Environment

New guidelines for $2bn carbon offsetting industry aim to guide buyers towards high-quality credits

New quality standards for the $2bn carbon offsetting industry have been published to help guide buyers to high-quality credits following widespread concern that many are just hot air.

On Thursday, new guidelines for a “good” carbon credit programme were announced by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), an initiative that aims to reassure buyers about the quality of offsets they are buying for climate commitments and help them avoid credits that do nothing to mitigate climate change or might be linked to human rights violations.

In latest blow to Joe Biden’s reputation as the ‘climate president’, 73.3m acres of the gulf will be offered for fossil fuel extraction

An enormous swathe of the Gulf of Mexico, spanning an area the size of Italy, was put up for auction on Wednesday for oil and gas drilling, in the latest blow to Joe Biden’s increasingly frayed reputation on dealing with the climate crisis.

The president’s Department of the Interior offered up a vast area of the central and western Gulf, including plunging deep water reaches, for drilling projects that will stretch out over decades, despite scientists’ urgent warnings that fossil fuels must be rapidly phased out if the world is to avoid disastrous global heating. The auctions also come despite Biden’s own pre-election promise to halt all drilling on federal lands and waters.

Comedians and comedy programs have started to find ways to speak to the climate crisis in their work but how can something so heavy create laughter?

When David Perdue applied to be part of a climate comedy program, he felt a little out of his element: “I couldn’t recall one time I’d ever had a conversation with my friends about climate change,” said the Atlanta-based comic. Perdue, who is Black, added, “But I knew it was an issue that was going to affect people who look like me, so I wanted to use comedy to address that.”

Perdue was one of nine comedians who took part in a nine-month fellowship where they learned about climate science and solutions and collaborated on new, climate-related material. The Climate Comedy Cohort produced shorts, toured together, and pitched ideas to television networks. Their work is part of a broader effort to bring some levity to a topic that is increasingly present in everyday life.

EPA’s response to the derailment has drawn intense criticism from East Palestine residents and public health experts

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s internal watchdog division is opening an investigation into the handling of the East Palestine train wreck which caused a toxic disaster in the small Ohio town.

An agency spokesperson declined to comment on why it is launching the investigation, but a public memo from the EPA office of inspector general states that it will “conduct interviews, gather data, and analyze a variety of issues, including hazardous waste disposal, air and water monitoring, soil and sediment sampling, and risk communication”.

At two wildlife centres in the Madre de Dios region, the victims of illegal mining activities embark on a long journey of rehabilitation

“She used to fight every time I tried to feed her, but she recognises it’s me now,” says Cinthia Pariguana-Garriazo, a veterinary nurse at Taricaya eco reserve. It is 6am, and she is coaxing a squealing baby spider monkey called Rain into accepting breakfast – a syringe filled with liquefied fruit and medicine.

Rain is fed every four hours and requires regular physical contact with Pariguana-Garriazo, her primary carer. Over the next few months, she will be gradually introduced to solid food and to other spider monkeys and her contact with humans will dwindle. From there, it’s a long process of rehabilitation before her release back into the wild. Juveniles can expect to stay at Taricaya for at least three years.

Minority Labor government in NSW looking likely as two more seats called for Coalition. Follow live

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Sorry – I am told by a couple of senators that it was “technically” 4.13am.

So expect to see a few bleary-eyed senators in the coffee lines this morning.

Government’s official advisers point to ‘lost decade’ in efforts to protect lives and livelihoods

The UK is “strikingly unprepared” for the impacts of the climate crisis, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which said there had been a “lost decade” in efforts to adapt for the impacts of global heating.

The CCC, the government’s official climate adviser, said climate damages will inevitably intensify for decades to come. It has warned repeatedly of poor preparation in the past and said government action was now urgently needed to protect people and their homes and livelihoods.

Exclusive: National Trust concerned at danger to rich mix of ecosystems including lagoon, woodland, salt marsh and reedbed

Oil from the Perenco pipeline leak in Poole harbour has washed up on the shores of Brownsea Island, an internationally important wetland and marine conservation zone.

Nearly 200 barrels of reservoir fluid – a brine mixture that is about 15% oil – leaked into the waters of Ower Bay on Sunday from the pipeline sparking a major incident and urgent clean-up operation.

Bembidion brownorum, named for Jerry Brown, was last seen in 1966, but hadn’t been named until one was collected on his ranch

Scientists are naming a rare species of beetle in honor of the former California governor Jerry Brown after finding one at his ranch.

Bembidion brownorum was last seen in 1966, but it hadn’t been named or described until one was collected near a creek on Brown’s ranch in Colusa county, about an hour’s drive north-west of Sacramento, the University of California, Berkeley announced on Monday.

A lack of swimming skills among young people, especially girls, stops them working in local industries and getting involved in conservation

Azha Abdul Azeez lives in Malé, the capital of the Maldives archipelago, surrounded by the idyllic Indian Ocean. But she “grew up in the house” and the water that makes up so much of Abdul Azeez’s home – a rich habitat including coral reefs, turtles, manta rays and exotic fish – terrifies her because she never learned to swim.

“[My parents] were worried that something might happen to me. I think that’s why they didn’t send me [swimming] when I was little,” she says.

Nasa grants last-minute reprieve to invaluable climate and biodiversity scanner on International Space Station, due to be incinerated in Earth’s atmosphere

Nasa has extended the life of a key climate and biodiversity sensor for scanning the world’s forests which was set to be destroyed in Earth’s atmosphere.

The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (Gedi) mission – pronounced like Jedi in Star Wars – was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the International Space Station (ISS) in December 2018, and has provided the first 3D map of the world’s forests.

Exclusive: Australian company resurrects flesh of lost species to demonstrate potential of meat grown from cells

A mammoth meatball has been created by a cultivated meat company, resurrecting the flesh of the long-extinct animals.

The project aims to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells, without the slaughter of animals, and to highlight the link between large-scale livestock production and the destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis.

Pacific nation is sponsoring resolution that will ask ICJ to rule on consequences for climate inaction

Last month, twin cyclones tore through Port Vila, the capital of the Pacific nation of Vanuatu. The category-four storms left corrugated iron roofs crumpled like leftover wrapping paper, flooded the streets with waste-ridden mud, cut residents off from water and electricity for several days, and sent many fleeing to hastily established evacuation centres.

Devastation of this sort is becoming more common throughout the Pacific, where rising sea levels are leaving shorelines increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather made more intense by climate change.

A Canada Pacific train derailed on Sunday night, affecting 31 of its 70 cars, and spilling petroleum used to make asphalt

A train carrying hazardous materials derailed in North Dakota late on Sunday night in the latest toxic railway accident to hit the US.

The incident happened less than two months after a train derailed near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, causing a raging fire and leaking cancerous chemicals near the small town of East Palestine.

Extinction Rebellion leads protest and council leader expresses anger over damage done to protected site

Environmental activists, biodiversity experts, politicians and nature lovers are demanding answers over an oil leak in Poole harbour, a site internationally recognised for its ecological importance.

Nearly 200 barrels of reservoir fluid – a brine mixture that is about 15% oil – leaked into the waters of Owers Bay on Sunday afternoon from a pipeline operated by the energy company Perenco.

Adam Bandt says deal puts ‘significant hurdles’ in the way of new coal and gas but Chris Bowen insists it will not kill off new investment

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The Albanese government’s signature climate bill targeting big polluters is a step closer to passing after a deal with the Greens including an absolute cap on emissions.

The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, announced the deal on the safeguard mechanism bill on Monday, taking credit for “a big hit on coal and gas” that could effectively block half of 116 proposed new fossil fuel projects.

A sailor in Poole in Dorset posted a video on social media on Sunday showing an oily substance he had noticed leaking into the water in the harbour. He collected some of the 'horrible, oil kind of sludge' in a plastic bottle. The public is being urged to avoid using the water and beaches within Poole after the harbour regulator said a leak occurred at a pipeline operated by gas company Perenco. The incident, which took place at Wytch Farm oilfield, resulted in approximately 200 barrels of 'reservoir fluid' being released from the UK’s largest onshore field

• Poole harbour: major incident declared over leak from oilfield

Residents show skepticism to officials insisting tap water is uncontaminated after chemical spill in the Delaware River

Residents in Philadelphia and nearby areas have been buying bottled water after a chemical spill upstream in the Delaware River in neighboring Bucks county, despite officials’ latest advisory insisting tap water was safe to drink at least up to midnight Monday.

The concerns came after a leak late Friday evening at the Trinseo Altuglas chemical facility in Bristol Township spilled between 8,100 and 12,000 gallons of a water-based latex finishing solution into the river, Bucks county health officials said Sunday.

The agreement delivers important changes to the safeguard mechanism. But there is still a lot of work to do

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The safeguard mechanism is a better policy to deal with major industrial greenhouse gas emissions after a deal between the Albanese government and the Greens.

It is not perfect, it is needlessly complicated and there are still things to be ironed out about how some of the headline changes will work. But it is an improvement.

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I’m proud to be part of Third Act, a climate activist organization for people over the age of 60

The brutal truth is that last week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report didn’t have the effect it should have had, or that its authors clearly intended. Produced by thousands of scientists who synthesized the work of tens of thousands of their peers over the last decade, and meticulously drafted by teams of careful communicators, it landed in the world with a gentle plop, not the resounding thud that’s required.

In China, the world’s biggest emitter, official attention was focused instead on Moscow, where Xi Jinping was off to do a little male bonding with fellow autocrat Vladimir Putin, incidentally the world’s second largest producer of hydrocarbons. In America, the historical emissions champ, we were riveted by the possibility that would-be autocrat Donald Trump might be indicted. In the New York Times, our planet’s closest thing to a paper of record, the IPCC report was the fourth story on the website.