‘It’s like a death pit’: how Ghana became fast fashion’s dumping ground. Yvette Yaa Konadu Tetteh’s epic swim down the River Volta highlights the damage done to the country’s waterways by an out-of-control trade in secondhand clothes from the global north, and why it’s time for change. It’s mid-morning on a sunny day, and Yvette...
Tag: sustainability
‘World’s money is flowing in the wrong direction’: Funding of fossil fuels eclipses climate finance
‘World’s money is flowing in the wrong direction’: Funding of fossil fuels eclipses climate finance. Funding for polluting industries far outstrips support for climate change mitigation, a new report shows. Top banks are funding two of the world’s most polluting industries far more aggressively than governments are funding solutions, a new report reveals. Banks including...
Climate engineering: a quick fix or a risky distraction?
On a Tuesday in August, Luke Iseman drove two hours east of Oakland in drought-stricken California to a remote spot where he launched a handful of balloons filled with sulphur dioxide and helium high into the sky. From there, he used GPS to try to track the balloons as they rose into the stratosphere,the layer...
‘Fragile and under threat’: Prosecco could disappear due to climate change, experts warn
Some of Europe’s favourite wines could be wiped out by climate change, experts have warned. Climate change could wipe out Prosecco and other popular European wines, new research has warned. Prosecco – a sparkling white wine produced in Italy’s mountainside vineyards – is one of the continent’s most beloved drinks. But grape yields are dwindling, devastated by a...
Part two: COP28 host’s favoured carbon credit climate solution a stitch-up for more fossil fuels
In part one of this two-part article series, the Canary reported that UAE-based carbon credit company Blue Carbon LLC – under the patronage of sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum – has been amassing land agreements with governments across Africa and the Pacific. The organisation’s latest land-grab amounts to some 7.5m hectares of exclusive land development rights in Zimbabwe. Now,...
Part one: UAE carbon credit company shows COP28 host dripping in green-grabbing hypocrisy
The COP28 climate summit’s host has launched a neocolonial green-grabbing crusade across the Global South. Naturally, it’s yet another nifty ‘net-zero’ carbon con. In part one of this two-part article, we’ll look at how UAE-based carbon credit company Blue Carbon LLC has been amassing land agreements with governments across Africa and the Pacific. Blue Carbon...
Young People are Worried About Climate Change, and Rightfully So
Recent reports have found that the world is on track to pass a critical temperature limit by as early as the 2030s. If this happens, climate disasters will be frequent and the Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystems will be altered. While this news is frightening, there are steps that can be taken to prevent this from happening such as government...
The 90 companies responsible for two-thirds of historical greenhouse gas emissions
ExxonMobil, the fifth-leading producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the world from 1880 to 2010, has been planning since 2018 to raise its yearly carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 17% by 2025, according to internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg. The news comes in stark contrast to efforts to slow down the pace of...
The Short List Of Climate Actions That Will Work
I spend a lot of time critiquing solutions for low-carbon transformation, and that leads, inevitably, to people asking me: what works? What should we be doing? Most recently, that came in the form of a question on Quora that was well enough formed to trigger me to write down the solution set: “What exactly is the current...
Strawberry fields forever? Strawberry production leaves long-term plastic pollution, research finds
Researchers have found that the plastic mulch used to support the growth of Californian strawberries sheds large quantities of plastic mulch fragments. These particles have been shown to negatively impact soil qualities, casting doubt on the long-term viability of their use. The findings from the survey are likely to apply world-wide to plastic use in...