The COP process seems to have the ability to bring out the best and the worst in me.
I always consider these annual UN events an anomaly –– its the ‘dreamscape’ of what climate action could be, and also a prime example of everything that is wrong with climate action. Hundreds of cultures coming together to talk about climate change. Greenwashing and fossil fuel lobbyists taking up too much space. All at the same time.
As I close out my first 24 hours in Dubai, I’ve already been on a rollercoaster of emotions. I think this is the reality of anyone thinking about climate change for days on end, but there’s something about being at COP that makes it feel heavier and lighter simultaneously.
I know this might not make sense, but let me try to explain.
Dubai is beautiful. It’s a city that makes you look. Burj Khalifa glitters hundreds of floors into the sky. The architecture is futuristic and modern — orbs, and silver, and strange angles that make you question, “how’d they do that?” It’s a place that visually inspires the thought that anything can be possible; creativity in this way is thriving.
Dubai also hasn’t earned my trust. The 20-foot-high advertisements gracing bridges and highways as you drive into the city boast large businesses partnering with COP28 with vague taglines. “Towards Tomorrow Together.” Luxury car dealerships line the highways, selling fossil fuel lifestyles. Indoor ski hills and penguins are a taxi-ride away even though we’re in the middle of the desert. It’s a place that seems to do things “just because they can.”
I’m reeling a bit from the juxtaposition. I think it’s capturing exactly how I feel about climate change action right now. Everything is possible, and yet we’re not committing to changing how we survive, as human beings, on this planet.
Part of my role as crafting the negotiations summary for the Window into COP digests is to be well-informed about COP happenings, narratives, actions, and failings. I read so many articles about the big announcements and progress, and then I read about how they’re actually just pledges, not action. I read about the innovative solutions happening in the Global South, and then I read some more about how they’re not getting funded with anywhere near the amount of capital they need. I read about closed door meetings. I read about inaccessibility. I read about false solutions and a lack of ambition.
As I prepared to leave our Airbnb for my first day on the ground this morning (attending a side event called the Climate Action Innovation Zone), I was overwhelmed. I had just finished all that reading for today’s digest, and I couldn’t shake this sad, deep feeling in my gut. Like even though I’m here, and we’re all here, doing what we can, we’re also part of the problem. Thoughts like, “It’s too big.” We can’t do it at the scale we need to.
And then I got up and I went to the Innovation Zone, and my entire mood shifted. And it’s because of the people I met. The people I connected with from around the world.
Someone from Moscow who works at a climate tech company. She sends her daughter to school in Dubai, and she’s worked in the business sector for more than 20 years. She believes that businesses have a role to play.
A young woman from Kenya who makes biochar, a material created from biomass waste that increases soil fertility and decreases drought. She was representing Kenya and Uganda, trying to build momentum for a community-based project that could help farmers in her region.
A man from Scotland who was passionate about waste management and providing services to communities on how to actually change their habits. He was advocating for all islands, from the Global North to the Global South, to decarbonize urban life and share their learnings. My favorite line? “The world is just one big island. And we’re all on it.”
As I settle down for the evening and prepare to enter the Blue Zone tomorrow, I’m ruminating on one thing that hasn’t left me since this morning.
The climate crisis is truly a connection crisis. An inability to talk to each other.
To move each other. To inspire the understanding of why a specific solution matters to one specific community, and why it doesn’t work for others. And it’s not our fault, but it also is entirely our fault. There’s so many factors at play on why climate change is hard to communicate about, and why it’s hard to understand one another in general. An inability to see the world, and each other, in all of the gray areas.
The climate crisis isn’t this or that. It’s all of the above. It’s every option from the solutions buffet, please, so we can phase out fossil fuels while also decarbonizing every part of our society. It’s holding leaders and businesses accountable, and giving land back to Indigenous communities. It’s scaling innovative solutions that involve tech, and agriculture, and education, while also pouring funding into communities getting ravaged by impacts.
I’m eager to connect with more people tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until I fly out next week.
Selfishly, so I can feed the part of me that finds so much joy in connecting with people who care just as much as I do. Because I need joy to sustain this work. But I need the deep, sad feeling in my gut to ground me in how much losing this planet as we know it hurts; that I need to do something about it.
And collectively, so we can build a stronger climate movement and understanding, and make the world feel just a little bit smaller than it did the day before.
Lauren Boritzke Smith manages online audience engagement, communications and branding, marketing, and media outreach for Climate Generation’s programming, fundraising, and events. She was introduced to the climate justice movement through her interest in food access, public health, and stewarding plants – from reporting on food deserts, participating in WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), to advocating for the importance of diverse ecosystems. Lauren has bachelor’s degrees in Strategic Communications and English from UW-Madison, and approaches nonprofit communications and marketing with a community lens, bringing enthusiasm for the importance of art and story in building change and centering voices that are most impacted by the issue at hand. After college, Lauren served in AmeriCorps VISTA, building community outreach capacity and development strategies for a tutoring and creative writing nonprofit in St. Paul. In her free time, she enjoys traveling around to state and national parks with her husband and pup River, designing graphic art and pressing flowers, and playing the banjo.
The post The climate crisis is a connection crisis appeared first on Climate Generation.
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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