A look at who will – and who may not – be at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh climate summit this month
Delegates arrive for Cop27 on 6 November in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and the conference is scheduled to end on 18 November, though it is likely to run later. World leaders will attend on 7 and 8 November, and after they depart the crunch negotiations will be done by their representatives, environment ministers or other high-ranking officials.
Continue reading...La Niña brings an increased chance of above average rainfall for Australia’s north and east and a lingering risk of flooding for the months ahead
Flood waters continued to rise in the New South Wales town of Forbes, where there had been 10 flood rescues and more than 237 calls for help in the past 24 hours, including for a pregnant woman.
The woman, whose water broke on Friday, was transported across the middle of the river in Forbes to the town’s hospital by a local volunteer, where she could be cared for by doctors and nurses.
Continue reading...Egypt has expressed frustration at leaders making positive statements that are abandoned in negotiations
Governments meeting for vital climate talks have been accused of making positive commitments in public but denying them later in the privacy of the negotiating rooms by the Egyptian hosts of the summit.
Wael Aboulmagd, the Egyptian diplomat in charge of running the negotiations at the Cop27 UN climate summit, said: “Political statements and pledges are made in front of the cameras, but in the negotiating rooms it’s back to the adversarial approach. These [publicly positive positions] will not be of value until translated into the negotiating rooms, and that has not been the case so far.”
Continue reading...About 70 people seized in protest at environmental damage from crude oil spillage into Cuninico River
Indigenous people in the Amazon in Peru have detained a group of Peruvian and foreign tourists, including UK and US citizens, in protest at a lack of government aid following an oil spill in the area.
“[We want] to call the government’s attention with this action, There are foreigners and Peruvians, there are about 70 people,” Watson Trujillo, the leader of the Cuninico community, told RPP radio.
Continue reading...Scientists have long sought to farm the scarce seafood staple, but critics say animals are not suited to intensive methods
Scientists in Japan say they have developed a groundbreaking method of farming squid that could solve shortages of the seafood staple, amid warnings from environmental groups that aquaculture is incompatible with the animal’s welfare.
Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) say their system produced a reliable supply of squid and has the potential to be commercialised.
Continue reading...Queensland environment group had asked federal minister to revisit decisions made going back to 2011
Federal environment officials have agreed to look again at 18 proposed new coal and gas projects after a Queensland environment group submitted requests to have the effects of climate change considered.
None of the 18 projects has been approved under the country’s environment law, but have been through a process where the environment minister determines the nature and scale of their likely impacts.
Continue reading...Teresa Ribera says she was ‘hugely surprised’ and saddened by PM’s initial refusal to go to Cop27 summit
The Spanish government has urged Rishi Sunak to demonstrate a clear commitment to fighting the climate emergency, describing the British government’s flip-flopping over the prime minister’s attendance of the forthcoming Cop27 summit as “sad” and “surprising”, given the UK’s global reputation and its current presidency of the conference.
Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, also said the “absurd”, heel-dragging political debate over climate change in the UK was “surprising and disappointing”.
Continue reading...Murray Watt says Canberra is funding disaster mitigation infrastructure and ‘expects the insurance industry to fulfil its end of the bargain’
Insurance companies need to reduce premiums for customers in disaster-prone regions now the federal government is investing heavily in infrastructure to minimise loss during extreme weather, the emergency management minister, Murray Watt, says.
Ahead of confirming funding on Friday for 34 new mitigation projects to reduce the impact of coastal erosion accelerated by the climate crisis, Watt used an insurance industry conference to put the sector on notice.
Continue reading...British-Egyptian activist says he will cease drinking, raising fears he may die while officials attend summit
A British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist has said he will escalate his hunger strike inside a desert prison, raising concerns he could die while British officials attend the Cop27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a figurehead of Egypt’s 2011 uprising and one of the Middle East’s best-known political prisoners, has spent most of the past decade behind bars. Shortly after gaining British citizenship while in detention last year, he was sentenced to a further five years in a high-security prison on charges of “spreading false news” for sharing a social media post about torture.
Continue reading...Industry minister says gas companies are ‘not picking up the signals’. Follow all the day’s news live
Gas supply not a problem, ‘glut of greed is’, industry minister says
Husic:
This is not a shortage of supply problem; this is a glut of greed problem, that has to be basically short-circuited and common sense prevail.
The pricing mechanism is the one that I think needs to be seriously examined.
The LNG exporters are offering gas to the domestic market at prices they couldn’t reasonably expect on the international market.
We have the ACCC looking at that [code of conduct] and that code of conduct is to help better guide the way in which these contracts get negotiated … in terms of the other areas, we want to work through that internally.
If you look at what the treasurer has said over the last few days, he is examining those type of options and again that will be in the mix of things he thinks through.
I think the bigger focus long-term is the price mechanism.
Continue reading...Two activists from Just Stop Oil Belgium each sentenced to two months in prison with one month suspended
Two Belgian climate change activists who last week targeted the Johannes Vermeer painting Girl with a Pearl Earring have been sentenced to two months in prison by a Dutch court, of which one month was suspended.
One activist glued his head to glass covering the painting at a museum in The Hague. The artwork was not damaged, gallery staff said.
Continue reading...UK prime minister says he will now attend talks in Egypt next week
Rishi Sunak has reversed on his decision to skip Cop27 and will attend the climate summit in Egypt next week.
“There is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change,” the prime minister said.
Continue reading...Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been on hunger strike for six months and will refuse water from 6 November, the first day of the climate summit
The majority of living Nobel prize for literature laureates have called on world leaders attending the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt this week to help free thousands of political prisoners in the country, including the writer Alaa Abd El-Fattah who is six months into a hunger strike and “at risk of death”.
The letter, organised by Abd El-Fattah’s UK publishers Fitzcarraldo Editions and Seven Stories Press, has been signed by 13 Nobel prize for literature winners: Svetlana Alexievich, JM Coetzee, Annie Ernaux, Louise Glück, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elfriede Jelinek, Mario Vargas Llosa, Patrick Modiano, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka and Olga Tokarczuk.
Continue reading...Search continued for two people swept off ute near Boorowa as prime minister said he hoped for positive news
Anthony Albanese says he is concerned about two men missing in flood waters after their ute was washed off the road in central New South Wales.
As the Riverina town of Gundagai braced for its worst flooding in 33 years, the State Emergency Service undertook 39 flood rescues in the 24 hours to Wednesday morning.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Peter Hain to table amendment in House of Lords to protect single energy market
A Labour peer is launching a bid to avert a fresh energy crisis with potential power cuts and drastic electricity price rises in Northern Ireland as a result of proposed Brexit legislation.
The former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain will table an amendment to the Northern Ireland protocol bill in the House of Lords on Wednesday to protect the so-called single energy market (SEM), which allows power to be traded with the island of Ireland as one economic unit.
Continue reading...Budget forecast doesn’t predict wage price spiral: finance minister
The Reserve Bank says it wants to avoid a wage price spiral. Does Gallagher think the government’s policies are risking that?
The bank obviously will keep looking at that … we’re not seeing that, the budget in its forecast doesn’t predict that.
Looking at the regulatory arrangements is our first inclination. That work is under way, I can’t give you a timeframe on the completion of that.
Continue reading...Berlin urges International Seabed Authority to prioritise nature as it debates rules and warns seabed mining may ‘destroy ecosystems’
Germany has called for a pause in the controversial deep-sea mining industry, saying not enough is known about the likely impacts of digging up the ocean floor for metals.
While other nations, including Spain and New Zealand, have previously called for a temporary halt to any exploitation of deep-sea metals, Germany, the world’s fourth biggest economy, is the most significant nation to voice its opposition to date. The country holds two of the 22 licences for exploration of the seabed.
Continue reading...Concern over country’s human rights record after Indian Ajit Rajagopal arrested on walk to raise awareness about climate crisis
The arrest of an Indian climate activist by Egyptian security forces has renewed alarm about the regime’s dire human rights record as it prepares to host the Cop27 UN climate summit.
Ajit Rajagopal, an architect and activist from Kerala in south India, was arrested on Sunday afternoon shortly after setting off on an eight-day walk from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh as part of a global campaign to raise awareness about the climate crisis.
Continue reading...Mouthe’s temperate autumn is extra proof of climate crisis, say weather experts
For the first time in 140 years, the village of Mouthe – officially recognised as France’s coldest – reported a frost-free October.
A temperate autumn is additional proof of the reality of the climate crisis, weather experts say.
Continue reading...Calls by countries such as UK and US to halt auction for drilling permits in the world’s second-largest rainforest branded ‘galling’
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has criticised the west for pressuring it to halt oil and gas exploration in the Congo basin rainforest, while continuing to search for fossil fuels in their own countries.
The Congo basin, more than half of which is located in DRC, is the last rainforest on Earth that sucks in more carbon than it releases and is second only to the Amazon in size. The DRC announced in July that oil and gas permits in parts of the rainforest would be auctioned off. The blocks up for sale include areas in Virunga national park, as well as critically endangered gorilla habitats and the world’s largest tropical peatlands, which store the equivalent of three years of the world’s fossil fuel emissions.
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