Here at Climate Home News we tell you what happens inside the air-conditioned boardrooms, government ministries and negotiating halls where people in suits discuss the politics of climate change – but we also like to take a step back and look at the effects their decisions have on the real world.
As the year comes to an end, we have made a list of the stories we feel embody that spirit, published during 2024. If you’d like to receive stories like this in your inbox every Friday in 2025, subscribe to our free weekly newsletter. And if you want to stay up to date with our work, follow us on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.
- On beaches of Gaza and Tel Aviv, two tales of one heatwave
- Germany uses funding to pressure climate groups on Israel-Gaza war
- Saudi visa crackdown left heatwave-hit Hajj pilgrims scared to ask for help
- Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation
- Indonesia turns traditional Indigenous land into nickel industrial zone
- Greenpeace Africa in disarray as restructuring meets resistance
- In Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s net zero vision clashes with legacy of war
- World Bank climate funding greens African hotels while fishermen sink
- From cyclone to drought, Zimbabwe’s climate victims struggle to adapt
1. On beaches of Gaza and Tel Aviv, two tales of one heatwave
As 2023 became 2024, the biggest international story was Israel’s invasion, and continued bombing of, the Palestinian territory of Gaza after Hamas militants targeted an Israeli music festival, killing more than 1,100 people. That incident unleashed ongoing attacks by Israel that have caused the deaths of more than 46,000 Palestinians.
But larger numbers have died as an indirect result of the war – for example, when many Gazans were left without shelter or cooling during a climate change-fuelled heatwave that struck in April and May.
Our reporter in Gaza, Taghreed Ali, spoke to two fathers in refugee camps who had lost children to the heat – against which the flimsy protection of their nylon tents, where they waved food containers as makeshift fans, was no match.
Just north of there, our reporter in Israel – Jessica Buxbaum – spoke to beachgoers in Tel Aviv. With their homes still intact, their main concerns were the cost of air-conditioning, the threat of power cuts and drooping house plants.
Climate change affects everyone, but it doesn’t affect everyone equally.
Beaches in Gaza (left) and Tel Aviv (right) in May 2024 (Photos: Taghreed Ali and Jessica Buxbaum)
2. Germany uses funding to pressure climate groups on Israel-Gaza war
Many climate activists continued to speak out against the Israeli government’s role in the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza but came under pressure to stay quiet on the issue from one of the Israeli government’s biggest political backers – Germany.
The German government funds many climate campaign groups in the Global South and, we revealed, used this financial leverage to try to silence criticism of Israel’s offensive. Some activists complied, but others didn’t and suffered financially when contracts were put on hold or their funding was cut.
Veteran British climate activist Asad Rehman said climate justice activists were questioning their partnerships with German civil society, as well as the government. “How can we ally and work together with German organisations that are not prepared to stand up against their own government?” he asked.
Protesters at COP28 in Dubai (Photos: Cop28/Christopher Pike)
3. Saudi visa crackdown left heatwave-hit Hajj pilgrims scared to ask for help
Another reminder that climate change hits some people harder than others came in June, as 1.5 million Muslims descended on Mecca for the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
As temperatures soared to an unusually high 52C, wealthy pilgrims travelled from air-conditioned hotels to the holy sites by bus and were offered medical help if they needed it.
Poorer pilgrims, however, who had snuck in to the city without the expensive proper visa avoided public transport and cooling centres for fear of deportation. Instead, they walked 19 kilometres in the extreme heat. Over 1,300 died – more than 80% of whom did not have official Hajj permits.
Instead of promising to look after irregular pilgrims better, Saudi Arabia and other governments have reacted by cracking down on the travel agents who organise unofficial trips. We’ll find out next June if that approach has worked or not.
Muslim worshippers make their way to cast stones as part of a symbolic stoning of the devil ritual on June 18, 2023. (Photo: Medhat Hajjaj/apaimages)
4. Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation
Governments may have agreed to “transition” away from fossil fuels at COP28 in Dubai last year, but the building of fossil fuel infrastructure continues, harming the planet and sometimes local communities.
Our reporter – who did not want to be named due to fears of government retaliation – travelled to the spot in Tanzania where a 1,400 km-long new pipeline will meet the sea so that the oil it is due to transport from Uganda can be shipped abroad.
Climate Home found that people evicted from their homes to make way for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) – a joint venture between the two countries, French firm TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation – and its port had been warned off talking to journalists but they complained to us about the terms of their compensation nonetheless.
“I am angry that the government took advantage of our ignorance of legal matters and gave us a bad deal that we couldn’t argue against,” said one.
Land by the ocean has been closed off to the public (Photo: Climate Home News)
5. Indonesia turns traditional Indigenous land into nickel industrial zone
Green energy projects can hurt locals too though. The world needs nickel to make electric vehicles, preventing the climate change and air pollution caused by fossil fuel-powered vehicles.
Indonesia has the world’s largest reserves of the silvery white metal. But one of its mines on the island of Sulawesi has displaced Indigenous people, with police arresting those who resist. Nature-rich forests, meanwhile, have been chopped down by politically-connected nickel bosses.
“It’s not to say that nickel mining can’t take place in Indonesia. But it has to be done in a way that’s a lot more careful,” one campaigner said.
Stories like this and others in our Clean Energy Frontiers series are having an impact. This year, the United Nations Secretary-General backed a report calling for human rights, the environment and nature to be respected by those digging up these minerals the world needs for the energy transition.
Road to the SCM nickel mine in southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, which holds one of the world’s largest reserves of nickel. (Photo: Franco Bravo Dengo)
6. Greenpeace Africa in disarray as restructuring meets resistance
At Climate Home News, we aim to hold the powerful to account. That means governments and corporations but also large international campaign groups – and there’s no bigger name than Greenpeace.
We spoke to former staff and consulted leaked documents to reveal turmoil at its African branch. A restructuring led by a new boss has resulted in mass job losses, court cases, a retreat from the Democratic Republic of Congo and heated debates over strategies on LGBT+ issues and government relations.
Legal proceedings against lay-offs continue in South Africa and Senegal while, in Amsterdam, parent organisation Greenpeace International has stayed silent.
A Greenpeace activist protests against a coal plant in Kenya, on June 12, 2019. (Photo: Baz Ratner/Reuters)
7. In Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s net zero vision clashes with legacy of war
Oil and gas-reliant Azerbaijan and the rest of Central Asia have stayed under the climate radar for a long time. But that changed as Azerbaijan’s capital Baku hosted COP29 in 2024, thrusting the authoritarian regime and its energy policies into the limelight.
Azerbaijan’s government spent big money taking journalists, including our own Matteo Civillini, to see its new “smart villages”, hydropower plants and solar energy installations in the conflict-torn region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
What they didn’t draw attention to – but Climate Home reported anyway – was that Armenians had been chased out of these villages less than a year before our visit. “It’s greenwashing of an ethnic cleansing,” one analyst said.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev tours the “smart” village of Aghali in an electric cart. (Photo: Azerbaijan Presidency)
8. World Bank climate funding greens African hotels while fishermen sink
COP29 was Azerbaijan’s COP – but also the “finance COP”. Figures of millions, billions and trillions of dollars shot around in press releases, while journalists struggled to differentiate between verbs like “mobilise” and “provide”.
But what exactly is counted in the figures that make up climate finance? How about when you help Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and a huge hotel corporation buy up a chain of African hotels and spruce them up to luxury standard in an energy-efficient manner? If you ask the World Bank Group – which has ambitious targets to increase climate finance – this makes the cut.
Our reporter Jack Thompson hung out at one of these five-star hotels in Senegal (not the worst assignment) and then spoke to local fishermen just down the coast, who said they’d rather the money was spent helping them protect the beaches that are their workplace from rising sea levels.
With wealthy nations pledging at COP29 to increase their climate finance to $300 billion a year by 2035 – much of it coming from development institutions like the World Bank – this story, an award finalist, shows the importance of questioning the top-line numbers.
Le Lamantin Hotel, in Saly, Senegal, where a standard room costs about $220 a night. (Photo: Jack Thompson)
9. From cyclone to drought, Zimbabwe’s climate victims struggle to adapt
And in Zimbabwe we found more evidence that quantity isn’t all that matters. You can spend all you want on a climate project but if it’s badly-designed, it’s no use.
That’s what Matteo Civillini learned from a visit to the country’s eastern highlands, where cyclone victims have been moved out of a storm-prone area and into a drought-prone one where the authorities lack the money to build a planned dam. Out of the frying pan into the fire, you might say.
People in the resettled community said that, despite the cyclone risks, they miss their old home and its bountiful water supply. “We’d never run out of water – we could always access fresh food,” one said. “Here it’s more difficult.”
Tambudzai Chikweya stands in front of her home in Runyararo. Photo: Matteo Civillini
(Writing by Joe Lo, editing by Megan Rowling)
The post Nine of our best climate change stories from 2024 appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Blazing heat hits Europe
FANNING THE FLAMES: Wildfires “fanned by a heatwave and strong winds” caused havoc across southern Europe, Reuters reported. It added: “Fire has affected nearly 440,000 hectares (1,700 square miles) in the eurozone so far in 2025, double the average for the same period of the year since 2006.” Extreme heat is “breaking temperature records across Europe”, the Guardian said, with several countries reporting readings of around 40C.
HUMAN TOLL: At least three people have died in the wildfires erupting across Spain, Turkey and Albania, France24 said, adding that the fires have “displaced thousands in Greece and Albania”. Le Monde reported that a child in Italy “died of heatstroke”, while thousands were evacuated from Spain and firefighters “battled three large wildfires” in Portugal.
UK WILDFIRE RISK: The UK saw temperatures as high as 33.4C this week as England “entered its fourth heatwave”, BBC News said. The high heat is causing “nationally significant” water shortfalls, it added, “hitting farms, damaging wildlife and increasing wildfires”. The Daily Mirror noted that these conditions “could last until mid-autumn”. Scientists warn the UK faces possible “firewaves” due to climate change, BBC News also reported.
Around the world
- GRID PRESSURES: Iraq suffered a “near nationwide blackout” as elevated power demand – due to extreme temperatures of around 50C – triggered a transmission line failure, Bloomberg reported.
- ‘DIRE’ DOWN UNDER: The Australian government is keeping a climate risk assessment that contains “dire” implications for the continent “under wraps”, the Australian Financial Review said.
- EXTREME RAINFALL: Mexico City is “seeing one of its heaviest rainy seasons in years”, the Washington Post said. Downpours in the Japanese island of Kyushu “caused flooding and mudslides”, according to Politico. In Kashmir, flash floods killed 56 and left “scores missing”, the Associated Press said.
- SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION: China and Brazil agreed to “ensure the success” of COP30 in a recent phone call, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
- PLASTIC ‘DEADLOCK’: Talks on a plastic pollution treaty have failed again at a summit in Geneva, according to the Guardian, with countries “deadlocked” on whether it should include “curbs on production and toxic chemicals”.
15
The number of times by which the most ethnically-diverse areas in England are more likely to experience extreme heat than its “least diverse” areas, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- As many as 13 minerals critical for low-carbon energy may face shortages under 2C pathways | Nature Climate Change
- A “scoping review” examined the impact of climate change on poor sexual and reproductive health and rights in sub-Saharan Africa | PLOS One
- A UK university cut the carbon footprint of its weekly canteen menu by 31% “without students noticing” | Nature Food
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Factchecking Trump’s climate report
A report commissioned by the US government to justify rolling back climate regulations contains “at least 100 false or misleading statements”, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists. The report, compiled in two months by five hand-picked researchers, inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed” and misleadingly states that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”80
Spotlight
Does Xi Jinping care about climate change?
This week, Carbon Brief unpacks new research on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s policy priorities.
On this day in 2005, Xi Jinping, a local official in eastern China, made an unplanned speech when touring a small village – a rare occurrence in China’s highly-choreographed political culture.
In it, he observed that “lucid waters and lush mountains are mountains of silver and gold” – that is, the environment cannot be sacrificed for the sake of growth.
(The full text of the speech is not available, although Xi discussed the concept in a brief newspaper column – see below – a few days later.)
In a time where most government officials were laser-focused on delivering economic growth, this message was highly unusual.
Forward-thinking on environment
As a local official in the early 2000s, Xi endorsed the concept of “green GDP”, which integrates the value of natural resources and the environment into GDP calculations.
He also penned a regular newspaper column, 22 of which discussed environmental protection – although “climate change” was never mentioned.
This focus carried over to China’s national agenda when Xi became president.
New research from the Asia Society Policy Institute tracked policies in which Xi is reported by state media to have “personally” taken action.
It found that environmental protection is one of six topics in which he is often said to have directly steered policymaking.
Such policies include guidelines to build a “Beautiful China”, the creation of an environmental protection inspection team and the “three-north shelterbelt” afforestation programme.
“It’s important to know what Xi’s priorities are because the top leader wields outsized influence in the Chinese political system,” Neil Thomas, Asia Society Policy Institute fellow and report co-author, told Carbon Brief.
Local policymakers are “more likely” to invest resources in addressing policies they know have Xi’s attention, to increase their chances for promotion, he added.
What about climate and energy?
However, the research noted, climate and energy policies have not been publicised as bearing Xi’s personal touch.
“I think Xi prioritises environmental protection more than climate change because reducing pollution is an issue of social stability,” Thomas said, noting that “smoggy skies and polluted rivers” were more visible and more likely to trigger civil society pushback than gradual temperature increases.
The paper also said topics might not be linked to Xi personally when they are “too technical” or “politically sensitive”.
For example, Xi’s landmark decision for China to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 is widely reported as having only been made after climate modelling – facilitated by former climate envoy Xie Zhenhua – showed that this goal was achievable.
Prior to this, Xi had never spoken publicly about carbon neutrality.
Prof Alex Wang, a University of California, Los Angeles professor of law not involved in the research, noted that emphasising Xi’s personal attention may signal “top” political priorities, but not necessarily Xi’s “personal interests”.
By not emphasising climate, he said, Xi may be trying to avoid “pushing the system to overprioritise climate to the exclusion of the other priorities”.
There are other ways to know where climate ranks on the policy agenda, Thomas noted:
“Climate watchers should look at what Xi says, what Xi does and what policies Xi authorises in the name of the ‘central committee’. Is Xi talking more about climate? Is Xi establishing institutions and convening meetings that focus on climate? Is climate becoming a more prominent theme in top-level documents?”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP EFFECT: The Columbia Energy Exchange podcast examined how pressure from US tariffs could affect India’s clean energy transition.
NAMIBIAN ‘DESTRUCTION’: The National Observer investigated the failure to address “human rights abuses and environmental destruction” claims against a Canadian oil company in Namibia.
‘RED AI’: The Network for the Digital Economy and the Environment studied the state of current research on “Red AI”, or the “negative environmental implications of AI”.
Coming up
- 17 August: Bolivian general elections
- 18-29 August: Preparatory talks on the entry into force of the “High Seas Treaty”, New York
- 18-22 August: Y20 Summit, Johannesburg
- 21 August: Advancing the “Africa clean air programme” through Africa-Asia collaboration, Yokohama
Pick of the jobs
- Lancaster Environment Centre, senior research associate: JUST Centre | Salary: £39,355-£45,413. Location: Lancaster, UK
- Environmental Justice Foundation, communications and media officer, Francophone Africa | Salary: XOF600,000-XOF800,000. Location: Dakar, Senegal
- Politico, energy & climate editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Brussels, Belgium
- EnviroCatalysts, meteorologist | Salary: Unknown. Location: New Delhi, India
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.
The post DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Climate Change
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
The specter of a “gas-for-wind” compromise between the governor and the White House is drawing the ire of residents as a deadline looms.
Hundreds of New Yorkers rallied against new natural gas pipelines in their state as a deadline loomed for the public to comment on a revived proposal to expand the gas pipeline that supplies downstate New York.
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
A “critical assessment” report commissioned by the Trump administration to justify a rollback of US climate regulations contains at least 100 false or misleading statements, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists.
The report – “A critical review of impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the US climate” – was published by the US Department of Energy (DoE) on 23 July, just days before the government laid out plans to revoke a scientific finding used as the legal basis for emissions regulation.
The executive summary of the controversial report inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed”.
It also states misleadingly that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”.
Compiled in just two months by five “independent” researchers hand-selected by the climate-sceptic US secretary of energy Chris Wright, the document has sparked fierce criticism from climate scientists, who have pointed to factual errors, misrepresentation of research, messy citations and the cherry-picking of data.
Experts have also noted the authors’ track record of promoting views at odds with the mainstream understanding of climate science.
Wright’s department claims the report – which is currently open to public comment as part of a 30-day review – underwent an “internal peer-review period amongst [the] DoE’s scientific research community”.
The report is designed to provide a scientific underpinning to one flank of the Trump administration’s plans to rescind a finding that serves as the legal prerequisite for federal emissions regulation. (The second flank is about legal authority to regulate emissions.)
The “endangerment finding” – enacted by the Obama administration in 2009 – states that six greenhouse gases are contributing to the net-negative impacts of climate change and, thus, put the public in danger.
In a press release on 29 July, the US Environmental Protection Agency said “updated studies and information” set out in the new report would “challenge the assumptions” of the 2009 finding.
Carbon Brief asked a wide range of climate scientists, including those cited in the “critical review” itself, to factcheck the report’s various claims and statements.
The post Factcheck: Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-trumps-climate-report-includes-more-than-100-false-or-misleading-claims/
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