US suffered greatest economic losses, report commissioned by International Chamber of Commerce finds, followed by China and India
Violent weather cost the world $2tn over the past decade, a report has found, as diplomats descend on the Cop29 climate summit for a tense fight over finance.
The analysis of 4,000 climate-related extreme weather events, from flash floods that wash away homes in an instant to slow-burning droughts that ruin farms over years, found economic damages hit $451bn across the past two years alone.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/10/2024 - 19:01
Early signs of success seen in area where native European oysters were fished to local extinction by early 1900s
Thousands of oysters released into the Firth of Forth appear to be thriving again after a century-long absence from the Scottish estuary since they were lost to overfishing.
Marine experts from Heriot-Watt University who have helped reintroduce about 30,000 European flat oysters to the estuary said divers and underwater cameras showed they were doing well.
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11/10/2024 - 13:25
Verse’s connection to nature can inspire awareness and hope amid the climate crisis, offering clarity beyond data
Poetry has a big debt to nature, its muse and source of metaphor for centuries. As the UN climate conference begins, it is time to pay it back. Poetry must give nature a voice to express its dire predicament. “I will rise,” declares the furious river in the Scottish makar Kathleen Jamie’s poem What the Clyde Said, After Cop26 – just as the River Xanthus in Homer’s Iliad rose in revenge against Achilles for filling it with so many bodies.
Ms Jamie’s poem appears in a new anthology, Earth Prayers, edited by the former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy. “We are in the age of anthropogenic climate breakdown, possibly the Age of Grief,” Ms Duffy writes in the foreword. The 100 poems, ranging from classics such as Matthew Arnold’s 1867 Dover Beach to #ExtinctionRebellion by Pascale Petit, remind us not just of the beauty of the natural world, but its fragility.
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11/10/2024 - 11:00
Once heavily scorned because of fraud and poor outcomes, carbon trading is likely to be high on the agenda in Baku
For the next two weeks, countries will gather on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan, to discuss how to increase finance for climate crisis adaptation and mitigation. A global agreement on carbon markets will be high on the agenda as countries try to find ways of generating the trillions they need to decarbonise in order to limit heating to below 2C above preindustrial levels.
Here is what you need to know.
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11/10/2024 - 09:00
Australian Automobile Association analysis notes hybrids are exempt from fringe benefits tax until 1 April 2025
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Battery-powered electric vehicle sales fell sharply last quarter and may have temporarily peaked as consumers turn to hybrid models that attract tax concessions, according to new analysis.
Quarterly vehicle sales data released by the Australian Automobile Association on Monday reveals petrol-powered cars continued to decline in popularity, with sales falling by 9.16% in the three months to 30 September.
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11/10/2024 - 07:00
Annual bird survey suggests ‘particularly bad’ autumn on key migration route through city’s brightly lit skyscrapers
As fall bird migration nears its end in New York City, a troubling trend may be emerging: preliminary evidence suggest that more avians collided with buildings this season compared with last autumn.
NYC Bird Alliance surveys suggest that collisions are up citywide and that it has proved to be a “particularly bad” autumn for collisions. While spring 2024 showed fewer collisions than in 2023, about 60-75% of such accidents occur during fall migration, which peaks from early September to October.
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11/10/2024 - 07:00
Crucial question for summit will be how to help developing countries cope with extreme weather caused by high temperatures
Cop29 officially opens on Monday 11 November in Baku, Azerbaijan, and the conference is scheduled to end on 22 November, although it is likely to run later. World leaders – about 100 have said they will turn up – are expected in the first three days, and after that the crunch negotiations will be carried on by their representatives, mostly environment ministers or other high-ranking officials.
The crucial question for the summit is climate finance. Developing countries want assurances that trillions will flow to them in the next decade to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the rapidly receding hope of limiting global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, and to enable them to cope with the increasingly evident extreme weather that rising temperatures are driving.
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11/10/2024 - 00:00
The region’s president responds to criticisms that he was slow to act by attacking the prime minister
The sun still hadn’t risen on Tuesday 29 October when the mayor of Utiel, Ricardo Gabaldón, took another look at the warnings from Spain’s state meteorological office and ordered all the schools in the small Valencian town to close.
“The warning early that morning – at 5am or 6am – was orange,” he said. “That’s when I was weighing up whether to close the schools here. In the end, I ordered them to close at six or seven that morning. Soon after, the alert went red.”
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11/09/2024 - 15:50
Ten people have been injured so far by the Mountain fire, which was 17% contained by Saturday morning
As firefighting crews continued to battle the Mountain fire on Saturday, some residents were allowed to return to areas destroyed by the blaze to sift through the destruction to their homes.
As of 7am Pacific time on Saturday, the fire had been 17% contained, according to Cal Fire, the state’s wildfire-fighting agency.
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11/09/2024 - 15:00
Shadow cabinet secretary Claire Coutinho accepted donation from Lord Bamford while overseeing millions awarded to his family businesses in green grants
A Conservative former cabinet minister who took donations from the billionaire boss of the JCB digger dynasty – including a £7,000 trip on his VIP private helicopter – oversaw decisions to award his family’s business empire millions in taxpayer-funded green energy grants.
Claire Coutinho also posed for pictures promoting Lord Bamford’s personal £100m hydrogen engine project and accepted a £7,500 donation from JCB to her local election campaign while she was the energy secretary in Rishi Sunak’s government.
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