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Many researchers are exploring high-tech ways to help reefs survive the climate crisis. But low-tech solutions like manually pulling out seaweed have a place too. Hillary Smith, Senior Research Officer, James Cook University David Bourne, Professor of Marine Biology, James Cook University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Rugby World Cup 2023 host France has launched a tender seeking offers for carbon credits to compensate for the emissions resulting from the ongoing tournament.

Winning images of the amazing parts of our Universe go on display in London.

The latest warning from climate experts points to the urgency of a fossil fuel phase-out

The climate is changing more quickly now than it has done for tens of millions of years. This was the blunt conclusion to the BBC’s recent Earth series, which sought to convey to viewers how cataclysmic the disruption caused by global heating could be. Chris Packham, its presenter, described the tipping points that were reached 56m years ago, when, over the course of a few thousand years, temperatures climbed by 5C. Fossil records from this period are one resource that modern scientists use when trying to predict the consequences of the much faster heating that is now under way.

Planetary boundaries, about which scientists this week issued an updated warning, are another tool for thinking about the environment. These are a set of parameters defined at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, led by Prof Johan Rockström, in 2009. They are limits within which changes to the Earth’s life support systems, which have been relatively stable for 10,000 years, can be considered manageable. Once the boundaries are breached, however, everything becomes much more extreme, unstable and threatening. As well as an attempt at quantifying the disruption that natural systems can withstand, the nine boundaries represented an attempt to broaden understanding of the risks. One key message was that global heating caused by greenhouse gases trapped in the atmosphere is not the only threat.

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Investment in the voluntary carbon market will tumble sharply in the next two years after a surge of money flooded in over the last two-and-a-half years when carbon credits prices hit a peak, according to research published on Thursday.

Lack of progress towards climate goals is undermining global efforts to tackle hunger, poverty, ill health, access to clean water and energy, and many other aspects of sustainable development, according to a UN report released Thursday.

The City of London Corporation has called for the UK to include marine biodiversity in its nature credits market as a “matter of urgency” as part of its ambition for the country to become a global nature finance centre, it has said.

A moratorium should be placed on the highly controversial practice of geoengineering to control climate change, while allowing for ongoing research into the possibilities of using solar radiation management given the magnitude of the problem and the need to prepare the ground for future generations, an expert body concluded in a report published Thursday.

Next week's summit, organised by UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres in New York, will provide an opportunity to hold the rich world to account for their poor record on climate finance and set the tone for core topics of discussion at COP28 in Dubai at the end of the year, a webinar heard Thursday.

Federal effort will focus on marginalized areas in all parts of country and aims to reduce extreme heat and benefit health

Hundreds of communities around the US will share more than $1bn in federal money to help them plant and maintain trees under a federal program that is intended to reduce extreme heat, benefit health and improve access to nature.

The US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, will announce the $1.13bn in funding for 385 projects at an event on Thursday morning in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

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A Brazilian fintech firm is aiming to raise R$300 million ($61 mln) for a second carbon credit-focused fund after the success of its first offering and hopes to benefit from the proposed emissions trading scheme in the country, a local media outlet reported Wednesday.

The durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) market could grow to $135 billion by 2040 if the price of units can fall to $150 per tonne, according to projections made in a report this week from one of the world's largest consultancy firms.

The UN body responsible for guiding the Paris Agreement's carbon crediting mechanism made significant progress at this week's penultimate meeting, with observers noting they had never seen such consensus among the group, but ultimately failed to adopt final texts on methodological guidance after running out of time, leaving crunch discussions for the final meeting later this year.

Fatih Birol, head of International Energy Agency, says countries planning expansion are ‘misjudging market trends’

Countries and companies planning to expand their fossil fuel production are taking “very unhealthy and unwise economic risks” as their investments may not be profitable, the world’s foremost energy adviser has warned.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), predicted this week that fossil fuels would peak this decade, a historic turning point for the climate. But despite the likelihood of demand declining, and the threat of climate chaos, many countries and private sector companies are considering new capacity.

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A study compiling the best companies in terms of their climate leadership has found that 16 of the 27 highest performing firms are based in Europe, while those involved in the fossil fuel industry still failing to prioritise action. 

Claimants to argue lack of adequate action is breach of human rights, in largest climate legal action to date

Six young people are preparing to appear at the European court of human rights to try to compel 32 nations to rapidly escalate their emissions reductions in the world’s largest climate legal action to date.

Aged from 11 to 24, the six Portuguese claimants, say they were driven to act by their experiences in the wildfires that ripped through the Leiria region in 2017, killing 66 people and destroying 20,000 hectares of forest.

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The largest offshore wind developer in the world on Thursday called on all renewable energy developers to set net-positive biodiversity targets when developing projects.

The European Parliament gave the green light to start negotiations with member states on a bill to regulate the EU's rapidly-decarbonising electricity market, during a plenary session on Thursday in Strasbourg.

The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act will accelerate the path towards the bloc's resource sovereignty and competitiveness, according to members of the European Parliament on Thursday after voting on a united position to take forward into negotiations with member states on a bill designed to reduce the bloc’s dependency on imports of the raw materials indispensable for clean technology.

European carbon prices extended their rally on Thursday amid a short squeeze that began after the previous session's weekly Commitment of Traders report, before consolidating their gains amid a drop in natural gas, as traders speculated whether short-term fundamentals are sufficiently bearish to justify the recent decline, and how long the current rally would last.