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An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
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This week
September heat record ‘shattered’
‘GOBSMACKINGLY BANANAS’: September has “shattered” its previous global heat record “by a record margin”, according to data covered by the Washington Post. BBC News reported that last month was 0.93C hotter than the 1991-2020 September average and 0.5C hotter than the previous record set in 2020. Several outlets, including the Guardian, have quoted the verdict of Carbon Brief’s science contributor, Dr Zeke Hausfather, who described the heat as “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas”.
OCTOBER HEATS UP: The unusual heat has continued into October, with the New York Times publishing a map showing that parts of Europe, the Middle East, southern Africa, southeast Asia, Australia, North America and South America experienced temperatures up to 9C higher than average this week. CBC noted that “warm summer-like weather” has continued in the Canadian province of Ontario and the Australian Associated Press reported that more than 100 fires have been blazing across New South Wales amid a heatwave in the Australian state.
EU launches first carbon border tax
PHASE ONE: The EU has launched the initial phase of its carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), the world’s first system to impose emissions tariffs on imported goods, according to Reuters. For now, importers of steel, cement and other products only have to report the emissions “embodied” in their goods, but, from 2026, they will face border charges for high-emitting goods, the Economist explained.
GLOBAL PUSHBACK: Major EU trading partners, including Russia, the UK and US, are likely to feel CBAM’s effects the most, according to a recent report by Carnegie Europe. Brazil, South Africa and India have accused the CBAM of being “discriminatory” and China has called on the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to assess the measure, Politico stated. Writing in the Financial Times, EU economy commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said non-European countries “need not fear” the tax and said it was “fully compatible” with WTO rules.
NEW CLIMATE CHIEFS: Meanwhile, European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič and former Dutch foreign minister Wopke Hoekstra have been approved by the European parliament as the EU “green deal” chief and climate commissioner, respectively, according to Politico.
Around the world
- ‘IRRESPONSIBLE’ LIFESTYLES: The Pope has pointed to an “irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model” as a key driver of climate change in a new “apostolic exhortation” titled Laudate Deum (Praise God), CNN reported.
- RUSSIA ROADBLOCK: Ahead of the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, Russia has stated it will oppose a global deal to cut fossil-fuel use, according to the Financial Times. Another Financial Times article said the United Arab Emirates has proposed hosting COP for two years in a row as Russia continues to block eastern European states from hosting it next year.
- INDIA FLOODS: At least 14 people have been killed and 102 are missing after flash floods in North Sikkim, India, triggered by a glacial lake outburst, the Times of India reported.
- OIL LAWSUIT: Environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against French oil giant TotalEnergies and its major pipeline project in Tanzania and Uganda, alleging numerous criminal offences, according to Radio France Internationale.
- CLIMATE ARRESTS: Vietnamese state media has confirmed the arrest of energy expert Ngo Thi To Nhien, who worked on the G7-backed plan to wean the nation off fossil fuels, Agence France-Presse reported. Drilled has covered a string of arrests of Vietnamese climate advocates since 2021.
- ‘NET-ZERO ZEALOTS’: “Green politics” has been “under attack” at the UK’s Conservative party conference, the Guardian stated, with even the net-zero secretary, Claire Coutinho, taking aim at “zealots” who “view net-zero as a religion”.
$143bn
The annual “global cost” of extreme weather that can be attributed to human-caused climate change, according to a new study in Nature Communications.
Latest climate research
- The boom in commercial tree plantations for the purpose of carbon-offsetting threatens biodiversity in the tropics, a paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution concluded.
- The second Global Amphibian Assessment, published in Nature, found that 41% of species are threatened with extinction – and climate change is a key factor in their decline.
- A paper in Nature Food explored how meat taxes in Europe could be designed to avoid overburdening low-income consumers.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The second “pledging conference” for the UN’s flagship Green Climate Fund (GCF) took place on Thursday in Bonn, Germany. The GCF, which is the world’s largest multilateral climate fund, was established in 2010 as part of the global effort to help developing countries cut emissions and prepare for climate change. The event brought the total pledged by wealthy nations to just $9.3bn, less than previous funding rounds and short of the GCF’s internal targets, according to Climate Home News. Notable absences included the US and Australia, both of which have failed to pledge anything since 2014. They, along with Italy, Sweden and Switzerland, said they will commit funds, but did not specify how much. The Natural Resources Defense Council’s Green Climate Fund Pledge Tracker has data on every country’s contributions.
Spotlight
Factcheck: Do large solar projects produce more CO2 than they save?
This week, Carbon Brief factchecks claims pushed by right-wing politicians and anti-solar campaigners that a major UK solar project would produce more greenhouse gases than it is able to save.
Matt Hancock, former UK minister turned TV reality show contestant – has urged the government to reject plans for a solar farm in his West Suffolk constituency. The proposed Sunnica scheme is on track to be one of the nation’s largest solar projects. When built, the developers say it would produce enough electricity to power up to 100,000 homes.
Hancock is not alone. At least 19 other UK MPs – all Conservatives – have come out against new solar farms, citing the concerns of people in their rural constituencies. The issue became a hot topic during the Conservative leadership contest last year, when both former prime minister Liz Truss and current prime minister Rishi Sunak vowed to stop farmland being used for solar power.
This is part of a wider trend of groups claiming to represent local communities pushing back against new renewable projects. Hundreds of new wind and solar projects are facing local opposition across the US, amid an organised effort by climate-sceptics. In the UK, a group called the Solar Campaign Alliance, which stresses it is “not against renewables”, supports a network of around 100 anti-solar protest groups, including the Say No To Sunnica campaign.
One of the central points made by many of these activists is that some new solar farms are “not carbon neutral” and will “do nothing to help” the UK meet its climate goals. This has been repeated on the campaign websites and materials distributed by those protesting the Sunnica project and other sites. Also repeating the claim, Hancock has written in the Daily Mail that Sunnica “would pump out more carbon…than it actually saved”.
These claims appear out of step with the central role solar power is expected to play in getting the UK – and the world – to net-zero.
They come from analysis commissioned by the Say No To Sunnica campaign and carried out by researchers at Cranfield University. The authors argue that the Sunnica scheme “during its lifetime would constitute a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions”, largely based on the developers underestimating its “lifecycle” emissions – including those associated with battery production and replacement.
Solar projects do not produce emissions when they generate electricity, but the manufacture of their components does as fossil fuels are used in these processes.
Despite this, experts tell Carbon Brief that the Cranfield study contains unusual methodological choices. Not least, it compares the Sunnica solar farm to a scenario in which the grid decarbonises, thanks in large part to solar power. Prof Edgar Hertwich, a researcher of resource efficiency and climate change at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, says arguing that the new solar farm replaces renewable power is “conceptually not correct”.
A more relevant comparison would be contrasting Sunnica with a scenario in which fossil fuels continue to be used. Gas power produces more than eight times more carbon dioxide (CO2) per unit of energy throughout its lifetime than ground-mounted solar panels.
The Cranfield researchers tell Carbon Brief they agree that the comparison they make is problematic, but point out that they followed the same methodology as the one used by the Sunnica developers.
They also warn that solar developers are not sufficiently accounting for battery production emissions when making claims about their net-zero credentials, stating that Sunnica did not factor in the need to replace batteries. However, other research shows that when solar power displaces fossil fuels from the grid, its climate benefits are only “marginally affected” by adding batteries.
Ultimately, the researchers stress that their conclusions “apply to this particular scheme only”, adding that each project “needs to be assessed on its own merits”.
The Say No To Sunnica campaign did not respond to Carbon Brief’s request for comment.
Watch, read, listen
CLIMATE SLEUTHING: Bloomberg has a feature on Itziar Irakulis Loitxate, a PhD student tasked with searching for global methane leaks at the UN Environment Programme. She is the “closest thing the world has to climate police”.
SOLUTIONS SEARCH: NPR has dedicated an entire week to stories and conversations about the search for climate solutions, from the Philippines to California.
WEAPONISING HEAT PUMPS: A long read in Politico explored how the far-right Alternative for Germany party has turned the issue of electric heat pumps into “electoral rocket fuel”.
Coming up
- 8 October: Luxembourg parliamentary election
- 8-12 October: Middle East and North Africa Climate Week, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- 9-15 October: World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meeting, Marrakech, Morocco
- 10 October: Liberia presidential, senate and house of representatives election
Pick of the jobs
- International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), senior researcher | Salary: £52,244-64,944. Location: Hybrid (within or outside of UK) with occasional travel to the UK offices
- University of Wisconsin-Madison, assistant professor trained in geographical and related social science approaches to critical development | Salary: Unknown. Location: Madison, Wisconsin, US
- China Global South Project (CGSP), freelance copy editor (Africa climate) | Salary: Unknown. Location: Africa, (remote)
DeBriefed is written in rotation by Carbon Brief’s team and edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org
The post DeBriefed 6 October 2023: ‘Gobsmackingly bananas’ global heat; EU’s carbon border tax; UK solar claims factchecked appeared first on Carbon Brief.
An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.