#Environment

Voters across the world care about the climate – so why don’t green parties do better at the ballot box, and could something be about to change?

Flying will always come with a hefty carbon footprint. The best way to green the industry is to avoid it

A series of domestic and international crises have deepened China’s addiction to coal. What will it take to wean it off?

The UK is using its limited land badly. Government plans won’t make agriculture change fast enough

We’ll need a wider variety of ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere if we’re going to keep the planet cool.

The West doesn’t control the resources it needs to build a renewable energy future. China does

Nuclear power is a key part of the government’s strategy, but an inadequate solution to the energy crisis and the need for immediate and deep decarbonisation

In a climate and energy crisis, the UK’s leaky, old housing stock is an extravagance neither people nor the planet can afford.

It’s getting cheaper to make the energy-storing gas using renewables – and that could help the world through the energy crisis.

It’s tempting to believe the solution to cutting soaring energy bills is lying beneath our feet. But after a decade dreaming of a US-style shale revolution, fracking has failed to deliver.

If Europe were to survive next winter without Russian gas, it would have to shift to a wartime footing. In the short term that could put net zero at risk. In the longer term it could accelerate climate action

Part two of the IPCC landmark report on climate change highlights both the risks and opportunities for cities.

There is no net zero without Africa, and that’s a problem

The government needs to make it clear to the public that net zero remains a priority, despite high gas prices and calls to delay from the backbench.

The oil majors are reporting soaring profits, but the pressure on them to decarbonise continues to mount. Driving down demand could force them to go faster.

The Beijing Winter Olympics are taking place in an area completely unsuited to winter sports. But at least the air will be clearer than it was in 2008

The world creates 300 million tonnes of plastic waste every year – but companies still can’t get enough recycled material to stop using it brand new.

Permafrost covers nine million square miles of the Earth’s surface – and it’s thawing faster than ever. Will the big melt become a climate feedback loop?

At Cop26 last year, financial institutions made a $130 trillion promise to save the planet. How’s it going so far?

The EU is trying to define what constitutes a “green” investment, but member states have conflicting ideas about what that really means.

Snow is surrendering to rain even in the coldest places on the planet, but it can still spring surprises. An unseasonal blizzard in Greenland this year showed how climate change can deliver enough snow in a few days to change the mass of an entire ice sheet

Imagine a world in which carbon cap and trade systems actually worked. Guess what? It’s happening.

Humans aren’t finding climate solutions fast enough. Luckily, machines can help.

Natural and unnatural disasters can cut carbon emissions, but so can the right policies.

US Congress has a habit of killing off climate-focused legislation. Can Biden’s transformative bill make it through?

Cop survives as a way to progress the fight against climate change but only because this year’s host spent a lot of energy on key deals outside the core agenda.

The lesson of Cop is that it is open to a small number of key protagonists to save the planet. Will they?

Will a deal emerge from Glasgow that has the teeth to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees? Or will the forces of inactivism prevail?

The gap between electric vehicle uptake and the infrastructure to charge them is growing. The hassle that will cause could put drivers off

The amount of carbon put out needs to decrease, the amount taken in to increase. To do that you need to count carbon. Welcome to remote sensing. 

The success of the summit depends on the powerful wielders of the negotiating pen heeding the warnings of the young, of activists and of indigenous peoples

The law is becoming an increasingly powerful tool in holding companies and countries to account on their emissions – but some cases fail to bring the latest science into the courtroom.

There are good, natural reasons why flooding rivers and the sea with sewage is a terrible idea. It’s also deeply unpopular

The UK Cop presidency has made ending coal use its main mission. Will a new global deal succeed in banishing the black stuff?

If we keep the promises made at Cop, many of these fading monuments of natural glacial beauty may yet survive

The UK Cop presidency has made ending coal use its main mission. Will a new global deal succeed in banishing the black stuff?

On day three of Cop, three lanky men walk into a conference centre promising the world with trillions of other people’s dollars. Not everyone believes them.

On day two of Cop more than 100 countries joined forces to protect 85 per cent of the world’s forests. What’s not to like? We’ve tried this before and it didn’t work, but apart from that it’s a big step forward

Day one of Cop 26 got off to better than expected. But are we seeing enough action from the mega-polluters: India, US, Russia and China?

The Holy Father’s Thought for the Day this morning showed exactly why he is the moral leader the international community needs to achieve the goals of Cop 26

If the future of this Earth depended on the cajolery of the UN’s climate conference, we’d all be screwed. But the trillions of dollars poised for investment in the environment should give us hope

“Green lairds” are buying up Scotland to offset emissions and green their reputations. They can make a difference – but communities must have more say

Findings from Tortoise’s Responsibility 100 Index show that the UK’s biggest supermarket chains are failing basic transparency tests when reporting on their environmental impact.

The world’s most populous continent, with its fastest-growing economies, depends on coal. We’ve mapped the data over the last 50 years to try and get a sense of this critical challenge for Asia – and the world

In advance of Cop 26, there remains a yawning gap between countries’ pledges and policy action. Britain is making a last-ditch effort to narrow it

Ahead of Cop26, the world’s two biggest superpowers, China and the US, have tried talking to each other about emissions. Nothing has been achieved

Aviation talks a big game about reaching net zero. But to actually achieve it, the industry and customers face some tough choices.

Insects are crucial for the flourishing of life on Earth. We should be nurturing them. Instead we’re killing them off, wholesale

Let the world’s farmlands breathe and come alive, and they might just steer the planet to net zero

The government hasn’t done enough, either before or during the pandemic, to improve air quality. It can atone for that failure at next month’s climate conference

The truth is: very little. But that says more about Cop than it does about Germany, which has a chance to lead global climate policy once its governing coalition is decided

Join us at The New York Times Climate Hub as we discuss Cop26, and help build a practical to-do list to save the planet.

Nobody understands what is happening in the Arctic better than its Indigenous people. Effective climate change adaptation means giving them more power over the resources on which they depend

The global fight against climate change depends on us protecting the natural resources we still have left. We should be prepared to pay for that

Humans have always been a relentlessly mobile species. But climate change is accelerating the number of people fleeing drought and disaster. How will developed nations respond?

Due to vaccine inequality, trust is breaking down ahead of the crucial Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow. Genuine solidarity is needed to solve both transnational crises

One of the central aims of Cop26 is to assemble a set of Nationally Determined Contributions towards global emissions reduction (NDCs). Are they ambitious enough?

Too little water is bad for both the planet and people. Too much water is bad for them, too. We’ve created a crisis in which both extremes are happening at once

John Kerry, President Biden’s climate envoy, wishes China wouldn’t link climate change to global politics – he says it isn’t a geostrategic issue. China says: oh yes it is

Their brief existence and their perceived fragility is a sermon on the nature of beauty and life. How sad that 76 per cent of the UK’s resident and migratory butterfly species are in decline – with all that has to say about the future of the planet

As appealing as tidiness is, grass is too important to the environment, to agriculture and to biodiversity to be tamed

Is the widespread adoption of hydrogen a necessary step towards net zero?

From September, businesses looking to secure deals that supply the most valuable goods and services to the government must have committed to Net Zero. It’s an imperfect, but valuable incentive for action

Decarbonisation alone won’t solve the climate crisis. In the scramble to prevent average temperatures climbing more than 1.5°C within the next 20 years, we meed to slash methane emissions too.

Step one towards Net Zero is funding alternatives to coal for countries that are hooked on it

If we are to reach Net Zero in the decades ahead, then we have to do something about road transport. But electrifying it could just exacerbate many of the problems we face today

The weather has never been more political. When will it actually change policy?

Renewables are growing fast, but fossil fuels need to shrink much faster

Could undercover footage of Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy be the juice that climate litigation needs?

COP26 is in trouble. With only four months to go, the broad goals are clear but no one is confident of progress towards achieving them and the big Biden dividend – US climate leadership after the Trump disaster – is nowhere to be seen

The EU is finally putting serious money behind sustainable farming

Brazil’s southern region has been crippled by a lack of rain in the last year, an event that’s been attributed to the inversion of La Niña. But why has it reversed? And why now?

At last week’s ThinkIn, we assessed what we should be doing at Tortoise over the next 12 months if we want to advance the net zero agenda

Will the Net Zero Teeside project, focused on carbon capture, usage and storage, amount to anything serious?

The hunt for lithium and environmental justice on the shores of a dying lake

Your weekly update on what we’re doing – and what more we can do – to build an agenda for COP26 that makes a difference

Emissions pledges have become a trendy tool through which companies show off their “green” credentials. They’re just talk

It is not the only thing, but planting trees is an obvious first step in tackling the climate crisis

The planet needs more trees, and one of their strengths as a climate change solution is that everyone can plant them, or help others to. Whichever your preference, here’s the Tortoise guide to trees

The hollowed trunk of the mighty baobab tree is used to store life-giving water in the extreme drought of southern Madagascar

Inspirational heroes who have written, campaigned, climbed – and died – in defence of trees

Tom Crowther had no idea that his audit of the world’s trees would make him so many friends – and enemies

Nothing would incentivise tree planting quite like a proper price for carbon

Can the world’s wide open spaces deliver a solution to climate armageddon?

We have to get to net zero soon. The question is how

Can companies really change enough to save the planet?

A year ago, a Californian town burned to the ground. Now, the area’s tech pioneers are coding to prevent further catastrophe

Extreme power blackouts by California’s energy giants tell a story for our times

More than four fifths of the world’s energy still comes from coal, oil and gas. The challenge is to phase them out as demand goes on rising

The October Rebellion pitted climate protestors against police – and left both sides bedraggled

Activism about the climate crisis is intensifying. What woke us up?

Activists demanding action on the climate emergency will try to take over London again today

Your route to work every day takes you past the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations, blocking the streets of London. You’re aware of the threat of climate change but not actively part of the environmental movement. What do you do? Do you keep walking?

Climate activists occupied five key sites in London. Now, they are occupying a sixth: the City of London Magistrates’ Court

Do the FTSE 100’s promises on sustainability stack up?

Images taken from space show a planet wreathed in forest fires. They aren’t started by climate change, but they will speed it up with a vengeance

If mankind survives another century or two, the history books of the future will record one man as the giant of our times

A Tortoise ThinkIn on energy and climate change, Washington, DC. 13 June 2019

Throwaway fashion harms the environment – it’s time to tax everything you wear

Fracking has transformed the US energy industry. But in Britain, where financial benefits do not flow to landowners, it’s attracted fierce opposition from environmentalists. To frack or not to frack? That is the question. Or is it?

Greg Barker has gone from being an MP and David Cameron’s climate change envoy to chairing one of the biggest aluminium and energy companies in Russia

Wherever fracking is proposed, it is opposed. Is it time to ask more fundamental questions about our attitudes to energy?

The explosion in solar power has had some surprising consequences

Hydraulic fracturing is a proven way of getting inaccessible fossil fuel. Its high-pressure methods have attracted widespread protest ranging from fear of earthquakes to water pollution. Its supporters argue that it is a vital new source of cheap energy and would make the UK less dependent on imported oil and gas