December 5, 2019

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has said in the preliminary findings of its annual State of the Global Climate report that the last decade has been one of high heat around the world, meaning it will almost certainly become the hottest on record.

December 2, 2019

The world's political leaders are meeting in Madrid for the next two weeks in an attempt to agree plans to tackle the climate crisis.

November 28, 2019

The European Parliament has today declared a "global climate and environmental emergency' and has urged all member states to commit to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This is in line with the UK government's current ambitions for reducing emissions.

November 28, 2019

The environment is very much in the news today. First, new research from Greenpeace and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has shown that the amount of plastic packaging used in supermarkets actually increased from 2017 to 2018, going from 886,000 tonnes to 903,000 tonnes. A lot of the additional weight comes from 10p 'bags for life', which are made of thicker plastic than the flimsier and 'throwaway' 5p bags used previously. The report has found that each household buys an average of 54 'bags for life' a year, making them more 'bag a week' than 'bag for life', with sales up 26% to 1.5 billion bags in 2018.

November 26, 2019

Following on from yesterday's news that the world's greenhouse gas emissions reached a record high in 2018 at 55 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent, the UN has said that significant cuts need to take place across the planet if we are to have any hope of limiting global average temperature increases by the year 2100 to 1.5C.

November 25, 2019

The United Nations' World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has released a new report showing that all key greenhouses gases measured in 2018 increased at above average rates for the last decade.

November 20, 2019

The newly-published Production Gap Report 2019, the first of its kind, aims to assess the difference between current government plans for fossil fuel production and the levels that would be necessary to achieve the 1.5C and 2C limits on global temperature increases proposed by the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

November 11, 2019

The Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales (NSW) have declared states of emergency because of the threat of bushfires, which are burning out of control. There are more than 120 bushfires burning across the two states. Nine homes have been destroyed in Queensland, whilst 150 have been razed to the ground in NSW.

November 7, 2019

'Climate strike' has been named the Word of the Year for 2019 by the Collins Dictionary. It topped a shortlist of new and notable words that reflected the events of the last 12 months. Interestingly, it is the second year in a row that en environmentally themed word has been chosen. The Word of the Year for 2018 was 'single-use', marking a massive increase in public awareness of plastic pollution.

November 6, 2019

US President Donald Trump began the process of formally withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement on 4 November 2019. The US will be the only country in the world not to be participating in the pact.