Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

Broken records

FIRES: Wildfires have burned through more than 1m hectares of land across the EU, making 2025 the worst year on record, the Guardian reported. Blazes in the EU have burned four times as much land this year as the average over the past two decades, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System, the outlet said. Meanwhile, the UK has “almost certainly” faced its hottest summer on record, according to provisional Met Office data covered by BBC News.

FLOODS: At least 34 people have been killed as heavy rainfall across India and Pakistan continued to cause flash floods and landslides in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the Associated Press reported. Continuing extreme rainfall in China has caused more than $2bn in damages since July, noted Reuters. Typhoon Kajiki has killed at least eight people in Vietnam and Thailand, with more flash floods and mudslides expected, Channel News Asia reported.

Turbine turbulence

POWER SHOCK: Shares in the Danish wind-power developer Ørsted dropped to a record low after the Trump administration ordered the firm to stop work on a near-complete project, the Financial Times reported. The $1.5bn Revolution Wind project is four-fifths complete and was due to power 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut, the newspaper said.

‘WINDFARM WASTE’: In the UK, the energy regulator Ofgem announced that energy bills will rise by 2% for millions of households in October, with the Times reporting that part of the increase is due to the rising cost of “paying wind farms to switch themselves off”. The news sparked a wave of critical editorials and comment pieces in right-leaning and climate-sceptic UK newspapers. A Carbon Brief factcheck previously explained how gas prices, rather than “balancing costs” associated with wind farms, are the largest driver of high electricity prices in the UK.

Around the world

• FORESTS FOREVER: At a summit in Colombia, Brazil won the backing of other Amazon nations for its $125bn “Tropical Forests Forever Facility”, a fund first launched at COP28 in 2023, Bloomberg reported.
• CHINA CAP: China’s cabinet announced that the country will “tighten its carbon trading market by introducing absolute emissions caps in some industries for the first time starting by 2027”, Reuters said.
• RECORD RENEWABLES: Global renewables investment increased by 10% in the first half of the year, when compared to last year, to a record $386bn, according to new data from BloombergNEF covered by BusinessGreen.
• BANKING BREAK: The Net-Zero Banking Alliance has “paused” its activities “after losing top European and Wall Street members amid Trump’s ongoing crusade against climate change”, reported the Financial Times.
• STAFF SUSPENDED: The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has suspended more than 20 members of staff who signed an open letter warning that Trump’s cuts to the body could risk a “national catastrophe” on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, according to BBC News.

87%

The percentage of new coal-power capacity located in China or India that came online globally in the first half of 2025, as revealed in a guest post for Carbon Brief written by Global Energy Monitor researchers.

Latest climate research

• Exposure to heatwaves may cause people to age faster | Nature Climate Change
• The number of supercell thunderstorms – the “most hazardous thunderstorm category” – could increase by an average of 11% in Europe under 3C of global warming | Science Advances
• Sea level rise projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) second assessment in 1995 were “strikingly close to what transpired over the next 30 years” | Earth’s Future

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

Carbon Brief published an in-depth factcheck debunking 16 of the most commonly heard false and misleading myths about solar power. One such claim is that solar power poses “a serious threat to agriculture and food security” by taking up land. The chart above, adapted from the factcheck, puts such a claim in perspective using the land-use of golf courses as a comparison.

Spotlight

How to reform the UN’s climate COPs

This week, Carbon Brief highlights a short extract from a new autobiography written by the late Peter Betts, who was the UK and EU lead negotiator at various COPs, including 2015’s pivotal COP21 in Paris. Betts, who died of brain cancer in October 2023, used his book to lay out his views on how to reform COPs – a topic Carbon Brief recently asked a range of experts about, too.

Of course, the UNFCCC and COP process has its shortcomings. For example, I would be the first to acknowledge that progress on finance, adaptation and loss and damage has been too slow. But I would argue that it would not have happened at all without the central global discussion afforded by the COPs, at which vulnerable countries always have a strong voice.

The alternative to COPs – often put forward by big and powerful countries – is to do everything within the G20, perhaps complemented by plurilateral cooperation between big states. No one would be more pleased to see the end of the COP process than big oil and gas interests in the US who sought to undermine COPs throughout my decade or more in negotiations.

My experience was that excluding the vulnerable countries led to lower-ambition outcomes which the US and emerging economies were comfortable with. The vast bulk of vulnerable countries would be horrified to lose the COPs, since it guarantees them a voice.

Overall, then, I believe that the case for keeping a global forum, where all have a seat at the table and, therefore, the most vulnerable have a voice, is overwhelming, and this is the UNFCCC. It is an indispensable political moment every year to rally the forces of ambition for climate change (and, to paraphrase Voltaire, if we didn’t have it, we would need to invent it). There are, however, two improvements that could be made to the way COPs operate.

1: The second stocktake

Formal stocktakes occur every five years, at a point two years before the next five-yearly ambition cycles of the COPs (such as Paris and Glasgow). But there is almost no focus by the media or NGOs on the announcements of NDCs [nationally determined contributions], especially those of “developing countries”, despite the importance of NDCs’ impact on climate goals.

In the run-up to the five-yearly stocktakes there should be a moment, perhaps a third of the way through the year, where we can see where we stand, individually and collectively, following the NDCs that have been announced. If some countries’ proposals are weak, those countries should be pressured to do more; if some have not submitted a proposal at all, then that should be highlighted.

It seems unlikely that the big economies would agree a formal process change, as when I have suggested such a second stocktake “moment” to various partners they have expressed concerns that it would be controversial. However, civil society should look to create this moment outside the formal process with analysis and media-friendly events which would provide an opportunity to assess (and put pressure on) relative, proposed contributions.

2: Annex membership

Second, we should review membership of the annexes to the convention, which set out who is “developed” and who is a “developing” country. We need a step change in support for emerging economies to help them make the transition to low carbon, which is increasingly affordable and will bring them other benefits. This means much more finance from Annex II countries, complemented by finance from China (the world’s biggest sovereign investor) and from Gulf states, who have grown rich on selling fossil fuels.

Sadly, however, I doubt whether it will be possible to negotiate changes to membership of the annexes, even though that was required by the convention to happen by 1998. But could countries such as China and the Gulf states not voluntarily step into Annex I and/or even Annex II?

Non-Annex I countries now constitute nearly two-thirds of global emissions and are likely to be a far higher proportion of emissions growth. So, if we want to limit climate change, it is these emissions we need above all to target. Of course, we must complement this by quicker action by Annex I countries, perhaps alongside negative emissions, and we must provide much more serious help to some non-Annex I countries.

Adapted from The Climate Diplomat: A Personal History of the COP Conferences by Peter Betts, published by Profile on 28 August and available now.

Watch, read, listen

KATRINA: Twenty years on from the category-five hurricane that devastated New Orleans, the Times had a lengthy feature about the “flood, failures and chilling aftermath”. Netflix also released a three-part series about the disaster.

SLOP: DeSmog investigated the websites using AI-generated content citing non-existent climate experts and institutions.

FAILED MODEL: Pakistani journalist Arifa Noor lamented in Dawn the “development model” being adopted by the nation’s “ruling elite” amid the “rage of climate change”.

Coming up

• 31 August-5 September: Africa Food Systems Summit, Dakar, Senegal
• 1 September: Guyana elections
• 3 September: Jamaica general election
• 5-10 September: Africa Climate Summit 2, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Pick of the jobs

• World Weather Attribution, media relations manager | Salary: £46,614-£56,345. Location: London/hybrid
• Wood Mackenzie, research analyst – solar supply chain, power & renewables | Salary: Unknown. Location: Shanghai
• Conservation Law Foundation, vice president for clean energy and climate change | Salary: $136,000-$175,000. Location: Boston, US
• London School of Economics, head of Climate and Growth Initiative | Salary: £53,949-£62,160. Location: London

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

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DeBriefed 22 August 2025: Pakistan floods; China emissions drop; Climate-adaptive architecture

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22.08.25

DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report

DeBriefed

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15.08.25

DeBriefed 8 August 2025: Arctic heatwave; Climate anxiety deep-dive; France’s wildfire crisis

DeBriefed

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08.08.25

DeBriefed 1 August 2025: Trump targets ‘endangerment finding’; Floods and heatwaves; ‘Thirst’ exhibition

DeBriefed

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01.08.25

The post DeBriefed 29 August 2025: Record wildfires; Solar myths factchecked; Climate veteran on COP reform appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 29 August 2025: Record wildfires; Solar myths factchecked; Climate veteran on COP reform

We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

Key developments

Amazon summit leaves observers ‘frustrated’

MISSING THE TARGET: The fifth summit of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) took place last Friday, with the release of the Bogotá Declaration coming the next day, Agência Brasil reported. The meeting was a “platform to update the commitments of the countries” that share the Amazon rainforest, the outlet said. The declaration “emphasised the urgency of coordinated action against deforestation and biodiversity loss”, but there was an “absence of clearer targets”, which “frustrated” observers and civil-society groups. Agência Brasil also said that the “issue of energy transition and fossil-fuel exploration” was divisive at the summit.

INDIGENOUS INCLUSION: Ahead of the meeting, Indigenous groups were “demanding that oil be left underground…[and] that the Amazon be declared the world’s first no-go zone for fossil-fuel exploration and exploitation”, EFE Verde reported. According to Stand.earth, the summit “strengthen[ed] Indigenous participation” despite “fail[ing]” to meet the fossil-fuel demands. The summit resulted in the creation of the Amazonian Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (MAPI), which Stand.earth explained “establishes a co-governance structure” for ACTO where each country is represented by both a government and an Indigenous delegate.

FUND THE FACILITY: Another element of the Bogotá Declaration was a pledge to support the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), Climate Home News reported. The outlet added that the declaration “invites” countries to “announce substantial contributions” in order to “guarantee the fund’s quick activation”. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said: “We’re fed up with promises…I want to see who’s going to put up the money to keep the forest standing.” Meanwhile, ((o))eco reported that Brazil saw an 84% increase in international climate finance from 2019-20 to 2021-22, but forests received just 2%.

Wildfires continue to burn

NEW EU RECORD: Wildfires have ravaged more than 1m hectares in the EU in 2025, the largest area since records began in 2006, according to an analysis by Agence France-Presse. The news agency analysed data from the European Forest Fire Information System and found that Spain, Cyprus, Germany and Slovakia have been the hardest hit over the past two decades. Additionally, satellites revealed that wildfires across the Iberian peninsula released 13m tonnes of carbon dioxide this year – six times larger than 2022 levels, El Periódico reported.

HARDEST HIT: Six firefighters died while combatting “devastating wildfires exacerbated by an enduring heatwave” in Spain and Portugal, according to France24. More than 343,000 hectares were “ravage[d]” this year in Spain, setting a new national record, the outlet said. Scientists identified the primary cause of the fires in both countries as an “overabundance of flammable vegetation on abandoned land and authorities’ failure to take preventive measures,” which prompted Spain’s environmental prosecutor to initiate an “investigation into the lack of prevention plans”, Politico added.

US FIRES: Wildfires in California and Oregon led to the evacuation of thousands of homes, the Associated Press reported. In Oregon, the fire began Thursday and “grew quickly amid hot, gusty conditions”, the newswire said. A “sweltering” heatwave has hospitalised people in the western US, it added. Mongabay covered the “scientific standoff” surrounding the “active management” of forests, which consists of using controlled burning and thinning of forests to promote regeneration and resilience. It added that forest managers are “grappl[ing] with the growing effects of climate change”.

News and views

PRIVATE SECTOR CALL: Nature loss will reduce UK GDP by 5% without a “greater effort” from the private sector to halt the decline, the Guardian said. A report from the Green Finance Institute and WWF said that companies in many sectors can receive economic returns from investment in nature. The outlet noted that some businesses “are failing to reform or are unaware of the impact of their actions on nature and the climate”. The report listed suggestions for companies to take action on nature decline.

SOLAR SLOWDOWN: The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it will “heighten scrutiny of some solar and wind projects” on farmland across the country, reported Reuters. The agency said it will stop funding larger renewable energy facilities and will not allow the use of foreign-made solar panels. Inside Climate News said the agency had expressed concern about the possible expansion of wind and solar facilities on productive farmland. However, the outlet cited a 2024 USDA analysis finding that renewables occupy 0.05% of the 897m acres of pasture and cropland in the country.

FISHERY REFORM: Ghanaian president John Dramani Mahama signed a “sweeping” fisheries and aquaculture reform act into law last week that the government believes will “ensure sustainability…and better protection for the country’s fishing communities”, according to Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. One provision in the bill is an expansion of the country’s inshore exclusion zone, which prevents industrial trawling ships from encroaching on artisanal fishing grounds. News Ghana reported that the law is “designed to address EU trade sanctions”, which threaten the country’s $425m annual seafood exports.

POLARISED POLICY: A new forest land policy in the Philippines has been touted by officials as a “major shift in forest governance”, but has been questioned by civil society organisations, Mongabay reported. Under the policy, farmers are able to carry out multiple different land uses – including reforestation, ecotourism, conservation and commercial use – in designated forest areas. The secretary of the Philippines’s environment department said the reform is an attempt to “unlock the economic potential” of the country’s forests and scale up sustainable investment. The outlet said that environmental groups warned of the policy resulting in forest degradation, the displacement of Indigenous peoples and greenwashing.

PARAGUAYAN PLANTATIONS: Apple purchased carbon credits associated with the use of agrochemicals harmful to communities on eucalyptus plantations in Paraguay, a joint investigation for Consenso and Climate Tracker revealed. The investigation used documents, field visits and satellite images to show that the forestry company selling these carbon credits does not “comply with agrochemical regulations”. It added that eucalyptus monocultures cover more than 300,000 hectares in Paraguay. Residents have pointed out the risks of wildfire due to “persistent drought” conditions in the country over the past five years. Apple had not responded to the allegations at the time of the investigation’s publication.

Spotlight

Extreme heat could triple lost work hours by century’s end

This week, Carbon Brief covers a new UN-backed report that examines the impacts of climate change on labour productivity and health.

Manual labourers, such as farmworkers and fisherfolk, are “already” being impacted by rising temperatures, according to two UN agencies.

A new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) examined the effects of climate change on heat stress in the workplace and offered technical guidance for employers, workers and policymakers.

The report called occupational heat stress a “global societal challenge”.

It also noted that both the direct and indirect impacts of environmental heat stress will worsen and spread geographically as the world continues to warm.

In a press conference prior to the release of the report, Dr Rüdiger Krech, interim director of the WHO’s environment, climate change and migration programme, said the report offered the “most comprehensive evidence yet on how rising temperatures are harming workers”.

‘Adverse consequences’

In 1969, the WHO published a technical report on the potential health threats of working under environmental heat stress. The report concluded that “knowledge relating to occupational heat exposures is inadequate in many respects”. It recommended several priorities for further research.

The new report updated the 1969 report with decades’ worth of research showing that workplace heat stress “directly threatens workers’ ability to live healthy and productive lives and leads subsequently to worsening poverty and socioeconomic inequality”.

It found that around half of the global population currently experiences “adverse consequences of high environmental temperatures”. Agricultural work is “often regarded as [one of] the highest-risk occupations” for work-related heat illness, it said.

Farmworkers typically work with little or no shade during the hottest hours of the day. Some groups of agricultural workers – such as those who manually spray pesticides or other agrochemicals – face added risk of heat stress due to the protective gear that they must wear.

The report warned that, while several early warning systems are in place to protect people during heatwaves, these systems may not be adequate to protect workers, who differ in their exposure to heat and their ability to adapt.

Raising the risk

The new report also examined the changing risks of occupational heat exposure in the context of climate change.

Citing the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it noted that each additional 0.5C of warming “significantly raises the risk of longer and more severe heatwaves”. The largest relative shifts will take place in the temperate mid-latitudes, but the frequency of dangerous events will also increase in the tropics, which have the “greatest workplace heat stress problems at present”.

Under the emissions scenario that aligns with current national climate policies, the worst-affected countries will face annual work hour losses of up to 11% by the end of the century – up from 2-4% today, the report said.

Previous research has found that 3C of warming could reduce global labour capacity by up to 50%, driving up food prices and requiring higher levels of agricultural employment to make up the shortfall.

Krech told the press conference:

“Protecting workers from extreme heat is not only a health priority, it is essential to building resilient, equal and sustainable societies in a warming world.”

Watch, read, listen

ACCESS ISSUES: Civil Eats covered a group in northern California that works to bridge the gap between emergency-relief organisations and local food-systems workers during emergencies.

DELVING INTO THE DEPTHS: NPR Shortwave addressed the importance of mapping the entire seafloor for “improving human life”, from tsunami alerts through to renewable energy.

CONSEQUENCES IN CALIFORNIA: A California state legislator and the president of the California Farm Bureau wrote in the New York Times how immigration raids on farmworkers increase food waste and drive up prices.
‘MESSY GARDENS’: A CBC News video explored how having a “messy garden” can bring benefits for biodiversity and contribute to mitigating climate change.

New science

• A study published in One Earth found that the “planetary boundary” of ecosystem integrity may have already been breached on up to 60% of the Earth’s land surface. Researchers modelled ecological disruption and found that 38% of the Earth is “already at high risk of degradation”.
• Research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that if global temperatures rise 2.3C above pre-industrial temperatures, soil bacterial and fungal diversity would be reduced by 16 and 19%, respectively. It also found that soil organic carbon would drop by 18% under that level of warming.
• Eating a diet of biodiverse, plant-based foods can have “modest benefits” for both sufficient nutrition and environmental health, according to new research published in Nature Food. The study found that diversity of animal-sourced foods was inversely associated with both greenhouse gas emissions and land use.

In the diary

• 18-29 August: Second session of the preparatory commission for the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction | New York
• 31 August-5 September: Africa Food Systems Summit | Dakar, Senegal
• 2-5 September: Subregional dialogue on biodiversity monitoring and reporting | Bangkok, Thailand
• 14-18 September: International Mountain Conference | Innsbruck, Austria

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org

Cropped 13 August 2025: Fossil-fuelled bird decline; ‘Deadly’ wildfires; Empty nature fund

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13.08.25

Cropped 30 July 2025: ‘Unprecedented’ ocean heatwaves; ‘Uneven’ hunger progress; Brazil’s ‘devastation bill’

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30.07.25

Cropped 16 July 2025: EU deforestation law pushback; Agri emissions; US lobster disease

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16.07.25

Cropped 2 July 2025: US public lands under attack; How India’s gig workers are suffering under climate change; Bonn to Belém

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02.07.25

The post Cropped 27 August 2025: ‘Frustrating’ Amazon summit; Workplace heat hazards; Record European wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 27 August 2025: ‘Frustrating’ Amazon summit; Workplace heat hazards; Record European wildfires

The world is set to pump far more oil and gas than it would use if it is to meet the 1.5C warming limit endorsed by governments in the Paris Agreement, according to new analysis from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Meeting the Paris temperature target would mean shutting down production of eight million barrels a day of oil and 250 billion cubic metres of gas a year by 2050, the IEA said in a report this week – roughly equal to Saudi Arabia’s oil and Iran’s gas output today.

Back in 2021, the agency made headlines by declaring there was “no room” for new fossil fuel production projects in a 1.5C warming scenario.

But this week, it added that – with the 1.5C scenario’s projected rapid drop in oil and gas demand – “several higher cost” oil and gas production projects should be shut down “before they reach the end of their technical lifetimes”.

While the IEA did not name any specific projects, it has previously identified oil projects in Canada, China and Algeria and gas projects in Australia, Argentina and Malaysia as among the most expensive. The cost of extracting oil and gas varies, mainly depending on geographic and geological factors.

Kelly Trout, research director at Oil Change International, said that the IEA’s findings show “countries must follow through on their internationally agreed commitment to transition away from polluting fossil fuels, and invest in a renewable energy future”.

Buried in a box

Despite those findings, a press release accompanying the report led with warnings about the “implications for markets and energy security” of slowing production in oil and gas fields – an aspect many media articles focused on. The IEA has come under pressure from the Trump administration in the US to promote fossil fuels.

The 1.5C warming scenario, meanwhile, was buried in a three-paragraph box near the end of the 73-page report.

The report found that most of the cheapest and easiest-to-access oil and gas reserves have already been extracted, “leaving primarily smaller, deeper and more technically challenging fields” which are often deep under the sea.

Despite recent large discoveries of oil in Guyana and gas in Mozambique, the amount of conventional oil and gas discovered has been declining since at least the 1960s, the report found. Over the last ten years, oil and gas companies have been spending less and less on exploration.

Of the $550 billion spent annually, about $500bn simply replaces declining fields. Only $50bn goes to new supply, the IEA estimated.

Guy Prince, head of energy supply research at Carbon Tracker, told Climate Home that the big publicly traded oil and gas companies “are being cautious, quietly retreating from energy growth and instead returning cash to shareholders”.

In 2024, Rystad analysis shows that six of these big companies paid out a record $119 billion to shareholders, leaving them with less cash to invest in producing oil and gas.

Prince said the shift to electric vehicles poses the biggest threat to future oil demand.

US pressures the IEA

The IEA projects in both its “announced pledges” and its “stated policies” scenarios that demand for both oil and gas will peak before 2030. These projections have angered US Republicans who worry they will disincentivise investment in oil and gas extraction.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright called these projections “nonsensical” and said in July that the US will leave the IEA if it cannot reform it.

The IEA has said it will re-introduce a more pessimistic projection, called the “current policy” scenario, to its flagship World Energy Outlook report, to be published alongside other scenarios. According to Bloomberg, a draft of the report shows that this scenario projects oil and gas demand rising into the 2050s.

Greg Muttitt, a researcher at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, wrote in a post on Linkedin that the IEA’s stated policies and announced pledges scenarios’ projections of a pre-2030 oil peak are backed by estimates from oil companies like BP and Equinor, as well as consultancies like McKinsey.

“The US Administration wants people to believe that fossil fuels will have a bright future, hoping that this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he added. “But overly-optimistic fossil narratives lead to economic risks, both for investors and for countries whose economies depend on oil & gas revenues, such as Nigeria and Iraq.”

The post IEA says some oil and gas projects must shut early to meet 1.5C limit appeared first on Climate Home News.

IEA says some oil and gas projects must shut early to meet 1.5C limit