The Green Climate Fund had problems before Donald Trump came along. Then the US president axed 20% of its start-up capital.
Small wonder its chief Howard Bamsey has kept a low profile these last 15 months. There was work to do.
In his first media interview since taking the job, Bamsey told us why, for all its flaws, the fund “really had to succeed”.
Climate deal of the year
With the International Maritime Organization set to agree a climate target for shipping in two weeks, countries remain deeply divided.
The International Chamber of Shipping is urging EU and Pacific states to compromise. Their “highly ambitious” proposal will not win consensus, the influential industry group says, instead endorsing a Japanese submission.
But campaigners have picked holes in Japan’s analysis, arguing it does not align with the Paris Agreement global warming limits.
Figure of the week
80GWh – the projected capacity of batteries to be produced each year by European “gigafactories” within a decade. We’ve mapped them.
Climate security
The UN Security Council officially recognised climate change as a threat to peace and stability in Somalia, Zak Derler reports.
Following similar statements on the Lake Chad and Sahel regions, it shows a growing recognition of the issue in one of the most powerful international bodies.
Reclaiming coal
Jim Justice became governor of West Virginia as a champion of coal and mining jobs. But many of the mines he owns across Appalachia are lying idle, putting miners out of work while a regulatory loophole allows him to defer environmental clean-up.
Across the US, former mines have been reclaimed on the cheap, leaving the land barren, Mark Olalde reports. Find all the articles from his six month coal mine clean-up investigation here.
Climate conversations
Four ways the Trump administration has buried climate science – Morgan Currie, Stanford University and Britt S Paris, University of California, Los Angeles
Green finance
UK lawmakers have urged the environment secretary to compel financial regulators to report on climate change risk.
In a letter to Michael Gove, they warned that climate change will have significant consequences for long-term investments.
Trump shuffle
Wells Griffith has been named as the new White House lead on international climate policy, replacing George David Banks.
Griffith was involved in setting up a coal export deal to Ukraine last year but has little experience of UN negotiations.
Best of the rest
- Pilita Clark’s reporting on Antarctica’s science frontier is well worth subscribing to the FT for. Complete with dive-bombing skuas, rotten seal poo and the alarming collapse of ice shelves.
- UN Climate Change courted controversy by endorsing a new Shell climate and energy scenario. Many were furious it was sharing oil industry “propaganda”, although Carbon Brief analysts say Shell’s assumptions and findings were broadly in line with the academic literature.
- EU carbon prices have tripled in the past year, prompting a debate over whether an emergency handbrake could be triggered.