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UN secretary general urges opening session in Brazil to bring about a ‘fundamental paradigm shift’
The failure to limit global heating to 1.5C is a “moral failure and deadly negligence”, the UN secretary general has said at the opening session of the Cop30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.
António Guterres said even a temporary overshoot could “unleash far greater destruction and costs for every nation. It could push ecosystems past catastrophic and irreversible tipping points, expose billions to unliveable conditions, and amplify threats to peace and security”.
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Winds of Melissa’s strength are now five times more frequent due to the climate crisis, research says
Every aspect of Hurricane Melissa, the most powerful storm ever to hit Jamaica, was worsened by the climate crisis, a team of scientists has found.
Melissa caused widespread devastation when it crunched into Jamaica as a category five hurricane on October 28, with winds up up to 185mph.
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PM defies critics calling for a slowdown as he flies to Brazil, where he may have frosty reception after opting out of tropical forest fund
The UK will lead on tackling the climate crisis, the prime minister vowed on Wednesday, despite critics calling for a slowdown, because shifting to a low-carbon economy will cut bills, boost economic growth and bring national renewal.
But his words risked being overshadowed by a bitter row over funding for tropical forest preservation at the UN Cop30 climate conference.
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Decision is bitter blow to Brazil ahead of fund’s launch at Cop30 – and an embarrassment to Prince William
The UK will not contribute to a flagship fund for the world’s remaining tropical forests, in a bitter blow to the Brazilian hosts on the eve of the Cop30 climate summit.
Keir Starmer flew to Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, on Wednesday to join the summit of world leaders hosted by Brazil’s president, Lula da Silva.
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ASA action won approval of clean air campaigners, who said some ‘seriously misleading myths’ had been debunked
Adverts claiming that wood-burning stoves are “very low emissions” have been banned by the Advertising Standards Agency for being misleading and not substantiated.
The claims were made on the website of the Stove Industry Association, which represents the makers and sellers of stoves in the UK. Campaigners against air pollution said they were glad the ASA had debunked some “seriously misleading myths”.
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After it was found most offsets did not represent real carbon reductions, the money dried up. But successful schemes such as Kasigau in Kenya now face a stark future
Solomon Morris Makau checks the fallen tree for snakes before he wraps a tape measure around the trunk. The early morning sun is overwhelming in the dryland forests of the Kasigau corridor, which separates the east and west Tsavo national parks in southern Kenya. Two guards keep watch for elephants and lions. There is little sign of green among the sprawling acacias, which stand silently in their punishing wait for the end of the dry season. Despite the threat from puff adders, Makau and his team have a job to do: measure the trees and shrubs in this 50 sq metre area to calculate their growth and change in carbon stock.
“This one is lying dead,” says Makau, of one of the trees pushed over by elephants – but tens of thousands around it are still alive, stretching out in the distance as far as the eye can see.
Solomon Morris Makau, right, leads a team of environmental technicians in gathering bio data from natural vegetation
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Cwmtydu, Ceredigion: The tree has been laid low by dieback, but the treasures nearby bring to mind miniature brains, the smell of leather and bread-and-butter pudding
As I reach the top of the cliff, a lone raven soughs south on an errand, flying at head height. In the bronze and iron ages, headlands like Castell Bach and Ynys Lochtyn in Ceredigion were used as summer camps for festivals and coastal foraging. This holiday season is drawing to a close as I scramble off the Wales Coast Path on to Banc Pen y Parc to visit a favourite tree.
Even though it should be wizened by the prevailing westerlies and dieback – which is rampant in this valley – this huge ash hasn’t lost its ambition. I pace out its dimensions: 18 yards (16 metres) for the trunk, 23 yards for the crown. Its lichened trunk grows horizontally, leaning on its elbow, so I can perch in branches that should be inaccessible. It kicks in the wind like a boat in water, while goldcrests fuss in the gorse.
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Liberal MPs are convinced the commitment will be ‘dead’ after next week’s party meeting, saying populist right’s ‘pathological hatred of the environment’ dashed hopes of compromise
By the time Liberal MPs filed out of last Friday’s meeting on energy policy, many had accepted the party’s promise to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 – made under Scott Morrison and retained by Peter Dutton – was all but dead.
But there was a similar expectation that the party would remain loosely committed to carbon neutrality at some fixed point in time, even if not by mid-century.
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According to folklore, the weather on St Martin’s Day is a glimpse of the winter ahead and geese are said to sense it first
St Martin’s Day, 11 November, is associated with feasting and the beginning of preparations for winter. Like St Swithin’s Day, Martinmas was believed to indicate the weather ahead.
Saint Martin, who is understood to have lived in fourth-century France, was associated with geese, having supposedly hidden in a goose pen to avoid being made bishop, only to be given away by their honking. Weather predictions from his day tend to have a flavour of goose.
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Eucalyptus production is dominated by large multinationals that convert farmland and forest into monoculture plantations
Razor-straight rows of eucalyptus clones flank the Baixa Verde settlement in north-eastern Brazil. The genetically identical trees are in marked contrast to the patches of wild Atlantic forest – one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth – that remain scattered across the region.
Surrounded by nearly 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of eucalyptus plantations, Baixa Verde is a rare example of a local victory over a multinational in Brazil. The rural settlement owes its existence to nearly two decades of legal battles over land rights – but the fight is not over yet.
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