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Met Office warning over impact of global heating prompts calls for action to protect elderly and vulnerable

Britain is failing to protect its vulnerable citizens from the threat of intensifying heatwaves, health experts warned last week. Thousands of preventable deaths could be triggered every year because simple measures to keep houses and care homes cool have not been implemented.

As global heating worsens and heatwaves become more frequent, the problem is likely to worsen significantly – unless urgent action is taken, they say. Those most likely to suffer include the very young, the elderly and people suffering from chronic conditions such as asthma.

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Campaigners are dismayed that Australian governments are ‘shooting themselves in the foot’ over EV policies

As of last week, Canberrans who buy electric and other zero-emissions vehicles automatically receive two years’ registration for free. The Australian Capital Territory already waives stamp duty for clean cars, and has promised households and not-for-profit organisations interest-free loans of up to $15,000 to buy them.

Also last week, the Victorian parliament passed the country’s first road user charge – a tax on every kilometre driven – for electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids. The Labor state government’s legislation was backed by enough crossbench MPs to pass the upper house despite opposition from the Coalition and Greens. It starts on 1 July.

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British printmaker Sarah Gillespie was drawn to moths because they’re “overlooked and underloved”. Then she found out they’re in catastrophic decline: 50-60 species have become extinct in the past 80 years.

So Gillespie has created a series of mezzotints, on show now at Castle Howard in Yorkshire, to highlight their existential plight. “We have done enormous damage to those we share the Earth with. The work of the artist is to pay attention – to refuse not to notice.”

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Artists are harnessing NFTs to sell their work but ignoring the vast amount of fossil fuels needed to power them

If you happen to count yourself among those appalled by the seemingly unstoppable rise of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, over the past few months, you might be forgiven a little schadenfreude at the recent news that a dispute has broken out over the ownership of Mars House, a digital file that sold in March for $512,000 (£360,000).

Let’s be clear what’s been purchased here. Mars House itself is nothing more than a string of ones and zeroes residing on a server somewhere. But the NFT isn’t even that string. All it is is another such string pointing to that one, certifying that it is the only copy of that precise sequence of ones and zeroes in existence. Put aside, if you can, the obscenity of a purely virtual dwelling selling for half a million dollars. The dispute over Mars House makes plain what should have been obvious all along: NFTs aren’t even capable of guaranteeing the one thing their value is supposedly predicated on, ownership of a unique digital asset.

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Rare flower reappears on Tean after disappearing in the absence of human inhabitants

The tiny island of Tean was once home to a single resident, a modest chapel, diminutive grazed fields and a dwarf pansy smaller than the tip of a pencil.

All these things vanished from the 0.16 sq km Scilly island in the years after it was abandoned by humans seeking larger things.

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Hairdressers from UK and Ireland sign up to initiative to protect environment and power National Grid

Hair cuttings from salons are being used to mop up oil spills and hair bleaches, and dyes are being burned to create energy as part of a scheme to make the hairdressing industry greener.

Over the past 10 months, 550 salons across the UK and Ireland have signed up to the Green Salon Collective (GSC), an initiative that reduces salon waste through recycling and education programmes.

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The solar tower that rises at Sundrop Farms shines like a beacon from above the saltbush landscape.

The post Good taste and food security: How Sundrop used solar to bring tomatoes to the desert appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Campaigners sense turning point as shareholders, boards and The Hague act to force Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell to cut pollution

The world’s patience with the fossil fuel industry is wearing thin. This was the stark message delivered to major international oil companies this week in an unprecedented day of reckoning for their role in the climate crisis.

In a stunning series of defeats for the oil industry, over the course of less than 24 hours, courtrooms and boardrooms turned on the executives at Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron. Shell was ordered by a court in The Hague to go far further to reduce its climate emissions, while shareholder rebellions in the US imposed emissions targets at Chevron and a boardroom overhaul at Exxon.

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A hot-water heat pump can be the cheapest way to heat water at your home or business, with or without rooftop solar.

The post Explainer: Why hot-water heat pumps are great for homes with or without solar PV appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Speculators’ California Carbon Allowance (CCA) length surged to an all-time high over the past week, as emitters held a cumulative net short across the V20-22 contracts for the first time since last spring, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data published Friday.

Scientists have tracked 4,000 years of human influence on the planet - all from long tubes of mud.

An Australian engineer-turned climate activist hosts Coal Miners Driving Teslas, a YouTube and Twitter channel heavily spiced with unbridled swearing

What happens when you take an electric car into a town full of petrolheads and coalminers, and film them planting their steel-capped boots on the accelerator?

“Fuck me … it’s like a rocket ship,” says one miner, who usually spends his time driving V8s or manoeuvring a giant coal scoop.

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EUAs slumped to a one-week low just above €50 on Friday to notch a 1.4% weekly loss, while UKAs also sank as it emerged Britain was considering boosting this year's auction supply.

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 developments in California and Massachusetts.

EU carbon will average €50 for the remainder of this year, analysts predict, with a number of bullish factors leading them to raise their forecasts for both 2021 and 2022.

Heat from industry and warmth from the sea feature in advice to government on future home heating.

Fossil fuel firms are being held responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. That’s a good thing

History was made in the Hague district court this week. Judge Larisa Alwin ruled that Shell, one of the world’s biggest oil companies, must cut its emissions by 45% by 2030 relative to 2019 levels. Until Wednesday, courts in the Netherlands, France and Germany had concentrated on holding governments to their commitments under the Paris climate deal of 2015. States were found guilty of denying basic rights to future citizens, triggering more ambitious climate plans. The landmark Hague ruling shows that corporations can now be ordered to comply with the goals of the Paris agreement.

Governments are supposed to design the regulatory frameworks and put in place the laws so that companies and households steadily reduce their carbon emissions. But this relies on private entities playing their part. If they do not, preferring to hide behind slick PR, the law can step in. The judge accepted the argument that Shell had failed in its duty to respect human rights by failing to adequately curb its role in global heating. Shell’s goals to mitigate its climate impact, the court found, “largely amount to rather intangible, undefined and non-binding plans for the long term”.

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Increased hardship for small farmers as close to a billion pounds wiped off UK’s farming economy in 2020

Farm incomes dropped drastically last year, as poor weather combined with the impact of the pandemic and Brexit-related issues wiped close to a billion pounds off the UK’s farming economy and increased hardship for many small farmers.

Total income from farming, calculated annually by the government, fell from nearly £5.2bn in 2019 to just over £4.1bn in 2020, the lowest value in real terms since 2007.

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The Nova Scotia government is mulling its options for post-2022 carbon pricing, according to a discussion paper released Thursday, suggesting the Canadian province could choose an alternative to its cap-and-trade scheme going forward.