Feed aggregator

Rising speculative demand helped push the California-Quebec Q3 auction settlement to a new all-time high while regulated entities took home their smallest share ever, as the quarterly sale bucked past trends to settle at a premium to the secondary market price, according to results published Wednesday.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) announced the first transaction of verified emissions reductions (VERs) from a forest project on US state-owned lands on Wednesday, with an energy company agreeing to purchase all of the voluntary carbon offsets generated over the initial decade.

‘Eco-friendly’ lights found to be worse than sodium ones – but both contribute to insect decline, says study

“Eco-friendly” LED streetlights produce even worse light pollution for insects than the traditional sodium bulbs they are replacing, a study has found.

The abundance of moth caterpillars in hedgerows by rural roads in England was 52% lower under LED lights and 41% lower under sodium lights when compared with nearby unlit areas.

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Extinction Rebellion protesters have blocked Oxford Circus in London, the site of one of its most famous occupations, as women took the lead on the third day of its latest campaign of UK protest.

Police charged into the road to seize the group's structure and were then surrounded by female protesters. Women who spoke to the Guardian claimed officers trampled them as they rushed to secure their cordon

• Extinction Rebellion protesters block Oxford Circus in London

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From crowd favourites to more unusual picks, these are the birds Australians are flocking to nominate

• Bird of the year: nominate your favourite for the shortlist
• Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing

Budding birders are flocking to nominate their favourite feathered friends for Guardian/BirdLife Australia’s 2021 Bird of the Year.

“I find this groundswell and outpouring of love for our birds really heartwarming,” says Sean Dooley from BirdLife Australia.

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The developer behind a California-registered offset project in Idaho is following in the footsteps of numerous other dairy digesters in seeking to transition the project to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), according to documents published by state regulator ARB.

"The window of opportunity" for crucial studies into how the Covid-19 pandemic started is closing, scientists say.

Trading house Hartree Partners and offset project developer ecosecurities announced a multi-decade initiative on Wednesday that will yield more than 300 million forestry and agriculture-based carbon credits in the cone of South America.

Temperatures in Europe in 2020 broke the previous high mark by a worrying margin say scientists.

Female activists claim police officers trampled them as they rushed to secure cordon

Extinction Rebellion protesters have blocked Oxford Circus in London, the site of one of its most famous occupations, as women took the lead on the third day of its latest campaign of UK protest.

Just before 2pm, protesters swarmed into the middle of the intersection between Regent Street and Oxford Street, London’s busiest shopping district, and erected a pink structure and sound system.

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Statement calling for significant cut in antimicrobial drug usage is ‘real missed opportunity’, say critics

Animal health experts and UN leaders have called for a significant reduction in antimicrobial drug usage in food animals, which is already causing a “silent pandemic”.

But critics say the statement is “a real missed opportunity”, pointing to its failure to set reduction targets or even call for a ban on the use of antibiotics for animal growth promotion.

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Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and Environment (MoE) ministries have signed off on separate interim plans for a carbon pricing mechanism, with the former’s proposal based around a voluntary baseline-and-crediting scheme as well as access to offsets generated home and abroad appearing to be the frontrunner.

Sweden has teamed up with carbon project certifier Gold Standard to support its work procuring international credits under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Reinsurance giant Swiss Re has agreed to pay $10 million to be supplied with carbon removals units over ten years from Swiss-based direct air capture (DAC) specialists Climeworks, the companies said on Wednesday.

German exchange EEX will begin selling allowances on Oct. 5 under the country’s domestic emissions trading system for transport and buildings (nEHS), according to the Leipzig-based bourse.

Carbon prices slipped back from early gains above €57 on Wednesday, following a key court decision on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

The municipal government in China’s northeastern city of Shenyang expects to launch trading in its local emissions trading scheme next month, but with compliance obligations from the beginning of 2020, it said Wednesday.

It’s not enough for Greens to have bold ideas, to deliver them we need to be in power. This deal could be a turning point

• Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion

No one gets into politics to be in opposition for ever, especially people in a hurry. And the Greens have every reason to hurry. We believe other parties have neither the ideas nor the resolve to handle the interlocking crises we face. Crucially, we understand that – as the environmentalist Bill McKibben once said – “winning slowly is the same as losing”.

The impacts of the climate emergency that we feared might occur in the second half of this century are happening now. But the other parties are still only prepared to tinker around the edges of what is needed. The British government’s policies on the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis fall far short of what’s needed to avert environmental breakdown or mass extinction.

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By boosting dominant species such as great tits, human-provided food can make life harder for many woodland birds

Feeding birds is hard-wired into our national psyche. The apocryphal Victorian “tuppence a bag” for seed for the Trafalgar Square pigeons has morphed into a national pastime, with an estimated 17m households spending £250m a year on more than 150,000 tonnes of bird feed – enough to feed the entire breeding population of the 10 most common feeder-using bird species year-round three times over.

The habit has been enthusiastically encouraged by environmental NGOs, which recognise it as a way for people to connect with nature. This was brought into sharp relief during the pandemic, with many of us discovering the joy of attracting birds to our own gardens after losing access to wildlife and wild spaces. So we know that bird-feeding can be good for humans, but what about for birds?

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Approvals for new coal power facilities in China fell 78.8% year-on-year in H1, an NGO report published on Wednesday found, but provincial governments continue to seek funding for new plants.