Google Maps is to offer drivers the lowest carbon route for their chosen journey as part of the search company’s new environmentally friendly policies.
Motorists will be able to select the route with the lowest carbon emissions once factors such as traffic and road inclines are taken into account. The new product launches in the US on Wednesday and in Europe next year. Where the comparable journey times are broadly the same, Google Maps will default to the lowest carbon option.

One of the issues for discussion at COP26 is global pricing mechanism for carbon dioxide emissions. Is carbon pricing an effective tool to reduce emissions and tackle climate change? What are the critical elements that determine its effectiveness?

Carbon pricing shows serious promise as a tool in the fight against climate change.

Deterring the use of fossil fuels, such as coal, fuel oil, and gasoline, is crucial to reducing the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Carbon pricing provides across-the-board incentives to reduce energy use and shift to cleaner fuels and is an essential price signal for redirecting new investment to clean technologies.

Less than one month to COP26. My colleagues at Earth Negotiations Bulletin will be reporting from Glasgow and have thoughts on what to expect, based on covering the UNFCCC talks in June 2021.

With two billion cups consumed each day, it makes coffee the most popular drink in the world. It's only natural to ask if and how the warming global temperatures affect coffee farmers and plantations. What does the future hold for coffee?

Countries’ current climate plans — including 2030 emissions-reduction pledges (known as NDCs) and legally binding net-zero targets — will only limit warming to 2.4 degrees C by 2100, setting the world up for increasingly severe wildfires, droughts, floods and more. If G20 countries fully enact the additional targets they’ve announced but not yet formally adopted, temperature rise could be limited to 2.1 degrees C.

New research by the WRI finds that if all G20 countries set ambitious 2030 emissions-reduction targets and commit to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century, global temperature rise could be limited to 1.7 degrees C in 2100, keeping the 1.5-degree C goal within reach.

If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest source of GHG emissions on the planet, of which 61% comes from households. Meanwhile, according to FAO, more than 800 million people are undernourished while 2 billion are micronutrient deficient.

In the lead up to the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste on 29 September, check out these 12 apps that help prevent household food waste and protect the planet.

According to the Guardian, 90% of coal and 60% of oil and gas reserves should remain in the ground if there is to be “even a 50% chance of keeping global heating below 1.5C”, the stretch goal of the Paris Agreement.

Investments of about $280 billion will be needed to cope with the effects of climate change in 35 cities in South Africa, Kenya and Ethiopia by 2050, new report by the Coalition for Urban Transitions shows. As the fastest urbanizing continent and the hardest hit by global warming, trillions of dollars of investment will be needed as a further 950 million people are expected to live in African cities by 2050.

The report concludes that the regulatory and financial framework and policy reforms are highly required to mobilize finance at scale and unlock investment in cities. Is it achievable?