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World’s climate scientists to issue stark warning over global heating threat
IPCC’s landmark report will be most comprehensive assessment yet as governments prepare for pivotal UN talks in November
The fires, floods and extreme weather seen around the world in recent months are just a foretaste of what can be expected if global heating takes hold, scientists say, as the world’s leading authority on climate change prepares to warn of an imminent and dire risk to the global climate system.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will on Monday publish a landmark report, the most comprehensive assessment yet, less than three months before vital UN talks that will determine the future course of life on Earth.
Continue reading...Dixie fire: cool weather slows raging California blaze as attention shifts to PG&E role
Wildfire’s cause is under investigation but utility company has admitted its equipment may have been linked to the devastation
As relatively cool temperatures and higher humidity slowed the Dixie fire raging across northern California on Saturday, attention shifted to the role an already disgraced utility company may have played in the gigantic blaze.
By Saturday evening, the Dixie fire covered 447,723 acres and had destroyed 370 structures, including residential, commercial and other buildings. The fire was only 21% contained, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection did not expect full containment until 20 August.
Continue reading...‘People can’t sleep’: Rhondda valley flood leaves climate fear in its wake
Many in south Wales are still suffering from havoc of last year – and say not enough is being done to prevent a repeat
In February last year, Storm Dennis wreaked havoc in the Rhondda valley, causing flooding in hundreds of homes and businesses, leaving landslips, ruined roads, smashed bridges and broken hearts in its wake.
Eighteen months on, many people in this close-knit corner of south Wales continue to suffer. “I still have nightmares about the river rising again,” said Katie Whelan, whose end-of-terrace house in the village of Ynyshir, near Pontypridd, was flooded.
Continue reading...The gift we should give to the living world? Time, and lots of it | George Monbiot
Planting 10 saplings does not replace a twisted old oak. ‘Slow ecology’ is the only way to preserve and restore ancient habitats
We have a slow food movement and a slow travel movement. But we’re missing something, and its absence contributes to our escalating crisis. We need a slow ecology movement, and we need it fast.
The majority of the world’s species cannot withstand any significant disruption of their habitat by humans. Healthy ecosystems depend to a great extent on old and gnarly places, that might take centuries to develop, and are rich in what ecologists call “spatial heterogeneity”: complex natural architecture. They need, for example, giant trees, whose knotty entrails are split and rotten; great reefs of coral or oysters or honeycomb worms; braiding, meandering rivers full of snags and beaver dams; undisturbed soils reamed by roots and holes. The loss of these ancient habitats is one of the factors driving the global shift from large, slow-growing creatures to the small, short-lived species able to survive our onslaughts. Slow ecology would protect and create our future ancient habitats.
Continue reading...Program Assistant, Climate Policy Initiative – Washington DC/San Francisco
UK farmers urged to set aside 1% of land for wildlife havens
Campaign seeks pledges for the rewilding of arable land as the Cop26 climate summit approaches
Farmers are being called upon to dedicate 1% of their land to nature and carbon sequestration in an unexpected way – by farming in straight lines.
The call to make a commitment to nature and the climate in the run-up to the crucial Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow comes from WildEast, the farmer-led rewilding movement that is encouraging landowners large and small to create wildlife-rich places across East Anglia.
Continue reading...Program Officer, Sustainable Development, Verra – Flexible
Senior Program Officer, Verra – Flexible/Washington DC/Remote
Carbon Credits Trader, Targray – Houston
Carbon Market Coordinator, Plan Vivo Foundation – Netherlands/Scandinavia/Germany
Climate & Trade Campaign Officer, CAN Europe – Europe
Associate, Oil and Gas, European Climate Foundation – Tokyo
Britain needs big ideas for big problems, but its leaders don’t appear to have any | Isabel Hardman
Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer both pitched up in Scotland last week for two-day trips that were supposed to show that the two leaders have important things to say about the union and the big issues that face the UK. On the surface, Starmer had a more successful visit: unlike Johnson, he didn’t decide to launch his own Edinburgh fringe show complete with the sort of jokes that would empty even the smaller-capacity venues that this year’s Covid-secure event is running. The prime minister’s quip about Margaret Thatcher giving Britain an “early start” in decarbonisation by closing so many coal mines is the only thing anyone will remember of this foray north of the border. Then again, the only thing of note that Starmer managed to say was that he thought Labour should be proud of what Tony Blair, the only Labour politician to have won an election for the party since the 1970s, had achieved. It might challenge some in his movement, but it’s hardly radical stuff.
Both men have a clear grasp of the big issues facing the country. Neither seems able to say anything that remotely matches up to those challenges. Johnson’s climate spokeswoman, Allegra Stratton, has been doing the heavy lifting on the need for governments to be far more ambitious as the Cop26 summit in Glasgow approaches, but she also found herself being sucked into performing her own one-woman fringe show with a monologue on how it’s not that easy being green. While Stratton has been candid about the problems with the electric car charging network for a family such as hers, Johnson’s contribution to the debate has been to set everyone off on an angry row about the damage his own party did to mining communities in the 1980s.
Continue reading...When it comes to saving the planet, we need to play dirty
Dirt is good, environmentalists are telling us. Fine by me. Let’s start by not doing so much washing
Don’t rinse your plates before putting them in the dishwasher,” said Boris Johnson’s spokesperson, and then I sank to my knees. This wetness on my face, was it tears? I was shaking, and laughing, my hands reaching skywards in raw and screaming thanks, as I learned finally, how to save the world.
To my left, the city was flooding, cars wading through the dark water of drowned streets, and over there the path was littered with the corpses of bees, and in the distance fossil fuel companies were merrily going about their days responsible for over a third of all greenhouse gas emissions while billionaires popped to space for the afternoon. But here, on my kitchen floor, I was weeping with thanks. I can make a difference, I whispered, hoarse now, holding my ketchupped plate aloft. The future is mine!
Continue reading...Wind and solar to get taste of freedom as new syncons join the grid
Limits on output of wind and solar to be relaxed as the first of a fleet of spinning machines called synchronous condensers join the grid.
The post Wind and solar to get taste of freedom as new syncons join the grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Allegra Stratton leads by example in saving the world… she doesn’t fancy it just yet | Catherine Bennett
‘I don’t fancy it just yet,” said Allegra Stratton, the No 10 press secretary turned prime minister’s climate spokesperson, when she was asked about getting an electric car. She preferred her old diesel, thank you.
If this was merely the most memorable in a series of suboptimal comments from the person hired to communicate the urgency of Cop26, the climate summit, you couldn’t fault it as a summary of Boris Johnson’s position on decisive climate action. He doesn’t fancy it just yet.
Continue reading...In the darkness and dust: memorial recalls the hard history of British mining
The sculpture, to be unveiled next month, will celebrate the courageous contribution of pit workers to our industrial heritage
They toiled far underground in dark, cramped and dangerous conditions, emerging at the end of their shifts caked in coal dust and often gasping for air.
Towns grew up around the collieries; boys followed their fathers and grandfathers down the pit. In the 19th century, women and children were among the nation’s coal workers. But by the end of the 20th century, miners had mostly been consigned to the post-industrial scrap heap as pit after pit shut down.
Continue reading...Climate change: Time running out to stop catastrophe - Alok Sharma
Climate change: Low-income countries 'can't keep up' with impacts
Dixie fire: eight missing in largest single wildfire in California history
Judge demands information from PG&E utility as investigators seek cause of blaze spanning 698 sq miles
At least eight people were missing on Saturday as what has become the largest single wildfire in California’s recorded history continued to scorch through northern communities, forest and tinder-dry scrub in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
People in the scenic region were already facing a weekend of fear as the huge Dixie fire threatened to reduce thousands of homes to ashes.
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