The scope of the Cop26 net zero banking alliance may have been limited, but the exodus of six US banks signifies a seismic political shift
Last week, as flames began tearing through greater Los Angeles, claiming multiple lives and forcing more than 100,000 people to evacuate, JP Morgan became the sixth major US bank to quit the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) since the start of December. A smaller story, certainly, but the departure of top US banks from the NZBA in the weeks since Donald Trump’s re-election nonetheless speaks to a seismic political shift prompting major financial institutions to turn away from the climate-related commitments they made in the optimistic years after the Paris agreement.
The NZBA is a voluntary network of global banks committed to “align lending and investment portfolios with net zero emissions by 2050”. It is part of the umbrella Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which counts among its membership dozens of “alliances” covering the various segments of global finance. For its part, the NZBA requires new members to submit science-aligned targets within 18 months of joining, alongside disclosing plans for and status updates on meeting them.
Adrienne Buller is director of The Break Down and the author of The Value of a Whale: on the illusions of green capitalism
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01/15/2025 - 07:07
01/15/2025 - 07:00
Neso says ‘short pause’ will help ease logjam delaying vital green projects, as unfunded ‘zombie projects’ block queue
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Great Britain’s energy system operator has been forced to block new electricity projects from joining the decade-long queue for a grid connection, to stop the growing logjam from delaying vital green developments.
The National Energy System Operator (Neso) says it plans to use the “short pause” to overhaul application rules that have allowed a surge of unfunded project proposals to join the queue, blocking the progress of legitimate green investments.
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01/15/2025 - 07:00
Exclusive: US companies are increasingly shipping toxic waste to other countries, where some argue it poses a risk
US companies ship more than 1m tons of hazardous waste to other countries each year, raising questions over possible impacts on health and the environment, an investigation by the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab has found.
Exports of toxic waste, most of which is shipped to Mexico and Canada, have climbed 17% since 2018, US records show. And while sending it away for recycling and disposal is legal, some experts are concerned that more and more of America’s most dangerous discards are leaving the country.
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01/15/2025 - 06:07
I feel like I am safe in saying that we are not thriving on our changing planet – and we will not in the coming decades
My house in Altadena burned down in the wildfires on Wednesday. It all happened quickly. On Tuesday around 7pm, my wife and daughters went to a hotel as a precaution. I left the house with the dogs when the mandatory evacuation order came in around 3am. As best as I can put the timeline together, our home burned down around the same time that the sun came up, and I was able to drive in and see the damage around 2pm.
Neighbors that went in after said it looked like a “war zone”. I have never been in a war zone thankfully, but I didn’t think so. There was nothing violent or chaotic about it. No one stopped me from driving in. There were no sirens. I stood alone – no one else around – in front of my house that was at that point just a fireplace and chimney. The house across the street was about halfway done with burning down, and the house behind ours had just started to burn.
Benjamin Hamlington is a research scientist at Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a team lead at Nasa Sea Level Change team
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01/15/2025 - 06:00
Legislation has new life in wake of Los Angeles catastrophe but US fossil-fuel industry is already mobilizing against it
In the year preceding the devastating Los Angeles county wildfires, big oil fiercely lobbied to kill a “polluter pay” bill that moved through the California senate and would have forced major fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate disasters.
Fossil-fuel industry lobbying in California spiked to record levels during the 2023-24 legislative session, and the polluter pay bill was among the most targeted pieces of legislation, a Guardian review of state lobby filings found.
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01/15/2025 - 04:39
Forecasters warn of ‘particularly dangerous weather situation’ in California; Gavin Newsom hits back at House speaker for ‘politicizing’ tragedy
LA mayor, Karen Bass, has shared a phone number for residents who have evacuated to get assistance in finding and retrieving pets in evacuation areas.
Posting on X, Bass wrote:
Pets are family.
The City is making help available to find and retrieve pets in evacuation areas.
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01/15/2025 - 04:30
World Economic Forum says responses from experts in business, politics and academia also highlight climate crisis
Global leaders have said that escalating armed conflict is the most urgent threat in 2025 but the climate emergency is expected to cause the greatest concern over the next decade, according to the World Economic Forum.
Ahead of its yearly gathering in the Swiss ski resort of Davos next week, the WEF asked more than 900 leaders from business, politics and academia about the risks that most concern them.
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01/15/2025 - 04:00
Experts believe H5N1 bird flu belongs in a growing category of infectious diseases that can cause pandemics across many species. But there are ways to reduce the risks
Bird flu poses a threat that is “unique and new in our lifetime” because it has become a “‘panzootic” that can kill huge numbers across multiple species, experts warn. For months, highly pathogenic bird flu, or H5N1, has been circulating in dairy farms, with dozens of human infections reported among farm workers. It has now jumped into more than 48 species of mammals, from bears to dairy cows, causing mass die-offs in sea lions and elephant seal pups. Last week, the first person in the US died of the infection.
This ability to infect, spread between, and kill such a wide range of creatures has prompted some scientists to call H5N1 a “panzootic”: an epidemic that leaps species barriers and can devastate diverse animal populations, posing a threat to humans too. As shrinking habitats, biodiversity loss and intensified farming create perfect incubators for infectious diseases to jump from one species to another, some scientists say panzootics could become one of the era’s defining threats to human health and security.
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01/15/2025 - 01:59
Penny Sharpe says ‘mystery’ debris sent for testing and beaches not closed as there were so few balls
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More ball-shaped debris has washed ashore at Sydney’s Bondi, Coogee, Maroubra and Cronulla beaches, the New South Wales government has confirmed.
The office of the acting premier, Penny Sharpe, told Guardian Australia on Wednesday that “small numbers of balls” – some only pea-sized – had washed up on the four beaches in the past few days.
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01/15/2025 - 01:00
Exclusive: Sampling results show ‘extremely concerning’ concentrations of PFOS and PFOA at sites across UK
Where are the UK’s ‘forever chemical’ hotspots?
RAF bases are hotspots of toxic “forever chemical” pollution in water, analysis of Ministry of Defence documents has revealed.
Moreover, some of the highest concentrations of these chemicals in British drinking water sources are near RAF bases, official sampling results obtained by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations show.
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