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Host uses Indigenous concepts and changes agenda to help delegates agree on ways to meet existing climate goals
Shipping containers, cruise ships, river boats, schools and even army barracks have been pressed into service as accommodation for the 50,000 plus people descending on the Amazon: this year’s Cop30 climate summit is going to be, in many ways, an unconventional one.
Located in Belém, a small city at the mouth of the Amazon river, the Brazilian hosts have been criticised for the exorbitant cost of scarce hotel rooms and hastily vacated apartments. Many delegations have slimmed down their presence, while business leaders have decamped to hold their own events in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
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Energy firms and charities urge chancellor to avoid short-term fix that could also harm low-income households
Rachel Reeves has been told that cutting funding for home insulation at the budget would risk the UK’s climate goals and hurt low-income households in a joint intervention by energy firms, fuel poverty charities and environmental groups.
In a letter to the chancellor, more than 60 groups and companies urged Reeves not to take such a damaging “short-term fix” to slash funding for more energy-efficient homes to pay for a reduction in energy bills.
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Government and water companies are devising emergency plans for worst water shortage in decades
Water companies and the government are drawing up emergency plans for a drought next year more extreme than we have seen in decades.
Executives at one major water company told the Guardian they were extremely concerned about the prospect of a winter with lower than average rainfall, which the Met Office’s long-term forecast says is likely. They said if this happened, the water shortfall would mean taking drastic water use curtailment measures “going beyond hosepipe bans”.
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Exclusive: Just Stop Oil activist was banned from attending gatherings, including meeting a friend in a cafe, without permission
Environmental protesters are being given licence conditions on release from jail that are supposed to be limited to extremism cases.
Ella Ward, 22, was banned from going to any meetings or gatherings, except for worship, without permission from her probation officer, although the Ministry of Justice dropped the condition after she brought a legal challenge.
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Bridport, Dorset: The appropriately named Dorset Horns are perfectly content to have lambs in cooler months, thanks to an obscure genetic quirk
Chubby lambs gambolling over green grass – surely that’s a scene which belongs to spring? But here they are, leaping and bouncing on a sunny hilltop in November.
Autumn lambs have been a familiar part of country life in these parts for hundreds of years. As far back as the 17th century, sheep from west Dorset and south Somerset were renowned for their ability to lamb out of season, due to a genetic quirk which somehow arose in the region. With careful planning, healthy ewes could have three pregnancies in 24 months.
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Money talks – and his essay denouncing ‘near-term emissions goals’ at Cop30 mostly argues the case for letting the ultra-rich off the hook
Let’s begin with the fundamental problem: Bill Gates is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about political realities. His latest essay on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He writes as if there were no such thing as political power, and no such thing as billionaires.
His main contention is that funds are very limited, so the delegates at this month’s climate summit in Brazil should direct money away from “near-term emissions goals” towards climate “adaptation” and spending on poverty and disease.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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As amphibian enthusiasts get ready to hop into FrogID Week, hope persists that one of Australia’s most bizarre creatures may survive
It’s a story almost too preposterous to believe, starring a group of young uni students, an infamous state premier, a legendary Australian poet and an extinct frog which gave birth by vomiting its young – all at the dawn of the Australian conservation movement.
Yet the tale of the southern gastric-brooding frog, which once inhabited the rainforest streams of the Conondale and Blackall ranges in south-east Queensland, continues to perplex and inspire a new generation of citizen scientists as they hop into FrogID Week.
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Brazil’s president welcomes world leaders while navigating divided government, promising action on deforestation and emissions
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has welcomed world leaders to Belém for the first climate summit in the Amazon, where conservationists hope he can be a champion for the rainforest and its people.
But with a divided administration, a hostile Congress and 20th-century developmentalist instincts, this global figurehead of the centre left has a balancing act to perform in advocating protection of nature and a reduction of emissions.
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Banking is an unavoidable fact of modern life, but where you choose to put your money can make a difference
Banks have differing commitments and targets when it comes to climate change and environmental issues, providing financing and loans for industries varying from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
In Australia, some banks and super funds have been linked to mass deforestation and fossil fuel investments, while others have been criticised for their investments in nuclear weapons manufacturers.
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Damage from Typhoon Halong underscored the vulnerability of villages in western Alaska to climate crisis
Darrel John watched the final evacuees depart his village on the western coast of Alaska in helicopters and small planes and walked home, avoiding the debris piled on the boardwalks over the swampy land.
He is one of seven residents who chose to remain in Kwigillingok after the remnants of Typhoon Halong devastated the village last month, uprooting homes and floating many of them miles away, some with residents inside. One person was killed and two remain missing.
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