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
Long hot winter
‘WORLD’S WARMEST’: Record heat has affected “everywhere from northern Siberia and central and north-west America to parts of South America, Africa and Australia” this winter, reported the Financial Times. BBC News reported that last month was the world’s warmest February “in modern times”, the ninth month in a row to be the hottest on record since June 2023. This puts the world temporarily above the 1.5C threshold, noted the Guardian.
‘WEIRD’ WINTER HEAT: The New York Times reported that the “fingerprints of climate change” were detectable on the “weird” winter heat, including in Iran’s capital city Tehran, which was 4.2C warmer than average during the winter months. Morocco experienced the hottest January since measurements began, the country’s meteorological department told Agence France-Presse, at 3.8C above normal.
SMOKEHOUSE SCAR: Record winter heat continued to fan the flames of the “largest wildfire on record” in Texas, reported Axios. It added the blazes had left “a burn scar so large it is clearly visible from space”. Known as the Smokehouse Creek fire, it has burned more than 1.2m acres and “killed two people and thousands of cattle”, reported BBC Future. The publication explained that the fire has a “complex link” with climate change.
China’s pivotal ‘two sessions’ meeting
WHAT, WHEN, WHERE: China’s “two sessions” meeting, which sees the annual parliamentary gathering of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, is currently underway in Beijing, Carbon Brief’s China Briefing newsletter reported. Its centrepiece is the “government work report”, a speech traditionally delivered by the premier that outlines priorities for the year ahead.
CLIMATE TARGETS: One of the few quantitative climate targets China set in the report is to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 2.5% over the coming year, a goal that Bloomberg described as “modest”. The target was lower than analysts’ expectations of 4%, the outlet added.
FOSSIL FUELS REMAIN: The work report also restated a commitment to boosting fossil fuels in the name of “energy security”, Reuters reported. The newswire noted that China also aims to step up exploration of “strategic minerals”.
Around the world
- SURPRISE SNOW: Pakistan experienced unusual snowfall and heavy rains, resulting in the death of at least 35 people, including 22 children, reported BBC News.
- CORAL BLEACH: The world is on the brink of a fourth global mass coral bleaching event, which could see many tropical reefs killed by extreme ocean temperatures, reported Reuters. The Guardian reported that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is facing its fifth mass coral bleaching event in eight years.
- FUNDING THREAT: Individuals from global south climate groups that depend on finance from the German government “feel unable to criticise Israel’s military action in Gaza” due to pressure from their German-funded employers, Climate Home News reported.
- MISSING MONEY: A UN official said that “Africa will be $2.5tn short of the finance it needs to cope with climate change by 2030”, noted Reuters, despite the continent producing the lowest emissions and experiencing the worst effects.
- NEW ZEALAND LAWSUIT: An elder of the Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu tribes “won the right to sue seven New Zealand-based corporate entities”, including fuel, coal and gas companies and dairy exporters, for their contribution to climate change, noted the Guardian.
- NOTHING TO SEE HERE: The UK’s spring budget announcement was one of the “least green budgets in recent years” experts told the Guardian, with disappointment around electric vehicles and North Sea oil and gas. Carbon Brief had all the details.
2 billion
The amount of land in hectares that has been degraded by human activity over the past 500 years, reported Bloomberg.
Latest climate research
- A Nature Climate Change study found that, while climate change drives population growth in lizards “when trees are present”, deforestation could reverse this effect and even exacerbate the negative impacts of climate change.
- Under an additional 1C of warming, around 800 million people in the tropics will live in areas where “heavy work should be limited for over half of the hours in the year” due to the heat, a One Earth review paper found.
- The severe “Tinderbox drought” in southeast Australia, which preceded the country’s largest wildfires on record from 2019-20, was intensified by human-caused climate change, according to a Science study.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
A victory for Donald Trump (red line) in November’s US presidential election could lead to an additional 4bn tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared with Joe Biden’s plans (blue line), new Carbon Brief analysis revealed. It is based on an aggregation of modelling by various US research groups. For context, 4bn tonnes of greenhouse gases is equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan, or the combined annual total of the world’s 140 lowest-emitting countries. “Regardless of the precise impact, a second Trump term that successfully dismantles Biden’s climate legacy would likely end any global hopes of keeping global warming below 1.5C,” the analysis added.
Spotlight
Female climate activist Angel Arutura
On International Women’s Day, Carbon Brief speaks to Angel Arutura, a social and climate justice activist in Northern Ireland passionate about “connecting people and the planet” through social media.
Carbon Brief: How long has environmental activism been part of your life?
Angel Arutura: I’ve always been interested in the world around me, but it goes back to school, where geography was a subject that grabbed me. My teacher made lessons engaging and I became interested in how different parts of the world are affected by issues. I think my mixed-race heritage also helped. I have a multifaceted identity so, naturally, it made sense for me to think about how actions from the global north affected communities in the global south. I’m half Irish, half Zimbabwean, so I’ve been able to see that not just from an academic standpoint, but an emotional standpoint. Since then, I’ve been committed to connecting people to our true nature of love and protection and harbouring that loving connection for the people and the world around us.
CB: How has your identity as a woman shaped your activism, particularly your identity as a Black woman?
AA: I really started being vocal with my activism around the time of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, where the conversation was heavily on social justice. Growing up in a 98% White country, I experienced a lot of racism and my experience as a Black woman living in Ireland has been overwhelmingly negative. I rejected my Zimbabwean culture, my heritage, for so long. I went through a transformation at 17 where I started to connect with my heritage and it was through those years of self-reflection that I was able to speak at the protests. That’s when I found my voice. But, I thought to myself, hold on. Why are we just talking about social justice here? From then, I talked about the intersectionality of climate and social justice. As a Black woman, the driving power behind this was, in a weird way, finding that self-love.
CB: Why is it important to lift up the voices of women, particularly women of colour, when it comes to climate change?
AA: The majority of the time, when people talk about climate change and sustainability, they only talk about the exploitation of the planet. Think about fast fashion and women’s rights violations, and how those brands do sustainability initiatives and all this greenwashing. But how can you talk about the exploitation of the planet and not also the exploitation of women in the global south? The climate crisis, social justice, women’s rights, it’s all interconnected. An intersectional approach is the only one we need to take when it comes to climate change. It’s imperative if we want to create real, sustainable change. One of the best ways we can do this is through storytelling, in particular, elevating and uplifting the voices of the most vulnerable, especially those from the global south. And, unfortunately, that is women.
This interview was edited for length.
Watch, read, listen
SOUND WAVES: A three-part Sky documentary narrated by David Attenborough, revealed – amid glunking elk, popping grouse and laughing insects – how harnessing the sound of fish could be a vital tool to help save coral reefs.
‘FOLKLORIST’: Grist spoke to a “folklorist” about how community, culture and tradition are vulnerable to, but may also hold solutions for, climate change.
REPORTING FOR DUTY: In the face of extreme heat, “chief heat officers” in Sierra Leone and Mexico explain what this rare role entails in BBC World Service’s The Climate Question podcast.
Coming up
- 5-11 March: China’s “two sessions” meeting
- 10 March: Portugal general elections
- 11-12 March: G20 second research and innovation working group meeting, Brasília, Brazil
Pick of the jobs
- The Gecko Project, investigations editor | Salary: £60,000. Location: Remote
- Small World Consulting, chief executive officer | Salary: £70,000-100,000. Location: Lancaster, UK
- Brighton and Hove Energy Services Co-operative, business development manager | Salary: £40,000-45,000. Location: Brighton, UK
- United Nations Environment Programme, associate public information officer | Salary: Unknown. Location: Bonn, Germany
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org
The post DeBriefed 8 March 2024: Climate cost of a Trump victory calculated; ‘Weird’ winter heat; China’s pivotal ‘two sessions’ meeting; Young female activist interview 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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