Carbon Footprint News

COLOMBO — The small Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka may contribute only 0.03% to global carbon emission levels yet it has set an ambitious target to become carbon neutral…

The past decade has seen a paradigm shift in the way the world looks at lighting. Homes, offices and streets have turned off wasteful incandescent lights and fluorescent ones that…

Players in the carbon offset market say they offer a solution to the climate crisis. When an emitter releases carbon in one place, they can support a project elsewhere that…

The multibillion-dollar global console gaming industry is linked to environmental harm throughout the life cycle of these wildly popular devices. But the industry is taking some steps to curb its excesses.

“Should I have kids?” is an age-old question, but the urgent context we find ourselves in today isn’t, as we climb rapidly toward 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) of warming above…

The death knell of coal has been proclaimed, but policy loopholes in Asia allow for cofired power plants, where coal and wood are combined as fuel. Both fuels produce lots of carbon emissions, but those from wood aren’t counted.

Indonesia’s planned new capital city on the island of Borneo, Nusantara, is being touted by the government as a "green" city. However, its construction may lead to a surge in…

The UK and EU were the primary users of woody biomass for energy. But Japan and South Korea have drastically stepped up their burning of wood pellets — potentially threatening forests, biodiversity, and the climate.

Training cattle ranchers in Brazil to recover degraded pastures could curb carbon dioxide emissions, scale down deforestation for agriculture in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, and increase their income, according…

Japan and South Korea are increasingly burning biomass, such as wood pellets, to make energy, with potentially adverse impacts on the global climate, deforestation and biodiversity.

The world still has a fighting chance to keep temperatures below 2° Celsius over pre-industrial levels, if all countries meet their commitments to curb global warming, scientists say. In a…

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted many aspects of everyday life, including the way we work. Now, more than ever, professionals are working from home due to health and safety concerns…

Thousands of companies around the world have made pledges to reduce carbon emissions in the coming decades in response to the climate crisis, including initiatives to reduce reliance on carbon-heavy…

While it’s clear that soil can help limit the impacts of climate change, leveraging its power requires a menu of solutions at many scales. Most of them require big policy…

With humanity emitting more carbon skyward, nature-based climate solutions — and their ecosystem carbon storage capacity — are put at risk by agribusiness and extraction industries. Will world leaders act in time to conserve forests?

Plastics will outpace coal plants in the U.S. by 2030 in terms of their contributions to climate change, according to a new report released Oct. 21 by Beyond Plastics, a…

A new version of a tool to measure forest carbon credits, TREES 2.0, was published last month. It includes novel avenues for measuring carbon storage and purports to bring clarity…

REDD+ is an idea that has launched a thousand projects. It’s essentially a way to monetize forests’ ability to store carbon and put that money in the hands of communities…

Is harnessing the storage power of soils the global carbon solution we have been searching for? Understanding soil-formation and function is a first step to finding out.

To stay within planetary boundary safe limits, we must protect soils by conserving global habitat and revamping industrial agribusiness — and do it fast.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has been the year of the climate commitment, with a number of companies and governments announcing plans to reduce carbon emissions by a specified level…

Low carbon investment in agriculture, industry and energy shows better economic prospects than business-as-usual scenario, raising hopes Brazil will add environmental priorities to COVID-19 economic recovery plan.

Dreaming of a white-picket-fence home in an affluent suburb? Chances are your carbon footprint will be 15 times larger than your less-well-off neighbor. A new study finds that wealthy Americans…

A first ever study has quantified carbon emissions across Brazil’s entire soy sector in detail and pinpointed the highest deforestation related emissions in the Cerrado savanna, followed by the Amazon.

Fast fashion and the environment We live in a world of fast fashion, a model that relies on frequent, trend-driven, impulse buying of cheaply manufactured clothing that often ends up…

Responding to intense pressure from investors and environmental activists, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, signaled in January that it would reduce investments in coal for energy generation. Other fossil…

Scientists are already warning of gradual permafrost CO2 releases; but future abrupt thaws could send huge amounts of methane skyward, causing a surge in global temperatures.

Tech giant Microsoft says it will go “carbon negative” by 2030; to get there, it will rely on Pachama, a startup using LIDAR and artificial intelligence to truthfully track forest carbon storage projects.

Negotiators drafting Paris Agreement Article 6 rules appear to be assuring loopholes to up carbon emissions, turn forests into plantations, and failing to protect human rights.

Madrid negotiators plan to create rules for a global carbon market, but a failure so far to include forest incentives, and a silence on a biomass carbon accounting loophole could hinder progress.