Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!
You are here
Feed aggregator
A Landscape Architect Fights Climate Change
Meeting the Challenge of Transportation and Climate
Eriel Tchekwie Deranger Seeks Climate Policy That Works With the Land
An Indigenous Woman Helps Her People Address Climate Change
Kate Raworth Looked Beyond G.D.P. to Create ‘Doughnut Economics’
Chef Nadia Sammut Aims to Educate About How Food Affects the Earth
A German Company Provides Fuel Cells to Power Remote Areas
Mette Lykke Helps Keep Food Out of the Trash in 19 Countries
Selfies and surf simulators: the young cruisers driving boom in sea holidays
A new generation is taking to the ocean in growing numbers – and fears over the environmental impact of cruise ships appear not to be denting their popularity
- Read more in this series
This summer was the first time 31-year-old Daisie Morrison had been on a cruise when she set sail on a two-week holiday with two friends, also in their early 30s.
“One of my friends suggested it,” she says. “She had seen different influencers on Instagram going on cruises. You go to so many places that we wanted to visit, so we were all quite keen.”
Continue reading...Backroom deals and betrayal: how Cop29’s late $300bn deal left nobody happy
While an agreement on climate finance was eventually reached in Baku, many poorer countries were outraged
The Lamborghini showroom and a Tiffany branch sit at either end of Baku’s long boulevards beside the Caspian Sea. Adorned with grand 19th-century mansions, all plaster nymphs and columned facades, that were built by the first oil millionaires, they are a testament to the enduring power of fossil fuels. Oil has been very good to Azerbaijan.
It flows out of the ground here, and gas has seeped out, ignited and burned naturally in the area for so long that the country’s symbol is a flame and its nickname is the Land of Fire. Baku was the world’s first oil town, with wells exploited as early as the 1840s. Ilham Aliyev, the autocratic president, calls oil and gas “the gift of God” to his people. They represent 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports.
Continue reading...‘Travesty of justice’: Cop29’s controversial deal – podcast
Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian’s environment editor, Damian Carrington, about the controversial climate finance deal that brought Cop29 negotiations to a close in the early hours on Sunday morning in Baku, Azerbaijan. Developing countries asked rich countries to provide them with $1.3tn a year to help them decarbonise their economies and cope with the effects of the climate crisis. But the final deal set a pledge of just $300bn annually, with $1.3tn only a target. Damian tells Madeleine how negotiations unfolded, and what we can expect from next year’s conference in Brazil
Find all the Guardian’s reporting on Cop29
Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod
Continue reading...Cop29 deal fails to consider inflation so is not tripling of target, economists say
Experts say financial movements mean poor nations will in effect get billions less in value from £300bn pledge
A failure to factor in inflation means the $300bn (£240bn) climate finance deal agreed at Cop29 is not the tripling of pledges that has been claimed, economists have said.
The international talks in Baku were pulled back from the brink of collapse early on Sunday morning when negotiators struck an agreement in which rich countries promised to raise $300bn a year by 2035. On paper, this is a tripling of the previous climate finance target of $100bn a year by 2020, and has been trumpeted as such by the UN and others.
Continue reading...Storm Bert: drone footage shows extent of flooding at English holiday park – video
Drone footage captured on Monday showed flooded caravans at Billing Aquadrome Holiday Park near Northampton, Northamptonshire. Storm Bert will continue to bring disruption into Monday after torrential downpours caused 'devastating' flooding over the weekend.
Continue reading...How Trump Could Upend Electric Car Sales
I'm glad we got a deal at Cop29 – but western nations stood in the way of a much better one | Mukhtar Babayev
My negotiating team tried in vain to push up support for the global south. Lessons must be learned before the next summit in Brazil
- Mukhtar Babayev is president of the Cop29 UN climate change conference
- China was willing to offer more in climate finance, says Cop29 president
Nine years after the Paris agreement, and after 11 months of multilateral diplomacy and two weeks of the most intense negotiations at Cop29 in Baku, we have a deal. Under the terms of the Baku breakthrough, the world’s industrialised nations will provide $300bn (£240bn), which, combined with resources from multilateral lending institutions and the private sector will reach $1.3tn in climate financing this year. Cop29 also finalised, after years of failed attempts, a global framework for international carbon markets trading, a critical mechanism for less polluting and less wealthy nations to raise climate finance. A fund for responding to loss and damage – another new financial resource for less developed nations – was brought in shortly before the summit, and funds are already being paid into it.
This deal may be imperfect. It does not keep everyone happy. But it is a major step forward from the $100bn pledged in Paris back in 2015.
Mukhtar Babayev is president of the Cop29 UN climate change conference
Continue reading...China was willing to offer more in climate finance, says Cop29 president
Azerbaijan’s Mukhtar Babayev criticises western countries for failing to provide enough money for developing world
China would have offered more money to the poor world to tackle the climate crisis if western countries had not failed to show leadership, the president of the Cop29 UN climate summit has said.
Cop29 ended early on Sunday morning after a marathon final negotiating session in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, with a deal on finance to developing countries that was widely attacked for being inadequate and a betrayal of trust.
Continue reading...Newsom Challenges Trump on Electric Vehicle Tax Credits
Storm Bert: forecasters and politicians criticised after devastating floods
Critics claim warnings and defences were inadequate but Met Office says storm was ‘well forecast’
Weather forecasters and politicians have come in for strong criticism after hundreds of homes and businesses across the UK suffered devastating flooding in Storm Bert but the Met Office has said it issued sufficient warning.
There were growing complaints in south Wales, one of the areas most heavily hit, that the Met Office issued only a yellow warning, rather than an amber or red, and that not enough new defences had been put in place by the Welsh government since storms last wreaked havoc in the area four years ago.
Continue reading...