Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Record floods across the globe
IVORY COAST: Floods and landslides killed at least 24 people in Ivory Coast’s largest city of Abidjan after a week of heavy rains that was “four times the usual volume in some cases”, the Associated Press reported. The newswire added that the city’s disadvantaged communities are “particularly vulnerable” because of poor storm drainage in informal settlements.
CHINA ‘SWAMPED’: Landslides killed eight people in their homes in southern China’s Hunan province, said the South China Morning Post, with Taoyuan county receiving 39.5cm of rain in a day. Record rains “swamped” Hunan’s capital of Changsha, “turning roads into rivers and submerging subway tunnels”, Reuters wrote. By Monday, 33 rivers had “exceeded warning levels”, Xinhua reported. Associated Press also reported that flooding killed two people in the “deluged” US midwest.
BANGLADESH INUNDATED: Widespread flooding has stranded nearly two million people in north-east Bangladesh, CNN reported. It added that “large swathes” of Sylhet and Sunamganj provinces were underwater after a second wave of flooding hit the region in less than a month, with 772,000 children “in urgent need of assistance”. Camps in Cox’s Bazaar that accommodate “almost [one million] documented [Rohingya] refugees have been overrun by the incoming floodwaters”, Down to Earth reported, with at least 10 Rohingya fatalities out of the total 31 deaths in the Bangladesh floods this year.
Heat deaths: tolls apart
PAKISTAN’S FATAL HEAT: Doctors in Karachi “treated thousands of victims of heatstroke at various hospitals” after a “days-long heatwave” scorched southern Pakistan, the Associated Press reported. While local media reported that the heatwave “killed more than two dozen people” in Karachi alone, AP added that “no government spokesman was available to confirm the number of heatstroke-related deaths”. However, the Edhi ambulance service told BBC News it had taken around 568 people’s bodies to the Karachi city morgue in Pakistan over the past six days – up from its usual rate of 30-40 bodies a day.
‘TOLLS APART’: In neighbouring India, the country’s health ministry said 143 people across the country had died of heatstroke from the start of summer until 20 June, far lower than 209 confirmed and 448 suspected deaths tallied by Times of India. Meanwhile, a non-profit report estimated that “192 homeless individuals died from the heat in just nine days” in the national capital region alone, experts in India Development Review Online wrote, “highlighting the significant underreporting of heat-related deaths” in the country.
CULPABLE HEAT: In the US, the Boston Globe reported that New England experienced the “highest rate of heat-related emergency department visits” in the country, with temperatures in the region crossing 32C. Meanwhile, prosecutors in Arizona could “reasonably press homicide charges against big oil” for heat deaths in the state last year, the Guardian reported. Finally, Reuters wrote that the “sweltering summer” is worsening conditions in Gaza, where “nearly all the 2.3 million inhabitants have been driven from their homes by Israel’s military campaign” with almost no access to electricity and little clean water.
Around the world
- COW TAX: Denmark is set to introduce the world’s first carbon tax on agriculture after a historic agreement on Monday, Politico reported. Farmers will be charged “almost €100 a year” per cow once the levy rolls out in 2030, Financial Times said.
- PARLEY VOUS: In a “new and surprising” move, South China Morning Post reported that China agreed to talks with the EU over its plans to raise tariffs on electric vehicle imports by 48%.
- MAI KUHIHEWA: Youth in the US state of Hawaii who sued transport authorities for their use of fossil fuels reached a “first-of-its-kind” settlement that recognised their “constitutional rights to a life-sustaining climate”, Teen Vogue reported.
- OILSTRUCK: Financial Times reported on ExxonMobil’s development of “one of the largest offshore oil developments in history” and what it could mean for Guyana.
- BP U-TURN: Oil and gas giant BP has imposed a hiring freeze and paused new offshore wind projects to place a greater emphasis on oil and gas rather than renewables amid investor discontent, sources at the company told Reuters.
- PIPELINE PROTESTS: 37 activists in Uganda were arrested for protesting the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), calling on China to “reject financial support” to the project, All Africa reported.
£116bn £30bn £2.8tn
Some of the “scary-sounding” numbers being used to mislead the public about the “cost” of net-zero in the UK general-election campaign. Carbon Brief’s Dr Simon Evans has factchecked them.
Latest climate research
- A new study in Nature Ecology and Evolution found that Earth’s most extreme wildfires increased 2.2-fold in the past 20 years, with the last seven years seeing the six most extreme fires on record.
- According to new research in Nature Climate Change, a 1C rise in average temperatures would mean four extra minutes every day spent collecting water for women. By 2050, women could spend 30% and 100% more time – globally and regionally – collecting water, “undermining” their welfare.
- New research on grounding zones – where ice transitions from land to water – suggests that sea-level rise projections could be substantially underestimated, according to a Carbon Brief guest post.
(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 Carbon Brief analysis found that UK governments in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have missed their tree-planting targets set in 2020 and failed to plant an area of forest nearly the size of Birmingham. Tree-planting is a “significant” part of the UK’s net-zero strategy to compensate for other polluting sectors. By 2050, the unplanted trees would have removed some 8.5m tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, roughly 2% of the UK’s annual emissions in 2023. This shortfall will need to be made up for with stronger efforts elsewhere if the UK’s net-zero by 2050 target is to be met.
Spotlight
Monsoon mixtape
As the UK gears up for Glastonbury, Carbon Brief interviews pioneering Indian hip-hop and folk artists about protest music and the role of artists in an era of climate change.
When Carbon Brief spoke to the Marathi-language rapper MC Mawali from the hip-hop collective Swadesi, Mumbai was under an orange alert for extremely heavy rains, after stalling for most of the month.
The monsoon has changed along with the mega-city most defined by it. Massive infrastructure projects have cost the island city its flood buffers, including the much-diminished Aarey forest, home to the Indigenous Warli tribe and the only urban leopard population in the world.
In 2019, Mawali, along with fellow Swadesi rappers and Warli bard Prakash Bhoir, gave Mumbai’s #SaveAarey movement its protest anthem, The Warli Revolt – its chorus warning of a dystopian climate future to come.
“I used to go to Aarey to swim in the Vihar lake as a kid, but I didn’t know about [Warli] culture, their instruments, their songs going extinct that are not on the internet,” said Mawali.
When the chainsaws came for the forest, Mawali says he “felt helpless”, but he’s happy to hear that Warli Revolt has become a go-to anti-deforestation anthem across the country since. He added:
“Today’s music business is about labels pouring in music and splashing their artists all over platforms that censor messages like ours, but, through hip-hop, we’ve learned to hijack that same system to keep folk, tribal and conscious music alive.”
To anti-caste singer-poet Dhammarakshit Randive from the Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch collective, the word “green” has turned into “its own kind of propaganda” that justifies “ask-no-questions development”, with high displacement of people and a large emissions footprint.
“‘Green’ often becomes propaganda, telling us you can offset 100 trees in a biodiverse forest that Adivasis (Indigenous peoples) depend on by planting another 1,000 somewhere else,” he told Carbon Brief.
Randive sees climate change, anti-caste and “movements to centre democracy” as interlinked, “affecting all our lives, everywhere”. To him, the main role of musicians and artists in responding to climate change is to establish that intersectionality. He told Carbon Brief:
“Otherwise, those fighting for forests are dying unheard in those same forests, sanitation workers are dying in the same sewers, factory workers are dying in the heat and there’s no one to widen peoples’ perspectives to say ‘this is all part of the same struggle’.”
Taru Dalmia, also known as Delhi Sultanate, was among the earliest pioneers to fuse dub and dancehall with protest anthems penned by Indigenous singers, such as Bhagaban Majhi, protesting mining projects in central India. Blood Earth, the album Dalmia made with producer Chris McGuiness, is now 12-years-old, but remains just as relevant.
“At that time we made it, I felt that there was a kind of hidden violence and not as much discourse about a war-like situation in [mineral-rich Indian states],” said Dalmia, speaking to Carbon Brief. He feels that, since then, “there’s definitely more awareness and politicisation which has to do with how much more repressive things have gotten and [environmental and other] issues staring at us in the face”.
While hip-hop has “blown up” over the past half-decade, he feels that little has changed as far as mining companies are concerned, since “profit margins remain huge”. Dalmia added:
“This awareness of how fundamentally our way of life is based on extraction, extractive industries and destruction and how that’s a direct continuation of the colonial project…sure, there’s more politicisation, but the depth of it is still missing.”
While extreme weather has not quite made its way to the airwaves, aside from boilerplate Bollywood songs invoking heat and rain, mercury levels were the subject of one of India’s earliest environmental campaign songs.
In 2015, a young Sofia Ashraf dropped the single Kodaikanal Won’t, a rap parody of Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda, demanding that Unilever clean up toxic waste from its thermometer factory dumped in the rainforest and compensate its workers for mercury poisoning. It drew over 2m views, praise from Minaj and a public apology and settlement from Unilever. Speaking to Carbon Brief, Ashraf said:
“Since Kodaikanal Won’t, there has been a whole gamut of songs around climate change, from general awareness-building to pointed information-sharing, music has been used effectively to express the dread a lot of us live under. The downside is that greenwashing is constantly on the rise and there is too much onus on the audience to parse this content for the truth.”
But she remains optimistic, telling Carbon Brief:
“As long as art still strives to build conscious narratives, I feel we are headed in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
PETROCENTRIC: Adam Hanieh, author and professor of political economy at the University of Exeter, spoke to the Break Down about all the ways in which oil came to “permeate” our lives.
MIC TEST: Vox tuned in to how scientists are listening to Puerto Rico’s frogs to understand how climate change is altering life on the rainforest island.
NON-ALIGNED: A piece in Drilled unpacked new research prompting questions of what “Paris-aligned” means and whether “climate pledges…need a terminology overhaul”.
Coming up
- 22-30 June: London climate action week
- 30 June: France national assembly elections, first round
- 4 July: UK general election
Pick of the jobs
- International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), head of global climate law, policy and governance programme (maternity cover) | Salary: £64,814-£80,654. Location: UK (hybrid) with access to London office
- Sustainable Futures Collaborative, senior research associate, climate policy | Salary: Unknown. Location: New Delhi
- Climate and Community Project, data communications manager | Salary: $105,000. Location: US (fully remote), one week of travel every two months
- Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ), communications coordinator. Salary: $38,400. Location: Remote. Preference for candidates from the global south
- Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), global fellowships for scholars from non-OECD countries | Stipend: NOK 15,000 per month, plus travel, accommodation and insurance coverage. Location: Bergen, Norway
- Climate News Tracker, managing editor | Salary: £70,000-£80,000. Location: Remote, with occasional UK travel for meetings
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 28 June 2024: Global floods; Heat deaths uncertainty; India’s climate protest music appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 28 June 2024: Global floods; Heat deaths uncertainty; India’s climate protest music
But a $345 million U.S. verdict against the environmental group hangs over the case.
A lawsuit filed by Greenpeace International against the U.S.-based fossil fuel company Energy Transfer in the Netherlands is moving forward after a Dutch court recently ruled in favor of the environmental organization in rejecting the company’s bid to toss out the case.
Greenpeace’s Dutch Anti-SLAPP Case Against Oil Pipeline Giant Advances
Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and oceans correspondent Teresa Tomassoni as they discuss the search for heat-resilient coral reefs that are somehow defying the odds to survive a warming planet.
The world has already lost more than half of its coral reefs, and most of what remains is at risk of disappearing in the next 25 years.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Bonn talks close
‘SIDE-STEPPING AND STALLING’: UN climate talks in Bonn have ended in “gridlock”, according to Climate Home News. The outlet reported on the failure to balance developing countries’ need for climate-adaptation finance with “richer nations’ desire to move forward” on emissions cuts. It added that both topics were subject to “rule 16”, meaning no agreement could be reached and work will be pushed to the COP31 summit in Turkey. Inside Climate News quoted UN climate executive secretary Simon Stiell, who said the talks had seen “side-stepping and stalling”.
JUST TRANSITION: One “glimmer of hope” came from negotiations on achieving a “just transition”, reported Euronews. The news outlet said negotiators “made headway on operationalising the Belém-Antalya mechanism”, intended to support people in the shift to a low-carbon economy. However, Politico concluded that much of the focus in Bonn had “shift[ed] to efforts outside diplomatic talks – raising questions about the future of global climate negotiations”.
‘ATTACKING SCIENCE’: Agence France-Presse reported on the EU, Switzerland and “dozens of developing nations” warning of “attacks on science” by a “small group of fossil-fuels interests” in Bonn. Table Briefings explained that “the 1.5C target is increasingly being challenged” and the role of the UN climate-science panel – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – in an upcoming assessment of global climate progress “remains controversial”. See Carbon Brief’s full write-up of the talks for more detail.
US-Iran deal
PRICE DROP: The US and Iran announced that they have reached an interim agreement to halt the war and reopen the strait of Hormuz, reported Bloomberg. Oil prices have fallen, as the “long-awaited deal” began the process of “eas[ing]” the global energy crisis triggered by the conflict, according to the New York Times. The Associated Press noted that high fuel prices will “likely outlast the Iran war”.
‘OIL GLUT’: The Financial Times reported that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has forecast a “glut of oil” emerging next year, if the peace deal holds. The IEA said this would allow countries to build new strategic reserves, as they “review their energy strategies and policies in response to the crisis”, according to Reuters.
‘NEW ERA’: Agence France-Presse reported that oil and gas companies have “few illusions about a return to normal for the Gulf energy industry after more than three months of blockage”. One analyst told the newswire that the war “showed the oil and gas industry that Hormuz risk is no longer just a geopolitical headline”.
Around the world
- OCEAN MONITOR: The Trump administration is “abandoning its plan” to dismantle a $368m ocean monitoring system key for tracking climate change after a “bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill”, reported the New York Times.
- CORAL HAVEN: The New York Times covered preliminary research, presented at the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya, suggesting there could be three times as many “coral refugia” – where corals are relatively safe from climate change – than previously thought.
- BAD CREDIT: Down to Earth reported that the first carbon credits issued under the Paris Agreement’s new Article 6.4 mechanism are “facing scrutiny over alleged links to institutions controlled by Myanmar’s military junta”.
- OIL BACKTRACK: Reuters reported that oil-and-gas company Equinor has dropped a renewable-energy target and scaled back clean investments, while another Reuters story noted that Shell is selling off its offshore wind assets.
1.1 billion
The number of children facing “at least three overlapping climate hazards”, according to a new Unicef report covered by Agence France-Presse.
Latest climate research
- Including the “permafrost carbon-climate feedback” in climate models increases the chance of exceeding “tipping elements” – such as the Greenland ice sheets, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or Amazon rainforest – by up to 50% | Environmental Research Letters
- The intensity of influenza outbreaks could decline in temperate regions, but increase in tropical areas over the next century, as the climate warms | PNAS Nexus
- European snow cover has declined by 20% for December and January since the start of the industrial era, revealing an “unprecedented ongoing shrinkage of European winters” | Communications Earth & Environment
(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 more than 2m battery electric vehicles (BEVs), 1m “plug-in” hybrids (PHEVs) and 100,000 electric vans on UK roads are already saving drivers a total of around £3bn a year, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. This amounts to savings of more than £1,100 a year in fuel costs for each BEV driver in the UK. The analysis comes amid reports in UK media this week that the government is considering “watering down” its EV sales targets.
Spotlight
Oceans rising at UN climate talks
The state of the world’s oceans is inextricably linked to the changing climate – and many delegates at UN climate talks want to see more focus on this issue, reports Carbon Brief.
Oceans are often described as the world’s “greatest ally” against climate change – absorbing 30% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and most of the heat generated by those emissions.
They are also the site of important climate solutions, such as huge offshore windfarms and the shipping industry’s transition to cleaner fuels.
At the same time, the oceans themselves present a growing danger to coastal communities and sea life due to sea level rise, marine heatwaves and ocean acidification.
These diverse issues have led to growing calls within the UN climate process for more focus on oceans. During climate negotiations this week in Bonn – known as SB64 – nations and civil society had a chance to air these views during an “ocean and climate change dialogue”.
‘Elevate action’
Oceans first entered UN climate outcomes in 2019, when the final COP25 negotiated text requested a new “dialogue” on “the ocean and climate change to consider how to strengthen mitigation and adaptation action”.
The following years saw this dialogue established as an annual event. However, the political weight of these discussions has been limited.
COP31 is being co-led by Turkey and Australia, but with Pacific islands playing a supporting role. These small islands sometimes self-identify as “large ocean states”, stressing the ocean’s centrality in their societies.
In Bonn, figures from across the presidency threw their weight behind this issue. Chris Bowen, an Australian minister and incoming COP31 “president of negotiations”, told attendees:
“Australia, Turkey and the Pacific see an important opportunity to elevate ocean-based climate action.”
Strategies and finance
The two-day dialogue in Bonn involved a series of panels, statements and breakout groups.
One of the main topics was how oceans are integrated into national climate plans under the Paris Agreement, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs).
Three-quarters of the latest round of NDCs mention oceans, with conservation of “blue carbon” ecosystems the most frequently described action. (Landscapes such as mangroves can both absorb CO2 and protect coastal areas.)
Delegates also discussed alignment with the UN biodiversity process, as well as ocean finance, which currently makes up less than 1% of all climate finance.
(As discussions were taking place in Bonn, country officials also gathered in Mombasa, Kenya for the 11th Our Ocean Conference. Carbon Brief’s associate editor Giuliana Viglione attended the conference and will publish a full summary shortly.)
Developing countries were clear that many of the ocean-related actions in their NDCs would depend on receiving more financial support.
‘Political momentum’
With the backing of the COP31 presidency, delegates were hopeful about where this year’s dialogue could lead.
Charles Hamilton, an advisor for the Bahamas who spoke for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) in the dialogue, told Carbon Brief that island representatives “are not traveling thousands of miles to just talk and pat ourselves on the back”. He added:
“A dialogue that just remains a dialogue is just more talk – no action.”
Given that, he said “discussions in the dialogue must move into COP decisions and the decisions must be actioned”, noting the importance of finance.
Marina Corrêa, oceans lead at WWF-Brazil, pointed to an upcoming UN climate change Standing Committee on Finance forum as a space to ramp up pressure on ocean finance.
More broadly, she wanted to see the presidencies translate their support into a “leader-level ocean initiative” that could “mainstream” oceans across negotiations.
“We have a really interesting opportunity, in terms of political momentum,” Corrêa told Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listen
‘HOTTER THAN HELL’: An episode of the BBC’s Rare Earth podcast titled “hotter than hell” considered the issue of extreme heat, with input from experts and “people facing up to the hottest temperatures on the planet”.
NOT BROKEN?: John Drake, a professor of ecology at the University of Georgia, wrote an essay for Aeon – also re-published as a Guardian “long read” – questioning the framing of ecosystems and climate systems “breaking down”.
ON COURSE: On his Volts podcast, US climate journalist David Roberts interviewed UK climate minister Katie White, quizzing her about whether the UK will “stay the course with its climate plans”.
Coming up
- 20-28 June: London climate action week
- 21 June: Colombia presidential runoff
- 24 June: UK Climate Change Committee progress in reducing emissions 2026 report to parliament
Pick of the jobs
- Mongabay, managing editor – Africa | Salary: Unknown. Location: Global
- Contexte, environment reporter – Brussels | Salary: €45,000-€60,000. Location: Brussels
- Climate 200, communications director | Salary: Unknown. Location: Australia
- Energy Tracker Asia, energy transition correspondent | Salary: $3,000-$4,000 per month. Location: South-east Asia (remote)
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 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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