Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Pakistan and India floods
EXTREME WEATHER: Heavy flooding forced half a million people to evacuate their homes in just 24 hours in Pakistan’s Punjab this week, the Associated Press reported. It brings the total number of people displaced since last month to 1.8 million, the newswire said. According to Arab News, at least 41 people have died as a result of the flooding since last week. The flooding has also destroyed thousands of acres of crops in Punjab, a province that accounts for 68% of Pakistan’s total annual food grain production, Bloomberg reported.
CROSS-BORDER EVENT: Meanwhile, in Indian Punjab, “at least 30 people have died and more than 354,000 have been affected” by flooding, BBC News reported. India also warned Pakistan about more cross-border flooding for the second time in as many weeks, as both countries reeled from monsoon rains, the Associated Press reported.
UK dividing lines
NEW FACE: Zack Polanski has been elected as the new leader of the Green Party of England and Wales in a landslide victory, the Financial Times reported. Polanski is an “outspoken campaigner who has argued his party needs to ‘connect with people’s anger’ and become more combative against ‘villains’, including oil major Shell and the ‘super-rich’”, the newspaper said. Polanksi wants to “replace” the ruling Labour party on a platform of “eco-populism”, according to BBC News.
NORTH SEA OIL: Meanwhile, the UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch pledged to drill “all” of the remaining oil and gas in the North Sea if elected, BBC News reported. [The Conservatives are polling third, at 17%.] In response to the speech, the Daily Telegraph‘s world economy editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argued that Badenoch’s plan would not “raise this country’s long-term output of oil and gas by more than homeopathic amounts” nor “move the needle on UK energy prices” (more below).
Around the world
- HIGHER AMBITIONS: The UN urged countries to set new, more ambitious national climate plans this month, ahead of this year’s COP30 summit in Belém, Brazil, Reuters reported.
- ‘JUNK SCIENCE’: A group of more than 85 climate scientists released a “scathing review” of the Trump administration’s misleading climate report, DeSmog reported.
- FOSSIL ENERGY: Russia said China had agreed to a massive new pipeline capable of importing as much as 50bn cubic metres of gas a year, the Financial Times reported.
- US PRESSURE: Reuters reported that the US is pressuring other countries to reject a UN deal on cutting emissions from shipping by threatening them with tariffs, visa restrictions and port levies.
- SWELTERING HEAT: Authorities in Japan and South Korea said 2025 was the hottest summer in their countries since records began, Al Jazeera reported.
- MITIGATION WORK: According to Bloomberg, Zimbabwe has published draft regulations to establish a National Climate Fund. The fund will finance projects “aimed at mitigating the impact of climate change and respond[ing] to emergencies”.
20%
The amount by which clean-energy production has surged in India this year, according to Reuters, citing data from the thinktank Ember.
Latest climate research
- “Extreme cold surges” have “robustly weakened in middle-to-high latitude continents during autumn and winter” due to climate change, according to a study in Nature Communications.
- A study published in npj Climate Action found that exposing people to moral appeals results in overall carbon footprint reduction and increased participation in civic and political climate action, regardless of ideological affiliation.
- The World Bank’s increase in climate finance spending since the Paris Agreement has been driven by projects with “low climate components”, according to a study in Climatic Change.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
A claim that gas produced in the North Sea emits “four times” less CO2 than imported liquified natural gas (LNG) featured prominently in both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph this week, following Badenoch’s pledge to drill “all” the remaining oil and gas in the UK. However, this figure is highly misleading. It only refers to the emissions that come from the process of extracting and delivering the gas, which are much smaller than those from burning it. When both extraction and burning of the gas are taken into account, CO2 emissions from UK production are only around 15% lower than those from LNG imports, according to a new factcheck from Carbon Brief.
Spotlight
A man-made lake threatened by climate change
This week, Carbon Brief reports on how climate change is impacting the sustainability of a scenic nature reserve in the southern US.
In 1941, as World War 2 thickened, the US Congress approved a plan to construct a reservoir storage project on the Hiwassee River, a water body that cuts across the states of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee.
The dam, which came to be known as Chatuge after an 18th-century Cherokee village, was originally built for power generation purposes. However, after it was completed, it became more than a hydroelectric project.
In May 1942, the Towns County Lions Club started stocking fish in the newly created Lake Chatuge. In 1944, Clay County leased a tract of land for a public park.
Today, the park offers “scenic mountain views” and “panoramic views” of Lake Chatuge. The lake is also home to rare, endangered plant species and is an important source of drinking water.
However, Lake Chatuge’s future has been plunged into uncertainty after the Tennessee Valley Authority proposed a plan to repair the dam’s spillway, which could involve draining the lake’s water levels by 20 feet (6m) for up to eight years.
The TVA’s action is largely forward-thinking. While the dam and its spillway are in good condition, the public utility company is wary of extreme weather events made more likely by climate change.
In September 2024, Hurricane Helene tore through parts of Georgia and North Carolina, leaving more than 128 people dead across the US and uprooting communities in its wake. One analysis estimated that 44% of the economic damage from the storm can be attributed to human-caused climate change.
The Lake Chatuge area was largely spared, but officials worry that the next extreme weather event may not be far off.
“It’s the kind of event – the unusual storm event that can happen, that’s pretty rare – is what we’re looking out for,” a TVA project manager has said.
Meanwhile, aside from the imminent repairs made more likely by the increased possibility of extreme weather events, Lake Chatuge is also battling a parrot feather infestation, a phenomenon involving the spread of an invasive plant that has been linked to global warming in other parts of the US.
Saving Lake Chatuge
The threat posed by climate change to Lake Chatuge is not an isolated case. A July 2025 report by researchers at Utah State University found that climate change is affecting the social benefits of dams across the country.
Elsewhere in the world, the impact of extreme weather on ageing dams is wide ranging, including recently heightening tensions between India and Pakistan.
However, community members in the Lake Chatuge area are not giving up easily. A Facebook group dedicated to saving the lake has more than 2,000 members.
“Lake Chatuge is our economy,” Towns County’s sole commissioner, Cliff Bradshaw, told Carbon Brief. He added:
“The main attraction to this area is Lake Chatuge. Without the lake, the county’s tourism would drop, and our economy would suffer greatly – could even drive the county into a depression – as we have a great deal of businesses that rely solely on activities on Lake Chatuge for their customers, such as marinas, party boats and water activity playgrounds. The other businesses in town may not rely on the lake for customers, but do rely on the tourist traffic brought into the area by the lake to drive customers into their place of business.”
According to reporting by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, visitors have spent up to $100m annually in the area since 2021.
The TVA’s repair work could begin as soon as 2027, but community members are asking both the public utility company and political leaders to help find the least damaging pathway.
Watch, read, listen
SCIENCE CUTS: The Financial Times reported on how the Trump administration has “gutted” the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), throwing into doubt the nation’s ability to respond to extreme weather disasters.
SUSTAINABLE ECONOMICS: In an interview with Le Monde, the French economist Thomas Piketty argued that protecting the planet from climate change requires wealth redistribution.
TWEAKING NATURE: A Havard atmospheric chemist and an Oxford planetary physicist discussed the nuances and subtleties of geoengineering on the podcast Entanglements by Undark.
Coming up
- 8 September: Norway election
- 8-12 September: 54th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, Honoraria, Solomon Islands
- 9-23 September: 80th Session of the UN General Assembly, New York
Pick of the jobs
- Energy UK, policy manager | Salary: £38,450. Location: London
- CNN Digital, climate and weather editor | Salary: $91,000-$169,000. Location: Atlanta, Washington DC, New York, Chicago or Burbank, California
- The Post and Courier, rising waters reporter | Salary: Unknown. Location: South Carolina, US
- The Seattle Times, climate reporter | Salary: $75,000-$90,000. Location: Seattle, US
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 5 September 2025: Pakistan floods hit 1.8m people; UK ‘eco-populism’; How warming threatens a man-made lake 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.