Feed aggregator
Surging energy prices are really going to hurt. What can the government actually do?
Rishi Sunak’s U-turn on windfarms reflects the Tories’ failure to protect rural England | Simon Jenkins
As the Conservatives squabble over planning and housing targets, England’s countryside is being destroyed
The English countryside is sick. It can feel as though a day never passes without its green and pleasant land falling victim to the threat of windfarms, coalmines, solar arrays and housing estates. Boris Johnson seemed to want a turbine in every field. Liz Truss wanted “investment zones” even in protected areas. Rishi Sunak called for 300,000 new houses a year – until he didn’t.
This week the new environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, could not enlighten a Commons committee on her policy for farms, given the shambles of Brexit. Meanwhile, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, found himself capitulating to onshore windfarms one minute and a coalmine in Whitehaven the next. As for Labour’s Keir Starmer, he savaged Sunak for abandoning housing targets the same week as he said he would stop telling local councils what to do.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Tories continue to appal as Labour schmoozes a newly receptive City set | John Crace
As ministers proved again they’ve lost the plot, Keir Starmer sought to show business bigwigs his is the party to back
Back to the future. A Tory government in its extended death throes. Any number of sex and sleaze scandals. Disengaged backbench MPs planning for life outside Westminster. A weak prime minister totally out of ideas. Just reacting to the latest rebellion. No discernible coherent policies. Sound familiar?
Take Thursday. One MP has the whip withdrawn after a police complaint. Michelle Mone swears blind there was nothing wrong with her for trousering £29m for recommending a startup company that specialised in useless PPE. Headless gowns for headless chickens.
Continue reading...Labour says it would stop Cumbria coalmine from opening
Ed Miliband vows party will seek to prevent ‘climate-destroying’ plan and if elected would deliver green jobs
Labour would stop the new coalmine in Cumbria from going ahead if elected, and will seek to prevent it progressing before then, the party has said.
Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change secretary, said: “A Labour government will leave no stone unturned in seeking to prevent the opening of this climate-destroying coalmine, and instead ensure we deliver the green jobs that people in Cumbria deserve.”
Continue reading...Cop15 diary: delegates grapple with masks, snoods and meaningful action
The inside story of what happened on the first two days of the biodiversity summit in Montreal
Wednesday, 7 December
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge of C$800m (£510m) over seven years to support Indigenous-led conservation projects was preceded by a ceremony led by the First Nations Elder, Ka’nahsohon Kevin Deer. It made a change from the day before when Trudeau was interrupted by Indigenous protesters at the opening ceremony.
The UN secretary general António Guterres spoke powerfully about the need to protect the rights of environment protesters, saying “human rights must be at the centre of all environmental concerns and namely, the work of the [UN convention on biodiversity] CBD”.
A new draft text of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is littered with more than 1,000 brackets, which will need dealing with over the next two weeks. The text has been described as a “mess”, with many concerned about the amount that still needs to be done.
Despite more than 20 targets being negotiated, the 30x30 goal to protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030 is stealing the limelight. As delegates arrived at Montreal airport, there was no escaping the slew of posters promoting the ambition.
Both Canada and China have given delegates welcome bags – the former contained a snood, and the latter, a silk scarf and tea. Masks are also back and each day delegates are taking Covid tests in order to get into the conference centre.
The EU representative Ladislav Miko criticised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying it brings about “long-term environmental degradation”. Russian delegate Denis Rebrikov responded by saying the subject should be outside the scope of the biodiversity summit. “It’s hard to avoid the impression that these countries are deliberately trying to sabotage the adoption of a global framework,” he said.
It’s currently 3C in Montreal and some delegates are struggling with the cold. One was seen wearing a thick coat and woolly hat with headphones over the top in the main plenary hall.
Continue reading...Carbon platform owner Xpansiv shuffles leadership, expands board
Nature carbon fund manager eyes expansion, new funds in 2023
COP27: What was agreed at the Sharm el Sheikh climate conference?
Cumbria coalmine is owned by private equity firm with Caymans base
West Cumbria Mining, which set up Whitehaven office during push for new mine, owned by EMR Capital
• What is the Cumbrian coalmine and why does it matter?
The first deep coalmine to be dug in the UK in a generation is ultimately owned by an international private equity company, with executives whose mining interests have stretched to Russia, Asia, Africa and across Australia.
West Cumbria Mining positioned itself as a local company with an office in Whitehaven, and promised it would provide jobs for people in the area, during its campaign for permission to extract 2.8m tonnes of coking coal a year from the site.
Continue reading...Business coalition calls for 2035 zero emissions law on new EU trucks
Manager Trading, Environmental Markets, NRG – Houston
Poor performance now ‘the norm’ for some water firms, warns Ofwat
Serious pollution, poor service and weak financial management embedded, says England and Wales water industry regulator
Serious pollution by water companies has increased in the past year, the regulator has said in a damning report on the performance of the sector in England and Wales.
Ofwat said poor performance by some firms was embedded, and named Northumbrian Water, Southern Water, South West Water, Thames Water, Welsh Water and Yorkshire Water as lagging in the way they served customers and ran the system.
Continue reading...Wild at Art 2022 winners: children draw attention to Australia’s threatened species – in pictures
Nearly 5,000 primary school students took part in the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Wild at Art competition, which invites children to create an artwork depicting one of the country’s threatened native animals or plants
Continue reading...‘Extractivism’ is destroying nature: to tackle it Cop15 must go beyond simple targets | Rosemary Collard and Jessica Dempsey
The mass-scale removal of resources is a key driver of biodiversity loss. Extractivism’s grip on the planet must be broken
At the biodiversity Cop taking place in Montreal, much attention will focus on a policy proposal calling for 30% of the planet’s land and oceans to be protected by 2030, known as 30x30. Protected areas have their place in addressing the biodiversity crisis, but we also know that they are insufficient. Since the 1970s, they have increased fourfold globally, expanding to about 17% of the planet, but extraction rates have more than tripled. This unrelenting expansion of forestry, mining, monoculture farming and fossil fuel developments is a central driver of biodiversity loss. Ending or at least reducing “extractivism” must be front and centre at Cop15.
Extractivism is more than extraction. Extraction is the not inherently damaging removal of matter from nature and its transformation into things useful to humans. Extractivism, a term born of anti-colonial struggle and thought in the Americas, is a mode of accumulation based on hyper-extraction with lopsided benefits and costs: concentrated mass-scale removal of resources primarily for export, with benefits largely accumulating far from the sites of extraction. One estimate puts the drain south to north at a staggering $10tn (£8tn) a year.
Continue reading...Puro.earth adds enhanced weathering to list of removals methodologies
Euro Markets: Midday Update
Cop15: Trudeau pledges £510m for Indigenous-led conservation projects
Canada’s prime minister calls on China, Russia and Brazil to expand protected areas for nature
Justin Trudeau has urged China, Russia, Brazil and other large countries to massively expand protected areas for nature at Cop15 while putting Indigenous rights at the heart of conservation, as momentum gathers behind a controversial target to conserve 30% of Earth.
On Wednesday, the Canadian prime minister committed C$800m (£510m) of funding over seven years for Indigenous-led conservation projects in his country across an area the size of Egypt, starting a “story of reconciliation” with Indigenous peoples.
Continue reading...Puffin nesting sites in western Europe could be lost by end of century
Experts create guide to help save seabirds from bleak future caused by global heating
The majority of puffin nesting sites in western Europe are likely to be lost by the end of the century due to climate breakdown, a report has warned.
Other seabirds will also be affected unless urgent action to limit global heating is taken, with razorbills and arctic terns forecast to lose 80% and 87% of their breeding grounds respectively owing to reduced food accessibility and prolonged periods of stormy weather.
Continue reading...WA’s biggest solar farm tops list of best performing PV assets in November
The biggest solar farm in WA was the best performing solar project in Australia in November with a capacity factor of more than 37 per cent.
The post WA’s biggest solar farm tops list of best performing PV assets in November appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Water companies "letting down" customers
Pages
