Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Record heat in 2024
DEADLY DECADE: UN secretary general António Guterres used his new year’s message to declare that “we have just endured a decade of deadly heat”, the Press Association reported. The news outlet said that all of the top 10 hottest years on record took place in this period, with 2024 emerging as the hottest. Meanwhile, China Daily reported that China reached its hottest annual temperature since records began, while ABC News said Australia saw its second-warmest year.
DANGEROUS HEAT: The Associated Press covered research from World Weather Attribution and Climate Central that found people globally experienced “an average of 41 extra days of dangerous heat” last year due to climate change. The analysis also found that climate change intensified 26 of the 29 extreme weather events from last year that the groups studied, according to Euronews.
Turning off Russian gas
GAS BLOCK: Russian gas flowing into several European countries was stopped on New Year’s Day, after Ukraine refused to renegotiate a transit deal “in the hopes of hurting its invader financially”, NBC News reported. Ending the flow of gas via Ukrainian pipelines will cost the Russian state-backed Gazprom around $5bn a year in gas sales, but will also cost Ukraine around $800n a year in transit fees, according to CNN.
EUROPE’S RESPONSE: EU member states prepared for this event by increasing capacity for liquified natural gas (LNG) imports and renewables, according to the Kyiv Independent. LNG from the US and Qatar has also helped the EU move away from Russian gas, Reuters said. However, Euractiv reported on “unease” from negatively affected eastern European countries, with Slovakia “threatening” retaliation against Ukraine, and Moldova – which is not an EU member state – “declaring a state of emergency” amid gas shortages.
Around the world
- FIRE WEATHER: “Out of control” bushfires are blazing in Australia, with elevated fire danger warnings issued for many states amid high temperatures, according to the Guardian.
- FLOOD DAMAGE: Hundreds of people have been evacuated in north-west England due to flooding, BBC News reported. Meanwhile, the Bank of England warned that climate change-driven floods could “devastate the value” of hundreds of thousands of UK homes, according to the Daily Telegraph.
- BANK WITHDRAWAL: Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup announced that they were quitting the UN-backed net-zero banking alliance, Bloomberg reported. Financial Times described the departures as “the latest sign corporate America may retreat from climate goals” under incoming president Donald Trump.
- ALL ELECTRIC: Norway is “on the brink” of achieving its target for 100% of new car sales to be electric by 2025, with zero-emission cars making up 88% of new sales last year, the National reported. Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph said Tesla saw its “first ever drop” in annual electric-vehicle sales, amid pressure from Chinese rivals.
$75 billion
The amount that fossil-fuel companies will be fined over the next 25 years, under a recent New York state law, according to Reuters.
Latest climate research
- The record-long Canadian wildfire season in 2023 was more than five times as likely due to human-caused climate change, according to a new study published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.
- New research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the rate at which carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions increase could affect the pace at which the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a current moving water, heat and nutrients around the world, slows down.
- A nationally representative survey of more than 1,000 US adults, published in Environmental Science and Policy, found that only around one-third were aware of the term “climate justice”, but half supported its goals after reading a short description.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The UK’s electricity was the cleanest it has ever been in 2024, according to new Carbon Brief analysis that was covered by the Times, the Guardian and other news outlets. CO2 emissions per unit have fallen by 70% over the past decade, as the chart above shows. This trend can be attributed to the UK phasing out coal while expanding its use of renewables, which reached a record 45% of electricity generation last year.
Spotlight
Europe’s forgotten overseas territories and climate change
In the wake of Cyclone Chido, Carbon Brief considers the climate threat facing Europe’s overseas territories.
Cyclone Chido tore through the French island of Mayotte in mid-December, killing at least 39 people and leaving thousands injured or homeless.
The storm, which was made more intense by climate change, was the strongest to hit the tiny Indian Ocean territory in close to a century. Much of the devastation was linked to the lack of sufficient shelter and resources in what has long been France’s poorest region.
Chido marks the latest extreme weather event to hit one of Europe’s “overseas territories” – colonial remnants that are largely dotted around the tropics, from the Caribbean to the Pacific.
‘Urgent action’ required
Most of the 34 European overseas territories are part of France, the UK and the Netherlands, due to their histories operating slave plantations on tropical islands.
These territories vary significantly in governance, wealth and independence. However, they have a shared vulnerability to climate-related threats, such as cyclones and sea level rise.
The EU’s first climate risk assessment report, published last year, called for “urgent action” to protect member states’ overseas territories from climate change, highlighting their “remote locations, weaker infrastructure and economic vulnerability”. UK territories, particularly those in the Caribbean, face similar challenges.
“Technically, politically, institutionally, they’re in the global north, but their realities are akin to any other country in the global south,” Dr Vanessa Deane, an urban planning researcher at New York University, told Carbon Brief.
Carbon Brief analysis of the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), run by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Belgium, shows that at least 197 people in European overseas territories were killed by extreme weather events over 1990-2024. (EM-DAT is the most comprehensive disaster database, but lacks complete data for poorer countries, meaning this figure is likely to be an underestimate.)
At least another 39 have been killed by Chido in Mayotte, making it the deadliest single event over this period in an overseas territory, according to EM-DAT data. The final death toll may be far higher.
Another quarter of a million people in these territories have lost their homes, been injured or otherwise affected over this period, mainly due to cyclones, according to EM-DAT.
‘Lagging behind’
Dr Virginie Duvat, a small islands researcher at the University of La Rochelle in France, said territories such as Mayotte are simply not treated the same as their mainland counterparts by French policymakers:
“Climate adaptation policies are lagging behind. This is paradoxical because these territories are more exposed and more vulnerable to climate change.”
Elise Naccarato, a climate justice advocate at Oxfam France, pointed to the “almost total absence of the overseas territories” in France’s upcoming climate adaptation plan.
Overseas territories generally lack the financial and technical capacity to implement climate adaptation programmes, or recover from climate-related disasters. Yet they also often cannot access climate-related aid.
Instead, the territories tend to rely on specialised funds set up by the EU and central governments to support climate-related activities, but these have been described as “insufficient” and “uncertain”.
As an example, Dr Daphina Misiedjan, a legal researcher at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, pointed to the “roundabout way” that the Dutch government provided relief to the territory of Sint Maarten, in the wake of Hurricane Irma. Rather than providing money directly, the government handed control to the World Bank, and funds took years to reach people.
Last year, residents of the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire, alongside Greenpeace Netherlands, launched a lawsuit against the Netherlands, claiming the state had not protected them sufficiently from climate change.
“[European countries] really profited from the colonial times, but now they have extra responsibility to make sure these islands are safe during the climate crisis,” Greenpeace climate campaigner Maarten de Zeeuw told Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listen
THE YEAR IN CLIMATE: After a year of key elections and many extreme weather events, BBC podcast the Climate Question presented a review of the top climate stories from 2024, hosted by an expert panel.
WINE LIST: A “big read” article in the Financial Times, which includes interactive graphics, looked at how the changing climate is pushing wine making into northern regions and “redrawing of Europe’s wine map”.
BEST BOOKS: Mongabay has published a list of 10 “notable” environment-themed books published in 2024. Topics covered range from Indigenous land rights to coral bleaching.
Coming up
- 6-11 January: First Global Heat Health Information Network Southeast Asia Heat Health Forum, Singapore
- 9-10 January: Attribution Science and Climate Law Conference, New York City
- 9-11 January: Extraordinary Summit on the Post Malabo Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, Kampala, Uganda
Pick of the jobs
- UK Climate Change Committee, chair | Salary: £1,000 per day. Location: London
- Wiley, deputy editor – environment | Salary: $59,900-$87,767. Location: Remote or hybrid, US, UK or Brazil
- Smith School, University of Oxford, data lead – state of carbon dioxide removal | Salary: £48,235-£57,255. Location: Oxford, UK
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 3 January 2025: ‘Decade of deadly heat’; Russian gas cut off; Europe’s forgotten overseas territories and climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.