Published

1 year ago

December 24, 2024

Alice Rush

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

This week

COP29 kicks off

AGENDA FIGHT: The UN’s COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan got off to a shaky start on Monday. The host nation attempted to repeat the UAE’s COP28 day-one “win” by pushing through a deal on Article 6.4, which governs international carbon trading, in a move described by one party as a “horrible precedent”. But, instead of adulation, the COP29 presidency landed in a lengthy “agenda fight”, resolved in classic COP fashion with a footnote. This fight reflected the key battlelines at the summit: the new climate finance goal; and how, where – or even whether – to carry forward COP28’s deal on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”. Carbon Brief journalists will host a free webinar to answer questions about COP29 later today. Sign up.

COUNTRY CLIMATE PLANS: Three nations – UAE, Brazil and the UK – have come forward with new UN climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), ahead of the February 2025 deadline. Climate Home News reported that the UAE’s plan was criticised for failing to include measures to restrain oil and gas production, which is projected to rise by a third by 2035. Meanwhile, the Brazilian climate NGO Climate Observatory said the emissions cut planned by the nation falls far short of its fair share towards limiting global warming to 1.5C. The UK’s emissions aim has broadly been welcomed by climate experts.

‘PAY UP’: With a new climate-finance goal seen as the main COP29 objective, UN secretary general António Guterres told leaders to “pay up, or humanity will pay the price”, Reuters reported. Early disputes over the goal produced a draft text with “pretty much every option…on the table”, showing “polarised views” between countries, explained the Hindustan Times. (For more on the negotiations, see Spotlight below.) Meanwhile, multilateral development banks announced that their climate-finance contributions will reach $120bn annually by 2030, according to Azernews.

World leaders summit

‘GIFT OF GOD’: The president of Azerbaijan, the country hosting COP29, caused a media firestorm by describing oil and gas a “gift of god” during his address at the opening of the conference’s World Leaders Climate Action summit. BBC News reported that Ilham Aliyev criticised “western fake news” about the country’s emissions and said nations “should not be blamed” for exploiting their fossil fuels. On Friday, senior figures including former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres wrote in a letter that the COP process is “no longer fit for purpose”.

UNITED MESSAGES: Aliyev’s address at the summit was followed by interventions from 80 heads of state on Tuesday and Wednesday. Carbon Brief was in the room for the summit’s first day and summarised what each leader chose to focus on. Developing countries put on a united front calling for “climate justice” to be at the heart of climate-finance discussions, while European leaders implored all countries to release new plans to keep the 1.5C temperature goal in sight.

LEADERSHIP SCRAMBLE: After Donald Trump’s US election win, debate is swirling over which party might take over as a “leader” at the talks. The UK government told the Observer it intended to step up to “save COP29”. At its first press conference, the European Union said it will lead from the front at the negotiations – despite France’s environment minister deciding to skip the summit following a diplomatic spat with Azerbaijan. At the sidelines, a senior Chinese official told delegates that “China is willing to take a more active role in global climate governance”, according to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.

Around the world

SHELL COURT WIN: Oil giant Shell has won a “landmark case” in the Dutch courts, reported BBC News, overturning a ruling requiring the company to cut its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels.
EMISSIONS RISE: A new Global Carbon Budget report has found there is “no sign” of the transition away from burning fossil fuels pledged at COP28, with emissions from coal, oil and gas rising by 0.8% in 2024, the Guardian reported. Carbon Brief has an in-depth write-up of the report.
‘THREE-YEAR STANDSTILL’: Current policies would put the world on track for 2.7C of warming by 2100 – following a “three-year standstill” in significant climate progress, according to a Climate Action Tracker report covered by the New York Times.
TRUMP MOVES: Donald Trump is expected to nominate former Republican congressman Lee Zeldin as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a federal body responsible for enforcing climate rules, according to the New York Times. The Hill reported that, in a recent interview, Zeldin said that the Trump administration would “roll back regulations that are forcing businesses to struggle”.
VALENCIA PROTESTS: Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Valencia, Spain last weekend, calling on the local leaders to resign after more than 200 people were killed in recent flooding, according to the Guardian.

12%

The proportion of heads of state speaking at COP29 that were female, based on the official running order.

Latest climate research

Human-induced climate change has driven a 1.49C temperature increase compared to a pre-1700 baseline, according to a new Nature Geoscience study using Antarctic ice-core data.
Air temperatures inside caves in the European Alps have increased by around 0.2C per decade over the past 20 years, a new Scientific Reports study found.
A new research paper in Nature Ecology and Evolution found that the capacity of land to store carbon has weakened during warm extremes over the past 40 years – mainly in tropical regions.

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

Captured

More than 65,000 delegates have registered to attend COP29 in Baku, potentially making it the second-largest COP on record. This total is more than 15,000 lower than the record-breaking COP in Dubai last year – and marks the first time in seven years that a COP is not larger than its predecessor. According to Carbon Brief analysis, host country Azerbaijan has the largest delegation at the summit, with 2,229 people registered. This is followed by Brazil (1,914), Turkey (1,862), the UAE (1,011) and China (969).

Spotlight

Finance and fossil-fuel fights at COP29

This week, Carbon Brief outlines what to expect from the two biggest topics being negotiated at COP29.

Climate finance

Nations gathered at COP29 must agree on a global target to channel finance into climate action, known as the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG).

There are major rifts between parties over virtually every aspect of the NCQG. As a result, negotiations got off to a shaky start.

Broadly, developing countries want developed countries to provide or “mobilise” at least $1tn a year to them, largely as grants. Developed country parties, such as the US and the EU, want a goal that does not rely entirely on them, including lots of private investment and input from the wealthier developing countries. Parties have diverging views on when the goal should be delivered, but dates broadly range between 2025 and 2035.

At the first opportunity, developing countries unanimously rejected the nine-page text meant as the starting point for negotiations and requested a rewrite.

Ali Mohamed, chair of the African Group of Negotiators, told journalists that the “biggest obstacle” was language that shifted responsibility away from developed countries’ obligation to provide funds to developing countries.

Having incorporated the views of all countries, the co-chairs facilitating the talks released a new version that had ballooned to 34 pages and was widely viewed as unworkable. There were more delays as parties only allowed the chairs to slightly streamline this text, producing one that was just a page shorter.

By this point, talks were entering the second half of the week and delegates expressed concerns that so little progress had been made. EU lead negotiator Jacob Werksman told a press briefing that they were “very worried”, lamenting that “more than a year of preparation” had gone into the initial text that had been rejected.

Negotiators are engaging in informal talks to hash out some of the less divisive elements, such as how easy it is for countries to access funds. Next week will see government ministers take over, with the goal of steering them through more controversial territories into a final conclusion.

Fossil fuels

Apart from climate finance, the other key battleground at COP29 is around how – or even whether – to carry forward the outcome of last year’s “global stocktake”, in which all parties agreed to help with “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.

This question was a major part of the “agenda fight” at the start of the summit. Disagreement centred on which part of the agenda would include the “UAE dialogue”, which was created to discuss “implementing the global stocktake outcomes”.

The Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDCs), including China and India, want this dialogue to focus exclusively on finance, as do the Arab Group and the African Group. Many others want a broader focus, taking in all stocktake outcomes, including fossil-fuel transition.

Supporters, including the EU, US, UK, small island states (AOSIS) and Latin American countries (AILAC), are pushing for text on ambitious climate action in several venues.

Ultimately, fossil-fuel transition could end up in a so-called “cover text” at COP29. This has become a space to include more political language that does not have a “home” elsewhere.

On Thursday evening, the Azerbaijan presidency began talks with parties on where to put text on climate ambition – including fossil-fuel transition – but it has yet to give more details on its plans.

Watch, read, listen

TRUMP FAILSAFE: Politico’s Power Play podcast spoke to Ali Zaidi, the White House’s national climate advisor, on whether Biden’s climate policies were built to outlast the incoming Trump administration.

EXXON SAYS STAY: In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said Donald Trump “shouldn’t pull” the US from the Paris Agreement.
PARTISAN OVERFLOW: New DeSmog analysis found that industrial agriculture and biotechnology representatives “enjoyed privileged access” to the COP16 biodiversity summit negotiations, brought in on country badges.

Coming up

11-22 November: UN Climate Change Conference COP29, Baku, Azerbaijan
18-19 November: G20 heads of state summit, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
18-22 November: International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Council 133rd Session, London

Pick of the jobs

CNN, extreme weather editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Hong Kong
World Meteorological Organization (WMO)-World Health Organization (WHO) Joint Office, associate programme officer for climate and health | Salary: $50,377. Location: Geneva
Columbia University Climate School, assistant/associate professor in climate finance | Salary: $200,000-$300,000. Location: New York
Cooperative Institute for Modelling the Earth System (CIMES), Princeton University, summer research internships in atmospheric, oceanic and earth system science | Salary: $5,600-$6,300 for a 40-hour work week. Location: Princeton, New Jersey
Wellcome Trust, head of communications for climate and health | Salary: £94,100. Location: London (hybrid, two days remote work)

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 COP29 DeBriefed 15 November 2024: Azerbaijan’s shaky start; Finance and fossil fuels dominate negotiations; Free webinar today appeared first on Carbon Brief.

COP29 DeBriefed 15 November 2024: Azerbaijan’s shaky start; Finance and fossil fuels dominate negotiations; Free webinar today

Climate Change

Corpus Christi Cuts Timeline to Disaster as Abbott Issues Emergency Orders

Published

21 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

The governor’s office said the city’s two main reservoirs could dry up by May, much sooner than previous timelines. But authorities still offer no plan for curtailment of water use.

By Dylan Baddour

City officials in Corpus Christi on Tuesday released modeling that showed emergency cuts to water demand could be required as soon as May as reservoir levels continue to decline.

Corpus Christi Cuts Timeline to Disaster as Abbott Issues Emergency Orders

Climate Change

Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems

Published

22 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Lena Luig is the head of the International Agricultural Policy Division at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a member of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Anna Lappé is the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.

As toxic clouds loom over Tehran and Beirut from the US and Israel’s bombardment of oil depots and civilian infrastructure in the region’s ongoing war, the world is once again witnessing the not-so-subtle connections between conflict, hunger, food insecurity and the vulnerability of global food systems dependent on fossil fuels, dominated by a few powerful countries and corporations.

The conflict in Iran is having a huge impact on the world’s fertilizer supply. The Strait of Hormuz is a critical trade route in the region for nearly half of the global supply of urea, the main synthetic fertilizer derived from natural gas through the conversion of ammonia.

With the Strait impacted by Iran’s blockades, prices of urea have shot up by 35% since the war started, just as planting season starts in many parts of the world, putting millions of farmers and consumers at risk of increasing production costs and food price spikes, resulting in food insecurity, particularly for low-income households. The World Food Programme has projected that an extra 45 million people would be pushed into acute hunger because of rises in food, oil and shipping costs, if the war continues until June.

Pesticides and synthetic fertilizer leave system fragile

On the face of it, this looks like a supply chain issue, but at the core of this crisis lies a truth about many of our food systems around the world: the instability and injustice in the very design of systems so reliant on these fossil fuel inputs for our food.

At the Global Alliance, a strategic alliance of philanthropic foundations working to transform food systems, we have been documenting the fossil fuel-food nexus, raising alarm about the fragility of a system propped up by fossil fuels, with 15% of annual fossil fuel use going into food systems, in part because of high-cost, fossil fuel-based inputs like pesticides and synthetic fertilizer. The Heinrich Böll Foundation has also been flagging this threat consistently, most recently in the Pesticide Atlas and Soil Atlas compendia.

We’ve seen this before: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sparked global disruptions in fertilizer supply and food price volatility. As the conflict worsened, fertilizer prices spiked – as much from input companies capitalizing on the crisis for speculation as from real cost increases from production and transport – triggering a food price crisis around the world.

Mar 16, 2026

News

‘Completely delusional’: UN climate chief warns against fossil fuel push after Iran crisis

As Gulf disruptions send oil and gas prices soaring, Simon Stiell urges leaders to double down on renewables and fight fossil fuel dependency

Read more
Mar 4, 2026

Energy

Gulf oil and gas crisis sparks calls for renewables investment

Energy analysts and some politicians say the Iran war’s effect on oil and gas prices shows renewables are the path to energy security

Read more

Since then, fertilizer industry profit margins have continued to soar. In 2022, the largest nine fertilizer producers increased their profit margins by more than 35% compared to the year before—when fertilizer prices were already high. As Lena Bassermann and Dr. Gideon Tups underscore in the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Soil Atlas, the global dependencies of nitrogen fertilizer impacted economies around the world, especially state budgets in already indebted and import-dependent economies, as well as farmers across Africa.

Learning lessons from the war in Ukraine, many countries invested heavily in renewable energy and/or increased domestic oil production as a way to decrease dependency on foreign fossil fuels. But few took the same approach to reimagining domestic food systems and their food sovereignty.

Agroecology as an alternative

There is another way. Governments can adopt policy frameworks to encourage reductions in synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use, especially in regions that currently massively overuse nitrogen fertilizer. At the African Union fertilizer and Soil Health Summit in 2024, African leaders at least agreed that organic fertilizers should be subsidized as well, not only mineral fertilizers, but we can go farther in actively promoting agricultural pathways that reduce fossil fuel dependency.

In 2024, the Global Alliance organized dozens of philanthropies to call for a tenfold increase in investments to help farmers transition from fossil fuel dependency towards agroecological approaches that prioritize livelihoods, health, climate, and biodiversity.

In our research, we detail the huge opportunity to repurpose harmful subsidies currently supporting inputs like synthetic fertilizer and pesticides towards locally-sourced bio-inputs and biofertilizer production. We know this works: There are powerful stories of hope and change from those who have made this transition, despite only receiving a fraction of the financing that industrial agriculture receives, with evidence of benefits from stable incomes and livelihoods to better health and climate outcomes.

New summit in Colombia seeks to revive stalled UN talks on fossil fuel transition

Inspiring examples abound: G-BIACK in Kenya is training farmers how to produce their own high-quality compost; start-ups like the Evola Company in Cambodia are producing both nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and protein-rich animal feed with black soldier fly farming; Sabon Sake in Ghana is enriching sugarcane bagasse – usually organic waste – with microbial agents and earthworms to turn it into a rich vermicompost.

These efforts, grounded in ecosystems and tapping nature for soil fertility and to manage pest pressures, are just some of the countless examples around the world, tapping the skill and knowledge of millions of farmers. On a national and global policy level, the Agroecology Coalition, with 480+ members, including governments, civil society organizations, academic institutions, and philanthropic foundations, is supporting a transition toward agroecology, working with natural systems to produce abundant food, boost biodiversity, and foster community well-being.

Fertilizer industry spins “clean” products

We must also inoculate ourselves from the fertilizer industry’s public relations spin, which includes promoting the promise that their products can be produced without heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Despite experts debunking the viability of what the industry has dubbed “green hydrogen” or “green or clean ammonia”, the sector still promotes this narrative, arguing that these are produced with resource-intensive renewable energy or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), a costly and unreliable technology for reducing emissions.

As we mourn this conflict’s senseless destruction and death, including hundreds of children, we also recognize that peace cannot mean a return to business-as-usual. We need to upend the systems that allow the richest and most powerful to have dominion over so much.

This includes fighting for a food system that is based on genuine sovereignty and justice, free from dependency on fossil fuels, one that honors natural systems and puts power into the hands of communities and food producers themselves.

The post Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems appeared first on Climate Home News.

Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems

Climate Change

Are There Climate Fingerprints in Tornado Activity?

Published

22 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Parts of the Southern and Northeastern U.S. faced tornado threats this week. Scientists are trying to parse out the climate links in changing tornado activity.

By Kiley Price

It’s been a weird few weeks for weather across the United States.