Trump pulls out of Cop28 loss and damage deal that recognises harms done by richer, polluting economies to vulnerable nations
The Trump administration has withdrawn the US from a global agreement under which the developed nations most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating.
The loss and damage fund was agreed at the Cop28 UN climate summit in late 2023 – a hard-won victory after years of diplomatic and grassroots advocacy by developing nations that bear the brunt of the climate crisis despite having contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions. The fund signalled a commitment by developed, polluting countries to provide financial support for some of the irreversible economic and noneconomic losses from sea level rise, desertification, drought and floods already happening.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
03/07/2025 - 13:00
Biden-era suit sought to curb emissions of the carcinogen chloroprene at Denka plant formerly owned by DuPont
The Donald Trump administration has formally agreed to drop a landmark environmental justice case in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” region, marking a blow to clean air advocates in the region and a win for the Japanese petrochemical giant at the centre of the litigation.
Legal filings made public on Friday morning reveal that Trump’s Department of Justice agreed to dismiss a long-running lawsuit against the operators of a synthetic rubber plant in Reserve, Louisiana, which is allegedly largely responsible for some of the highest cancer risk rates in the US for the surrounding majority-Black neighborhoods.
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03/07/2025 - 10:17
Council of Europe says Swiss government failing to respect human rights court’s ruling on emissions
Europe live – latest updates
The Swiss government has been told it must do more to show that its national climate plans are ambitious enough to comply with a landmark legal ruling.
The Council of Europe’s committee of ministers, in a meeting this week, decided that Switzerland was not doing enough to respect a decision last year by the European court of human rights that it must do more to cut its greenhouse gas emissions and rejected the government’s plea to close the case.
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03/07/2025 - 09:00
Bob Brown Foundation’s drone footage appears to show farm workers pumping live salmon into a tub carrying dead fish and then sealing it
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At least 1 million salmon died at Tasmanian fish farms and were dumped at landfill sites and rendering plants in February in what authorities and the industry described as an “unprecedented” mass death triggered by a bacterium outbreak.
The revelation that waste facilities in Tasmania’s south received more than 5,500 tonnes of dead salmon last month – equivalent to about 1.07 million full-grown Atlantic salmon, or 8% of total annual production in the state – followed weeks of reports of fatty chunks of fish washing up on beaches in the Huon Valley and on Bruny Island.
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03/07/2025 - 07:00
Using high-definition camera traps on trails in Congo’s Nouabalé-Ndoki national park, Will Burrard-Lucas, a photographer for the Wildlife Conservation Society, has captured Africa’s most elusive and rarely seen animals
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03/07/2025 - 05:33
Judge says cofounder Roger Hallam’s term was ‘manifestly excessive’ as she cuts his and five other activists’ sentences
A lengthy jail sentence handed to the Just Stop Oil cofounder Roger Hallam was “manifestly excessive”, the country’s most senior judge has said, as she reduced his and five other climate protesters’ sentences on appeal.
Hallam was originally jailed for five years for conspiring to disrupt traffic by having protesters climb on to gantries over the M25 for four successive days in 2022. His sentence was reduced to four years.
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03/07/2025 - 05:00
Investor–state dispute settlements don’t just mean growing debt burdens for countries: they are also a barrier to action on the climate crisis
Donald Trump has thrown a hand grenade into the global economic architecture, destroying some things that are working well. But amid the devastation, some things seem to be surviving that really should be taken down. Among the most notable of these is an arcane set of international agreements by which private investors can sue governments, known as ISDS: investor-state dispute settlement. These disputes are litigated not in public courts with impartial judges but in private arbitration – behind closed doors, and rife with conflicts of interest.
Early on, when they were snuck into many trade agreements, no one paid much attention. For instance, these provisions in Nafta, the so-called free trade agreement between the US, Mexico, and Canada, never got a discussion within the cabinet while I served in the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton when Nafta got adopted.
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03/07/2025 - 04:29
Government considering such a move over state-owned firm set up by Labour in June’s spending review, say reports
Business live – latest updates
The UK government is reportedly weighing up the possibility of cutting planned funding for GB Energy, the state-owned company set up by Labour to drive renewable energy and cut household bills, in June’s spending review.
Cuts to the £8.3bn of taxpayer money promised over the five-year parliament would be another blow for Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, after he was overruled by the government when the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, backed the expansion of Heathrow’s third runway.
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03/07/2025 - 03:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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03/07/2025 - 00:37
Cameras stationed by Swellnet to monitor swells on Australia's east coast show the difference a couple of days can make when a tropical cyclone like Alfred approaches. The cameras record how eight beaches, in Queensland and New South Wales, change from Monday to Thursday.
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