Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Conchologists, and citizen scientists team up to seek out endangered mollusc species along River Thames It is tiny, hairy and “German” – and it could be hiding underneath a piece of driftwood near you. Citizen scientists and expert conchologists are teaming up to conduct the first London-wide search for one of Britain’s most endangered molluscs. The fingernail-sized German hairy snail (Pseudotrichia rubiginosa) is found in fragmented patches of habitat mostly along the tidal Thames. Continue reading...

The Philippines is one of the countries most at risk of the climate emergency due to its low-lying island geography. With sea temperatures rising, the country deals with increasingly frequent and intense typhoons, rising sea-levels that threaten coastal communities, and changing rainfall patterns that disrupt agriculture. The country is one of the smallest contributors to climate change but one of the places most affected by its impacts. Gideon Mendel’s visceral portraits from his project Drowning World show people in Bulacan province dealing with the climate emergency in their daily lives Continue reading...

Getting to net zero CO2 emissions globally means we can halt global warming. This requires a rapid phase-out. It’s physics With another set of global climate talks behind us, the Australian government faces some tricky tasks before it takes over negotiations at the next round of talks next year in Turkey. Cop30 in Belém, Brazil, did not deliver the bold fossil fuel phase-out roadmap we needed, but it did nudge the system forward with more scrutiny of fossil fuel producers. And despite the weakness of the outcome, one can gain some important comfort by the fact that Bélem – and the G20 in Johannesburg at the weekend – both solidly endorsed the Paris agreement, its central goal of keeping warming to 1.5C and the importance of net zero emissions. Cop30 agreed that an “ambition accelerator” will be needed to fill the gap between what governments are planning (projected to warm the world by 2.6C) and the agreed guardrails of the Paris agreement: a limit of 1.5C. It also, crucially, began the momentum for developing a roadmap for a just transition away from fossil fuels, with more than 80 countries – including Australia – signing the “Belém declaration” on a transition away from fossil fuels. While this declaration didn’t get support from the whole conference, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has promised to move forward on its implementation during the course of this year, until he hands over to Cop31 in Turkey. Continue reading...

For all its flaws, the Brazil conference underlined the wish by a global majority for clean energy and climate action – and the UK will keep leading the way Ed Miliband is the secretary of state for energy security and net zero Sweaty, maddening, sleepless. That’s what it was like to be part of Cop30 in Brazil. And yet more than 190 countries came together in the rainforest of the Amazon and reaffirmed their faith in multilateralism, the Paris agreement and the need to redouble our efforts to keep global warming to 1.5C. We went to Cop because working with other countries to tackle the climate crisis is the only way to protect our home and way of life. We know the UK produces just 1% of emissions, which is why, as the prime minister said in Belém, our government is “all-in” on working with others to reduce the remaining 99%. Ed Miliband is Labour MP for Doncaster North and secretary of state for energy security and net zero Continue reading...