Katharine Gage, Emily O’Keefe and other CCLers at the United States’ Local Conference of Youth in Dubai
National Youth Climate Statement calls for carbon pricing
By Steffanie Munguía
In October, we shared with you that seven of our campus leaders had been selected to participate in the United States’ Local Conference of Youth (LCOY). As our CCL delegation heads to COP28 in Dubai, we sat down with three of these young leaders: Katharine Gage (campus leader at Bowdoin College), Roksanna Keyvan (emerging leader at Wake Forest University), and Emily O’Keefe (founder of the Carbon Fee and Dividend Movement). They shared more about their experience as delegates at LCOY — including getting carbon pricing included in the National Youth Climate Statement — and their vision for climate action both in the U.S. and on the global stage.
Roksanna Keyvan, emerging campus leader at Wake Forest University
What is LCOY, and how does it relate to the COP?
Roksanna: LCOYs offer a unique platform for young climate activists to foster connections, capacity-build, and engage in dialogues on local climate issues. LCOYs precede the UN Climate Change Conference of Youth (COY), an annual event organized by YOUNGO, the official youth constituency of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In the United States, LCOY culminates in the creation of the National Youth Statement on Climate, which contributes to the discussions and preparations for the annual UN Climate Change Conference, also known as the Conference of the Parties (COP). LCOY also plays a pivotal role in providing young individuals with the skills and knowledge required for their engagement at COP, empowering them to actively participate in shaping international climate policies.
What led you to apply to be a delegate?
Emily: Because the purpose of the Local Conference of the Youth in the US is to draft up the youth demands from the US for COP 28, I applied because I wanted to advocate to include a carbon fee and dividend and carbon pricing in the demands. I also wanted to network among young climate activists!
Katharine: I applied to participate in LCOY because I thought it was really important to bring Carbon Fee and Dividend into the youth climate discussion and demands for COP 28. I thought LCOY would be a great opportunity to meet other young climate activists and find ways we can work together to build a more powerful movement.
What was the event like?
Roksanna: The conference adopted a hybrid format, offering attendees the choice to participate both virtually and in person. Although I was unable to attend the conference in person, I was warmly welcomed into the virtual space, where I connected with people from across the nation, listening to their unique perspectives and experiences as activists and environmental leaders.
Emily: There were around 90 delegates who attended the event at American University, and there were many training sessions and workshops around different topics. Topics included climate negotiation training, climate communication, just transition, mitigation, and adaptation. I focused on attending the mitigation workshops because that was the most appropriate place to advocate for carbon pricing, though I thoroughly enjoyed the other training sessions too, like the climate communication training!
What was the outcome? What does the youth statement contain? What comes next?
Katharine: The National Youth Statement on Climate that came out of LCOY contains a set of domestic and global demands on mitigation, adaptation, just transition, and youth inclusion. As part of these demands, the statement calls for a domestic Carbon Fee and Dividend and international border-adjusted carbon pricing:
“Pass a national Carbon Fee and Dividend (e.g. a steadily rising carbon price starting at $15/ton and increasing by $10/ton each year to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 30% in the first five years and 90 by 2050 (Kaufman, et al. 2019), putting the US on a path to keep 1.5˚C alive)” (Page 8).
“Acknowledge the need for the implementation of carbon pricing with carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAMs) based on common but differentiated responsibility” (Page 10).
Katharine Gage, campus leader at Bowdoin University
Significant discussion and debate about CFD occurred during and after LCOY as the statement was being finalized, but the CCLers and some other delegates worked hard to advocate for its inclusion and address concerns with research-backed information. The discussion ultimately ended in a 39-24 vote in favor of including CFD in the statement. Given that only seven of the delegates were CCLers, it was really exciting to see so many youth understand the policy and vote in favor of including CFD!
Other demands include a commitment to an equitable fossil fuel phase-out by 2050 from parties at COP 28, a mandated dialogue and recommendations on the climate refugee crisis at SB60, the adoption of a Just Transition Action Plan, and the establishment of a National US Youth Office to involve youth in climate decision-making and implementation processes. The full statement can be found here.
Following LCOY, the National Youth Statement will feed into the Global Youth Statement, which will be presented at COP 28. We hope that parties at COP will consider our demands and commit to strong policies to meet climate targets. The youth climate movement will continue to build on connections and momentum throughout the year and come together again at the next LCOY in 2024.
What are you taking away from this experience? What do you want people to know about LCOY?
Emily O’Keefe, founder of Carbon Fee and Dividend Movement and campus leader at William and Mary
Emily: By the end of this experience I felt really enthusiastic. Being in a space where powerful youth climate leaders were together gave me a lot of optimism about collectively solving the climate crisis. It seems like one big takeaway is people want the youth climate movement to be more united, the question is still how and what will we unite around? (Of course I’ll probably die on the hill that it would be really strategic to converge around putting a price on carbon). I want people to know that spaces like LCOY are incredibly important if you are a young climate activist. Even more so than the actual demands in the statement, the ability to bring ideas about how the youth movement should collaboratively move forward I found to be the most important aspect. There was a lot of discussion about carbon pricing and I think the reason it is in the statement is because of the really strong proponents of it during the conference. If you are a young CCLer, please come and be a voice in these spaces! CCLers are powerful in that we are extremely knowledgeable about high impact national policies, and that is something the youth climate movement needs! And our voices are extremely powerful together. Sometimes just one or two more people giving feedback on something is what makes all the difference about what gets advocated for.
Roksanna: The distinctiveness of LCOY became evident through its multifaceted role, offering me the chance to both lead and learn, thus creating exciting opportunities for me to pursue my environmental interests. In addition to amplifying the voices of youth, it facilitated the establishment of valuable connections and lasting friendships. One highlight was the opportunity to engage with fellow youth leaders from Citizens’ Climate Lobby at LCOY, collaborating on initiatives that focused on furthering our national goals. In my role as a delegate, I was able to advance my personal goals of spearheading impactful climate initiatives, both alongside my peers and within my community. LCOY provided a platform for me to ignite my passions and delve into the intersections of environmental and humanitarian activism, further strengthening my commitment to making a positive impact on the world.
Katharine: Attending LCOY was a really great experience. I left with a lot of new friends and even more motivation and excitement for spreading the CFD Movement. It was so amazing to be in a room discussing mitigation policies and see not only the CCLers, but also youth who I didn’t even know, raising their hands and speaking favorably about Carbon Fee and Dividend. I think this was the first time that CFD has been seriously considered as a climate solution and supported in the national youth climate space, and it was so exciting to see this progress being made! I also noticed that the majority of the resistance to CFD arose from either misunderstandings about the policy and its projected impacts or concerns that it would not realistically pass in Congress, and both of these concerns can be addressed through the CFD Movement by educating people about the policy and building political will for it. I am very excited to keep growing the CFD Movement and see how the discussion around CFD at LCOY goes next year.
The Youth statement was released the week of November 20th, and we encourage others to read it and show their support by signing on to this petition. In addition to our college student leaders who attended the LCOY, we also had members of our National Youth Action Team participating! Vinay Karthik, a high school student and Communications team leader, was instrumental in drafting the final statement and advocating for the inclusion of a carbon fee and dividend in the demands. Vinay’s communication skills and commitment to climate advocacy have been further recognized as he has been selected to serve as a Logistics Manager for YOUNGO at COP28 in Dubai! Stay tuned for an update from Vinay after he returns.
The post National Youth Climate Statement calls for carbon pricing appeared first on Citizens' Climate Lobby.
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.
- FLAGSHIP FUND: The African Development Bank’s “flagship clean energy fund” plans to more than double its financing to $2.5bn for African renewables over the next two years, reported the Associated Press.
- NO WITHDRAWAL: Vanuatu has defied US efforts to force the Pacific-island nation to drop a UN draft resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on climate, according to the Guardian.
98
The number of nations that submitted their national reports on tackling nature loss to the UN on time – just half of the 196 countries that are part of the UN biodiversity treaty – according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Sea levels are already “much higher than assumed” in most assessments of the threat posed by sea-level rise, due to “inadequate” modelling assumptions | Nature
- Accelerating human-caused global warming could see the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit crossed before 2030 | Geophysical Research Letters covered by Carbon Brief
- Future “super El Niño events” could “significantly lower” solar power generation due to a reduction in solar irradiance in key regions, such as California and east China | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 fell to 54% below 1990 levels, the baseline year for its legally binding climate goals, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Over the same period, data from the World Bank shows that the UK’s economy has expanded by 95%, meaning that emissions have been decoupling from growth.
Spotlight
Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ community wind turbine
Following the recent launch of the UK government’s local power plan, Carbon Brief visits one of the country’s community-energy success stories.
The Lawrence Weston housing estate is set apart from the main city of Bristol, wedged between the tree-lined grounds of a stately home and a sprawl of warehouses and waste incinerators. It is one of the most deprived areas in the city.
Yet, just across the M5 motorway stands a structure that has brought the spoils of the energy transition directly to this historically forgotten estate – a 4.2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine.
The turbine is owned by local charity Ambition Lawrence Weston and all the profits from its electricity sales – around £100,000 a year – go to the community. In the UK’s local power plan, it was singled out by energy secretary Ed Miliband as a “pioneering” project.
‘Sustainable income’
On a recent visit to the estate by Carbon Brief, Ambition Lawrence Weston’s development manager, Mark Pepper, rattled off the story behind the wind turbine.
In 2012, Pepper and his team were approached by the Bristol Energy Cooperative with a chance to get a slice of the income from a new solar farm. They jumped at the opportunity.
“Austerity measures were kicking in at the time,” Pepper told Carbon Brief. “We needed to generate an income. Our own, sustainable income.”
With the solar farm proving to be a success, the team started to explore other opportunities. This began a decade-long process that saw them navigate the Conservative government’s “ban” on onshore wind, raise £5.5m in funding and, ultimately, erect the turbine in 2023.
Today, the turbine generates electricity equivalent to Lawrence Weston’s 3,000 households and will save 87,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) over its lifetime.
