Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded. New York Times
A leaked “non-paper” by the eight countries calls on the European Union to step up the fight against climate change and sign up to a European Commission plan to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions “by 2050 at the latest” .Germany, Italy and Poland were notably absent from the list of signatories of the leaked document, obtained by EURACTIV, echoing divisions at a recent EU summit. EurActiv
Global surface temperatures in 2019 are on track to be either the second or third warmest since records began in the mid-1800s, behind only 2016 and possibly 2017. Carbon Brief
A futures bet gone spectacularly wrong provoked a daylong crisis at one of the clearinghouses that are supposed to be global safeguards. New York Times
What we now know about G.O.P. economics. New York Times
Electricity generation and production in Europe in 15 minute intervals. Electricity Map
The bad news is that our slow-motion ecological catastrophe demands new ways of thinking. The good news? We’ve faced the end of the world before. MIT Technology Review
For decades, profitable U.S. companies have been able to avoid corporate taxes. But the list of those paying zero roughly doubled last year as a result of provisions in President Trump’s 2017 tax bill that expanded corporate tax breaks and reduced the tax rate on corporate income. New York Times
Climate change creates winners and losers. Norway is among the winners; Nigeria among the losers. New York Times
30 million acres of tropical forest were lost in 2018, according to an analysis of satellite images released by Global Forest Watch, a program of the environmental research group World Resources Institute. This is down from the highs of 42 million acres in 2016 and 39 million acres in 2017. New York Times