COP24

Oil and gas companies shouldn’t bother showing up at global climate negotiations later this year unless they’re ready to help deliver on real emission reductions, former United Nations climate secretary Christiana Figueres told a climate journalism conference in New York this morning.

PR giants like Edelman, McCann, Ogilvy, and Publicis Groupe are under the microscope during New York Climate Week after the Clean Creatives campaign launched its 2023 F-List, an inventory of 500 fossil fuel contracts with 294 advertising and public relations agencies in 2022 and 2023.

Group of 20 leaders agreed Saturday to triple renewable energy deployment and try to increase funding to address climate change-related disasters, but maintained the status quo on phasing out carbon spewing coal.

Every facet of human health is prone to the cascading risks of climate change, concludes a special analysis by the Washington Post that followed the distressing scale of human suffering that unfolded in Pakistan after flooding and extreme heat events.

The 27 countries that form the European Union are preparing to propose a global deal to phase out fossil fuels when this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 28, convenes in the United Arab Emirates November 30.

Climate change is “relentlessly eating away” at Africa’s economic progress and it’s time to have a global conversation about a carbon tax on polluters, Kenya’s president declared Tuesday as the first Africa Climate Summit got under way.

Amid revelations that the United Arab Emirates has not disclosed its methane emissions data for nearly 10 years leading up to its role as COP 28 host later this year, critics are further alleging that its state-owned oil company, whose CEO Sultan al Jaber will be serving as COP President, has set itself “incoherent” methane targets.

Three high-profile critiques shed light on the mounting moral and financial issues facing Big Oil: an incisive TED talk by climate icon Al Gore, a scathing New York Times op-ed on the industry’s “last man standing” approach, and an influential research entity’s rebuke of its flawed business model.

Canada’s cap on oil and gas emissions will be delayed by months, not years, and the slower schedule won’t relax the 2030 target for companies to reduce their climate pollution, Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault said this morning.

Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault has unveiled detailed plans to phase out “inefficient” oil and gas subsidies, based on guidelines released this morning that take effect immediately and are meant to fulfill a 14-year-old pledge by G20 countries.

With a 1.5°C target to stabilize the global climate moving out of reach, and Monday, July 3 setting a record for the hottest world average temperature ever, a new report says leading oil and gas companies have done little to shift out of fossil fuels and meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Being awarded the French Legion of Honour was a timely reminder that the “pivotal” targets in the Paris climate agreement matter, and that relationships among countries make a difference in the fight to decarbonize, former Canadian environment minister Catherine McKenna said this week.

Fresh off a set of deeply dysfunctional climate negotiations in Bonn that threatened to throw this year’s COP 28 talks into disarray, dozens of world leaders are set to gather in Paris this week to discuss a broad menu of international finance issues, including the funds needed to drive down carbon emissions and help developing countries confront the impacts of climate change.

The oil and gas CEO at the helm of this year’s United Nations climate talks was still a lightning rod for objections, global carbon dioxide levels hit a record high, and delegates couldn’t even agree on an agenda as 10 days of mid-year negotiations got off to a rocky start in Bonn, Germany this week.

Not only have rich countries failed to deliver the annual US$100 billion in climate finance they promised back in 2009, but they’ve also vastly overstated the funds they did pony up, finds a new report by Oxfam International, resulting in a brewing distrust that could undermine ongoing climate negotiations.

A U.S. policy think tank is advocating a transformative approach to climate finance for vulnerable countries: cancel national debts and redirect the repayment funds to climate adaptation and resilience projects.

In what one news report called a “remarkable rebuke” heading into mid-year climate negotiations, more than 130 members of the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament are asking the United Nations and other key decision-makers to remove Sultan al Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), from his role as COP 28 President.

COP 28 President Sultan al Jaber is under fire for a “dangerous” pitch to reduce fossil fuel emissions without reducing oil and gas production, even as countries work toward adopting a global renewable energy target when the annual UN climate summit convenes in Dubai November 30-December 12.

For climate action to succeed, cities will have to be at the forefront, according to the latest scientific assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And while many are on the right path, local leaders need citizen support to ensure their ambitious climate plans actually get implemented and remain in place.

Germany called Tuesday for governments around the world to work on setting an ambitious target for renewable energy that would “ring in the end of the fossil fuel age” and help prevent dangerous global warming.

With the COP 28 climate summit set to open eight months from now in Dubai, this week’s synthesis report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underscores the yawning gap between the actions scientists say are required to prevent catastrophic climate change and the real political steps governments are taking.

The head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) says there’s “no excuse” for near-record global emissions of methane from fossil fuels, even as new research suggests heavy oil facilities in Saskatchewan are releasing almost four times as much of the climate super-pollutant as they report to government.

The oil executive who will lead this year’s United Nations climate talks has responded to fears that fossil fuel interests are hijacking the process: his “top priority” is to keep the 1.5°C goal alive, he said, a week after cautioning that the world still needs oil to “bridge from the current energy system to the new one.”

Negotiations aimed at solidifying a plan for loss and damage funding ahead of this year’s COP 28 climate summit have already fallen behind schedule, with a lag in nominating committee members raising fears that vital climate recovery dollars for the world’s most vulnerable countries will be delayed.

A tiny Danish island has completed its journey to becoming the world’s first “renewable energy island,” with its roughly 4,000 residents reducing their emissions to near zero through collective ownership of wind turbines, solar panels, and biomass heating plants.

Ten months out from hosting the COP 28 climate summit, and weeks away from being censured by the C40 Cities initiative for its underwhelming climate efforts, Dubai is poised to pre-emptively drop out of the flagship green communities alliance.

Two legal challenges against the Woodhouse Colliery coal mine in the North West England county Cumbria may determine the country’s future reputation as a climate leader, after a new analysis suggested the mine would release 17,500 tonnes of methane per year.

The questions are as predictable as the incremental, half-hearted result of this year’s United Nations climate conference, COP 27, in Egypt.

Countries attending the COP 15 summit in Montreal have adopted a 2030 deadline to protect 30% of the world’s lands, oceans, coasts, and inland waters, cut subsidies that harm nature by US$500 billion, reduce the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance to near zero, and cut food waste in half, in what some participants and observers have been calling a “Paris moment” for nature.

A municipal climate leader from Halifax came away from this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 27, with a stronger network of contacts, a wider view of the climate challenges cities face, and a sense that it’s time to “hack the COP” so that participants get more out of the two weeks onsite.

News that the fossil-intensive United Arab Emirates will be hosting the COP 28 climate summit is getting mixed reviews.

Representatives from developing countries have walked out the global biodiversity and nature summit, COP 15, over concerns that talks about how those efforts should be funded are lagging behind those on how much land and water should be set aside.

A letter backed by 650 scientists says forest bioenergy has “wrongly been deemed ‘carbon neutral’” and calls on world leaders to stop the practice that they say destroys valuable wildlife habitats.

While the global biodiversity crisis deepens and the COP 15 summit in Montreal enters a final week of high-stakes negotiations, a report this morning points to a yawning gap between the degraded landscapes set aside for restoration and countries’ “aspirational goal” to restore a billion hectares—an area the size of China—by the end of this decade.

The world won’t succeed in halting biodiversity loss without Indigenous participation and leadership, according to leaders attending a major United Nations conference in Montreal.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged global consensus on conserving 30% of Earth’s land and waters by 2030 as the United Nations biodiversity conference, COP 15, opened in Montreal, presenting Canada as nature’s champion—despite its sizeable oil and gas investments.

With the United Nations biodiversity summit, COP 15, taking place in Montreal, all eyes are on the host country’s efforts to set binding global targets to protect nature.

Ottawa will spend up to C$800 million to support four major Indigenous-led conservation projects across the country covering nearly one million square kilometres of land and water, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Wednesday.

If global biodiversity—the subject of the huge COP 15 summit in Montreal this week and next—is too much of a mouthful, try thinking instead about the white-throated sparrow.

It’s “factually incorrect and politically very wrong” to say a 1.5°C limit on average global warming is no longer possible, International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol said this week, pushing back on the “unusual coalition” of scientists, activists, and fossil industry “incumbents” that have been carrying that message.

Successful debt-for-nature swaps in the Seychelles, Belize, and Barbados have revived interest in a financing model that offers a three-way win: for debt-burdened countries seeking relief, investors chasing net-zero goals, and for the Earth’s declining biodiversity, which must be preserved to meet climate targets.

All big emitters—including China and Saudi Arabia—must contribute to a new global fund to compensate developing countries for the losses and damages they incur from climate change, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said toward the end of the COP 27 climate summit in Egypt.

A landmark victory on loss and damage funding was muted when COP 27 delegates realized they’d adopted a final declaration placing natural gas at the centre of the transition off carbon.

China has drafted a plan to reduce methane emissions and the United States has pledged to help, but climate campaigners say the country’s biggest methane culprits—coal mines and livestock—have yet to be addressed.

The European Union is laying the groundwork to increase reliance on expensive, emissions-intensive fertilizers, a move that will hit hardest for developing countries looking for funds to deal with the impacts of climate change and reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Canada won’t agree to add language calling for the phaseout of all fossil fuels—including oil and gas—to the final agreement at this year’s United Nations climate talks in Egypt, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Thursday.

A dramatic new offer from the plenary floor at COP 27, in which rich countries would immediately set up a loss and damage fund in exchange for a pledge to peak greenhouse gas emissions before 2025 and phase down oil and gas as well as coal, changed the tone and may have salvaged the outcome of climate negotiations that seemed hopelessly deadlocked just hours before.

Something significant is happening in the desert in Egypt as countries meet at COP 27, the United Nations summit on climate change, veteran climate finance special Rachel Kyte writes in a post for The Conversation.

A COP 27 event marked the Glasgow Statement’s one-year anniversary by urging Germany, Italy, Canada, and the United States to live up to climate promises that could shift US$28 billion per year from fossil fuels to clean energy.

The 2015 Paris agreement legally bound the world to keep global warming “well below” 2.0°C. Now its architects say nature needs a similar treaty, arguing that without urgent action to protect ecosystems, there will be no hope of accomplishing the Paris mission.

Six weeks before taking power, Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday told cheering crowds at the UN climate conference, COP 27, that he would crack down on illegal deforestation in the Amazon, revive relationships with countries that finance forest protection efforts, and push to host an upcoming world climate summit in the rainforest.

African petrostates betting on fossil fuel exports for wealth creation and energy security are making an imprudent choice, warns a new report, as the “inevitable and irreversible” energy transition will slash demand, lower oil prices, and freeze investments from international oil companies.

For decades, 40,000 litres per day of toxic effluent have been knowingly released from an oil terminal on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, endangering a super-hardy coral species that may contain the key to climate-proofing the rest of the world’s coral.

Fifteen of the world’s top food-producing companies have a methane footprint equal to 80% of the European Union’s emissions of the super-potent greenhouse gas, says a new report by the Changing Markets Foundation and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

The World Economic Forum has launched an open-access solutions toolbox for urban decarbonization for cities looking for inspiration and guidance in their race towards net-zero.

The COP 27 climate summit has been dominated by “false solutions” that ignore the needs of underrepresented people and shun vital principles like energy sovereignty, gender justice, and land rights, according to a panel of community experts on the front lines of the climate crisis.

One of the most important moments in this year’s COP 27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, may have happened 9,550 kilometres away in Indonesia, when U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to restart formal climate cooperation during a side meeting at this year’s G20 summit in Bali.

Canada placed fifth from the bottom, and the top three ranks were left empty for the second year in a row, in the latest edition of the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) released at the COP 27 climate summit Monday.

A cap on greenhouse gas emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector will be ready by the end of next year, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Monday.

While negotiations at the COP 27 climate summit lag and fossil interests strive to dominate the conversation, countries are announcing side agreements that point toward emission reductions and energy transition in parts of the world that need them most.

A COP 27 panel discussion on accountability for climate action revealed an ongoing disconnect between developed and developing worlds, with the former urging faith in a complex-but-sincere process and the latter expressing significant mistrust and frustration.

Mainstreaming climate action into city financial systems, applying a climate budget to all decisions, and encouraging private sector investment in climate adaptation are strategies that all municipalities, regardless of their situation, can implement to unlock green financing, says C-40 Cities.

Major energy exporting and importing countries made an ostensibly worthy pledge at the COP 27 climate summit to slash emissions from fossil fuels—but it turns out to be a toothless “paper tiger,” say climate watchdogs, with no legally binding effects and nothing new added to past commitments.

A new report busts the “fallacy” that boosting gas production in Africa will benefit the continent’s population. Instead, the so-called “dash for gas” will devastate the natural environment, leave local communities powerless, and wreak havoc on the climate, report authors say.

As the COP 27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, we’re hearing the same question that comes up every year: Why bother? Or, just a bit more optimistically—what will the COP have to achieve to make it worthwhile?

Negotiators working on the official COP 27 outcomes in Sharm el-Sheikh are being urged to remember that “1.5°C is a limit, not a target”, requiring them to work “collaboratively and relentlessly” to halve global emissions by 2030.

An invisible work force of people in the informal economy should receive the same support as fossil energy workers during a just transition to a green economy, says a lawyer with expertise in international environmental, trade and labour law and agreements.

A group of nine climate charities has announced a US$500-million investment over the next three years to support a just transition off fossil fuels in low- and middle-income countries.

The climate crisis is expected to create the largest human displacement ever seen in modern history. As many as a billion could be displaced over the coming decades, as more and more people are forced to leave their homes and communities because of floods, droughts, extreme weather events, wildfires, conflict, and extreme heat.

Only seven of 111 key world leaders attending the COP 27 climate conference are women—a concerning disparity, given that women are typically at the centre of mitigation, adaptation, and survival efforts on the ground.

Responsible for 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the “hard to abate” global shipping industry is on track to receive more scrutiny than ever before at this year’s COP 27 climate summit.

With a new report warning that developing countries will need US$2 trillion per year by 2030 to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and address the impacts of climate change, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry is taking fire for trying to put private finance at the centre of rich countries’ response.

With COP 27 host Egypt and 16 other natural gas-exporting governments pledging to plug the fossil energy source as “the perfect solution” to climate change and energy security, critics warned of a “dash for gas” in Africa—a prophecy taking shape this week in Sharm el-Sheikh, where some African countries said exploiting fossil reserves will help lift people out of poverty.

A series of symbolic moves on climate finance suggests positive momentum could be starting to build on a pivotal issue at the COP 27 summit in Egypt.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has been driving up global greenhouse gas emissions—to the tune of 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in seven months—but the biggest climate impact is expected from rebuilding after the war ends.

Just a few years ago, much of the business community viewed climate advocates with indifference or skepticism. Today, companies representing 40% of the stock market have committed to science-based targets around reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

With a pro-democracy blogger and activist reportedly being force-fed in prison, a relentless crackdown on protesters and undocumented workers, and a conference app raising serious concerns about unwarranted surveillance, Egypt is not getting the public relations bounce it was counting on as host of this year’s COP 27 climate change summit.

At last year’s United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, 193 governments promised to strengthen their national climate targets within one year. But only about two dozen of them have delivered on that promise, leaving civil society representatives wary of more empty promises and false solutions at the onset of COP 27.

Countries across Africa could lose 14% of their per capita GDP to climate change by 2050 and 34% by 2100, even if average global warming is held to 1.5°C, according to a report released this morning at this year’s UN climate conference, COP 27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

This year’s COP 27 climate conference may prove UN negotiations on global heating dead for some. But for others, the annual, marathon negotiating summits are a crucial forum to exert soft power, keep checks on Big Oil, and remind corporate interests that the Amazon is much more than just a business opportunity.

With 40 countries expected to unveil their methane reduction plans at COP 27, global action on the climate-busting greenhouse gas could get a boost after stalling out under industry pressure over the last year, even after more 100 countries signed on to the Global Methane Pledge at COP 26.

Climate science and the depth of the climate emergency demand that industries, financial institutions, cities, and regions commit fully to real net-zero targets, end new fossil fuel investment, stop greenwashing their activities, start lobbying for rather than against ambitious government climate policies, and shift from voluntary climate action to regulated, verified emission reductions, according to a UN expert panel chaired by former Canadian environment and climate minister Catherine McKenna.

UN climate finance envoy Mark Carney is pointing to a “wall of opportunity” for clean energy investment, even as a senior banking executive declares that Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ) is stalling out on the voluntary commitments it’s trying to extract from the world’s biggest banks.

Tuvalu has joined its fellow Pacific Island nation Vanuatu in calling on countries to develop a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), becoming the second nation-state to endorse the proposal.

The world’s biggest ocean-going shipping company, Copenhagen-based Maersk, is blaming the oil industry for slowing its transition off fossil fuels.

The COP 27 climate summit got under way this morning in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt with a dire warning from United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, calling for faster action and greater ambition on the “defining issue of our age.”

As COP 27 opens in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, developing countries and climate justice leaders are urging a notoriously reluctant developed world to get serious about financing for loss and damage, with the immediate and long-term well-being of hundreds of millions hanging in the balance.

An administrative decision on carbon removals, adopted in the dead of night with no community input, is raising alarm with experts attending the COP 27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

A 1.5°C climate future is only “barely within reach,” the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned yesterday in an early draft of its latest State of the Global Climate report, issued as negotiations got under way at the COP 27 climate summit in Egypt.

Leaders of major economies who handed polluting fossil fuels US$693 billion in financial support last year—the highest level since 2014—are among those entrusted with tackling global heating and delivering climate justice at the COP 27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

A look at past agendas for United Nations climate conferences sheds light on what is given priority at the annual summit and what gets left out, giving some predictive insight into how vulnerable nations’ push for loss and damage negotiations will fare during this year’s meetings in Egypt.

Former UN climate secretary Christiana Figueres is calling out the fossil fuel industry for not decisively acting to bring about an energy transition, despite reaping record profits from high energy prices.

The world’s 350 million family farmers and smallhold producers are looking to this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 27, to help avert a global food security crisis by funding climate adaptation and building “a food system that can feed the world on a hot planet”.

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ) is keeping emission reduction commitments voluntary for the banks and asset owners whose climate behaviour it aims to influence, after a flurry of reports that major banks were either planning to quit the alliance or were at risk of being kicked out.

Global deforestation slowed by 6.3% in 2021, but most countries are still falling short of their 2030 targets for stopping forest loss and degradation, a new report says.

In the lead-up to the COP 27 climate summit, a food systems think tank is calling for more discussion of “agroecology” and warning that corporations can exploit less well-defined terms to greenwash, while maintaining business-as-usual operations.

Incoming British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will restore his country’s ban on oil and gas fracking, Reuters reported yesterday, after his predecessor Liz Truss reversed a moratorium originally set out in the UK Conservative Party’s 2019 election platform.

The European Parliament is calling on EU nation states to begin developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), and to “stand ready” to do what is needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Reparations for climate damage, international climate finance, and the geopolitical snarls caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine are taking their place as central issues as the clock winds down to the launch of this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Germany’s foreign minister says there’s no guarantee that this year’s United Nations climate talks will result in an agreement that’s backed by all participating countries.

The World Bank is facing calls for far-reaching climate finance reform and vulnerable countries are demanding climate reparations as the clock ticks down to the annual United Nations climate summit, COP 27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Leading plastics polluter Coca-Cola has been named as the primary sponsor of next month’s COP 27 climate summit in Egypt, prompting protests from local climate experts facing government hostility toward their work and grassroots voices from across Africa struggling to get a seat at the table.

As Pakistan deals with the aftermath of devastating floods and links with global warming become clearer, a demand for climate reparations from the world’s top emitting countries is gaining momentum ahead of next month’s COP 27 climate summit in Egypt.

Several major banks are considering withdrawing from Mark Carney’s highly-touted Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero, fearing legal jeopardy as GFANZ toughens its requirements for climate action.

With African countries on the front lines of the climate emergency facing a US$108-billion annual gap in climate finance, loss and damage negotiations will a strong focus at the upcoming COP 27 summit in Egypt.

One of the world’s political hotspots is already a climate crisis zone, with the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East region now warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.

Loss and damage due to climate disasters had a moment in the spotlight during this week’s UN General Assembly in New York, with Pakistan calling for urgent action on flooding and Denmark pledging more than US$13 million in financing.

Climate change likely juiced rainfall by up to 50% late last month in two southern Pakistan provinces, but global warming wasn’t the biggest cause of the country’s catastrophic flooding that has killed more than 1,500 people, a new scientific analysis finds.

Witnessing a human being swept away by cruel waves of flood waters while saving five stranded children is not something everyone can bear. This was my experience in early July after a torrential rainfall event in Islamabad and adjoining areas, only a short walk from my house, just a couple of months after a devastating heat wave.

The risk of serious climate “tipping points” will rise dramatically if countries fail to hold global warming to the Paris agreement target of 1.5°C, according to a new study in the journal Science.

G20 countries meeting in Bali, Indonesia last week prompted accusations that they are backsliding on their emission reduction promises, despite agreeing on a set of voluntary principles to speed the transition to renewable energy.

The Royal Bank of Canada may soon be at risk of being kicked out of Mark Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ) when the global coalition begins toughening up its rules next year. But not to worry—the bank’s climate policies have been deemed mild enough to pass a Texas government test of whether financial institutions are sympathetic enough to oil and gas companies.

China suspended cooperative climate talks with the United States after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) recent trip to Taiwan, raising questions about what the two countries’ worsening relationship means for global climate action. But contrary to initial worries, some observers are taking hope from a “clean energy arms race” in the making.

A strong voice for small island states is taking the helm of United Nations climate negotiations with the appointment of Grenada’s former environment minister, Simon Stiell, as the new executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).

Three of the world’s biggest fossil companies—BP, Shell, and Equinor—are relying on decarbonization scenarios that fall short of the objectives of the Paris climate agreement, concludes a peer-reviewed study led by Berlin-based Climate Analytics.

U.S. climate hawks declared victory, Congressional Democrats got credit for a newly pragmatic approach to climate action, community campaigners demanded more ambitious action, and attention shifted to implementation after the U.S. House of Representatives passed the country’s $370-billion climate and clean energy plan and sent it to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature.

China’s fourteenth five-year plan (14FYP) shows the country could build enough wind and solar capacity to reach its emissions peak ahead of schedule, but continuing coal investments raise doubts.

The United States is back on the cusp of the biggest climate investment in its history after Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and coal state Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) agreed to a US$370-billion climate and clean energy package, ending months of negotiations on what one elated advocate called the “best-kept secret in Washington”.

Two days of negotiations in Berlin last week yielded decent progress on how the world’s richest countries can compensate the poorest for the impacts of climate change. But there’s a lot more ground to cover to deliver a fair, effective result at this year’s UN climate summit in November, Bloomberg Green reports.

Canada’s export development bank is taking fire for what a watchdog group calls a “disappointing” set of 2030 emission reduction targets for its lending activities.

Fossil fuel burning by the United States, China, Russia, India, and Brazil caused more than US$6 trillion in economic harm to other countries between 1990 and 2014, according to a study team that set out to lift the “veil of deniability” that has shielded big emitters from “climate liability and national accountability” for their actions.

Boris Johnson’s imminent departure as British Prime Minister is raising concern that the country will soon begin backsliding on its climate and nature commitments—even if those commitments consisted primarily of grand gestures, with relatively little practical action to back them up.

Restoring degraded environments, such as by planting trees, is an important climate solution but no substitute for preventing fossil fuel emissions to limit global warming, University of Melbourne researchers Kate Dooley and Zebedee Nicholls write in a post for The Conversation.

A deeply radical ruling Thursday by the United States Supreme Court has set back but not ended efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s fossil-fuelled power plants.

Last November, the Biden administration in the United States released a Methane Emissions Reduction Plan that included detailed steps to reduce emissions of the potent planet-warming gas from the oil and gas industries and from landfills. Under the authority of the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would expand regulations on fossil energy companies and require landfills to significantly reduce their emissions.

G7 leaders meeting in Bavaria this week affirmed their rhetorical commitment to climate action but walked back a month-old promise to swiftly end public investment in overseas fossil fuel projects as they sought to grapple with the energy crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Montreal will host a long-delayed United Nations nature summit December 5-17 that has been described as the Paris Conference for biodiversity, after Canada and China agreed to relocate the high-stakes negotiating session that was originally meant to take place in Kunming, China in October 2020.

Countries accounting for about 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and economic output made new promises on methane controls, clean energy technology demonstrations, zero-emission vehicles, food security and agriculture emissions, and green shipping at a Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate convened by U.S. President Joe Biden June 17.

The world’s richest countries stood accused of hypocrisy and international negotiators were left with a long list of issues to tie up after the UN climate secretariat hosted two weeks of talks leading up to the COP 27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt later this year.

Alok Sharma, the British politician appointed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to serve as COP 26 President, is one of the candidates to lead the United Nations climate secretariat when its current head, Patricia Espinosa, steps down next month.

While the Boris Johnson government congratulates itself for orchestrating the world’s first climate-neutral COP 26 climate summit, a sustainability report produced for Whitehall shows the Glasgow event was also the most polluting COP ever. And an accompanying report points to serious holes in that climate boast.

The Group of Seven western industrialized countries set a 2035 deadline to decarbonize electricity generation, promised to end international public financing of fossil fuels this year, cited Russia’s war in Ukraine as a catalyst for a faster fossil phaseout, but left themselves a long list of agenda items on climate finance as they tied up a marathon series of ministerial meetings in Germany last week.

To keep global heating below 2°C, the world must cut short-lived climate pollutants like methane, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), black carbon (soot), and low-level ozone in tandem with carbon dioxide emissions, says a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If Australia’s 2019 federal election was about coal and preserving coal jobs, the 2022 campaign was about acting on climate change and addressing integrity and corruption issues at the federal level. This is the essential message from Australia’s complicated federal election result May 21, writes climate campaigner and citizen journalist John Englart.

South Africa is on track to receive US$8.5 billion in debt guarantees from the world’s richest countries that could help it scale back its reliance on coal-fired electricity.

With many of the world’s cities, and especially their poorest citizens, facing increasing risks of drought and water shortages, faster emissions cuts and the long overdue establishment of an international fund for loss and damage are needed, says a new report.

Australians must vote for more effective climate policies in this Saturday’s federal election, advises former United Nations climate secretary Christiana Figueres, warning that the current government’s lacklustre commitments are leading the country to catastrophe.

The Guardian is out with an exclusive, explosive report based on months of research that documents the scores of new projects fossil fuel companies are proposing, enough to wipe out the world’s remaining carbon budget and shatter any effort to hold global warming to 1.5°C.

Annual average global warming has a 50-50 chance of blowing past the crucial 1.5°C threshold in at least one of the next five years, and at least one year between 2022 to 2026 has 93% odds of being the warmest on record, according to analysis produced by the UK Met Office and released this week by the World Meteorological Organization.

Three years after discovering that some climate models are running “hot,” the researchers who depend on them are figuring out how to handle the problem, and following the lead of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to give them less emphasis.

National politics and Russia’s war in Ukraine are impeding efforts to negotiate multi-billion-dollar financing packages to help poor countries get off coal. 

Countries must accelerate their transition off fossil fuels, not abandon urgent climate action, as they scramble to replace oil and gas supplies from Russia in response to the war in Ukraine, the steering group of the Net-Zero Asset Owners Alliance declared earlier this month.

G20 countries are falling behind on the all-important “say-do gap” between their 2030 emission reduction pledges and the climate action they’re actually taking, and Canada shows up dead last among the 10 wealthiest nations in the group, according to the first annual Earth Index released this week by Corporate Knights.

Export Development Canada shows up as the world’s biggest provider of trade and development finance for fossil fuels, averaging US$11 billion per year between 2018 and 2020, and Russia emerges as the second-biggest recipient of international public finance for fossil projects, in the latest update of the Public Finance for Energy Database released this week by Oil Change International.

Countries’ climate action promises to date would be enough to keep average global warming just under 2°C, but only “if all conditional and unconditional pledges are implemented in full and on time,” a team of Australian scientists concludes in a paper published last week in the journal Nature.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s latest report on climate change mitigation warns of an “enormous, growing emissions gap,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said yesterday, adding up to a “file of shame” the puts humanity on track toward an unliveable world.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is due to issue a landmark report today at 3:00 PM GMT, capping two weeks of intense negotiations on the actions that governments and other institutions can take to get the climate crisis under control.

With midterm elections looming, the success of U.S. President Joe Biden’s push for Congress to approve $45 billion in climate funding in the White House budget is expected to set the tone for future domestic and international climate policy.

Dr. Adelle Thomas is an IPCC scientist, and was one of only six authors from Small Island Developing States among the 270 who produced the Panel’s recent report on climate impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. In this post, she traces her earliest memory of climate impacts to a hurricane in The Bahamas in 1992, and talks about all that has changed since.

Rich countries may finally be on the verge of keeping their promise to deliver US$100 billion per year in international climate finance, but only by relying on private investment that isn’t well suited to some of the most urgent needs where people are most vulnerable to climate impacts.

Philanthropic organizations must step up and fund climate adaptation, say advocates, in light of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warning that vulnerable people and regions are enduring the worst of the climate crisis due to systemic inequalities.

The climate emergency was pushed to the back burner in international relations and oil prices hit US$105 per barrel this week after Russian President Vladimir Putin capped weeks of escalating tensions by launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Emissions of climate-busting methane from fossil fuel operations are 70% higher than national governments are reporting, according to the 2022 edition of the Global Methane Tracker released this morning by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Canadian climate and international development organizations are praising the federal government’s decision to invest C$315 million over five years in international climate adaptation projects, with sections of the fund earmarked to advance women’s rights and adaptation and support cooperative projects between Indigenous partners.

There’s still time for decisive actions that would stabilize global temperatures over a span of three or four years, rather than three or four decades, but only if countries move swiftly to bring greenhouse gas emissions to zero, two senior climate scientists said Thursday, during a webinar hosted by the Covering Climate Now (CCNow) news collaborative.

With Bloomberg News declaring that governments’ “Great Climate Backslide” has begun, recent reports show major banks pouring more than a trillion dollars into oil, gas, and coal, even as they scramble to burnish their green credentials.

Canada’s export credit agency’s continuing support for fossil industry business development keeps it far out of compliance with the Paris climate agreement, despite Canada’s COP 26 commitment to phase out international public financing for fossil fuels, according to a scathing new analysis by Freiburg, Germany-based Perspectives Climate Group.

Methane concentrations in the atmosphere have risen at a “dangerously fast” rate and now exceed 1,900 parts per billion, prompting some researchers to warn that climate change itself may be driving the increase.

The Boris Johnson government in the United Kingdom is neglecting science and will “torpedo climate action” if it follows through with plans to approve six new oil and gas fields in the North Sea, advocates say.

Greenpeace International CEO Jennifer Morgan has signed on as climate envoy for Germany’s new coalition government, officials said Tuesday.

A new analysis co-authored by a former BP geologist identifies five big oil and gas projects—run by ExxonMobil, Shell, Equinor, Petrobras, and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation—that will only succeed if efforts to control global greenhouse gas emissions fail.

The United Kingdom has approved a new oil and gas field, while French colossal fossil TotalÉnergies has invested US$10 billion to fund a pipeline in Uganda, both moves showing that leaders are willing to set aside their climate pledges in order to expand fossil development.

The United States, Norway, and Canada are set to produce more oil this year than ever before, despite solemn pronouncements at last year’s COP 26 climate summit on the urgent need for climate action, Oil Change International asserts in a new analysis.

The “words on a page” that delegates took away from last year’s COP 26 climate summit will “wither on the vine” if the countries that made the promises don’t translate them into urgent action, COP 26 President Alok Sharma warned last week.

Climate action failure ranks as the number one long-term threat to the world, followed by extreme weather, biodiversity loss, natural resource crises, and human environmental damage, according to a report that tracks risk perceptions among a thousand experts and world leaders in business, government, and civil society. 

Former Canadian environment and climate minister Catherine McKenna has signed on as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP).

Germany’s term in the G7 presidency could be the beginning of a “grand bargain” on climate and international health among the world’s richest nations if the new government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz follows through on plans to push for a global “climate club” over the next year.

Four hundred people killed and over half a million displaced, 830,000 houses damaged, and millions of dollars’ worth of crops, farmland and infrastructure wrecked—that’s the price the Philippines paid for greenhouse gas emissions from the developed world, when a climate-aggravated Typhoon Rai hit its coast last December.

One of the world’s most successful climate litigators is predicting an “avalanche” of climate cases as activists increasingly assert that not only governments, but private actors like fossil companies and banks, are legally bound to help prevent runaway climate change by cutting their emissions.

A new study has found that moving conferences online can cut their carbon footprint by 94% and energy use by 90%. And hybrid events, in which some participants attend in person while others attend online, could reduce carbon and energy by two-thirds by taking measures like carefully choosing a location and only serving plant-based foods.

By 2030, nine out of ten of the world’s nations can expect unprecedented hot years— the sort of annual temperature averages once experienced maybe once a century — every other year, without stronger climate action.

August 9, 2021: Human activity is “unequivocally” producing a world of heat waves, wildfires, floods, sea level rise, and needless death and suffering, “it is more likely than not” that average global warming will exceed 1.5°C by 2040, and faster, deeper emission reductions will be needed to bring temperatures back below 1.5° by the end of the century, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in a landmark science assessment.

October 7, 2021: The coal, oil, and gas industries received US$5.9 trillion in worldwide subsidies in 2020—a mind-bending $11.2 million per minute, every minute of every hour of every day in the year—the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revealed.

November 14, 2021: Glasgow’s COP 26, billed as the last chance to save the world from catastrophic climate change, failed to make the radical steps scientists said were needed but finally ended in a political consensus agreement 24 hours later than planned.

January 18, 2021: Incoming U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled plans to rescind the presidential permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and bring his country back into the Paris climate agreement on his first day in office, CBC reported, kicking off a 10-day blitz of executive actions intended as a first step in shifting the country’s direction after four years under the influence of Donald Trump.

October 13, 2021: While the world’s fossil fuel use could peak in the next few years, countries’ climate pledges as of mid-October covered “less than 20% of the gap in emissions reductions that needs to be closed by 2030 to keep a 1.5°C path within reach,” the International Energy Agency declared, in a breakthrough edition of its annual World Energy Outlook.

May 19, 2021: No new investment in oil, gas, or coal development, a massive increase in renewable energy adoption, speedy global phaseouts for new natural gas boilers and internal combustion vehicles, and a sharp focus on short-term action were key elements of a blockbuster Net Zero by 2050 report released in mid-May by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

June 30, 2021: Parliament made history and overjoyed climate and civil society groups took a victory lap as the Senate passed Canada’s first-ever climate accountability legislation, just hours before adjourning for the summer.

September 9, 2021: Canada must leave 83% of its fossil fuel reserves and 84% of its tar sands/oil sands in the ground if the world is to have even a 50% chance of holding average global warming to 1.5°C, according to a paper published in the prestigious journal Nature.

May 21, 2021: Canada played an important behind-the-scenes role in prodding the International Energy Agency to develop its landmark Net-Zero by 2050 pathway, while the Trump administration would have been in a position to exert outsized influence on the IEA’s governing board to obstruct progress, The Energy Mix learned in May.

November 28, 2021: Financial institutions are facing a US$22-trillion time bomb due to their investments in carbon-intensive industries, Moody’s Investment Services warned.

November 3, 2021: UN climate finance envoy Mark Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero only brought together a highly-touted US$130 trillion in global financial clout over 30 years by assuring participating institutions they could set their own pathways to achieving net-zero, with or without a commitment to end fossil fuel investment, then counting on sustained public attention to keep them on track.

A cap on oil and gas emissions, a 75% methane reduction this decade, a net-zero electricity grid by 2035, a mandated 50% target for electric vehicle sales by 2030, and a renewed commitment to international climate finance are among the elements of the mandate letter issued to Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault Thursday afternoon by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Focussing narrowly on greenhouse gas reductions in urban transport is “missing the point”, and governments should really focus on solutions that shorten commutes, said Juan Carlos Muñoz, director of the Centre for Sustainable Urban Development in Chile.

A group of countries led by the United Kingdom and Indonesia say they are launching a new partnership aiming to protect tropical rainforests, meet growing demand for commodities like palm, soy, and timber—widely criticized for their devastating impact on forests—and preserve the livelihoods of growers, Indigenous farmers, and local communities.

A declaration launched last month during the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow called for action to shift the global shipping industry from fossil to zero-emission fuels.

While digital technologies have huge potential to unlock climate solutions, reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the source must always be the top priority, according to panelists at a side meeting during the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow last month.

Forest biomass has been mislabelled as a carbon-neutral energy source, said speakers gathered at a COP 26 side meeting who urged governments to stop subsidizing power plants that say they have gone green by replacing coal.

Campaigners are taking the United Kingdom government to court for handing oil and gas firms £13.6 billion in subsidies since the Paris Agreement, despite the country’s legal duty to reach net-zero by 2050.

As the air travel industry weathers the ongoing strain of the pandemic, with both pleasure and business travel beginning to pick up in early November only to be hammered again by the Omicron variant, the industry’s outsized climate impact is emerging as a concern for airlines and some travellers.

Media outlets and the energy journalists employed by them seem to have lost their critical faculties when it comes to writing about small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), according to critics who think the industry has no hope of delivering on its promises to build a new generation of power stations.

Financial institutions are facing a US$22-trillion time bomb due to their investments in carbon-intensive industries, Bloomberg News reports, citing a study last week by Moody’s Investment Services.

Carbon offsets are to be treated as a last resort for emission reductions, and natural gas plants are unlikely to be recognized as “green” assets, as some of the key policy details behind Mark Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) gradually take shape.

Praying desperately for rain and preparing determinedly for the next deluge: two poles in Kenya’s deepening battle with the climate crisis.

A prototype of the world’s first comprehensive database on fossil fuel production and reserves was unveiled at a sidebar session at COP 26 in Glasgow, even as world leaders avoided decisive commitments to end fossil subsidies and urgently phase out coal.

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro and Environment Minister Joaquim Leite withheld data showing that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon had reached a 15-year high until United Nations climate negotiations during COP 26 had ended in Glasgow, three separate cabinet ministers have admitted to The Associated Press.

It is almost impossible to understate the sheer scale of the global challenge that lies ahead to reduce carbon emissions from buildings, according to the keynote speaker at a COP Presidency event during the recent COP 26 climate summit.

With the limited results of the COP 26 climate summit making clear that their cries for help are being  mostly ignored by wealthy nations like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, some small island states are looking to the International Court of Justice for protection and redress.

Mohammed Nasheed made global headlines in 2009 by convening the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting. As president of the Maldives, a nation of 1,138 low-lying islands southwest of India, Nasheed donned scuba gear and descended beneath the waves with 13 government ministers. The officials used waterproof pencils to sign a document urging the world to slash carbon dioxide emissions so the Maldives would not disappear beneath rising seas.

In the aftermath of the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow, where a last-minute intervention by India led to a weaker declaration calling for coal to be phased down but not out, both India and China are signalling a slower exit from the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel.

Glasgow’s COP 26, billed as the last chance to save the world from catastrophic climate change, failed to make the radical steps scientists said were needed but finally ended in a political consensus agreement 24 hours later than planned.

The final result of this year’s UN climate conference, COP 26, received a largely critical response from civil society, with praise for its first-ever references to fossil fuels, a doubling of climate adaptation funding, and a final deal on international carbon credits outweighed by delayed commitments on greenhouse gas reductions and a broader failure on climate finance, including compensation for loss and damage in the world’s most vulnerable countries.

Canada, the United Kingdom, and three other wealthy nations whose rhetoric on climate action does not match their plans to expand fossil fuel production are undermining attempts to slow the climate crisis, a new report concludes. 

For the Glasgow climate summit to be judged a success, a key outcome had to be that parties agreed the majority of the world’s fossil fuel reserves needed to be left in the ground.

Many of the fiercest climate activists attending COP 26 were young women, while many of the most powerful negotiators at the conference were older men, a demographic siloing that risks serving the interests of the fossil status quo.

As negotiators from 195 countries concluded two weeks of COP 26 negotiations with lacklustre results, atmospheric readings from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii showed carbon dioxide levels rising over the last year to 414.49 parts per million—2.56 ppm more than a year ago, and a 24.69 ppm rise in a decade.

In a world for the moment still committed to dangerous levels of warming, three new research studies deliver a grim warning. By the time the planetary thermometer registers a 2°C rise above the historic average, around a billion people could expect to be afflicted with extreme heat stress, according to the UK Met Office. 

The urgent need to make global food systems sustainable was barely discussed at COP 26, a reticence that bewilders experts who stress the challenges involved in changing how the world farms—from dismantling a subsidy system nearly synonymous with ecocide, to ensuring a just transition for agricultural workers.

A few hundred miles away from the COP in Glasgow and the increasingly frantic negotiations aimed at avoiding climate catastrophe, another major climate-related event has been unfolding in the more formal and subdued surroundings of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg.

A new alliance of countries whose members are pledged to reduce their oil and gas production in line with keeping the planet’s heating below 1.5°C was launched at the COP 26 summit in Glasgow yesterday.

Thursday’s edition of Climate Action Network-International’s daily COP newsletter, ECO, heaped praise on Denmark, Costa Rica, and the 10 other founding members of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA) for “committing to something long a ‘verboten’ topic at the UNFCCC—an end to oil and gas expansion, and a managed and equitable phaseout of existing extraction.”

As participants at the COP 26 climate summit looked ahead to a new round of negotiating text expected overnight or early Friday morning, national delegations still had their work cut out for them in areas like climate finance, financial support for loss and damage, countries’ deadline to adopt more ambitious Paris Agreement targets, and the contentious Article 6 dealing with carbon markets and credits.

Four years after declaring himself a climate change denier, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson travelled to Glasgow to open this year’s United Nations climate conference, COP 26. Climate policy watchers say he’s still a climate laggard, writes The Energy Mix correspondent Alex Kirby.

COP 26 negotiators are betraying the world’s most imperiled populations and leaving them to face urgent, climate-driven risks without survival funding, representatives of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) said earlier this week, in response to the COP 26 draft decision released Wednesday.

Corporate and government interests are delaying procedures and deflecting responsibility for the climate crisis as part of a “network of obstructionism” deployed to mire down the COP 26 negotiations, said experts on a panel this week hosted by the World Wildlife Federation in Glasgow.

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) representatives at COP 26 are calling on delegates to explore climate solutions that don’t require cutting back fossil fuel use, hinging their hopes on far-off opportunities in carbon capture and sequestration that many delegates onsite are calling “unicorn” solutions.

A surprise joint statement from China and the United States at the United Nations climate change conference, COP 26, on Wednesday committed the two countries to joint action on methane reductions, grid decarbonization, illegal deforestation, circular economy measures, and “enhanced climate actions that raise ambition in the 2020s in the context of the Paris Agreement”.

The first draft of the agreement that will mark the COP 26 summit, now in its final days, as success, failure, or a damp squib, went into circulation Wednesday morning at the conference venue in Glasgow, Scotland. It won’t be the last word, but it’s a signal that the endgame has begun. 

Nearly 150 parliamentarians from around the world have added their names to a peer-driven call to accelerate into a fossil-free future, with national policies to will ensure a truly global energy transition that leaves no one behind.

Experts were pointing to the absence of some notable signatories and the need for clear infrastructure targets in the wake of a Wednesday morning declaration at the COP 26 summit in Glasgow, setting a 2040 deadline to end sales of gas-burning cars and vans.

“Whenever I remember our situation, even if I’m alone, I cry,” Shirley Tapel said in an interview with ABS-CBN News. Tapel was one of the residents of Catanduanes island who saw her life upended in November 2020 when six typhoons hit the Philippines in the span of four weeks—one of them the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in recorded history. 

Reducing short-lived climate pollutants like black carbon and methane represents a major opportunity to help meet the 1.5°C warming target, while delivering major benefits for human health, energy security, soil replenishment, and rural employment.

Canada should establish a public policy category and new guidelines to help resettle climate migrants forced to leave their homelands due to climate-induced displacements, according to the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL).

Today’s question: For people who’ve never been to a UN climate conference—what’s all this about texts, cover decisions, non-papers, and stocktakes, and how does all of that help get climate change under control?

In a withering condemnation of developed nations’ claims to be making headway against the climate crisis, scientists say the United Nations climate conference, COP 26, has “a massive credibility, action, and commitment gap,” after a week of promises and declarations left the world heading to at least 2.4˚C average warming if not more.

A new draft of the final COP 26 declaration expected Tuesday night or Wednesday morning may open a path for countries to toughen up their carbon reduction targets ahead of schedule, but give the world’s biggest carbon polluters a chance to opt out, Bloomberg Green reported Tuesday, as negotiations at the marathon 12-day climate summit in Glasgow entered their final, decisive phase.

Canada’s fossil lobby leaned heavily on energy poverty in Africa as a pretext to promote continuing oil and gas extraction and exports, during a COP 26 news conference Tuesday that asserted the industry’s commitment to “meet GHG emissions reduction goals consistent with the ambitions of the Paris Agreement.”

A new study quantifies for the first time some of the key implications of trying to use natural gas while pursuing the Paris 1.5°C target, arguing that it should not be a “bridging fuel” but should instead be quickly phased out.

If the world’s most vulnerable communities are heard during last-ditch efforts to finalize Article 6, this final critical piece of the Paris climate agreement could deliver significant emission reduction opportunities and urgently needed funding for climate adaptation, whilst protecting human rights. Powerful voices in the developed world may yet drown them out, however.

At COP 26 this week, a group of 60 young people from around the world co-created this unified call for climate justice. It took them just four hours to share their experiences and describe the future they want to inherit. “If we can do this,” they say in this searing opinion piece, “decision-makers can do it, too.”

The governments of at least 50 countries, including some of those that are most vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change, have signed on to a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative to develop “climate-resilient and low-carbon health systems”.

Canada fell from 58th to 61st spot in the latest Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), released this week during the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow, with its current climate performance and 2030 targets well below what would be consistent with a 2.0°C limit on average global warming.

The Food Systems, Land Use, and Restoration (FOLUR) Impact Program, which aims to align landowners and governments with the private sector to transform the global food system, announced a plan to launch projects across 27 countries at COP 26 on Saturday.

Today’s questions: How has the conversation about a just transition for fossil fuel workers and communities filtered into the negotiating rooms at COP 26? And Lyn McDonell in Toronto asks: If we need to drastically step down consumption to sustainable levels and reduce demand, how do those lifestyle changes connect with a just transition?

The 196 countries involved in implementing the Paris climate agreement have under-reported their greenhouse gas emissions by 8.5 to 13.3 billion tonnes per year, leaving delegates gathered in Glasgow for a final week of COP 26 negotiations to do their work on a foundation of flawed data, the Washington Post concludes in a deep-dive investigative piece published Sunday.

If the fossil fuel lobby were a country, it would have the biggest delegation at this year’s United Nations climate change conference, COP 26, Global Witness and three other organizations conclude in a report released yesterday.

Immediate financial aid for small island states and other developing countries subject to extreme weather events is needed to make the Glasgow Climate talks a success, negotiators said yesterday.

Warming oceans may be absorbing less carbon dioxide than they used to, and scientists say that could have serious ramifications for climate targets.

The pledge to end deforestation in the Amazon by 2030 that Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro made at COP 26 is worthless, forest experts say, unless he acts now to clamp down on his own Congress, which is currently passing laws that make it easier to destroy the forests.

Indigenous communities in Canada are leading the way on the transition to clean energy by using renewable energy microgrids (REMs) as a pathway to community and energy sovereignty, said panelists at a COP 26 workshop session last week.

To turn climate ambition into climate action and climate justice, current political leaders must work harder and much faster to build trust and accountability, while future ones need to be skeptical, stubborn, and scientific, while never ever losing hope. 

How do federal leaders engage leaders from our urban areas to address the sustainability improvements we make to the built environment? And how do those action tie in with the admirable vision statements at an event like COP 26?

The United Kingdom government is taking sharp criticism for a “non-sensical” early outline of the final declaration from the COP 26 climate summit, released Sunday morning, that makes no mention of the words “energy”, “fossil”, “fuel”, or “renewable”, The Energy Mix has learned.

Despite the rain that seemed to come down sideways in the wind, the march of 100,000 climate protestors in Glasgow on Saturday had a carnival atmosphere with 10 bands and dozens of drummers keeping up the spirits.

After a week of back-to-back climate pledges that had the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) declaring a moment of celebration at a COP 26 side event Thursday, a report from Climate Analytics aims to temper world leaders’ optimism until short-term emissions targets ramp up. 

The world’s rich “consume and consume and consume with no thought,” Oxfam says, quoting UN climate secretary Patricia Espinosa in a new report that details how the “polluter elite” must be held accountable for its highly disproportionate contribution to excess greenhouse gas emissions.

The climate talks in Glasgow are heading for “a rough tough week of hard bargaining”, and there needs to be much higher ambition than in the first week of negotiations if COP 26 is not to end in failure, a coalition of 1,500 environment organizations in 130 countries said Friday.

Is the UN climate conference, COP 26, on course to end in triumph or disaster later this week? Finding answers that will please everyone won’t be easy. 

The harsh reality of climate change will land hard on Fiji, whose minister of economy delivered a statement at the opening of the COP 26 Ocean Action Day calling for stronger global support to protect island states and invest in ocean-based climate solutions.

The world’s largest asset manager is urging rich nations to deliver the annual US$100 billion in international climate finance they first promised in 2009, to sweeten the pot for risk-averse private investors looking to support—and profit from—climate mitigation projects. But some of the world’s most climate vulnerable nations continue to emphasize the critical need for debt forgiveness.

Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Board (NZAB) is planning to move swiftly with its advice to the federal government on declining greenhouse gas emission caps for oil and gas operations, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reiterated his campaign pledge to introduce the caps during his address last week to the World Leaders’ Summit at COP 26, the United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Quebec is joining the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA), an international alliance led by Denmark and Costa Rica to speed up the global phaseout of fossil fuels, Premier François Legault announced last week.

It is a full half-mile from the entrance of the conference building to the media centre—and that is after passing through three levels of security and queuing with thousands of others going through the same process just to get to the front door.

Today’s question: What are the major social and environmental justice issues at this year’s United Nations climate conference, COP 26, and what would a win look like?

Celebrating the just-announced US$8.5 billion partnership to help South Africa get off coal as an “exemplary blueprint” to follow, policy-makers and labour organizations opened COP 26’s Energy Day Thursday by stressing the need to accelerate a just, inclusive energy transition.

Three prominent CEOs discussed the potential of green hydrogen as a vital climate solution that is poised for rapid expansion at a COP 26 panel hosted by the Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI).

If you live on a small island or in the heart of drought-hit Africa, the progress at the climate talks in Glasgow does not seem so rosy as the flurry of announcements and political grandstanding of the first few days would suggest.

Export Development Canada (EDC), the Quebec government, the Vancity financial co-op, the United Church of Canada, and TransAlta Corporation were among 28 entities announced as new members of the Powering Past Coal Alliance Thursday, during a side event at COP 26 in Glasgow.

The Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF)—representing more than 1.2 billion people in countries most exposed to the climate crisis—is demanding that COP 26 adopt a Climate Emergency Pact “to rebuild confidence in international climate cooperation, accelerate adaptation, and keep 1.5°C within reach.” 

The Great Lakes are getting warmer, wetter, and wilder, three Windsor-area researchers write for The Conversation. And those “typical conditions” are amplifying other threats to the region.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday while attending the UN climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, an event that has drawn world leaders and tens of thousands of other people from around the world.

Today’s Question: The Canadian youth delegation is always a powerful and constant presence at the annual UN climate conference. How are things going so far this year, and what’s in store?

UN climate finance envoy Mark Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero only brought together a highly-touted US$130 trillion in global financial clout over 30 years by assuring participating institutions they could set their own pathways to achieving net-zero, with or without a commitment to end fossil fuel investment, then counting on sustained public attention to keep them on track, The Energy Mix has learned.

The province with Canada’s largest oil and gas industry has sent one of the country’s smallest delegations to the COP 26 international climate conference where emissions from that sector are under scrutiny

In an ardent display of greenwashing, Brazil’s new emission reduction targets have been presented as a step forward while cunningly allowing the country to actually increase emissions, making the country a strong contender for Climate Action Network-International’s sought-after Fossil of the Day award at this year’s United Nations climate conference, COP 26.

The Global Methane Pledge announced Tuesday during the United Nations climate conference, COP 26, needs to boost its target for reducing emissions of the climate-busting gas from 30 to 50% by 2030, according to an analysis by a trio of climate experts.

Ten private companies pledging to reduce air pollution launched the Alliance for Clean Air this Wednesday at the COP 26 summit, but the common shortcomings of industry self-regulation are raising doubts about the alliance’s impact.

Aspiring “green superpower” Gabon brought its forest preservation efforts to the world stage at COP 26 with a potential lesson or two for British Columbia, where environmentalists say the premier is dragging his feet on protecting the province’s old-growth forests.

With the meetings and talks at COP 26 expected to sidestep any action on the growing climate migration crisis, experts are calling for new legal approaches that might better protect climate refugees. 

Today’s question: Thursday is Energy Day at COP 26, and two of the top issues are a global coal phaseout and how to decarbonize the power grid. How is Canada addressing those issues in Glasgow?

More than 100 countries representing more than 70% of the global economy agreed to cut their emissions of climate-busting methane 30% by 2030, in a much-anticipated announcement on the second day of the United Nations climate change conference, COP 26, in Glasgow Scotland.

More than 100 national leaders representing more than 85% of the world’s forests pledged to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030 in an announcement on the second day of the United Nations climate conference, COP 26, Tuesday morning.

Canada’s newly-appointed environment and climate change minister came in for some good-natured but pointed ribbing yesterday from ECO, the widely-read daily newsletter that Climate Action Network-International produces at the annual UN climate conference—a publication for which Steven Guilbeault once served as editor.

Declaring that the UN’s consensus-based process is moving too slowly to solve the climate crisis, a global, non-partisan group of elected officials is trying to lead the charge to decarbonize the world’s electricity grids. 

With billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg announcing an extension of his Beyond Coal campaign aiming to shutter 25% of the world’s coal plants and nix all proposed ones by 2025, a new study warns plastic has become “the new coal” in its climate-busting power. 

Today’s question: Net-zero targets have been all the rage for government and industry, but we’ve been hearing over the last year that “net-zero is not zero”. Where are the gaps between the spin and the substance?

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a shock that may have brought new momentum to United Nations climate negotiations in Glasgow yesterday, in a speech to world leaders that promised a 2070 deadline to bring his country’s greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced a £1-million fund to help vulnerable countries cope with “loss and damage” due to the unavoidable impacts of climate change, a small contribution that could have an outsized impact in pushing a serious, longstanding issue toward the centre of the COP 26 negotiating table.

Sunday’s opening statements to COP 26 concluded with a powerful speech by Māori climate activist India Logan-Riley, who emphasized that Indigenous knowledge and culture have stood resilient in the face of colonizing forces and pointed to the urgent need for Indigenous communities to be empowered to lead global climate solutions.

The Earth is in “uncharted territory” when it comes to the environmental, social, and economic impacts of climate change, according to the latest analysis by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), released at the beginning of the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow.

As world leaders descend on Glasgow this week for the start of the 2021 UN Climate Conference, Alberta is watching.

The United Kingdom government may be in line for a new round of legal headaches over fears that it will approve a massive new oilfield off the Shetland Islands, just as it takes the chair of the United Nations climate conference aimed at quickly and drastically reducing the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

A group of youth hunger strikers outside the White House in Washington, DC is making waves at COP 26 in Glasgow, calling on President Joe Biden to deliver on his country’s commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 50 to 52% by 2021.

Today’s question: We’ve seen some big numbers thrown around on climate finance: $100 billion per year that rich countries promised the developing world, and a $75 billion gap between the promise and the delivery. What’s going on, and why is climate finance so important at COP26?

United Nations Climate Secretary Patricia Espinosa urged COP 26 delegates to embrace a “pivotal point in history”, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared the conference had “no chance” of setting a course for climate stabilization, and the G20 summit ending just hours earlier produced tepid results, as two weeks of UN-sponsored climate negotiations got under way in Glasgow Sunday.

Vulnerable countries’ urgent calls for global climate action collided with disappointing news from a handful of major carbon polluters as delegates gathered over the weekend for this year’s high-stakes UN climate conference, COP 26, in Glasgow.

As they meet in Glasgow, Scotland, to tackle climate change, the world’s leaders have it in their power to change the planet to a point that might make Earth unrecognizable to humans today. All they need do is carry on as usual: promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but fail to do actually cut them.

Royal Dutch Shell has pledged to halve its production and distribution (Scope 1 and 2) emissions by 2030, still a far cry from the 45% across-the-board cut (including Scope 3) demanded by a Dutch court in May.

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) resisted agribusiness lobbying efforts and adopted a resolution to support the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy, opening the door for measures like pesticide reduction targets and phasing out caged-bird farming by 2027.

With COP 26 getting under way this Sunday, “there is still time to reach the political agreements, economic transformations, and public buy-in needed to sharply cut emissions, limit temperature rise, and limit destruction,” Scientific American writes. Deep emission cuts now could stabilize global temperatures in as little as three years, buying crucial time for further reductions.

If you’ve been counting on a world-beating way to solve the climate crisis emerging from the UN conference, COP 26, then relax. Just hope it doesn’t make things any worse.

China has released a long-awaited greenhouse gas emissions plan that shows only modest progress from its original Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris agreement, and is feeding disappointment among observers gathering in Glasgow for the opening of the UN climate conference, COP 26, this Sunday.

Days before U.S. President Joe Biden is due to attend the high-stakes United Nations climate change conference, COP 26, in Glasgow, the White House released a US$1.75-trillion Build Back Better Framework Thursday that falls far short of what progressive legislators wanted, but could win the support of two renegade Democratic senators who’ve been holding up the plan for weeks.

A European Space Commission satellite has identified a massive methane leak in Russia, demonstrating the fundamental shift that data transparency is bringing to climate politics.

Six years ago, The Energy Mix Publisher Mitchell Beer reported on the high stakes and tortured, complex negotiations at the 2015 Paris climate conference. Much has changed since then. Lots hasn’t. Here’s a snapshot of what delegates—and all the rest of us—will be living through over the next two weeks in Glasgow.

Veteran climate advocate Steven Guilbeault is Canada’s new Minister of Environment and Climate Change and former environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson is becoming Natural Resources Minister after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled the new federal Cabinet Tuesday morning.

In what Secretary General António Guterres calls “another thundering wake-up call” on the eve of this year’s global climate change summit, COP 26, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says countries’ failure to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions is putting the world on course for 2.7°C average global warming by 2100, with massively destructive results.

Colossal fossils BP and Shell, software giant Microsoft, and UK bioenergy producer Drax are among the companies that stand accused of greenwashing their own emission reduction commitments in a new “fact file” released this week by Boston-based campaign organization Corporate Accountability.

With his eye on the markets and his finger on the pulse of green technologies like hydrogen electrolyzers, Carbon Tracker Initiative strategist Kingsmill Bond is urging everyone fighting the climate crisis to find hope that “the ceiling of the possible is always rising.”

The laudably climate-friendly actions contained in British Columbia’s updated climate roadmap stand to be cancelled out by the Horgan government’s continuing, avid support for an expanded liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, observers warn.

New assessments released by the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence community, and the White House show an evolving awareness of the threats to global security posed by climate change’s potential to “upend societies and topple governments.”

Two new studies have made it clear that, if the world does get to net-zero in time to limit global heating to 1.5°C by 2100, it may not have done so with much help from fossil fuel companies.

With this year’s United Nations climate conference, COP 26, due to open in six days, a top climate official is warning of the “catastrophic” consequences of unchecked global heating, developing countries are objecting to universal net-zero by 2050 targets, a sprawling state fossil company is being redefined as a “climate project,” and Big Oil is no longer welcome at the climate table.

At least 35 countries are on track to join a U.S.- and European Union-led agreement to curb climate-busting methane emissions, with the official announcement expected in the early days of the United Nations climate change conference, COP 26, in Glasgow.

Canada is unlikely to be on the podium when a group of countries led by Denmark and Costa Rica unveils the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA) during this year’s United Nations climate conference, COP 26, in Glasgow.

A recent commitment by the U.S. Interior Secretary announcement to lease much of the country’s coastline to wind developers is being interpreted as a watershed moment in U.S. renewable energy policy.

An Australian mining magnate is taking a bold step to reinvent an iron extracting company by decarbonizing its operations and transforming it into a renewable energy powerhouse.

The Lancet Countdown’s sixth annual report on the links between public health and the climate crisis is urging a rapid and concerted “code red” effort to integrate climate mitigation into pandemic recovery plans.

As the clock ticks down to COP 26 in Glasgow, some superstar bands are taking steps to design a concert tour that does less harm to the climate.

After several years of global energy storage expanding at breakneck pace, two new forecasts point to the trend continuing this year with a near tripling of capacity.

A French court is telling the government of President Emmanuel Macron to walk the talk on climate action after the country overshot its emissions targets by 15 million tonnes between 2015 and 2018. 

Canada shows up as the world’s fourth-biggest oil and gas producer, and global fossil fuel production in 2030 will still be more than double the amount that would match a 1.5°C climate pathway, according to the 2021 Production Gap Report due to be released this morning by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Genuine climate leadership in Canada means separating the country’s economy from fossil fuel production quickly and for good, says Stand.Earth international program director Tzeporah Berman. 

More than 100 countries have signed on to the Kunming Declaration at the UN Biodiversity Summit, but onlookers are unsure if the pledge has teeth, or whether host country China will honour its promise to lead the charge.

After a summer that saw one in three Americans experiencing extreme weather events, the Biden administration has released plans from 23 government agencies to address wide-ranging threats from climate change.

Canada’s Big Six banks together announced Friday that they will join the global Net-Zero Banking Alliance championed by former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.

Public health experts are warning that two huge cruise ships intended to house up to 5,000 staff during the United Nations climate conference, COP 26, could cause COVID-19 outbreaks and set off a new wave of infections in the host city, Glasgow.