Feed aggregator

Standardised, CORSIA-grade voluntary emissions reduction (VER) prices trended lower over the past week, though the losses in the exchange-traded products accelerated on Monday as traders pondered reasons for the sell-off.

Investors rejoiced as compliance-grade carbon funds had a stellar month in September, with allowance prices in several markets soaring to new all-time highs.

Journalist Maria Ressa was the only woman to win a Nobel Prize this year, and just the 58th in history.

A handful of countries submitted revised Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement on Monday, just ahead of the cut-off for the UN to include the pledges in its final report ahead of the COP26 Glasgow summit.

Extreme weather is behind much of the crisis, but it will make the transition to new energy sources more complicated. Lurion De Mello, Senior Lecturer in Finance, Macquarie University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Some 24 new countries on Monday joined the ranks of an EU-US-led initiative aimed at accelerating methane emission cuts, providing a boost to the fast-approaching COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow.

A WWF-Australia report reveals more than 1,500 of the country’s unique ecosystems are lacking protection

• Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates

More than 1,500 of Australia’s unique ecosystems, both land and sea, are not represented in any of the nation’s protected areas, according to new research.

The study, by WWF-Australia, comes as countries are meeting this week for the first stage of the United Nations biodiversity conference, hosted by China in Kunming. The talks aim to set new targets for protecting and restoring nature.

Continue reading...

Arguments about switching from one mode of transport to another miss the point – we ought to be travelling less

All domestic plane journeys in Britain should be banned and passengers told to take a train. So says the Campaign for Better Transport in its contribution to the climate emergency debate. Planes emit six times more CO2 per passenger mile than trains. The trouble is that plane tickets tend to be half the price of train ones. So tax planes, and subsidise trains.

So far, so simple. Planes are bad, trains are good. But trains will always be more expensive to run than planes over long distances. Surface rail in Britain supplies a tiny minority of journeys – just 2% of “trips” and 9% of miles travelled. In 2018-19, 58% of public transport journeys were by bus. The car remains prime, accounting for 61% of trips in 2019. Rail subsidies chiefly benefit better-off travellers. Poorer people use cars, coaches and buses for both work and leisure. And while a car with one person is carbon-inefficient, it is estimated that with four it is nearly as efficient as a train.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

FSO Safer has been abandoned since 2017 and loss of its 1.1m barrels would destroy Yemen’s fishing stocks

The impact of an oil spill in the Red Sea from a tanker that is rotting in the water could be far wider than anticipated, with 8 million people losing access to running water and Yemen’s Red Sea fishing stock destroyed within three weeks.

Negotiations are under way to offload the estimated 1.1m barrels of crude oil that remains onboard the FSO Safer, which has been deteriorating by the month since it was abandoned in 2017. The vessel contains four times the amount of oil released by the Exxon Valdez in the Gulf of Alaska in 1989, and a spill is considered increasingly probable.

Continue reading...

Hundreds of international health organisations and professionals sign open letter to politicians ahead of Cop26

More than 400 international health organisations and professionals, representing two-thirds of global healthcare workers, have signed an open letter calling on politicians to consider the health benefits of climate action ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

“We know that climate change is impacting people’s health, this is increasingly visible around the world. We also know that many solutions to address climate change offer tremendous health co-benefits,” said Dr Jeni Miller of Global Climate and Health Alliance, the organisation which drafted the letter. “The health community is really seeing that if we don’t step up and call for action on climate change, we’re failing the patients and the communities that we care for.”

Continue reading...

Biggest ever analysis shows public backs carbon tax on industry, flight levies and grants for heat pumps

The UK public backs a carbon tax on polluting industries, higher levies on flying and grants for heat pumps in order to tackle the climate crisis, according to the biggest analysis of policy preferences ever published.

Almost 22,000 people chose their favoured mix of policies to hit the government’s 2030 target for emissions cuts. A speed limit of 60mph on motorways and a campaign to reduce meat eating by 10% were also among the most popular measures, all of which had between 77% and 94% public support.

A carbon tax of £75 per tonne on polluting manufacturing and construction businesses, with some funding to invest in new technologies, supported by 94% of people.

Better-integrated public transport coordinated by local government (93%).

Food campaigns and support from government, supermarkets and food companies promoting plant-based diets and cutting meat and dairy consumption by 10% (93%).

A comprehensive UK-wide electric vehicle charging network by 2028 (91%).

Raising flying costs, particularly on frequent fliers (89%).

Some restrictions on cars entering city centres and a 60mph speed limit on motorways (82%).

Support for less intensive farming and paying farmers to improve nature, including woodlands (79%).

Grants for heat pumps and home insulation for low-income households and low-interest loans for others, reaching 1.4m heat pump installations a year by 2030 (77%).

Continue reading...

Overconsumption is inevitable when adverts are so ubiquitous and sophisticated. There must be a pushback

To confront the climate emergency, the amount we consume needs to drop dramatically. Yet every day we’re told to consume more. We all know about air pollution – but there’s a kind of “brain pollution” produced by advertising that, uncontrolled, fuels overconsumption. And the problem is getting worse.

Advertising is everywhere, so prevalent as to be invisible but with an effect no less insidious than air pollution. A few years ago, an individual in the US was estimated to be exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 adverts daily.

Continue reading...

Exclusive: upbeat US climate envoy anticipates big announcements from key players at Glasgow talks

• The complete guide to Cop26
• Your Cop26 jargon buster
• Who’s who at the climate summit

The world is poised to make a big leap forward at the UN Cop26 climate summit, with world leaders “sharpening their pencils” to make fresh commitments that could put the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement within reach, John Kerry has said.

Kerry, special envoy for climate to Joe Biden, gave an upbeat assessment of the prospects for Cop26, which begins in Glasgow at the end of this month, saying he anticipated “surprising announcements” from key countries.

Continue reading...

EUAs posted moderate gains in low-key Monday morning trading, as traders absorbed margin adjustments for energy contracts while coal prices resumed their climb after big drops last week.

As world leaders gather for the environmental conference, here is our summary of the key terminology

• The complete guide to Cop26
• Who’s who at the climate summit
• John Kerry says Cop26 is ‘starting line for rest of decade’

Cop26 will be the 26th conference of the parties to the UN framework convention on climate change, the parent treaty to the 2015 Paris agreement. More than 120 world leaders are expected to attend, with more than 25,000 delegates from 197 countries, in the biggest diplomatic event on British soil since the second world war.

Continue reading...

Fossil fuel companies have been exploring the potential for fracking in Australia’s Beetaloo sub-basin, but if the Northern Territory state government stands by its recommendations on offset requirements then big-emitting projects will likely be rendered unprofitable, analysts said Monday.

China’s central government has launched a process to establish standards for carbon neutral claims and processes, a move analysts say will likely tighten settings for developing offset credits.

Ecosystem collapse is as much a threat as the climate crisis, but valuing nature will help us meet both these challenges

All eyes are on Cop26 in Glasgow since the climate crisis aroused worldwide attention and compelled more than 120 countries to join the unprecedented global Race to Zero carbon-emissions campaign. But the UN biodiversity conference in Kunming, or Cop15, should not be overshadowed, as biodiversity loss is an equally grave threat to humanity.

Cop15, delayed repeatedly by the Covid-19 pandemic, will take place in two parts, online from 11 October, with more detailed discussions left for April’s meeting in Kunming, China. The conference will convene governments from around the world to agree new goals for nature for the next decade, as global biodiversity losses pose a threat to human wellbeing, affecting food, health and security, and increasing the likelihood of pandemics.

Continue reading...

The government should be supporting green jobs for fossil fuel workers, not deepening our dependency on oil and gas

In three weeks’ time world leaders will gather in my hometown of Glasgow to talk about the biggest threat to our future: the climate crisis. We’ve seen an unrecognisable summer of flooding and extreme heat, and as a result people have lost their lives in Europe and around the world. The crisis is very much upon us.

And yet, incredibly, our prime minister, Boris Johnson, is preparing to sign off on a new drilling permit at Cambo oilfield, west of Shetland. If approved, Cambo would produce 170m barrels of oil and would deepen the climate crisis for decades to come. It would be a staggeringly backward move, going against the science and denying us all the green recovery we’ve been promised.

Peter Capaldi is an actor and campaigner

Continue reading...

The Australian state of Queensland will host a giant green energy manufacturing facility to be developed by Fortescue Future Industries (FFI), the subsidiary of iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group (FMG), in a deal announced jointly between FFI and the Queensland government over the weekend.