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Russia justifies fossil gas use by citing contentious COP28 loophole
Russia’s new climate plan justifies the use of natural gas as a “transition fuel” by referencing the controversial loophole that it pushed to have included in the COP28 pledge on shifting away from fossil fuels.
In a landmark agreement at the Dubai climate summit two years, governments agreed to call on each other to work on “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” as one of eight global efforts to fight climate change.
The hard-won agreement followed years of campaigning by climate activists and pro-climate action governments, and was hailed as “the beginning of the end” for the fossil fuel era by UN climate chief Simon Stiell.
But in a concession to some countries that were led by Russia – the world’s second-biggest gas producer, the COP28 agreement included a paragraph recognising that “transitional fuels can play a role in facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security”.
After it was agreed, Antigua and Barbuda negotiator Diann Black-Layne called it a “dangerous loophole” because natural gas is a fossil fuel “we need to transition away from”.
This year, all the signatories of the 2015 Paris Agreement are due to submit their emissions reduction targets up to 2035, and must say how their targets have “been informed by” the COP28 agreement.
Gas as “transition fuel”Russia’s new climate plan says it is compatible with paragraph 28 of the COP28 agreement – which includes the language on transitioning away from fossil fuels – because Russia “continues to contribute to the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through national efforts to the greatest possible extent”.
It adds that the transition should be “based on independence and freedom of choice, the technological neutrality in designing the composition of energy mix and implementing climate policies in the energy sector”.
It then cites the COP28 language around transitional fuels to say Russia “uses natural gas as a transition fuel on the way towards a low-carbon economy” and gas “is the most environmentally friendly type of fuel among the types of conventional heat generation”.
While burning gas for power releases less emissions directly than burning coal, whether or not it emits less overall depends mostly on how much gas leaks as it is transported from where it is produced to where it is consumed, energy experts say.
Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns at renewable energy advocacy group 350.org, said Russia was “wilfully misreading the global stocktake”.
“Rebranding methane-heavy, flare-ridden gas as a ‘transition fuel’ is spin, not science [which] props up a regime whose political economy runs on petro-rents and aggression,” Sieber told Climate Home News, adding “any credible transition runs on renewables and efficiency, not on Russia’s gas”.
Russian climate envoy Ruslan Edelgeriev told a UN climate summit last week the country’s commitment to reaching net zero by 2060 was firm and it “has moved from strategy to practical implementation”.
Russia is not the only government to play down the COP28 language on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Shortly after COP28, the Saudi energy minister said the agreement in Dubai was just an “a la carte menu” from which governments could choose.
And several African countries including Nigeria have set out plans to boost the use of fossil gas as a “transition fuel” in their updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
“Unambitious” targetRussia’s plan aims to reduce emissions to 33%-35% below their 1990 levels by 2035. This adds to existing targets to cut emissions by 30% on 1990 levels by 2030 and reach net zero – when the country emits no more than it absorbs – by 2060.
Russia’s emissions dropped by a quarter after the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, making percentage reductions on 1990 levels much more achievable. US President Donald Trump noted this in a recent UN speech, saying “Russia was given an old standard that was easy to meet – 1990 standard”.
Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a nonprofit which assesses governments’ climate plans and policies, said Russia’s new 2035 target “does not increase ambition beyond business as usual” because Russia’s current policies already put it on course to cut emissions 35% by 2035.
CAT said that is at odds with a Paris Agreement principle that targets should reflect the “highest possible ambition”. “Russia’s 2035 target not only fails to reflect highest ambition, but does not increase ambition at all”, CAT said in an analysis on its website.
Russia says the target is in line with the Paris Agreement’s goal to hold a temperature increase to 2C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C. CAT said, however, that it was only compatible with warming of 4C or more.
Under its climate plan, Russia says it will cut overall emissions through gas, nuclear, hydropower, renewables, carbon capture and storage and hydrogen. It will also aim to reduce the emissions which come from producing coal and oil, by capturing and selling gas rather than burning it as a waste product and by detecting and fixing pipeline leaks.
CAT also accused Russia of taking too much credit in its carbon accounting for the emissions absorbed by its huge forests. UN guidelines say countries should only take credit for forests which they actively manage, giving governments discretion to decide which land falls into this category.
Russia claims it manages nearly two-thirds of its vast forests, a percentage CAT said was “inflated”. Other heavily forested nations such as Guyana – which claims to be “carbon negative” – have been criticised by climate campaigners for similarly large assumptions about how much forest they manage.
The post Russia justifies fossil gas use by citing contentious COP28 loophole appeared first on Climate Home News.
As Hurricanes Stir Up Coastal Waters, North Carolina Homes Collapse Into the Sea
Five unoccupied homes on North Carolina's Outer Banks collapsed into the sea Tuesday as hurricanes Humberto and Imelda coursed through the Atlantic, stirring up coastal waters. The Outer Banks have seen 17 seaside homes destroyed since 2020.
NGOs urge Brazil to prevent fossil fuel capture of COP30 climate summit
Brazil’s COP30 presidency must do more to protect the UN climate talks from the “unchecked” influence of the fossil fuel industry and other high-emitting businesses driving the climate crisis, more than 200 civil society groups said in a letter published on Wednesday.
Campaigners have called on the organisers of this year’s summit to lead by example and commit to a “polluter-free“ conference by banning sponsorship from corporations whose activities drive climate change and by ending their partnership with PR firm Edelman, among other measures.
As Climate Home News previously revealed, Edelman won a $835,000 contract to help Brazil’s COP30 team with its international media strategy for the UN talks while also working with Shell, which is investing in new oil and gas production in the South American country and beyond.
COP30 PR firm found to be “uniquely reliant” on fossil fuel clients
“For years, major corporations – especially in the fossil fuel and other heavily polluting sectors – have undermined climate action through intense lobbying, including at the UN,” said Lien Vandamme, a senior campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), one of the letter’s signatories. “Reforming the UN climate talks is more urgent than ever – COPs cannot continue as corporate trade shows.”
Tackling corporate influenceAlmost 1,800 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to last year’s COP29 talks in Azerbaijan, according to analysis by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition – more than the government delegates of the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries combined.
Amid growing pressure from civil society to tackle corporate influence on the talks, the UN climate change body in September introduced new transparency guidelines giving COP observers the option to disclose who is paying for their participation at the annual summits.
But campaigners want further actions to shield the talks from corporate representatives who, they say, have “sabotaged climate progress through aggressive lobbying, disinformation, and glossy PR campaigns”.
In the letter endorsed by 229 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across the globe, they urge the COP30 presidency to advance the establishment of an “accountability framework” that should define what constitutes a conflict of interest at UN climate talks – and how such cases should be addressed by setting clear “rules of engagement”.
Business invited to BelémThe letter was organised by members of the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition in response to an earlier missive from COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago, inviting business leaders to show up in the Amazonian city of Belém this November.
Despite the logistical challenges in the host city, including the sky-high cost of accommodation, he urged companies “to attend and engage through solutions, partnerships, investments, and ideas” so that COP30 could become “the world’s largest marketplace of transformational climate solutions”.
But campaigners criticised Corrêa do Lago’s words, saying his overture to the business world felt removed from the reality that polluting companies, and their enablers, are directly responsible for the climate crisis.
“It’s unacceptable that the COP30 president has invited corporations to the table without explicitly addressing the inevitable risks of greenwashing and conflicts of interest,” said CIEL’s Vandamme.
The post NGOs urge Brazil to prevent fossil fuel capture of COP30 climate summit appeared first on Climate Home News.
The power of participation
Zimbabwe forest carbon megaproject generated millions of junk credits
More than half of the 27 million carbon credits produced by one of the world’s largest offsetting projects did not correspond to actual emission reductions, leading carbon registry Verra has said following a two-year review of Zimbabwe’s Kariba forest protection initiative.
Verra is now seeking compensation for the millions of “excess” credits from Carbon Green Investments (CGI) – the project’s developer – after the registry’s technical analysis found the threat to the forest had been overstated in the project’s original forecast.
The Kariba REDD+ project, which aims to protect an area 10 times the size of New York City, has long faced accusations by several media outlets and carbon market analysts of exaggerating its climate credentials through flawed carbon accounting and of failing to provide promised benefits to local communities.
The conservation project stretches across national parks, forest reserves and wildlife corridors along the southern shore of Lake Kariba in the Zambezi River basin in northern Zimbabwe.
Dozens of big companies, including Gucci, Volkswagen, Nestlé and Dutch electricity firm Greenchoice, bought millions of Kariba’s credits and used them to offset part of their own emissions and back up various green assertions.
Overstated deforestation riskAccording to a report by Bloomberg, the project generated more than $100 million in revenue after being set up over a decade ago by South Pole, a major Swiss carbon credits broker, and CGI, which is run by a Zimbabwean businessman. South Pole walked away from Kariba in late 2023 when Verra suspended the project and began an internal review following an investigation by The New Yorker magazine.
Nearly two years later, Verra announced last week that its review had found 57% of Kariba’s nearly 27 million credits were issued “in excess”. That is because the actual deforestation observed in a reference area chosen by Kariba’s project developers to predict how much CO2 the scheme would conserve was “significantly lower” than initially estimated, Verra said.
This calculation is known as the baseline against which a project’s performance is assessed. Critics have repeatedly questioned the accounting method and said flawed methodologies compromise the integrity of carbon offsets. Previous studies by independent rating agencies suggested Kariba may have produced as many as 30 times more credits than it should have done by exaggerating the threat to forests that were never really at risk.
Compensation processVerra said last week that, despite finding them worthless, the millions of “excess” credits already used by buyers would remain valid. But, at the same time, the carbon registry has requested CGI to compensate for them by buying and cancelling an equivalent number of credits from other projects.
Verra “received a positive response related to this process” from CGI, a spokesperson subsequently told Climate Home News, without giving further details.
CGI’s founder, Zimbabwean tycoon Steve Wentzel, did not reply to a request for comment. In an online statement, CGI said it remains dedicated to Kariba’s “mission of forest conservation” and “committed to continue working toward resolutions that uphold the highest standards”.
The company also said it had asked Verra for a “moratorium” on the compensation process until it reviews the registry’s carbon assessment.
Will pricing emissions from flying affect tourism? Not if it’s done right
Separately, Verra also invited the holders of nearly 5 million Kariba credits that have been purchased but not yet used for offsetting to “voluntarily” eliminate those credits, which in that case would be counted towards the compensation.
South Pole, CGI’s former partner in the scheme, said last week it had asked Verra to cancel 2.5 million credits it still held “to help address the discrepancies in issued credits and uphold the environmental integrity of the project”.
‘Big concerns’ remainBut Jonathan Crook, at the nonprofit Carbon Market Watch (CMW), said Verra’s handling of the Kariba case leaves many questions unanswered and raises big concerns.
“It is not clear what, if anything concrete, will happen if CGI refuses this request [for compensation], thereby raising real questions over whether anyone will actually be held liable, which would be a shockingly inappropriate outcome to this scandal,” he added.
Verra has a patchy track record in obtaining compensation from discredited projects. Nearly 2 million phantom credits linked to failed methane-cutting rice cultivation projects in China have yet to be paid back more than a year since Verra shut down the schemes and sought recompense from their developers.
As Climate Home revealed last year, energy giant Shell was directly involved in the projects and used the majority of the credits to offset – on paper – real greenhouse gas emissions created by its vast fossil fuel operations.
Climate Home understands that Verra is still pursuing compensation for the excess credits from the companies involved in the rice cultivation projects, but there is no fixed timeline for the process to be completed.
Questions over permanenceCMW’s Crook also raised concerns over the future integrity of the remaining 11.6 million Kariba credits deemed by Verra’s review to be of good quality. An underlying principle of REDD+ projects is that carbon stored in forests must be maintained over a long period of time – up to a century – to reliably offset the release of fossil carbon.
But, with the Kariba project no longer registered with Verra, any carbon supposedly conserved through the scheme now “faces a significant risk of being re-released into the atmosphere over the coming years and decades without any clear solution to remedy the situation”, Crook added.
More than 5 million credits from the Kariba project had been kept in a so-called buffer pool, an insurance fund with credits set aside for unexpected losses in stored carbon.
Verra said it had decided to “take pre-emptive action” and cancel all those credits. Additionally, a monitoring system will track deforestation in the project area in the years ahead and extra credits will be cancelled if observed forest loss goes beyond Kariba’s contributions to the buffer pool, the registry said.
“We are following our processes to ensure integrity and deliver what is right for the climate and communities,” the Verra spokesperson added.
The post Zimbabwe forest carbon megaproject generated millions of junk credits appeared first on Climate Home News.
As Floods Worsen, Pakistan Is the Epicenter of Climate Change
This season’s intense monsoon rains caused flooding that killed hundreds and displaced millions of people in Pakistan — an increasingly frequent occurrence. Scientists who study extreme weather warn that Pakistan is more vulnerable to climate change than any other nation.
Greens and Pirates in Czechia: Elective Affinity or Marriage of Convenience?
After an acrimonious exit from Petr Fiala’s centre-right government last year, the Czech Pirate Party will run together with the Greens in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Thanks to this collaboration, Greens hope to return to parliament after a more than 15-year absence. But their future remains uncertain, as does the country’s direction: the most likely outcome is a far-right government led by oligarch Andrej Babiš.
In a few days, the Czech Republic will hold parliamentary elections. The most likely outcome is that right-wing populist Andrej Babiš will return to power after nearly four years in opposition. Polls suggest that Babiš, the leader of the ANO (“Yes”) party, will need at least two partners to form a majority. These could be any of the following: the xenophobic far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy party (Svoboda a přímá demokracie – SPD), the leftist pro-Russian protest party Stačilo (“Enough!”), or the newly formed far-right Motorists party, whose policies combine opposition to the European Green Deal (and everything else climate-related) with extreme neoliberal policies.
The opposition is trying to mobilise in the fight against the high cost of living, for which the Green Deal is largely blamed, and security issues related to the war in Ukraine. The ruling parties, on the other hand, point to the risks of oligarch Babiš returning to power, along with smaller extremist parties. Both the main government and opposition parties more or less agree on rejecting climate policies and share conservative views on many issues.
While the overall picture is grim, there are some positive developments on the progressive front: for the first time, the Greens and the Pirate Party are collaborating in parliamentary elections. Will this bring back a Green MP after a more than 15-year absence?
The long road to cooperationCooperation between the Czech Greens and the Pirate Party was first experimented with for the 2014 European elections. However, the two parties fell short of the 5 per cent threshold required to enter parliament.
The Pirate Party, however, continued to grow in the following years. In 2017, it entered the Czech parliament for the first time; in 2019, it won three seats at the European Parliament and joined the Greens-European Free Alliance parliamentary group; after the 2021 elections, it became part of the centre-right coalition government led by Petr Fiala. Conversely, the Greens suffered a series of electoral defeats at the national level. Most of their electorate switched to the Pirates, who also managed to appeal to more centrist and pro-market voters.
Efforts initiated by the Greens for greater cooperation between the two parties never materialised in national elections. Instead, cooperation peaked with joint projects at the local and regional levels, though relations between the parties were far from ideal. From their position as a much stronger party, the Pirates viewed the Greens with contempt and showed no interest in collaboration. Their tactic was simply to win the support of all Green voters. They even chose the campaign slogan “ecology without ideology”, which indirectly labelled the Greens’ policies as ideological and not based on reality.
Although the political programmes of the Pirates and the Greens were not significantly different overall, the parties differed in their emphasis on individual issues. The Pirates did not focus so much on environmental or climate policy, concentrating instead on digitisation and the fight against corruption. Even after entering the government, they did not seek the ministries of the environment or education, which had previously been the main goals of the Greens.
Another difference was that the Pirates eventually came to represent a broader spectrum of political views, ranging from the standard Western European green Left, through advocates of evidence-based centrist politics, to techno-optimists with libertarian tendencies. Former chairman Ivan Bartoš then managed to skillfully unify these political currents.
From power to crisisBefore the 2021 elections, the Pirates ran in a coalition with the centrist Mayors and Independents (STAN/EPP) party. Although opinion polls predicted a strong result for them, with Ivan Bartoš being touted by some as a potential world-first Pirate prime minister, and the coalition ultimately winning a respectable 15 per cent of the vote, the result was a disaster for the Pirates themselves.
Thanks to preferential votes (where voters can rank up to four individual candidates on the ballot), 33 STAN representatives from the joint coalition lists made it into parliament, while the Pirates won only four seats. Even though their votes were not necessary for a parliamentary majority, they still chose to participate in the centre-right government coalition led by Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS/ECR), which also included ministers from STAN, KDU-ČSL, and TOP09 (all EPP). Pirate candidates secured a range of posts: minister of foreign affairs, minister for legislation, and minister for regional development. Party leader Ivan Bartoš was appointed both minister for regional development and deputy prime minister for digitalisation.
After three years in government, during which they had to deal with issues such as the energy crisis following the invasion of Ukraine, the Pirates were ironically brought down by their flagship issue: digitalisation. Bartoš was dismissed from his post by the prime minister on the grounds that he had failed to manage the complex project of introducing digitalisation into the system by which building permits are issued.
The remaining Pirate ministers subsequently announced their resignations. However, Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský resigned from the Pirates the day after Bartoš’ dismissal, and remained in his ministerial post as a non-partisan appointee. Lipavský subsequently became close to the conservative ODS, for which he is even running in this year’s elections. He has long been criticised for his unconditional support for Israel’s actions in its aggression in Gaza.
In September 2024, the Pirates became an opposition party, and in voter intention polls, they began to fall dangerously close to the 5 per cent threshold needed to enter parliament. Bartoš, visibly tired and frustrated, resigned as chairman, and the party elected Zdeněk Hřib, former mayor of Prague and now deputy mayor for transport, as its new chairman.
Originally a medical expert, Hřib was the party’s most recognisable face in the media alongside the outgoing Bartoš, and the party quite logically bet on him. However, his election led to the departure from the party of several prominent members, especially from its left wing. They criticised, in particular, efforts to reduce democratic processes within the party that many Pirates valued highly. Prominent figures who left the party included former MEPs Mikuláš Peksa, who subsequently joined Volt, and Marcel Kolaja. At the beginning of the 2025 election year, the internal situation and public support for the Pirates did not look promising.
An unusual agreementThe Pirates’ internal struggles brought them closer to the Greens, who were also looking for new momentum after winning just 1.55 per cent of the vote in the 2024 European elections. The party’s new co-chairs, former diplomat and human rights advocate Gabriela Svárovská and agriculture expert Matěj Pomahač, worked towards securing cooperation with the Pirates to increase the likelihood of a Green candidate being elected, and therefore to resolve the long-standing dilemma faced by environmentally-minded voters. Before each recent election, these voters have had to choose between supporting the Greens as the party closest to their values, knowing that their vote would be wasted if the party failed to reach the threshold, or voting for the Pirates, who are more politically liberal and less environmentally conscious, but who are more likely to exceed the 5 per cent threshold.
Before each recent election, voters have had to choose between supporting the Greens as the party closest to their values, or voting for the Pirates, who are more likely to exceed the 5 per cent threshold.
After months of negotiations, cooperation was approved by both parties. However, as part of their internal party democracy, the Pirates let each of their regional organisations decide whether Green representatives would be included on the Pirates’ candidate lists in each of the country’s 14 regions.
The result is an unusual situation where voters will find Green Party members on the ballots in only 8 of the 14 Czech regions, with a total of 31 Green candidates running for office. Understandably, this arrangement did not sit well with part of the Green Party’s membership, who considered it undignified. Nevertheless, the agreement gained majority support in an internal party vote, and Green candidates – or “Green experts”, as the Pirates call them – began appearing in the election campaign.
Will this step lead to Czechia having a Green MP again after 15 years? There is a chance, but it is not a big one. Green candidates have never ranked higher than fifth on the list of candidates, so they would have to obtain a sufficient number of preferential votes to be successful. This possibility cannot be ruled out, but in some regions they are competing with very well-known former Pirate MPs or ministers, so this task is very difficult.
The effort could, however, be aided by women’s non-profit organisations, which – as in 2021 – are campaigning for preferential votes for female candidates. Women’s representation in the Czech parliament remains shamefully low. Progressive-minded Pirate and Green voters are likely to heed this call, and since the Greens have placed a considerable number of women on their candidate lists, the push for gender parity could benefit Green candidates. This is particularly significant given that the Pirates have no internal gender quotas, unlike the Greens, making external advocacy for women candidates all the more important.
The benefits of cooperationCooperation between parties is part of a broader trend in Czechia’s fragmented politics. The right-wing parties in the current Fiala-led government have already been cooperating under the SPOLU (“Together”) coalition since 2021. More recently, the xenophobic far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) joined forces with smaller like-minded parties, and the pro-Russian radical left (which includes the Communists and the formerly pro-European Social Democracy) came together under the Stačilo! (“Enough!”) brand.
Formal coalitions face a higher electoral threshold (8 per cent in the case of two-party coalitions, 11 per cent for three or more parties). Therefore, the Greens placed their candidates on the Pirates’ lists. So far, this cooperation has been beneficial to both forces. The Pirates have risen to over 10 per cent in the polls, which could take them up to 20 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, compared to the current four. The more seats the candidate list wins, the more likely it is that one of the Greens will be elected.
Experts and the public also appreciate the Pirates’ effective election campaign, which projects a renewed energy that few believed possible after the party’s recent crisis. For the first time, the Pirates are also seeking advice from foreign experts for their campaign. Among others, they have hired British strategist Paul Hilder, who has experience working for Bernie Sanders and Britain’s Liberal Democrats. Until now, the Pirates have always managed and devised their campaigns themselves.
The party has placed a focus on housing affordability and other economic issues, such as improving the tax system to benefit families. Classic Pirate issues such as the fight against corruption and digitisation are also present. Environmental and climate issues, on the other hand, have been pushed into the background to some extent, but Green candidates in particular are trying to make the oligarchisation of society a point of public debate, given that many Czech oligarchs have close ties to the fossil fuel industry.
If no Green candidates win seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the party will struggle to chart its future course.
An uncertain futureNow, a few weeks before the elections, the option of voting for the Greens on the Pirate Party’s candidate lists seems like a clear choice for progressive and green-minded voters – at least for those who live in regions where the Greens are running. Those that don’t can obtain a voter card and travel to another region to vote, but it is likely that only a small number of the most loyal Green supporters will do so, with the rest choosing from among the Pirate candidates.
What is much less clear is the future – both that of the Greens and of the Czech Republic as a whole. The most likely alternative to a far-right alliance led by Andrej Babiš is a continuation of the status quo. However, Petr Fiala’s current centre-right government is extremely unpopular, particularly for its incompetent handling of the economy and inflation, which has led to a decline in the standard of living for a significant part of the population. Fiala and his finance minister Zbyněk Stanjura focused too much on stabilising public budgets, but mainly on the expenditure side; as for the other side – revenue – they helped high-income earners and did not dare to tackle the poverty that afflicts a significant proportion of the working population. Only a broad mobilisation against the far right could grant Fiala a second chance.
An uncertain future also awaits the Czech Greens. By running in these elections, they have demonstrated their “country before party” approach – that is, they have prioritised the interests of progressive voters over their own visibility.
However, if no Green candidates win seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the party will struggle to chart its future course. The attention – whether in opposition or in government – will once again be on the re-elected Pirates. A good election result for the entire list will bring the Greens some financial resources and perhaps even opportunities for closer expert cooperation with the elected Pirate MPs, but that is not enough to secure the party’s future.
So even if their record is one of successful contributions to progressive politics, they will once again be back to square one when it comes to their own future.
A century of Woodcraft Folk
Will pricing emissions from flying affect tourism? Not if it’s done right
Emma Fenton is senior director of climate diplomacy at Opportunity Green, an NGO working to unlock the opportunities from tackling climate change using law, economics, and policy.
Last week, the world’s governments came together in Montreal for the triennial assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), just as aviation’s climate impact is coming under sharper scrutiny.
Despite aviation contributing 4% of global heating to date, there are no effective measures to drive emissions reductions – and the industry is expected to keep growing. Passenger traffic is forecast to double over the next two decades, and as a result, the sector is projected to be responsible for as much as 22% of annual global CO2 emissions by 2050.
For too long the aviation industry has held a privileged position in how it accounts for its impacts. Just 1% of the world’s population is responsible for more than 50% of aviation emissions, highlighting the profound injustice at the heart of the sector’s operations.
But without a serious attempt to fairly price – and therefore curb – this sector’s insatiable appetite for fossil fuels, any progress made in decarbonising other sectors will be undone by the aviation industry’s refusal to join the club.
As China and EU disappoint, prospects of meeting 1.5C climate target fade
Enter ICAO’s flagship ‘emissions reduction’ scheme CORSIA, which stands for Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. CORSIA may give the industry a prop when it is quizzed on decarbonisation.
But in reality it is ineffectual, with a baseline threshold for ‘acceptable’ emissions set at 85% of the highest-ever level of emissions recorded for international aviation to date. Clearly a scheme that doesn’t bring all aviation emissions into scope creates unnecessary loopholes for the industry.
And all too often we hear the same excuse from the industry – if we were to price aviation emissions, it would create unmanageable economic consequences, particularly for tourism-dependent climate-vulnerable countries. It also cites a lack of fuel availability as a rationale for not taking any decisive action.
But neither of these arguments fly.
Distribution of costs and revenues is keyLatest research by Opportunity Green shows that – while the effect on tourism must unquestionably be a consideration when pricing emissions from aviation – the impacts can be mitigated in how you distribute both the costs and the revenues from your pricing system.
Firstly, those causing the most emissions should pay the greatest share. First-class passengers can be responsible for up to four times the emissions of those in economy seats, so the price of emissions should be borne by those who are causing the most.
Secondly, the pricing mechanism itself can act as a market signal and play a vital role in bringing investment certainty for the development of truly sustainable fuels for aviation. This market signal would help to create the fiscal enabling environment that will unlock private-sector investment to accelerate the uptake of e-fuels (those that are derived from green hydrogen).
And finally, where an emissions price has caused an economic impact in a tourism-dependent country, this can be compensated for through the equitable distribution of the revenues raised by the emissions pricing mechanism. This means that any losses incurred by climate-vulnerable and developing countries can be addressed as a priority.
Climate legal obligations apply to aviationTo make a meaningful step-change in ambition and pace on decarbonisation, we must also see states recognise the growing body of international legal obligations on climate change. Recent opinions from the International Court of Justice, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and Inter-American Court of Human Rights all confirm that states have binding obligations to reduce emissions, including from international aviation.
ICAO must align its governance with these legal standards to remain credible.
While hostile moves from the likes of the US and Saudi Arabia have attempted to shake the founding principles of multilateralism, we have also seen states come together in solidarity to push for ambition in tackling climate change.
So far this year, we have seen an historic agreement made at the International Maritime Organisation in April, and a pioneering group of countries agree to implement solidarity levies on luxury aviation, demonstrating how climate action is both morally essential and economically effective.
Coalition set sights on taxing luxury air travel to fund climate action
It was 2022 when ICAO adopted its long-term global aspirational goal for international aviation to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 in support of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C goal. Since then, we have seen no credible action to start moving the sector in the right direction.
Now is the time to confront aviation’s free pass and show how a well-designed emissions price could not only cut emissions but also support the very countries most at risk from climate change.
Unless its member states act in courage, solidarity and with the urgency that is demanded by the climate crisis, ICAO’s long-term goal won’t even make it off the runway.
The post Will pricing emissions from flying affect tourism? Not if it’s done right appeared first on Climate Home News.
Incredible Journeys: Migratory Sharks on the Move
Migration: Many animal species do it — from tiny zooplankton to enormous whales — moving over every continent and through all oceans, from north to south, south to north, Europe to Asia, and Asia to Africa. This movement by individual animals in response to season or life stage typically involves substantial numbers and vast distances.
Recent studies give scientists a better understanding of migrations at the species and population levels and reveal implications for conservation. This series focuses on a few particular species, what we’re learning about their migrations, and how that knowledge may help us protect them.
We start with a group of species many people may not realize migrate: sharks.
In April 2025 researchers tagged a 7-foot male scalloped hammerhead shark they dubbed Webbkinfield off Port Aransas, Texas. Over the next four months, the scientists watched, fascinated, as Webbkinfield pinballed around just off the continental shelf. He didn’t wander far on the map but swam almost 2,000 miles.
Less of a homebody, a male shortfin mako named Pico was tagged in March 2018 off the Texas coast and traveled more than 21,000 miles by August 2020. His journeys took him up to Massachusetts and back. Twice.
Scientists are learning that some sharks get around more — a lot more — than others. A silky shark tagged June 18, 2021, in the Galápagos Marine Reserve had swum more than 1,000 miles west into the open ocean by Sept. 20; another tagged that February traveled more than 8,000 miles into the big blue and back. Others milled around the reserve, with a few making short forays to the Central or South American coast.
Silky shark satellite tagging in the Galapagos. Photo: Pelayo Salinas, used with permission.This research on when and where marine animals move is critical to efforts to protect them, says Yannis Papastamatiou, an associate professor in Florida International University’s Institute of Environment.
“Conservation is expensive, so we need to know when, where, and how to apply actions,” he says.
Papastamatiou is one of the more than 350 contributing authors of a recent study in the journal Science that aims to tackle part of that challenge. The study examined data on migration patterns of more than 100 large-bodied marine vertebrate species, including several sharks.
One of the study’s biggest revelations: On average, data showed, the tracked animals spent just 13% of their time inside existing marine protected areas.
That suggests a pressing need to protect more ocean habitats and figure out the best areas to protect.
Some efforts along these lines are already underway. For example, in 2022 the nations that are parties to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which set a goal to protect, conserve, and manage at least 30% of the world’s oceans. But Papastamatiou stresses that it needs to be the right 30%. “A lot of these animals move over very large areas, and it is not feasible to protect all of those.”
Research on three shark species help illustrate the challenges ahead, as well as what we still need to understand about shark migration.
Shortfin MakoMako shark populations have plummeted due to commercial and recreational fishing, which is they they’re listed on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species, which puts limits on their commercial exploitation.
Makos are an apex predator found in tropical and temperate waters around the world, but until recently little was known about their movements and, therefore, where to protect them.
But earlier this year, a genetic study identified two distinct mako populations in the North and South Atlantic, according to co-author Mahmood Shivji of the Save Our Seas Foundation Shark Research Center at Nova Southeastern University, Florida. Females appear to stick to their respective populations, but males contribute genetically to both, which means they move between them. Such intermixing helps maintain genetic diversity, Shivji points out, giving the species a better chance to adapt to environmental changes.
This new information builds on a 2021 tagging study by the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi (which included Pico) that showed makos spend more time in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico than expected. Another found that some stay in the Gulf year-round.
Subscribe to our newsletter“We thought makos were seasonal in the Gulf from looking at catch data,” said Kesley Banks, an associate research scientist at the institute and an author on both papers. “We assumed they left in the summer and that isn’t the case. With both these studies, we see that they stay in the Gulf all year.”
Not all of them, though. In addition to Pico’s summer sojourns up the Atlantic coast, another male traveled thousands of miles to and around the Caribbean. Mako sharks tagged in the Atlantic by Shivji and his colleagues have not been tracked to the western Gulf, though, according to Banks.
These findings highlight how much movement patterns vary even within a species and make it clear that highly migratory animals must be managed at a large scale, not just on the local level. Those two meandering makos from the Gulf, for example, passed through at least 12 jurisdictional boundaries, representing different levels of fishing pressure and a variety of regulations.
Scalloped HammerheadsCritically endangered scalloped hammerhead sharks are another highly migratory species experiencing intense overfishing and rapidly diminishing numbers.
Every year hundreds of these hammerheads, mostly females, gather around protected areas near the Galápagos Islands. It isn’t clear where they migrate from, though, or whether the same individuals return every year. To find out, Shivji’s Shark Research Center spent five years conducting biopsies collected from the aggregation. They’re currently analyzing the samples, with plans to publish results in mid-2026.
Researcher about to deploy a satellite tag on a scalloped hammerhead. Photo: Mark Wong, used with permission.But we already know a few things about their behavior.
“The sharks aggregate during daytime and disappear at night,” probably to feed, says Shivji, who is leading the study. The researchers suspect many of the females are pregnant based on their size, and tracks show some moving from the aggregation to recently discovered nursery areas near the mainland. Others have gone westward far into the Pacific, although their tags didn’t last long enough to show whether those individuals turned around and came back.
This study could help make the case that the paths the sharks travel between existing protected areas also need protection.
“Their migrations to the aggregation area put them at risk,” Shivji says.
Silky SharksConsidered “vulnerable to extinction” by the IUCN, silky sharks get their name from the sheen created by densely packed dermal denticles — the tooth-like structures that make up shark skin. Once one of the most abundant shark species, they are heavily fished for their fins.
Silky sharks aggregate around Cocos Island in Costa Rica and the Galápagos Marine Reserve. Individuals tagged there by Shivji’s team mostly remained close by, not venturing far outside the Reserve. But some were tracked far into unprotected international waters, with the data indicating they faced fishing pressure on as much as 50% of their journeys.
Shivji and colleagues also have tagged silky sharks in Revillagigedo National Park, part of a network of protected areas in Mexico’s Eastern Tropical Pacific (and a UNESCO World Heritage Center). Those, too, traveled well outside the protected area, with two known to have been captured.
One question answered by this work could be whether the Galápagos and Mexico populations mix and if so, whether their travel routes that can be protected.
More to LearnResearchers have learned a lot about shark migrations in the past few decades thanks in part to improved and more commonplace tools. Tags are more advanced, for example, providing near real-time tracking via satellites for longer periods of time thanks to protective paint and better batteries.
Even so, findings have only scratched the surface. The movements of many species remain a mystery, as does the variation in migration behaviors within a species.
“People like to describe migration as a population-level reaction, where everybody leaves at same time, all go here, and all come back at the same time,” Papastamatiou says. “But we have started to see it is a proportion of animals that perform a migration, with a mix of animals that migrate or are residential. It is important to ask what determines who migrates and who remains? There has to be some selective reason for it.”
Studies have shown sex differences in migratory patterns of some shark species, such as females seeming more likely to migrate than males and pregnant females more likely to migrate than nonpregnant ones.
A Moving TargetEven as scientists are learning shark migration patterns, those patterns may be changing.
Another paper on which Shivji is a co-author found mako migrations responding to increasing water temperatures and the decreased dissolved oxygen content that results. Because makos have the highest metabolic rate of any shark, low oxygen levels effectively restrict their range.
“People focus on water temperature with climate change, but dissolved oxygen should be as big a concern,” Shivji said.
Other research has concluded that elevated sea-surface temperatures could cause sharks to delay their departure for summer habitats. That may already be happening; from 2011 to 2021, researchers at Florida Atlantic University saw blacktip shark populations off the state’s coast decrease to one-tenth of their initial abundance.
“In 2011 it was common to see over 10,000 sharks on a single aerial survey flight along Palm Beach County,” FAU professor Stephen Kajiura wrote in an email. “By 2021, we barely saw 1,000, despite increasing the number of flights in later years. The sharks were shifting northward. During that time, the average winter water temperature had increased by 1 degree C. That is a dramatic shift in just a decade.”
Such changes in the behavior of major predators have wide-ranging effects on local ecosystems.
For example, fewer sharks preying on groupers and snappers could increase their numbers, and those fish would eat more of the smaller fish. Reducing the number of smaller fish could increase that of other creatures down the food web, in turn causing changes to their prey. Down at the bottom of the chain, a decline in species that eat blue-green algae could increase toxic algae blooms.
In addition to protected areas, mitigation strategies also must account for changes in movement patterns. For example, a shift in timing of the arrival of a species to an aggregation could necessitate altering existing fishing limits.
Enforcement is also key — and already inadequate.
“Law enforcement is stretched out. We need more funding and more people,” said Banks. “But we also need the research to know where to send people, to narrow down where enforcement should be.”
Toward that goal, she and other scientists plan to continue tagging sharks.
“I’m waiting on tags in the mail right now,” Banks says. “Shark science is in its infancy, we are just now learning where they’re going and making new discoveries.”
“There are still species that we don’t know much about,” Papastamatiou says. “And even those we do know about, we can’t stop studying them because they can change.”
Previously in The Revelator:Trump vs. Birds: Proposed Budget Eliminates Critical Research Programs
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Sea Life Thrives on Sunken Ships and Discarded Bombs from World Wars
Marine life is thriving on unexploded bombs and sunken ships left over from the world wars, according to two new studies.
End of the line for cod?
'We do not accept this genocide'
In new forest finance plan, 34 nations endorse Brazil’s rainforest fund
Launching a plan to unlock much-needed finance to protect rainforests, a group of 34 countries – including both developing and donor nations – have backed Brazil’s proposal for a new rainforest fund, set to be launched at COP30 in Belém.
The Forest & Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) – a coalition formed at COP27 in Egypt to raise ambition for forest protection – unveiled an action plan in New York this week. It proposes six solutions to reverse forest loss by 2030, among them the creation of Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF).
The TFFF would invest in financial markets and use the expected returns to pay forest-rich nations to halt deforestation. It aims to raise initial capital of $25bn in public funds and $100bn from private investors. Brazil is the only country to have pledged money so far, announcing a $1bn investment this week.
Guyana’s Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Outar Bharrat said at the New York event that the new six-point forest finance plan “underlines that real solutions are already within our reach, with a menu of options that can move forward together at speed”.
André Aquino, economy and environment advisor at Brazil’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, said the country has made “significant progress” on finalising the details of the TFFF proposal and has “sprinted” to launch the fund at COP30.
Its design is mostly concluded, Aquino said at the finance plan launch. “There are ongoing conversations on some aspects. Basically, we move now into full-fledged investment mode,” he added.
The countries behind the broader roadmap include forest nations that could potentially benefit from the TFFF and other financing measures, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia and Vietnam, among others. It also includes wealthy donor governments such as Japan, Canada, UK and the US.
Despite the US’s roll-back of international climate finance under the Trump administration, Brazilian President Lula da Silva told journalists in New York this week he is “optimistic” about landing an American contribution to the TFFF.
The TFFF has already been endorsed by the eight South American countries that are home to the Amazon rainforest, the largest forest basin in the world. The BRICS group of large emerging economies have also voiced their support.
But while some wealthy countries – among them the UK, Germany, Norway and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – have engaged in the design of the TFFF, funding pledges have yet to follow. The Brazilian government aims to sign a letter of intent with donors at COP30 in November.
UK climate minister Katie White said at the event that establishing the TFFF and scaling up forest carbon markets are among the country’s priorities. “Rather than announcing lots of new plans, we want to work with existing initiatives, which can make the biggest impact in the smallest time,” she added.
Unlocking finance for rainforests by COP30A new analysis by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), published during Climate Week NYC, estimates the annual funding gap for forest protection at around $67 billion. The roadmap launched by the FCLP presents six potential solutions to quickly ramp up forest finance by COP30.
Among them are a scale-up of state-level forest carbon credits and debt-for-nature swaps, which free up debt repayments for ecosystem protection. Taken together, the proposed solutions could raise as much as $50bn a year, proponents say.
The most potentially profitable option, according to the roadmap, would be enabling local communities to produce more sustainable products from the forest, such as wood products and organic foods. This “bioeconomy” approach could raise up to $15bn every year to protect forests, experts say.
The funding roadmap estimates that a fully operational TFFF could raise up to $4 billion by 2030. The fund’s concept note claims it could pay countries up to $2.8 billion annually.
At COP28 in Dubai, all countries adopted a target of ramping up efforts to stop and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. But monitoring shows the world is losing forests at “frightening” record speed – not only due to humans cutting down trees but also because of massive wildfires amplified by global warming.
Developing countries, meanwhile, have argued that high government debt levels, limited access to multilateral banks, and unpredictable payments from donors make financing forest protection difficult.
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Logging to ‘Save’ Northern Spotted Owls From Wildfires Will Not End Well
A do-loop occurs when you repeat a set of tasks an indefinite number of times until something is ostensibly resolved. In other words, it’s doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different outcome.
We see this do-loop mindset in action in owl habitat management, where the Northwest Forest Plan & Amendment proposes logging canopy giants up to 150 years old, supposedly to “save” the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) from wildfires, a policy advocated for by some forest researchers. But scientific evidence clearly shows that these imperiled nocturnal birds of prey can survive and thrive with wildfires.
Logging for northern spotted owls was institutionalized in forest management practices in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recovery plan. The 2011 plan, published by the Obama administration, carried forward logging provisions from a politically influenced earlier plan under the George W. Bush administration that was summarily rejected in peer-review by scientists in 2007 and redone by the Obama administration in 2011. Unfortunately many of the logging provisions remained in the revised plan and are now inculcated in forest management.
Owl habitat managers also reinforce the logging do-loop with incorrect assumptions that severely burned forest patches are unsuitable for owls. Under this misperception, large trees can be removed via post-fire logging without jeopardizing the status of the owl population. For instance, the Fish and Wildlife Service routinely grants logging permits to federal land managers after fire even though logging causes owls to abandon territories that may not otherwise be lost to fire itself.
As the spotted owl is one of the most intensively studied birds of prey on the planet, we know that all forms of logging in burned and unburned forests that remove large trees and reduce the overstory canopy degrade habitat. While the species occupies old-growth forests throughout its range, mixed-severity wildfires have created the conditions for owl habitat in dry forests to flourish. Such fires are not complete “tree kill” events; instead, they leave a mosaic of large and small patches of dead and live trees for owls as well as myriad species that occupy the gradient of forest successional stages from pioneering stage after fire to older age stages that act as fire refugia.
Colloquially speaking, unburned patches act as nesting areas or owl “bedrooms,” and severely burned ones become the “kitchens” for small mammal prey to flourish.
Mixed-severity fire effects on the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest, Oregon, illustrating the “bed-and-breakfast” effect. (Photo: D. DellaSala)The owl presumably expanded its range along the eastern crest of the Cascades of Oregon and Washington not just because of fire suppression, as often claimed, but ostensibly because of mixed-severity fires that provided this habitat effect. And while there are conflicting perspectives on spotted owl management in wildfire areas, the main culprit in spotted owl nest abandonment post-fire is more complicated than wildfires, which are most often blamed.
For instance, researchers (including two of the authors of this op-ed) documented that nearly every known northern spotted owl territory throughout the entire range of the subspecies experienced repeat logging before and after fires, as well as the incursion of the competitive barred owl (Strix varia). The interacting effect of logging and barred owl encroachment conflates whether severe fire is the main problem in spotted owl nest abandonment. Regardless, federal agencies have used the excuse of wildfires to weaken habitat protections by allowing logging of large trees up to 150 years old in spotted owl habitat, thereby, reinforcing the do-loop.
Logging in northern spotted owl critical habitat that opens the forest canopy below the 60% threshold is a form of habitat degradation. Despite recognizing this in the recovery plan, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service approves such projects as fuel reduction (pictured here is “fuel reduction” in critical owl habitat on the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest, Oregon) (D. DellaSala).In a habitat simulation study, researchers (including three of the authors of this op-ed) concluded that logging large trees in spotted owl habitat in the name of wildfire management, as proposed in the owl recovery plan, would result in a large net degradation of owl habitat. Yet this concern, and the previously mentioned study documenting extensive logging in owl territories, has been repeatedly ignored by land managers — including researchers inappropriately calling for more logging in owl territories for fire concerns.
The do-loop of logging in owl territories is playing out in the Northwest Forest Plan Amendment that proposes to reverse habitat protections in the original plan established in 1993. The landmark plan has served as the benchmark ecosystem and biodiversity framework across some 25 million acres of federal lands in the Pacific Northwest for more than three decades. It is anchored in spotted owl habitat protections (e.g., late-successional reserves) that placed restrictions on logging trees that are more than 80 years old in the reserves. The current amendment would allow logging of large trees up to 150 years of age for fire concerns following misguided direction from some researchers and the owl recovery plan.
The original Northwest plan also was a 100-year plan whose effects, because of the habitat protections, have begun to shift the region’s forests from a source of carbon emissions from logging to a carbon sink, while gradually repairing damaged watersheds from expansive roads and logging.
Subscribe to our newsletterSimultaneously, in some areas, like the dry forests of the eastern Cascades of Oregon and Washington, logging restrictions have allowed large trees to begin to recover from early 20th century exploitation, and the recovering trees store over 40% of the aboveground carbon.
Logging large trees up to 150 years old would emit most of the stored carbon while exacerbating the global climate and regional wildfire crises. This is because large trees within intact forest canopies act as a wind buffer that slows advancing flames. The older trees also tend to burn in lower fire intensities. Removing them can over-ventilate a forest, increase wind speeds, dry out soils and understories that, in turn, contribute to fast fires that race through logged stands in extreme fire weather. These conditions are increasing because of the unprecedented buildup of greenhouse gases which, in an ironic twist, is worsened by the emissions from logging.
The Trump administration is on a collision course with forests nationwide. It’s rescinding protections for about 44.7 million acres of roadless areas and proposing to log large trees and older forests on nearly 60% of the entire national forest system. It will do this by “streamlined” permitting (i.e., minimal environmental review) and bypassing endangered species protections.
The Northwest Forest Plan Amendment and the owl recovery plan of 2011 have inculcated the do-loop of logging to save owls from wildfires, even though our peer-reviewed research questions that assumption. Instead, we believe it is time to break the cycle of repeating the same failing tactics. That would mean maintaining and even increasing habitat protections for the spotted owl, especially large trees now targeted for logging, along with science-based measures in the recovery plan like barred owl containment. Protecting the forest for these owls and myriad species that use large, old trees is the right call — not doing the same thing over repeatedly and expecting a different outcome.
That outcome is the likely extinction of northern spotted owls at the hands of some of the same logging “solutions” that historically contributed to the owl’s decline in the first place. We offer our research in the links provided to activists fighting to save the owl from misguided fire concerns, and while our response is directed at researchers and land managers responsible for enabling the do-loop, we believe the issues addressed herein are playing out in other dry forests outside the range of the owl where logging proposals aimed at large trees are degrading forests and increasing fire risks while doing nothing to solve the climate and global extinction crises.
Previously in The Revelator:‘Active Management’ Harms Forests — And It’s About to Get a Whole Lot Worse
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Childhood Exposure to Plastic Raises Lifetime Health Risks, Research Finds
Chemicals commonly used in plastic pose a serious threat to children, raising the risk of disability and disease long into adulthood. That is the conclusion of a sprawling review of hundreds of studies on the harms of plastics.
Inspired by Nature: 10 Powerful New Memoirs and Biographies
Everyone experiences life-altering events — the sudden loss of a loved one, professional or personal disruptions, natural disasters, or periods of burnout that stop us in our tracks.
These times can leave us feeling lost, but they’re not forever. Several new books published in 2025 feature life-affirming stories of how the natural world has helped people find new directions in life. These memoirs and biographies can help us to similarly embrace nature and wildlife to reaffirm, reawaken, and restore our creativity, resilience, and selves.
We’ve excerpted the books’ official descriptions below and provided links to the publishers’ sites. You should also be able to find these books in a variety of formats through your local bookstore or library.
All Humans Outside: Stories of Belonging in Nature
by Tommy Corey
A reflective look at the varied ways people’s lives are forever changed by nature through sustainability and conservation work, outdoor sports and recreation, community building, and more. Corey traveled across the United States and conducted more than two hundred interviews to chronicle these diverse experiences, sharing them through documentary-style photography and both first-person and third-person stories. Subjects include backcountry horse rider Gillian Larson, Triple Crowner and sponsored athlete Jack Jones, self-described “seminomadic van-dwelling grandma” Pacific Crest Trail hiker Karen DeSousa, Filipinx immigrant and park ranger Francis Eymard Mendoza, adaptive athlete Annijke Wade, New York Hunters of Color ambassador Brandon Dale, bestselling author and runner Mirna Valerio, and many more.
Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing
by Lili Taylor
Most people don’t really know birds — or rather, they aren’t aware of them. Lili Taylor used to be one of those people. She knew birds existed. She thought about them, maybe even more than the average person. But she didn’t know them. And then something happened. During a much-needed break from her work as an actor, Lili sought silence and instead found the bustling, symphonic world of birds that had always existed around her… Through a series of beautifully crafted essays, Taylor shares her intimate encounters with the birds that have captured her heart and imagination — from tracking flitting woodpeckers through oak trees to spotting majestic blue jays perched on a Manhattan fire escape; from the exhilaration of witnessing a migratory flock from the top of the Empire State Building to the quiet joy of observing a nest of hatchlings in her own backyard. Through simply paying attention to birds, Lili has been shown a parallel world that is wider and deeper, one of constant change and movement, full of life and the will to survive.
Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future
by Alan Weisman
The bestselling author of The World Without Us returns with a book ten years in the making: a study of what it means to be a human on the front lines of our planet’s existential crisis. To write this book, Weisman traveled the globe, witnessing climate upheaval and other devastations, and meeting the people striving to mitigate and undo our past transgressions. From the flooding Marshall Islands to revived wetlands in Iraq, from the Netherlands and Bangladesh to the Korean DMZ and to cities and coastlines in the U.S. and around the world, he has encountered the best of humanity battling heat, hunger, rising tides, and imperiled nature. He profiles the innovations of big thinkers — engineers, scientists, conservationists, economists, architects, and artists — as they conjure wildly creative, imaginative responses to an uncertain, ominous future. At this unprecedented point in history, as our collective exploits on this planet may lead to our own undoing and we could be among the species marching toward extinction, they refuse to accept defeat.
Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop
by Paula Whyman
When Paula Whyman first climbs a peak in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in search of a home in the country, she has no idea how quickly her tidy backyard ecology project will become a massive endeavor. Just as quickly, she discovers how little she knows about hands-on conservation work. In Bad Naturalist, readers meander with her through orchards and meadows, forests and frog ponds, as she is beset by an influx of invasive species, rattlesnake encounters, conflicting advice from experts, and delayed plans—but none of it dampens her irrepressible passion for protecting this place. With delightful, lyrically deft storytelling, she shares her attempts to coax this beautiful piece of land back into shape. It turns out that amid the seeming chaos of nature, the mountaintop is teeming with life and hope.
Radical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace
by James T. Costa
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) was perhaps the most famed naturalist of the Victorian age. His expeditions to remote Amazonia and southeast Asia were the stuff of legend. A collector of thousands of species new to science, he shared in the discovery of natural selection and founded the discipline of evolutionary biogeography.
Radical by Nature tells the story of Wallace’s epic life and achievements, from his stellar rise from humble origins to his complicated friendship with Charles Darwin and other leading scientific lights of Britain to his devotion to social causes and movements that threatened to alienate him from scientific society.
by Chloe Dalton
In February 2021 Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare — a leveret — that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how difficult it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton’s house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, weasels, feral cats, raptors, or even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death. Raising Hare chronicles their journey together while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore.
The Bird Singers: How Two Boys Discovered the Magic of Birdsong
By Jean Boucault and Johnny Rasse
This captivating book brings together two birds of a feather: Jean and Johnny, boys from very different worlds growing up in a small village in France. Jean is the genteel pharmacist’s son, dressed in his Sunday best; Johnny’s father is a rough, working-class sheep herder, always with the odor of animals clinging to him. Each year, over 300 bird species visit their village, which intersects a major migratory flyway. The two boys’ stories converge when Jean enters a bird-calling contest. He places second, and at only eleven years old becomes a child celebrity on the bird-calling circuit. Then Johnny starts to compete as well. At the annual bird festival, both boys are standouts, and a long, admiring rivalry develops between them, eventually culminating in the European championships.
North to the Future: An Offline Adventure Through the Changing Wilds of Alaska
by Ben Weissenbach
At the age of 20, college student Ben Weissenbach went north to Arctic Alaska armed with little more than inspiration from his literary heroes and a growing interest in climate change. What met him there was a world utterly unlike the 21st century Los Angeles in which he grew up — a land of ice, rock, and grizzlies seen by few outside a small contingent of scientists with big personalities… As these scientists teach Ben to read Alaska’s warming landscape, he confronts the limits of digital life and the complexity of the world beyond his screens. He emerges from each adventure with a new perspective on our modern relationship to technology and a growing wonder for our fast-changing — ever-changing — natural world.
Take to the Trees: A Story of Hope, Science, and Self-Discovery in America’s Imperiled Forests
by Marguerite Holloway
Journalist Marguerite Holloway arrives at the Women’s Tree Climbing Workshop as a climbing novice, but with a passion for trees and a deep concern about their future. Run by twin sister tree doctors Bear LeVangie and Melissa LeVangie Ingersoll, the workshop helps people — from everyday tree lovers to women arborists working in a largely male industry. As Holloway tackles unfamiliar equipment and dizzying heights, she learns about the science of trees and tells the stories of charismatic species, including hemlock, aspen, Atlantic white cedar, oak, and beech. She spotlights experts who are chronicling the great dying that is underway in forests around the world as trees face simultaneous and accelerating threats from drought, heat, floods, disease, and other disruptions. Holloway also comes to understand the profound significance of trees in her relationship with her family. The story of trees and their resilience meshes with that of people working to steward the forests of the future.
A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory
By Dr. Jagadish Shukla
Until 40 years ago, we couldn’t forecast weather conditions beyond ten days. Renowned climate scientist Dr. Jagadish Shukla is largely to thank for modern weather forecasting. Born in rural India with no electricity, plumbing, or formal schools, he attended classes that were held in a cow shed. Shukla grew up amid turmoil: overwhelming monsoons, devastating droughts, and unpredictable crop yields. His drive brought him to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, despite little experience. He then followed an unlikely path to MIT and Princeton, and the highest echelons of climate science. His work, which has enabled us to predict weather farther into the future than previously thought possible, allows us to feed more people, save lives, and hold on to hope in a warming world.
That’s it for this month, but you can find hundreds of additional environmental book recommendations, including many more memoirs and biographies, in the “Revelator Reads” archives.
And let us know what you’re reading: drop us a line at comments@therevelator.org
Previously in The Revelator:Earth Versed: 10 New Poetry Books About Our Relationship With Nature
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As China and EU disappoint, prospects of meeting 1.5C climate target fade
This week’s pledges by the EU, China and other large countries for emissions cuts by 2035 are not ambitious enough to get global climate targets back on track, climate experts say.
With the US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and President Donald Trump pouring scorn on climate action in his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, climate campaigners had hoped to see the European Union and China in particular step up. But many were disappointed by their announcements at the UN climate summit in New York on Wednesday.
“The US is absent. China and the EU have not raised each other’s ambition enough and even Australia, which is bidding to host COP31, has presented a weak target,” said Tracy Carty, a climate change politics specialist from Greenpeace International.
Chinese President Xi Jinping told the summit that China – the world’s top emitter – would cut emissions by between 7% and 10% by 2035 against peak levels. Its previous goal was for emissions to peak by around 2030.
Xi also appeared to make a dig at Trump’s climate scepticism. “While some country is acting against it, the international community should stay focused on the right direction,” he said.
His comments were echoed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who said “the clean transition is moving on” and “Europe will stay the course”.
“Timid” Chinese goalBut some climate change experts said the substance of their announcements was underwhelming and did not match their rhetoric, calling China’s goal “timid” and too easy to meet given the country’s rapid rollout of renewables and electric vehicles.
Von der Leyen, meanwhile, announced only that the EU’s 2035 reduction target would be somewhere between 66% and 72% on 1990 levels – unable to be more specific because EU member states have yet to agree a target, with several pushing to weaken the European Commission’s ambitions.
A few big countries including Nigeria and Pakistan announced new targets. Nigeria said it would aim to cut emissions 32% below 2018 levels by 2035 – with four-fifths of this target dependent on foreign help. Pakistan will aim for 17% below a business-as-usual projection by 2035.
But many other major economies, among them India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and South Korea, have yet to file their plans – despite an end of September deadline for them to be included in a UN progress report.
“Dangerously off track”The nonprofit research group World Resources Institute (WRI) calculates that 53 governments – representing a quarter of the world’s emissions – have filed their NDCs, though that figure did not include China or the EU. The group’s CEO, Ani Dasgupta, said the new NDCs “do not put us anywhere near on track for a safe future”.
“The lack of ambition so far from most major emitters, barring a few, underscores the immense political challenge countries face in transforming their entire economy. Yet vulnerable countries continue to step up with bold climate leadership,” Dasgupta said.
Greenpeace’s Carty agreed that the NDCs are “dangerously off track and without a serious shift, we’ll soar past 1.5C”.
At ActionAid, Teresa Anderson accused governments of “running scared from the corporations that care only for short-term profits over long-term survival of the planet”.
A few voices were more positive about the new round of NDCs. Gina McCarthy, former climate adviser to then U.S. President Joe Biden, said the America Is All In coalition that she co-chairs “applauds world leaders submitting updated climate plans that align with the targets of the Paris Agreement”, and there were bright spots in leaders’ speeches.
Solar booms and legal movesAnnouncing Pakistan’s new NDC, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif described how solar energy has grown seven-fold since 2021 as Pakistanis embrace rooftop solar panels to keep their lights on during frequent power cuts. Similar solar booms are happening in several blackout-afflicted African nations.
And government decisions on the NDCs may not be the final word. Leaders of the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu – both Pacific island nations that are among the most vulnerable to climate change – warned their fellow politicians that a recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion could mean courts force them to ramp up their climate targets and policies.
“Fellow leaders and especially those of you from the G20, if the Marshall Islands can deliver an ambitious NDC, so can you,” said Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine. “In fact, as the ICJ decision confirms, you are legally required to. You must deliver stronger NDCs that can meet 1.5C and can say how you will transition away from fossil fuels.”
On Monday, Ralph Regenvanu, the climate minister of fellow Pacific island nation Vanuatu, announced his country was drafting a UN General Assembly resolution to turn the ICJ advisory opinion into “political action”.
Regenvanu said individual governments opposed to the step would not be able to block it because the UN General Assembly votes by majority.
“There is no veto power to block this resolution going through,” Regenvanu said.
The post As China and EU disappoint, prospects of meeting 1.5C climate target fade appeared first on Climate Home News.
Why COP30 needs a cover decision to succeed
Andreas Sieber is the associate director of global policy and campaigns at 350.org.
It is no accident that the COP30 presidency convenes consultations on Thursday, a day after the UN Climate Summit. Wednesday’s speeches offered proof that, even amid geopolitical upheaval, the Paris Agreement still drives momentum. At the same time, the hard truth was clear well before the summit: the pledges do not add up.
COP30’s credibility rests on how it confronts this ambition gap. Attempts to spin COP30 as a success without such a response seem hollow. If COP30 must respond to this ambition gap, a cover decision emerges as the most credible path forward.
COP30 brings the ambition cycle of the Global Stocktake (GST), launched at COP28, to a close. The ambition gap is often framed through the temperature threshold, but it runs deeper, encompassing adaptation, loss and damage, and finance, all of which are falling dangerously short.
Countries trail COP30 clash over global response to shortfall in national climate plans
A cover decision is surely not the only marker of success: the Belém Action Mechanism on Just Transition, an ambitious Baku-to-Belém roadmap, and a Global Goal on Adaptation are just a few among other high-stakes deliverables. But it is one decisive piece of the puzzle.
Breaking through entrenched negotiationsWhy do we need one in the first place? Anyone who sat through the UAE Dialogue or Mitigation Work Programme earlier this year, will have more than serious doubts that these rooms can overcome their entrenched dynamics to deliver adequate outcomes, let alone allow the broader dealmaking required.
That is why a cover decision emerges as the most credible way to confront the ambition gap head-on – and here it is the Brazilian presidency that holds the pen.
A cover decision is no magic bullet to solve negotiation challenges, but it offers the best-placed procedural vehicle to balance different elements of the ambition package, allowing a race to the top instead of zero-sum trade-offs.
At the last COP, we saw mitigation pitted against finance, and without real commitments – especially credible new finance from wealthy countries – that history risks repeating itself. Process alone is no guarantee of success, but a misguided process is a recipe for failure. It’s also noteworthy that the COP29 presidency, due to a lack of political will or misguided strategy, refused to engage with the idea of a cover decision.
Instead of discussing several crunch issues across different rooms, a cover decision can bring topics together in the same room and the same text.
What should a cover decision includeA cover decision can anchor critical finance outcomes that otherwise lack a formal home, from the Baku-to-Belém roadmap to a meaningful scale-up in adaptation finance, with tripling as the obvious first step.
This is not about creating a procedural parking lot; it is about giving key outcomes real political and procedural weight. Linking the roadmap’s $1.3 trillion mobilisation goal for 2035 to concrete donor commitments through a cover decision would turn aspiration into accountability.
Responding to the ambition gap will also require initiatives that target the sectors driving the crisis. This could mean establishing a dedicated working group on phasing out fossil fuels, anchored in equity and 1.5°C consistent timelines, with a mandate that connects its work to COP31 under the incoming Presidency.
Brazil’s environment minister suggests roadmap to end fossil fuels at COP30
It could also mean reinforcing and expanding the COP29 Grids Initiative, this time with concrete public finance commitments attached. Both initiatives could be launched through presidential declarations and then captured and formalised within a cover decision.
Finally, a cover decision must also speak beyond the negotiating halls. It should respond with grave concern to the latest NDC synthesis report, and it should build on messages from the landmark ICJ advisory opinion and the leaders’ summit to signal that the world’s governments understand the urgency of the moment.
Instruments of real progressCritics may dismiss cover decisions as the epitome of empty words: procedural theatre about brackets and commas, offering conversation to those who are excited about “the process”, conversation rather than consequences. At times, cover decisions can be sprawling, jargon-laden texts that feel detached from real-world impact, such as in 2019. Yet history shows they can also be instruments of real progress.
It was a cover decision in Durban in 2011 that launched the Ad Hoc Working Group (ADP), the negotiating track that ultimately delivered the Paris Agreement.
Since then, their character has evolved. With the Paris rulebook now in place, cover decisions have increasingly driven forward momentum.
The closing plenary of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow (Photo: Kiara Worth/ UN Climate Change /Flickr) The closing plenary of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow (Photo: Kiara Worth/ UN Climate Change /Flickr)In Glasgow, a cover decision broke new ground by naming a fossil fuel for the first time, calling for the “phase down” of coal. However imperfect – singling out coal was very convenient for European countries and the United States at the time – this opened the door to COP28’s landmark outcome: a collective commitment to transition away from all fossil fuels and to triple renewable energy.
One could argue that the COP28 Global Stocktake decision was not technically a cover decision, but in practice it served as one. And in Egypt, a cover decision launched both the Just Transition Work Programme and the loss and damage fund, breakthroughs that continue to shape the process today. As we look ahead to COP30, where the Belém Action Mechanism on Just Transition is on the table, history suggests that a strong cover decision could again prove decisive.
COP30 and the Brazilian presidency will be remembered for whether (and how) it responds to the ambition gap in this decisive decade. A strong cover decision remains the most credible tool to anchor that response.
The post Why COP30 needs a cover decision to succeed appeared first on Climate Home News.
Heat Stress Is a Major Driver of India’s Kidney Disease Epidemic
Cases of chronic kidney disease unrelated to pre-existing conditions are on the rise in India and other tropical nations. As climate change raises temperatures and humidity, the disease is increasingly prevalent among outdoor laborers without access to rest, shade, or hydration.
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