Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
China’s ‘two sessions’
‘CONCRETE MEASURES’: China’s premier Li Qiang said the country will work “diligently” and take a “series of concrete measures” to achieve the country’s “dual-carbon” goals of peaking CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, state newspaper China Daily reported. Li made the comments as he delivered the “report on the work of the government”, a major policy document that outlines key priorities for 2025, at the nation’s all-important annual “two sessions” meeting, it said.
RENEWABLES PACKAGE: China also announced plans to develop a package of major projects to tackle climate change at the meeting, Reuters reported. A new report from the country’s National Development and Reform Commission outlined plans to develop new offshore wind farms and accelerate the construction of “new energy bases”, it added. However, coal will remain a “key fuel”, with plans to increase production and supply, the article noted.
NEW NEGOTIATOR: Li Gao was promoted to vice minister at China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, replacing Zhao Yingmin, who served as the head of China’s delegation to COP29, according to Bloomberg. Li is a “climate negotiator” with “two decades of experience in global climate change talks” and an “advocate of the country’s carbon-credit programme”, the article noted.
Trump continues cuts
CUTTING FORESTS: Trump signed an executive order to expand logging across 280m acres of US national forests and other public lands, the Guardian reported. Conservation groups warned that this could have a “disastrous impact on climate change, endangered species and local economies dependent on ecotourism”, added Inside Climate News.
‘NATIONAL DISASTER’: BBC News reported that around 880 workers at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were fired last week. Reuters said that Jane Lubchenco, the former NOAA administrator under Barack Obama, called the layoffs a “national disaster and a colossal waste of money”, adding: “Destroying NOAA’s ability to provide life-saving information, keep our ocean healthy and strengthen the economy makes no sense – no sense at all.”
‘PIVOTAL CENTERS’: The Trump administration told NOAA that “two pivotal centres for weather forecasting will soon have their leases cancelled”, sources told Axios this week. Elsewhere, Reuters reported that the US is pulling out of the Just Energy Transition Partnership, where wealthy countries help support developing countries to move away from coal, according to several participating countries.
Around the world
- INDIAN AVALANCHE: An avalanche in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand that killed eight people was triggered by a 600% surge in precipitation within 24 hours, fuelling “climate concerns”, reported the Times of India.
- EU EMISSIONS: The European Commission announced that carmakers will have three more years to meet emissions rules, but the 2035 ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars remains in place, according to the Financial Times. Reuters added the EU is also still committed to its interim target for zero-emission car sales for 2030.
- JAPANESE WILDFIRE: Japan’s biggest wildfire in 30 years has burned around 2,100 hectares and killed one person so far, the South China Morning Post reported.
- CLIMATE MULTILATERALISM: Brazil will use the COP30 climate summit in November to “press for multilateralism and respect for science”, said president-designate Andre Aranha Correa do Lago, according to Reuters.
- NORTH SEA: The UK has confirmed it will not issue new North Sea oil and gas licences and announced a 2030 end date for the “windfall tax”, first introduced when fossil-fuel company profits skyrocketed in 2022, in new plans released ahead of a consultation, the Press Association reported.
36
The number of fossil-fuel companies responsible for half of global CO2 emissions, the Guardian reported.
Latest climate research
- An AI-driven assessment of COP side events from 2003-23 published in Nature Climate Change examined how fossil-fuel lobbyists have been gaining access to UN climate summits to “uncover power dynamics at the highest levels of climate governance”.
- In a high-emissions future, melting Antarctic ice could lead to Earth’s strongest ocean current slowing down by 20% by 2050, according to a new study in Environmental Research Letters.
- Women and girls continue to bear a disproportionate impacts from heatwaves in South Sudan, according to a new World Weather Attribution analysis.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
At the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) meeting in Hangzhou, China, governments failed for a third time to agree to a timeline for the next round of UN climate science reports, according to Climate Home News. The absence of US federal scientists “cast a shadow” over the IPCC meeting, reported the Financial Times. The chart above, from Carbon Brief’s in-depth coverage of the meeting, highlights that the US has provided around 30% of the voluntary contributions to the IPCC’s financial budgets since it was established in 1988.
Spotlight
The ‘Super Grid’ campaign of the 1950s
As the UK looks to expand its grid, Carbon Brief takes a look at what can be learned from the Super Grid expansion 70 years ago.
Electricity demand in the UK is expected to at least double by 2050, requiring an expansion of the grid to keep pace. National Grid has launched the “Great Grid Upgrade“, with at least 17 major infrastructure projects being built as part of this.
However, there has been repeated pushback, with critics condemning plans to “carpet” the countryside with pylons, “devastating” locals and “shattering” rural dreams.
Speaking earlier this year, energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband said there would need to be a communication campaign to convey the benefits of the expansion, pointing to one during the last big expansion in the 1950s and 60s – known as the “Super Grid”.
Super Grid
The UK’s first electricity transmission grid began operation in 1933 – this excludes Northern Ireland, which is part of Ireland’s power grid. National Grid was created in 1935 and the regional grids were connected into the world’s first integrated national grid in 1938.
By 1950, the grid was at capacity, with demand rising ninefold in just 15 years.
Out of this the idea for a “Super Grid” was born. Made up of 1,150 miles of power lines held by 136-feet-high steel pylons, the grid cost £52m, roughly £1.4bn in today’s prices, over 10 years.
It was designed not just to increase capacity, but also to strengthen the north-to-south interconnections of the existing grid, especially as generation capacity shifted to large coal-fired power stations to the north of London.
After it was announced, opposition around the UK was voiced by local authorities, preservationist groups, voluntary societies and residents, citing concerns about the visual impact of the new pylons on the countryside, as well as concerns around industrialisation and the economy.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Prof Katrina Navickas at the University of Hertfordshire said that the Super Grid expansions were undertaken during a time when there was a post-war “desire for modernisation, efficiency and growth”, adding:
“These aims were often in tension with popular demands for amenity and countryside preservation, as the national parks were set up from 1949 and a popular idea of preservation of the rural landscape arose out of the right to roam movement.”
Attempts were made to minimise the impact of the pylons on the landscape. For example, the electricity boards argued that the large scale of the infrastructure would fit the landscape better than a “cluster” of smaller grid, noted Navickas.
Debate continued into the 1960s, with ministers questioning the impact of the Super Grid “upon the beauty of the countryside”, calling on army specialists to look at the potential of camouflage and arguing against the pylons being “painted in antinationalisation Tory colours”.
Communication challenges
To try to counter the opposition to the Super Grid and wider grid expansion, the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) launched an information campaign, using articles and adverts to try to convey the benefits of an expanded electricity network.
For example, one advert (above left) highlighted surging electricity demand and the need to ensure supply for future generations.
Others sought to highlight that the CEGB appreciated the need to protect the countryside and expand.
As an advert in Country Life (above right) highlighted, there is a “double duty” that falls on the shoulders of those tasked with managing the grid expansion. This is to “maintain an efficient, economical electricity supply, but also to preserve the amenities of the country”.
Some of the challenges around the attachment to the “amenity value of local landscapes” still exist today, Navickas added:
“But the ecological and environmental considerations are also much more to the fore than they had been in the 1950s and 1960s. Local community consultation has to be at the heart of any planning schemes too, whereas the earlier schemes were implemented in a much more top-down way that assumed that local opposition was based on lack of understanding of national benefits.”
Watch, read, listen
CLIMATE LENS: A new podcast titled Lights, Climate, Action discussed film and TV through a climate lens, with hosts talking about the film Don’t Look Up in their first episode.
ACTIVISM AND TRUMP: Yale360 interviewed activist and author Bill McKibben about “rethinking the role of protest, the global push on clean energy and why he sees reason for hope” in the “age of Trump 2.0”.
WOMEN’S DAY: To mark International Women’s Day, Costa Rican diplomat and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres is joined by top climate scientist Dr Katharine Hayhoe on her Outrage and Optimism podcast to discuss why ignoring women endangers the climate.
Coming up
- 11 March: Greenland’s general election
- 16-25 March: Climate and Clean Air Conference, Brasilia, Brazil
- 17 March: G20 Second International Financial Architecture Working Group Meeting, Pretoria, South Africa
- 18-19 March: OECD x IEA Global Forum on the Environment and Climate Change, Paris, France
- 18-19 March: Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue, Berlin, Germany
Pick of the jobs
- Union of Concerned Scientists, senior climate scientist | Salary: $134,805. Location: Washington DC/remote
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, head of communication in the IPCC working group I technical support unit | Salary: Unknown. Location: Paris, France
- Community Energy England, chief operating officer | Salary: £46,000-£52,470. Location: Remote/Sheffield
- Irish Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, head of circular economy and resource efficiency | Salary: Unknown. Location: Ireland
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 7 March 2025: China’s pivotal ‘two sessions’; IPCC indecision; Lessons from UK’s 1950s ‘Super Grid’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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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