Climate change news – latest: Fracking protesters freed and Scottish Power goes 100% renewable
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Your support makes all the difference.The government's climate change advisers have been tasked with setting out a strategy that could see the UK bring its carbon emissions to zero by 2050.
Such a target would be in line with the ambitious targets laid out in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recent report, which revealed unprecedented changes were needed across society to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Meanwhile, one of the UK's biggest energy suppliers has completely dropped fossil fuels in favour of wind power - setting the agenda for the nation's future power supply - and the three activists jailed for protesting against fracking have been freed.
Here you can follow the latest climate change news from the UK and around the world after scientists urged nation's to take action last week.
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Scottish Power says it is giving us a taste of the future as it sells off its fossil fuel assets and goes 100% renewable.
I'm wrapping up for today, but tune in again for more climate change news tomorrow.
The Australian government currently has no plans to reduce emissions beyond 2020, and now its ministers have made it clear they have no plans to end the nation's love affair with coal - despite the IPCC's warnings.
When considering the news about climate change, it is easy to think of it as a vague, abstract entity - but the reality is that this is something that is already affected people's lives. Scientists are increasingly confident attributing the likelihood and intensity of particular events - hurricanes, droughts, heatwaves - to the changing global climate.
This year we have already seen climate change's fingerprints on events from Europe's summer heatwave to Cape Town's drought. In this piece from our Middle East correspondent Bel Trew, she looks at how vanishing water resources could fuel the next war in the Middle East and North Africa:
This morning a Dutch appeals court upheld a historic ruling that ordered the government to slash the country's greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25 per cent by 2020 from benchmark 1990 levels. The decision means the government will have to accelerate decarbonisation.
The order to increase emissions cuts is particularly pertinent a day after the IPCC report concluded global efforts to reduce greenhouse gases are far from sufficient.
The original June 2015 ruling came from environmental group Urgenda on behalf of 900 Dutch citizens, and has been followed by several similar cases in countries across the world.
Judge Tan de Sonnaville said:
Climate change is a grave danger. Any postponement of emissions reductions exacerbates the risks of climate change. The Dutch Government cannot hide behind other countries emissions. It has an independent duty to reduce emissions from its own territory.
Tessa Khan, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network said:
Today’s judgment is a resounding vindication of all our demands that governments act decisively on climate change. As yesterday’s IPCC report confirmed, time is not on our side and our actions in the next few years will determine our future. The Appeal Court made it clear that if governments fail to urgently reduce emissions, they are knowingly putting their citizens in harm’s way.
This judgment puts governments all over the world on notice. Ordinary people in Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway and the US are already turning to the courts to protect their human rights in the face of devastating climate change. Governments have no more excuses for inaction after today; they must ramp up their ambition without delay or face the consequences.
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