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Pressure from the miners’ and energy workers’ union CGT forced the French government to back down on extending the carbon tax to coal-fired power stations. EurActiv’s partner Journal de l’Environnement reports.French governments have always struggled to tax emissions from coal. In 2009, François Fillon had to abandon the idea after his plans were struck down by the Constitutional Council. This time, the plan has been sunk by the country’s biggest union of miners and energy workers. On 25 April, President François Hollande announced the introduction of a minimum quota price for greenhouse gas emissions from combustion power stations. “This price...

Experts say that solar activity as low as it currently is has not been seen since the mini-ice age that took place between 1645 and 1715 – a period known as the Maunder Minimum where the entire Thames froze over. A new model has allowed experts to predict solar activity with more accuracy than ever before and it suggests that magnetic activity will fall by 60 per cent between 2030 and 2040. The model looks at the Sun’s ’11-year heartbeat’ – the period it takes for magnetic activity to fluctuate. This cycle was first discovered some 173 years ago. However,...

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Paramount and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions are in talks to make a live action film adaptation of the early 1990s environmental cartoon “Captain Planet.” […] According to reporters Rebecca Ford and Borys Kit, “Sources say the story takes place years after the adventures of the show, with the Captain now a washed-up has-been who needs the kids more than they need him.” …

Dead and dying are two very different things. If a person is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, their loved ones don't rush to write an obituary and plan a funeral. Likewise, species aren't declared extinct until they actually are. In a viral article entitled "Obituary: Great Barrier Reef (25 Million BC-2016)," however, writer Rowan Jacobsen proclaimed ― inaccurately and, we can only hope, hyperbolically ― that Earth's largest living structure is dead and gone.

KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) — Nearly 200 nations have reached a deal, announced Saturday morning after all-night negotiations, to limit the use of greenhouse gases far more powerful than carbon dioxide in a major effort to fight climate change. The talks on hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, were called the first test of global will since the historic Paris Agreement to cut carbon emissions was reached last year. HFCs are described as the world's fastest-growing climate pollutant and are used in air conditioners and refrigerators. Experts say cutting them is the fastest way to reduce global warming. President Barack Obama, in a statement...

Negotiators from more than 170 countries on Saturday reached a legally binding accord to counter climate change by cutting the worldwide use of a powerful planet-warming chemical used in air-conditioners and refrigerators. -snip-While the Paris agreement included pledges by nearly every country to cut emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels that power vehicles, electric plants and factories, the new Kigali deal has a single target: chemical coolants called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, used in air-conditioners and refrigerators.-snip-And while the Paris pledges are broad, they are also voluntary, often vague and dependent on the political will of future world...

Renewable energy companies have hiked up the prices consumers have to bear to cover their costs, leading to accusations the country’s “energy transition” is running out of control. Germans will be paying 8.3 percent more to subsidize the renewable energy industry in 2017, after grid operators announced that households will be paying 6.88 cents for every kilowatt hour of energy used to fund renewables. The previous subsidy was 6.35 cents per kilowatt hour, Bild reports. Germany has one of the most ambitious green energy policies in the world, the so-called Energiewende (energy transition), which aims to reduce its greenhouse gas...

A federal judge has opened the way for Exxon Mobil Corp. to seek documents and question witnesses who may help the Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey investigate whether the company hid what it knew about climate change. U.S. District Court Judge Ed Kinkeade in Dallas said Thursday that critical comments Healey made at a news conference raised the possibility that she acted in “bad faith” by issuing a subpoena against the company. Healey and New York’s attorney general have accused Exxon of committing securities fraud by misleading investors and the public about what the company knew about the link between...

MIAMI—Former Vice President Al Gore on Tuesday returned to the campaign trail in Florida, where his 537-vote loss cost him the White House in 2000, presenting himself as “exhibit A” on the importance of voting. “Please take it from me: Every single vote counts,” he told 1,600 people at a rally here with Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton. Mr. Gore reminded younger people in the audience that his loss to Republican George W. Bush was “very close”—so close that many Democrats believe the outcome would have been different if the Supreme Court hadn’t halted a recount of ballots.

Of all the problems facing this nation, climate change is at the top, Democrat Hillary Clinton told a campaign rally in Miami, Florida on Tuesday. “And I will tell you this — it is one of the most important issues at stake in this election,” she said. Appearing with climate change activisit Al Gore — her husband’s vice president — Clinton capitalized on Florida’s recent brush with Hurricane Matthew, saying the storm was “likely more destructive because of climate change.” …

America’s first offshore wind power plant will cost about $17,600 dollars to build per home it will power. Three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, the wind farm is supposed to generate enough energy to power 17,000 homes, but will cost $300 million to build five turbines. This cost is just to build the turbines, not to operate them. The extremely high cost of offshore wind doesn’t worry environmentalists and progressives, however, because, as Salon.com says about the project, “it’s the precedent that counts.” Despite the extremely high cost, federal officials want to power a whooping 23...

(Rest of Headline: and Third-Party Risks)[snip]“When it comes to the most urgent issue facing our country and the world, the choice in this election is extremely clear,” Gore told the crowd at Miami Dade University. “Hillary Clinton will make solving the climate crisis a top national priority. Her opponent based on the ideas that he has presented would take us towards a climate catastrophe.”

You can't blame climate change for creating Hurricane Matthew. But two Florida scientists say you can blame a warmer world for making the storm get so strong so fast.Hurricanes and tropical storms gain their power from absorbing the heat of warm water. That's why hurricane season runs from June to November, when the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico are at their warmest. This year, global temperature readings are setting new records every month, so that 2016 is on track to be the warmest year ever. "Ocean temperatures are playing a big role in that," said...

Eliminating refrigerants known as HFCs could prevent a leap in global warming After being directed for almost 30 years at substances that destroy ozone, the Montreal Protocol will for the first time target a group of greenhouse gases. Beginning today in Kigali, Rwanda, member states of the United Nations are finalizing the terms of what could be the largest commitment to reducing global warming since the Paris Agreement on climate last December. Delegates are likely to take till the meeting’s final day on Oct. 14 to hammer out the knotty details of an amendment to the protocol. Ideally, the...

(2010) Former Vice President Al Gore has been hit by new allegations of sexual assault. This time, it's two more massage therapists bringing the charges. The former VP is already in hot water, fighting abuse claims in Portland, where another masseuse said Gore groped her in '06

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, alongside Former Vice President Al Gore, are holding a campaign rally at Miami Dade College’s Kendall campus, Tuesday afternoon.

While it may seem like only yesterday that you were enjoying a cold glass of white wine on a sunny terrace, a winter chill is spreading across the country. Yes, it’s already snowing in (some parts) of France — and there’s a storm brewing too. France’s weather agency Météo France predicted “fairly significant snowfall” in the French Alps as a storm passes across the country on Wednesday and Thursday. The storm will also bring some serious rainfall further west, especially in Languedoc and the Cévennes, as well as in the mountains of Corsica. …

It seems like just days since we were lapping up glorious summer sun, but on Monday residents of southern Germany were strolling through the snow. A low pressure which has spread over most of the country will push temperatures down into the minus figures over the next couple of nights, the German Weather Service (DWD) predicts. […] Already on Monday, hikers on the Feldberg in the Black Forest were strolling through fresh snow. …

President Barack Obama spoke to reporters on Wednesday afternoon on the Paris climate change agreement and, almost on cue, NBC’s Ron Allen connected global warming to Hurricane Matthew set to bear down on the Bahamas, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Speaking on MSNBC Live to host Kate Snow, Allen first gushed about how the President “believes so deeply in protecting the environment” that the deal marks “one of the most significant aspects of his legacy” before bringing in Hurricane Matthew as a intriguing “practical matter.” It was "what the president was talking about as the threat that the planet faces...

The Environmental Protection Agency Thursday unveiled its new online tool to help local officials deal with climate change, and it warns that no state in the nation is safe from disaster. The "Climate Change Adaptation Resource Center," or "ARC-X," provides a map that break the country into eight regions and every single one comes with a threatening warning and long list of threats to human life. "From floods and droughts to dangerous heat islands and other public health effects, communities are facing the very real impacts of climate change," said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in unveiling the portal. While the...