Australia resurrects axed Climate Commission as independent body

A summary of today’s top climate and clean energy stories.
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Tim Flannery, the outgoing head of the Climate Commission (Pic: Flickr / UWS Comm Arts Students)

Australia: The Climate Commission has been resurrected just days after its highly controversial axing by the Coalition government as a new, privately funded body called the Climate Council, after being “overwhelmed” by support from the Australian public. (Guardian)

IPCC: Governments will assess the UN’s latest climate science report this week amid fears the world is running out of time to address the issue. (RTCC)

ICAO: Airlines on Monday urged a UN aviation group to back a mandatory global framework to curb airline emissions, saying failure to reach a deal would revive threats of a trade war. (Planet Ark)

World: World hunger is expected to worsen as climate change hurts crop production and disrupts incomes, with food-price spikes due to extreme weather set to increase, charity Oxfam said. (Bloomberg)

IPCC: The Indian leading the United Nation’s climate science arm is planning to step down from his position in 2015. Rajendra Pachauri told about his plans to Speigel Online. He is not a scientist himself, despite the fact that he leads a group of climate scientists looking at global warming. (Yahoo)

Research: Deadly and destructive thunderstorms — and the violent tornadoes they produce — are forecast to see a “robust” increase across parts of the US in upcoming decades because of climate change, says a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (USA Today)

US: Former vice president Al Gore on Monday called for making climate change “denial” a taboo in society. “Within the market system we have to put a price on carbon, and within the political system, we have to put a price on denial,” Gore said at the Social Good Summit New York City. (The Hill)

UK: The UK has teamed up with Norway, Sweden and four other nations to launch an $8.9 million assessment of the economic costs and benefits of tackling climate change. In what some are calling “Stern 2.0”, the study is expected to build on the 2006 UK review of the economics of climate change by British economist, Lord Nicholas Stern, who will act as a reviewer of the new work. (Financial Times)

World: A collection of leading thinkers on climate have launched a declaration today, intending to spur action towards the creation of an ambitious international agreement in 2015. (RTCC)

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