Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Low-carbon electricity investment driven by solar projects but oil and gas spending still too high to meet climate goals Global investment in low-carbon electricity will rise to 10 times as much as fossil fuel power this year due to an increase in spending on solar projects, according to the International Energy Agency. The global energy watchdog has predicted that investment in clean energy including renewables and nuclear power as well as electric vehicles, power grids, energy storage, low-emissions fuels, efficiency improvements and heat pumps will reach $2tn this year. Continue reading...

Fossil fuel firms are biggest beneficiaries of investor-state dispute settlement courts which have awarded $114bn of public money More than $100bn of public money has been awarded to private investors in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) courts, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet. The controversial arbitration system which allows corporations to sue governments for compensation over decisions they argue affect their profits is largely carried out behind closed doors, with some judgments kept secret. But, according to a global ISDS tracker which launches today, $114bn has so far been paid out of the public purse to investors – about as much as rich nations provided in climate aid in 2022. A $15bn compensation suit by TC Energy against the US government for cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline which would have carried 830,000 barrels of highly polluting tar sands oil to the US coast every day. The permit was withdrawn by Joe Biden on his first day in office after a long campaign by Indigenous Americans, farmers and climate activists. The pipeline had been championed by ex-president Donald Trump and became a touchstone culture war issue. Ruby River Capital’s claim for “no less than $20bn” after the Quebec government cancelled a natural gas liquefaction plant on the St Lawrence River. An environmental impact assessment had found that the plant would increase greenhouse gas emissions, hurt Indigenous Canadian communities and destroy biodiversity. RRC’s claim was the largest ever under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). The most lucrative ISDS claim currently being heard is Zeph Investment’s $200bn case against Australia over a huge planned mine in Western Australia which, Zeph Investment claims, the Australian government had “effectively destroyed”, in breach of the Asean free trade agreement. Avima Iron Ore is seeking $27bn from the Republic of the Congo, after it revoked iron ore mining licenses for three Australian-owned firms, handing them instead to a small Chinese investment group. The sum is almost twice as much as the country’s GDP last year. Continue reading...

In the West Bank and Gaza, a growing number of birdwatchers are pursuing their hobby despite the violence surrounding them Sitting in the shade of an olive tree in the valley of Ein Qiniya, north-west of Ramallah, the wildlife photographer and birdwatcher Mohamad Shuaibi starts to enumerate the birds he can spot. Swifts and swallows flit and swoop, a short-toed eagle hovers in the distance, a jay perches on an olive branch and a kestrel returns to its nest in the limestone cliffs. He also starts counting the times he has been stopped by Israeli soldiers or police out in the field with his camera. “I was detained four times already since October, and each time was worse,” he says. He now avoids going out at certain times: “To watch birds we need to go out very early in the morning. But most of the military operations are in the early hours, so you can be shot if you’re out around this time.” Continue reading...

The contributor to Sky News accuses climate change ‘zealots’ of not having read the research. But his own reading is less than comprehensive Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast You know you’re in for a bit of grandiose lecturing on climate change when conservative commentators start making comparisons to religion and throwing around quotes from the 20th-century science philosopher Karl Popper. Now I’ve got nothing against Popper, but you need to be on pretty solid ground to declare, as the Sky News contributor Chris Uhlmann did last weekend, that the idea global warming is causing more extreme weather is “an article of faith” rather than something we can just test and observe. Continue reading...