Composted Reads for 15 November 2022

Story of the day Stopping climate change isn’t enough – we need to reverse it With the world on course to exceed 1.5C warming, taking carbon out of the atmosphere, as well as lowering emissions, will become increasingly important. Read the full story here The good news

Glassy fangs and glowing fins: amazing deep sea animals found near Cocos Islands A shipload of scientists has just returned from exploring the uncharted waters of the Indian Ocean, where they mapped giant underwater mountains and encountered a multitude of deep-sea animals decked out in twinkling lights, with velvety black skin and mouths full of needle-sharp, glassy fangs. Saving the dragon’s blood: how an island refused to let a legendary tree die out > Dracaena cinnabari > Diksam plateau – Yemen’s Socotra Island

The bad news

It should not be controversial to say a population of 8 billion will have a grave impact on the climate | John Vidal By a remarkable coincidence, just as governments, campaigners and business owners are meeting in Egypt to address climate breakdown today, the world is officially crashing past the symbolic 8 billion population milestone . This means global population is on its way to 10 billion or more by the turn of the century. India ‘committed to clean energy’ but continues to boost coal production Critics says India’s plans to increase coal production to 1bn tonnes a year are environmentally devastating and unnecessary

Essential reads

The British right’s hostility to climate action is deeply entrenched – and extremely dangerous | John Harris With voters increasingly fearful about fires, floods and extreme temperatures, can the Tories find a way back towards reality? + Rishi Sunak first declined to go to the Cop27 summit, and then turned up to contribute almost nothing of any substance. In his party’s most recent leadership contest, Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman expressed particularly sceptical views about their government’s ostensible net zero target, and Sunak and Liz Truss fell over themselves to aim the same hostility at solar farms. Badenoch and Braverman now have senior roles in the cabinet, while the climate change minister Graham Stuart no longer attends its meetings, and the Cop26 president Alok Sharma has been similarly demoted: for the first time in years, there is no top-tier minister focused on the climate crisis. ‘In Delhi I can see the climate catastrophe unfolding before my eyes’ Rahul Raina splits his year between his homes in Oxford and Delhi, cities where the fallout from the climate crisis is being felt in starkly different ways