Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
World court’s ‘landmark’ climate opinion
POLLUTERS ‘ACCOUNTABLE’: The UN’s highest court has told “wealthy” countries “they must comply with their international commitments to curb pollution or risk having to pay compensation to nations hard hit by climate change”, reported Reuters. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a much-awaited advisory opinion that small island states have described as a “legal stepping stone to make big polluters accountable”, the newswire added.
‘INHERENT RIGHT’: The Associated Press said that, during a two-hour hearing to present the unanimous opinion, Japanese judge Yuji Iwasawa told the court that the “human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is…inherent in the enjoyment of other human rights”. The newswire said activists described this as a “turning point in international climate law”.
‘LEGAL WEIGHT’: The Times noted that the “view is non-binding on governments, including the [UK], and the US does not recognise the court’s jurisdiction”. However, the “ICJ’s advisory opinions carry great legal weight and are seen to contribute to the clarification of international law”, the newspaper added. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth Q&A on what the opinion means for climate change.
Renewables ‘breakthrough’
BRINK OF BREAKTHROUGH: UN secretary-general António Guterres said on Tuesday that the “world is on the brink of a breakthrough in the climate fight and fossil fuels are running out of road”, the Guardian reported, as two new reports were published illustrating the growing dominance of renewable energy. In his online speech, Guterres said the global energy transition is now “unstoppable” due to “smart economics”.
RENEWABLES ‘CHEAPER’: The first of the new reports, from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), said that around 90% of renewable power projects globally are now cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives, Reuters said. The second, from the UN drawing on data from multiple international agencies, found that renewables made up 92.5% of all new electricity capacity additions and 74% of electricity generation growth in 2024, the Financial Times reported. Carbon Brief pulled out five key takeaways from both reports.
Around the world
- IN DANGER: The Trump administration has “drafted a plan to repeal a fundamental scientific finding”, known as the “endangerment finding”, that “gives the US government its authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change”, reported the New York Times.
- EU-CHINA SUMMIT: The EU and China have “committed to leading the world in the fight against climate change” in a joint statement released on Thursday following a meeting between the two superpowers, Bloomberg said. Carbon Brief’s China Briefing newsletter provided more details.
- JAPAN EYES NUCLEAR: A Japanese utility has become the first since the Fukushima nuclear disaster 14 years ago to take steps towards building a new reactor, reported Channel News Asia.
- SHELL QUITS INITIATIVE: Shell and other fossil-fuel companies have “abandoned” a six-year-long attempt to define a net-zero emissions strategy “after being told that such a standard would require them to stop developing new oil and gas fields”, according to the Financial Times.
- FLASH FLOODS: Ongoing flash flooding in Pakistan has killed at least 266 people over the past month, the Hindu reported.
50C
The temperature in some parts of Iran this week – as authorities asked people to limit drinking water amid an ongoing drought crisis, reported the Guardian.
Latest research
- Climate change is creating “new vulnerabilities” for pandemics | Carbon Brief
- South American lands stewarded by “Afro-descendant” people coincide with areas with “high biodiversity” and are associated with a 29-55% reduction in forest loss, compared to control sites | Communications Earth & Environment
- The “true price” of solar geoengineering is “much higher than its modest technical costs would indicate” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
New research covered by Carbon Brief this week found that one in three people in informal settlements in the global south live in floodplains and are at risk of a “disastrous flood”. The chart above draws on data from the study, published in Nature Cities, to illustrate where in the world has the highest number of “slum residents” living in floodplains.
Spotlight
Antarctica’s oldest ice arrives in UK
Carbon Brief recently visited British Antarctic Survey scientists responsible for uncovering the secrets of Antarctica’s oldest ice.
Standing in a freezer in Cambridge – with a -25C chill licking at his nostrils – British Antarctic Survey (BAS) lab manager Jack Humby excitedly opens up an unassuming polystyrene box.
Using his bare hands, he pulls out its contents. Long square-shaped sections of crystal clear ice – wrapped in plastic labelling which way is up – are revealed.
Little about the appearance of the ice gives away that it is at least 1.2m years old.
It has journeyed to the BAS headquarters on the outskirts of Cambridge from an ice core drilling camp in East Antarctica.
In January, scientists at the camp vertically drilled a 2,800m-long ice core, with on-site tests revealing it was likely to be at least 1.2m years old. The ice was then flown to a nearby port and shipped to Europe aboard the Italian icebreaker Laura Bassi.
The ice was drilled as part of the Beyond Epica Oldest Ice project, a large-scale field operation involving multiple research teams and laboratories across Europe.
‘One shot’
Owing to its specialist equipment and research expertise, BAS has been tasked with analysing the ice to reveal its secrets.
Though not visible to the human eye, the ice contains organic compounds and tiny pockets of air from periods stretching back hundreds of thousands of years.
Over the next seven weeks, the research team at BAS will work around the clock to analyse these features. However, in order to do so, they will have to melt the ice.
Dr Liz Thomas, head of the ice cores team at BAS, told journalists:
“It’s a huge responsibility because this is a one shot. Given how much effort has gone into drilling these cores, we have to get this absolutely right.”
To conduct their analysis, the team plan to use a gold-plated instrument to melt the square-shaped sections of ice being stored in the freezer room.
The meltwater will then be piped into a specially designed lab next door, which contains millions of pounds worth of analysis equipment, according to Humby.
Climates past
The analysis will help scientists work out how old the ice actually is. Though initial tests suggest it is at least 1.2m years old, but the team believe it could be up to 1.5m years old or even older.
It will also enable researchers to paint a more detailed picture of Earth’s past climates.
In turn, this could inform scientists’ understanding of how large swings in temperature in the past have affected various parts of the Earth climate system, including its ice sheets and ecosystems.
Ultimately, this could help researchers to make more informed projections about the likely impacts of human-caused climate change, Thomas explained:
“As climate scientists, it’s our job to provide as much information as we can. What we’re relying on to understand the next steps is climate models. They are fantastic, but they’re only as good as the information we put into them. That really is the justification for looking back in time.”
Watch, read, listen
COP30 LOOMS: A long-read in the Brazilian culture magazine Piauí examined the fraught road that the nation faces to host the next UN climate summit in November.
ARCTIC ‘MELTING POINT’: In Nature Communications, researchers recounted how the Arctic island of Svalbard is facing a “dramatic shift” to high air temperatures and rainfall in the depths of winter.
STUDENT VICTORY: The Guardian spoke to a group of students from the Pacific islands who started the campaign for the world’s top court, the ICJ, to take on the issue of climate change.
Coming up
- 23-31 July: COP15 of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
- 30 July: International Energy Agency electricity mid-year update
- 30 July: Advancing the implementation of the Chilean framework Law on Climate Change, Santiago, Chile
Pick of the jobs
- Boston Globe, climate science and environment reporter | Salary: Unknown. Location: Boston, US
- Science Museum London, curator of climate and earth sciences | Salary: £41,770. Location: London
- Netflix, manager, sustainability standards and partnerships | Salary: Unknown. Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 25 July 2025: World court delivers climate ‘turning point’; Renewables ‘unstoppable’; Antarctica’s oldest ice examined appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The United States is set to quit the world’s landmark climate convention next February, after the Trump administration formally notified the UN of its previously announced decision to withdraw.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres communicated last Friday that the UN treaty depository had received Washington’s formal notice to leave the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Adopted in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit, the climate treaty is the cornerstone of global efforts to curb climate change and tackle its impacts.
The US withdrawal will take effect on 27 February 2027 – one year after the formal notification – as required by the terms of the convention.
The US, the world’s second-largest emitter, will be the first nation to formally exit the treaty and the only one recognised by the UN outside of it.
‘Colossal own goal’
In January, President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “con job”, announced his administration’s intention to quit the UNFCCC and 65 other international organisations and instruments, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative global voice on climate science, and the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the world’s largest multilateral climate fund.
A White House factsheet said President Trump was ending US participation in international organisations that “undermine America’s independence and waste taxpayer dollars on ineffective or hostile agendas”.
“Many of these bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance, and ideological programmes that conflict with US sovereignty and economic strength,” it added.
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Explainer: Will AI data centres make or break the energy transition?
As grids struggle to meet soaring electricity demand for AI data-crunching, big tech is under pressure to cover the costs of boosting power supplies – which may be dirty or clean -
Uganda cites contentious IEA fossil fuel scenario backed by Trump administration
Critics of the African nation’s oil ambitions say referencing the International Energy Agency’s most pessimistic scenario for climate action is a risky policy
At the time, the UNFCCC chief Simon Stiell called the US decision to leave the convention “a colossal own goal which will leave the US less secure and less prosperous”.
“While all other nations are stepping forward together, this latest step back from global leadership, climate cooperation and science can only harm the US economy, jobs and living standards, as wildfires, floods, mega-storms and droughts get rapidly worse,” he added.
Relinquishing obligations
At the end of January 2026, the US already formally left the Paris Agreement, under which countries agreed in 2015 to try to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to issue regular emissions-reduction plans. Trump pulled the US out of the accord in 2020 before President Biden re-joined it in 2021.
While the Trump administration had effectively already disengaged from global climate action immediately after its inauguration, its formal departure from the UNFCCC will free it from formal obligations, including reporting detailed greenhouse gas emissions inventories and providing funding for the convention.
The US already stopped funding the UNFCCC and failed to submit its emissions data last year. The federal administration also sent no delegates to the COP30 summit in Brazil last November.
Washington remains involved in other international negotiations with climate implications – including talks on a UN treaty to curb plastics pollution and efforts to price emissions in the shipping sector – where it has sought to slow progress and block binding global measures.
A route back in?
The US could potentially rejoin the UNFCCC in future, likely under a different administration, but there are different views on how complicated that process would be.
The US Senate ratified the UN climate convention – with no opposition – in 1992 and some experts believe a future president could rejoin the UNFCCC within 90 days of a formal decision based on the original “advice and consent” of the Senate.
But other legal experts told Carbon Brief that theory has never been tested in court and a new two-third majority vote in the Senate might be required, which would be challenging with the vast majority of Republican Senators currently opposed to membership.
The post US set to exit UN climate convention in February 2027 appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
Gas price shocks from Middle East crisis proves Australia must unhook itself from volatile fossil fuels
SYDNEY, Wednesday 4 March 2026 — As the Middle East crisis sends global gas and oil prices surging, Greenpeace Australia Pacific warns that peace and security will remain at the mercy of geopolitics as long as we remain hooked on fossil fuels.
Experts have warned the outbreak of war in the Middle East, and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, risks a repeat of the 2022 energy shock driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that forced Australian power bills up by more than 40%.
While households brace for a new wave of price hikes, the conflict could prove a goldmine for gas corporations, with share prices for Woodside and Santos surging this week as they look to cash in on windfall war profits.
Solaye Snider, Climate Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific said: “The escalating violence and suffering in the Middle East is deeply distressing.
“The resulting energy shock being felt around the world shows why we need to unhook from volatile sources of energy. It is disturbing to see that here in Australia, power bills are set to skyrocket because of yet another war, while gas corporations like Woodside and Santos stand to line their pockets from windfall war profits.
“As long as we are dependent on fossil fuels, we will be at the mercy of geopolitics and impulsive decisions made by foreign leaders.
“We need to urgently move away from these inherently volatile sources of energy. Transitioning to local renewables is the way to protect Australian households and businesses from international energy price volatility, and ensure a safe, clean and peaceful future for all.”
-ENDS-
Media contact: Lucy Keller on 0491 135 308 or lucy.keller@greenpeace.org
Climate Change
A Global Chemical Giant Racks Up Violations in Durham, N.C., Where Drinking Water for a Million Is Threatened
Acetone, ethanol, 1,4-dioxane and methylene chloride were among contaminants found in a stream near Brenntag Mid-South’s chemical repackaging facility.
DURHAM, N.C.—Brenntag Mid-South continues to amass serious environmental violations related to its chemical repackaging plant in East Durham, where state inspectors cited the company in November for failing to clean up leaking barrels on the property.
US set to exit UN climate convention in February 2027
Gas price shocks from Middle East crisis proves Australia must unhook itself from volatile fossil fuels
A Global Chemical Giant Racks Up Violations in Durham, N.C., Where Drinking Water for a Million Is Threatened
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