Published

8 months ago

July 10, 2025

Alice Rush

Mukhtar Babayev is COP29 President and Special Representative of the President of Azerbaijan for Climate Issues.

We face an historic irony this year. 2025 was supposed to start a new decade in climate finance.

When countries signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, they set this year as the date from which donor countries would support the developing world under a new climate finance deal. The Baku Finance Goal agreed at COP29 in Azerbaijan did indeed set a target of $300 billion a year by 2035, a three-fold increase on the current funding.

But instead of stepping up, donors are stepping back. Governments are diverting funds from communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Military spending is being raised at the expense of climate finance and aid budgets are being slashed.

This is not how the new decade of solidarity and action was supposed to begin. Developed countries were supposed to take the lead. It is a bitter pill for the world’s poorest to swallow.

No enforcement mechanism for promises

Worryingly, this comes as countries prepare their next generation of climate plans for submission. This round of emission cuts is our last best chance to keep the 1.5 degree Celsius target within reach without a sustained overshoot. But how can developing countries cut emissions if they can’t count on support?

COP Presidents face the same question – how do you ensure the deals you gavelled are actually delivered? The awkward truth is that, technically, we cannot. There are proposals to reform climate governance, but we currently have no formal power to hold countries to account.

There is no international enforcement mechanism. Some countries should be commended for embedding commitments into domestic law. Most, however, exploit every loophole to avoid legally binding requirements.

COP30 president: Transition from fossil fuels can start without climate talks

Instead, we rely on norms, values and standards. We place our hope in enlightened leaders who can see their own interest in collective climate action. We hope they understand that promises made are promises. Or we are forced to invoke their sense of duty.

When governments break promises to each other, it breeds distrust and anger. We can see this in the hallways of climate negotiations already. There is little point investing in soft power if leaders go soft on their words.

Many donor countries seem oblivious to the promises made. At ministerial meetings on climate change, few can recount the pledges of past years. Ministers gathered in Spain last week for the Fourth International Financing for Development conference. For all the talk of implementation, how many governments have kept the promises they made last time?

The early milestones for 2025 are barely on the agenda for this year’s UN climate summit. Small island states have said that, if need be, they will fight to get climate finance on the agenda. Why are their voices alone?

Adaptation finance goal expires this year

The earliest invoice due is a pledge made when the UK hosted COP26 in 2021. Under the “Glasgow Pact”, developed countries would at least double their collective support to help communities adapt to the consequences of climate change by 2025. Put simply, that’s at least $40 billion a year.

This is a critical early test of whether the will is there to hit the $300 billion by 2035. Falling short of a commitment due now augurs ill for a much larger commitment due ten years hence.

The conventional excuse is that the world has changed, making old plans and pledges redundant. To that, we say the world was always going to change. These targets were supposed to provide certainty in uncertain times. They were collective goals, so collectively they must be delivered.

Green Climate Fund reforms aim to fix “slow, cumbersome” accreditation process

When we negotiated the Baku Finance Goal in November following the US election, donors insisted they couldn’t be expected to pay more than $300 billion when some of the biggest players were stepping away. They cannot use the same excuse again to explain why they can’t meet the goal.

To lead is to choose, and in a world of tight finances, the burden of leadership is heavy. Nobody should envy the trade-offs governments must make: which causes to support, which sectors to prioritise, which issues to address. There are no free choices.

But there are shortsighted choices. And there are choices that can corrode the system. Breaking your word is not an acceptable choice. It would be a matter of deep regret. Developed countries need to take the lead on climate finance. Donors must send a clear and strong signal that a promise made is a promise kept.

The post Donors were supposed to step up, not step back on climate finance appeared first on Climate Home News.

Donors were supposed to step up, not step back on climate finance

Climate Change

Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit

Published

7 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.

ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.

Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.

“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”

The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]

ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]

Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.

“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”

Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.

-ENDS-

Images available in Greenpeace Media Library

Notes:

[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.

[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee

[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.

[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.

Media contact:

Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit

Climate Change

Former EPA Staff Detail Expanding Pollution Risks Under Trump

Published

7 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

The Trump administration’s relentless rollback of public health and environmental protections has allowed widespread toxic exposures to flourish, warn experts who helped implement safeguards now under assault.

By Liza Gross

In a new report that outlines a dozen high-risk pollutants given new life thanks to weakened, delayed or rescinded regulations, the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of hundreds of former Environmental Protection Agency staff, warns that the EPA under President Donald Trump has abandoned the agency’s core mission of protecting people and the environment from preventable toxic exposures.

Former EPA Staff Detail Expanding Pollution Risks Under Trump

Climate Change

Cheniere Energy Received $370 Million IRS Windfall for Using LNG as ‘Alternative’ Fuel

Published

14 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Alice Rush

The country’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas benefited from what critics say is a questionable IRS interpretation of tax credits.

By Phil McKenna

Cheniere Energy, the largest producer and exporter of U.S. liquefied natural gas, received $370 million from the IRS in the first quarter of 2026, a payout that shipping experts, tax specialists and a U.S. senator say the company never should have received.