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US star, who was also in Succession, urged leaders at biodiversity conference to take more forceful action to end nature crisis

The US actor James Cromwell revisited his old role in Jurassic Park with a modern twist in a protest against inaction on the nature crisis. He urged leaders at Cop15 to “Stop the Human Asteroid” as he stood in front of a model dinosaur surrounded by pictures of world leaders’ heads as bits of rock flying into Earth.

The 82-year-old actor – known for his roles as Ewan Logan in Succession and the farmer in Babe – staged the protest near the Cop15 convention centre in Montreal, where more than 10,000 people have gathered to create the next decade of targets to bend the curve on biodiversity loss. He told the Guardian: “With all the history of the Cops, we have achieved nothing, absolutely nothing, and they know that. I don’t know how they look at themselves in the mirror in the morning.”

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UK corporates are seeking to buy foreign carbon credits for offsetting because of a lack of high quality domestic  projects, according to a survey of listed companies commissioned by a listings firm.

Chemicals that leach out of plastic shown to cause fatal abnormalities, including gut developing outside body

Sea urchins raised in sea water with high levels of plastic pollution, including fragments collected from a Cornish surfing beach, die from developmental abnormalities, research shows.

Scientists placed fertilised urchin eggs in seawater with varying levels of plastic to compare the effects of newly made plastic pellets, or “nurdles”, with the impacts of high levels of fragments found washed up on Watergate Bay in Cornwall.

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A Brazil-based startup on Thursday announced it has started to operationalise $100 mln towards reforesting degraded Amazonian land through a revamped methodology, and is already in a discussion to sell the resulting carbon removal credits at a level well above other VER prices. 

Populations have increased tenfold in the past two decades, leading to a new national strategy to halt the rapid spread

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Populations of feral deer have increased tenfold in the past two decades with numbers now too high to be managed by recreational hunting or other recent control measures.

Numbers of the invasive species are now so large in some parts of the east coast that a new national strategy by federal and state governments proposes establishing a “containment zone” to stop the spread of the animals westward across the country.

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Labor revokes Abbott government move which allowed energy from burning wood waste to be counted with solar and wind

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Electricity generated by burning native forest wood waste will no longer be allowed to be classified as renewable energy under a regulatory change adopted by the Albanese government.

The decision, which Labor had promised to consider after it was recommended by a Senate committee in September, reverses a 2015 Abbott government move which allowed burning native forest timber to be counted alongside solar and wind energy towards the national renewable energy target.

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Much of the media and NGO community have recently muddied the waters around the global carbon market by repeating a set of myths around the market, writes Charles Bedford of Carbon Growth Partners.

EUAs posted robust gains late on Thursday morning as traders switched their focus from REPowerEU negotiations and options expiry to Friday's trilogue discussions on EU ETS reform and next week's expiry of the December futures contract.

A weekly summary of our biodiversity news plus bite-sized updates from around the world. All articles in this edition are free to read (no subscription required).

The environment regulator in Shenzhen, one of China's economic powerhouses, has launched offset methodologies for forest carbon sinks and bike-sharing, the latest move in an emerging trend for regional governments to expand their offset schemes.

Financing for biodiversity is about to take off with the launch of biodiversity markets. They have the opportunity to learn from the successes and mistakes of the Voluntary Carbon Market by creating an effective biodiversity metrics framework, writes Torrey Sanseverino, a natural capital research associate with offset ratings agency BeZero.

Growth in China’s thermal power generation slowed in November, though outpaced the growth of total power output amid mixed signs of economic recovery, government data showed Thursday.

A startup company has gained certification to use blue carbon credits for a venture in Japan that restores kelp forests and develops sea urchin aquaculture, it announced on Thursday.

New Zealand infrastructure investor and Australia's politicians' super fund establish a new wind, solar and storage developer.

The post Institutional investors Mint a new wind, solar and storage developer in Australia appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The efforts, including restoring grassland in the Georgian steppe, will work in cooperation with local communities to repair biodiversity hotspots

From the wilderness of the Finnish boreal forest to the busy Solent estuary, seven landscape restoration projects across Europe have been boosted by more than $26m (£21m) from the Endangered Landscapes Programme (ELP).

The projects cover an area 18 times the size of Greater London and include returning nature to the Iberian Highlands, restoring grassland in the Georgian steppe, and replacing coniferous plantations with natural riverine and deciduous forests in the Rhodope mountains in south-east Bulgaria.

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The Australian government has delayed the release of its final policy proposal to overhaul the Safeguard Mechanism, due to its focus on its energy price legislation that has now been legislated by parliament.

The New Zealand government on Thursday announced the country’s emissions trading scheme price settings between 2023-27, keeping much of the existing architecture in place and making only a marginal increase to the Cost Containment Reserve trigger price despite the recommendation from the Climate Change Commission to more than double it.

Scientists behind car number plate study say ‘potentially catastrophic’ decline must be reversed

The number of insects splattered on vehicle number plates in Britain fell by 64% between 2004 and 2022, according to a survey.

Each summer citizen scientists record the number of insect splats on their number plates on an app after a journey. The latest Bugs Matter report, produced by Kent Wildlife Trust and Buglife, found another drop in 2022 compared with 2021, with the long-term decrease jumping by five percentage points.

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Post-pandemic relaxation of restrictions could weaken animal protection and pose a hazard to public health, say experts

China appears to be weakening its post-Covid restrictions on the farming of wildlife such as porcupines, civets and bamboo rats, which raises a new risk to public health and biodiversity, warn NGOs and experts.

Before the pandemic, wildlife farming was promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich. But China issued an outright ban on hunting, trading and transporting wildlife, as well as the consumption as food, after public health experts suggested the virus could have originated from the supply chain.

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Chronically stressed and diseased koalas in clinical care are often euthanised, rather than released back into the wild. Edward Narayan, Senior Lecturer in Animal Science, The University of Queensland Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.