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President formally files new plans under Paris agreement and hails ‘boldest climate agenda in American history’
Joe Biden has announced tougher targets on the US’s carbon dioxide emissions for the next decade, in a defiant final gesture intended as a “capstone” on his legacy on the climate.
With just weeks to go before Donald Trump enters the White House, the Biden administration is formally filing new plans under the Paris agreement – the global climate treaty from which Trump has vowed to withdraw.
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Scientists race to discover new species before destruction of natural world drives them to extinction
From a toadstool with teeth to a vine smelling of marzipan and a flower that has cheated its way out of having to photosynthesise, a weird and wonderful host of new plant and fungus species have been discovered in 2024.
Other plants given scientific names for the first time include beautiful new orchids, a ghostly palm and a hairy plant that appears to have stolen a gene from an unrelated family. The species are among the 172 new plants and fungi named by scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and their partners.
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Law around illegal wood burning in smoke-control areas is not being enforced, campaigners say
Only four fines out of 5,600 complaints have been issued for illegal burning of wood in smoke-control areas from September 2023 to August 2024 in England, data has revealed.
The new data, from freedom of information requests submitted by the campaign group Mums for Lungs, shows that the law around illegal wood burning is not being enforced in England, campaigners said.
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Popular in Victorian times, they are sustainable, a good source of protein and brilliant for biodiversity, say those championing the bivalves
A splash of white wine, a handful of basil leaves and a few minutes preparation are all it takes to transform mussels that 24 hours ago were filtering seawater off the south Devon coast, into a delicious starter.
At the training kitchen in London’s oldest fish market, Billingsgate, in Poplar, we learn that fresh mussels require two vital preparation steps that the vacuum-packed, cooked variety don’t: “debearding” or pulling off the “byssus” thread that attaches the shell to rocks and other substrate, and the discarding of any with broken or open shells
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Balcony solar panels can save 30% on a typical household’s electricity bill and, with vertical surface area in cities larger than roof space, the appeal is clear
They are easy to install, and knock chunks off electricity bills. It may not be Romeo and Juliet, but Spain’s balcony scene is heating up as the country embraces what has hitherto been a mainly German love affair with DIY plug-in solar panels.
Panels have already been installed on about 1.5m German balconies, where they are so popular the term Balkonkraftwerk (balcony power plant) has been coined.
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Court rules in favor of 16 young people who said their health and prospects were being imperiled by climate crisis
Montana’s top court on Wednesday held that the state’s constitution guaranteed a right to a stable climate system and invalidated a law barring regulators from considering the effects of greenhouse gas emissions when permitting new fossil fuel projects.
The Montana supreme court upheld a landmark trial court decision last August in favor of 16 young people who said their health and futures were being jeopardized by climate change, which the state aggravates through its permitting of energy projects.
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McNeese State University in Louisiana building a liquefied natural gas center, prompting fears of ‘corporate capture’
One of Louisiana’s top public universities has prompted concerns about “corporate capture” over its expanding relationship with the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, despite environmental warnings about pollution and prolonging fossil fuel use.
As the US’s LNG boom gained momentum in south-west Louisiana, McNeese State University courted the industry to help launch a new LNG Center of Excellence currently under construction, hired a director doubling as an LNG industry lobbyist, and approached federal regulators to co-locate their own research center at the university, according to emails obtained via public records requests by DeSmog and the Guardian.
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In 2019, scientists published a climate-friendly food plan. I’ve long wondered: could it work for most Americans?
As a fossil fuels and climate reporter, most of my journalism focuses on the need to radically overhaul the energy system. But the food sector also needs a makeover, as it creates between a quarter and a third of all greenhouse gas emissions.
When scientists came up with a new climate-friendly food plan in 2019 and published their findings in the medical journal the Lancet, I read with interest. The guidelines called for more vegetables, legumes and whole grains, which seemed doable to me. The authors even allowed for meat and dairy consumption, albeit in small quantities. Both are major drivers of the climate crisis: the United Nations estimates that meat and dairy produce more than 11% of all global greenhouse gas emissions, and some experts put the figure at up to 19.6%.
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Restoring age-old land rights has enabled 300 villagers to build a profitable business and halt the exodus to the city
It’s late morning and the sound of axes clacking against wood echoes through Pachgaon’s bamboo forest in the central Indian state of Maharashtra. A huge depot, larger than a cricket stadium,is full of bamboo branches, stacked neatly by size in different sections. Nearby is a small, windowless office painted in the colours of the forest – a record-keeper of Pachgaon’s turnaround from abject poverty to relative wealth in just over a decade.
Pachgaon’s rags-to-riches story follows the implementation of two longstanding Indian laws that restored to the local adivasi (tribal) community its traditional ownership rights over the forest, which they lost to rulers and colonisers several generations ago.
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By rejecting traditional grazing and maintaining trees and wildlife habitats alongside pasture, farmers are turning their land carbon positive. But will it be enough?
On a humid dawn in Colombia’s livestock capital, Michael Robbin rides across one of his farm’s pastures, where tall green stalks brush his horse’s belly. When he bought the land outside Montería in 2020 he divided it into 125 smaller fields. His neighbours called him crazy at first.
“That’s not how it’s done in this area,” he acknowledges. “Everybody was looking at me like I was from outer space.”
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