Museum’s prestigious wildlife photographer of the year competition have been announced, with an exhibition opening on Friday 11 October. The Canadian marine conservation photojournalist Shane Gross was awarded wildlife photographer of the year 2024 for his image of tadpoles, The Swarm of Life, captured while snorkelling through lily pads in Cedar Lake on Vancouver Island, British Columbia

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