Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Heat dome hits North America
100F: Temperatures in New York City reached 100F (38C) for the first time since 2013, as a heat dome “crushed” the eastern side of the US, reported the Associated Press. Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston all also surpassed three-digit temperatures, it added.
CHIOS FIRES: More than 400 firefighters have been fighting wildfires on the Greek Island of Chios, with evacuation orders in place across the island, reported Reuters. Strong winds and 40C temperatures have made the fire “extremely difficult to control” amidst Greece’s first heatwave of the summer, added BBC News.
HEATWAVES: Japan is currently facing a two-week heatwave, driving up energy demand and keeping power prices high, reported Bloomberg. The Financial Times warned that temperatures could reach dangerous highs as “heat domes” continue to hit the US and Europe. The Daily Mail said the UK Health Security Agency had “activated the five-day alert amid concerns that there could be ‘a rise in deaths, particularly among those ages 65 and over or with health conditions’”.
Bonn climate talks close
BUDGET GROWTH: Reuters reported that more than 200 countries have agreed at the Bonn climate talks to increase the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) budget by 10% to €81.5m for 2026-27. (Carbon Brief has just published its in-depth summary of the Bonn intersessional.)
JUST TRANSITION: After talks stalled at COP29 last year, activists have welcomed progress on the just transition work programme (JTWP) in Bonn, reported Climate Home News. Campaigners hope the JTWP will lead to the creation of the Belém Action Mechanism at the upcoming COP30 in Brazil, helping to facilitate a just transition on the ground, the article added.
EYES ON COP30: As the two weeks of talks in Bonn came to an end, Bloomberg noted that “it’s still not clear what Brazil will need, or is aiming, to deliver” at COP30 in November. It added that, before the climate summit, most countries still need to submit new “nationally determined contributions”, detailing their plans to help meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, but, currently, less than 30 countries have done so.
Around the world
- DRILL, BABY, DRILL: US president Donald Trump has urged his government to “drill, baby, drill” as fears grew that the aftermath of attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities could cause energy prices to spike, reported Reuters.
- GREENWASHING: EU countries have abandoned anti-greenwashing negotiations, after Italy withdrew its support for the bill, according to Politico.
- SOUTH AFRICA GRANT: South Africa’s national treasury has announced that the World Bank has granted it a $1.5bn loan to help it transition to a low-carbon economy, reported the Associated Press.
- MONEYPOINT: Ireland became Europe’s sixth country to end coal power with the closure of its last coal-fired plant at Moneypoint, according to the Irish Examiner.
- RECORD DEMAND: The Times reported on the Energy Institute’s annual statistical review, which showed global demand for every main type of energy hit a record high in 2024.
$525bn
Between 2000 and 2019, 55 climate-vulnerable economies lost approximately $525bn “because of climate change’s temperature and precipitation patterns”, according to a new report from the United Nations Development Programme.
Latest climate research
- Sea turtles will likely experience “substantial habitat redistributions” under future climate change scenarios, according to a new study in Science Advances.
- Warming of the tropical Indian Ocean can increase sea ice concentration in the Arctic during winter in the northern hemisphere, a study published in Climate Dynamics has found.
- According to a study published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, a 2C temperature increase over high-mountain Alpine regions would double the frequency of “extreme summer downpours”, compared to 1991-2020 levels.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Emissions from the electricity sector in the UK have now fallen from being the largest emitter in the UK up until the mid-2010s, to the sixth-largest emitter, according to the Climate Change Committee’s latest progress report. As Carbon Brief’s chart above shows, this dramatic drop means that the electricity sector now produces fewer emissions than surface transport, industry, residential buildings, agriculture and – as of 2024 – aviation.
Spotlight
Gender clash at the climate talks
Negotiations in Bonn have laid bare divergent political and cultural stances as countries dispute gender terminology, reports Carbon Brief.
As technical discussions drew to a close in Bonn, Argentina inserted a footnote into one of the event’s many documents, defining “gender” as “two sexes, male and female”.
This seemingly innocuous move came at the end of a week-long terminology dispute, as nations debated a new “action plan” to centre gender equality in climate action.
Climate change often disproportionately harms women and can also have an outsized impact on other marginalised communities.
However, divergent political and cultural stances meant countries disagreed about the right ways to discuss these issues, ahead of a major decision later this year.
‘Global rollback’
UN climate talks are taking place amid a “global rollback” of rights for women and girls.
In some countries, notably the US and Argentina, this rollback has gone hand-in-hand with a rejection of so-called “gender ideology” and a reversal of trangender rights.
Right-wing populist leaders are also conflating environmental protection with efforts to protect women and marginalised groups.
For example, Argentine president Javier Milei has described “environmentalism”, “feminism” and “gender ideology” as “heads of the same beast” – namely, “wokeism”.
These views have manifested in unexpected places. Negotiations at a UN working group on pollution earlier this month saw the US insist that the output text stated: “Women are biologically female and men are biologically male.”
‘Strong divergence’
While the US was absent from Bonn, Argentina was a prominent voice in the gender sessions. This was despite the nation sending just one negotiator: Eliana Saissac.
Jennifer Bansard, who led the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) team that reported from within the Bonn talks, told Carbon Brief that Argentina took a “hard stance”:
“There’s definitely strong divergences on gender terminology and broader societal debates are affecting the talks.”
ENB’s reporting captures these disagreements. Argentina wanted to define “gender” based on a contentious 1998 statute of the international criminal court, referring to “two sexes, male and female”. Paraguay sought a similar definition.
Bansard noted that the divergence was “in both directions”, with some expressing more expansive views. Norway discussed “women and girls in all their diversity”, Canada referred to “gender-diverse people” and Iceland stated that it “[does] not support binary terms”.
Future plans
The talks also saw the Holy See – the governing arm of the Vatican City – make a rare intervention calling for a reference to “sex” rather than ”gender”. Saudi Arabia was among those flatly rejecting the notion of “gender diversity”.
These religiously conservative states have previously aligned in UN talks on gender. At COP29, they were among those reportedly blocking progress on the action plan.
In Bonn, they argued for cultural sensitivity and respect for nations’ differing laws. Claudia Rubio Giraldo, a lawyer who works with the Women and Gender Constituency, told Carbon Brief that she sympathised with this view:
“I think we all come here assuming that we are all on the same ground, understanding certain terminology…but there is a process of bridging that is necessary.”
Nevertheless, Giraldo championed an “intersectional” approach, backed by some nations, that benefits not only women, but also other marginalised groups.
NGOs also warned of parties attempting to roll back existing language on “gender mainstreaming” and “gender responsive” action.
Despite the disagreements, participants noted a constructive tone and agreed on an “informal note” to feed into future negotiations.
Yet, with the gender plan expected to be one of the more tangible outcomes from COP30, civil-society observers were cautious. Francesca Rhodes, a senior policy adviser at CARE International UK, told Carbon Brief:
“These negotiations are taking place in the wider context of a global rollback on rights and inclusive approaches to gender…Progress made must not be sidetracked by these efforts.”
Watch, read, listen
BESTING BIG OIL: The New Statesman had a feature on campaigner Sarah Finch and her victory in the supreme court in the UK last summer, which has “sunk billions of pounds worth of oil and gas projects”.
THIN ICE: Scientists at the University of Cambridge, including Prof Michael Meredith, discussed on The Naked Scientists podcast how the latest polar science is tracking climate change’s impact in Antarctica.
MAMDANI’S ‘GREEN ABUNDANCE’: The Jacobin examined how the focus of New York City mayor frontrunner Zohran Mamdani on lowering the cost of living can serve as a “blueprint” for embedding climate action in everyday life.
Coming up
- 7-25 July: 2nd Part of the 30th Annual Session of the International Seabed Authority, Kingston, Jamaica
- 11 July: IEA Oil Market Report publication
- 14-23 July: High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development 2025, UN Headquarters, New York
Pick of the jobs
- United Nations, national contractor for climate change mitigation | Salary: Unknown. Location: Baku, Azerbaijan.
- UNICEF, climate change negotiations consultant | Salary: Unknown. Location: Panama City, Panama.
- Chatham House, senior research fellow – energy transition and climate mitigation | Salary: £90,000. Location: London, England.
- Young European Greens, communications and campaigns intern | Salary: €1,500 per month. Location: Belgium.
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 27 June 2025: Heat domes; Bonn comes to a close; Gender clash in climate talks appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 27 June 2025: Heat domes; Bonn comes to a close; Gender clash in climate talks
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.
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
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.
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‘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 -
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
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
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.
It’s been a weird few weeks for weather across the United States.
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