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There is no doubt we need to stop emitting fossil carbon. But if we fixate on replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and don’t also reduce consumption and energy waste, we risk failure. Michael (Mike) Joy, Senior Researcher; Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Seabirds journey vast distances across the Earth’s seascapes to find food and to breed. This means their biology, particularly their breeding success, can reveal what's happening in our oceans. David Schoeman, Professor of Global-Change Ecology, University of the Sunshine Coast Brian Allan Hoover, Postdoctoral Fellow, Chapman University William Sydeman, Adjunct associate, University of California San Diego Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The California-Quebec Q2 auction settled underneath the secondary market on Thursday as speculators purchased their largest share ever, while the auction set an all-time high and landed on the upper end of market expectations.

EUAs dropped 3.4% to below €52 on Thursday, with carbon weighed down by weaker energy markets and a perceived tailing off of investor buying.

The 27-nation EU’s capitals are on track to ratify by the end of the month a bill that would allow for carbon pricing-generated revenues to pay back the €800 billion COVID-19 recovery fund, with only two countries left to ratify the decision.

Switzerland will soon announce its third bilateral deal under the Paris Agreement’s Article 6 to purchase carbon offsets from Senegal and is undertaking formal and informal discussions with a host of other countries on future arrangements, an official from the European country’s credit procurement agency said Thursday.

The mate is not discouraged. Instead, a ‘separate mini-brain in his tail kicks in and actually speeds up his performance’

When the female praying mantis is mating, she does not bite the head off the male with one swift snip: she chomps into it, like an apple. It appears to have the texture of a honeydew melon.

Her mate has tried to avoid this destiny. The male European mantis “uses his feelers to calm her down”, the BBC narrates. But it is already too late. Although chemicals in his brain have told him to stay away from her, the chemicals in his abdomen were more potent. Once he is decapitated, a “separate mini-brain in his tail kicks in and actually speeds up his performance,” says the BBC. The female, meanwhile, cleans her face “like a cat”, writes Annie Dillard in Pilgrim and Tinker Creek. After watching the video I wished I had been decapitated.

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The most detailed map of dark matter in the Universe is puzzling physicists.

California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) values crossed the $190 mark this week as some pointed to higher fuel demand and state regulator ARB’s revisions to the crude average carbon intensity under the transportation sector programme.

Nature’s financial value must be considered to avoid ‘irreversible’ degradation to biodiversity and land

The world needs to quadruple its annual investment in nature if the climate, biodiversity and land degradation crises are to be tackled by the middle of the century, according to a new UN report.

Investing just 0.1% of global GDP every year in restorative agriculture, forests, pollution management and protected areas to close a $4.1tn (£2.9tn) financial gap by 2050 could avoid the breakdown of natural ecosystem “services” such as clean water, food and flood protection, the report said.

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Online payment processing company Stripe on Wednesday selected six more early-stage CO2 removal (CDR) projects as part of its climate programme, with some of these nascent technologies costing over $2,000 per tonne.

Court and investor defeats over carbon emissions a historic turning point, say campaigners and lawyers

A “cataclysmic day” for three major oil companies in which investors rebelled over climate fears and a court ordered fossil fuel emissions to be slashed has sparked hope among campaigners, investors, lawyers and academics who said the historic decisions marked a turning point in efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

A Dutch court on Wednesday ordered Shell to cut carbon emissions from its oil and gas by 45% by 2030. A tiny activist investor group simultaneously won two places on ExxonMobil’s board and Chevron’s management was defeated when investors voted in favour of forcing the group to cut its carbon emissions.

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Study finds change would shrink emissions by 127m tonnes, helping country meet climate targets

The introduction of a four-day working week with no loss of pay would dramatically reduce the UK’s carbon footprint and help the country meet its binding climate targets, according to a report.

The study found that moving to a four-day week by 2025 would shrink the UK’s emissions by 127m tonnes, a reduction of more than 20% and equivalent to taking the country’s entire private car fleet off the road.

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The Fujian provincial government has issued over 1.7 million forestry-based offsets to boost supply in the local pilot ETS as well as in China’s fledgling voluntary carbon market.

Rising ocean temperatures caused by climate crisis are increasing number of cyclones and intensity of storms, say experts

India’s cyclone season is being made more intense by the rapidly heating Indian Ocean, scientists have warned.

Last week, India was battered by Cyclone Tauktae, an unusually strong cyclone in the Arabian Sea, resulting in widespread disruption. This week, another severe storm, Cyclone Yaas, formed in the Bay of Bengal, leading to more than a million people being evacuated into safe shelters.

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Government agency appears to support introduction of system which uses insecticide US termed an ‘environmental hazard’

The Scottish government appears ready to approve a banned insecticide blamed for destroying bee populations for use in Scottish salmon farms, according to internal documents seen by the Guardian, as MEPs warn of its potentially “devastating” impact on aquatic life.

The insecticide is one of three nicotine-based, or neonicotinoid, chemicals banned by the European Union in 2018 for agricultural use on crops, a decision upheld this month by the EU’s top court, the European court of justice, which rejected an appeal by the Bayer chemical multinational. The ban does not apply to rivers or the sea.

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The court described climate change as 'the greatest inter-generational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next'. Laura Schuijers, Research Fellow in Environmental Law, The University of Melbourne Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Nestlé and UK supermarkets sign open letter calling for G7 nations to show leadership this June

Major packaging producers and environmental charities have called for the G7 summit to agree to a global treaty on plastic to tackle the waste crisis.

Nestlé, one of the largest creators of plastic waste, has joined the supermarkets Aldi, Iceland and the Co-op as signatories in an open letter that supports a binding worldwide treaty to tackle plastic pollution.

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Queensland government reveals the Tarong coal plant would become host of new big battery, as it deals with the fallout of recent coal plant failures.

The post Tarong coal generator to add 150MW big battery in Queensland “battery blitz” appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The much-loved nature programme is broadcasting from a sustainable farming project in west Norfolk.