Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

Earth’s first climate ‘tipping point’ reached

CORAL IN CRISIS: A new report warned that the world has reached its first climate “tipping point” as global warming pushes warm-water coral reefs towards an irreversible decline, the Press Association outlined. The report, co-authored by more than 160 scientists in 23 countries, also warned the world is “on the brink” of reaching other tipping points, including the dieback of the Amazon, the collapse of major ocean currents and the loss of ice sheets, the Guardian noted.

CO2 RECORD: Carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere reached the highest level ever recorded last year, according to a new report by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) covered by the Associated Press, which said it was fuelling “more extreme weather”. On top of burning fossil fuels, an increase in wildfires contributed to the rise in CO2 levels over the last year, Reuters reported.

DECLINING SINKS: The Guardian said WMO scientists are also “concerned” that the natural land and ocean “sinks” that remove CO2 from the air are “weakening as a result of global heating”. Separate new research concluded that Australia’s tropical rainforests are among the first in the world to start emitting more CO2 than they absorb, Agence France-Presse reported, with the decay of dead trees emitting more than the growing trunks and branches can store.

INCREASED EMISSIONS: Wildfires burned an area of land larger than India during the 2024-25 “global fire season”, emitting more than 8bn tonnes of CO2, almost 10% above average. This is according to the annual “state of wildfires” report covered by Carbon Brief, which also finds that four of the most prominent extreme wildfire events were found to have been more likely to occur as a result of human-caused climate change.

October extremes

MEXICO MOURNING: At least 66 people have died and 77 people are still missing after five days of torrential rain caused “historic” floods and landslides in Mexico, Reuters reported. The Associated Press said that the extreme weather “cut off 300 towns…from the outside world” and the New York Times reported Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum saying that 100,000 homes were affected.

TYPHOONS TOO: At least 14 gold mine workers have been killed in floods after heavy rainfall in Venezuela, according to Agence France-Presse. At least one person was killed, two are missing and more than 1,500 people have been displaced across Alaska due to Typhoon Halong, the Associated Press reported.

Around the world

• ‘HEADING FOR THE ROCKS’: US president Donald Trump’s plan to derail a global climate agreement for the shipping industry is “heading for the rocks”, as more than 100 nations gathered in London for talks to approve the legally binding regulation, with a decision expected today, the Financial Times reported.
• COP FLOTILLA: A group of Amazon Indigenous peoples have departed from Ecuador to attend COP30, planning to travel more than 3,000km on rivers and grow in size along the way, according to Folha de São Paulo.
• KIWI CONCERN: Scientists have warned that New Zealand’s decision to weaken its methane emissions reduction target, from a 24-47% cut on 2017 levels by 2050 to a 14-24% cut, sets a “worrying precedent”, said Bloomberg.
• DIPLOMACY DETOUR: The EU plans to cooperate with US local authorities and businesses to “bypass” the federal government on clean energy, the Financial Times detailed.
• VOTING VICTORY: After years of campaigning, citizens of Hamburg voted for stricter climate targets for the city during a referendum, reported Der Spiegel.
• ‘ENVIRONMENTAL FREEFALL’: A report on the environmental damage after nearly two years of conflict found that Gaza’s energy, water, food and ecosystems have been “devastated” and are “on the brink of a total collapse”, the Independent outlined.

582 gigawatts

The record amount of new renewable energy capacity added globally in 2024, reported Reuters.

Latest climate research

• Just seven African nations “would be able to satisfy their nutrient gaps” through production expansion, given water and land constraints | Nature Food
• An experiment finds that generative artificial intelligence “can alter the information diet [climate] sceptics consume” | Nature Climate Change
• While many frog species show “short-term resilience” to climate-induced wildfires, flooding poses an “underappreciated threat to frog biodiversity” in Australia | Biological Conservation

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

Carbon Brief sat down for an in-depth interview with Emma Pinchbeck, the chief executive of the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC). The CCC is a statutory body created under the Climate Change Act 2008 and is the official adviser to the UK government on climate change mitigation and adaptation. The conversation covered a range of topics from the UK’s high energy costs to talking to children about climate change.

Spotlight

Why paediatricians want climate action

This week, Carbon Brief speaks to Dr Helena Clements, a paediatrician who was appointed as the inaugural officer for climate change for the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

Carbon Brief: How does climate change risk children’s health?

Dr Helena Clements: In lots of ways. Partly it’s about the direct impacts of climate change on health and that might include air pollution as a really easy example here in the UK right now. We know about Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah who died of asthma induced [by] air pollution on her way to school and the little boy in [Rochdale], Awaab [Ishak], who died because of exposure to indoor air pollution. Those are two people that pediatricians have looked after and failed to save, who have been directly impacted by air pollution in this country. Of course it’s much worse in other parts of the world, particularly where people are cooking on open fires. It’s a global problem. 

For children who are exposed to air pollution, the answer isn’t to lock them up inside. It’s to clean the air by addressing the burning of fossil fuels. It’s about creating green spaces and active transport, because that’s better for our mental health, our physical well-being and we’re also cleaning the air. All of the solutions are solutions for climate change, as well as for health, and it’s not anything that I can prescribe.

Only about 20-30% of your health is down to what a doctor can do. I can treat asthma, but I’m not in control of the causes.

CB: How do you engage the medical community – and external groups – with health risks facing children from climate change?

HC: What I find helpful is to paint that picture of health and wellbeing, because if we had healthy children and adults, we would reduce demand on our services. I sometimes talk about being a lazy pediatrician. If everybody had their immunisations and a healthy diet, and we had clean air and families who had better health literacy, there would be much less work for me to do because most of what children need is good conditions to grow and thrive in.

A healthy diet is high in fibre, fruit and vegetables, which is also a lower-carbon diet. Pediatricians spend a lot of time treating constipation because children don’t eat a healthy diet and it’s rarely more complicated than that. We need to help children and families to eat more healthily to avoid things that need treatment and become more complex.

So there’s lots of benefits to focusing on the health and wellbeing side, rather than necessarily talking lots about the climate, but I talk about the two things simultaneously. Healthy people have a lower carbon impact than unhealthy people who require lots of medicines and trips to hospital.

CB: What else does your work in this intersection of climate change and children’s health involve?

HC: We’ve got three things really. One is advocating about climate itself because climate change is a health crisis, a massive risk, because of changing demographics and vector-borne diseases coming our way. The second thing is the NHS [National Health Service] is a very carbon-dense business, so we need to decarbonise. There’s the “how do we get rid of all these anesthetic gases or single-use items” practical changes that we need to make. And then there’s the fact that health is expensive and, if we were all healthier through, not directly tackling climate change, but say, tackling air pollution, we’d make health cheaper and be addressing climate change. You can tackle it from different lenses, but the solutions are all the same.

This interview has been edited for length.

Watch, read, listen

TORY LEGACY: Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute released a new Youtube video offering the “inside story” of the UK’s net-zero target, featuring former prime minister Theresa May.

BIG IN BRAZIL: With one month to go until COP30 begins in Belém, Brazil, Agence France-Presse listed “four Brazilians to watch” at the conference.

COX QUIZZED: In a new A Question of Science podcast, Prof Brian Cox and a panel of experts answered listener’s questions on everything from carbon capture to climate sceptics.

Coming up

• 19 October: Bolivia presidential elections (2nd round)
• 20-23 October: Africa energy efficiency policy training week, Accra, Ghana
• 20-24 October: 27th meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice, Panama City, Panama

Pick of the jobs

• Global Green Growth Institute, senior energy officer | Salary: $77,904. Location: Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
• Mongabay, wire reporter | Salary: Unknown. Location: Remote in Asia
• London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, editorial manager | Salary: £43,277-£55,497. Location: London
• Centre for International Environmental Law, publications manager | Salary: $81,000-$110,000. Location: Remote (EST)
• UN Environment Programme, chief scientist and the director of the office of science | Salary: Unknown. Location: Nairobi, Kenya

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

DeBriefed 10 October 2025: Renewables power past coal; Legacy of UK’s Climate Change Act; Fukushima’s solar future

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DeBriefed 3 October 2025: UK political gap on climate widens; Fossil-fuelled Typhoon Ragasa; ‘Overshoot’ unknowns

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DeBriefed 26 September 2025: China leads new climate pledges; Trump calls warming a ‘con job’; What comes next

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26.09.25

DeBriefed 19 September 2025: EU ducks UN climate target; Australia delivers; Tracing beef’s impact on the Amazon

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19.09.25

The post DeBriefed: Earth’s first ‘tipping point’; Climate adviser interview; How warming affects children’s health appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 17 October 2025: Earth’s first ‘tipping point’; Climate adviser interview; How warming affects children’s health

The unrest has been triggered, in part, by the targeting of environmental leaders whose work protects large swaths of the Amazon rainforest.

By Katie Surma

At least three people have been killed in Ecuador as the government further ramps up its use of force against Indigenous-led protests triggered in part by crackdowns on environmentalists, according to civil society and human rights groups.

The Death Toll Is Rising from Ecuador’s Crackdown on Protesters

The US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and their allies have spearheaded a push to alter the approval process for a hard-fought green shipping deal, which experts say could jeopardise the landmark pact at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) talks in London this week.

If approved, the procedural changes would make it harder for the IMO’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) to come into effect, as it would require support from countries representing half of the world’s shipping fleet.

After years of discussions, governments provisionally agreed the NZF in April, in which they pledged to penalise polluting ships and uses the money to fund the transition to cleaner fuel. The policy is the world’s first global emissions pricing on any sector. At talks in London this week, countries are meeting to discuss how to carry the NZF forward.

Procedural roadblock to shipping deal

The US and its allies want to shift away from a system of tacit approval where, after the NZF is approved at the IMO talks, its rules automatically come into force unless a certain number of countries object. They prefer explicit approval instead, meaning it would not come into force unless enough governments – representing a certain percentage of the world’s shipping fleet – actively indicate support for it.

Emma Fenton, senior director of climate diplomacy at nonprofit policy group Opportunity Green, told Climate Home News that the US’s proposed change “risks undermining the NZF’s ambitions, delays the maritime transition and does not meet the scale or the pace of action that the climate crisis demands”.

Bryan Comer, maritime director at the International Council on Clean Transportation called it “an unnecessary procedural roadblock”.

The US has been pressuring governments not to support the NZF, which they provisionally agreed at the last set of talks in April. Last week, the US threatened supportive government officials and their shipowners with sanctions, visa restrictions, tariffs and port fees.

These measures that would hit small nations with big shipping registries, particularly those whose ships sail frequently to the USA or who have office offices there, the hardest. Two such governments, Bahamas and Liberia – have reversed their support for the NZF and have been actively opposing it this week.

Green shipping deal at risk

While in April some climate campaigners said the NZF lacked ambition and Pacific Island nations abstained from supporting it, others celebrated it a “groundbreaking moment which should signal a turning of the tide on greenhouse gases from global shipping”.

The deal was set to be officially approved by governments at talks at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) this week, with discussions limited to minor changes to the text. The head of the IMO – Panamanian Arsenio Dominguez – told governments on Tuesday that the text was “balanced” and that not agreeing to it would cause uncertainty and lead to a patchwork of regional and national green shipping regulations which would “increase the costs of this transition in the long run”.

Despite the US threats, government statements at an opening plenary on Tuesday suggested that support for the measure had grown since April – with Pacific and other nations who had previously abstained backing the proposal.

A US, Saudi and Russia-led attempt to oppose the adoption of the agenda failed and the talks’ chair – Liberian Harry Conway – introduced a three-minute time limit and urged governments to stop repetitive interventions in an attempt to prevent delays, joking that offenders would have to donate money to the IMO if they kept repeating themselves.

How high-risk biofuels could sink a flagship climate law for global shipping

Tacit or explicit approval

But on Wednesday morning, the US proposed not to use the tacit approval, a system which stipulates that, after agreements, amendments have a ten-month cooling off period.

During this period, the deal can be cancelled if a third of the nations signed up to the relevant IMO treaty – in this case the countries signed up to the Marpol Annex 6 treaty – object. It can also be cancelled if nations whose ship registries make up half of the world’s fleet by weight actively oppose it.

The US negotiator – who IMO rules say cannot be named – proposed explicit acceptance, which puts the onus on the governments supporting the NZF. Under this system, it would come into force until six months after two-thirds of nations, representing more than half the world’s shipping fleet, actively “communicated” to the IMO that they accept the deal.

“The usual tacit acceptance method is not appropriate for the potential entry into force of such significant measures”, the US negotiator said. They were supported by just over 20 governments, mainly from oil-reliant states like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Nigeria as well as Turkiye, Morocco, Argentina and Paraguay.

Their proposal was opposed by a larger group of nations, including Western and Pacific countries, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, Namibia and Kenya. The Danish negotiator protested that switching to the “time consuming and inefficient” explicit acceptance procedure would throw off the NZF’s timeline and reopening the text would mean “starting all over again”.

“The regulatory framework is ready. It is mature. The decision to move forward was already made in April with the approval of the amendments and, in reality, accepting an explicit acceptance procedure would, in reality, mean no to realising the NZF”, she said.

The Brazilian negotiator said tacit approval has been the default since 1973 because explicit acceptance “simply does not work”. The internal procedures for national governments to ratify amendments are “complicated”, he said, and “may take longer than action requires”, particularly as the shipping industry needs “predictability” on what the rules will be.

The negotiator from the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu said he was “surprised” that the US had not made its proposal before the talks. “We are of the view that the requested change at this stage is not conducive of a transparent and predictable process”, he said.

Talks’ chair U-turns under pressure

After nearly two hours of government statements, Conway said that from what he had heard it was “the will of the committee to proceed with the tacit approval”.

But that conclusion drew further complaints from the US and allies, who repeated their arguments. The US accused Conway and the IMO secretariat of not being “neutral” – which they later firmly denied. Russia’s negotiator accepted that “perhaps those who spoke in the majority were indeed for tacit acceptance” but argued that because the NZF is so “significant” it needs explicit approval.

Countries like Spain and Denmark spoke in defence of Conway’s ruling that the room was for tacit approval. Conway repeated that “there’s a clear majority that have decided to maintain the tacit acceptance procedure” and said he did not want to hear arguments repeated.

But after 30 more minutes of statements from the US, Saudi Arabia and allies, he changed his mind. In the interest of consensus and compromise, he said that the US proposal should be discussed by technical negotiators in a working group. “This will be my final ruling on the matter, he said.

The other side then complained. The Cook Islands negotiator suggested Conway had folded under the “pressure of events” and his decision risked “driving a VLCC [a type of big ship] through the processes and procedures that have stood the test of time”.

But they relented and Wednesday morning’s plenary meeting ended with negotiators being given a mandate to discuss tacit and explicit acceptance procedures in behind closed door sessions, which continued until nearly 11pm that night.

The full plenary met again on Thursday afternoon, but Conway proposed that discussions continue on Friday morning. The US called for time to consult and gathered with its Saudi Arabian and other allies. As negotiations continued behind closed doors, Conway urged governments to come back in the morning – the last day of talks – with solutions “so we will have a smooth discussion and a happy ending”.

Governments are also likely to vote tomorrow on the NZF itself. To pass, the deal need two-thirds of the MARPOL VI signatory countries which are present and voting to vote in favour of the deal – a threshold that was achieved easily in April.

The post US, Saudi-led alliance plunges green shipping deal into doubt appeared first on Climate Home News.

US, Saudi-led alliance plunges green shipping deal into doubt