During the 2024 UK general election campaign, politicians and newspapers have used a series of “scary-sounding numbers” to mislead voters about net-zero.
While some of the numbers are accurate in isolation, they have been used in false or misleading ways, shaved of context and typically designed to exaggerate the cost of cutting emissions.
Current prime minister Rishi Sunak, his energy secretary Claire Coutinho and a string of right-leaning newspapers have all been guilty of this approach.
The most common tactics for misleading voters about net-zero include: focusing on the cost of action without mentioning the cost of business-as-usual; mentioning the costs of cutting emissions but not the benefits; and omitting the costs of failing to tackle dangerous climate change.
Below, Carbon Brief factchecks a series of claims made around the election campaign, each of which involves a big number about “costs”. The article explains who made each claim, where the relevant number came from – and the missing context that makes the claim false or misleading.
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MISLEADING
Hundreds of billions
“We’ve just found a recording that they have put out there from the deputy chancellor from the Labour Party admitting that their [climate] plans will cost hundreds of billions of pounds.”
– Rishi Sunak during BBC leaders’ debate – 26 June 2024
Where it comes from
In what appears to have been a coordinated move, Sunak attacked Labour’s net-zero plans during the final leaders’ debate hosted by BBC News, by citing an article published online the same evening in the Daily Telegraph. The article, which appeared on the newspaper’s frontpage the following morning, is based on public comments by Labour’s Darren Jones in March 2024 about the cost of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, which is also government policy. The target was legislated in 2019 under Conservative former prime minister Theresa May.
What it excludes
Sunak misleads voters by omitting the fact that his own government – as well as the Conservative manifesto – also support the net-zero by 2050 target. He also ignores the costs of inaction on climate change and the evidence that accelerated action would yield significant economic benefits.
In 2019, the Climate Change Committee estimated that the net cost to the whole economy of reaching net-zero by 2050 would amount to £1.4tn, offset by savings from lower fossil fuel bills of £1.1tn. As set out by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in 2021, this amounted to a net cost of £321bn over nearly 30 years – consistent with the “hundreds of billions” cited by Labour’s Darren Jones. Furthermore, the OBR estimated that only a quarter of the costs of reaching net-zero would come from public spending and that delaying action towards the target could double the overall cost to the UK. It added that failing to act on climate change would have far greater impacts on the economy and public finances, concluding: “Unmitigated climate change would ultimately have catastrophic economic and fiscal consequences.”
In a 2023 report, the OBR found that continued reliance on gas could be more than twice as costly for the exchequer as reaching net-zero. Separate analysis for trade group Energy UK concluded: “[A]n accelerated transition [to net-zero] could boost the UK’s economy by £240bn in 2050 more than current trajectories…Under the most ambitious scenario, the GDP of each area of the UK would be 5.4%-7.5% greater in 2050 than under the current trajectory.”
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FALSE
£116bn
“Labour are still not being honest about the costs of their energy policy. Independent energy experts have warned that Labour’s 2030 target would need an extra £116bn of investment, which means one thing…higher taxes for millions of Brits.”
– Claire Coutinho tweet – 25 June 2024
Where it comes from
The figure is based on analysis by consultancy Aurora, which said a total of £116bn would need to be invested during 2025-2035 to reach Labour’s 2030 clean power target. This works at an average of £10.6bn per year, according to Aurora.
What it excludes
The current secretary of state’s phrasing is false. The same Aurora analysis said a total of £105bn would need to be invested during 2025-2035 to meet the government’s own target of clean power by 2035, averaging £9.5bn per year. As such, the “extra” investment is only £11bn over 11 years, or £1bn a year.
Coutinho’s claim that higher investment would mean higher taxes is also false, as electricity sector investment is predominantly from the private sector and paid for via bills. Moreover, Aurora has said, based on the same analysis, that consumer energy bills would be lower under Labour’s 2030 target than under a 2035 clean power goal – or under the current, less ambitious trajectory. Aurora said: “Either scenario will be highly challenging to implement, stretching the limits of deliverability. However, if delivered, increased investment could lead to lower total system costs once the long-term savings from lower gas consumption are included.”
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FALSE
£30bn
“Ditching Net Zero could save the public sector over £30bn per year for the next 25 years.”
– Reform manifesto – 17 June 2024
Where it comes from
Reform, a climate-sceptic party led and majority owned by Nigel Farage, offers almost no information on how it arrived at this figure. According to the OBR, public-sector spending on net-zero is estimated at around £8bn per year. The only other number mentioned by Reform is for renewable energy subsidies, which it puts at £10bn per year. These are paid by consumers, not the government, such that scrapping them would not save the public sector any money. Instead, Reform proposes to tax renewables by an equivalent amount, which would likely end investor confidence in the UK across the board.
What it excludes
Reform is claiming, implausibly, that the government could save more than it currently spends. It also focuses on the costs of reaching net-zero while ignoring benefits, as well as the cost of business-as-usual. The CCC has estimated that reaching net-zero will entail net investment costs of £44bn per year out to 2050, offset by operational cost savings of £29bn per year, with the annual cost in total averaging £15bn. This excludes wider GDP impacts: the CCC said that the size of the economy, the number of jobs and real disposable incomes would all grow under a net-zero pathway. The CCC’s monetary estimates also exclude the cost of climate impacts, the sizeable health benefits of improved air quality and other externalities. The IEA recently concluded that accelerating climate action towards net-zero “could lead to major reductions in household energy bills”, again purely looking at economic costs and benefits. According to the OBR, the UK government spent £51bn on energy bill support during 2022-23, after gas prices rocketed.
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FALSE
£2tn
“The UK cost of net-zero has been estimated by the National Grid and others at some £2tn or more. It is so big that no one really knows.”
– Draft Reform manifesto – 19 March 2024
Where it comes from
In 2020, National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) estimated the cost of building and operating a net-zero energy system at a cumulative total of £2.8-3tn by 2050. This is the total cost of building and operating the country’s energy system for 30 years.
What it excludes
The Reform statement is false. The same National Grid ESO report said: “Scenarios where we hit net-zero in 2050…incur broadly the same costs as the scenario where we miss our net-zero target.” As such, based on the National Grid ESO analysis, there would not be any additional cost to hitting net-zero relative to running an energy system that does not meet the target. Moreover, in 2021, the Treasury stated: “The costs of global [climate] inaction significantly outweigh the costs of action.”
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FALSE
£2.8-3tn
“National Grid ESO, the company which manages our electricity supply, has estimated decarbonising Britain’s entire energy system will cost between £2.8tn and £3tn between now and 2050, working out at between £108bn and £115bn a year.”
– Sun comment by Ross Clark – 23 June 2024
Where it comes from
In 2020, National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) estimated the cost of the country’s energy system at a cumulative total of £2.8-3tn by 2050. This is the total cost of building and operating the energy system for 30 years.
What it excludes
The climate-sceptic columnist’s statement is false. The same National Grid report said: “Scenarios where we hit net-zero in 2050…incur broadly the same costs as the scenario where we miss our net-zero target.” As such, based on the National Grid ESO analysis, there would not be any additional cost to hitting net-zero, relative to running an energy system that does not meet the target. Furthermore, the £108-115bn annual cost cited by Clark can be compared with the £265bn spent by UK consumers on energy in 2022 – when fossil fuel costs spiked due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – including more than £100bn on imported oil and gas alone. These 2022 figures did not include investment in new infrastructure.
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FALSE
£1,000
“[R]estoring the 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will cost an estimated extra £1,000 per household per year from 2022 until 2050.”
– Sunday Telegraph article and editorial – 15 June 2024
Where it comes from
The Sunday Telegraph article and accompanying editorial are based on a dossier compiled by free-market thinktank the Institute of Economic Affairs, which, in turn, cites a 2022 report published by consultancy the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR). The CEBR work was funded by Fair Fuel UK, the motoring lobby group run by climate-sceptic Reform candidate for London mayor Howard Cox. The newspaper omits this detail from its article.
What it excludes
The Sunday Telegraph claim is false, because the underlying report from CEBR makes the “simply perverse” assumption that the relative cost of petrol and electric vehicles (EVs) is unchanged for the next 30 years. The assumption that EVs will continue to face a purchase price premium over petrol cars is directly contradicted by the evidence of falling costs, including recent data showing that EVs are now close to up-front price parity in the UK. The Climate Change Committee (CCC) concluded that an earlier combustion-engine car ban would deliver £6bn in cost savings, because EVs have much lower running costs than petrol cars, again directly contradicting the CEBR and Sunday Telegraph claims. When Sunak delayed the combustion-car ban from 2030 to 2035, the CCC said this was “likely to increase…motoring costs for households”, adding that EVs were “significantly cheaper than petrol or diesel vehicles to own and operate”.
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TRUE
£265bn
“The UK spent a staggering £265bn on energy in 2022 – the most recent data available – including more than £100bn on imported oil and gas alone”
– Tweet by Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans – 8 February 2024
Where it comes from
This is the cost of energy – the majority of it being fossil fuels – bought in the UK in 2022 at market prices, reflecting the cost to consumers of heat, power and transport fuel. The data was the most recently available at time of publication and covers the first year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when Russia restricted gas supplies to Europe and sent fossil fuel prices rocketing. In the pre-crisis year of 2021, the UK spent £184bn on energy.
What it excludes
These figures do not include investment in energy-related infrastructure, such as power plants, pylons, boilers, cars or heat pumps. Many conversations about the cost of reaching net-zero ignore the substantial costs of the status quo, which is heavily reliant on volatile fossil fuels.
The post Factcheck: How ‘scary-sounding numbers’ are being used to mislead the UK about net-zero appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: How ‘scary-sounding numbers’ are being used to mislead the UK about net-zero
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(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 constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
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 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
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NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz.
Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
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