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An international team of scientists has proposed a series of deadlines by which humanity must take serious action to combat climate change if it is to meet the ambitious goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, and stave off potential disaster. The team behind the study hopes that these points of no return will help inform debate, and spur leaders to take action to mitigate the threat of climate change while there is still time.

A number of biologists have recently made the argument that extinction is part of evolution and that saving species need not be a conservation priority. But this revisionist thinking shows a lack of understanding of evolution and an ignorance of the natural world.

Britain will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2040 in an attempt to reduce air pollution that could herald the end of over a century of reliance on the internal combustion engine. Britain's step, which follows France, amounts to a victory for electric cars that if copied globally could hit the wealth of oil producers, as well as transform car industry jobs and one of the icons of 20th Century capitalism: the automobile itself.

The Antarctic Peninsula is not only getting warmer, it's getting dramatically greener with a sharp increase in plant growth over the last 50 years. Key points A study of moss cores sampled from along the eastern side of the peninsula has provided a unique record of how temperature increases over the last 150 years have affected plant growth.

A group of companies - including General Mills, The Hershey Company, and Nestlé - have committed to working with the governments of Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana to end cocoa-related deforestation, protect national parks from illegal cocoa production, and improve the livelihoods of smallholder cocoa farmers. The initiative is led by IDH - the Sustainable Trade Initiative, the Prince of Wales's International Sustainability Unit, and the World Cocoa Foundation, in partnership with the governments of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana.

The story that should dominate every end of year round up from every media outlet on the planet came last month in the form of two reports released at the U.N. climate summit in Bonn. The first confirmed atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are at their highest levels in at least 800,000 years and possibly 3 million to 5 million years. As Emily Shuckburgh of the British Antarctic Survey said, the last time concentrations of greenhouse gas were as high as they are, sea levels were around 10 meters higher. Up to two meters of sea level rise this century is now entirely plausible. However, the second report was the real kicker. The Global Carbon Project predicted carbon emissions will rise this year after four years when flat emissions fuelled hopes global economic growth and carbon emissions had been decoupled

news broke of a pending decision by the RSPO Complaints Panel to lift the suspension of IOI Group's certification under the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil certification system. If successful this move would do irreparable harm to the RSPO's credibility. Less than five months after the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) suspended Malaysian palm oil producer IOI Group's certification, that suspension has been lifted - much to the dismay of NGO campaigners. While the RSPO's Complaints Panel has said it is "satisfied that IOI has met the conditions set out in its letter to IOI," Greenpeace Indonesia and the Center for International Policy says they have yet to see any real action on the ground. This was the second time a suspension has been placed on an IOI subsidiary. A coalition of NGOs has rapidly issued an appeal, urging the RSPO to maintain its suspension of IOI Group stating that it is far too premature to lift the suspension given that the company has not come into full compliance with the RSPO Certification Systems nor resolved outstanding complaints. There are fears that any change at this stage would seriously hinder the resolution process between the complainant and the company.

New analysis reveals troubling evidence of tree cover loss within Alliance for Zero Extinction sites (AZE sites), areas that house species that are endangered and endemic. From 2001 to 2013, AZE sites lost 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of tree cover, an area roughly the size of Connecticut. While this is a relatively small amount of tree cover loss compared to global averages, for species in AZE sites, losing even a small area of tree cover can mean life or death.

Apple has released its annual Supplier Responsibility report, detailing its monitoring of supply partner labor practices, compliance with regulations and Apple's standards of business, the environmental impact of its product components and more. Apple highlighted its ongoing education investments in the report, detailing the growth in its worker rights and skills training up top.

A local environmental group slams the plan for the just-approved 58-acre facility, which will eventually employ 2,800 people but faces months of hearings before breaking ground

More than half of Earth's 37 largest aquifers are being depleted, according to gravitational data from the GRACE satellite system.

More than half of the world's 37 biggest aquifers are running dry, putting at risk the freshwater supplies of hundreds of millions of people, according to a NASA analysis. "The water table is dropping all over the world," said NASA water scientist Jay Famiglietti. 

The White House last week outlined plans to get the US offshore wind industry off the ground. The White House has awarded Maine, Rhode Island, New York and Massachusetts each a grant of $600,000 to support offshore wind development. It has also established an interagency group in support of offshore wind. As part of that effort, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management plans to offer areas off the coasts of North Carolina and New Jersey. GovTech.com (10/2) 

The industry group Sustainable Apparel Coalition has opened use of its Higg Index suite of tools for measuring and evaluating supply chain impact to non-member small and medium-sized (SME) brands and retailers. SMEs may now take advantage of a special licence for full access to the Higg Index. The coalition, which has over 180 apparel, footwear and home textile company members, expects that increasing the number of SMEs participating in the Index will bolster reporting and impact a wider spectrum of the supply chain.

The Coca-Cola Company, which uses about 300 billion liters of water a year - a quantity so big it's as if every person on earth donated 40 liters of the shared resource of water to its operations -  announced Monday that it reached a goal it set a decade ago: To "replenish" or restore the equivalent quantity of all the water it uses in a year in its global operations to produce, bottle and sell Coke, Sprite, Fanta, Minute Maid orange juice and hundreds of other beverages.

Last month, the first comprehensive study on global bush meat consumption found that 113 species in Southeast Asia have dwindled to precarious numbers, primarily due to bush meat hunting and trapping. But while this region may be one of the worst affected, the study, published in Royal Society Open Science, reports that bush meat hunting is driving many of the world's mammals to the brink of extinction. "The large mammals are much more threatened than the small ones," says William Ripple, a professor of ecology at Oregon State University and lead author of the study. "This is likely because there is more meat on large mammals."

Bordering Myanmar on the southeast and the Indian states of Tripura on the north and Mizoram on the east, the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is one of these areas. Characterized by semi-evergreen forest that is considered part of the highly endangered Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot, CHT is a refuge for at least 26 globally threatened species, making it a critical conservation priority. But conservation efforts in the region have historically been challenged by the very remoteness and political instability that have helped protect it from deforestation seen in other parts of Bangladesh. That protection is now disappearing with the influx of settlers from other regions who are increasingly clearing forests for agriculture, logging trees for timber and firewood, and hunting wildlife. In other words, time is running out for Bangladesh's last rainforest and its traditional tribes.

British shoppers could be unknowingly buying wooden furniture, flooring and even food items that are byproducts of destructive illegal logging in the Amazon, environmental campaigners are warning. Friends of the Earth is calling on ministers to make companies reveal the source of their products in order to stop the black market trade. Last week human rights watchdog Global Witness revealed that 185 environmental activists were killed in 2015, many of whom had been trying to stop illegal logging in the Amazon. An estimated 80% of Brazilian hardwood is illegally logged.

It's been almost 10 years since the Coca-Cola Company (PDF) vowed to "safely return to communities and nature an amount of water equal to what we use in our finished beverages and their production," with a deadline of 2020 for doing so. To get there, it teamed up with a broad array of NGOs and government aid agencies, who established clear rules for "replenishing" the aquifers and waterways that make up a watershed, and in 2015 the company announced it not only had reached its target five years early, but even surpassed it by putting 15 percent more water into the system than it took out. This tiny pack, however, is dwarfed by a massive herd of corporates that have made similar promises without offering any indication of how they'll deliver or whether they're making progress - and it's not just a water problem.

The current case claims that the government has done both too little to solve the problem of climate change and too much to worsen it-even while knowing of the risks it poses to citizens. There is little dispute that at least some parts of the government have been aware of the causes and costs of climate change for a very long time. 

Coca-Cola European Partners, Avery Dennison, Viridor and PET UK have teamed up to reduce waste, costs and the carbon footprint of Smartwater production in the UK. The initiative, which turns label waste into products, was rolled out late last year in an effort by CCEP to reduce the carbon footprint of its Morpeth factory by approximately 180-200 tons of CO2. The participating parties expect to achieve annual savings of over $30,000 by simply recycling, rather than incinerating or disposing of bottle liners.