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Reaching agreement in divisive political landscape shows ‘climate cooperation is alive and kicking’, says UN climate chief
The world is not winning the fight against the climate crisis but it is still in that fight, the UN climate chief has said in Belém, Brazil, after a bitterly contested Cop30 reached a deal.
Countries at Cop30 failed to bring the curtain down on the fossil fuel age amid opposition from some countries led by Saudi Arabia, and they underdelivered on a flagship hope – at a conference held in the Amazon – to chart an end to deforestation.
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Blazes that smoulder in the permafrost, only to reignite, are extending fire season though winter, leaving vegetation struggling to recover
In May 2023, a lightning strike hit the forest in Donnie Creek, British Columbia, and the trees started to burn. It was early in the year for a wildfire, but a dry autumn and warm spring had turned the forest into a tinderbox, and the flames spread rapidly. By mid-June, the fire had become one of largest in the province’s history, burning through an area of boreal forest nearly twice the size of central London. That year, more of Canada burned than ever before.
The return of cold and snow at the close of the year typically signal the end of the wildfire season. But this time, the fire did not stop. Instead, it smouldered in the soil underground, insulated from the freezing conditions by the snowpack. The next spring, it reemerged as a “zombie fire” that continued to burn until August 2024. By then, more than 600,000 hectares (1.5m acres) had been destroyed.
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Conchologists, and citizen scientists team up to seek out endangered mollusc species along River Thames
It is tiny, hairy and “German” – and it could be hiding underneath a piece of driftwood near you. Citizen scientists and expert conchologists are teaming up to conduct the first London-wide search for one of Britain’s most endangered molluscs.
The fingernail-sized German hairy snail (Pseudotrichia rubiginosa) is found in fragmented patches of habitat mostly along the tidal Thames.
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The fingerprints of Russia and Saudi Arabia are all over the decision text in Brazil. But a group of nations led by Colombia and the Netherlands offer hope
The 30th conference of the parties (Cop30), the annual climate summit of all nations party to the UNFCCC, just ended. Stakeholders are out in the media trying spin the outcome as a win. Simon Stiell, climate change executive secretary for the UN is, for instance, praising Cop30 for showing that “climate cooperation is alive and kicking, keeping humanity in the fight for a liveable planet”. But let us be clear. The conference was a failure. Its outcome, the decision text known as the Global Mutirão or Global Collective Effort, is, in essence, a form of climate denial.
In 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) determined that the world had already developed, or planned to develop, too much fossil fuel to be able to halt global heating at 2C. It acknowledged that the capital assets built up around fossil fuels must be stranded – that is to say, abandoned and not used – if warming was to be limited to 2C. But the Cop30 decision text ignores all this. Indeed, it never even mentions fossil fuels.
Genevieve Guenther is the founding director of End Climate Silence, and the author of The Language of Climate Politics
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In western Chad, villagers are desperately trying to hold back the sand as the climate crisis wreaks havoc on one of the hottest countries in the world
On the ochre sands of Kanem, the neat vegetable gardens and silver-green palm trees of Kaou oasis stand out, incongruous in this desert province of 70,000 sq km in western Chad.
Oases such as this, on the edge of the Sahara, have sustained human life in the world’s deserts for thousands of years. Globally, an estimated 150 million people rely on the water, arable land and access to trade networks they provide. But in Chad, such oases are disappearing fast.
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Government panel’s final report calls for ‘radical reset’ of planning and environmental rules to get reactors built faster and cheaper
The UK has become the “most expensive place in the world” to build a nuclear power station because of overly complex bureaucracy and regulation, according to a government review.
The nuclear regulatory taskforce was set up by Keir Starmer in February after the government promised to rip up “archaic rules” and slash regulations to “get Britain building”.
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Cross-party coalition behind proposals hope eco-friendly scheme for million people could begin before end of decade
In the next few years, spades could be in the ground for a city made of wood, in the middle of the largest new nature reserve created in England in decades, with four-bedroom homes on sale for £350,000.
It sounds too good to be true, but a cross-party coalition of campaigners is trying to make a “forest city” to house a million people a reality, with construction commencing by the end of this parliament. It would be the first such project in England since the purpose-built new town of Milton Keynes in the 1960s.
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Alison Gaffney believes her son’s rare leukaemia was caused by dumped toxic waste from the town’s steelworks
Alison Gaffney and Andy Hinde received the devastating news that their 17-month-old son, Fraser, had a rare type of leukaemia in 2018.
Two years of gruelling treatment followed, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy, before a stem cell transplant. Fraser, then aged three, made a “miraculous recovery” from the surgery, before doctors declared the cancer in remission.
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Australia’s largest synchronous condenser begins testing in Victoria, joining an expanding network operators say will reduce the grid’s reliance on fossil fuels
Nestled amid green rolling hills in western Victoria, 150 tonnes of metal has begun spinning to help secure the electricity grid.
Next to the Ararat terminal station and inside a large grey shed, a steel blue “pony motor” turns a massive rotor at 750 revolutions a minute.
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Black soldier fly larvae turn food waste into valuable protein meal and other byproducts – and Australian producers say the industry is about to take off
In the back streets of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, where children play football on vacant dirt blocks beside apartment blocks, a concrete building stands behind a wobbly corrugated iron fence. It seems an unlikely place for an agricultural revolution.
The half-built building is flanked by a 10m-long greenhouse and from it emerges Winnie Wambui. The 24-year-old is an engineering student, business owner and entrepreneur – and her crop is black soldier flies.
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