Feed aggregator

Financial participants increased their California Carbon Allowance (CCA) futures-only holdings but reduced their combined futures and options holdings in the latest reporting period, while compliance entities offloaded allowances, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data.

Faced with a plethora of negative catalysts, California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) credit prices appeared to consolidate as they approached early June lows this week, while some buyers remain.

The world heritage site still has some capacity for recovery but the window is closing fast as the climate continues to warm

• Get our free news app, morning email briefing and daily news podcast

The Great Barrier Reef is one of the planet’s natural jewels, stretching for more than 2,300km along Australia’s north-east.

But as well as being a bucket-list favourite and a heaving mass of biodiversity across 3,000 individual reefs, the world heritage-listed organism is at the coalface of the climate crisis.

Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

Continue reading...

The European Council agreed on Friday to officially adopt a regulation mandating a voluntary reduction of gas consumption by 15% by Mar. 2023, including the possibility to back a so-called ‘Union alert’ where the target would become mandatory.

A new database of extreme weather studies makes clear how far policymaking is lagging behind the reality of climate chaos

The scientists behind a new database of more than 400 extreme weather attribution studies have performed an essential service. This piece of work, drawing together every study of this type, ought to galvanise a greater sense of urgency around policymaking and campaigning. It shows that intense heatwaves, hurricanes, droughts and floods have all been made far more likely by greenhouse gas emissions, which trap the sun’s heat and put more energy into weather systems. And it spells out the alarming unpredictability as well as the extent of global heating’s consequences.

Until the early 2000s, when the first attribution studies were published, it was harder to link CO2 in the atmosphere with global heating’s tangible effects. Thanks to a growing body of research, now we know. The record-breaking “heat dome” over north-western Canada and the US last summer would have been almost impossible without human-caused climate change. The same is true of heatwaves across the northern hemisphere in 2018, and in Asia in 2016.

Continue reading...

US Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D) is considered the final piece to the puzzle of passing a sweeping climate change, healthcare, and tax reform bill called the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and she's signed on to vote in favour.

Campaigners say ‘our rivers are dying’ after driest July in England for more than 100 years

Most of the UK’s rivers are on “red alert”, according to the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH), as campaigners say “our rivers are dying” and call for immediate nationwide hosepipe bans.

This summer, water companies have come under intense criticism for their apparent failure to plan for drought and deal with their leaking pipes. Sarah Bentley, the chief executive of Thames Water, received a £496,000 bonus last year, which is nearly double the performance-related payout for the previous year, and a salary increase to £750,000 from £438,000 in 2020-21, annual accounts show.

Continue reading...

Climate-conscious passengers may have to pay almost double for their trips to take advantage of Lufthansa Group’s new 'green fare' for carbon neutral flying.

Companies active in the energy, heavy industry, and aviation sectors tend to pay below-average for their carbon offsets, according to retirement data collated by a climate analytics firm, while car manufacturers, and tech firms have historically purchased credits at a higher price than most others.

China’s environment ministry has rejected complaints by one of the four verifiers that were named and shamed earlier this year for ETS data falsification, that the government had exaggerated its claims.

China on Friday said it would cancel or suspend a number of bilateral processes with the US in response to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan this week, including the two nations’ cooperation on climate change issues.

Technology applied to Oude Rign river helps stop plastic pollution reaching sea

Five years ago, Claar-els van Delft began to suspect that plastic waste on the beach at Katwijk in the Netherlands did not come from visitors, or the sea, but from the mouth of a nearby river.

“We started picking up litter and we noticed, near the river entrance, pieces that came from fresh water – all kinds of plastic,” she says. “Tampon sheaths, brush bristles, but also crisp packages, drink packages, everything.”

Continue reading...

By promoting more diverse farming, we can provide nutritious food without having the same devasting effect on our climate

• Andy Cato is a regenerative farmer and cofounder of Wildfarmed. He is also one half of the electronic music band Groove Armada

On the way back from a gig 15 years ago, I read an article on the environmental consequences of food production. It made for sobering reading, and ended by saying: “If you don’t like the system, don’t depend on it.” I was inspired to transform our garden in France into a vegetable patch in a quest for self-sufficiency. This quickly escalated, and I ended up selling the rights to my songs with Groove Armada to buy a farm nearby. After 12 years in the agricultural school of hard knocks, what we learned there is now being applied on a National Trust farm near Swindon for which we were awarded the tenancy last year.

Back in France during last month’s heatwaves, the effect on the landscape was devastating. Spring-sown crops, hanging on after very little rainfall and unrelenting sun, will, for many, not be worth harvesting. Looking over the parched valley, veiled in wildfire smoke drifting up from the coast, I made a throwaway remark to some farming friends about planting olive trees to cope with increasingly regular episodes of intense, dry heat. One replied that there was in fact a meeting that evening about the creation of a Gascon olive oil collective. The shift in weather patterns over the past decade has been incredible. Farmers feel the effects immediately; we are gardening without a hosepipe.

Andy Cato is a regenerative farmer and cofounder of Wildfarmed. He is also one half of the electronic music band Groove Armada

Continue reading...

EUAs moved up on thin liquidity despite a weak German sale, as the annual August auction supply cut continues to support the market, with relative stability on gas and power prices also offering some strength.

India’s carbon market framework is likely to be rolled out over three phases, with the government leveraging its experience with existing schemes to develop voluntary markets in the first two, ultimately progressing to a fully-fledged compulsory scheme in the third, according to a research note from an Indian securities firm.

Kylie Jenner’s 17-minute private jet ride is a reminder that private jets are morally obscene and terrible for the climate. The planet can no longer afford these indulgences

Kylie Jenner, Drake and other celebrities have recently faced criticism for carbon emission-heavy private jet rides, with one of Jenner’s flights reportedly lasting an offensively short 17 minutes.

It might be less insulting if the flights were taken for reasons vital to the survival of the human race or at least the function of government. But these were entertainers and private individuals who have access to first-class commercial flights and the same conveniences of phone and video calls us humble common folk use.

private aircraft still emit more than 33m tonnes of greenhouse gases, more than the country of Denmark … they are five to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes, per passenger, and 50 times more polluting than trains.

Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian

Continue reading...

Wildfires in the US have depleted at least 95% of California’s forest offset buffer pool in just one decade, a reserve mechanism used by the state’s forest carbon offsets programme, which is designed to protect against the risk of damage to forests from natural disasters for a period of 100 years, research has found.

Birdwatcher ‘overcome with emotion’ on spotting the Santa Marta sabrewing, only third time it has been documented

A rare hummingbird has been rediscovered by a birdwatcher in Colombia after going missing for more than a decade.

The Santa Marta sabrewing, a large hummingbird only found in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains, was last seen in 2010 and scientists feared the species might be extinct as the tropical forests it inhabited have largely been cleared for agriculture.

Continue reading...

Chinese carbon allowance prices dropped over the past week with evaporated trading volumes amid lukewarm interest, while the offset market posted relatively abundant liquidity during the period.

The Australian Labor Party government is all but certain to have its 43% emissions reduction cut by 2030 signed into law next month, now the work begins on one of its key policy measures to meet that target – the Safeguard Mechanism.