VEN – Good News on Climate Action – Blog

Phoebe Weston in The GuardianEveryone wants to save the bees. Angelina Jolie put on a beekeeping suit for Guerlain and David Beckham proudly presented the King with a pot of honey from his bees in Oxfordshire. So many people wanting to do good have set up hives in their gardens or on roofs that they have…

Figure amounts to a $60bn fall by 2030 under any future scenario of emissions reduction in Australia, modelling predicts. Graham Readfearn Sat 20 Sep 2025 in The Guardian The value of Australia’s coal and gas exports is predicted to plummet by 50% over the next five years as global demand for fossil fuel falls, according…

Bob Burton: Coalwire The latest government data shows Chinese manufacturers have produced 550 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity in the year to date, with August production up by almost a fifth on a year ago. China’s prodigious solar production capacity is not only reshaping the domestic power sector but is also underpinning rapid shifts in the renewable…

A new analysis shows that oil made from corn husks, wood chips, and other waste could plug greenhouse gas-belching abandoned oil wells while sequestering carbon for about $152 per ton By Anthropocene Team September 11, 2025 There are hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and natural gas wells in the U.S. These orphaned wells, most of…

Greg Jericho in the Guardian The wellbeing framework has become little more than a data dump – but at least it highlights how little stock we should put in productivity figures Thu 18 Sep 2025 This week, the Bureau of Statistics realised its latest series of Measuring What Matters in an attempt to assess things beyond the…

Program aims to replace liquid fuels – which make up a third of Australia’s emissions – with cleaner alternatives Image from: Z. Wang, B. Dong, M. Li, Y. Ji, F. Han Configuration of low-carbon fuels green marine power systems in diverse ship types and applications. Energ Convers Manage,  302 (2024), Article 118139, 10.1016/j.enconman.2024.118139 Dan Jervis-Bardy in The Guardian Tue 16 Sep 2025 The Albanese government will invest…

In a lab outside Boulder Colorado, engineers are reinventing one of the dirtiest industrial processes on Earth—by swapping fire for modern alchemy. By Stephen Robert Miller in Anthropocene magazine In a business park in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, across a road from a popular swimming lake and surrounded by craft breweries, a startup called…

The authors reveal the origin of nucleation activity of barium-based nucleation particles in the salt hydrate calcium chloride hexahydrate (CCH), a candidate for near room temperature thermal energy storage.

Bill McKibben in the USA in The Guardian We’re beyond Mel Gibson’s Mad Max era. We no longer need oil to make it through the apocalypse Sun 7 Sep 2025 As I write these words, the No 1 trending story on the Guardian is titled: “The history and future of societal collapse”. It is an…

In collaboration with Project Drawdown, leading climate scientist and best-selling author Kimberly Nicholas, Ph.D., has launched the Super High-Impact Initiative for Fixing Tomorrow, or SHIFT, a free web-based guide that helps climate-concerned individuals find the most effective, science-backed personal actions they can take. ‘What can I personally do to stop climate change?’ this is the guide you’ve been…

Its vast investment in solar, wind and batteries is on track to end an era of global growth in the use of coal, oil and gas, the researchers said. By Max Bearak in New York Times Sept. 8, 2025 Since the beginning of the industrial age, the global economy has required more and more fossil fuels…

link to Geo-engineering video Ewa M. Bednarz, Paul Brent Goddard, Douglas G MacMartin, et al. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection could prevent future Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation decline, but injection location is key. ESS Open Archive . December 21, 2024.DOI: 10.22541/essoar.173482135.52320055/v1 link to scientific article in American Geophysical Union Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) can prevent the decline of the Atlantic Meridional…

Scientists are testing hybrid elkhorn corals bred from Florida and Honduras parents in the wild for the first time. The experiment could reshape both reef survival—and conservation politics. By Warren Cornwall in Anthropocene August 20, 2025 Coral isn’t exactly a migratory species. Many have exoskeletons that seem more like sculptures than living organisms. But right now,…

Extreme actions turn people off the activists behind them—but may leave the broader climate movement stronger than before. By Sarah DeWeerdt in Anthropocene August 26, 2025 Groups that carry out extreme climate protests risk creating antipathy to themselves, but may increase concern about climate change more broadly, according to a new study. The findings add an…

The Portland City Council voted to require all coal  that is transported or stored within the city to be stored under a “permanent covering” as of January 1, 2027. The council also voted to ban the transport or storage of more than one ton (907 kilograms) of coal in the city in Maine from December…

The culprit behind the largest known marine disease outbreak is now known, giving researchers new tools to protect and reintroduce these keystone predators. By Warren Cornwall in Anthropocene August 13, 2025 For the last dozen years, scientists have been on the hunt for a killer that has claimed billions of lives. They’ve finally found it. In…

New study shows that applying sugarcane-derived biochar to cotton fields offers a sustainable path forward for one of agriculture’s most resource-hungry crops.  By Emma Bryce in Anthropocene magazine August 8, 2025 Adding biochar to the soil not only creates better growing conditions for cotton, but also reduces nitrogen run-off by up to 87%. These findings from…

Making ammonia fertilizer is energy and carbon-intensive. New solar-driven method is a low-cost way to recycle the ammonia in farm and industrial runoff that would otherwise become pollution. By Anthropocene Team August 7, 2025 Sewage is not something most people want to give a second thought to, but it contains a trove of valuable nutrients. One of…

from Bob Burton CoalWire Published by Global Energy Monitor IEA forecasts coal demand to plateau in 2025 and 2026: The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the rapid growth in wind and solar capacity is likely to drive renewable generation to exceed coal power “by 2026 at the latest”. The agency’s Electricity Mid-Year Update 2025 estimates that favourable wind and rainfall…