Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility accuses Australian oil giant of misleading and false claims in closing arguments
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Santos misled investors by positioning itself as a “clean fuels company” with a credible net zero plan, the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) has alleged in closing remarks to a world-first greenwashing case.
Noel Hutley SC, representing ACCR, said the case was about protecting the public interest by “ensuring that commitments by Australian companies regarding climate change are reasonably based and not misleading”.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/15/2024 - 03:26
11/15/2024 - 03:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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11/15/2024 - 02:00
What would it witness in Azerbaijan? A species that knows it is destroying itself but is too greedy to change course
Imagine, as many people do, an all-seeing eye in the sky, looking down on planet Earth. Imagine seeing what it sees. It watches, over the course of decades, ice caps shrinking, rainforests retreating, deserts expanding, ocean circulation slowing, freshwater dwindling and sea levels rising, and it thinks – for it has been there since the beginning – “this is familiar”. All the signs are there, of an Earth system sliding towards collapse, as it has done five times since animals with hard body parts first evolved.
But this time, it knows, is different. Not only is one of the life forms causing the collapse, but it shares some of the eye’s supernatural abilities: it too can see what is happening. So, with heightened curiosity, the eye zooms in, to see what this well-informed being is doing to avert catastrophe.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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11/15/2024 - 01:48
UK Greens say climate measures ‘being derailed by the fossil fuel lobby’ and that Trump’s victory underlines the need to reform COP
According to an interesting piece in the Africa Report, African countries at Cop are wary of alienating China.
But this year, the main issue at stake in the negotiations is the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). In the jargon of climate finance, this is the amount that developed countries will have to provide to vulnerable countries to help them adapt to climate change.
When they signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, the developed countries undertook to allocate $100bn a year from 2020 onwards – via loans and grants – to finance projects that enable developing countries to adapt to climate change (rising sea levels, drought, etc.) or help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This amount was not reached until 2022, but is due to be renegotiated upwards this year.
The developed countries are also lobbying to broaden the base of contributing countries to include the “new polluters”: China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others. “The African Group will not be supporting this proposal, as it is too sensitive and we don’t want to alienate China,” says an African negotiator.
The African countries are also members of the G77, the group of developing countries to which China belongs.
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11/14/2024 - 21:53
Primary schools ordered to cease in-person classes as air pollution deteriorates to dangerous levels in Indian capital
India’s capital, Delhi, has ordered all primary schools to cease in-person classes until further notice due to worsening pollution in the sprawling megacity, while over 100 miles away the smog was so thick it obscured the Taj Mahal monument.
Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to more than 30 million people, consistently tops world rankings for air pollution in winter which is estimated to reduce life expectancy for the capital’s residents by up to seven years.
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11/14/2024 - 21:24
Baby spiders collected from egg sacs via Australian Reptile Park’s yearly callout are vital to creating lifesaving antivenom
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Hunting for potentially deadly, silky spider burrows in the back yard may not be on every Sydneysiders’ bucket list.
But that’s the request of the Australian Reptile Park (ARP) as breeding season begins for funnel-webs, encouraging residents to search shoes, piles of laundry, pools and garden debris for spiders and their egg sacs.
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11/14/2024 - 19:01
Future UN conferences should only be held in countries that show support for climate action, urge influential group
Over 1,700 coal, oil and gas lobbyists granted access to Cop29, says report
Future UN climate summits should be held only in countries that can show clear support for climate action and have stricter rules on fossil fuel lobbying, according to a group of influential climate policy experts.
The group includes former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, the former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, the former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and the prominent climate scientist Johan Rockström.
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11/14/2024 - 19:01
Fossil fuel-linked lobbyists outnumber delegations of almost every country at climate talks in Baku, analysis finds
Cop summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, say leading climate policy experts
At least 1,773 coal, oil, and gas lobbyists have been granted access to the United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, a new report has found, raising concerns about the planet-heating industry’s influence on the negotiations.
Those lobbyists outnumber the delegations of almost every country at the conference, the analysis from the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition shows, with the only exceptions being this year’s host country, Azerbaijan, next year’s host Brazil, and Turkey.
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11/14/2024 - 13:02
Fifty years of change on iconic limestone pavements has revealed mixed fortunes for one of the most distinctive landscapes in the UK. The findings, which reveal large changes since the 1970s, are from the first national assessment in half a century of plants and vegetation in Britain's rare and iconic limestone pavements.
11/14/2024 - 12:58
Changing how land-use subsidies are implemented would give UK taxpayers better value for money and improve chances of meeting environmental targets such as Net Zero.
