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One third of fuel used in domestic flights by 2030 will come from sustainable sources, according to a new German roadmap on the market ramp-up of power-to-liquid (PtL) kerosene unveiled on Friday (7 May). The plan for increased use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) aims to have an annual production of 200,000 tonnes of green kerosene by 2030. Politicians and representatives of interest groups came together on Friday (7 May) to announce that they had come to an agreement on the German roadmap towards production of sustainable PtL kerosene, a type of electro-fuel. “By switching to electricity-based kerosene, we can...

Implementing a border levy to price carbon-intensive imports and protect European industries will be “extremely complicated,” warned Jonathan Pershing, a member of the US climate envoy’s team. “I do note that it’s extremely complicated to think about the structure of a border tax,” Pershing told participants at a EURACTIV debate last Friday (7 May). “I don’t disagree in principle that it has value, but I think that it’s got enormous complexity,” he warned. The carbon border adjustment mechanism, due to be revealed in July, aims to put a price on imports from countries where it is cheaper to pollute, as...

A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control. As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet,...

Yes, friends, yesterday was one of our many Soviet-style communal events around the Global Church of Climate Change religion, a day that was in fact invented by a communist. Earth Day was the brain child, supposedly, of Wisconsin Democrat/communist Sen. Gaylord Nelson, a compatriot of fellow communist George McGovern, the Democrat nominee for president in 1972. McGovern lost in a near-record landslide to Richard Nixon that year, as most Americans realized that hey, this guy’s a commie and we ain’t voting for him. McGovern’s ignominious defeat was surpassed in its utter futility just 16 years later by Walter Mondale, who...

I was very lucky to be able to make this little film.

France is set to ban short domestic flights in favor of train services, after lawmakers approved a plan that will see several air routes discontinued to reduce emissions. MPs voted late on Saturday to some suspend some flights by domestic airlines that can be made by train in less than two-and-a-half hours, as part of a wider climate bill. If the bill passes through France’s upper house, the Senate, France will join a number of European countries seeking to move away from short flights. But some have criticized President Emmanuel Macron for watering down proposals from his own environmental panel,...

Scientific American magazine announced Monday that it would stop using the term "climate change" in articles about man-made global warming and substitute "climate emergency" instead.

In a letter to the spring meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Pope Francis called for the creation of new institutions of “global governance” to help advance the “integral human development of all peoples.” He also said the “financial industry” should calculate the “ecological debt” of countries “so that developed countries can pay it.…” We cannot “overlook another kind of debt: the ‘ecological debt’ that exists, especially between the global north and south,” said the Pope in his April 8 letter. “We are, in fact, in debt to nature itself, as well as the people and...

Germany is in the grip of a cold front. And it’s going to stay that way until at least the weekend, according to meteorologists. It’s snowing, hailing and raining — and in some parts of Germany temperatures have even dipped to below freezing, with thick blankets of snow covering the landscape. The reason is a persistent cold front, which will continue to provide cool weather that fluctuates between bursts of snow, rain and sun in the coming days. Germany lies in the influx of cold polar air from Arctic latitudes, wrote the German Weather Service (DWD) on its website. On...

A £24,000 statue of Greta Thunberg installed at a university has sparked anger among students who have branded it a “vanity project”. The University of Winchester believes it is the world’s first life-sized sculpture of the “inspirational” Swedish environmental activist. But the students’ union said the funds could have been better spent. The university said “no money was diverted” from student support or staffing for the project. President of Winchester Student Union Megan Ball described Thunberg as a “fantastic role model to everyone, as someone who speaks loudly and proudly about important global issues”, but said the union could not...

Vatican observes 'Earth Hour'On Saturday, along with the Vatican, symbolic monuments of cities all across the globe turn off their lights, to demonstrate the serious global climate crisis.By Vatican News staff writerVatican City State took part in the traditional international initiative Earth Hour 2021, promoted annually by the environmental organization, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).On Saturday, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. (Rome time), the lights of the dome and the facade of St. Peter's Basilica, as well as the colonnade, were turned off. Only a few lights remained on for safety reasons.Earth hourEarth Hour is billed as...

Europe has set a clear goal for full decarbonization by 2050, with renewables-based electricity set to become the dominant energy carrier, and that means fossil gas will have “only a marginal role” in the long run, EU climate chief Frans Timmermans said on Thursday (25 March). By 2050, Europe’s energy system will be changed fundamentally, with ten times more solar and onshore wind power than today, said Timmermans, the European Commission’s executive vice-president in charge of the Green Deal. And “at the end of that road, there will be no more space for coal, very little room for oil, and...

The climate movement is ascendant, and it has become common to see climate change as a social justice issue. Climate change and its effects—pandemics, pollution, natural disasters—are not universally or uniformly felt: the people and communities suffering most are disproportionately Black, Indigenous and people of color. It is no surprise then that U.S. surveys show that these are the communities most concerned about climate change. ... Today, a year into the pandemic, after the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, I am deeply concerned about the racial implications of climate...

Ronald Reagan famously said, "The trouble with our liberal friends isn't that they're ignorant. It's that they know so much that isn't so." This might be the only thing our friends on the left have in common with yesterday's liberals. The earlier breed at least gave lip service to the value of free speech and vigorous debate. "Liberalism" was the enemy of truth and clarity throughout the Cold War. Public debate was full of wordplay. Nimbleness of language ruled the day, with liberals parsing their way through the decay of communism 'til they could blame the decadence of capitalism for...

Depending on how and when you count, Japan’s Toyota is the world’s largest automaker. According to Wheels, Toyota and Volkswagen vie for the title of the world’s largest, with each taking the crown from the other as the market moves. That’s including Volkswagen’s inherent advantage of sporting 12 brands versus Toyota’s four. Audi, Lamborghini, Porsche, Bugatti, and Bentley are included in the Volkswagen brand family. GM, America’s largest automaker, is about half Toyota’s size thanks to its 2009 bankruptcy and restructuring. Toyota is actually a major car manufacturer in the United States; in 2016 it made about 81% of the...

Proven technologies for a net-zero energy system already largely exist today, according to a report published Tuesday by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The report predicts that renewable power, green hydrogen and modern bioenergy will shape the way we power the world in 2050. Adopting such solutions would set world leaders on track to meet their target of keeping the planet from heating by more than 1.5 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels this century, according to the World Energy Transitions Outlook report. The UN had warned in November that pledges to meet this goal were so far “woefully inadequate.”...

NATO must reduce its “military emissions” in an effort to tackle climate change, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday. He made the announcement on Twitter as he welcomed the United States’ special envoy for climate — John Kerry — to Brussels. He tweeted: “Great to welcome @ClimateEnvoy John Kerry to Brussels. We agree that climate change makes the world more unsafe, so #NATO needs to step up and play a bigger role in combating it — including by reducing military emissions. I look forward to working closely together. #NATO2030.” Last September, in an op-ed published on the NATO website, Stoltenberg...

A large mural of climate activist Greta Thunberg in Dublin has been vandalized a little over 24 hours after it was finished. The work, by acclaimed artist Emmalene Blake, spans the side of a building on Chancery Street next to the Luas Red Line. Ms. Blake’s mural shows the teenager speaking at the UN Climate Summit in 2019, when she condemned world leaders for failing to tackle the problem. …

The Polish government wants to start producing nuclear energy in 2033 and has agreed to deals with the US and France. But Germany is increasingly alarmed by its neighbor’s energy plans. […] The EU member has to find new sources of energy in order to meet the bloc’s climate, energy and environmental targets. Poland currently depends on coal for 70% of its energy and is thus one of the most polluting EU states. But Poland’s energy transition is not driven by external pressure alone. Brown coal mining in central Poland, which currently supplies 20% of the country’s energy, is set...

Heavy snowfall blanketed the Acropolis and other ancient monuments in Athens, caused power cuts and halted COVID-19 vaccinations in the Greek capital on Tuesday as the weather brought many services across the country to a standstill. Greek media reported that three deaths in separate parts of the country were linked with the bad weather. State ERT TV said two elderly men with breathing problems died after their mechanical respiratory aids stopped working due to power cuts, and a farmer on the island of Crete was found dead in a snow-covered area near his sheepfold. While western Europe got some respite...