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Fossil fuel and petrochemical campaigners at Ottawa summit outnumber scientists, EU and Indigenous delegates
The number of fossil fuel and petrochemical industry lobbyists has increased by more than a third at UN talks to agree the first global treaty to cut plastic pollution, analysis shows.
Most plastic is made from fossil fuels via a chemical process known as cracking, and 196 lobbyists from both industries are at the UN talks in Ottawa, Canada, where countries are attempting to come to an agreement to curb plastic production as part of a treaty to cut global plastic waste, according to analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law (Ciel).
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Illnesses such as dengue and malaria to reach unaffected parts of northern Europe, America, Asia and Australia, conference to hear
Mosquito-borne diseases are spreading across the globe, and particularly in Europe, due to climate breakdown, an expert has said.
The insects spread illnesses such as malaria and dengue fever, the prevalences of which have hugely increased over the past 80 years as global heating has given them the warmer, more humid conditions they thrive in.
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Scheme for plastic bottles and cans put back to 2027 while environment minister says glass recycling ‘unduly’ complex
A UK deposit return scheme for recycling drinks bottles has been delayed to 2027, meaning it will not be in place until almost a decade after it was proposed.
Campaigners say the delay is a “huge disappointment”, adding they are doubly dismayed that the plan will not include glass bottles.
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As the climate crisis has deepened, protesters have become more confrontational – and their ambitions have grown
The head of ExxonMobil told to “eat shit” as he was about to receive an award. A US senator and coal boss called a “sick fuck”, almost sparking a brawl. Theatre shows interrupted. As the climate crisis has deepened, protests aimed at those deemed responsible are becoming starkly personal, and often confrontational.
At the vanguard of this new style of in-your-face activism is Climate Defiance, a group of just a handful of core staffers now marking its first birthday following a year of disrupting, often crudely, the usually mundane procession of talks, speeches and panels that feature Joe Biden administration officials, oil company bosses and financiers.
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Energy watchdog warns pace must accelerate to hit targets after new batteries increased capacity by 130%
The rollout of batteries across the global electricity industry more than doubled last year but will need to be six times faster if the world hopes to meet its renewable energy targets, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
A report from the global energy watchdog found that new batteries totalling 42 gigawatts (GW) were plugged into electricity systems around the world last year, increasing total capacity by more than 130% from the year before to 85GW.
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Green Finance Institute report said further pollution could cut 12% off GDP by 2030s
The destruction of nature over the rest of the decade could trigger a bigger economic slump in Britain than those caused by the 2008 global financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, experts have warned.
Sounding the alarm over the rising financial cost from pollution, damage to water systems, soil erosion, and threats from disease, the report by the Green Finance Institute warned that further breakdown in the UK’s natural environment could lead to a 12% loss of gross domestic product (GDP) by the 2030s.
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Years after the emergency, the Michigan city is yet to replace all lead pipes and affected families are still awaiting justice
Earlier this month, Brittany Thomas received a call that her 11-year-old daughter Janiyah had experienced a seizure at school.
“She’d been seizure-free for about two years now,” said Thomas, a resident of Flint, Michigan. “And they just came back.”
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Researchers in the Netherlands find climate change is increasing vulnerability of some species
Climate change is causing apparently healthy trees to die after periods of heat and drought. Many may not die immediately but repeated periods of hot weather seem to increase the vulnerability of some species more than others.
Researchers studied 20 species of conifers planted 100 years ago in the same place in the Netherlands, taking tree ring samples to see how they did in droughts between 1970 and 2013. From the distance between the rings it is possible to tell how much each species’ growth was affected.
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The divestment movement has a long history among US student activists, including in the overlapping movements of today
Cameron Jones first learned about fossil fuel divestment as a 15-year-old climate organizer. When he enrolled at Columbia University in 2022, he joined the campus’s chapter of the youth-led climate justice group the Sunrise Movement and began pushing the school in New York to sever financial ties with coal, oil and gas companies.
“The time for institutions like Columbia to be in the pocket of fossil fuel corporations has passed,” Jones wrote in an October 2023 op-ed in the student newspaper directed toward the Columbia president, Minouche Shafik.
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Study reveals repurposing of ecologically vital land for homes or agriculture is happening particularly rapidly in Asia
Estuaries – the place where a river meets the ocean – are often called the “nurseries of the sea”. They are home to many of the fish we eat and support vast numbers of birds, while the surrounding salt marsh helps to stabilise shorelines and absorb floods.
However, a new study shows that nearly half of the world’s estuaries have been altered by humans, and 20% of this estuary loss has occurred in the past 35 years.
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