Environment news

• Now is the time to unplug and reset. Next year we enter a more dangerous world – but for now I need the silence of nature | Paul Daley

  21-11-2024 23:46 via theguardian.com
  
  The return of Trump demands extreme watchfulness. But effective vigilance also requires energy and strength, mental and emotional recharge and balanceA long walk in the mountains last weekend brought sudden perspective to just how heavily the shoutiness and anger was weighing.Suddenly there was only birdsong, the rustling tree canopies, the gentle burbling of the Snowy River and the wind whispering through the trunks of ancient ghost gums. This was anything but a quiet quietness. But it was the
  
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• Poor nations may have to downgrade climate cash demands, ex-UN envoy says

  21-11-2024 20:04 via theguardian.com
  Rich country budgets are stretched amid inflation, Covid and Ukraine war, Mary Robinson tells Cop29Poor countries may have to compromise on demands for cash to tackle global heating, a former UN climate envoy has said, as UN talks entered their final hours in deadlock.In comments that are likely to disappoint poorer countries at the Cop29 summit, Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and twice a UN climate envoy, said rich country budgets were stretched amid inflation, Covid and conflic
  
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• Cop29: UN chair ‘so sick’ of Saudi Arabia’s defence of fossil fuels – as it happened

  21-11-2024 16:55 via theguardian.com
  
  Former climate minister for Canada reacts after Saudi delegation said it ‘will not accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuels’My colleague Patrick Greenfield is following the plenary where countries give their formal response to the draft text.Cop29 president Mukhtar Babayev gets the plenary started. He asks countries to give their thoughts on the latest iterations of text to inform future versions. He says that with collective effort, he believes that
  
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• Cop29 live: UN chair ‘so sick’ of Saudi Arabia’s defence of fossil fuels

  21-11-2024 16:55 via theguardian.com
  
  Former climate minister for Canada reacts after Saudi delegation said it ‘will not accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuels’My colleague Patrick Greenfield is following the plenary where countries give their formal response to the draft text.Cop29 president Mukhtar Babayev gets the plenary started. He asks countries to give their thoughts on the latest iterations of text to inform future versions. He says that with collective effort, he believes that
  
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• Cop29 live: Saudi Arabia opposition to targeting of fossil fuels breaks into the open

  21-11-2024 16:11 via theguardian.com
  
  The Saudi delegation said it ‘will not accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuels’My colleague Patrick Greenfield is following the plenary where countries give their formal response to the draft text.Cop29 president Mukhtar Babayev gets the plenary started. He asks countries to give their thoughts on the latest iterations of text to inform future versions. He says that with collective effort, he believes that the summit can be finished by 6pm tomorrow.
  
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• UK environment secretary vows to ensure farmers are paid fairly for produce

  21-11-2024 13:49 via theguardian.com
  
  Steve Reed says he may not agree on inheritance tax changes but government will listen to rural BritainUK politics live – latest updatesThe UK environment secretary has promised to reform the food system to ensure farmers are paid fairly for the food they produce, after many filled the streets of Westminster to campaign against inheritance tax changes.Speaking at the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) conference, Steve Reed said: “I heard the anguish of the countryside on th
  
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• Cop29 live: UK climate minister says world cannot afford for talks to fail

  21-11-2024 13:35 via theguardian.com
  
  Ed Miliband said the draft text risked talks taking a backward step as a deadline looms for a climate finance dealMy colleague Patrick Greenfield is following the plenary where countries give their formal response to the draft text.Cop29 president Mukhtar Babayev gets the plenary started. He asks countries to give their thoughts on the latest iterations of text to inform future versions. He says that with collective effort, he believes that the summit can be finished by 6pm tomorrow. Continue re
  
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• ‘When the hurricane hit, I saw my neighbour’s boat lift into the sky’ – This is climate breakdown

  21-11-2024 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  All of a sudden I heard this loud noise at the back of my house. The window was smashed in what was supposed to be our secure room. This is Roseman’s storyLocation Union Island, the CaribbeanDisaster Hurricane BerylRoseman Adams, a nature conservation officer and part of the island’s disaster preparedness committee, was at home on Union Island when Hurricane Beryl hit on 2 July. It was the earliest-forming category 5 hurricane on record, demolishing almost all of the buildings on the
  
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• 'It is a shame': Starmer laments lack of Tory support for climate measures – video

  21-11-2024 12:42 via theguardian.com
  
  The prime minister, Keir Starmer, has hit out at the lack of Conservative support for climate targets and said it shows 'just how far the party has fallen'. 'It’s a shame,' he said. 'When Cop was in Scotland, there was a real unity across the house about the importance of tackling one of the most central issues of our time,' Starmer said in Commons after returning from the G20 and Cop29Cop29 live - latest updates Continue reading...
  
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• Fury at climate talks over ‘backsliding’ on fossil fuels

  21-11-2024 12:06 via bbc.com
  
  Countries are split at UN climate summit over funding and commitments to reducing fossil fuel use.
  
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• As we wait for national legislation, let’s launch a Green New Deal from below | Jeremy Brecher

  21-11-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  Local and state initiatives can act as ‘proof of concept’ for transformative climate and jobs legislationAs Trump and Trumpism devastate the American political landscape, how can people counter this destructive juggernaut? For the past five years, I have been studying how people are actually implementing the elements of the Green New Deal through what has become a Green New Deal from Below. This framework, which ordinary people are already putting into practice, is an approach to org
  
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• Cop29 live: UN secretary general urges climate finance negotiators to ‘never forget what is at stake’

  21-11-2024 11:45 via theguardian.com
  
  António Guterres appealed to ministers and officials to ‘navigate a path’ through their differencesMy colleague Patrick Greenfield is following the plenary where countries give their formal response to the draft text.Cop29 president Mukhtar Babayev gets the plenary started. He asks countries to give their thoughts on the latest iterations of text to inform future versions. He says that with collective effort, he believes that the summit can be finished by 6pm tomorrow. Continu
  
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• Cop29 live: EU climate commissioner says draft text ‘clearly unacceptable in current form’

  21-11-2024 10:00 via theguardian.com
  Wopke Hoekstra gave his reaction at a press conference in Baku to the lack of a clear figure on climate finance“We are many and they are few,” warn Global South campaignersAs the negotiations about how much climate finance the rich world should pay to the poor nations suffering in the climate crisis they did not cause, campaigners have highlighted that the vast majority of humanity live in the Global South and said the Global North owes a huge climate debt. Continue reading...
  
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• Cop29 live: tense day predicted as negotiators mull over new draft texts

  21-11-2024 08:59 via theguardian.com
  Stakes high as officials discuss summit’s key question of how much rich countries should pay for developing nations to cope with climate crisis and decarbonize their economiesIn response to the latest text on climate finance, Laurie van der Burg, Oil Change International Global Public Finance Manager, said it was “a mixed bag with good, bad and ugly options.”“Rich countries now have a last chance to step up to pay the climate debt they owe to the Global South and unlock a
  
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• ‘The land is tearing itself apart’: life on a collapsing Arctic isle

  21-11-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  On Qikiqtaruk, off Canada, researchers at the frontier of climate change are seeing its rich ecology slide into the sea as the melting permafrost leaves little behind
  Last summer, the western Arctic was uncomfortably hot. Smoke from Canada’s wildfires hung thick in the air, and swarms of mosquitoes searched for exposed skin. It was a maddening combination that left researchers on Qikiqtaruk, an island off the north coast of the Yukon, desperate for relief.And so on a late July afternoon, a
  
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• Human rights activists face reprisals for opposing extractive industries, says report

  21-11-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Peace Brigades International calling for new act to force companies with links to UK to do due diligence Human rights defenders have faced brutal reprisals for standing up to extractive industries with links to UK companies or investors, according to a report calling for a law obliging firms to do human rights and environmental due diligence.Peace Brigades International (PBI) UK says a corporate accountability law requiring businesses to do due diligence on their operations, investments and supp
  
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• Call for east of England coast trail to address access-to-nature gap

  21-11-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Exclusive: Trail would help region with few areas where people can walk in countryside, report saysA new trail along the east coast of England should be created, a Tory thinktank has said, because farmland is preventing those who live there from having access to nature.A report from Onward has found that in most rural areas, people enjoy extensive rights-of-way networks. But across the east of England, there are many areas where people have barely anywhere they are allowed to walk in the country
  
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• Country diary: A time of muted colours and luminosity in the valley | Virginia Spiers

  21-11-2024 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  St Dominic, Tamar Valley: Leaves are filling up the tracks, glimmering in the murky shade, and our garden grows ever-more wild in the dry, mild weatherIn gloomy November days, sunshine is at a premium. To the north, mist shrouds Kit Hill’s summit stack, but eastwards occasional streaks of pinkish light reflect on Dartmoor’s faded expanses of purple moor grass.In the dullness, muted autumnal colours are strangely luminous, contrasting with the continuing growth of greenery. Black Angu
  
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• Is nuclear power gaining new energy?

  21-11-2024 01:03 via bbc.com
  
  Countries around the world are building new nuclear power stations.
  
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