Published

3 years ago

November 15, 2023

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

This week

Countdown to COP

FOSSIL PHASEDOWN: The “high ambition coalition” – a group of 15 nations including France, Spain and Kenya – has called for the phasing out of all fossil fuels at preliminary talks ahead of this month’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai, the Financial Times reported. This puts the group “at odds” with major fossil fuel producers, particularly in the Middle East, the paper added.

RENEWABLES ‘RALLY’: The EU, US and the United Arab Emirates are “rallying” other governments to join a global deal to triple renewable energy this decade at COP28, according to documents shared with Reuters. The countries are working to recruit others to sign the pledge ahead of COP28, with a launch event likely to be held at the start of the summit, it said.

PAPAL PARTICIPATION: Pope Francis has announced that he will attend COP28, becoming the first pontiff to participate in such an event, the Wall Street Journal reported. UK monarch King Charles will attend the opening ceremony, a year after he was advised by former prime minister Liz Truss’s government not to attend COP27 in Egypt, reported the Guardian. Reuters noted that US president Joe Biden is not scheduled to attend.

‘Carbon budget’ cuts

SHRINKING BUDGET: The remaining “carbon budget” for limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures has shrunk further, according to a new study reported on by BBC News. The study found that only 250bn tonnes of CO2 can be released if the planet is to have a 50% chance of staying below 1.5C, BBC News reported. The study authors revealed the reduced carbon budget in a Carbon Brief guest post last year and the new study includes small methodology updates.

COUNTDOWN: The Guardian reported that, according to the study, the remaining carbon budget will be exhausted in six years, given current levels of emissions. The UN goal of reaching net-zero by 2050 would give the planet only a 40% chance of staying below 1.5C, the paper added. New Scientist noted that, to have half a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C, the planet would need to reach net-zero emissions by 2034.

TEMPERATURE TARGETS: Elsewhere, a separate study led by Dr James Hansen, a NASA scientist best known for his striking testimony on climate change before Congress 35 years ago, projected that the world will warm by 1.5C this decade. “The 1.5C limit is deader than a doornail,” said Hansen, according to the New York Times. The newspaper carried comments from Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather, who says: “I think everyone agrees that 1.5C is in the rearview mirror at this point.”

Adaptation gap

‘WOEFULLY INADEQUATE’: The United Nations Environment Programme has published its annual “adaptation gap” report, which found that current spending is “woefully inadequate,” according to the New York Times. The report warned that developing countries need 10-18 times more climate adaptation funding than they currently receive, the Washington Post reported.

BILLIONS NEEDED: Developing countries need $215bn-387bn per year to adapt to the impacts of climate change – a $47bn increase since last year’s assessment – the Financial Times reported. However, adaptation finance flows to developing countries declined by 15% to $21bn in 2021, leading to a finance gap of $194bn-366bn per year, according to the South China Morning Post.

‘MAJOR GAPS’: In a Carbon Brief guest post, two of the report’s authors identified the major gaps in adaptation finance and explained why they have emerged. Over 2017-21, only 66% of the allocated funds were successfully disbursed to their recipient countries, the authors estimated.

Around the world

PRICE SPIKE: The World Bank has warned that the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas could drive up oil prices, Reuters reported. According to the newswire, the bank outlined three scenarios, the worst of which could see oil prices jump above $150 per barrel.
THREE BASINS: Rainforest countries from across three continents have agreed to work together to finance and protect their ecosystems – but failed to firm up a unified alliance, Carbon Brief reported.
WIND WOES: The world’s biggest offshore wind developer has taken a £4.6bn hit after scrapping two projects in the US due to rising costs and delays, the Times reported. The decision is a “blow” to Joe Biden’s plan to reach 30GW of offshore wind capacity in US waters before 2030, the Guardian said.
LICENCE TO DRILL: The UK’s North Sea Transition Authority has issued 27 new oil and gas licences, the Press Association reported. The Times said the decision has attracted criticism, with Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf calling it the “wrong move”.
INDONESIA EMISSIONS: Indonesia aims to cut CO2 emissions from its on-grid power sector to 250m tonnes by 2030 and increase its share of renewable electricity generation to 44%, Reuters reported. The plan is part of the nation’s “just energy transition partnership”.

$150bn

The amount that banks pumped into companies with “carbon bomb” projects – extraction projects that release more than one gigatonne of CO2 – in 2022, according to the Guardian.

Latest climate research

The Denman Glacier in East Antarctica will contribute 0.33mm per year to global sea level rise until the year 2300 – a level that is “comparable to half of the contemporary sea level contribution of the entire Antarctic ice sheet” – according to new research in Science Advances.
Forests in the Brazilian Amazon that have been disturbed by human activity have much lower resilience to heat stress and atmospheric water stress than intact forests, according to a new study in Global Change Biology.
New research in Communications Earth and Environment found that the rise in global average surface temperature shows a consistent 50-year trend of 0.18C per decade, with an increased rate from 1990.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

Global South Climate Database

Carbon Brief’s Global South Climate Database, a project that aims to ensure that journalists from all over the world can contact climate experts from developing countries, recently celebrated its one-year anniversary. The database now includes 1,003 experts from 107 countries, who collectively speak more than 75 languages. Carbon Brief launched the publicly available, searchable database of climate experts from the global south in October 2022, with the support of the Reuters Institute’s Oxford Climate Journalism Network.

Spotlight

Prof Saleemul Huq: A ‘climate revolutionary’

This week, Carbon Brief profiles the life of loss-and-damage pioneer Prof Saleemul Huq.

Tributes have been flooding in from politicians, scientists and activists for Prof Saleemul Huq – the influential Bangladeshi climate scientist who died on 28 October at the age of 71.

Born in 1952 in then-East Pakistan, Huq attended university in the UK. After obtaining his PhD in biochemistry at Imperial College London, he returned to Bangladesh where he founded the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies – an independent thinktank focused on environment policy.

Huq quickly became a leading voice in community-based adaptation and organised annual conferences on the topic from 2005, bringing together experts from around the world.

In 2009, Huq was appointed the director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCAD). He also set up the climate change research group at International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in Bangladesh, and was its initial director – continuing as a senior fellow until 2021.

Huq was a prominent scientist. He worked as lead author on the third, fourth and fifth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He also published hundreds of papers in high-profile journals throughout his career.

The Queen awarded Huq an OBE in the 2022 New Year’s honours list for his “services to combating international climate change”. Later that year, Nature named Huq as one of its top-10 scientists, calling him a “climate revolutionary”.

Huq also played an active role in international climate negotiations. He attended every single set of UN climate talks, from COP1 in Berlin in 1995 to COP27 in Egypt, where he used his expertise to advise the least developed and most climate-vulnerable countries.

Huq was widely known for his campaign work on providing “loss and damage” funding for less developed countries. At COP27, he was front and centre when countries came to a historic agreement to set up a loss and damage fund.

“He worked tirelessly for 30 years,” Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at the Climate Action Network, told the Washington Post. “Despite many moments of frustration, he never lost hope.”

ICCAD has launched a petition calling for the UN loss and damage fund to be named after Huq, after the idea gained traction with many prominent voices in the climate community.

Huq was part of the advisory committee to the presidency of COP28 and had planned to attend the talks in Dubai.

In his final piece of writing, published days after his death, Huq emphasised the need to “keep pressure on the biggest emitters” at COP28. Prof Farhana Sultana, his co-author, wrote that he “was a visionary and steadfast leader on climate justice, a champion of developing countries at climate negotiations, an advocate for the global poor, and a source of inspiration to thousands worldwide”.

Huq was a “titan of the climate movement who stood out in a field dominated by scientists from Europe and North America”, said Mohamad Adow, director of energy and climate thinktank Power Shift Africa.

German climate envoy and former Greenpeace head Jennifer Morgan called Huq “a driving force for climate justice since the beginning of the climate debate”.

ICCAD called him “a visionary leader who was not only the torch bearer for Bangladesh’s fight against climate change but for the entire global community”.

On Sunday afternoon, hundreds gathered at the Gulshan Society mosque in Dhaka to pay their respects. Huq is survived by his wife, son and daughter.

Watch, read, listen

‘KILLER LAKE’: A joint investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Reuters revealed the “preferential treatment and backroom deals” behind the Canadian winner of gas rights on Congo’s “killer” Lake Kivu.

SUN AND WIND: On her blog Sustainability by Numbers, Dr Hannah Ritchie walked through the numbers from a policy paper (pdf) published by the University of Oxford looking at the potential for solar and wind to meet the UK’s energy needs.

ECUADOR VS OIL: BBC podcast The Climate Question explored why the people of Ecuador voted to stop oil drilling in the Amazon rainforest.

Coming up

6-10 November: Group on Earth Observations (GEO) week 2023, Cape Town, South Africa
6-10 November: 52nd Meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, Cook Islands
7 November: Liberia second round of presidential elections
10 November: IEA Energy Policy Review of Uganda, Kampala, Uganda

Pick of the jobs

Carbon Brief, multimedia producer | Salary: £30,000 a year, dependent on experience. Location: A UK/Europe time zone
UK Met Office, scientific manager – sea level rise | Salary: £49,149 a year. Location: Exeter
The Nature Conservancy, policy adviser, northern Caribbean programme | Salary: BSD$53,000-58,000. Location: Bahamas
The Stockholm Environment Institute, research fellow, climate finance | Salary: Unknown. Location: Bangkok, Thailand

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org

The post DeBriefed 3 November 2023: King at COP28; 1.5C in ‘rearview mirror’; Life of ‘climate revolutionary’ Prof Saleemul Huq appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 3 November 2023: King at COP28; 1.5C in ‘rearview mirror’; Life of ‘climate revolutionary’ Prof Saleemul Huq

Climate Change

Greenpeace’s Dutch Anti-SLAPP Case Against Oil Pipeline Giant Advances

Published

17 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Alice Rush

But a $345 million U.S. verdict against the environmental group hangs over the case.

By Dana Drugmand

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

Climate Change

The Search for Super Reefs

Published

18 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Alice Rush

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.

By Teresa Tomassoni

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.

The Search for Super Reefs

Climate Change

DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations

Published

2 days ago

June 20, 2026

Alice Rush

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.”

Ocean dialogue breakout group. Credit: IISD/ENB, Maja Schmidt-Thomé.

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.