Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
US targets Chinese clean tech
100% TARIFFS: US president Joe Biden on Tuesday announced tariffs on “$18bn” in Chinese clean technologies and critical minerals, Reuters reported. According to the newswire, tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) will quadruple to 100% (plus a separate 2.5% tariff), while solar cell tariffs will double to 50%, lithium-ion EV battery tariffs will increase from 7.5% to 25% and tariffs on critical minerals rise from nothing to 25% this year.
SOLAR PANELS: On Friday, the Biden administration announced further tariffs on double-sided solar panel imports, which largely come from southeast Asia, the Financial Times reported. Economist Joe Brusuelas told CNN that the changes “foreshadow what is going to be a long, cold winter of economic conflict between the US and China”.
CALL AND RESPONSE: In the New York Times, economist Paul Krugman said the tariffs were all about “political economy”. He explained: “If those subsidies [under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act] are seen as creating jobs in China instead, our last, best hope of avoiding climate catastrophe will be lost.” State-run newspaper China Daily quoted foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin saying that the US is “making double standards by justifying its own subsidies and exports, while accusing other countries’ subsidies and exports as ‘unfair’ and ‘overcapacity’”.
Afghanistan flooding
‘CATASTROPHIC’ FLOODING: Flash flooding hit Baghlan province in north Afghanistan last Friday, leaving more than 300 people dead and villages cut off, Fox Weather reported. The outlet said that the flooding washed away “vast landscapes” of communities and farms. It added that the World Health Organization described the floods as “catastrophic” and stated the country “lacks the necessary resources to manage a disaster of this magnitude”, including health facilities, especially as waterborne diseases emerge.
AID CALL: A survivor of the floods in a district of Baghlan told Xinhua that victims fled to the mountain in search of refuge and scores of them are still stranded in the hilltops. The newswire spoke to another survivor who said: “No one has assisted us, the women are living in the open ground, there is no tent and no one has provided assistance.
Around the world
- WEAKENING UK TARGETS?: Ministers are “considering” weakening the UK’s emissions targets by carrying over the “unused” portion of the last carbon budget to the next period, the Guardian reported. A decision is due this month.
- VATICAN CLIMATE SUMMIT: Experts and leaders from the Americas, Asia and Africa met at a Vatican summit on how to “effectively manage” climate change and boost climate resilience from 15-17 May, Vatican News reported. The summit is expected to deliver a “Planetary Climate Resilience protocol”, which will be submitted to the UN climate change body.
- AFRICAN CLEAN COOKING: Carbon Brief covered a summit held in Paris which saw leaders pledge $2.2bn to help to achieve universal clean cooking access by 2030, examining what this could mean for climate, energy, nature and gender goals.
- BRAZIL CLIMATE REFUGEES: Nearly 80,000 people remain in shelters in Rio Grande do Sul, following flooding in the Brazilian state, according to El País. The outlet noted that people are in a “dramatic and uncertain situation as rains persist and water rises again”.
- ‘HISTORIC’ TREATY: Le Monde reported that Australia and Tuvalu have agreed on a “historic” treaty to welcome climate refugees from Tuvalu, an island in the South Pacific threatened by rising sea levels. The treaty will come into force by the end of the year.
- ‘GREEN’ MINING: At a press briefing attended by Carbon Brief, Indigenous leaders called for an upcoming OECD forum on responsible mineral supply chains to consider their rights to consent on mining projects.
€48 billion
The amount spent each year by the EU on nature-harming activities, according to a new report covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- New research published in Nature Communications found that chronic exposure of older adults to heat is projected to double in “all warming scenarios” by mid-century, with Asia and Africa being the most affected continents.
- Global investors and owners, mainly from Europe, were involved in 78% of wind and 96% of solar parks in Brazil from 2000 to 2021. These parks occupy 2,148 and 102 square km, respectively, and could “exacerbate land struggles,” according to a study in Nature Sustainability.
- A World Weather Attribution study found that the “deadly heatwaves” that hit Asia throughout April and May this year and brought temperatures above 40C, were more frequent and extreme due to climate 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
The administration of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has boosted coal mining and coal power since 2014. Carbon Brief published an interactive piece analysing the impact on Indian communities and climate change, as well how this year’s general election could change things. The map above shows that India’s coal reserves are concentrated in seven south-central and eastern states, regions that have significant Indigenous populations. Indigenous peoples and local communities told Carbon Brief that they have been displaced and suffered environmental impacts as a result of coal mining projects.
Spotlight
Intense heatwave hits Mexico
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to experts about why recent heat in Mexico was so deadly.
Mexico recently experienced a heatwave from 3 to 13 May, leaving 14 dead and driving temperatures above 40C in several states, Forbes Mexico reported. The health services in the state of San Luis Potosí, in eastern and central Mexico, reported 10 deaths from heat stroke and other similar deaths in southern and northern states.
Milenio reported that the heatwave also killed birds, such as parrots and toucans, in San Luis Potosí. N+ news added that owls, parrots, stake birds and bats also died because of the heat, and other species, such as squirrels and turkeys, were also affected.
The heatwave is the second major deadly event in Mexico’s heat season, which began in March, Reuters reported.
Mexico is no exception. A recent report by the World Meteorological Organization stated that 2023 was the hottest year in Latin America and the Caribbean, with temperatures 1.39C above the 1961-1990 period.
There were 3,405 heatwave-associated deaths annually in the region between 1990 and 2019, according to a new study published in PLOS Medicine.
Deadly impacts
Dr Lucía Gabriela Rosales, director of public health at the Health Services of San Luis Potosí, told Carbon Brief that this second heatwave was very “atypical” and caused four confirmed deaths from heat stroke – mostly in adults over the age of 60 – as well as cases of dehydration and heat stroke.
Rosales pointed out that there was no specific alert for this heatwave, but there was a warning about the heat season from the Civil Protection authorities.
She added that the health sector has carried out some actions to deal with the high temperatures in the state, such as community campaigns and hydration points. She called on the population to take care of their health.
Dr José Antonio Ávalos, head of the Laboratory of Climate Variability, Remote Sensing and Assessment of Risks at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, told Carbon Brief that May is the hottest month of the year in the state. Since 2023, the country as a whole has been experiencing levels of drought not seen since 1941, he added.
Ávalos pointed out that the authorities were aware of the municipalities most at risk from heatwaves, yet failed to effectively alert the population. He recommended the creation of a heatwave surveillance mechanism, the implementation of heat indices and increased investment in climate science.
The experts explained that heat stroke causes, among other things, body temperature above 42C, headache and tachycardia. Deaths from heat stroke are caused by an increase in the atmospheric temperature and humidity, which prevents the body’s sweat from evaporating, causing it to accumulate heat, they added.
Watch, read, listen
THREATENED PARKS: An Agence France-Presse video looked at how climate change is threatening many features of US national parks.
CHOCOLATE DILEMMA: A National Public Radio podcast explored how climate change is decreasing cocoa production worldwide and what solutions are available.
STELLAR CHANGE: The New York Times covered the challenges climate change poses to astronomers, who are considering “using their expertise” to address it.
Coming up
- 19 May: Dominican Republic presidential election
- 20 May: Fifth phase of India’s general election
- 21 May: International Energy Agency (IEA) ninth annual conference on energy efficiency, Nairobi, Kenya
- 21-24 May: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) forum on responsible mineral supply chains, Paris, France
- 22 May: Allied for Climate Transformation by 2025 (ACT2025) consortium high-level webinar on unlocking finance for climate-vulnerable nations at COP29 and beyond, virtual
Pick of the jobs
- Global Alliance for the Future of Food, climate and nature director | Salary: $125,000. Location: Global (remote)
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate mitigation staff scientist (working group III) | Salary: $76,848-$130,642. Location: Washington DC (hybrid)
- The Washington Post, climate and environment photo assignment editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Washington DC
- UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, filmmaker, Antarctica 2024-2025 | Salary: Travel and expenses plus a fee. Location: Cambridge, UK and Blaiklock, Antarctica
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 17 May 2024: Biden’s clean-energy tariff blitz; Modi’s coal plans examined; Deadly heat in Mexico appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Discussing climate change can make a difference. Focusing on the impacts in everyday life is a good place to start, experts say.
When Bad Bunny climbed onto broken power lines during his Super Bowl halftime show, millions of viewers saw a spectacle. Climate communicators saw a lesson in how to talk about climate change.
Wondering How to Talk About Climate Change? Take a Lesson from Bad Bunny
Sydney, Thursday 19 March 2026 — In response to escalating attacks on gas fields in the Middle East, including Israeli strikes on Iran’s giant South Pars gas field and Iranian retaliations on gas fields in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the following lines can be attributed to Solaye Snider, Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“The targeting of gas fields across the Middle East is a perilous escalation that reinforces just how vulnerable our fossil-fuelled world really is.
“Oil and gas have long been used as tools of power and coercion by authoritarian regimes. They cause climate chaos and environmental pollution and they drive conflict and war. The energy security of every nation still hooked on gas, including Australia, is under direct threat.
“For countries that are reliant on gas imports, like Sri Lanka, Pakistan and South Korea, this crisis is just getting started. It can take months to restart a gas export facility once it is shut down, meaning the shockwaves of these strikes will be felt for a long time to come.
“It is a gross and tragic injustice that while civilians are killed and lose their homes to this escalating violence, and families struggle with a tightening cost-of-living, gas giants like Woodside and Santos have seen their share prices surge on the prospect of windfall war profits.
“We must break this cycle. Transitioning to local renewable energy is the way to protect Australian households from the inherent volatility of fossil fuels like gas.”
-ENDS-
Images available for download via the Greenpeace Media Library
Media contact: Lucy Keller on 0491 135 308 or lkeller@greenpeace.org
Greenpeace response to escalating attacks on gas fields in Middle East
Climate Change
DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Iran war fallout continues
WORK FROM HOME: The International Energy Agency has advised its member countries to take 10 steps in response to the ongoing energy crisis fuelled by the Iran war, including reducing highway speeds and encouraging people to work from home, said the Guardian. It came after retaliatory attacks between Israel and Iran continued to destroy energy infrastructure in the Middle East, causing energy prices to soar further, said Reuters.
SUPPLY DISRUPTED: The IEA also said it is prepared to make more of its member nations’ 1.4bn-barrel oil reserves available to help ease the impacts of what it called the “biggest supply disruption in the history of the oil market”, reported Bloomberg. The outlet noted that Asian countries have been hit hardest by the shortages, caused by a “near-halt” of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
EU SUMMIT: The energy crisis dominated talks at an EU leaders summit on Thursday, said Politico. Arriving at the summit, Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez attacked other European leaders for using the energy crisis as an excuse to “gut climate policies”, according to the EU Observer. The Financial Times said that some European leaders have asked the European Commission to overhaul its flagship emissions trading system (ETS) by summer in response to the energy crisis.
COAL BOOST: In response to the conflict, utility companies in Asia are “boosting coal-fired power generation to cut costs and safeguard energy supply”, said Reuters. UN climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell told Reuters: “If there was ever a moment to accelerate that energy transition, breaking dependencies which have shackled economies, this is the time.”
Around the world
- WINDFARM WINDFALL: The Trump administration in the US is considering a nearly $1bn settlement with TotalEnergies to cancel the French energy company’s two planned windfarms off the US east coast and have it instead invest in fossil-gas infrastructure in Texas, according to documents seen by the New York Times.
- BUSINESS CLASH: Following “clashes” with the agribusiness sector, Brazil launched its new climate plan, which calls for a 49-58% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2022 levels by 2025 and includes “specific guidelines for different sectors”, reported Folha de Sao Paolo.
- SALES SLUMP: Sales of liquified petroleum gas from India’s state-run oil companies have fallen by 17% this month due to cuts in deliveries to commercial and industrial consumers “amid the widespread logistical bottlenecks triggered by the Iran war”, said the Economic Times.
- CUBAN ENERGY CRISIS: The US imposed an “effective oil blockade” on Cuba, leaving the country facing its “worst energy crisis in decades”, reported the Washington Post. Meanwhile, Chinese exports of solar panels to the island have “skyrocketed” since 2023, it added.
- RECORD HIGHS: An “unprecedented” heatwave in the western and south-western US is “shattering dozens of temperature records” and could lead to drought in California in the coming months, reported the Los Angeles Times.
- VULNERABILITY CONCERNS: Landslides that killed more than 100 people in southern Ethiopia have “renewed concerns about Ethiopia’s vulnerability to climate-related disasters”, said the Addis Standard.
1%
The percentage of England’s land surface that could be devoted to renewables by 2050, according to the long-awaited “land-use framework” released by the UK government this week and covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Approaching international climate action by shifting the burden of mitigation onto higher-income countries could avoid 13.5 million premature deaths from air pollution in middle- and lower-income countries by 2050 | The Lancet Global Health
- Beavers can turn the ecosystems surrounding streams into “persistent” sinks of carbon that can sequester an order of magnitude more than non-beaver-modified ecosystems can store | Communications Earth & Environment
- Mobile-phone data from seven diverse countries during the summer heatwaves of 2022-23 showed a “widespread tendency to withdraw into homes” and an increase in out-of-home activities that can offer cooling, such as indoor retail | Environmental Research: Climate
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief this week published a significant update to its map of how climate change is affecting extreme weather events around the world. The map now includes 232 new extreme weather events from studies published in 2024 and 2025. Of these events, 196 were made more severe or more likely to occur by human-driven climate change, 12 were made less severe or less likely to occur and 10 had no discernible human influence. (The remaining 14 studies were inconclusive.)
Spotlight
New Zealand breaks new ground on climate litigation
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to experts about a first-of-its-kind climate lawsuit in New Zealand.
Earlier this week, representatives from two environmentally focused legal advocacy groups challenged the New Zealand government’s climate-action plan in court.
The plaintiffs argued that the measures laid out in the plan are insufficient to achieve the country’s legal obligation to hold global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.
The case could be “influential” in shaping lawsuits and rulings around the world, one legal expert not involved in the case told Carbon Brief.
Reductions vs removals
The new case contends that there are several issues regarding the New Zealand government’s response to climate change.
One of the key arguments the plaintiffs make is that New Zealand’s second emissions reduction plan, which covers the period from 2026-30, is overreliant on the use of tree-planting to achieve its targets.
When the plan was released in December 2024, it was “immediately clear that it was a pretty lacklustre plan”, Eliza Prestidge Oldfield, senior legal researcher at the Environmental Law Initiative, one of the groups behind the legal case, told Carbon Brief.
The plan called for large-scale planting of pine tree plantations, which are not native to New Zealand and have a high risk of burning. Because of this, there are concerns about how permanent any carbon removal provided by these plantations actually can be, experts told Carbon Brief.
Catherine Higham, senior policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment who was not involved in the case, said:
“The lawyers are arguing that there are real challenges with equating the emissions that you may be able to remove from the atmosphere through afforestation with actual emissions reductions, which are much more certain.”
‘Global dialogue’
While other climate lawsuits elsewhere in the world have also focused on the inadequacy of a government’s plan to meet its stated emissions-reduction targets, this is the first such case that addresses the role of removals head-on.
Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, told Carbon Brief that the lawsuit “builds on a decade of climate litigation” in national, regional and international courts.
Maxwell, who was not involved in the New Zealand case, added that there is a “real global dialogue” between, not just plaintiffs, but national courts as well. She said:
“[National courts] look to common issues that have been decided in other countries. They’re not binding on that court if it’s at the national level, but they are influential.”
Given that many other countries have legal frameworks requiring their governments to create plans outlining the pathway to their long-term climate targets, Prestidge Oldfield told Carbon Brief that other jurisdictions “should be interested in these questions around the level of certainty”.
Higham noted that, even if the case is successful, addressing the plan’s shortfalls will face its own set of challenges. She told Carbon Brief:
“A lot of these decisions are political and they can be politically contentious…Those [measures] have to be put into action through legislation and that is then subject to the usual political process. So that’s where the challenge comes in.”
While she could not speculate on the outcome of the case, Prestidge Oldfield said it was “very heartening” to see that both the judge and the opposing counsel “appreciated how much of a concern climate change is globally”.
She added:
“It’s not a given that the judge would even be interested in climate change.”
Watch, read, listen
COMMON APPROACH: The Heated podcast analysed fossil-fuel advertisements and highlighted the most common deception tactics they employed.
THREAT ASSESSMENT: Mongabay mapped the potential threat that oil extraction poses to Venezuela’s ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest and its coral reefs.
SALT LAKES? GREAT!: High Country News interviewed journalist Dr Caroline Tracey about her new book on saline lakes – such as Utah’s Great Salt Lake – the threats that face them and what they can teach us.
Coming up
- 23 March-2 April: Third meeting of the preparatory commission for the High Seas Treaty, New York
- 24-27 March: 64th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bangkok
- 26-29 March: 14th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization, Yaoundé, Cameroon
Pick of the jobs
- International Centre of Research for the Environment and Development (CIRAD), IPCC chapter scientist | Salary: €3,200-3,750 per month. Location: Nogent-sur-Marne, France
- Avaaz, chief of staff | Salary: Dependent on location. Location: Remote, with preferred time zones
- Green Party, social media officer | Salary: £31,592-£32,192. Location: Remote or Westminster, UK
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 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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