Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Brazil’s oil ‘evolution’
OIL BE FRIENDS: Brazil’s government has approved an invitation to join OPEC+, a group representing the interests of oil-exporting nations, just months ahead of hosting the COP30 climate summit, the Associated Press reported. The move signals the “country’s evolution into a major oil state”, the newswire said. Brazil’s energy minister said the country’s participation will be limited to a “forum for discussing strategies” and that “we should not be ashamed of being oil producers”.
SHIPPING SHOWDOWN: Brazil was also among 15 countries that asked the UN to ditch plans for a new levy on CO2 emissions from global shipping, reported the Guardian. Ahead of an International Maritime Organisation (IMO) meeting this week, the group – which includes China, Saudi Arabia and South Africa – “argued a levy could reduce exports from the developing world, raise food prices and increase inequalities”, the newspaper said. It added that the levy “could still pass”, if the IMO takes a “firm stance”.
NO HOTEL, NO PROBLEM: During a visit to Belém, the host city for COP30 this November, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva responded to concerns that it does not have enough accommodation by saying delegates could “sleep [under the] star[s] in the sky…which will be wonderful”, Folha de São Paulo reported. And Reuters covered the latest raids as part of “Operation Maravalha” to curb illegal logging in the Amazon.
Trampling Trump
ACCESS DENIED: US state department officials have been denied permission to participate in an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in China next week, Axios reported. A contract for an IPCC working group technical support unit was also “recently terminated by NASA”, it added. Axios also reported that NASA and NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) are in line for a “10% reduction in staff”, which could “imperil” the work of the National Weather Service.
‘CHAOTIC’: In US president Donald Trump’s latest move to dismantle federal climate policies, the Department of Homeland Security has been ordered to “eliminate all climate change activities and the use of climate change terminology”, Bloomberg reported. This includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which “has been responding to more disasters”, the newswire added, as “wildfires, storms and floods increase”.
‘LIQUID GOLD’: Trump has signed an executive order formally creating a “National Energy Dominance Council”, reported the Associated Press, and “directed it to drive up already record-setting domestic oil and gas production”. Trump said: “We’re going to make more money than anybody’s ever made with energy.” E&E News examined how his ambitions could hit “economic and geologic realities”.
Around the world
- ABOUT TURN: In a “major policy shift”, Japan’s newly approved energy plan will aim to produce 20% of its electricity from nuclear power by 2040, reported BBC News.
- RISING SEAS: The Pacific Ocean nation of Nauru is aiming to sell citizenships to help meet the cost of moving 10,000 residents from low-lying areas into the island’s “barren interior”, Bloomberg reported.
- LANDSLIDE RISK: Heavy rainfall in Peru has killed at least 46 people and left more than 8,000 people homeless, reported El Comercio, which noted that the extreme weather was expected to continue in the coming days.
- ‘GREEN CORRIDOR’: Environmentalists warned that a new protected area – the size of France – in the Democratic Republic of Congo has so far failed to include Indigenous people and local communities in its design, Climate Home News said.
- ICE IN DECLINE: According to BBC News analysis of satellite data, global sea ice extent dropped to a record low in mid-February.
- ‘FRAGILE GLOBAL EXISTENCE’: A G20 meeting of foreign ministers has started in Johannesburg, South Africa, with “stepping up the fight against global warming” on the agenda, reported Bloomberg. US secretary of state Marco Rubio has “snubbed” the event due, in part, to its climate focus, it added.
10%
The record proportion of China’s GDP coming from clean-energy technologies in 2024, according to analysis published by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Glaciers across the world collectively lost 273bn tonnes of ice every year between 2000 and 2023, a new Nature study found, with a 36% increase in ice loss from the first (2000-11) to the second (2012-23) half of the research period.
- New research in a Royal Society journal used data collected from 600 green turtles over three decades to show that females are bringing forward their nesting dates by six days for every 1C of sea surface temperature rise.
- The timing of plant flowering and insect flight in the US is “highly responsive” to extreme weather events, a Nature Climate Change study showed.
(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 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) forthcoming special report on climate change and cities has more women than men on its authorship team, for the first time in the organisation’s history, according to analysis by Carbon Brief. The analysis covers all assessment, special and methodology reports published over the IPCC’s 37-year history. It revealed how the representation of women in the IPCC has steadily risen over time, from just 8% of authors in its first report in 1990 to 53% in its cities report, due to be published in March 2027.
Spotlight
Cooling cities with ‘smart’ surfaces
Carbon Brief reports on how “smart” surfaces can be used to cool cities in the face of worsening extreme heat.
Last month, new research showed that increasing the reflectivity of surfaces at San Francisco International airport could cut the risk of heat stress in its outdoor workers and see fewer working hours lost at the height of summer.
At its heart, the idea is a simple one – making the ground surface and roofs of buildings more reflective means they absorb less of the sun’s energy. This, in turn, means they warm up less and radiate less heat back into the surroundings.
This helps offset the “urban heat island” effect, where temperatures in cities are consistently higher than in the surrounding countryside due to heat-trapping urban infrastructure.
Heat inequality
The airport study was conducted by the Smart Surfaces Coalition, a not-for-profit organisation that works with cities to use “smart” surfaces – including reflective, porous and green surfaces, solar panels and urban trees – to help manage the impacts of extreme heat and rainfall.
The coalition is working with 11 “partner cities” in the US – plus Bhopal in India – to drive adoption of smart surfaces through citywide policies and local implementation projects.
According to coalition founder Greg Kats, cities have typically followed “business as usual” for public construction projects – opting for “dark, impervious surfaces of tarmac” at the lowest cost, which “absorbs 90% of the incoming sunlight”.
As well as leaving cities at higher risk of getting “hotter and hotter and more prone to flooding”, these choices have contributed to urban inequality, Kats explained to Carbon Brief.
In the case of Baltimore on the US east coast, “at the same time of day in the summer afternoon” there will be a “14F [7.8C] temperature difference between wealthy, treed areas and low-income, dark, impervious areas”, he said.
This “structural inequality is a legacy of redlining” – long-abolished discriminatory lending practices in the US – and is a “hallmark of American cities”, Kats added.
Urban cooling
In partner cities, the coalition is conducting citywide surface mapping and heat modelling, developing cost-benefit tools and helping cities craft policies and building codes.
In Baltimore, for example, installing smart surfaces could bring more than 5F (2.8C) of citywide cooling, coalition analysis has shown, with benefits that outweigh the costs at a ratio of 10 to 1.
These measures also reduce the need for air conditioning, Kats explained:
“For 1F of ambient temperature reduction, it reduces an air conditioning electricity bill by 4-5%, so a 5F reduction is a 20-25% reduction in electricity bills.”
As a result, smart surfaces are a “really big deal” for climate mitigation, Kats said. And it taps into another aspect of the urban island effect – a key contribution comes from human activity, such as the use of cars and air conditioning.
Air conditioners cool the air inside buildings by pumping waste heat outside, so “you have this perverse effect of private cooling heating the city, which means more air conditioning”. Kats explained:
“So you’ve got two different pathways for a city: do you do citywide cooling, or do you keep relying on the private sector to buy more air conditioning?”
While cool surfaces do have their barriers and challenges, Kats argued that they offer the “only viable, scalable, cost-effective, urban-cooling strategy”, adding: “There really isn’t anything else.”
Watch, read, listen
‘TRAPPED IN EXPLOITATION’: Climate Home News reported on how “nearly all” Bangladeshi migrants who leave areas hit hard by climate change to seek work elsewhere end up “subject to forms of forced labour”.
RECORDS SMASHED: A Guardian interactive mapped the record heat experienced by two-thirds of the Earth’s surface in 2024.
PRESERVING WEBSITES: A research librarian and policy scholar in North America outlined in the Conversation how to “find climate data and science the Trump administration doesn’t want you to see”.
Coming up
- 23 February: Germany general election
- 24-28 February: 62nd session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Hangzhou, China
- 25-27 February: Resumed session of the UN biodiversity summit COP16, Rome
- 26 February: UK Climate Change Committee seventh carbon budget advice published
- 26-28 February: Finance in common summit, Cape Town, South Africa
Pick of the jobs
- The China Global South Company, critical minerals editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Remote (Africa preferred)
- Dioceses of Leicester and Peterborough, net-zero carbon projects development officer | Salary: £30,000. Location: Peterborough, Leicester or Northampton, UK
- Imperial War Museum, head of sustainability and environment | Salary: £65,000. Location: Duxford, London or Manchester, UK
- Groundwork, goals for climate co-ordinator | Salary: £24,716. Location: Hybrid (Northern Ireland)
- Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, consultant analyst – trade and net-zero | Salary: Unknown. Location: Flexible
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 21 February 2025: Brazil joins oil bloc ahead of COP30; US ‘pulled’ from IPCC meeting; Cooling cities with ‘smart’ surfaces appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Blazing heat hits Europe
FANNING THE FLAMES: Wildfires “fanned by a heatwave and strong winds” caused havoc across southern Europe, Reuters reported. It added: “Fire has affected nearly 440,000 hectares (1,700 square miles) in the eurozone so far in 2025, double the average for the same period of the year since 2006.” Extreme heat is “breaking temperature records across Europe”, the Guardian said, with several countries reporting readings of around 40C.
HUMAN TOLL: At least three people have died in the wildfires erupting across Spain, Turkey and Albania, France24 said, adding that the fires have “displaced thousands in Greece and Albania”. Le Monde reported that a child in Italy “died of heatstroke”, while thousands were evacuated from Spain and firefighters “battled three large wildfires” in Portugal.
UK WILDFIRE RISK: The UK saw temperatures as high as 33.4C this week as England “entered its fourth heatwave”, BBC News said. The high heat is causing “nationally significant” water shortfalls, it added, “hitting farms, damaging wildlife and increasing wildfires”. The Daily Mirror noted that these conditions “could last until mid-autumn”. Scientists warn the UK faces possible “firewaves” due to climate change, BBC News also reported.
Around the world
- GRID PRESSURES: Iraq suffered a “near nationwide blackout” as elevated power demand – due to extreme temperatures of around 50C – triggered a transmission line failure, Bloomberg reported.
- ‘DIRE’ DOWN UNDER: The Australian government is keeping a climate risk assessment that contains “dire” implications for the continent “under wraps”, the Australian Financial Review said.
- EXTREME RAINFALL: Mexico City is “seeing one of its heaviest rainy seasons in years”, the Washington Post said. Downpours in the Japanese island of Kyushu “caused flooding and mudslides”, according to Politico. In Kashmir, flash floods killed 56 and left “scores missing”, the Associated Press said.
- SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION: China and Brazil agreed to “ensure the success” of COP30 in a recent phone call, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
- PLASTIC ‘DEADLOCK’: Talks on a plastic pollution treaty have failed again at a summit in Geneva, according to the Guardian, with countries “deadlocked” on whether it should include “curbs on production and toxic chemicals”.
15
The number of times by which the most ethnically-diverse areas in England are more likely to experience extreme heat than its “least diverse” areas, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- As many as 13 minerals critical for low-carbon energy may face shortages under 2C pathways | Nature Climate Change
- A “scoping review” examined the impact of climate change on poor sexual and reproductive health and rights in sub-Saharan Africa | PLOS One
- A UK university cut the carbon footprint of its weekly canteen menu by 31% “without students noticing” | Nature Food
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Factchecking Trump’s climate report
A report commissioned by the US government to justify rolling back climate regulations contains “at least 100 false or misleading statements”, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists. The report, compiled in two months by five hand-picked researchers, inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed” and misleadingly states that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”80
Spotlight
Does Xi Jinping care about climate change?
This week, Carbon Brief unpacks new research on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s policy priorities.
On this day in 2005, Xi Jinping, a local official in eastern China, made an unplanned speech when touring a small village – a rare occurrence in China’s highly-choreographed political culture.
In it, he observed that “lucid waters and lush mountains are mountains of silver and gold” – that is, the environment cannot be sacrificed for the sake of growth.
(The full text of the speech is not available, although Xi discussed the concept in a brief newspaper column – see below – a few days later.)
In a time where most government officials were laser-focused on delivering economic growth, this message was highly unusual.
Forward-thinking on environment
As a local official in the early 2000s, Xi endorsed the concept of “green GDP”, which integrates the value of natural resources and the environment into GDP calculations.
He also penned a regular newspaper column, 22 of which discussed environmental protection – although “climate change” was never mentioned.
This focus carried over to China’s national agenda when Xi became president.
New research from the Asia Society Policy Institute tracked policies in which Xi is reported by state media to have “personally” taken action.
It found that environmental protection is one of six topics in which he is often said to have directly steered policymaking.
Such policies include guidelines to build a “Beautiful China”, the creation of an environmental protection inspection team and the “three-north shelterbelt” afforestation programme.
“It’s important to know what Xi’s priorities are because the top leader wields outsized influence in the Chinese political system,” Neil Thomas, Asia Society Policy Institute fellow and report co-author, told Carbon Brief.
Local policymakers are “more likely” to invest resources in addressing policies they know have Xi’s attention, to increase their chances for promotion, he added.
What about climate and energy?
However, the research noted, climate and energy policies have not been publicised as bearing Xi’s personal touch.
“I think Xi prioritises environmental protection more than climate change because reducing pollution is an issue of social stability,” Thomas said, noting that “smoggy skies and polluted rivers” were more visible and more likely to trigger civil society pushback than gradual temperature increases.
The paper also said topics might not be linked to Xi personally when they are “too technical” or “politically sensitive”.
For example, Xi’s landmark decision for China to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 is widely reported as having only been made after climate modelling – facilitated by former climate envoy Xie Zhenhua – showed that this goal was achievable.
Prior to this, Xi had never spoken publicly about carbon neutrality.
Prof Alex Wang, a University of California, Los Angeles professor of law not involved in the research, noted that emphasising Xi’s personal attention may signal “top” political priorities, but not necessarily Xi’s “personal interests”.
By not emphasising climate, he said, Xi may be trying to avoid “pushing the system to overprioritise climate to the exclusion of the other priorities”.
There are other ways to know where climate ranks on the policy agenda, Thomas noted:
“Climate watchers should look at what Xi says, what Xi does and what policies Xi authorises in the name of the ‘central committee’. Is Xi talking more about climate? Is Xi establishing institutions and convening meetings that focus on climate? Is climate becoming a more prominent theme in top-level documents?”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP EFFECT: The Columbia Energy Exchange podcast examined how pressure from US tariffs could affect India’s clean energy transition.
NAMIBIAN ‘DESTRUCTION’: The National Observer investigated the failure to address “human rights abuses and environmental destruction” claims against a Canadian oil company in Namibia.
‘RED AI’: The Network for the Digital Economy and the Environment studied the state of current research on “Red AI”, or the “negative environmental implications of AI”.
Coming up
- 17 August: Bolivian general elections
- 18-29 August: Preparatory talks on the entry into force of the “High Seas Treaty”, New York
- 18-22 August: Y20 Summit, Johannesburg
- 21 August: Advancing the “Africa clean air programme” through Africa-Asia collaboration, Yokohama
Pick of the jobs
- Lancaster Environment Centre, senior research associate: JUST Centre | Salary: £39,355-£45,413. Location: Lancaster, UK
- Environmental Justice Foundation, communications and media officer, Francophone Africa | Salary: XOF600,000-XOF800,000. Location: Dakar, Senegal
- Politico, energy & climate editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Brussels, Belgium
- EnviroCatalysts, meteorologist | Salary: Unknown. Location: New Delhi, India
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 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Climate Change
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
The specter of a “gas-for-wind” compromise between the governor and the White House is drawing the ire of residents as a deadline looms.
Hundreds of New Yorkers rallied against new natural gas pipelines in their state as a deadline loomed for the public to comment on a revived proposal to expand the gas pipeline that supplies downstate New York.
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
A “critical assessment” report commissioned by the Trump administration to justify a rollback of US climate regulations contains at least 100 false or misleading statements, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists.
The report – “A critical review of impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the US climate” – was published by the US Department of Energy (DoE) on 23 July, just days before the government laid out plans to revoke a scientific finding used as the legal basis for emissions regulation.
The executive summary of the controversial report inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed”.
It also states misleadingly that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”.
Compiled in just two months by five “independent” researchers hand-selected by the climate-sceptic US secretary of energy Chris Wright, the document has sparked fierce criticism from climate scientists, who have pointed to factual errors, misrepresentation of research, messy citations and the cherry-picking of data.
Experts have also noted the authors’ track record of promoting views at odds with the mainstream understanding of climate science.
Wright’s department claims the report – which is currently open to public comment as part of a 30-day review – underwent an “internal peer-review period amongst [the] DoE’s scientific research community”.
The report is designed to provide a scientific underpinning to one flank of the Trump administration’s plans to rescind a finding that serves as the legal prerequisite for federal emissions regulation. (The second flank is about legal authority to regulate emissions.)
The “endangerment finding” – enacted by the Obama administration in 2009 – states that six greenhouse gases are contributing to the net-negative impacts of climate change and, thus, put the public in danger.
In a press release on 29 July, the US Environmental Protection Agency said “updated studies and information” set out in the new report would “challenge the assumptions” of the 2009 finding.
Carbon Brief asked a wide range of climate scientists, including those cited in the “critical review” itself, to factcheck the report’s various claims and statements.
The post Factcheck: Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-trumps-climate-report-includes-more-than-100-false-or-misleading-claims/
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