A new ban on domestic flights has been approved by Brussels and will apply to domestic flights in France where there is an existing alternative by rail that takes less than two and a half hours. This will have the immediate effect of ending flights between Paris Orly airport and the cities of Lyon, Nantes and Bordeaux.
After two weeks of intense negotiations, developed countries agreed to provide a fund to assist poorer countries that are being impacted by the extreme effects of climate change. It's not exactly a new idea. Since 2009, a promise has been in place for richer nations to provide $100 billion (84 Bn) in climate finance by 2020, but the new agreement has brought finance for rescue and rebuilding of poorer countries affected by the impacts of climate change that they didn't cause (something they have been requesting for the last 30 years) into reality.
Speaking at COP27 on 15 November, President-Elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told a delighted audience that 'Brazil is back. In his speech, Lula committed to working towards zero deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, reversing the environmental damage that was allowed under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
On 15 November 2022, the United Nations estimated that the world’s human population reached 8 billion people. It was only twelve years ago that the planet’s population hit 7 billion. However, the population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950 and is now expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and peaking at around 10.4 billion by 2080.
The government confirmed yesterday that the moratorium on fracking in England, which has been in place since 2019 has been lifted. The moratorium, which effectively banned all fracking operations in England was put in place because of concerns over earth tremors that were being caused by fracking wells.
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released on 28 February 2022 has said that many of the effects of climate change are already baked in, but that humanity still has a brief window to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Scientists at the Oxfordshire-based Joint European Torus (JET) laboratory made a significant breakthrough yesterday in their mission to harness the power of nuclear fusion - the energy that powers the stars.
All kinds of climate records were broken in 2021, with a notable one being a new high for December of 19.4C set in Kodiak, Alaska. Meanwhile, China saw its hottest year ever, but perhaps even more dramatic than this was more than a year's worth of rain, which fell on Henan province in just three days, causing flooding, destroying homes and wrecking crops.