Feed aggregator

A handful of startups are racing to usher in an era of near-limitless fusion energy, but big questions remain.

The U.N. climate conference, held in a petrostate, is a surreal moment. This darkly funny novel about Baku, oil companies and climate change in the first Trump term helps make sense of it all.

Poor country delegates say classifications that date back to 1992 are obsolete and two countries ‘should be contributing’

China and India should no longer be treated as developing countries in the same way as some of the poorest African nations are, according to a growing number of delegates from poorer country at the Cop29 UN climate talks.

China should take on some additional responsibility for providing financial help to the poorest and most vulnerable, several delegates told the Guardian. India should not be eligible for receiving financial help as it has no trouble attracting investment, some said.

Continue reading...

China has now passed Europe in its historical contribution to global warming. Rich nations say the country should contribute more climate aid.

Cop29 presidency announces new drive to cut methane emissions from waste dumps as G20 reaffirms transition from fossil fuels

The UK government has conceded that Australia was mistakenly included on a list of countries that were expected to sign up to a US-UK civil nuclear deal agreed at Cop29 on Monday, writes Adam Morton, Guardian Australia’s climate and environment editor.

The Albanese government flatly denied media reports on Tuesday that it would join the UK and the US in a collaboration to share advanced nuclear technology. The UK and the US announcement said they would speed up work on “cutting-edge nuclear technology”, including small modular reactors, after inking a deal at the Cop29 UN climate summit in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.

We urge them to use the G20 meeting to send a positive signal of their commitment to address the climate crisis.

Continue reading...

Chris Bowen also pledges A$50m to a fund to help the world’s most vulnerable people to repair the damage from climate breakdown

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has declared the landmark Paris agreement “is working” as it had brought the world back from “the brink of catastrophic 4C warming”, but argued countries must set the most ambitious emissions targets possible for 2035 to limit worsening global heating.

Giving Australia’s national statement on the conference floor at the Cop29 summit in Azerbaijan, he also pledged A$50m (US$32.5m) towards a global loss and damage fund to help the world’s most vulnerable people to repair the damage from climate breakdown.

Continue reading...

My brother called saying there was a storm. I was waiting, waiting, waiting. This is Elisa’s story

Location Saint-Martin-Vésubie, France

Disaster name Storm Alex, 2020

Elisa is a women’s clothing designer who runs her own label in Montreal, Canada. She was born and grew up in Nice, France, where much of her family remained, but was in Canada with her children and partner when Storm Alex gusted towards France and the mountain village where her mother lived. The storm was a powerful extratropical cyclone that caused extreme flooding around the Mediterranean, killing at least 15 people. Three months’ worth of rain – 50cm – fell on Saint-Martin-Vésubie in one day, 3 October 2020.

Continue reading...

An update on our progress from the Guardian’s head of sustainability

• The Guardian environment pledge 2024
• Support urgent, independent climate journalism today

Five years ago the Guardian made a pledge that we would “play a part, both in our journalism and in our own organisation, to address the climate emergency” with our first annual environment pledge. That commitment reflected our long history of environment reporting and our view that individual companies had to take greater responsibility for their impact on the natural world. We wanted to demonstrate to readers that we were taking the action that our journalism showed was so necessary, and to be transparent about our progress. Today we publish the 2024 pledge.

Since then we have worked hard to measure and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, to understand our impact on nature and to share our results openly with readers. In our latest sustainability report, published last month, we show that our emissions have fallen by 43% since 2020, putting us well on track to achieve our goal of a 67% cut by 2030.

Continue reading...

Nearly 40% of food sector lobbyists have travelled to Baku as part of countries’ delegations

• Cop29 climate summit – live updates

Hundreds of lobbyists for industrial agriculture are attending the Cop29 climate summit in Baku, analysis shows.

They include representatives from some of the world’s largest agribusiness companies including the Brazilian meatpacker JBS, the animal pharmaceuticals company Elanco, and the food giant PepsiCo, as well as trade groups representing the food sector.

Continue reading...

The tourism industry will be officially recognized at COP29 on Wednesday. Industry leaders signed a climate accord in 2021 to make travel more sustainable, but the results so far are meager.

Refurbishing an old building is subject to full VAT, but it isn’t if you build a polluting new one. The government’s priorities are all wrong

You can damn oil companies, abuse cars, insult nimbys, kill cows, befoul art galleries. But you must never, ever criticise the worst offender of all. The construction industry is sacred to both the left and the right. It may be the world’s greatest polluter, but it is not to be criticised. It is the elephant in the global-heating room.

It’s hard not to feel as though we have a blind spot when it comes to cement, steel and concrete. A year has now passed since the UN’s environment programme stated baldly that “the building and construction sector is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases”. The industry accounts for “a staggering 37% of global emissions”, more than any other single source. Yet it rarely gets the same attention as oil or car companies.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

A medida que los glaciares de Sudamérica retroceden, el suministro de agua dulce disminuye y su calidad empeora.

As the glaciers of South America retreat, the supply of freshwater is dwindling and its quality is getting worse.

City also pauses major repairs to aqueduct as residents and local agencies ordered to cut down on water usage

New York City on Monday issued its first drought warning in 22 years and paused major repairs to its main water aqueduct out of concern for the lack of rainfall.

Dry conditions across the north-east have been blamed for hundreds of brush fires. They had already prompted New York and state officials to implement water-conservation protocols when Mayor Eric Adams upgraded the drought warning and temporarily halted the $2bn Delaware aqueduct project, which was intended to repair leaks in the 80-year-old tunnel.

Continue reading...

Marine scientists say one area around Cooktown and Lizard Island had lost more than a third of its live hard coral after bleaching event

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Reefs across the north of the Great Barrier Reef have seen “substantial losses” of coral cover after a summer of extreme heat, two cyclones and major flooding, according to the first results of surveys from government marine scientists.

After the most widespread coral bleaching event seen on the world’s biggest reef system, the Australian Institute of Marine Science said one area around Cooktown and Lizard Island had lost more than a third of its live hard coral – the biggest annual drop in 39 years of monitoring.

Continue reading...

When the heat is on, the onus should be on the Coalition to explain why they don’t support measures to ensure their newly discovered battlers have access to rooftop solar

• Guardian Essential poll: almost half of Australian voters want Aukus reviewed after Donald Trump’s election win
• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Australia is facing the extreme risk of dangerous concentrations of high pressure and hot air this summer. There is also a strong likelihood of heatwaves.

The return of the performatively anti-climate Donald Trump will see the world’s biggest per capita carbon polluter pull out of global targets, emboldening energy incumbents and their mouthpieces to amp up their attacks on renewables.

Continue reading...

It’s November, and heat may not be the first thing on your mind. But here’s why it should be and what you can do to help indoor and outdoor workers stay safe from deadly heat. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has issued a proposed heat health safety standard and is taking comments on it through the end of December. Please weigh in to protect workers’ health and safety.

We’re coming off a summer that was the planet’s hottest on record, and millions of people had to work through it in conditions that are risky for their health—even deadly. Many of us interact frequently with outdoor workers or have friends and family who work outdoors. They work construction jobs, or harvest vegetables and fruit, handle baggage on hot airport tarmacs, clean the inside of planes with the AC turned off in between flights, or deliver packages to our doorsteps. In the United States, outdoor workers face a disproportionate risk of heat-related death, which occurs disproportionately among Black and Hispanic people.

Even now, with fall in the air, we are reminded of the harsh reality that fossil-fueled climate change is causing fall to be warmer across the contiguous US, particularly in the southwest. Phoenix, which has experienced record-breaking extended heatwaves this year, endured an unprecedented four days of temperatures of 110°F or higher in October! California too experienced a late-season October heatwave, made worse by climate change. And the first few weeks in November had weirdly warm temperatures across the Northeast.  

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) monthly outlook for October and November looks to follow this trend in which many parts of the US will have above-average temperatures. Warmer temperatures during the fall months could have repercussions on outdoor workers who worked through dangerously hot conditions this past summer.

Our own research finds that outdoor workers’ exposure to extreme heat can be expected to triple or quadruple between now and midcentury depending on the pace of growth in global heat-trapping emissions. As if this projected increase in extreme heat exposure isn’t daunting enough, outdoor workers are also at risk of collectively losing up to $55.4 billion in annual earnings due to extreme heat.

Is there any good news?

Yes! After years and even decades of calls for action, OSHA has finally proposed heat protection standards to help keep workers safe, and we have an opportunity to urge them to quickly finalize the strongest version of these standards.    

On July 2, 2024 OSHA  announced the release of the Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings rulemaking and on August 30 OSHA officially listed the proposed rule in the Federal Register, requesting public comments by December 30, 2024.  

What it does

OSHA’s goal is to prevent and reduce the number of occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities caused by exposure to hazardous heat. It would apply to all employers whose workers take part in outdoor and indoor work across industries and in construction, maritime, and agriculture sectors where OSHA has jurisdiction, excluding emergency responders and people working in air-conditioned spaces.    

OSHA’s standard would require employers to create a plan to evaluate and control heat hazards in their workplace and would clarify employer obligations and the steps necessary to effectively protect employees from hazardous heat.

OSHA has also provided a robust and extensive scientific basis for the rule. Section III of the proposed rule provides these science-based background materials, and OSHA also has a one-stop shop webpage with additional background information and resources.

Critical points for public comments 

UCS, alongside a broad coalition of worker justice and public health professionals, has long been calling for these heat-health protections. We have also been weighing in on the OSHA rulemaking process over the years (2022 and 2023).

We hope that you will submit comments in support of OSHA’s rulemaking.

In a recent blogpost, my former colleague Kristina Dahl summarized the proposed rulemaking, noting that while there are areas for improvement that OSHA should address, this is a strong standard that will help keep workers safer from extreme heat.

As you prepare to submit comments on OSHA’s heat standard, below are points from Kristy Dahl’s overview to keep in mind:

1. Support the strong provisions in the heat protection standard which include:

• The core health-protective measures workers need when it’s hot: water, shade, and rest;
• Provisions that require rest breaks to be paid—a real win that will ensure workers don’t have to choose between their health and their livelihoods. UCS research shows that outdoor workers could collectively be losing billions of dollars in earnings due to worsening extreme heat by midcentury if provisions like this are not in place;
• The inclusion of an initial heat trigger at 80°F, above which certain protective measures go into place, and a high heat trigger at 90°F, when those measures get ramped up;
• Requirements that managers involve non-managerial employees in identifying hot spots in workplaces and in developing plans to monitor employees when it’s hot.

2. Highlight how the standard could be improved:

• Written heat injury and illness protection plans should not be exempted for employers with fewer than 10 employers. There are different means of assessing how many employers and employees this would exempt, but it’s safe to say it’s a lot. Pew Research shows that half of small businesses in the US have fewer than five employees, for example. And the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council has used Census data to estimate that nearly 80% of employer firms have fewer than ten employees.
• OSHA should strengthen protections for temporary and part-time workers, many of whom work in construction and agriculture, as recommended by heat and health experts like Juanita Constible.
• Weak and limited recordkeeping requirements. Under the proposed rule, employers would not be required to keep records of heat illnesses and injuries experienced in their workplaces or how those cases were resolved. Employers would only be required to keep six months’ worth of records of workplace temperatures.
• Fixed length for rest breaks. The rest break policy is set at a minimum of 15 minutes every two hours rather than progressively longer breaks as the temperature rises, as was suggested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in their 2016 recommendations.  
• Shorter-than-needed acclimatization periods. The proposed rule requires employers to implement a gradual period of acclimatization for new workers that is, at a minimum, four days long. Science suggests this is much too short. OSHA’s own data has shown that most workplace heat-related fatalities occur during the first week on the job. And the CDC notes that acclimatization can take longer than one week.
• Improve sedentary work activity protections. We are pleased OSHA included more specificity on what constitutes sedentary work indoors and encourage OSHA to maintain, at a minimum, this language. However, workers’ exposure to sufficiently extreme heat even when sedentary can present serious harms. Given this, we encourage OSHA to consider a stipulation in which the standard does not apply to those engaged in sedentary work activities in environments where the heat index is below 110 °F but does apply in environments above that threshold.
• Monitoring conditions at work sites or with local forecasts. This policy has the potential to provide insufficient protection for workers because measurements from the weather stations used to determine forecasts might differ from measurements at local worksites. Instead, we recommend OSHA strengthen this policy by requiring employers to monitor the on-site heat index or wet bulb globe temperature throughout the day. Alternatively, employers could note that if the daily maximum heat index forecast exceeds relevant thresholds, they would then implement protection measures for the full workday regardless of how temperature and humidity evolve throughout the day.

If you have expertise on worker conditions, public health or if you’re simply interested in submitting a more substantial set of comments you may be interested in reading and lending support to our full set of UCS comments on the heat protection standard. You could also draw from fellow advocate Juanita Constible’s excellent blog post about the proposed rule and this recent helpful NPR interview with experts including Kristina Dahl. We also recommend that you read the proposed rule itself and decide how you’d like to respond. For even more in-depth data, you may wish to review UCS’s reports Killer Heat and Too Hot To Work.

Whatever route you choose, we urge you to consider submitting a comment. The health and wellbeing of the roughly 36 million outdoor and indoor workers in the U.S. depends on this standard being as strong as possible, and it’s up to all of us to ensure it lives up to its potential.

State and local protections to complement the OSHA standard

While we are very close to being able to celebrate a productive end to this long OSHA heat standard journey (since the 1970’s), there are still multiple stages in the rulemaking process that will take months or years to finalize so the work doesn’t stop here.

We also need state and local protection standards. Why you ask? Good question. Currently only a few states and localities have heat protection standards and even when we have a final federal standard, states and localities can do more to tailor their policies to better reflect local conditions and employee needs while also lending to an increase in monitoring and enforcement of these standards so that fewer workers are left to the mercy of their employer. For more on state and local policies, see Public Citizens Scorched States report card and Section III, Part D of the proposed rule.

With your help, we’ll get a strong and final federal rule requiring employers to implement OSHA’s heat-protection standard. Moving forward we will also work to advocate for strong state and local standards. Thank you for your efforts in helping to keep workers safe from dangerously hot working conditions!

Sherry Rehman says rich nations should pay ‘internationally determined contributions’ to help poorer and worst-affected countries

Amid the endless politicking and inscrutable arguments at the UN climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, this month, it can be hard to remember what is at stake. That’s why Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s former climate change minister, is calling on global leaders to “keep an eye on the big picture”.

“We’re here for life and death reasons,” Rehman said.

Continue reading...

It may feel like we are facing a grim reality. Regardless of people’s beliefs, the facts show us the increasing toll from an unaddressed climate crisis. Globally, this year is going strong as the warmest on record and likely one of the coolest we’ll see in the decades ahead. In Spain, recent catastrophic flooding, the most devastating in Europe since 1967, has cost more than 200 lives. And locally, this year marks the second highest number of red flag warnings in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, with fires threatening to damage homes.  

Annual global mean temperature anomalies from January – September 2024 (relative to the 1950-1900 average) from six international datasets. Source: WMO 

In these dire times, it’s a huge relief to see that here in Massachusetts, state legislators rolled up their sleeves to protect their constituents now through steady climate action, passing An Act promoting a clean energy grid, advancing equity and protecting ratepayers, which Governor Maura Healey supports and is expected to sign shortly. This is a huge reason for hope and celebration! 

The legislation includes multiple components to decrease heat-trapping emissions from the electricity, transportation, and building sectors, including streamlining the siting process for clean energy projects, increasing energy storage targets, enabling a robust electric vehicle charging system, and implementing measures to protect ratepayers and reduce overreliance on gas in buildings and homes. In particular, I am celebrating two key achievements of this legislation related to clean energy siting and gas overreliance.  

Advancing faster, more equitable siting of clean energy infrastructure 

While the ability to build quickly is a key component of a clean energy transition, doing so with appropriate attention to the needs of communities, particularly to those who have been most heavily burdened by energy infrastructure and pollution, is just as crucial.  

Our own recent analysis found that to date, infrastructure siting has put a disproportionate burden on environmental justice (EJ) communities where people of color, low-income people, and limited-English proficient speakers live across the state. While close to 50 percent of Massachusetts neighborhoods (2,604 of 4,985 census block groups) classify as EJ neighborhoods, more than 80 percent of existing polluting electricity generating units—with their associated health risks—are located in or within one mile of an EJ neighborhood. 

The existing siting process has resulted in a high concentration of polluting electricity generating units in and near environmental justice neighborhoods. Source: UCS, with Alternatives for Community and Environment, GreenRoots, and the Conservation Law Foundation. 

With that in mind, it’s really encouraging to see that the three key recommendations from our analysis, guided by priorities from the Massachusetts Environmental Justice Table, were included in the new legislation to advance the siting of new clean energy infrastructure in the Commonwealth: 

• requiring a robust cumulative impacts analysis,  

• expanding the state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board to include representation from environmental justice and Indigenous sovereignty perspectives, and  

• integrating public health and climate change as priorities for decision-making.   

Addressing the state’s gas overreliance problem in buildings 

Buildings are the second largest source of heat trapping emissions in Massachusetts. As the state works to achieve its climate goals, it’s essential to explicitly put in place measures to move away from gas use in buildings.   

The new legislation gives particular attention to this issue by: 

• Allowing gas utilities to build networked geothermal projects. This is an important tool to replace fossil fuels for heating and cooling entire neighborhoods.  

• Prioritizing short-term repairs or retiring stretches of gas pipelines instead of continued investments in costly pipe replacements. 

• Considering alternatives such as electric heating and cooking before allowing for more gas hookups. This is good not only for the climate, but for the health of Massachusetts households by reducing indoor air pollution from gas stoves.  

Rising to meet the challenge ahead 

The job is not done yet. Despite this welcome good news, the new legislation does have some concerning elements and leaves plenty of work for the next legislative session. Of particular concern is the inclusion of nuclear fusion as a technology that qualifies for the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, a tool created to incentivize the generation of energy using commercially available technologies that harvest natural sources that are constantly replenished, like the wind and the sun (hence renewable energy) . The inclusion of fusion, a technology that’s not going to yield any practical source of electricity generation in the foreseeable future, is at best a distraction from the urgent need to decarbonize our electric grid with available and proven renewable energy technologies. 

While this new legislation will build on the state’s climate progress, including recent pieces of legislation like a net zero by 2050 goal, increased investments in offshore wind, and key protections for its most pollution burden communities, there is still a lot of work ahead of us, especially given the incoming Trump administration and the increased importance of state action.  

But for today, I want to express my sincere gratitude to our legislators for passing this bill, to Gov. Maura Healey and her administration for their leadership in prioritizing the health and well-being of their constituents and our shared planet, and giving us this much-needed breath of fresh air. Thank you! 

Despite endorsing a transition away from fossil fuels last year, Saudi officials have since worked to undermine it in at least five U.N. forums, diplomats said.