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Just Stop Oil ‘alienates people’ from its cause, says Ed Miliband
Labour shadow energy security secretary agrees climate crisis is emergency but ‘massively questions’ activist group’s tactics
The climate activist group Just Stop Oil is “alienating people” from its cause, Ed Miliband said at the Hay festival.
Speaking at a Q&A at the event via a video call from his constituency in Doncaster, the shadow secretary of state for energy security and net zero responded to an audience member who said she had been driven to support Just Stop Oil because she felt “so let down by politicians”.
Continue reading...‘It’s honest beauty’: the net-zero homes paving the way for the future
As demand for sustainable housing grows, architects go back to basics to future-proof homes for a changing climate
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“Energy efficient”, “carbon neutral” and “net zero” are buzzwords we hear more and more as we face the impact of climate change. But do we think about them enough in building?
Globally, a move towards sustainable housing is growing. In Europe, efforts to move to greener homes hope to combat rising energy costs and be better for the planet. But 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions still come from the real estate sector.
Continue reading...Biden Admin Struggles to Address Sharp Rise in Deaths From Extreme Heat
Biden Underestimates How Much Black Americans Care About This Issue
This City Is Tapping a Climate Cash Bonanza While It Can
This City Is Tapping a Climate Cash Bonanza While It Can
‘I want people to wake up’: Nemonte Nenquimo on growing up in the rainforest and her fight to save it
The Indigenous campaigner won a historic legal victory to protect Waorani land in the Amazon rainforest. Now she has written a groundbreaking memoir
When Nemonte Nenquimo was a young girl, experience began to reinforce what she had come to know intuitively: that her life, and those of the Waorani people of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, were on a collision course with forces it would take all their strength and determination to resist. “Deep down, I understood there were two worlds,” she remembers in We Will Not Be Saved, the book she has written with her husband and partner in activism Mitch Anderson. “One where there was our smoky, firelit oko, where my mouth turned manioc into honey, the parrots echoed ‘Mengatowe’, and my family called me Nemonte – my true name, meaning ‘many stars’. And another world, where the white people watched us from the sky, the devil’s heart was black, there was something named an ‘oil company’, and the evangelicals called me Inés.”
In 2015, Nenquimo, now 39, co-founded the Ceibo Alliance, a non-profit organisation in which she united with members of the A’i Cofán, Siekopai and Siona peoples of Ecuador, Peru and Colombia to fight for rights over their territories. Since then, she has won numerous awards for her activism, including the prestigious Goldman environmental prize; she was featured in Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2020, and has been named a United Nations Champion of the Earth.
Continue reading...The Maldives faces existential threat from a climate crisis it did little to create. We need the world’s help now | Mohamed Muizzu
Small islands like ours face an uncertain future. We can adapt – but climate finance that we badly need must be unlocked
- Mohamed Muizzu is the president of the Maldives
For the Maldives, the existential threat of the climate crisis, particularly sea level rise, has been a reality we have grappled with for decades. In 1989, recognising the urgency of our situation, with our islands standing just one metre above sea level, we brought this issue to the global stage for the first time.
This early recognition of our vulnerability sparked a national transformation as we embarked on proactive climate resilience and adaptation measures. Thirty-five years later, has the rest of the world truly been listening? If you look at how the world’s reaction to the climate crisis is funded, the answer is clearly “no”.
Continue reading...Nearly 175 arrested as climate protesters target France’s TotalEnergies and key investor
Demonstrators gathered outside Paris meetings of energy giant and Amundi, with some forcing their way into fund manager’s tower block
The head of TotalEnergies has told shareholders that new oilfields have to be developed to meet global demand, as the annual meetings of the French energy giant and one of its biggest shareholders were picketed by climate activists.
Police said they detained 173 people among hundreds who gathered outside the Paris headquarters of Amundi, one of the world’s biggest investment managers and a major TotalEnergies shareholder.
Continue reading...The week around the world in 20 pictures
War in Gaza, the Russian offensive in Kharkiv, Rishi Sunak in the rain and Cate Blanchett in Cannes: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing
Continue reading...‘Kitty cat’ storms hitting US heartland are growing threat to home insurance
Smaller secondary systems that create hailstorms and tornadoes pack a punch that is causing billions of dollars in damages
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration
The rising cost of homeowner’s insurance is now one of the most prominent symptoms of the climate crisis in the US. Major carriers such as State Farm and Allstate have pulled back from offering fire insurance in California, dropping thousands of homeowners from their books, and dozens of small insurance companies have collapsed or fled from Florida and Louisiana following recent large hurricanes.
Continue reading...La temporada de huracanes será inusualmente intensa este 2024
UK importing more bricks than ever and carbon cost is rising, study reveals
Imports have risen since Brexit despite brick producers saying UK can make enough for its own use
The UK is importing more of its bricks than ever and the carbon cost of each brick is rising, research has shown.
The UK is the number one country in the world for brick importation, according to data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Observatory of Economic Complexity.
Continue reading...Scientists transplant soil fungi in race to save world’s threatened orchids
Display at Chelsea flower show highlights work in UK and US to bring orchid habitats back to health
Scientists are racing against the clock to save the world’s orchids by discovering the soil fungi they need to thrive, breeding them and then, in a first for conservation, transplanting them into orchid habitats.
Among the showy blooms at Chelsea flower show this week was a moss-covered exhibit, sprouting from which were the types of rare, native flowers one does not normally see at horticultural exhibits.
Continue reading...Here It Comes: Another Hot Summer in Europe
Climate Change Is Taking a Toll on Mites and Springtails, a New Analysis Finds
These Teens Adopted an Orphaned Oil Well. Their Goal: Shut It Down.
‘We’re up for this fight’: Labour plans to make climate key focus of election
Leadership now sees environment as core issue for voters and strong dividing line against the Tories
Labour is planning to make the climate a key focus for its election campaign, putting its net zero commitments “up in lights”, and drawing a clear link between the “chaos” of the Conservative government and the effects of the climate crisis.
Fears over the climate – exemplified by a sopping Rishi Sunak calling the general election in a downpour on the same day scientists warned about the increased likelihood of seemingly “never-ending” autumn and winter rain – will be tied strongly to what Labour will portray as a polluting and careless Tory vein of climate denial.
Continue reading...Last summer’s temperature rise could be worse than we thought
The 19th century, used as a baseline for global heating, may have been a quarter of a degree cooler than previously believed
Since 2015, when the world’s governments promised to work to try to keep global temperatures from rising 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, it has always seemed likely they would fail to keep their word. Scientific data now shows that last summer in the northern hemisphere this target was already being exceeded by quite a margin.
In an area including the whole of Europe, most of North America and Asia the average temperature last summer was 2.07C hotter than between 1850 and 1900, the period that scientists have been using as the “reference period” to measure the averages before the industrial revolution began to alter the climate.
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