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Leading researchers say the UN biodiversity summit is ‘vastly more important’ than the recent Cop27 climate meeting

The “fate of the entire living world” will be determined at the Cop15 UN biodiversity summit, according to leading scientists.

They said the gathering of the world’s nations, which began on Wednesday in Montreal, is “vastly more important than Cop27”, the recent high-profile UN climate meeting. “We say this because of the many dimensions of anthropogenic global change … the most critical, complex and challenging is that of biodiversity loss,” the researchers said.

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Locals desperate for lower bills, jobs and economic revival have been seduced by this plan, but they – and we – will suffer

Today, the government has thrown its weight behind a climate-busting, backward-looking coalmine in Cumbria. The staggering hypocrisy of demanding other countries phase down coal, just when we’re phasing it back in again, sends a truly terrible message to global south countries and marks this decision as a climate crime against humanity.

Given this, you’d be forgiven for wondering why a new coalmine appears to have garnered local support. Areas such as Whitehaven in west Cumbria have been told it will “level up” the community – bringing lower bills, more jobs and economic revival to areas that have severely lacked all three for generations. So when a private coal company turned up, the community, understandably nostalgic for its more prosperous past, bit their arm off.

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The Argentinian province of Cordoba sold out of all the limited carbon credit volume on offer at the government’s pilot auction last week, a media outlet reported Tuesday.

Michael Gove greenlights £165m project that will produce estimated 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year

The UK will build its first new coalmine for three decades at Whitehaven in Cumbria, despite objections locally, across the UK and from around the world.

Michael Gove, the levelling-up secretary, gave the green light for the project on Wednesday, paving the way for an estimated investment of £165m that will create about 500 new jobs in the region and produce 2.8m tonnes of coking coal a year, largely for steelmaking.

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A greater-than-expected slump in EU power and gas consumption so far in Q4 is raising the prospect that parts of European heavy industry will never fully recover from the current extreme energy price environment, presenting a longer-term risk for carbon allowance demand.

Genetic material extracted from soil has revealed the ancient plants and animals of North Greenland.

As the government uses draconian laws to crack down on individuals, we must find new ways to protest and keep the public on side

The battle between climate protesters and the government is raging, and most people know who is in the right. The people trying to sound the alarm about the climate crisis are closer to mainstream opinion than those enabling fossil fuel corporations to make almost $3bn a day in profit while the planet burns.

Many in the government probably know it too, but to openly confront that reality would mean doing the unthinkable: pointing to corporate short-termism as the source of the crisis.

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Star Trek prepared me to feel a connection with the universe. Instead, I felt terrible grief for our planet. At Cop15, our leaders must negotiate to protect it

Last year, at the age of 90, I had a life-changing experience. I went to space, after decades of playing a science-fiction character who was exploring the universe and building connections with many diverse life forms and cultures. I thought I would experience a similar feeling: a feeling of deep connection with the immensity around us, a deep call for endless exploration. A call to indeed boldly go where no one had gone before.

I was absolutely wrong. As I explained in my latest book, what I felt was totally different. I knew that many before me had experienced a greater sense of care while contemplating our planet from above, because they were struck by the apparent fragility of this suspended blue marble. I felt that too. But the strongest feeling, dominating everything else by far, was the deepest grief that I had ever experienced.

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The Taskforce on Nature Markets, supported by consultancy McKinsey's Vivid Economics, released Wednesday a report that outlines how the world could utilise nature markets to curb biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, valuing multiple established and nascent markets at almost $10 trillion per year in total.

A significantly below-market auction dragged EUA futures lower on Wednesday morning as prices slumped 1.2%, though higher energy prices reacting to colder weather forecasts offered some support.

EU co-legislators have struck a provisional political deal in the early hours of Wednesday that would have flights within the bloc paying for all their CO2 emissions from 2026.

The push for a ‘nature positive economy’ through initiatives such as biodiversity credit trading risks is doomed to be an environmental failure and should be stopped, according to an EU-based green finance group.

Pressure is increasing on world leaders to make progress at the UN biodiversity summit – but the pile of unfinished tasks is mounting

All procrastinators know the feeling: an enormous task is not close to being finished, time is slipping away and the pressure to act has become impossible to ignore. But despite the mounting unease, there is still not yet enough pressure to take action, and it is unclear if there ever will be.

At the Palais des congrès de Montréal convention centre at Cop15, after more than two years of delays, there is a sense that governments tasked with agreeing this decade’s targets for protecting life on Earth are in just such a situation.

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Fighting the climate emergency is only one side of the story. Science tells us we must tackle the biodiversity crisis at the same time as addressing global heating to save the planet from further catastrophe.

Both crises centre on carbon. Burning carbon in the form of fossil fuels has led to global heating, and that needs to stop, but biodiversity – nature – is also built on carbon and it can be part of the solution. 

The Age of Extinction reporter Phoebe Weston explains how the Cop15  summit in Montreal  is a once in a decade chance to stop the loss of biodiversity and bend the curve to help save Earth.

• What is Cop15 and why does it matter for all life on Earth?
• Making sense of Cop15: what to look out for in Montreal
  

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A global biodiversity credit market could be based around a framework for determining biodiversity carrying capacity (BCC) and rules for who is able to trade various credit types, according to Paris-based consultants Carbone 4.

Concerns surrounding eligible methodologies for China's voluntary market continue to distress project developers, though the long-awaited relaunch of the country's national offset programme could be only months away, experts told Carbon Pulse.

Number of species on red list in the country doubled in last 20 years

The number of bird species seriously threatened in Wales has doubled in the last 20 years, with the rook, swift and greenfinch added to the red list.

A report from a coalition of conservation groups places 60 species on the red list, accounting for a quarter of the species in Wales – more than ever before.

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A group of international partners has launched an open-source metadata system to share information about carbon credits that aims to improve transparency for carbon markets, they announced on Wednesday.

Capacity factors for coal and gas fell below wind, solar and even rooftop PV in the month of November in the world's biggest isolated grid.

The post Capacity factors of wind, solar and rooftop PV beat coal and gas in world’s biggest isolated grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.

South Korean emitters covered under its domestic emissions trading scheme are concerned that its allocation plan will align with its 2030 NDC from 2026, providing limited time to cut emissions sufficiently to meet the national target, according to a market expert.