At least 120 people have died after a devastating flash flood swept through homes and holiday camps in central Texas in the early hours of 4 July.
The disaster unfolded after a severe rainstorm caused the Guadalupe River to swell to its second-greatest height on record.
Headlines have been dominated by the death of 27 children and counsellors from a summer camp for girls near the banks of the river.
In the aftermath of the flooding, many news outlets questioned whether the Trump administration’s decision to cut staff from the federal climate, weather and disaster response services may have impacted the emergency response to the disaster.
However, others defended the agency’s actions, saying that the appropriate warnings had been issued.
Scientists have been quick to point out the role of climate change in driving more intense rainfall events.
A rapid attribution analysis found “natural variability alone” could not explain the extreme rainfall observed during the “very exceptional meteorological event”.
Meanwhile, social media has also been awash with misinformation, including claims that the floods were caused by geoengineering – an argument that was quickly dismissed by officials.
In this article, Carbon Brief unpacks how the flood unfolded, the potential role of climate change and whether advanced warnings were affected by funding cuts to key agencies.
- How did the flooding develop?
- What impact did the flooding have?
- What role did climate change play?
- Were the forecasts and warnings affected by recent job cuts?
- What conspiracy theories have been circulating?
- How has the media responded?
How did the flooding develop?
The flash flooding began in the early hours of the morning on Friday 4 July, with early news coverage focusing on Guadalupe River in Kerr County.
According to BBC News, the US National Weather Service (NWS) reported a “swathe of around 5-10 inches (125-250mm) of rainfall in just three to six hours across south-central Kerr County”, equivalent to “around four months of rain [falling] in a matter of hours”.
The slow-moving weather system was fed by moisture from the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, which had brought flooding to Mexico, before tracking north as it died out, the outlet explained.
Kerr County is a “hillier part of Texas than surrounding counties”, meaning that “moisture-laden air was forced upwards, building huge storm clouds”, the article noted:
“These storm clouds were so large they effectively became their own weather system, producing huge amounts of rain over a large area.”
Prof Hatin Sharif, a hydrologist and civil engineer at the University of Texas at San Antonio, explained in an article for the Conversation why Kerr County is part of an area known as “flash flood alley”:
“The hills are steep and the water moves quickly when it floods. This is a semi-arid area with soils that don’t soak up much water, so the water sheets off quickly and the shallow creeks can rise fast.”
He added that Texas as a whole “leads the nation in flood deaths” – by a “wide margin”.
As the rain lashed down, the “destructive, fast-moving waters” of Guadalupe River rose by 8 metres in just 45 minutes before daybreak on Friday, said the Associated Press, “washing away homes and vehicles”.
The Washington Post reported that the river reached its “second-greatest height on record…and higher than levels reached when floodwaters rose in 1987”. It added that “at least 1.8tn gallons of rain” fell over the region on Friday morning.
The floodwaters swept through camps, resorts and motorhome parks along the banks of Guadalupe River for the Fourth of July weekend.
A timeline of events by NPR reported that “boats and other equipment that was pre-positioned started responding immediately”.
The article quotes Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, who said there were 14 helicopters, 12 drones and nine rescue teams in action – as well as “swimmers in the water rescuing adults and children out of trees”. He added that there were 400 to 500 people on the ground helping with the rescue effort.
By Saturday 5 July, more than 1,000 local, state and federal personnel were on the ground helping with the rescue operation, NPR said.
In the days that followed, further periods of heavy rainfall meant that flood watches remained in place for much of the weekend, said Bloomberg.
Newspapers and online outlets were filled with images from the area. For example, the Sunday Times carried photos and video footage of the floods, while BBC News had drone footage of the “catastrophic flooding”.
What impact did the flooding have?
The floods have killed at least 119 people, according to the latest count reports by the Guardian:
“In Kerr county, the area that was worst affected by last Friday’s flood, officials said on Wednesday morning that 95 people had died. The other 24 people who have died are from surrounding areas. The Kerr county sheriff said 59 adults and 36 children had died, with 27 bodies still unidentified.”
There are also 173 people believed to still be missing, the Guardian said, including 161 from Kerr County specifically.
Bloomberg noted that “some of the victims came from additional storms around the state capital Austin on 5 July”. It added that, according to officials, “no one had been found alive since 4 July, when the deluge arrived in the pre-dawn hours”.
BBC News reported that continuing rains following the initial flood “hamper[ed] rescue teams who are already facing venomous snakes as they sift through mud and debris”.
Headlines have been dominated by the death of 27 children and counsellors from Camp Mystic – a 700-acre summer camp for girls, which has been running for almost 100 years, noted the Guardian.
BBC News reported that “many of the hundreds of girls at the camp were sleeping in low-lying cabins less than 500ft (150 metres) from the riverbank”.
Lieutenant governor Patrick “told of one heroic camp counsellor who smashed a window so girls in their pyjamas could swim out through neck-high water”, the outlet reported. He added that “these little girls, they swam for about 10 or 15 minutes” before reaching safety.
The Associated Press reported:
“Dozens of families shared in local Facebook groups that they received devastating phone calls from safety officials informing them that their daughters had not yet been located among the washed-away camp cabins and downed trees. Camp Mystic said in an email to parents of the roughly 750 campers that if they have not been contacted directly, their child is accounted for.”
The New York Times published images and videos of the aftermath at the summer camp.
Visiting the site on Sunday 6 July, Texas governor Greg Abbott tweeted that the camp was “horrendously ravaged in ways unlike I’ve seen in any natural disaster”.
In the immediate aftermath of the floods, US president Donald Trump, at his golf club in Bedminster in New Jersey, signed a major disaster declaration that freed up resources for the state, reported France24.
A preliminary estimate by the private weather service AccuWeather put the damage and economic loss at $18bn-$22bn (£13.2bn-£16.2bn), the Guardian reported.
Former president Barack Obama described the events as “absolutely heartbreaking”, reported the Hill. In a statement, former president George W Bush and his wife Laura – who was once a counselor at the camp – said that they “are heartbroken by the loss of life and the agony so many are feeling”, another Hill article reported.
American-born pontiff Pope Leo XIV also “voiced his sympathies”, reported another Guardian article. Speaking at the Vatican, he said:
“I would like to express sincere condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones, in particular their daughters who were in a summer camp in the disaster caused by flooding of the Guadalupe River in Texas.”
What role did climate change play?
As the planet warms, extreme rainfall events are becoming more intense in many parts of the world.
This is principally because, according to the Clausius-Clapeyron (C-C) equation, the air is able to hold 7% more moisture for every 1C that the atmosphere warms, which means warmer air can release more liquid water when it rains.
For example, a recent study of the US found that the frequency of heavy rainfall at “durations from hourly to daily increased in 1949-2020”. It added that this was “likely inconsistent with natural climate variability”.
In addition, research indicates that, in some parts of the world, increases in the intensity of extreme rainfall over 1-3 hours are “stronger” than would be expected from the C-C scaling.
However, many other factors – such as local weather patterns and land use – affect whether extreme rainfall leads to flooding.
Local meteorologist Cary Burgess told Newsweek that “this part of the Texas Hill Country is very prone to flash flooding because of the rugged terrain and rocky landscape”. For example, the outlet notes, 10 teenagers died in flash floods in July 1987.
In the aftermath of the flooding in Texas, Dr Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, told ABC News that there is “abundant evidence” that “highly extreme rain events” have “already increased considerably around the world as a result of the warming that’s already occurred”.
Prof Andrew Dessler from Texas A&M University wrote on climate science newsletter The Climate Brink that “more water in the air flowing into the storm will lead to more intense rainfall”. He added:
“The role of climate change is like steroids for the weather – it injects an extra dose of intensity into existing weather patterns.”
Dr Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, told Bloomberg that Texas is “particularly flood-prone because the fever-hot Gulf of Mexico is right next door, providing plenty of tropical moisture to fuel storms when they come along”.
Many outlets pointed out the higher-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. BBC News said:
“Sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, where some of the air originated from, continue to be warmer than normal. Warmer waters mean more evaporation and so more available moisture in the atmosphere to feed a storm.”
Yale Climate Connections reported that sea surface temperatures were up to 1C above average in the central Gulf of Mexico. It said that human-caused climate change made these conditions up to 10 times more likely, according to the Climate Shift Index from Climate Central.
(This index gives the ratio of how common the temperature is in today’s climate, compared to how likely it would be in a world without climate change.)
Bloomberg was among a number of outlets to note that, in the run-up to the flooding, nearly 90% of Kerr County was experiencing “extreme” or “exceptional” drought. This meant the soil was hard and less able to soak in water when the intense rainfall arrived.
Just days after the event, rapid attribution group ClimaMeter published an analysis of the meteorological conditions that led to the flooding.
It stated that “conditions similar to those of the July 2025 Texas floods are becoming more favorable for extreme precipitation, in line with what would be expected under continued global warming”.
According to the analysis, the flooding was a “very exceptional meteorological event”. It explained that “meteorological conditions” similar to those that caused the floods are “up to 2 mm/day (up to 7%) wetter in the present than they have been in the past”. It added:
“Natural variability alone cannot explain the changes in precipitation associated with this very exceptional meteorological condition.”
The field of extreme weather attribution aims to find the “fingerprint” of climate change in extreme events such as floods, droughts and heatwaves.
ClimaMeter focuses on the atmospheric circulation patterns that cause an extreme event – for example, a low-pressure system in a particular region. Once an event is defined, the scientists search the historical record to find events with similar circulation patterns to calculate how the intensity of the events has changed over time.
The study authors warned that they have “low confidence in the robustness” of their conclusions for this study, because the event is “very exceptional in the data record”, so they do not have many past events to compare it to.
In its coverage of the attribution study, the Wall Street Journal highlighted some of the research’s limitations. It said:
“Remnant moisture from Tropical Storm Barry stalled over the region and repeatedly fed rainfall, making it hard to compare the weather pattern to historical data.”
The outlet quoted one of the study’s co-authors, Dr Davide Faranda, a scientist at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, who said the data “nonetheless suggests that climate change played a role”.
Many other climate scientists have also linked the flooding to climate change.
For example, Dr Leslie Mabon, a senior lecturer in environmental systems at the Open University, told the Science Media Centre:
“The Texas floods point to two issues. One is that there’s no such thing as a natural disaster – and one area that disaster experts will be probing is what warnings were given and when. The second is that the pace and scale of climate change means extreme events can and do exceed what our infrastructure and built environment is able to cope with.”
Were the forecasts and warnings affected by recent job cuts?
Observers were quick to question how the response to the floods has been impacted by recent sweeping cuts to federal climate, weather and disaster response services by the Trump administration.
BBC News explained how staffing cuts overseen by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency – the initiative formerly led by Elon Musk – have reduced the workforce National Weather Service (NWS).
The news outlet reported that – since the start of the year – “most” probationary employees had their contracts terminated, 200 employees have taken voluntary redundancy, 300 opted for early retirement and 100 were “ultimately fired”.
(The Trump administration has also proposed a 25% cut to the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – the agency which oversees the NWS – but this would not come into force until the 2026 financial year.)
The Independent was among a raft of publications to report the weather service had predicted 1-3 inches (2.5-7.6cm) of rain for the region – significantly less than the 10-15 inches (25-38cm) that ultimately fell.
CNN detailed how the first “life-threatening flash flooding warning” for parts of Kerr County – which would have triggered alerts to mobile phones in the area – was issued just past 1am on Friday morning by the NWS. This was 12 hours after the first flash flood warning and followed “several technical forecasts” issued on Thursday afternoon and evening with “increasingly heightened language”, it said.
Other publications focused on staffing shortages at local branches of the weather service. The New York Times and Guardian were among the outlets who reported that “key staff members” had been missing at the two Texas NWS offices involved in forecasting and warning for the affected region. This included a “warning coordination” officer.
Writing on social media platform BlueSky, Dr Daniel Swain – the climate scientist from the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources – said claims that the weather service “did not foresee” the floods were “simply not true”. He stated:
“This truly was a sudden and massive event and occurred at [the] worst possible time (middle of the night). But [the] problem, once again, was not a bad weather prediction: it was one of “last mile” forecast/warning dissemination.
“I am not aware of the details surrounding staffing levels at the local NWS offices involved, nor how that might have played into [the] timing/sequence of warnings involved. But I do know that locations that flooded catastrophically had at least 1-2+ hours of direct warning from NWS.”
Rick Spinrad, who led NOAA over 2021-25, speculated that the communication problems could have been caused by staffing shortages. He told the Hill:
“I do think the cuts are contributing to the inability of emergency managers to respond…The weather service did a really good job, actually, in getting watches and warnings and…wireless emergency alerts out.
“It is really a little early to give a specific analysis of where things might have broken down, but from what I’ve seen, it seems like the communications breakdown in the last mile is where most of the problem was.”
The Trump administration, meanwhile, was quick to push back on the suggestion that budget and job cuts to climate and weather services had aggravated the situation.
In an official statement provided to Axios, a White House spokesperson said criticisms of the NWS and funding cut accusations were “shameful and disgusting”. It added:
“False claims about the NWS have been repeatedly debunked by meteorologists, experts and other public reporting. The NWS did their job, even issuing a flood watch more than 12 hours in advance.”
Meanwhile, when a reporter asked Trump whether the administration would investigate whether recent cuts had led to “key” vacancies at the NWS, he responded that “they did not”.
Asked if he thought federal meteorologists should be rehired, Trump said:
“I would think not. This was the thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it. Nobody saw it.”
Media outlets highlighted how the disaster put a spotlight on the risks of forthcoming federal cuts to NOAA and the government’s plans to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The Guardian reported on warnings that such floods could become the “new normal” as “Trump and his allies dismantle crucial federal agencies that help states prepare and respond to extreme weather and other hazards”.
Dr Samantha Montano, professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, told the outlet.
“This is what happens when you let climate change run unabated and break apart the emergency management system – without investing in that system at the local and state level.”
CBS News reported about how, in 2017, Kerr County officials rejected proposals to install an outdoor warning system for floods on the grounds of cost. The outlet noted that neighbouring counties Guadalupe and Comal both have flood sirens in place.
What conspiracy theories have been circulating?
As with many other natural disasters, the floods have been followed by a wave of fast-spreading online misinformation.
One of the most popular theories to have taken hold is that the floods were caused by cloud seeding – a form of geoengineering where substances are purposefully introduced into the clouds to enhance rainfall.
In a pair of Twitter posts, each viewed by several million people, one account claimed the state of Texas was “running seven massive cloud seeding programs” and asked: “Did they push the clouds too far and trigger this flood?”
It also linked the floods and cloud seeding operations conducted by Rainmaker Technology Corporation, a weather modification start-up partly funded by US billionaire Peter Thiel.
Rainmaker Technology Corporation CEO Augustus Doricko found himself in the eye of the social media storm, as social media users pointed to his organisation’s links to Thiel and shared a photo of the businessman with former US president Bill Clinton.
The cloud seeding theory received a major boost when it was promoted by Mike Flynn, Donald Trump’s former national security advisor and one of the “most integral figures in the QAnon movement”, according to the Guardian.
The weather modification theory was picked up by existing and prospective Republican politicians.
The Daily Beast reported how Kandiss Taylor – a Republican congressional candidate in Georgia – blamed the event on “fake weather” in a string of tweets. She wrote: “This isn’t just ‘climate change.’ It’s cloud seeding, geoengineering, & manipulation.”
Meanwhile, sitting Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on Twitter that she had introduced a bill that “prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity”.
(This is not Taylor Greene’s first foray into weather manipulation conspiracies. In 2021, she postulated that Jewish bankers had started deadly fires in California in 2018 by firing a laser from space in order to benefit themselves financially.)
Meteorologists were quick to debunk the claims around cloud seeding. In a Facebook post, chief meteorologist for Texas news station ABC13 wrote:
“Cloud seeding cannot create a storm of this magnitude or size. In fact, cloud seeding cannot even create a single cloud. All it can do is take an existing cloud and enhance the rainfall by up to 20%.”
At a press conference on Monday, Texas senator Ted Cruz said there was “zero evidence of anything like weather modification”. He added:
“The internet can be a strange place. People can come up with all sorts of crazy theories.”
Theories about geoengineering were not the only form of misinformation to swirl online in the wake of the disaster.
Snopes reported how local outlet Kerr County Lead pulled a story about two girls rescued 30 metres up a tree two days after the flood event after the account was found to be false.
The story, which cited “sources on the ground”, was circulated widely on Twitter and replicated by other news outlets, including the Daily Mirror and Manchester Evening News in the UK. Both outlets subsequently deleted the articles.
In a retraction statement, the editor of Kerr County Lead said the story was a “classic tale of misinformation that consumes all of us during a natural disaster”.
Another widely-circulated story – debunked by Snopes – claimed that musician Eric Clapton would pay funeral expenses for the families of those killed.
How has the media responded?
The scale of flooding and the resulting death toll have prompted many news outlets to ask whether more could have been done to avoid the tragedy.
Newspapers in Texas highlighted perceived failures by local, state and federal authorities.
“Flash floods happen frequently enough in the Hill Country that many Texans rightly wonder whether at least some of the devastation and death…could have been prevented,” the Dallas Morning News said. “Answers must follow,” agreed the Austin American-Statesman.
An editorial in the San Antonio Express-News said there would likely be “plenty of finger-pointing”, arguing that “people will try to push narratives that serve political and personal agendas”. It added:
“The truth may reveal inevitability, failure or something in between.”
An editorial in the Houston Chronicle criticised “misguided decisions” by Trump to cut support for the “federal agencies that keep us safe from storms”. It stated:
“What will protect Texans is a fully staffed, fully supported weather service – with the scientists and infrastructure in place to warn us in time.”
While none of these Texan newspaper editorials pointed to a potential role for climate change in exacerbating the extreme rainfall, some of their wider reporting on the disaster did.
Other US news outlets, such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post emphasised this link in their coverage.
“We hope this tragedy will lead to renewed support for the systems we’ve devised over the years to help prepare for and respond to natural disasters,” Louisiana’s New Orleans Advocate stated in an editorial, adding that “we all are vulnerable to increasingly extreme weather events caused by climate change”.
In Pennsylvania, a Patriot-News editorial said that, following the floods, “government officials at all levels need to accept the reality of climate change. Too many do not.”
Writing in his news outlet, Bloomberg, businessman and former Democratic presidential nominee Michael Bloomberg made a direct link between the “climate denialism” of the Trump administration and the disaster in Texas.
The New York Times has an opinion piece on the floods by MaryAnn Tierney, former regional administrator at the FEMA. Besides making a clear link to climate change, Tierney stated that:
“The uncomfortable truth is this: With each passing day, the federal government is becoming less prepared to face the next big disaster.”
More overtly right-leaning and Trump-supporting media outlets in the US took aim at “left-wing critics” for linking the event to climate change and Trump administration cuts.
An article in Fox News, which has broadcast discussions of flood-related conspiracy theories, criticised “liberals” for “politicising the disastrous flooding”.
An editorial in the New York Post is headlined: “Lefty responses to the Texas flooding horror are demented and depraved.” It argued that Democrats had “wrongly suggest[ed] that Team Trump slowed the disaster response”.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, from the climate-sceptic Heritage Foundation, wrote in the UK’s Daily Telegraph that Democrats were trying to “politicise mother nature” by linking weather-service cuts to the deaths in Texas.
Meanwhile, Guardian columnist Rebecca Solnit urged caution in definitively linking the floods to any specific political issue amid “the information onslaughts of this moment”. She concluded that “both the weather and the news require vigilance.”
The post Media reaction: The 2025 Texas floods and the role of climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Media reaction: The 2025 Texas floods and the role of climate change
Climate Change
DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Iran war fallout continues
WORK FROM HOME: The International Energy Agency has advised its member countries to take 10 steps in response to the ongoing energy crisis fuelled by the Iran war, including reducing highway speeds and encouraging people to work from home, said the Guardian. It came after retaliatory attacks between Israel and Iran continued to destroy energy infrastructure in the Middle East, causing energy prices to soar further, said Reuters.
SUPPLY DISRUPTED: The IEA also said it is prepared to make more of its member nations’ 1.4bn-barrel oil reserves available to help ease the impacts of what it called the “biggest supply disruption in the history of the oil market”, reported Bloomberg. The outlet noted that Asian countries have been hit hardest by the shortages, caused by a “near-halt” of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
EU SUMMIT: The energy crisis dominated talks at an EU leaders summit on Thursday, said Politico. Arriving at the summit, Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez attacked other European leaders for using the energy crisis as an excuse to “gut climate policies”, according to the EU Observer. The Financial Times said that some European leaders have asked the European Commission to overhaul its flagship emissions trading system (ETS) by summer in response to the energy crisis.
COAL BOOST: In response to the conflict, utility companies in Asia are “boosting coal-fired power generation to cut costs and safeguard energy supply”, said Reuters. UN climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell told Reuters: “If there was ever a moment to accelerate that energy transition, breaking dependencies which have shackled economies, this is the time.”
Around the world
- WINDFARM WINDFALL: The Trump administration in the US is considering a nearly $1bn settlement with TotalEnergies to cancel the French energy company’s two planned windfarms off the US east coast and have it instead invest in fossil-gas infrastructure in Texas, according to documents seen by the New York Times.
- BUSINESS CLASH: Following “clashes” with the agribusiness sector, Brazil launched its new climate plan, which calls for a 49-58% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2022 levels by 2025 and includes “specific guidelines for different sectors”, reported Folha de Sao Paolo.
- SALES SLUMP: Sales of liquified petroleum gas from India’s state-run oil companies have fallen by 17% this month due to cuts in deliveries to commercial and industrial consumers “amid the widespread logistical bottlenecks triggered by the Iran war”, said the Economic Times.
- CUBAN ENERGY CRISIS: The US imposed an “effective oil blockade” on Cuba, leaving the country facing its “worst energy crisis in decades”, reported the Washington Post. Meanwhile, Chinese exports of solar panels to the island have “skyrocketed” since 2023, it added.
- RECORD HIGHS: An “unprecedented” heatwave in the western and south-western US is “shattering dozens of temperature records” and could lead to drought in California in the coming months, reported the Los Angeles Times.
- VULNERABILITY CONCERNS: Landslides that killed more than 100 people in southern Ethiopia have “renewed concerns about Ethiopia’s vulnerability to climate-related disasters”, said the Addis Standard.
1%
The percentage of England’s land surface that could be devoted to renewables by 2050, according to the long-awaited “land-use framework” released by the UK government this week and covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Approaching international climate action by shifting the burden of mitigation onto higher-income countries could avoid 13.5 million premature deaths from air pollution in middle- and lower-income countries by 2050 | The Lancet Global Health
- Beavers can turn the ecosystems surrounding streams into “persistent” sinks of carbon that can sequester an order of magnitude more than non-beaver-modified ecosystems can store | Communications Earth & Environment
- Mobile-phone data from seven diverse countries during the summer heatwaves of 2022-23 showed a “widespread tendency to withdraw into homes” and an increase in out-of-home activities that can offer cooling, such as indoor retail | Environmental Research: Climate
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief this week published a significant update to its map of how climate change is affecting extreme weather events around the world. The map now includes 232 new extreme weather events from studies published in 2024 and 2025. Of these events, 196 were made more severe or more likely to occur by human-driven climate change, 12 were made less severe or less likely to occur and 10 had no discernible human influence. (The remaining 14 studies were inconclusive.)
Spotlight
New Zealand breaks new ground on climate litigation
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to experts about a first-of-its-kind climate lawsuit in New Zealand.
Earlier this week, representatives from two environmentally focused legal advocacy groups challenged the New Zealand government’s climate-action plan in court.
The plaintiffs argued that the measures laid out in the plan are insufficient to achieve the country’s legal obligation to hold global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.
The case could be “influential” in shaping lawsuits and rulings around the world, one legal expert not involved in the case told Carbon Brief.
Reductions vs removals
The new case contends that there are several issues regarding the New Zealand government’s response to climate change.
One of the key arguments the plaintiffs make is that New Zealand’s second emissions reduction plan, which covers the period from 2026-30, is overreliant on the use of tree-planting to achieve its targets.
When the plan was released in December 2024, it was “immediately clear that it was a pretty lacklustre plan”, Eliza Prestidge Oldfield, senior legal researcher at the Environmental Law Initiative, one of the groups behind the legal case, told Carbon Brief.
The plan called for large-scale planting of pine tree plantations, which are not native to New Zealand and have a high risk of burning. Because of this, there are concerns about how permanent any carbon removal provided by these plantations actually can be, experts told Carbon Brief.
Catherine Higham, senior policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment who was not involved in the case, said:
“The lawyers are arguing that there are real challenges with equating the emissions that you may be able to remove from the atmosphere through afforestation with actual emissions reductions, which are much more certain.”
‘Global dialogue’
While other climate lawsuits elsewhere in the world have also focused on the inadequacy of a government’s plan to meet its stated emissions-reduction targets, this is the first such case that addresses the role of removals head-on.
Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, told Carbon Brief that the lawsuit “builds on a decade of climate litigation” in national, regional and international courts.
Maxwell, who was not involved in the New Zealand case, added that there is a “real global dialogue” between, not just plaintiffs, but national courts as well. She said:
“[National courts] look to common issues that have been decided in other countries. They’re not binding on that court if it’s at the national level, but they are influential.”
Given that many other countries have legal frameworks requiring their governments to create plans outlining the pathway to their long-term climate targets, Prestidge Oldfield told Carbon Brief that other jurisdictions “should be interested in these questions around the level of certainty”.
Higham noted that, even if the case is successful, addressing the plan’s shortfalls will face its own set of challenges. She told Carbon Brief:
“A lot of these decisions are political and they can be politically contentious…Those [measures] have to be put into action through legislation and that is then subject to the usual political process. So that’s where the challenge comes in.”
While she could not speculate on the outcome of the case, Prestidge Oldfield said it was “very heartening” to see that both the judge and the opposing counsel “appreciated how much of a concern climate change is globally”.
She added:
“It’s not a given that the judge would even be interested in climate change.”
Watch, read, listen
COMMON APPROACH: The Heated podcast analysed fossil-fuel advertisements and highlighted the most common deception tactics they employed.
THREAT ASSESSMENT: Mongabay mapped the potential threat that oil extraction poses to Venezuela’s ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest and its coral reefs.
SALT LAKES? GREAT!: High Country News interviewed journalist Dr Caroline Tracey about her new book on saline lakes – such as Utah’s Great Salt Lake – the threats that face them and what they can teach us.
Coming up
- 23 March-2 April: Third meeting of the preparatory commission for the High Seas Treaty, New York
- 24-27 March: 64th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bangkok
- 26-29 March: 14th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization, Yaoundé, Cameroon
Pick of the jobs
- International Centre of Research for the Environment and Development (CIRAD), IPCC chapter scientist | Salary: €3,200-3,750 per month. Location: Nogent-sur-Marne, France
- Avaaz, chief of staff | Salary: Dependent on location. Location: Remote, with preferred time zones
- Green Party, social media officer | Salary: £31,592-£32,192. Location: Remote or Westminster, UK
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 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Around 300 scientists, civil servants, journalists and climate experts took part in the 11th annual Carbon Brief quiz on Wednesday 18 March 2026.
For the second time, this year’s quiz was hosted by Octopus Energy at its headquarters in central London.
In total, 39 teams participated – 25 teams in person and 14 teams joining via Zoom.
Competing teams reflected a wide range of climate change and energy professionals. The list included journalists, civil servants, climate campaigners, policy advisers, energy experts and scientists.
Organisations represented included: Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) in India; New Scientist; the Times; Business Green; the Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources (BSEER), UCL; Verisk Maplecroft; BBC; World Weather Attribution; Grantham Institute at Imperial; DESNZ; WWF; European Climate Foundation (ECF); the ENDS Report; C40 Cities; Ricardo; Met Office; Meliore; E3G; Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI); Energy Transitions Commission; Carbon Tracker; Ember; Royal Meteorological Society; Civil Service Climate and Environment Network (CSCEN); Changing Markets Foundation; Cerulogy; Oxford Sustainable Law Programme; Université de Lausanne; University of Exeter; Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey; UK Parliament; Skeptical Science; ECIU (Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit); Octopus Energy; DeSmog; Department for Transport and Royal School of Mines.
Teams were tested with five rounds of questions – general knowledge, policy, science and two picture rounds. (See the slideshow of the questions and answers below).
After two hours of playing, this year’s winners were announced.
Comprised of players from the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) in India, last time’s second place team, “Emissions Impossible” won the coveted Carbon Brief trophy with a total score of 76 out of 100 available points.
In joint second place, with 59 points, were the “Potato-sized nodules”, a mixed team of journalists from New Scientist, the Times and Business Green.
Sharing second place, after leading at the half-way point, were “You cannot BSEERious” from the Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources at UCL.
In fourth place, with 57 points, were “Risky Quizness”, from Verisk Maplecroft.
A certificate was awarded to the BBC for the best team name, as voted for by Carbon Brief staff: “High hopes [low confidence]”.
See the full leaderboard:
All the questions and answers from this year’s quiz can be found in this PDF document.
This year’s trickiest round was picture round two, which asked teams to match the quote to the author, with an average score of 5.9 out of 20 available points.
No team correctly guessed that “Chris Funk: Drought, Flood, Fire” was the source of the quote: “How greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere is pretty straightforward. It is really important that we understand this. But almost nobody does, because it is not something that we are taught in school.”
Science was the second hardest round, earning an average score of 6.1 points out of 20.
No team correctly guessed “religious leaders” as the least trustworthy source of climate information, according to a 2025 study using public polling from seven global south countries.
The highest-scoring round was general knowledge, with an average of 13.8 out of 20 questions answered correctly.
Carbon Brief would like to thank all the teams who took part and we look forward to hosting the quiz again in the spring of 2027.
If you would like to participate in next year’s quiz, please contact us in advance at quiz AT carbonbrief DOT org.
Photos by Kerry Cleaver
The post The Carbon Brief Quiz 2026 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Just 1% of England’s land will be needed for renewables to help meet the UK’s climate goals by 2050, according to a first-of-its-kind framework.
There is enough land in England to meet climate and nature goals, while also producing more food and building new homes, according to the UK government’s new “land-use framework”.
Speaking at the framework’s launch on Wednesday, environment secretary Emma Reynolds said she hoped it would put an end to the idea that England faces “false choices” over “solar panels versus farmland”, or “growth versus environment”.
The policy was first planned by the Conservative government in 2022, but has been delayed many times.
It has been broadly welcomed by environmental groups, with Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, calling it a “vital step forward” towards “more joined-up approaches” to land use.
Below, Carbon Brief outlines the main points of the framework relating to climate change, nature restoration, food production, renewable energy and housing.
- What is the land-use framework?
- What does the plan say about how land in England should be used?
- What does the framework mean for different sectors?
What is the land-use framework?
The government’s land-use framework for England aims to set out a “coherent national vision” for using land.
The 56-page report is the first of its kind in England.
It focuses solely on England, but notes that the government will “work closely” with the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to share best practice and “collaborate on cross-border issues”.
It is a “blueprint” to inform better decisions on optimising land use to produce food, host renewable energy, restore nature and build more homes, says environment secretary Emma Reynolds in the foreword of the framework.
The plan hopes to end the “fragmented approach” to tackling these issues, which has led to a “confused picture and missed opportunities for land to deliver multiple benefits”, Reynolds says in the foreword. She adds:
“We can plant trees to reduce flood risk to homes and farmland, locate energy infrastructure alongside nature-rich food production and ensure nature recovery is at the heart of resilient growth and development.”
The report says it will play a “critical role” in helping to deliver national and global commitments, such as carbon budgets and national biodiversity and climate plans.
The framework commits to creating a long-term assessment of climate change impacts on land use at 2C and 4C of global warming.
It also commits to setting up a “land-use unit” in the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs to produce a map of “national spatial priorities” in England for, among other things, food production, nature and housing.
The government says it will update the framework every five years, outlining progress and next steps on implementation.
Currently, about 70% of land in the UK is used for agriculture – primarily livestock.
The chart below highlights how land is currently allocated in the UK (left) and how much overseas land is used to produce food for the UK (right).
The government’s land-use framework for England has been long-awaited and much-delayed.
The recommendation for the report first came in the 2021 National Food Strategy, an independent report led by businessman Henry Dimbleby.
It recommended creating a rural land-use framework to give “detailed assessments” of the best ways to use land in England.
The former Conservative government committed to produce such a report in a June 2022 food strategy.
This strategy said that a land-use framework for England would be released in 2023 “to ensure we meet our net-zero and biodiversity targets”, among other aims.
The publication was, however, delayed many times.
The Labour government launched a consultation on the framework in January 2025 and the final report was eventually released on 18 March 2026.
The framework is a “long-awaited opportunity for real change”, says Roger Mortlock, chief executive of the environmental charity Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), in a statement.
Mortlock welcomes its “ambition”, but says that the way in which land tradeoffs are considered locally and nationally “will be key to its success”.
A report released by CPRE earlier this week, however, said that the framework is “unlikely to be the silver bullet many are hoping for”.
What does the plan say about how land in England should be used?
The framework uses high-resolution modelling – what it calls the “most sophisticated analysis” of its kind – to examine how England can use land to meet climate, nature, food and housing needs.
One key finding is that England has enough land to meet all of its objectives, if land is used efficiently.
This means that England has “enough land to deliver our objectives for nature restoration and development without reducing domestic food production or compromising on these objectives”, according to the framework.
It adds that efficient land use means “playing to the strengths” of England’s varied landscape. This involves, for example, prioritising the restoration of peatlands in north-west England and temperate rainforests in the south-west.
The chart below shows the percentage of land in England currently used for different purposes, as well as how this distribution will need to change by 2030 and 2050, if the UK is to meet its goals, according to the framework.
According to the framework, just 1% of England’s land will need to be taken up by renewables, such as solar and onshore wind, by 2050.
However, the framework does note that there is “inherent uncertainty” in projecting energy use by 2050 and says that the amount of land required for renewables may be nearer to “more than 2%”, depending on how quickly solar and wind is deployed in the future.
A further 6% of England’s land should be used for achieving climate and nature goals, according to the framework.
(A Defra official tells Carbon Brief that the framework’s projections for renewable energy and tree-planting were not as ambitious as those in the Climate Change Committee’s central pathway to net-zero, but are in line with the government’s carbon budget delivery plan for 2035.)
Speaking at the launch of the framework, environment secretary Emma Reynolds said that the framework shows that there are no “false choices” between “solar panels versus farmland” or “growth versus environment”, adding:
“The problem has never been scarcity of land. It has been a shortage of clarity.”
What does the framework mean for different sectors?
The framework sets out a “vision” for land use in several areas, such as housing, energy, food and nature by 2030 and 2050.
It also details what the government is currently doing to achieve these aims and makes pledges for more action down the line.
Below, Carbon Brief has detailed the key points around renewable energy, tree-planting and nature restoration, food production and housing.
Renewable energy
The report notes that the need to produce extra electricity to meet growing demand from, among other things, electric vehicles, heat pumps and data centres is “changing the way land is used across England”.
The UK plans to produce at least 95% of electricity from low-carbon sources, such as wind, solar and nuclear, by 2030.
Despite this, the report says that solar and wind will continue to make up a “small proportion of land use”. It says that, by 2030, much of this land will be “managed sustainably” for dual purposes, such as placing solar panels on the same land as growing crops.
Currently, around 21,000 hectares of land in the UK is covered by solar panels – which, as Carbon Brief has previously noted, is much less than the land used for golf courses.
By 2035, an additional 129,000 hectares of land is estimated to be used for solar and wind energy in England, with some of this land also used to produce food at the same time.
If achieved, this will account for 1% of land in England and 2% of the UK’s agricultural area.
This estimate is based on the assumption that all extra solar will be installed on the ground, which the report says is a “highly conservative and unlikely scenario” given that many panels are anticipated to be placed on rooftops.
This makes the 2035 figure an “upper-bound” estimate, says the report.
By 2050, around 155,000 hectares – roughly equal to the size of Greater London – will be used for renewables, the report estimates, adding that this is based on trends from historical data and not future scenarios.
The report adds that it is possible that more land than this will be needed to meet energy goals past 2035, however, citing the “inherent uncertainty” in figuring out what the mix of electricity sources will look like by 2050.
By 2030, coordinated planning of electricity networks will encourage rural investment, “such as through new data centres”, the report claims.
By 2050, the report says that better land-use planning will lead to a “fairer and more efficient distribution of solar and wind infrastructure across England”.
There will also be better electricity connections to renewables, much of which will be delivered alongside “productive agriculture”, such as by installing solar panels above crops – known as agrivoltaic farming.
The report says that any land-use change decisions should be made based on a number of factors, drawing from “local knowledge, values, data and priorities”.
It notes that development of wind and solar infrastructure in rural areas should give local communities the “opportunity to benefit from local clean energy”.
Tree-planting and nature restoration
According to the framework, 6% of England’s land will need to be used for achieving climate and nature goals by 2050.
This kind of land use includes restoring England’s carbon-dense peatlands, planting new woodlands and restoring heathland habitats.
As part of the analysis, the framework takes a detailed look at what parts of England would be best suited for nature restoration. It says:
“Habitat creation and restoration should be directed to the places where it can have the greatest ecological impact, help to reconnect fragmented landscapes, support priority species and deliver the greatest contribution to nature recovery.”
The chart below, taken from the framework, shows where in England has the greatest potential for nature restoration in dark green.
The analysis finds that north-west England has high potential for nature restoration, largely because it is home to the vast majority of the country’s carbon-rich, but degraded, peatlands.
Other areas identified include the south-west, which could be suitable for “grassland restoration and broadleaf woodland creation” and the south-east, where new grasslands could be planted, according to the framework.
The framework adds that the UK government remains committed to protecting 30% of land for nature by 2030, an international goal set under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
However, it notes that, at present, just 7% of England’s land is protected for nature – with just four years to go until the deadline.
Speaking at the launch of the framework, nature minister Mary Creagh acknowledged that meeting the target remains a large challenge.
She added that her department was currently on a “data sprint” to try to account for all kinds of land that may not currently be classified as being protected for nature, despite serving this purpose.
Food production
The new framework extensively discusses how to balance food production with other uses for land, such as producing renewable energy and building homes.
The government says it is generally not suggesting land-use change on the country’s “best agricultural land”.
The framework focuses instead on using farmland to fulfil dual purposes, “rather than taking land out of production entirely”.
The goals outlined in the framework include increasing domestic food production in England, which the report says is “feasible according to our projections”.
Currently, the UK produces around 60% of its own food, importing the rest from abroad.
By 2030, the “vision” outlined in the framework says that farmers and other land managers will have better long-term clarity and more information on improved ways to use their land.
By 2050, meanwhile, farmlands will be managed to prioritise “sustainable food production and environmental benefits”, it says.
At this stage, the framework estimates that 480,000 hectares of farmland could be used primarily for food production, while also bringing environmental and climate benefits such as planting trees or restoring grassland habitats.
Agricultural land will be used to balance food production and other outcomes. A footnote in the report says that this will broadly lead to a “mosaic of different landscapes” – semi-natural land, low-intensity farmland and higher-intensity farmland.
It also says that, by 2050, farmland will be more resilient to climate change impacts through actions such as planting trees for flood and drought resilience.
All projected scenarios in the analysis behind the framework focus on producing food “more sustainably from less land”, the report notes.
The agricultural land-use change recommendations in the framework differ across the country. If focusing on improvements to water quality and biodiversity, for example, it recommends looking at areas with intensive agricultural production in the east of England.
This is due to these areas using high quantities of fertilisers, which can wash off fields and run into rivers and other waterways. This lowers water quality and harms plants and animals.
The government commits to developing sectoral growth plans, starting with horticulture and poultry, to provide a framework to boost production and “maintain food security”.
The government also promises to support making “under-used land” available for communities to grow food and recover nature, “where appropriate”. This refers to inactive land that is not suitable for other developments.
The report is a “step in the right direction”, says Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers’ Union. He adds that it is “positive” to have “explicit recognition” of using land for multiple purposes and a government commitment to maintain food production.
Bradshaw notes that “challenges remain about delivering against the ambitious objectives as the first 2030 milestone approaches”.
Housing
Reynolds says that this framework can help to “speed up house-building and infrastructure delivery”.
The report says that, by 2030, improved planning will enable areas to facilitate housing and development “whilst protecting and enhancing the environment”.
It adds that, where appropriate, developments will be higher-density to “make the best use of land within our towns and cities”.
By 2030, biodiversity net gain – a planning requirement to improve habitats while building developments – and nature-based solutions will also be used to ensure development “leaves the natural environment in a measurably better state than it was in beforehand”, the report says.
It adds that timber production will be expanded to provide “low-carbon building materials”.
By 2050, meanwhile, the framework says planners will be able to more easily assess how suitable areas are for development “using a streamlined digital planning service and decision support tools”.
These tools – built on a range of data sources – are intended to reduce the number of homes built in areas at risk of flooding, the report says.
One in four homes in England are projected to be at risk of flooding by 2050, under a high-emissions scenario, the report outlines.
The report notes that the government is proposing a “default yes” to some planning applications for developments near well-connected transport stations.
High-demand areas “need to be powered locally and sustainably”, it notes, and using technologies such as rooftop solar to “make use of existing built land for electricity generation” can reduce land pressures elsewhere.
The post Q&A: What England’s new ‘land-use framework’ means for climate, nature and food appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What England’s new ‘land-use framework’ means for climate, nature and food
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