The early optimism that launched plastic treaty negotiations in 2022 was stymied at talks this month in Nairobi at which large petrostates stonewalled against creating a binding international treaty that would regulate cradle-to-grave plastics production.
The company’s rapid downfall raises questions about how it can supply its annual 6 million metric tons of wood pellets to the UK, EU and Asia, and how nations relying on biomass to meet energy and climate commitments will cope.
As oil and gas production surge, shifting the global economy to a circular model is essential to charting a path away from fossil fuels, petroleum-based nitrogen fertilizers and petrochemicals such as plastics. Part 3 of a three-part miniseries.
This story is the second in a three-part mini-series surveying the range of impacts by the fossil fuel industry on the global environment. Part one and part two review harm…
Fossil fuels have done great good for humanity, but they are now not only threatening our planet’s climate, but also taking a terrible toll on the global environment, putting at risk Earth systems vital to life as we know it. Part 1 of a three-part miniseries.
Pope Francis is calling on policymakers, corporations and the world’s people to act decisively on climate. His plea comes as the faith-based climate movement — which built momentum after the 2015 Paris agreement — is lagging.
With plastic pollution littering the planet, certification organizations are popping up to sell “plastic credits” to companies, allowing them to offset the plastic they make and use with equivalent plastic waste collected and reused. Critics are skeptical.
Research finds impacts by tiny plastic particles on marine plankton and microbes could disrupt carbon and nitrogen cycling in the world’s oceans, possibly putting Earth’s operating system and the planet’s habitability at risk.
The planet’s Indigenous peoples are valued as Earth’s best stewards, protecting forests and other ecosystems holding vast carbon stores. But governments offer insufficient aid to meet the extreme climate threats now buffeting traditional communities.
This is the third story in a three-part Mongabay miniseries on the Dutch nitrogen crisis and farmer protests of 2022: The Dutch, and European, green agenda crashes into the continent’s…
This is the second story in a three-part Mongabay miniseries on the Dutch nitrogen crisis and farmer protests of 2022: How EU conservation rules shook up Dutch politics. Read Part…
This is the first story in a three-part Mongabay miniseries on the Dutch nitrogen crisis and farmer protests of 2022: How the Dutch food revolution became an ecological time bomb.…
Escalating geopolitical tensions, a weakening dollar, and growing distrust in financial markets has triggered a tropical rush for gold, diamonds and precious metals that’s doing serious ecological damage to Earth’s rivers.
While electric vehicles can cut direct emissions, their production supply chain needs to be decarbonized and other environmental impacts addressed. EVs have a long road to travel before being truly sustainable, say experts.
When powered by renewables, EVs can greatly reduce a vehicle’s direct carbon emissions. But experts warn that we need to gauge environmental impacts across the entire automotive supply chain to ensure sustainability.
The world’s linear economy, critically labeled as “take-make-waste,” is blamed for many global environmental problems, including climate change. The circular economy — focused on conserving resources and material reuse — is a proposed alternative.
Sustainable aviation fuels aren’t enough to drastically cut commercial aviation’s carbon footprint soon. Nor are redesigned planes or carbon-smart airports. Reducing demand for air travel may be the best answer.
The key to sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) is cutting their carbon footprint during production, and making large amounts — no easy task.
Every Friday at 7:30 a.m., María Isabel Aguilar sells her organic produce in an artisanal market in Totonicapán, a city located in the western highlands of Guatemala. Presented on a…
SAADNAYEL, Lebanon – Located in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, a region that has been farmed for millennia, a small experimental farm known as Buzuruna Juzuruna (BuJu) is establishing an agroecological network…
Sustainable liquid biofuels are needed to reduce the carbon footprint of fossil fuel-powered planes, ships, trucks and cars. Grass feedstock has shown promise in biofuel labs, but commercial scaling up may be an insurmountable hurdle.
The south polar region long seemed resistant to climate change, but as warming intensifies, impacts are being identified across the region. While signs of an irreversible tipping point are lacking, Antarctic changes will likely affect the rest of the world.
The world’s largest producer of biomass for energy, Enviva, has seen its stock price tumble, as operational, financial and legal problems pile up, with investors possibly also concerned about the company’s tarnished green image.
As bison, lynx and other wildlife return to European forests, conservationists debate whether biodiversity-enhancing reintroductions add to carbon storage and ecosystem resilience against climate change.
At the start of the 2000s, the search for a “miracle” biofuel led to a stubby Latin American tree. But jatropha’s boom went bust when high yields and big eco benefits failed to materialize. Now some say it’s set for a return.
Revisions to the long-debated European Union Renewable Energy Directive (RED) have been approved. Those policies still support the burning of wood pellets to make energy, despite evidence of harm to forests and climate, say NGOs.
New research finds that a record Arctic sea ice melt season in 2007 initiated a “regime shift” to thinner, more transient ice that may be “irreversible”; another study shows that atmospheric rivers from the south are warming the Arctic in winter.
Biofuels have long been held up as a viable high-tech climate solution, but in practice they’ve often not lived up to their promise, causing environmental harm and in some cases being more carbon-intensive than fossil fuels.
As biomass burning to make energy surges, nations are setting standards that fail to count carbon emissions at power plant smokestacks, worsening climate change even as those same countries dub biomass “carbon neutral.”
Insetting is a nature-based climate solution used by brands that rely on agriculture to reduce carbon emissions in their supply chains. Critics say self-monitoring and verification may be weak.
