The Earth is on a “disastrous trajectory” with “no adequate global governance” to deal with the scale of threats posed by climate tipping points, warns a major new report.
These tipping points “pose some of the gravest threats faced by humanity”, according to the authors.
They identify more than 25 tipping points across the Earth system, ranging from ice-sheet collapse to rainforest dieback.
“Five major tipping points are already at risk of being crossed due to warming right now and three more are threatened in the 2030s as the world exceeds 1.5C global warming,” the report finds.
Crossing Earth system tipping points would have “catastrophic” impacts on societies, with the potential to “escalate violent conflicts, mass displacement and financial instability”, the report also warns.
The authors say that promoting “positive social tipping points” in socio-behavioural, technological, economic and political systems is “the only realistic systemic risk governance option” to limit the risks.
Many positive tipping points have already been crossed – such as renewable energy becoming the cheapest form of electricity in some countries, and electric vehicles gaining the largest share of the market in others – the report finds.
An international team of more than 200 researchers have contributed to this report, which was initiated at a conference on tipping points in September 2022. (See Carbon Brief’s coverage of the event.) The report was funded by the Bezos Earth Fund.
The authors of the report support a proposal – currently under consideration – for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to prepare a special report on the topic of tipping points.
They also call for the risks and opportunities around tipping points to be included in the global stocktake of progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement, as well as future revisions of Nationally Determined Contributions and national and sub-national policy measures.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief unpacks the report’s findings on “negative” Earth system tipping points and “positive” social tipping points.
- What are tipping points?
- What are the main Earth system tipping points?
- When could key thresholds be crossed?
- What are the impacts of crossing tipping points?
- Can ‘positive tipping points’ mitigate the risks?
What are tipping points?
Scientists have warned for decades that many Earth systems are at risk of crossing “tipping points” – critical thresholds that, if exceeded, could push a system into an entirely new state.
Prof Tim Lenton is the chair of climate change and Earth system science at the University of Exeter and lead author of the new report on “global tipping points”. He describes a tipping point as a system in which “a small change makes a big difference and changes the state or the fate of a system”.
The report uses the analogy of a ball in a valley to describe tipping points, as shown in the graphic below.
In the left-most panel (blue), the ball sits in the left-side valley. If the ball is given a small push, it rolls briefly up the side of the valley before returning to its starting position. This “resilience” – the system’s ability to withstand changes – shows that the system is stable, the report says.
However, the report warns that human activity – including climate change, ecosystem degradation and pollution – are making many Earth systems less stable. This is shown by the left-hand valley getting shallower in the middle panel (purple) and the lowering of the hill between it and the right-hand valley. Now it would be easier for the ball to move into the right-hand valley when pushed.
As a system comes close to a tipping point, it may be slower to return to its original state after a “perturbation” or disturbance, the report says. This would be shown by the ball returning more slowly to its original position after it is pushed.
Dr David McKay – an independent research consultant and visiting fellow at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute – is a section lead on the new report. He describes this behaviour as a “wobble” and tells a press briefing that it can often be picked up using observational data. This is important, because it can provide an early warning signal that a tipping point is approaching.
A “tipping point” is crossed when the ball rolls past the point of no return into the right-side valley, leaving its original state and settling into a new stable state. This is shown in the right-hand panel (red). It is now very difficult for the ball to return to its original state in the left-hand valley.
The report says that a tipping point occurs “when change in part of a system becomes self-perpetuating beyond a threshold, leading to substantial, widespread, frequently abrupt and often irreversible impact”.
Under this definition, it is also possible for tipping points to be reversible and “non-abrupt” – although this is not usually the case, the authors note.
What are the main Earth system tipping points?
In recent years, there has been plenty of academic discussion about which elements of the Earth system might exhibit tipping points.
The report synthesises hundreds of peer-reviewed articles to identify more than 25 parts of the Earth system that have tipping points across the cryosphere, biosphere, atmosphere and oceans. (Carbon Brief has previously unpacked nine of them in detail.)
Importantly, the authors also show which systems they do not believe to exhibit tipping behaviour.
Cryosphere
The report identifies multiple tipping points in the cryosphere, as shown on the map below.
The colours and markers indicate how confident the authors are that each system has a tipping point. A red bar and “+++” marker indicates that the authors are very confident that the system is a tipping point. A blue bar and “- – -” marker indicates that the authors are very confident that the system is not a tipping point. The four arrows and globe symbols indicate regional and global systems, respectively.
There are “multiple lines of evidence” to support the existence of “large-scale” tipping points from the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the report says, explaining that if ice loss exceeds a threshold amount, self-amplifying feedbacks could cause the ice to disintegrate even faster, leading to large-scale ice-sheet “collapse”.
Conversely, the authors have “high confidence” that Arctic summer sea ice loss is not a tipping system, finding that in models and observations, summer sea ice loss tends to increase “gradually, but surely” in line with warming.
Meanwhile, the authors find evidence for “localised and regional” tipping points in glaciers and permafrost, but find that these systems do not exhibit “large-scale tipping dynamics”.
Oceans and atmosphere
There are four further tipping points in the oceans and atmosphere, including monsoons over west Africa, India and South America, clouds and El Niño southern oscillation (ENSO), according to the report. These are shown in the map below.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a major system of ocean currents that plays an important role in regulating the global climate. The report explains that rising temperatures, combined with an influx of cold, fresh water from the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, could destabilise these ocean currents, potentially causing the entire system to “shut down”.
Similarly, the authors find evidence for tipping points in the overturning circulations in the Atlantic and the Southern oceans, as well as for the west African monsoon.
The authors also assess the literature on cloud-induced tipping points. Various different mechanisms linked to incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation have been suggested, but the authors conclude that “concern about cloud-driven tipping points is relatively low”.
Biosphere
The report finds the most tipping points in the biosphere, as shown in the map below. Different colours of shading indicate different biomes – for example, coral reefs in red and mangroves in pink.
Systems in the biosphere have more “co-drivers” that can reduce their resilience – such as climate change, habitat loss and pollution – making tipping points easier to reach, the report finds.
For example, it notes that the Amazon provides much of its own rainfall by cycling water between the atmosphere and vegetation. Deforestation and climate change can disrupt this mechanism, pushing the system over a tipping point where it turns from forest into savannah. This process is called forest “dieback”.
Among tropical forests, there is most evidence of a tipping point for the Amazon, the report finds. Other tropical forests such as the Congo have evidence for local tipping points, but are less likely to cross them, the report finds.
The authors also find that mangroves and sea grasses – which are “historically among the most human-threatened ecosystems in the world” – are at risk tipping regionally. They highlight regional examples of “mangrove die-off”, which typically occur when the mangroves are “physiologically stressed”.
The report also looks at marine food webs and fisheries, finding that “marine community shifts take place when abrupt changes cascade through several species or functional groups of an ecosystem”.
When could key thresholds be crossed?
Assessing when key climate tipping points may be crossed has been a key area of research for many years. One way to identify imminent tipping points is by looking for the “wobble” or “loss of resistance” in a system.
For example, the report cites research that finds three-quarters of the Amazon rainforest has lost “resilience” since 2003, making it slower to recover from droughts and heatwaves. This indicates that the forest could be approaching a tipping point, the authors say.
Parts of the Greenland ice sheet and AMOC are also exhibiting a loss of resilience, the report finds. It adds that given present-day warming of 1.2C, tipping of warm-water coral reefs is likely:
“Coral reefs are already experiencing tipping points, as more frequent warming-driven bleaching events, along with pollution, extreme weather events and diseases, tip them to degraded algae-dominated states.”
As the planet continues to warm, the likelihood of crossing key thresholds increases. The report also draws on research recently published by McKay, which assesses how many tipping points could be triggered at different levels of global warming.
The upper half of the plot below shows the likelihood of triggering 15 tipping elements at different temperature levels. Yellow indicates a low likelihood and red indicates a high likelihood, while the dotted line indicates a central estimate.
The grey line underneath shows observed warming to the present day and projections out to 2100 from 1.5C (green) to more than 4C (red). The grey shading in the upper chart indicates expected warming given current climate policies.
The report says that five different tipping points are already “at risk of being crossed due to warming right now”. These are Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheet collapse, warm-water coral reef die-off, widespread localised abrupt thaw in permafrost and overturning circulation collapse in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre.
The North Atlantic subpolar gyre is a counter-clockwise ocean current to the south of Greenland, which drives the oceanic currents and redistributes heat and freshwater in the high latitude North Atlantic. The gyre is a component of AMOC, and is considered as a major tipping element of the climate system.
The report adds that three more tipping points are at risk of being crossed in the 2030s as the world exceeds 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.
However, the report warns that key thresholds could be crossed “at lower levels of global warming than previously thought”, adding:
“Our best models likely underestimate tipping point risks. The world is largely flying blind into this vast threat.”
This underestimation is largely due to “patchy and fragmented” knowledge, the authors say. For example, they note that “typical modelling approaches struggle to accurately represent ice sheet dynamics”.
The authors of the report support a proposal for the IPCC to prepare a special report on the topic of tipping points. The proposal was put forward by Switzerland in May 2022 and is currently under consideration.
What are the impacts of crossing tipping points?
The impacts of crossing Earth system tipping points “could be catastrophic”, the report warns.
Melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets would endanger coastal communities, and could lead to the complete loss of many small island nations, the report finds. Antarctic ice sheet instability alone could lead to a potential sea level rise of two metres by 2100, exposing 480 million people to annual coastal flooding events, it says.
Amazon dieback would be a “catastrophe for biodiversity”, the report finds. Reduced river flow would lead to transport difficulties in the region, and some six million people would face “extreme heat stress risk”. Overall, the report estimates that a complete Amazon dieback would cause damages of between $1tn and $3.5tn.
Thawing permafrost causes the ground to become unstable or “slump”, and the report warns that 70% of current infrastructure in permafrost regions is in areas with “high potential for thaw by 2050”.
It adds that crossing a tipping point in the AMOC would lead to global changes in rainfall patterns, with implications for water security and crop production around the world. The warm water that the AMOC carries northwards releases heat into the atmosphere, which means it plays a crucial role in keeping Western Europe warm.
However, the Earth system tipping points do not act in isolation. The authors find that crossing some tipping points, such as the dieback of rainforests or thawing of permafrost, releases more CO2 into the atmosphere, causing further warming.
Furthermore, many Earth systems are interlinked, meaning that crossing one tipping point can increase the likelihood of crossing others. The authors describe this as a “domino effect” or “tipping cascade”.
The map below shows these interactions. Red arrows indicate that crossing one tipping point causes another system to become more unstable, making it more likely to tip. Blue arrows indicate the opposite. Grey arrows indicate unclear effects.
Systems that may not tip on their own – but are still important due to their interactions with other systems – are shown with a blue outer circle. Tipping systems that exert a notable feedback on global average temperature when they tip are denoted by a red inner ring.
The report finds that the majority of interactions between climate tipping systems are destabilising – indicating that crossing one tipping point will generally lead to further tipping points being crossed.
For example, disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet would result in large volumes of cool freshwater flowing into the ocean, which could push the AMOC beyond a tipping point. This, in turn, could lead to an intensification of ENSO, which could go on to influence weather patterns over the Amazon, causing rainforest dieback, the report explains.
Crossing key tipping points “could have catastrophic impacts on human societies”, including an increase in violence and conflict, large-scale displacement and financial destabilisation, the authors warn.
The report says that Earth system destabilisation could lead to “social cohesion breaking down”, driving an increase in “mental disorders”, as well as “greater radicalisation of various groups and polarisation, making it harder to find collective solutions”. The report adds:
“These impacts could escalate to threaten the breakdown of economic, social and political systems, triggering destructive tipping points in societies experiencing stresses beyond their ability to cope.”
The authors add that each time a tipping point is crossed, humanity will be forced to divert more attention and resources into disaster response, “eroding away some of our agency
to tackle the underlying drivers”. This in turn would make it more likely for more tipping points to be crossed in the future, creating a “vicious cycle”, they say.
Can ‘positive tipping points’ mitigate the risks?
“The existence of tipping points means that ‘business as usual’ is now over,” the report warns. It adds:
“Rapid changes to nature and society are occurring, and more are coming. If we don’t revise our governance approach, these changes could overwhelm societies as the natural world rapidly comes apart.”
However, the authors add that “currently, there is no adequate global governance at the scale of the threats posed by negative tipping points”.
The authors argue that “positive social tipping points” – feedbacks in socio-behavioural, technological, economic and political systems that trigger a positive change – could be “the only realistic systemic risk governance option” to limit the risks.
Lenton told the press briefing that humanity has “left it basically too late for incremental action on the climate crisis”, adding that positive tipping points are key to limiting dangerous levels of warming.
Many positive social tipping points are being reached or have already been crossed, the authors say.
For example, they say that renewable energy has reached a tipping point of cost parity with fossil-fuelled power generation. They add that electric vehicles “show evidence of passing or approaching tipping points in major markets including China and Europe”.
Dr Tom Powell – a research impact fellow at Exeter’s Global Systems Institute and section lead on the report – told the press briefing that “the more of something we build, the cheaper it gets to build”.
He called this a “powerful reinforcing feedback”, adding that it is responsible for some of those cost reductions and renewable energies and electric vehicles.
In a similar way to negative Earth system tipping points, one positive social tipping point can trigger another, leading to a domino or cascade that generates “widespread societal change”, the authors say. Lenton outlined a positive tipping cascade in electric vehicle manufacture:
“As electric vehicles pass the positive tipping point of market dominance, this produces lots of cheap batteries, and those low cost batteries are crucial to provide essential storage capacity to reinforce a different positive tipping point towards renewable energy for our power supply.
“And that can in turn trigger positive tipping points in producing green ammonia and green hydrogen fuels for fertiliser, shipping and so on.”
Powell adds that “social contagion is a really powerful force”, noting that “the more people around you who are adopting sustainable choices, the more likely you are to do so yourself”. He adds:
“The more visible sustainable choices are among the general population, the easier it becomes for politicians to make policy choices that might have seemed very difficult a few years ago.”
However, positive social tipping points “don’t just happen by magic”, Lenton told the press briefing. Instead, he said they need “coordinated action”.
The report’s authors call for Earth system tipping point risks, corresponding action and positive tipping point opportunities to be included in the global stocktake under the Paris Agreement, as well as future revisions of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and national and sub-national policy measures.
The most recent iteration of the global stocktake text mentions climate tipping points twice. In one, it invites the scientific community to:
“Generate information relevant for NDCs and aligning them with 1.5C, cross-cutting considerations such as tipping points, guidance on risks and impacts, vulnerability, cryosphere and closing observation gaps.”
Dr Manjana Milkoreit – a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oslo and section lead on the report – adds that decisions and actions taken in the coming decades will commit us to “really long-term changes”, adding that the issue of tipping points is important for our notions of intergenerational justice.
The post Q&A: Climate tipping points have put Earth on ‘disastrous trajectory’, says new report appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: Climate tipping points have put Earth on ‘disastrous trajectory’, says new report
Climate Change
Analysis: UK newspapers have already printed 63 editorials in 2026 backing North Sea drilling
UK newspapers have already published 63 editorials this year calling for more oil and gas extraction in the North Sea, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The national outlets, including the Sun, the Daily Telegraph and the Times, argue that the nation “needs” more North Sea drilling to provide “home-sourced oil and gas” amid a “full-blown energy crisis”.
These newspapers seek to blame energy secretary Ed Miliband’s “net-zero crusade” for curbing UK fossil-fuel production – despite supplies dwindling for decades before he took the role.
The push for North Sea drilling in newspaper editorials – considered a publication’s formal “voice” – is part of a wider rejection of net-zero policies by the UK’s right-leaning press.
Figures ranging from ex-Labour prime minister Tony Blair to hard-right Reform UK leader Nigel Farage have repeated similar arguments that more drilling will “boost” the UK economy.
Even US president Donald Trump has weighed in, attributing, in part, the resignation of Keir Starmer as UK prime minister to him “fail[ing] badly” on North Sea oil.
Despite these claims, experts say trying to extract the last barrels of domestic oil and gas would have no impact on people’s energy bills and very little effect on energy security.
More drilling
North Sea oil and gas production is a highly politically charged issue in the UK, especially under the current Labour government.
When Labour won the general election in 2024, the new government committed to a “phased and responsible” transition away from fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
As part of this pledge, it ruled out issuing new exploration licences for oil and gas. Since then, the government has allowed some “tiebacks”, where new drilling is undertaken close to existing sites.
Roughly 90% of the fossil fuels that are likely to be extracted in the North Sea have already been burned. North Sea oil and gas extraction was, therefore, already on a clear downward trajectory long before Labour came to power, having dropped 75% between 2000 and 2024.
Nevertheless, many newspapers have relentlessly called for more oil and gas production, framing the Labour policy as “self-destructive” and compromised by “green ideology”.
This has ramped up significantly in 2026. Just six months into the year, newspapers have already published 63 pro-North Sea editorials, according to analysis by Carbon Brief. This is more than double the number published in 2025, as shown in the figure below.
Right-leaning newspapers have led this campaign, with the Sun alone publishing 25 editorials, while the Daily Telegraph and the Times have published 10 each.
‘Full-blown energy crisis’
The biggest surge in pro-North Sea drilling editorials came in March, as the Iran war escalated and a global energy crisis began to take shape. Newspapers published 24 such editorials that month, despite the crisis largely arising from the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.
The Daily Express said the UK needed more “home-sourced oil and gas” and the Daily Mail highlighted the “perverse limit on domestic fossil-fuel production”.
As the weeks progressed, the Sun lamented price rises and potential fuel shortages, proposing North Sea drilling as a solution to the “full-blown energy crisis”.
Yet, UK oil and gas is sold by private companies on the open market at international rates. This means UK consumers have no particular right to the fuels or control over the prices they are bought for.
The Sun claimed – without evidence – that if the North Sea had been prioritised, the UK “might just have the cheapest electricity in the world”. It also said net-zero “forces us to spend billions” on imports.
In fact, the UK’s high energy prices are primarily the result of its reliance on gas to generate electricity.
The nation is reliant on oil and gas imports, in part, because the North Sea is a “mature basin” that saw its output collapse long before the UK even had a net-zero target.
Renewables and low-carbon technologies – often dismissed by the same newspapers – are expected to have a far greater impact on cutting imports than new drilling ever could.
Miliband’s ‘crusade’
Much of the criticism by these newspapers of Labour’s North Sea stance is tied to their highly personal criticism of Miliband. Of the 63 editorials arguing for more drilling, nearly three-quarters also attacked him as a “net-zero zealot” on a “green crusade”.
The Times said the energy and net-zero secretary was pursuing a “masochistic policy” by not expanding North Sea drilling and that he had “cloaked his zealotry in spurious rationality”.
This all fits with a broader trend that has seen right-leaning newspapers launch frequent, personal attacks on Miliband.
In the roughly two years since Labour won the election, giving the government a clear mandate for its net-zero policies, there have been around 230 editorials criticising Miliband.
(These have redoubled in recent days, amid rumours that he may be made chancellor under Andy Burnham, if the new Makerfield MP becomes the next prime minister, as is widely expected.)
Such attacks have increasingly spilled over into politics. Conservative shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho has accused Miliband of “fanaticism” and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has even likened him to a “Nigerian military dictator”.
The newspapers have also interpreted any support for North Sea drilling as a rebuke of Miliband. Both the Sun and the Daily Telegraph welcomed an essay by Blair, in which he argued that “we must…use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources”.
The Sun heralded Blair as Labour’s “most successful election winner” and said he “nailed the chief mistakes” of the current government, including:
“Allowing Ed Miliband free rein on net-zero – especially the banning of North Sea drilling.”
Several of the newspapers have also thrown their support behind the Conservative party, as it frames itself as an anti-net-zero, pro-fossil fuel alternative to Labour.
The Daily Mail described Badenoch’s proposal to drill more in the North Sea as a “concrete plan”, while the Sun – in an echo of Trump’s slogan – has simply urged her to “drill, Kemi, drill”.
The post Analysis: UK newspapers have already printed 63 editorials in 2026 backing North Sea drilling appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: UK newspapers have already printed 63 editorials in 2026 backing North Sea drilling
Climate Change
Cropped 1 July 2026: Heatwave scorches Europe | UK 2050 farm plan | What’s next for the High Seas Treaty
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
Heatwave scorches European agriculture
‘PUSHED TO THEIR LIMITS’: The record-breaking heatwave that swept through much of western and central Europe in recent weeks had myriad impacts across the continent, reported Carbon Brief. Martin Lines, chief executive of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, explained: “Prolonged high temperatures place huge stress on livestock, dry out soils and reduce crop resilience, all while putting more pressure on nature.” The Times noted that “refrigerated warehouses were pushed to their limits” by the high temperatures.
POULTRY PROBLEMS: “At least several hundred thousand poultry” perished in France due to the extreme temperatures, the head of a French poultry-industry group told Reuters. A separate Reuters article said that “cows and pigs were suffering from heat stress” in Belgium, “which has raised concerns about milk and meat production”. Meanwhile, UK government data obtained by Carbon Brief showed that “twice as many animals died due to heat stress en route to slaughterhouses” amid record heat in 2025, compared to 2024.
FIRE AND ICE: The heatwave also had widespread impacts on the natural world. A wildfire scorched 200 hectares of moorland in Derbyshire, reported the Times. Derbyshire’s fire service said: “The ground is tinder dry and the slightest spark…could soon escalate to a major incident.” Agence France-Presse reported that “Swiss glaciers are set to lose an enormous amount of ice”, noting that this is the “second-earliest arrival on record of the tipping point known as ‘glacier-loss day’”.
UK 2050 farm plan
FARM CHANGES: The UK government launched a 2050 “farming roadmap” for England, setting out aims to make agriculture more resilient to climate change, increase domestic food production and boost nature recovery. The plan is “full of ambition”, but “falls short” on action and delivery, said National Farmers’ Union president Tom Bradshaw in a statement. Meanwhile, the government also announced £47m in funding for peatland protection and restoration schemes.
FOREST LOSS: UK companies may soon be required to “check that their supply chains are free from products linked to illegal land clearances”, reported the Times. The government revived plans for anti-deforestation rules for products such as soya, palm oil, cocoa and rubber, said the newspaper. The rules will initially target goods linked to illegal deforestation, but later move to a “blanket ‘deforestation-free’ standard”, it noted, adding that similar plans in the EU have been repeatedly delayed.
FRAUGHT FUND: UK energy secretary Ed Miliband was “poised to announce” a £400m commitment to the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, but the plan was “shelved over ‘optics concerns’” amid a “bitter row over defence spending”, said the Times. Meanwhile, one of Europe’s oldest and largest trees died after “becoming stressed by a series of hot, dry summers”, reported the Guardian. The Major Oak, which has grown in England’s Sherwood Forest “for at least 1,000 years”, did not produce leaves this year, said the newspaper.
News and views
- OCEAN ACTION: The Our Ocean Conference concluded in Mombasa, Kenya, with more than 300 voluntary commitments from governments, civil-society groups, non-governmental organisations and others, said Carbon Brief. Observers told the outlet that “these pledges must now be backed up by action”.
- HOT SEAS: Record-high global ocean temperatures in June could lead the world to “uncharted territory”, said the Financial Times. Meanwhile, the Independent reported that a species of sea star thought to be extinct was found off the coast of California.
- EU PLANS: The European parliament approved rules to allow the use of gene-edited plants, marking a “major shift” in the EU’s approach to modified crops, reported Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Grilled, a new investigative newsletter, said the EU is “considering an overhaul of how it measures methane emissions from livestock”.
- BRAZIL BLAZES: Last year, fires caused a “significant spike in forest loss” across three areas in Brazil home to Indigenous peoples living in “voluntary isolation”, according to Mongabay. Indigenous leaders told the outlet that fire “affects their productive practices and destroys the biodiversity and vegetation they depend on”.
- DISCLOSURE DISPARITY: The Biodiversity Footprint Company analysed the climate- and biodiversity-related disclosures of “120 of the world’s largest listed companies”. It found that “companies disclose roughly two-thirds of assessed climate information, yet less than one-20th of the equivalent biodiversity information”.
- FRUITLESS: Fruit growers across the US south-western state of Utah “are reporting near-total harvest losses”, reported High Country News. It noted that a warm, dry winter, followed by a “record-breaking spring heatwave”, led orchards to bloom early, but the crop was then “devasta[ed]” by a “series of April freezes”.
Spotlight
‘Up and running immediately’: what’s next for the High Seas Treaty
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, about the High Seas Treaty (also known as the agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, or BBNJ). This interview was conducted at the Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, Kenya.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Carbon Brief: What connects BBNJ and climate change?
Rebecca Hubbard: The high seas cover half of the planet, or two-thirds of the global ocean. The ocean is essential for many things, including producing oxygen, absorbing carbon and absorbing the enormous amount of excessive heat we’ve produced as a result of burning fossil fuels. The ocean, including the high seas, cannot perform its critical climate-regulating role without healthy populations, without being healthy, and – at the moment – the high seas are not protected.
In fact, only around 1% of the high seas are protected and they’re under immense pressure from shipping, fishing, pollution [and] climate change – both heating and acidification. The High Seas Treaty, for the first time ever, gives us the legal framework to be able to protect the high seas. By being able to protect and better manage the high seas, we are assuring its critical role in protecting us from the worst of climate change.
CB: What were your hopes or expectations coming into this conference?
RH: My hopes were that we would get strong engagement and leadership from African states in the High Seas Treaty and we have seen that, which is really fantastic. There’s been a lot of support, a lot of leadership from African governments on the treaty and on their ambitions to not just complete their ratification processes, but to also start looking at creating marine protected areas. They want to be engaged and involved in leading and delivering those processes and I think that’s really exciting. It’s a great opportunity for the whole world. We can really get some exciting collaborations.
CB: What has been missing from the conversation here?
RH: I actually don’t think much has been missing, because I think there’s been a lot of different conversations. There’s been conversations around the need for finance to implement the treaty and this is something that’s common across all multilateral environmental agreements – certainly no stranger to the climate process. We’re going to need this huge amount of resources to implement the treaty. Where is that money coming from?
CB: We’ve got almost exactly six months until COP1 [the first Conference of the Parties for the High Seas Treaty scheduled for January 2027]. What needs to happen between now and then?
RH: We need as many more countries to ratify as possible. We hope that well over 100 countries will be party to the agreement by COP1, so that they can be at the decision-making table. We need countries to really prepare for that COP, so that they’re ready to really efficiently make the decisions founded off all of the work that we’re done through the PrepCom [preparatory commission] meetings [and] so that we can get the rules of procedure and the subsidiary bodies that are going to be essential to an effective implementation up and running immediately.
There is so much to do and we do not have time to waste with circular negotiations, rehashing resolved issues. We also need countries to continue to prepare for implementation, particularly back in their capitals – establishing inter-ministerial committees, so that you have a cohesive and united approach from governments that reflects a whole-of-government approach. That’s what’s going to be essential for effective implementation.
Watch, read, listen
‘ELEPHANT MARSH’: Mongabay delved into the knock-on effects of a 2023 cyclone on farming households living in Malawi wetlands.
REEF RESILIENCE: In bioGraphic, journalist Claudia Geib explored the unexpected resilience of a coral reef in Miami that is home to some critically endangered species.
TRUMP VS ALGAE: The Guardian Science Weekly podcast discussed the causes of algal blooms, in light of the green algae saga at the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in Washington DC.
FRAUGHT FARMING: A century-old state law protects the water rights of just a handful of users on the Deschutes River at the expense of the region’s farmers, said Oregon Public Broadcasting.
New science
- Growing oil crops, such as oil palm and coconuts, potentially caused the long-term loss of 1.5% of global plant and animal species between 1995 and 2020, with largest impacts in the tropics | Nature Food
- “Climate-smart agriculture” is improving household resilience in Ethiopia, but scaling its benefits requires addressing “local realities and inequalities” | Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
- Drought has been linked to “abundance declines” and range shifts in 40% of 37 birds species living in the deserts of the western US | Conservation Letters
In the diary
- 1-3 July: UN Food and Agriculture Organization global conference on “smart farming” | Rome (webcast available)
- 13-31 July: Meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly and council | Kingston, Jamaica
- 14 July: Launch of the “state of food security and nutrition in the world” report | New York City
- 27 July-1 August: Scientific and technical subsidiary body meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity | Nairobi, Kenya
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Climate Change
Proposal for ‘Hyperscale’ data centre in remote Northern Territory demonstrates need for urgent moratorium
SYDNEY, Wednesday 1 July 2026 — The proposal for the ‘Project Ares’ data centre in remote Northern Territory, which would be powered by off-grid gas and renewables, has prompted renewed calls from Greenpeace for an urgent moratorium, citing serious concerns about emissions and environmental harm.
The application for the project under the EPBC Act reveals the gas-fired generation for the project would be approximately 1,038MW at full build-out, which would more than double the NT’s current gas-fired generating capacity.
A recent report by Greenpeace Australia Pacific and independent expert Ketan Joshi, Energy Vampires: the AI data centres draining Australia, revealed how the frenzied rollout of AI data centres in Australia is set to derail the renewable energy transition, entrench gas and turbocharge climate pollution.
Solaye Snider, Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Proposals like Project Ares, which would have significant off-grid gas powered generation and emissions, should not be moving along while there are still zero binding regulations to limit the impacts of AI data centres on our communities and environment.
“This hyperscale project proposes massive new off-grid gas infrastructure, making a mockery of the Federal Government’s unenforceable ‘expectations’ that data centres will cover their own power use with renewables. Communities will pay the price for the data centre industry’s endless hunger for energy at any cost.
“This proposal also raises serious questions about where this new gas would come from. Could it come from fracking the Beetaloo? Communities deserve to have the full picture before this project is approved.
“The Australian Government is asleep at the wheel when it comes to the rapid roll-out of AI data centres. We need an urgent moratorium on the construction and approval of new data centres, so our government can take appropriate time to legislate the regulations and safeguards we so desperately need.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Lucy Keller on 0491 135 308 or lucy.keller@greenpeace.org
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