Around The Web

he American Forest Foundation (AFF) seeks a highly motivated candidate to join the Family Forest Carbon Program (FFCP) Team. Individuals and families own 36% of America’s forests – more than any other ownership group – and are critical to unlocking U.S. forests as a Natural Climate Solution.  Were 20% of these lands to implement management activities that improved carbon sequestration and storage by 2030, an additional 2 gigatons of CO2e would be sequestered and stored over the balance of the century.

UK-headquartered low-cost leisure airline Jet2 has launched what it calls “one of the world’s largest” aviation offset programmes, neutralising all emissions not already covered by compliance schemes.

EU nations should face penalties for every tonne of emissions exceeded in non-ETS sectors based on prices in the bloc’s carbon market, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing draft plans set out by the lawmaker steering scrutiny of the revised Effort-Sharing Regulation (ESR).

Speculators significantly increased their California Carbon Allowance (CCA) holding this week as prices dove, while compliance entities modestly decreased their net short position, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data published Friday.

Quebec’s initial free allowance distribution for 2022 slightly regressed from the previous year, even as the number of industrial cap-and-trade emitters receiving allocation increased, according to data published by the province’s environmental ministry.

A summary of legislative and regulatory action on carbon pricing, clean fuel standards, and clean energy at the US subnational and federal level this week, including a market-based climate policy in New Mexico.

Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Paraguay are reeling from a historic heatwave with temperatures as high as 113F

Cities and towns across southern South America have been setting record high temperatures as the region swelters during a historic heatwave.

“Practically all of Argentina and also neighboring countries such as Uruguay, southern Brazil and Paraguay are experiencing the hottest days in history,” said Cindy Fernández, meteorologist at the official National Meteorological Service.

Continue reading...

President Joe Biden announced his nominations for three top Federal Reserve officials on Friday, advancing climate change considerations into the central bank’s influence over the financial sector.

Miami-Dade police department has shared body cam footage of one of their officers rescuing a juvenile dolphin that was tangled in a fishing net off the coast of Miami, Florida. The footage shows how officer Nelson Silva used a knife to cut the net and free the animal. The rescue took place on 10 December

• Companies race to stem flood of microplastic fibres into the oceans
  
• Plastic beads could make nets more visible to cetaceans, scientists say
  

Continue reading...

Credit generators under the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) called on regulator ARB to strengthen carbon intensity (CI) reduction targets for the programme, while refiners said a long-term market signal was important but declined to provide specific goals, according to public comments.

Dare we speak of the other crisis the government is failing us on?

Continue reading...

Advise people not to drive or light wood burners rather than imposing restrictions on vulnerable, campaigners say

Campaigners have called on the government to urge people not to drive or light wood-burning stoves during toxic air peaks rather than telling the vulnerable not to exercise or go outside.

London suffered its worst air pollution since 2018 on Friday, when experts predicted it would reach “band 10”, the highest level on the scale.

Continue reading...

Analysts predict that a reduction in French nuclear output flagged by utility EDF for 2022 will lead to a net rise of around 20 million tonnes of EU CO2 emissions, spurring additional demand for EUAs from the additional gas and coal burn and putting the carbon market on notice for future announcements.

David Attenborough’s new series takes aim at plant blindness, providing a vital service in the fight against global warming

The term “plant blindness” was coined in 1998 to describe our general tendency, as humans, not to see the plant life that surrounds us. The problem has understandable roots: the human brain evolved to detect difference, and then to categorise that difference as either threat or non-threat. Plants, being unlikely to attack, are lumped together and treated as background, a green screen against which dramas take place. Many plants, and especially trees, exist on a different timescale to humans – who, moreover, have spent millennia dividing existence into conscious beings and things, where the former are afforded automatic importance over the latter. Combined with the general move to cities, and then to screen-based life indoors, this has resulted in, for example, up to half of British children being unable to identify stinging nettles, brambles or bluebells; 82% of those questioned could not recognise an oak leaf.

We become more emotionally involved in what we can comprehend. Plants, as David Attenborough reminds us in his new BBC series, The Green Planet, “are the basis of all life, including ourselves”. And yet the beauty and power – and scope for anthropomorphism – of the polar bear, the snow leopard, the orangutan mean many more will campaign to save them than, say, crested cow-wheat.

Continue reading...

This role is a key contributor to Shell’s global carbon market analysis with a focus on offering comprehensive and regular fundamental analysis and forecasting of the global carbon offset market. The analyst will be responsible for bringing all the internally derived Supply, Demand, Infrastructure views together and modelling those key drivers through custom In-house and external models to derive the short to medium term market forecasts across all the regions and products in the carbon offset markets.

The EU lawmaker steering ETS reform is working on measures to prevent carbon market "manipulation", he said on Friday, vowing to ensure such steps don't punish companies with emissions obligations.

Canadian research on astronauts' red blood cells while in space could help knowledge of anaemia.

British Sugar has applied for ban exemption despite chemicals damaging bees’ ability to forage and navigate

The government has ignored the advice of its scientific advisers to allow sugar beet farmers to deploy a banned bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticide in 2022.

British Sugar has successfully applied for an exemption to permit the banned pesticide, known as Cruiser SB, to be used in England this year because of the threat to sugar beet posed by a virus transmitted by aphids.

Continue reading...

Jury decision over 2019 action is the latest acquittal involving a high-profile protest

Three activists who targeted London’s public transport network to raise the alarm about the escalating climate crisis have been acquitted by a jury.

The three Extinction Rebellion campaigners disrupted rush hour services for more than an hour in east London in 2019, with two of them climbing on top of the train and a third gluing himself to one of the carriages.

Continue reading...

Third Energy now has ‘absolutely no interest in fossil gas’ and is targeting renewable energy

A high-profile UK fracking company has been taken over by a green energy group and now has an anti-fracking campaigner as a director.

Yorkshire-based Third Energy was at the forefront of efforts to produce fossil gas and intended to use high-pressure fluids to fracture shale rocks under the county. But it was hampered by permit delays and fierce local opposition.

Continue reading...