From a very young age, I knew the gender I was assigned at birth didn’t make a lot of sense to what I felt internally.
Unfortunately our society does not do a good job of embracing complexities that exist within one person. This binary of “man” and “woman” has always been something that I was confused about, which resulted in me completely rejecting it. Growing up I didn’t have the language we have now to acknowledge different gender identities and expressions. “Why is there no word to describe what I’m feeling?” was always spinning in my mind.
For me Pride month is about remembering our history of resistance and persistence as Queer people. Whether it was the Stonewall riots or the Compton Lunch riots, we have always rejected societal norms that want to erase and make us fit this “perfect image” of what it looks like to be a man or a woman. It is these historic events that remind us that the fight for Queer liberation has and is being led by Black and Brown Trans people.
Pride month is for Queer joy and recognizes how far our advocacy efforts have gone. Our Queer elders have laid the groundwork for us to exist and for us to keep fighting, but only if we choose to do so. The simple act of showing up as your authentic self is a huge middle finger to those who are actively attacking us, but we must continue to remember our past of resistance and community organizing as we move forward.
My mind went into so many different directions when I was preparing to write this blog. I asked myself “what connection even is there between combating homophobia and combating the climate crisis?” This sent me into an interesting research spiral, where I learned about Queer Ecology and how these binaries, that I reject, are even applied to nature. I also read about how Queer people, specifically Trans people, are in Frontline communities as we have a large number of Trans people who are homeless and more exposed to the harms of pollution due to climate change.
Although these are really great reads that show some connection between Queer rights and Environmentalism I still struggled to feel the connection… until I did some deeper reflection.
The Power of Storytelling: Who are the Muxe?
Growing up, the men in my family told me to be the most competitive and aggressive person in order to achieve success. I was never this person, though, and found it hard to see why I needed those traits in order to survive.
Being the oldest of 3 and being labeled a “boy”, who would later become a “man” just didn’t sit well with me. Sadly it was who I was told to be, especially in the Catholic church. I don’t hold a grudge with my family, this is how they were raised and there is no handbook on how to raise a gay child. Luckily for me I accepted my own Queerness from an early age, so even if I was confused I was able to navigate the world as a Queer kid. After that I was struggling to learn about how I can show up as my authentic self in my Latine community.
Much like stories, toxic traits are passed down through generations. These traits aren’t random and learned in one day, they are systemic. They are the result of oppressive systems that don’t prioritize community and collaboration. Capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy are very big and scary words, I will admit, but being able to name them now has been eye-opening.
My family never talked about Queer people, so I didn’t know what LGBTQ+ history existed in Mexico until I did my own research. Through online storytelling, I was able to discover that the Indigenous people of Mexico, specifically the Zapotec in Oaxaca, recognize and celebrate a “third gender”. The Muxe (mu-shay) are a fabulous group of people in Mexico that embody masculinity and femininity both internally and in how they present themselves.
As a nonbinary person, I asked myself, “Why was I never introduced to the Muxe?” If they are an integral part of Mexican culture and history, then why does the binary way of thinking still exist in Mexico?
As I learned more about colonialism, specifically in Mexico, I learned that so much of what makes Mexican culture is a result of being colonized by Spain. From our language to the religion practiced there, I see how Spain “influenced” what I know Mexico to be today. It is important to remember that religion was a tool used for colonization and deeming what is or isn’t “natural”.
Colonization not only takes land and its resources away from the people indigenous to it, but it erases culture and replaces it with a straight, white version.
The Muxes and other Third Gender people were almost erased completely if it wasn’t for storytelling. I would not have been able to connect to my gender identity if it weren’t for storytelling. The story of the Muxe tells me that the world I’m envisioning is not far-fetched; it was once and still is a reality that shouldn’t be swept under the rug. We must keep fighting, not only for our rights and the rights of the planet, but also for the stories that helped guide us, as organizers.
When I say LGBTQ+ liberation, I mean breaking away from the harmful and oppressive systems and way of thinking that don’t serve our needs and dehumanize us. This liberation also means that people don’t suffer because of how and where they were born; everyone is taken care of regardless. Everyone should have access to housing, healthcare, and a healthy environment. Systems like capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy have created a world centered on the voices of the white wealthy elites.
The Fossil Fuel Industry perfectly embodies this way of thinking. Accepting Queer people and advocating around the climate crisis goes against everything the Fossil Fuel Industry was created to silence. For this reason we are seeing Queer and Environmental advocates being targeted, which is not new. Pushing back against the status quo is what our advocacy work should be centered on and failing to do so will only create incremental change, which is needed, but won’t be liberating anyone.
In order to achieve liberation for all Queer people we must reject capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy not only to avoid those systems from returning, but because it also means protecting the planet from further destruction. Although the language for homophobia has changed over the years, it still stems from viewing LGBTQ+ people as “unnatural”, which I find ironic since these are the same people who reject nature by exploiting our Earth.
As I become more of an Environmental organizer, I am doing a lot of unlearning on what I thought was “eco-friendly” and what I thought being an Environmentalist means. On the surface, I am getting better at recycling and teaching others how to properly recycle: I am getting better at not using single-use products; I am producing less food waste. On a deeper level, I am learning that the systems I listed above are not only the reasons why we are in the climate crisis, but are the reasons why so many people don’t deem LGBTQ+ people as human.
The Current Erasure of Queer Identity
Last year, we saw how Target backed out from openly supporting the LGBTQ+ community by removing products created by us. Now we are seeing the company remove all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion protocols. This corporation also sells a lot of greenwashed products like those made from “recycled materials,” when in reality, it is single-use plastic in green packaging.
These are clear examples of how these systems, in this case capitalism, try to infiltrate movement spaces.
Whether it be in the Environmental or Queer spaces it is important to remember one thing: corporations are not our allies and they must be rejected from entering our spaces. Failing to do so will destabilize our movement spaces and we will repeat the same harms… only this time it will be with a rainbow and Earth sticker.
As I enter into Pride season, I remain grounded in keeping the movements alive through stories. I challenge myself to think about how all these different issues connect. Housing, access to healthcare, defeating homophobia and racism means challenging the oppressive systems that got us in this mess to begin with.
It is not us vs. each other, but rather it is us vs. the problem. Being centered around this will not only ground me on who is to blame, but also on who I am working with to achieve liberation.
B. serves as Policy Manager for Climate Generation. They are a Minneapolis Southsider and first generation graduate of the University of Minnesota. B. has several years experience in community organizing and policy work and is excited to bring their experiences in voting rights and housing advocacy to Climate Generation’s climate justice work. They believe in investing in our young leaders to build a better future and sustain movement work and have centered the voices of young people in previous campaigns. B. is a participant in the Wilder Foundation’s Community Equity Program, a nine-month political leadership cohort-based learning journey for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color community leaders and change makers.
Resources:
- Queer Ecology: https://queerbrownvegan.com/queer-ecology/
- Queering Climate Activism: https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2021/11/19/queering-climate-activism
- Queers for Climate Justice: https://www.queerecoproject.org/queers4climatejustice
- Climate Solutions need Queerness: https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2023/06/08/queer-climate-solutions
- Queer Ecology and Intersectional Environmentalism: https://www.sustained.kitchen/latest/2021/6/17/queer-ecology-and-intersectional-environmentalism
- Grist’s Queer Activism in EJ spaces: https://grist.org/article/what-the-queer-community-brings-to-the-fight-for-climate-justice/
- Decolonizing Climate Action: https://commonslibrary.org/decolonizing-climate-action-toolkit/
- SOMO History on Colonialism: https://www.somo.nl/history-colonialism-climate-change-carbon-markets/
The post A Call for Liberation appeared first on Climate Generation.
Mariana Paoli, from Brazil, is the Global Advocacy Lead at Christian Aid and Iskander Erzini Vernoit, from Morocco, is the Executive Director at the IMAL Initiative for Climate and Development.
Government negotiators in Bonn will discuss in the coming two weeks how to put into practice an idea that emerged from the corridors of the COP29 climate talks: “the Baku to Belém Roadmap to $1.3 Trillion”.
This exercise, that aims to propose approaches for scaling climate finance flows for developing countries to over a trillion dollars per year by 2035, is due to be presented at COP30 in Brazil this November. The origins of its mandate offer insights into its perils – as well as its promise.
Brazil seeks early deals on two stalled issues at Bonn climate talks
Initially, negotiators from the G77+China countries united behind Africa’s call for $1.3 trillion as the replacement for the $100-billion goal for annual mobilisation of climate finance by developed countries for developing nations, set 15 years ago. Faithful to this, some G77 countries originally called for a roadmap to indicate actions that developed countries might take to raise public finance resources for this provision and mobilisation for the Global South.
There were, however, those in the Global North who pushed for a broader, less well-defined $1.3 trillion target that would include other sources and types of finance. These forces ultimately won the day, resulting in a final decision on $1.3 trillion that calls for “all finance” from “all … sources”, establishing a “roadmap” process toward this.
Exceedingly disappointing for the Global South, this new formulation obfuscates the responsibility of wealthy historical emitters to pay their fair share of public finance to tackle a proble they have caused and risks shifting the burden to developing countries.
Loss and damage threat
In this context, the Roadmap to 1.3T has the potential to be a milestone in the global governance of climate finance. Yet it faces risks and opportunities, being essentially at the discretion of Azerbaijan and Brazil as the COP29 and COP 30 presidencies.
There is a very real risk that the Roadmap will fall short of sending a strong signal of what level of ambition is required, in terms of public finance from contributor countries. If that happens, the Roadmap could entrench injustice, increase debt burdens, and delay urgent action on climate change.
In terms of injustice, poorer countries, while largely not responsible for climate change, could face loss and damage of $450 billion-$900 billion per year before 2030, not including the costs of reducing emissions and adapting to global warming.
Loss and damage fund to hand out $250 million in initial phase
Within this, Africa’s nomadic pastoral communities are one real-life example of those whose livelihoods and way of life are being destroyed by the choices of others. The COP29 decision on the new climate finance goal disregarded their needs by not including a target for loss and damage funding, but the Roadmap need not.
Heavy debt burden
The Roadmap must not ignore that external debts are at record highs, with repayment costs now higher than capacities for repayment in two-thirds of developing countries, according to UNCTAD.
In 2023, African governments paid around 17% of their revenues on servicing debts, the highest levels in decades, equalling 15% of African export earnings. By comparison, after the Second World War, inspired by the work of Keynes and others, it was decided to cap Germany’s debt repayments at 3% of its exports earnings, to allow recovery.
In this context, Global South countries may lack the fiscal space to invest in essential climate action – or may prioritise other areas, such as healthcare or education.
COP30 President-designate Andrea Corrêa do Lago is correct in his assertion that there is too often a denial of the economic benefits of climate action – yet Global South countries are not always able to pursue economically beneficial investments. Markets are not always efficient, economic benefits do not always equal revenues for investors , and the cost of capital is higher in Global South countries, heightening the need for support, especially with upfront costs.
Framework to scale up finance
Of course, in addition to underscoring the necessity of rich countries increasing their provision of grant-equivalent public funds for poorer countries, for the reasons cited above, the Roadmap can point to opportunities to build the architecture for scaling finance.
Reforming the international financial architecture is important, but, to achieve this, wealthy countries must relinquish their current hegemony and drop their resistance to reform in the negotiations for a UN tax convention and in those around the potential UN sovereign debt workout mechanism that could be agreed at the upcoming Financing for Development (FFD) Conference in Seville.
Climate shocks and volatile currencies hike debt burden for poor countries
Further additions to the financial architecture could include country platforms, aimed at unlocking finance, particularly private investment – but these require resourcing to administer and will only reaffirm the need for catalytic public resources, whether for technical assistance, project preparation, or making finance more affordable.
Of course, current politics are not conducive to increasing international provision of grant-equivalent finance, with recent short-sighted decisions taking overseas aid even further away from the global target for countries to provide assistance equal to 0.7% of their gross national income, established over fifty years ago, despite public support.
Naturally, Global South countries should not hold their breath waiting for others to come to their senses, but should do what they can, including South-South cooperation.
Bold signal needed
And yet, if global temperature goals are not to slip out of reach, if climate action is to be enhanced and injustice and indebtedness curtailed, richer countries must step up on finance. Will the Roadmap affirm this? The COP presidencies have yet to give a firm indication, though have called for inputs from finance ministers and other key groupings through ongoing consultations.
To be successful, there must be a willingness to depart from the status quo — just as was demonstrated with the Paris Agreement and the UAE Consensus, which set ambitious goals to limit global temperature rise and accelerate energy transition, respectively. Even amid uncertainty, these agreements raised the standard for ambition instead of passively allowing low expectations to go unchallenged.
A comparable approach is now needed for international public finance – the Baku-to-Belem Roadmap must send a bold signal of what is required, lest a key opportunity be lost.
The post A COP30 roadmap to inaction or ambition on climate finance? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Trump’s latest climate rollback
RULES REPEALED: The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun dismantling Biden-era regulations limiting pollution from power plants, including carbon dioxide emissions, reported the Financial Times. Announcing the repeal, climate-sceptic EPA administrator Lee Zeldin labelled efforts to fight climate change a “cult”, according to the New York Times. Politico said that these actions are the “most important EPA regulatory actions of Donald Trump’s second term to date”.
WEBSITE SHUTDOWN: The Guardian reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Climate.gov website “will imminently no longer publish new content” after all production staff were fired. Former employees of the agency interviewed by the Guardian believe the cuts were “specifically aimed at restricting public-facing climate information”.
EVS TARGETED: The Los Angeles Times reported that Trump signed legislation on Thursday “seeking to rescind California’s ambitious auto emission standards, including a landmark rule that eventually would have barred sales of new gas-only cars in California by 2035”.
UK goes nuclear
NEW NUCLEAR: In her first spending review, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves announced £14.2bn for the Sizewell C new nuclear power plant in Suffolk, England – the first new state-backed nuclear power station for decades and the first ever under a Labour government, BBC News reported. The government also announced funding for three small nuclear reactors to be built by Rolls-Royce, said the Times. Carbon Brief has just published a chart showing the “rise, fall and rise” of UK nuclear.
MILIBAND REWARDED: The Times described energy secretary Ed Miliband as one of the “biggest winners” from the review. In spite of relentless negative reporting around him from right-leaning publications, his Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) received the largest relative increase in capital spending. Carbon Brief’s summary has more on all the key climate and energy takeaways from the spending review.
Around the world
- UN OCEAN SUMMIT: In France, a “surge in support” brought the number of countries ratifying the High Seas Treaty to just 10 short of the 60 needed for the agreement to become international law, according to Sky News.
- CALLING TRUMP: Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he would “call” Trump to “persuade him” to attend COP30, according to Agence France-Presse. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that the country’s environmental agency has fast tracked oil and highway projects that threaten the Amazon.
- GERMAN FOSSIL SURGE: Due to “low” wind levels, electricity generation from renewables in Germany fell by 17% in the first quarter of this year, while generation from fossil-fuel sources increased significantly, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
- BATTERY BOOST: The power ministry in India announced 54bn rupees ($631m) in funding to build 30 gigawatt-hours of new battery energy storage systems to “ensure round-the-clock renewable energy capacities”, reported Money Control.
-19.3C
The temperature that one-in-10 London winters could reach in a scenario where a key Atlantic ocean current system “collapses” and global warming continues under “intermediate” emissions, according to new research covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- A study in Science Advances found that damage to coral reefs due to climate change will “outpace” reef expansion. It said “severe declines” will take place within 40-80 years, while “large-scale coral reef expansion requires centuries”.
- Climatic Change published research which identified “displacement and violence, caregiving burdens, early marriages of girls, human trafficking and food insecurity” as the main “mental health” stressors exacerbated by climate change for women in lower and middle-income countries.
- The weakening of a major ocean current system has partially offset the drying of the southern Amazon rainforest, research published in Environmental Research has found, demonstrating that climate tipping elements have the potential to moderate each other.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Aerosols – tiny light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds. In this way they have historically “acted as an invisible brake on global warming”. New Carbon Brief analysis by Dr Zeke Hausfather illustrated the extent to which a reduction in aerosol emissions in recent decades, while bringing widespread public health benefits through avoided deaths, has “unmasked” the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The chart above shows the estimated cooling effect of aerosols from the start of the industrial era until 2020.
Spotlight
How Carbon Brief turns complex research into visuals
This week, Carbon Brief’s interactive developer Tom Pearson explains how and why his team creates visuals from research papers.
Carbon Brief’s journalists will often write stories based on new scientific research or policy reports.
These documents will usually contain charts or graphics highlighting something interesting about the story. Sometimes, Carbon Brief’s visuals team will choose to recreate these graphics.
There are many reasons why we choose to spend time and effort doing this, but most often it can be boiled down to some combination of the following things.
Maintaining editorial and visual consistency
We want to, where possible, maintain editorial and visual consistency while matching our graphical and editorial style guides.
In doing this, we are trying to ease our audience’s reading experience. We hope that, by presenting a chart in a way that is consistent with Carbon Brief’s house style, readers will be able to concentrate on the story or the explanation we are trying to communicate and not the way that a chart might have been put together.
Highlighting relevant information
We want to highlight the part of a chart that is most relevant to the story.
Graphics in research papers, especially if they have been designed for a print context, often strive to illustrate many different points with a single figure.
We tend to use charts to answer a single question or provide evidence for a single point.
Paring charts back to their core “message”, removing extraneous elements and framing the chart with a clear editorial title helps with this, as the example below shows.
Ensuring audience understanding
We want to ensure our audience understands the “message” of the chart.
Graphics published in specialist publications, such as scientific journals, might have different expectations regarding a reader’s familiarity with the subject matter and the time they might be expected to spend reading an article.
If we can redraw a chart so that it meets the expectations of a more general audience, we will.
Supporting multiple contexts
We want our graphics to make sense in different contexts.
While we publish our graphics primarily in articles on our website, the nature of the internet means that we cannot guarantee that this is how people will encounter them.
Charts are often shared on social media or copy-pasted into presentations. We want to support these practices by including as much context relevant to understanding within the chart image as possible.
Below illustrates how adding a title and key information can make a chart easier to understand without supporting information.
When we do not recreate charts
When will we not redraw a chart? Most of the time! We are a small team and recreating data graphics requires time, effort, accessible data and often specialist software.
But, despite these constraints, when the conditions are right, the process of redrawing maps and charts allows us to communicate more clearly with our readers, transforming complex research into accessible visual stories.
Watch, read, listen
SPENDING $1BN ON CLIMATE: New Scientist interviewed Greg de Temmerman, former nuclear physicist turned chief science officer at Quadrature Climate Foundation, about the practicalities and ethics of philanthropic climate-science funding.
GENDER HURDLES: Research director Tracy Kajumba has written for Climate Home News about the barriers that women still face in attending and participating in COPs.
OCEAN HEATWAVES: The New York Times presented a richly illustrated look at how marine heatwaves are spreading across the globe and how they affect life in the oceans.
Coming up
- 16-26 June: Bonn climate talks, Bonn, Germany
- 16 June: 79th meeting of the World Meteorological Organization executive council, Geneva, Switzerland
- 17 June: International Energy Agency (IEA) Oil 2025 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- Inside Climate News, California environmental reporter | Salary: Unknown. Location: Southern California
- Natural Resources Wales, lead marine and energy policy advisor | Salary: £45,367-£50,877. Location: Wales
- Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, senior manager, climate | Salary: £82,000. Location: London/hybrid
- Green Party,social media and digital content officer | Salary: £33,211. Location: London/remote
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 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The UK’s chancellor Rachel Reeves gave the green light this week to the Sizewell C new nuclear plant in Suffolk, along with funding for “small modular reactors” (SMRs) and nuclear fusion.
In her spending review of government funding across the rest of this parliament, Reeves pledged £14.2bn for Sizewell C, £2.5bn for Rolls-Royce SMRs and £2.5bn for fusion research.
The UK was a pioneer in civilian nuclear power – opening the world’s first commercial reactor at Calder Hall in Cumbria in 1956 – which, ultimately, helped to squeeze out coal generation.
Over the decades that followed, the UK’s nuclear capacity climbed to a peak of 12.2 gigawatts (GW) in 1995, while electricity output from the fleet of reactors peaked in 1998.
The chart below shows the contribution of each of the UK’s nuclear plants to the country’s overall capacity, according to when they started and stopped operating.
The reactors are dotted around the UK’s coastline, where they can take advantage of cooling seawater, and many sites include multiple units coded with numbers or letters.
Since Sizewell B was completed in 1995, however, no new nuclear plants have been built – and, as the chart above shows, capacity has ebbed away as older reactors have gone out of service.
After a lengthy hiatus, the Hinkley C new nuclear plant in Somerset was signed off in 2016. It is now under construction and expected to start operating by 2030 at the earliest.
(Efforts to secure further new nuclear schemes at Moorside in Cumbria failed in 2017, while projects led by Hitachi at Wylfa on Anglesey and Oldbury in Gloucestershire collapsed in 2019.)
The additional schemes just given the go-ahead in Reeves’s spending review would – if successful – somewhat revive the UK’s nuclear capacity, after decades of decline.
However, with the closure of all but one of the UK’s existing reactors due by 2030, nuclear-power capacity would remain below its 1995 peak, unless further projects are built.
Moreover, with the UK’s electricity demand set to double over the next few decades, as transport, heat and industry are increasingly electrified, nuclear power is unlikely to match the 29% share of generation that it reached during the late 1990s.
There is an aspirational goal – set under former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson – for nuclear to supply “up to” a quarter of the UK’s electricity in 2050, with “up to” 24GW of capacity.
Assuming Sizewell B continues to operate until 2055 and that Hinkley C, Sizewell C and at least three Rolls-Royce SMRs are all built, this would take UK capacity back up to 9.0GW.
Methodology
The chart is based on data from the World Nuclear Association, with known start dates for operating and retired reactors, as well as planned closure dates announced by operator EDF.
The timeline for new reactors to start operating – and assumed 60-year lifetime – is illustrative, based on published information from EDF, Rolls-Royce, the UK government and media reports.
The post Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades
Hanwha Qcells Launches EcoRecycle for Solar Panel Recycling
DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research
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