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The prime minister admitted he “doesn’t really get” climate change, the former head of this year’s key summit on the issue has said. The UK is hosting COP26 in Glasgow in November – but Boris Johnson sacked president Claire O’Neill on Friday. Mrs O’Neill told the BBC there was a “huge lack of leadership and engagement” from the government.

Senior cabinet minister Michael Gove rejected claims that the government was failing to lead on climate change.

Mr Gove told Sky News the Glasgow conference had been the first item on the agenda when the cabinet met in the new year and he said the UK was setting an example on reducing carbon emissions.

But Ms O’Neill, the former Conservative minister for energy and clean growth, said people should be wary of the prime minister’s promises.

“My advice ...

You would think that ensuring the survival of the human race is something you can’t put a price on, but one of the reasons that governments aren’t always keen to take action on climate change is the economic costs of doing so.

But new research investigating the future costs of dealing with a warming planet shows just how counterintuitive that way of thinking actually is, because the longer we wait to take action, the more we’re going to have to pay in the long run.

According to the study’s calculations, the cheapest option at this point is to pay what it takes to limit the global temperature rise over the next century to 2 degrees Celsius – the same number that governments committed to with the Paris Agreement.

“To secure economic welfare for all people in these times of global warming, ...

In 2015, 193 countries agreed on 17 global objectives for ending poverty and protecting the environment by 2030. These Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) included SDG 14, to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”

A new study by two former diplomats with the CONOW Competence Centre for International Relations published in the journal Marine Policy estimates that to hit the targets needed to achieve this SDG the world must spend US$175 billion per year.

Reducing marine pollution will take more than half the money needed, according to the paper. At over USD$90 billion, that cost includes programs to clean up ocean trash, better manage waste and improve wastewater treatment plants. It also means investing in research on biodegra...

Plastic straws are getting all the attention lately, with cities like Vancouver and Seattle banning the use of them. Even major corporations like Starbucks and McDonald’s have jumped on the environmental bandwagon and implemented their own plastic straw ban, citing ocean pollution. But there is a worse polluter floating in the ocean, damaging habitats, poisoning fish and costing tax dollars for cleanup and disposal, according to environmental experts.

On Monday, a report by NBC News named cigarette butts as the single greatest source of ocean pollution — surpassing plastic straws.

The filters in cigarettes are made of tiny plastic particles that take decades or more to decompose. And they serve no use...

In a new report about how the world’s coral reefs face “the combined threats of climate change, pollution, and overfishing”—endangering the future of marine biodiversity—a London-based nonprofit calls for greater global efforts to end the climate crisis and ensure the survival of these vital underwater ecosystems. The report, entitled Marine Havens Under Threat: The impacts of the climate crisis on tropical coral reefs and the communities that rely on them (pdf), was published Wednesday by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF).

EJF warns that because of human activities that heat and pollute the planet, coral reefs “are under imminent risk of destruction,” pointing to a recent estimate from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that global warming o...

World leaders are currently updating the laws for international waters, and a group of scientists have proposed that they should include measures that allow protected zones to shift as species move under climate change. The scientists are advocating that the United Nations include mobile marine protected areas in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) now being updated since its last signing in 1982. The Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) is set to adopt a final treaty text that secures an agreement for a U.N. high seas conservation treaty which provides a mechanism for establishing marine protected areas and reserves. The IGC-4 meeting takes place in New York from March 23 to April 3.

“Animals obviously don’t stay in one place; a lot of them use very large areas of the ocean,...

Major global brands including BT Group, Danone, Microsoft and Sony have been named among 179 companies on a prestigious ‘A-list’ for their leadership on corporate transparency and action on climate change, released today by global non-profit climate research provider CDP.

Designed to harness the competitive spirit of business to raise ambition and spur action on tackling climate change, CDP scores thousands of companies which disclose environmental data through its platform each year at the request of their corporate customers and investors.

Data from STOXX has shown that the A-list has outperformed its global benchmark by an average of 5.5% per annum over a seven-year period, indicating transparency and leading action on climate change are correlated with financial success.

Out of ove...

The climate campaigner Greta Thunberg chose to sail to a UN climate conference in New York in a zero-emissions yacht rather than fly – to highlight the impact of aviation on the environment. The 16-year-old Swede has previously travelled to London and other European cities by train. Meanwhile the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have faced criticism over opting to fly to Sir Elton John’s villa in Nice in a private jet. So what is the environmental impact of flying and how do trips by train, car or boat compare?

What are aviation emissions?

Flights produce greenhouse gases – mainly carbon dioxide (CO2) – from burning fuel. These contribute to global warming when released into the atmosphere.

An economy-class return flight from London to New York emits an estimated 0...

The 10 years to the end of 2019 have been confirmed as the warmest decade on record by three global agencies. According to Nasa, Noaa and the UK Met Office, last year was the second warmest in a record dating back to 1850. The past five years were the hottest in the 170-year series, with each one more than 1C warmer than pre-industrial. The Met Office says that 2020 is likely to continue this warming trend.

2016 remains the warmest year on record, when temperatures were boosted by the El Niño weather phenomenon.

Today’s data doesn’t come as a huge surprise, with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) signalling at the start of last December that 2019 likely marked the end of the warmest decade on record.

The Met Office, which is involved in producing the HadCRUT4 temperature ...

The heat in the world’s oceans reached a new record level in 2019, showing “irrefutable and accelerating” heating of the planet. The world’s oceans are the clearest measure of the climate emergency because they absorb more than 90% of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuel burning, forest destruction and other human activities.

The new analysis shows the past five years are the top five warmest years recorded in the ocean and the past 10 years are also the top 10 years on record. The amount of heat being added to the oceans is equivalent to every person on the planet running 100 microwave ovens all day and all night.

Hotter oceans lead to more severe storms and disrupt the water cycle, meaning more floods, droughts and wildfires, as well as an inexorable r...