🗞️ In Climate News

• 🇾🇹 French controlled island Mayotte devastated by cyclone, death toll rises to 31 but feared to be a lot higher.

• 🧨 Countries fail to reach agreement about Global Plastic Treaty

  • Countries negotiating a global treaty to curb plastic pollution failed to reach agreement on Monday, with more than 100 nations wanting to cap production while a handful of oil producers were prepared only to target plastic waste.

  • Over 200 petrochemical lobbyists attended said negotiations.

• 🇧🇷 Pesticide exposure drives up rural women’s cancer risk in Brazil farming belt

  • Women farmers living in Brazil’s Paraná state run a 60% chance of developing breast cancer and a 220% increase in the risk of metastasis, according to a new study.

• ♻️ Coca-Cola cuts back on reusable plastic pledge

  • Coca-Cola is reducing its plastic recycling targets from previous commitments, which advocacy groups say is an abandonment of its reuse goals. The beverage giant’s announcement comes just as talks for a global plastic treaty stalled this month.

• 🐺 EU votes to weaken protection for European wolves

  • Wolves across Europe are set to lose their “strictly protected” status. The move is seen as a win for farmers concerned about loss of livestock, but conservationists warn that removing protections will jeopardize stable wolf populations.

• 🇪🇺 EU negotiators postpone deforestation ban and reject proposed changes

  • Companies will have at least one more year to adapt to new EU rules to prevent deforestation, which would ban the sale of products sourced from deforested land in the EU.

• 🇨🇬 Congo on alert over mystery flu-like disease as death toll rises

  • Among the hospital fatalities, 10 were attributed to a lack of blood transfusions, while 17 succumbed to respiratory complications. The illness has affected approximately 380 people, nearly half of whom are children under the age of five.

• 🇿🇦 Six bodies retrieved from illegal goldmine in South Africa

  • Authorities have been restricting food and water supplies to encourage them to evacuate the mine. Many illegal miners known as Zama Zamas come from neighbouring Mozambique and Lesotho and often face harsh conditions to work and reside in South Africa.

• 🇺🇸 Small North Carolina town sues energy ‘Goliath’ in historic climate action

  • The litigation accuses Duke Energy of waging a “deception campaign” to obscure the climate dangers of fossil fuels. Those efforts resulted in delayed action to curb planet-heating pollution, which has pushed up the costs of climate action today, the lawsuit says.

📈 Cool Trends

• 🦭 conservation of the caspian seal

• 🧻 Growing your own toilet paper

♾️ eco-story

Thoughts on COP29

About a month ago I was invited by the nascent Fins Initiative to attend and contribute to their project during COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Having been observing the “commitments” and “talks” for a few years I was curious to actually witness these in person at the yearly Conference Of Parties.

As many of us are aware, the yearly convention has been held in different countries for the last 29 years. Resulting in many treaties, agreements, negotiations and so on. The most celebrated and well known was the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 that had the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C– and which no country is on track to meet 9 years later.

Many boycotted Baku calling on the hypocrisy of a petrol-state hosting the climate talks. However, my main takeaway from my Azerbaijani week was just that, in my opinion Azerbaijan itself is the country that benefitted the most from this year’s summit.

🌏 The Culture Column

📺 What we’re watching: Dirty Energy

📸 Profile of the week: @finsinitiative
📖 What we’re reading: The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, by Daniel Yergin
🤯 Shocking fact we learnt this week: Oil consumption, which has steadily risen over three decades, reached 4.53 billion metric tons in 2023.