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The joy of buying a dress to keep isn’t satisfied by renting, which can be just as compulsive

My relationship with fashion is that of a long-term couple who frequently argue at a pitch that worries the neighbours. It contains passion, guilt, sorrow and frequent spot-cleaning.

I still enjoy the vinegar perfume of glossy magazines and even (as I peer at the price of a coat or boot) the familiar internal screech. I still enjoy a leisurely stroll around the shops, gently fingering a silky sleeve, noting the newer skirt length or ugly shoe index. At its best, getting dressed is an existential pleasure akin to the jolt upon meeting a stranger’s eye across a crowded room; at its worst, like lowering oneself into a cold bath of beans without a single name on your sponsor sheet. I love my clothes, each thing embedded with the sweat of memory, each old dress a welcome surprise.

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The UK automotive industry will need a large local supply of battery capacity. If it does not get it, it could shrink quickly

The end of the internal combustion engine was one of the goals identified by Boris Johnson before Cop26.

The climate summit in Glasgow has delivered in part – some manufacturers and a few big countries said last week they would end sales of fossil fuel cars by 2040. Neither Volkswagen nor Toyota, the world’s two biggest carmakers, signed up, because of concerns over electric charger availability in poorer countries, but nevertheless the path is clear. Petrol and diesel are on their way out. Battery electric cars are on the way in.

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Watered-down coal pledge and climate financing shortcomings temper optimism over Glasgow deal

World leaders and environmental experts have broadly welcomed a UN climate deal that for the first time targeted fossil fuels as the key driver of global warming, while some criticised the agreement for not going far enough.

While the agreement won applause for keeping alive the hope of capping global warming at 1.5C, many of the nearly 200 national delegations wished they had come away with more.

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The "Glasgow Pact" receives mixed reviews; praise for delivering a turning point for coal, while failing to bridge the gap ambition to 1.5 degrees.

The post COP26 Wrap: Australian and global reactions to the ‘Glasgow Climate Pact’ appeared first on RenewEconomy.

If Australia wants to stop being seen as a climate ‘wrecker’ it needs to increase its 2030 emissions target, phase down coal power and cut fossil fuel subsidies. Will it?

• Greg Hunt refuses to say if government will update 2030 emissions target
• ‘Still on the road to hell’: what the British papers say about Cop26
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The Glasgow climate pact is not enough to solve the climate crisis but it includes steps that could help bridge the gap between rhetoric and action.

What does it mean for Australia? Here are five key questions the Morrison government must now answer.

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The 'Glasgow Pact' keeps spotlight on countries going slow on climate action, despite a last-ditch attempt to weaken a call for the end of coal power.

The post ‘Glasgow Pact’ keeps pressure on climate laggards like Australia, even after watering it down appeared first on RenewEconomy.

As the climate summit in Glasgow wrapped up with a last-minute deal, the front pages of Britain’s papers told very different stories

After days of painful wrangling, the Cop26 summit finally delivered a watered-down climate deal on Saturday night. While some activists were firmly unimpressed with the result, Sunday’s papers delivered verdicts ranging from “Still on the road to hell” to a more sanguine “Climate deal for the world”.

The story found its way on to most front pages. The Observer splashed on Boris Johnson offering to help Jennifer Arcuri’s business, with a smaller story on Cop26 reporting that a deal had been struck after last-minute drama.

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Below is a summary of Carbon Pulse's coverage of COP26, including the daily roundups of various announcements and developments during the two-week summit.

Here are selected expert reactions to the Glasgow Climate Pact, which was concluded at the UN COP26 summit late Saturday, as well as a summary of the major announcements made during the two-week talks.

The sale of traditional vehicles would have to cease completely by 2038 to reach the government’s target. So where’s the plan to get there? John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Countries still lack the radical ambition to avert disaster – this accord goes nowhere near far enough

On Glasgow Green, there lies a stone that commemorates the spot where the engineer James Watt in 1765 conceived the idea for a separate condenser for the steam engine. It is Watt’s invention, which revolutionised the efficiency of the steam engine, that means Glasgow can lay claim to be the place from which the Industrial Revolution sprang.

Just over a quarter of a millennium later, delegates from all over the world meeting in the same city have agreed the text of a critical international agreement to try to bind countries into the action required to slow the catastrophic global heating that the Industrial Revolution set in train.

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Invasive species that wreaks havoc on land found on vessel after trip from Indian Key to Marco Island

A python sneaked aboard a sailboat in the Florida Keys and lurked undetected until the boat finished a near-100-mile voyage, police said.

The crew found the 7ft snake in the boat’s shower after docking on Friday at Marco Island, on the south-west Florida Gulf coast, after a trip from Indian Key, a distance of about 95 miles around the southern tip of the state.

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Critically endangered North Atlantic right whales are dying in alarming numbers after getting caught in lobster trap ropes

A fierce fight is being waged in the Gulf of Maine between lobster fishers desperate to maintain their way of life and conservationists who argue that the waters are a vital haven for the threatened North Atlantic right whale.

Last month, a federal judge in Maine rejected a federal ban on lobstering in a section of the Gulf of Maine that is meant to protect the whales.

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UN climate talks closed late Saturday by tasking nearly 200 nations to revise their emissions pledges within a year to “keep alive” the Paris Agreement's 1.5C global warming goal, but the deal failed to commit to a faster coal phaseout.

New global climate deal agreed at COP26 in Glasgow after last-minute wrangling over agreement on cutting coal

Glasgow Climate Pact adopted despite last-minute intervention by India to water down language on phasing out dirtiest fossil fuel

• Cop26: the goal of 1.5C of climate heating is alive, but only just

Countries have agreed a deal on the climate crisis that its backers say will keep within reach the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C, the key threshold of safety set out in the 2015 Paris agreement.

Alok Sharma, the UK cabinet minister and Cop president, said the deal was “imperfect” but showed “consensus and support”. He said: “I hope we can leave this conference united having delivered something significant for people and planet together as one.”

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Countries who take this crisis seriously must seize the initiative, and make the rest pariahs

Where now? Governments have agreed a weak climate deal which gets us a smidgen closer to holding temperatures to a rise of 1.5C. But as regards all the most important pledges to phase out coal, reduce subsidies and protect forests, Glasgow failed.

The fossil fuel lobby, led by India, held its line, dramatically succeeding in watering down – at the last minute and without due, transparent process – the move to ‘phase out’ coal power, pledging instead to ‘phase down’. The poor came away with next to nothing, there was little urgency and we are still heading for catastrophe. Any chance of halving fast-rising emissions by 2030 – the declared aim of the talks – is now negligible.

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At least 1,000 long-flowered mistletoe seeds, a key breeding source for the species, will be planted into host trees in the Tomalpin Woodlands

So few of Australia’s regent honeyeaters remain, its distinctive mating song is slowly being lost to its dwindling population.

Its staccato burst of pips and squeaks, a “funny sort of call”, was passed down to young males from “uncles” when honeyeaters, a nomadic species, still travelled in flocks.

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At a time when international travel has been mostly out of reach, BirdLife Australia is turning the spotlight on some of the country’s mightiest and most threatened migratory birds in its 2022 calendar

• BirdLife Australia’s Birds on the Move 2022 calendar is available for A$19.95.

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Demonstrators say Cop26 talks failed and call on City banks to stop funding fossil fuel projects

Police arrested Extinction Rebellion protesters who blocked the lord mayor’s show in central London on Saturday.

Footage shared on social media showed officers dragging demonstrators out of the road after they disrupted the procession. Environmental activists could be seen blocking the route in the City of London, while forcing riders on horseback and the new lord mayor’s golden state coach to stop.

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