Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Donald Trump elected as US president
TRUMP ELECTED: Republican Donald Trump claimed victory and a “powerful mandate” in the US election this week, reported the Financial Times. According to Agence France-Presse, the result could “slam the brakes on the transition to green energy” and jeopardise international efforts to tackle climate change.
‘MAJOR SETBACK’: BBC News reported that Trump’s election was a “major setback for climate action” according to experts. Similarly, Politico stated that “any slowdown from the world’s second-largest emitter – itself a major driver of the global shift to clean energy – is bound to throw a wrench into global climate efforts”. Carbon Brief analysis published in March – which has been widely cited in global media this week – found that a Trump victory could lead to an additional 4bn tonnes of US emissions by 2030, compared with incumbent Joe Biden’s plans.
HINDERING COP: The election result is “set to cast a pall over the UN COP29 summit next week”, reported the Financial Times. The Trump campaign said the president has pledged to withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement, as he did during his first term, the article continued. It noted that nations are meant to agree to a new climate finance goal at COP29 and the US is “viewed as crucial to that”. (Carbon Brief is hosting a free webinar today at 15:30 GMT to discuss the implications of Trump’s victory.)
COP16 ends in disarray
UNRESOLVED: The two-week COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Columbia ended “in disarray” on Saturday, reported the Guardian, with “some breakthroughs but key issues left unresolved”. It concluded “in confusion” after the talks ran over by almost 12 hours on Friday, with governments still failing to reach a consensus on issues, such as nature funding and how targets over the next decade will be monitored, the article added.
CALI FUND: Climate Home News said “some progress had been made” at COP16, including the establishment of a new “Cali Fund”. It continued: “They also created a new permanent body for Indigenous people, granting them formal power to influence decisions made under the UN biodiversity convention. But no common ground was found on the most pressing issue facing governments: how to close the gap in biodiversity finance.”
BIODIVERSITY PLANS: Carbon Brief’s team of specialist journalists at the summit published a 13,000-word summary explaining all the key outcomes of COP16. The article highlighted that, by the summit’s end, just 44 out of 196 parties involved – 22% – had come up with new biodiversity plans. Additionally, the CB team held two webinars – one in English and one in Spanish – discussing the summit’s outcomes.
Around the world
- SKIPPING COP: Leaders from key countries including the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, the US’s Joe Biden, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Australia’s Anthony Albanese are going to skip the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, Politico reported. India’s Narendra Modi and China’s Xi Jinping also are not expected to attend, a recent New York Times article noted. Germany’s Olaf Scholz has also said he will not go. (See below.)
- RED ALERT: RTÉ reported that Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez announced a €10.6bn plan to help flooding victims, while the Times reported that Barcelona was placed on red alert, as the country’s deadly flooding continued. Elsewhere, “unprecedented” floods in eastern Senegal have displaced more than 56,000 people and devastated harvests, reported Le Monde.
- CARBON BORDER TAXES: China, on behalf of the BASIC country group, requested that countries at COP29 discuss carbon border taxes and other “unilateral restrictive trade measures” it says are harmful to developing countries, according to Reuters.
- CANADA CAP: The Canadian government issued draft regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector, which would cap emissions at 35% below 2019 levels by 2030, Reuters reported.
- GERMAN COALITION CRUMBLES: Germany’s coalition government under Olaf Scholz was on the verge of collapse, leaving a “host of unfinished policy proposals that risk grinding to a halt”, including those relating to climate and energy, according to Clean Energy Wire.
- WARMEST YEAR: BBC News reported that 2024 is now “virtually certain” to be the world’s warmest year of record, according to projections by the European Copernicus Climate Change Service. See Carbon Brief’s detailed analysis of the latest data.
$1.2 billion
The amount investors are estimated to have made from running bets against – “shorting” – renewable-energy stocks in the wake of Trump’s election, according to the Financial Times.
Latest climate research
- The climate conditions that drove extreme wildfires in the southwest of France in June 2022 were made twice as likely by human-caused climate change, according to a study in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.
- A paper in Nature Geoscience found that weaker Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) could “exert a systemic impact on the Amazon”.
- New research published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science explored how “ecological fear” shapes attitudes to climate change across the US political spectrum.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Great Britain’s National Energy System Operator (NESO) found that England, Wales and Scotland, collectively, will need to double onshore wind capacity, triple offshore wind and solar and increase battery storage and flexibility capacity fivefold to achieve clean power in 2030. Doing so would allow the country to become a net exporter of power and cut the share of unabated gas on the system from 35% to below 5%, which NESO said would meet the government’s “clean power by 2030” target. The report concluded that clean power by 2030 is a “huge challenge, but is achievable”.
Spotlight
The origin story of the $100bn climate-finance goal
Michael Jacobs, professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield and visiting senior fellow at ODI Global, plus a former special adviser to UK prime minister Gordon Brown, explains the origins of the $100bn climate finance goal ahead of COP29.
This year’s UN climate conference, COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, will be dominated by negotiations over the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG), the finance target for the funds that will be channelled to developing nations over the next decade to help them tackle climate change.
The NCQG is often described as the successor to the $100bn-per-year climate-finance goal agreed at COP21 in 2015, alongside the Paris Agreement. In the sense that that goal formally runs out in 2025, and the NCQG will come into force in 2025, this is a fair description. But the $100bn came about through a very different process.
In fact, the NCQG represents the first time in the history of UN climate negotiations that countries have tried to negotiate a quantitative finance goal.
Where did the $100bn goal come from?
Then UK prime minister Gordon Brown first proposed the $100bn per year target in a speech in June 2009, in the run-up to COP15 in Copenhagen. At that point, developing countries were asking for climate finance of $300-400bn a year and developed ones thought they could afford $30-40bn.
Anxious that there would be no agreement, Brown asked his team to come up with a number based on estimates of climate needs in developing countries made by British economist Nick Stern and to which the UK could afford to contribute its share.
They suggested $100bn, envisaging that around half of this could come from public finance (both bilateral aid and via multilateral development banks) and half from the private sector, particularly through the Clean Development Mechanism.
Brown sought to persuade both developed and developing country leaders that $100bn by 2020 represented a feasible compromise.
EU leaders agreed on it in October 2009. In November, it was taken up by Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia, then chair of the African group of nations. Having first resisted it, the US announced towards the end of COP15 that it too would accept it.
As a result, it was included in the Copenhagen Accord, the agreement negotiated by a group of around 30 leaders, ministers and officials, which was “taken note of”, but not formally adopted at the final COP15 plenary session.
At Zenawi’s insistence, the agreement also included a “fast-start” commitment to $30bn in the period 2010-12.
Almost all of the Copenhagen Accord, including the $100bn goal, was formally adopted at COP16 in Cancun the following year. The text (paragraphs 98-99) “recognises” the commitment made by developed countries to “mobilising jointly” $100bn per year by 2020 “in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation”, plus agrees that this “may come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources”.
It remained a collective commitment made by the 23 “developed” countries, with no further specification on how the sum should be distributed between donors or between public or private sources, on what it should be spent, or to whom it should go.
Though agreed under the UNFCCC, at no point in any of these processes was the number subject to formal negotiation.
The ‘dog that didn’t bark’
In the run-up to the Paris COP in 2015, there were attempts by some developing countries to reopen the $100bn number. But, because the Paris Agreement was expected at that time only to take effect from 2020 – and the $100bn goal was for that year – these attempts did not get very far.
In practice, the $100bn in Paris was the “dog that didn’t bark”. Though the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) methodology being used by developed countries was widely contested, the Paris text maintained both the $100bn figure and the language of “mobilisation” (meaning that private finance is included if it has come about through the leverage of developed country public finance).
The only effective negotiated outcome in Paris was to extend the $100bn as the annual goal from 2020 to 2025 and to set this as the floor for the NCQG from 2025 onwards.
The adoption of the $100bn might be thought of as a strange way to agree such an important figure. Negotiating the NCQG formally is certainly proving much harder.
Watch, read, listen
CLIMATE HISTORY: Interdisciplinary project Monsoon Voyages melded history with climate science in an effort to enhance our understanding of long-term climate changes and their impacts.
ATTENBOROUGH’S ASIA: In a new seven-part series on BBC, Sir David Attenborough explored the “wildlife and natural wonders of our planet’s largest continent”.
CLIMATE OPTIMISTS: A new podcast called Solving for Climate has data scientist Hannah Richie and “sustainability nerd” Rob Stewart unpacking potential climate solutions.
Coming up
- 11-22 November: UN Climate Change Conference COP29, Baku, Azerbaijan
- 14 November: IEA Oil Market report 2024
- 18-19 November: G20 Heads of State summit, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Pick of the jobs
- University of Arts London, research development and design assistant: climate justice | Salary: £33,661-40,377. Location: Hybrid (UAL High Holborn, London/Home).
- Premier League, sustainability manager | Salary: Unknown. Location: London, UK.
- Norfolk Wildlife Trust, director of nature recovery | Salary: £65,000. Location: Norwich, UK.
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, international climate protection fellowship. Salary: Unknown. Location: Germany.
- Energy Foundation China, program officer, low-carbon cities. Salary: Unknown. Location: Beijing, China.
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 8 November 2024: Trump wins; COP16 ‘disarray’; Origin story of ‘$100bn’ climate-finance goal appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Blazing heat hits Europe
FANNING THE FLAMES: Wildfires “fanned by a heatwave and strong winds” caused havoc across southern Europe, Reuters reported. It added: “Fire has affected nearly 440,000 hectares (1,700 square miles) in the eurozone so far in 2025, double the average for the same period of the year since 2006.” Extreme heat is “breaking temperature records across Europe”, the Guardian said, with several countries reporting readings of around 40C.
HUMAN TOLL: At least three people have died in the wildfires erupting across Spain, Turkey and Albania, France24 said, adding that the fires have “displaced thousands in Greece and Albania”. Le Monde reported that a child in Italy “died of heatstroke”, while thousands were evacuated from Spain and firefighters “battled three large wildfires” in Portugal.
UK WILDFIRE RISK: The UK saw temperatures as high as 33.4C this week as England “entered its fourth heatwave”, BBC News said. The high heat is causing “nationally significant” water shortfalls, it added, “hitting farms, damaging wildlife and increasing wildfires”. The Daily Mirror noted that these conditions “could last until mid-autumn”. Scientists warn the UK faces possible “firewaves” due to climate change, BBC News also reported.
Around the world
- GRID PRESSURES: Iraq suffered a “near nationwide blackout” as elevated power demand – due to extreme temperatures of around 50C – triggered a transmission line failure, Bloomberg reported.
- ‘DIRE’ DOWN UNDER: The Australian government is keeping a climate risk assessment that contains “dire” implications for the continent “under wraps”, the Australian Financial Review said.
- EXTREME RAINFALL: Mexico City is “seeing one of its heaviest rainy seasons in years”, the Washington Post said. Downpours in the Japanese island of Kyushu “caused flooding and mudslides”, according to Politico. In Kashmir, flash floods killed 56 and left “scores missing”, the Associated Press said.
- SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION: China and Brazil agreed to “ensure the success” of COP30 in a recent phone call, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
- PLASTIC ‘DEADLOCK’: Talks on a plastic pollution treaty have failed again at a summit in Geneva, according to the Guardian, with countries “deadlocked” on whether it should include “curbs on production and toxic chemicals”.
15
The number of times by which the most ethnically-diverse areas in England are more likely to experience extreme heat than its “least diverse” areas, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- As many as 13 minerals critical for low-carbon energy may face shortages under 2C pathways | Nature Climate Change
- A “scoping review” examined the impact of climate change on poor sexual and reproductive health and rights in sub-Saharan Africa | PLOS One
- A UK university cut the carbon footprint of its weekly canteen menu by 31% “without students noticing” | Nature Food
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Factchecking Trump’s climate report
A report commissioned by the US government to justify rolling back climate regulations contains “at least 100 false or misleading statements”, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists. The report, compiled in two months by five hand-picked researchers, inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed” and misleadingly states that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”80
Spotlight
Does Xi Jinping care about climate change?
This week, Carbon Brief unpacks new research on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s policy priorities.
On this day in 2005, Xi Jinping, a local official in eastern China, made an unplanned speech when touring a small village – a rare occurrence in China’s highly-choreographed political culture.
In it, he observed that “lucid waters and lush mountains are mountains of silver and gold” – that is, the environment cannot be sacrificed for the sake of growth.
(The full text of the speech is not available, although Xi discussed the concept in a brief newspaper column – see below – a few days later.)
In a time where most government officials were laser-focused on delivering economic growth, this message was highly unusual.
Forward-thinking on environment
As a local official in the early 2000s, Xi endorsed the concept of “green GDP”, which integrates the value of natural resources and the environment into GDP calculations.
He also penned a regular newspaper column, 22 of which discussed environmental protection – although “climate change” was never mentioned.
This focus carried over to China’s national agenda when Xi became president.
New research from the Asia Society Policy Institute tracked policies in which Xi is reported by state media to have “personally” taken action.
It found that environmental protection is one of six topics in which he is often said to have directly steered policymaking.
Such policies include guidelines to build a “Beautiful China”, the creation of an environmental protection inspection team and the “three-north shelterbelt” afforestation programme.
“It’s important to know what Xi’s priorities are because the top leader wields outsized influence in the Chinese political system,” Neil Thomas, Asia Society Policy Institute fellow and report co-author, told Carbon Brief.
Local policymakers are “more likely” to invest resources in addressing policies they know have Xi’s attention, to increase their chances for promotion, he added.
What about climate and energy?
However, the research noted, climate and energy policies have not been publicised as bearing Xi’s personal touch.
“I think Xi prioritises environmental protection more than climate change because reducing pollution is an issue of social stability,” Thomas said, noting that “smoggy skies and polluted rivers” were more visible and more likely to trigger civil society pushback than gradual temperature increases.
The paper also said topics might not be linked to Xi personally when they are “too technical” or “politically sensitive”.
For example, Xi’s landmark decision for China to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 is widely reported as having only been made after climate modelling – facilitated by former climate envoy Xie Zhenhua – showed that this goal was achievable.
Prior to this, Xi had never spoken publicly about carbon neutrality.
Prof Alex Wang, a University of California, Los Angeles professor of law not involved in the research, noted that emphasising Xi’s personal attention may signal “top” political priorities, but not necessarily Xi’s “personal interests”.
By not emphasising climate, he said, Xi may be trying to avoid “pushing the system to overprioritise climate to the exclusion of the other priorities”.
There are other ways to know where climate ranks on the policy agenda, Thomas noted:
“Climate watchers should look at what Xi says, what Xi does and what policies Xi authorises in the name of the ‘central committee’. Is Xi talking more about climate? Is Xi establishing institutions and convening meetings that focus on climate? Is climate becoming a more prominent theme in top-level documents?”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP EFFECT: The Columbia Energy Exchange podcast examined how pressure from US tariffs could affect India’s clean energy transition.
NAMIBIAN ‘DESTRUCTION’: The National Observer investigated the failure to address “human rights abuses and environmental destruction” claims against a Canadian oil company in Namibia.
‘RED AI’: The Network for the Digital Economy and the Environment studied the state of current research on “Red AI”, or the “negative environmental implications of AI”.
Coming up
- 17 August: Bolivian general elections
- 18-29 August: Preparatory talks on the entry into force of the “High Seas Treaty”, New York
- 18-22 August: Y20 Summit, Johannesburg
- 21 August: Advancing the “Africa clean air programme” through Africa-Asia collaboration, Yokohama
Pick of the jobs
- Lancaster Environment Centre, senior research associate: JUST Centre | Salary: £39,355-£45,413. Location: Lancaster, UK
- Environmental Justice Foundation, communications and media officer, Francophone Africa | Salary: XOF600,000-XOF800,000. Location: Dakar, Senegal
- Politico, energy & climate editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Brussels, Belgium
- EnviroCatalysts, meteorologist | Salary: Unknown. Location: New Delhi, India
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 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Climate Change
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
The specter of a “gas-for-wind” compromise between the governor and the White House is drawing the ire of residents as a deadline looms.
Hundreds of New Yorkers rallied against new natural gas pipelines in their state as a deadline loomed for the public to comment on a revived proposal to expand the gas pipeline that supplies downstate New York.
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
A “critical assessment” report commissioned by the Trump administration to justify a rollback of US climate regulations contains at least 100 false or misleading statements, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists.
The report – “A critical review of impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the US climate” – was published by the US Department of Energy (DoE) on 23 July, just days before the government laid out plans to revoke a scientific finding used as the legal basis for emissions regulation.
The executive summary of the controversial report inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed”.
It also states misleadingly that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”.
Compiled in just two months by five “independent” researchers hand-selected by the climate-sceptic US secretary of energy Chris Wright, the document has sparked fierce criticism from climate scientists, who have pointed to factual errors, misrepresentation of research, messy citations and the cherry-picking of data.
Experts have also noted the authors’ track record of promoting views at odds with the mainstream understanding of climate science.
Wright’s department claims the report – which is currently open to public comment as part of a 30-day review – underwent an “internal peer-review period amongst [the] DoE’s scientific research community”.
The report is designed to provide a scientific underpinning to one flank of the Trump administration’s plans to rescind a finding that serves as the legal prerequisite for federal emissions regulation. (The second flank is about legal authority to regulate emissions.)
The “endangerment finding” – enacted by the Obama administration in 2009 – states that six greenhouse gases are contributing to the net-negative impacts of climate change and, thus, put the public in danger.
In a press release on 29 July, the US Environmental Protection Agency said “updated studies and information” set out in the new report would “challenge the assumptions” of the 2009 finding.
Carbon Brief asked a wide range of climate scientists, including those cited in the “critical review” itself, to factcheck the report’s various claims and statements.
The post Factcheck: Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-trumps-climate-report-includes-more-than-100-false-or-misleading-claims/
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