Uprooted trees remain after flood waters have receded in Aceh, northern Sumatra, on 14 December. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
Christian Aid annual report’s top 10 disasters amounted to more than $120bn in insured losses
Cyclones and floods in south-east Asia this autumn killed more than 1,750 people and caused more than $25bn (£19bn) in damage, while the death toll from California wildfires topped 400 people, with $60bn in damage, according to research on the costliest climate-related disasters of the year.
China’s devastating floods, in which thousands of people were displaced, were the third most expensive, causing about $12bn in damage, with at least 30 lives lost.
The true losses are likely to be much higher, as only the insurance costs could be reliably measured. The human costs, in lives, displacement and lost livelihoods, are uncounted.
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Joanna Haigh, emeritus professor of atmospheric physics at Imperial College London, said damaging events were increasing in frequency and intensity owing to the human-made climate crisis. “The world is paying an ever-higher price for a crisis we already know how to solve. These disasters are not ‘natural’ – they are the inevitable result of continued fossil fuel expansion and political delay,” she said.
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The bill for extreme weather damages will continue to rise until the world slashes greenhouse gas emissions and phases out fossil fuels, added Christian Aid’s chief executive, Patrick Watt.
“These climate disasters are a warning of what lies ahead if we do not accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels,” he said. “They also underline the urgent need for adaptation, particularly in the global south, where resources are stretched and people are especially vulnerable to climate shocks.”
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
A banner reading “Science makes America great” is seen at a rally of scientists and researchers against budget cuts and job cuts in Washington, DC on March 7, 2025. (Photo by Thomas Müller/picture alliance via Getty Images)
“This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face,” said one hurricane researcher.
One US House Democrat pledged Tuesday night that Colorado officials will fight the Trump administration’s latest attack on science “with every legal tool that we have” after top White Housebudget adviser Russell Vought announced a decision to break up a crucial climate research center in Boulder.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) called the decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) “a deeply dangerous” action.
“NCAR is one of the most renowned scientific facilities in the WORLD—where scientists perform cutting-edge research every day,” said Neguse. “We will fight this reckless directive.”
Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said the National Science Foundation (NSF), which contracts the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) to run NCAR, “will be breaking up” the center and has begun a “comprehensive review,” with “vital activities such as weather research” being moved to another entity.
He added that NCAR is “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”
But scientists pointed to the center’s 65-year history of making major advances in climate research and developing systems that scientists use regularly.
NCAR developed GPS dropsondes, which are dropped from the center’s aircraft into the eye of hurricanes to gather crucial data and improve forecasts, as well as severe weather warnings and analyses of the economic impacts that weather can bring, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, toldUSA Today, which first reported on the plan to dismantle the facility.
Neguse also called the decision to shutter NCAR “blatantly retaliatory.” The breakup of the center was announced days after President Donald Trump announced his plan to pardon Tina Peters, despite uncertainty over his authority to do so. The former county clerk was convicted in Colorado court on felony charges of allowing someone to access secure voting system data—part of an effort to prove the baseless conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Trump attacked Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, over the Peters case last week, calling him “incompetent” and “pathetic.”
Also on Tuesday, the administration announced it was canceling $109 million in environmental transportation grants for Colorado that were aimed at boosting investment in electric vehicles, rail improvements, and other research.
Writer Benjamin Kunkel said the dismantling of NCAR is evidently “what happens to a state whose leading officials do accept climate science… and don’t accept that Trump won the 2020 election.”
Polis said Tuesday that his government had not received any communication from the White House about the NCAR review and dismantling, but “if true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked.”
“Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” he said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
The White House Tuesday said it objected to UCAR’s “woke direction,” including its efforts to “make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered” via the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences and wind turbine research that aims to “better understand and predict the impact of weather conditions and changing climate on offshore wind production.”
The administration also said the review of NCAR will eliminate “green new scam research activities”—green energy research completed by many of the center’s 830 employees.
Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe warned that the dismantling of NCAR was an attack on “quite literally our global mothership.”
“NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes—the largest community climate model in the world,” said Hayhoe. “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.”
The @NCAR_Science is quite literally our global mothership.
Nearly everyone who researches climate and weather – not only in the US, but around the world – has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources.
Hurricane specialist Michael Lowry said the center is “crucial to cutting-edge meteorology and improvements in weather forecasting.”
“It’s far, far bigger than a ‘climate’ research lab,” he said. “This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face.”
The president this year has also pushed massive cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where major climate and weather research takes place. The cuts have come as 2024 has been named the hottest year on record and scientists have warned that planetary heating has contributed to recent weather disasters.
“Any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR,” UCAR president Antonio Busalacchi told the Washington Post, “would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters.”
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Wind mills along the A9 trunk road in Caithness, Scotland. Credit: Vincent Lowe / Alamy Stock Photo
A scenario that meets the “net-zero by 2050” goal would be the “cheapest” option for the UK, according to modelling by the National Energy System Operator (NESO).
In a new report, the organisation that manages the UK’s energy infrastructure says its “holistic transition” scenario would have the lowest cost over the next 25 years, saving £36bn a year – some 1% of GDP – compared to an alternative scenario that slows climate action.
These savings are from lower fuel costs and reduced climate damages, relative to a scenario where the UK fails to meet its climate goals, known as “falling behind”.
The UK will need to make significant investments to reach net-zero, NESO says, but this would cut fossil-fuel imports, support jobs and boost health, as well as contributing to a safer climate.
Slowing down these efforts would reduce the scale of investments needed, but overall costs would be higher unless the damages from worsening climate change are “ignored”, the report says.
In an illusory world where climate damages do not exist, slowing the UK’s efforts to cut emissions would generate “savings” of £14bn per year on average – some 0.4% of GDP.
NESO says that much of this £14bn could be avoided by reaching net-zero more cheaply and that it includes costs unrelated to climate action, such as a faster rollout of data centres.
Notably, the report appears to include efforts to avoid the widespread misreporting of a previous edition, including in the election manifesto of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party.
Overall, NESO warns that, as well as ignoring climate damages, the £14bn figure “does not represent the cost of achieving net-zero” and cannot be compared with comprehensive estimates of this, such as the 0.2% of GDP total from the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC).
Net-zero is the ‘cheapest option’
Every year, NESO publishes its “future energy scenarios”, a set of four pathways designed to explore how the nation’s energy system might change over the coming decades.
(Technically the scenarios apply to the island of Great Britain, rather than the whole UK, as Northern Ireland’s electricity system is part of a separate network covering the island of Ireland.)
Published in July, the scenarios test a series of questions, such as what it would mean for the UK to meet its climate goals, whether it is possible to do so while relying heavily on hydrogen and what would happen if the nation was to slow down its efforts to cut emissions.
The scenarios have a broad focus and do not only consider the UK’s climate goals. In addition, they also explore the implications of a rapid growth in electricity demand from data centres, the potential for autonomous driving and many other issues.
With so many questions to explore, the scenarios are not designed to keep costs to a minimum. In fact, NESO does not publish related cost estimates in most years.
This year, however, NESO has published an “economics annex” to the future energy scenarios. It last published a similar exercise in 2020, with the results being widely misreported.
In the new annex, NESO says that the UK currently spends around 10% of GDP on its energy system. This includes investments in new infrastructure and equipment – such as cars, boilers or power plants – as well as fuel, running and maintenance costs.
This figure is expected to decline to around 5% of GDP by 2050 under all four scenarios, NESO says, whether they meet the UK’s net-zero target or not.
For each scenario, the annex adds up the total of all investments and ongoing costs in every year out to 2050. It then adds an estimate of the economic damages from the greenhouse gas emissions that primarily come from burning fossil fuels, using the Treasury’s “green book”.
When all of these costs are taken into account, NESO says that the “cheapest” option is a pathway that meets the UK’s climate goals, including all of the targets on the way to net-zero by 2050.
It says this pathway, known as “holistic transition”, would bring average savings of £36bn per year out to 2050, relative to a pathway where the UK slows its efforts on climate change.
The overall savings, illustrated by the dashed line in the figure below, stem primarily from lower fuel costs (orange bars) and reduced climate damages (white bars).
In-year energy costs of the “holistic transition” pathway relative to “falling behind”, £bn in 2025 prices and assuming central estimates for future fossil-fuel prices. Credit: NESO.
Note that the carbon pricing that is already applied to power plants and other heavy industry under the UK’s emissions trading system (ETS) is excluded from running costs in the annex, appearing instead within the wider “carbon costs” category.
This makes the running costs of fossil-fuel energy sources seem cheaper than they really are, when including the ETS price.
Net-zero requires significant investment
While NESO says that its net-zero compliant “holistic transition” pathway is the cheapest option for the UK, it does require significant upfront investments.
The scale of the additional investments needed to stay on track for the UK’s climate goals, beyond a pathway where those targets are not met, is illustrated in the figure below.
This shows that the largest extra investments would need to be made in the power sector, such as by building new windfarms (shown by the dark yellow bars). This is followed by investment needs for homes, such as to install electric heat pumps instead of gas boilers (dark red bars).
These additional investments would amount to around £30bn per year out to 2050, but with a peak of as much as £60bn over the next decade.
These investments would be offset by lower fuel bills, including reduced gas use in homes (pale red) and lower oil use in transport (mid green).
Notably, NESO says it expects EVs to be cheaper to buy than petrol cars from 2027, meaning there are also significant savings in transport capital expenditure (“CapEx”, dark green).
Detailed breakdown of in-year energy costs of the “holistic transition” pathway relative to “falling behind”, £bn in 2025 prices and assuming central estimates for future fossil-fuel prices. Credit: NESO.
Again, the biggest savings in “holistic transition” relative to “falling behind” would come from avoided climate damages – described by NESO as “carbon costs”.
Net-zero cuts fossil-fuel imports
In addition to avoided climate damages, NESO says that reaching the UK’s net-zero target would bring wider benefits to the economy, including lower fuel imports.
Specifically, it says that climate efforts would “materially reduce” the UK’s dependency on overseas gas, with imports falling to 78% below current levels by 2050 in “holistic transition”. Under the “falling behind” scenario, imports rise by 35%”, despite higher domestic production.
This finding, shown in the figure below, is the opposite of what has been argued by many of those that oppose the UK’s net-zero target.
Annual gas imports to the UK, billion cubic metres (bcm) 2024-2050, under different NESO scenarios. Credit: NESO.
NESO goes on to argue that the shift to net-zero would have wider economic benefits. These include a shift from buying imported fossil fuels to investing money domestically instead, which “could bring local economic benefits and support future employment”.
The operator says that there is the “potential for more jobs to be created than lost in the transition to net-zero” and that there would be risks to UK trade if it fails to cut emissions, given exports to the EU – the UK’s main trading partner – would be subject to the bloc’s new carbon border tax.
Beyond the economy, NESO points to studies finding that the transition to net-zero would have other benefits, including for human health and the environment.
It does not attempt to quantify these benefits, but points to analysis from the CCC finding that health benefits alone could be worth £2.4-8.2bn per year by 2050.
Investment is higher for net-zero than for ‘not-zero’
It is clear from the NESO annex that its net-zero compliant “holistic transition” pathway would entail significantly more upfront investment than if climate action is slowed under “falling behind”.
This idea, in effect, is the launchpad for politiciansarguing that the UK should walk away from its climate commitments and stop building new low-carbon infrastructure.
As already noted, the NESO analysis shows that this would increase costs to the UK overall.
Still, NESO’s new report adds that “falling behind” would “save” £14bn a year – relative to meeting the UK’s net-zero target – as long as carbon costs are “ignored”.
Specifically, it says that ignoring carbon costs, “holistic transition” would cost an average of £14bn a year more out to 2050 than “falling behind”, which misses the net-zero target. This is equivalent to 0.4% of the UK’s GDP and is illustrated by the solid pink line in the figure below.
In-year energy costs of the “holistic transition” pathway relative to “falling behind”, £bn in 2025 prices and assuming central estimates for future fossil-fuel prices. Credit: NESO.
Some politicians are indeed now willing to ignore the problem of climate change and the damages caused by ongoing greenhouse gas emissions. These politicians may therefore be tempted to argue that the UK could “save” £14bn a year by scrapping net-zero.
However, NESO’s report cautions against this, stating explicitly that the “costs discussed here do not represent the cost of achieving net-zero emissions”. It says:
“Our pathways cannot provide firm conclusions over the relative costs attached to the choices between pathways…We reiterate that the costs discussed here do not represent the cost of achieving net-zero emissions.”
It says that the scenarios have not been designed to minimise costs and that it would be possible to reach net-zero more cheaply, for example by focusing more heavily on EVs and renewables instead of hydrogen and nuclear.
Moreover, it says that some of the difference in costs between “holistic transitions” and “falling behind” is unrelated to climate action. Specifically, it says that electricity demand from data centres is around twice as high in “holistic transitions”, adding some £5bn a year in costs in 2050.
In addition, NESO says that most of the “saving” in “falling behind” would be wiped out if fossil fuel prices are higher than expected – falling from £14bn per year to just £5bn a year – even before considering climate damages and wider benefits, such as for health.
Finally, NESO says that failing to make the transition to net-zero would leave the UK more exposed to fossil-fuel price shocks, such as the global energy crisis that added 1.8% to the nation’s energy costs in 2022. It says a similar shock would only cost 0.3% of GDP in 2050 if the country has reached net-zero – as in “holistic transition” – whereas costs would remain high in “falling behind”.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
… by giving nearly half of his $500 billion fortune to the children of the world.
“Let’s make the world’s richest man the richest man in town!” urges a new campaign launched Friday by the economic advocacy group Tax Justice Network, borrowing a memorable line from the classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
The group’s global petition emphasizes that SpaceX owner Elon Musk is already the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $508.4 billion—more than double the assets of the planet’s next-richest person, Google co-founder Larry Page.
Tax Justice Network’s (TJN) petition invites Musk to give 44% of his wealth—$223.6 billion—to the children of the world. That amount of money would allow the purchase of a $90 gift card for all 2.4 billion of the planet’s children under the age of 18, and could stop more than 100 million children from going hungry this holiday season.
And Musk would still be the richest person alive, emphasized the group.
Let’s make the world’s richest man feel like the richest man in town this Christmas! Sign our Christmas card inviting Elon Musk to gift 44% of his wealth to the children of the world to create 2 billion smiles and still be the world’s richest man alive! #WealthTax #TaxTheSuperRichc.org/jnnZhmp6J4
The campaign quotes Harry Bailey’s famous line declaring his brother George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, “the richest man in town” in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” after George’s neighbors donate money to save him from financial ruin.
“We’re obviously poking a little fun here but the point is to show how extreme the concentration of wealth has become,” said Alex Cobham, chief executive at TJN. “Depending on where you are in the world, if you earn the average wage, you’d need to work anywhere from 20 times to a thousand times longer than humans have existed to earn as much wealth as Elon Musk has collected.”
The petition notes that TJN and the world’s children “would also settle for a 2% wealth tax on the superrich,” which would allow countries around the world to raise $2 trillion per year if it was applied to the richest 0.5% of people on the planet.
“That’s enough public money to meet most countries’ climate finance needs, and leave billions to spare for local public services,” the group said.
The group pointed to a recent G20report declaring a global “inequality emergency” and last week’s World Inequality Report, which found that fewer than 60,000 multimillionaires—just 0.001% of the world’s population—own three times more wealth than the entire bottom 50% of humanity.
“Within almost every region, the top 1% alone hold more wealth than the bottom 90% combined,” noted TJN.
The petition emphasizes the difference between collected wealth—the kind enjoyed by Musk and other superrich people—and earned wealth. The vast majority of people earn money for what they do, notes TJN. Musk and other billionaires “get paid for what [they] own, so dividends for owning stocks and rent money for owning real estate.”
Billionaires including Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Oracle executive Larry Ellison famously take salaries of just $1, but the money that’s made them part of the world’s superrich is their collected wealth, emphasized TJN.
“Earned wealth cannot create billionaires,” said TJN. “Only collected wealth grows fast enough to do so. It’s impossible to earn a billion dollars.”
A ProPublicareport in 2021 detailed how billionaires like Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid a collective “true tax rate” of just 3.4% while the median American household made $70,000 and paid a tax rate of 14%.
“This special tax treatment has helped the superrich quadruple their wealth since the 1980s to extreme levels,” said TJN. “Studies directly link this rise in extreme wealth to lower economic productivity, to more households going into debt and to people living shorter lives.”
Musk in the past has pledged to use his extreme wealth to help people around the world—only to renege on his promises. In 2022, he challenged then-World Food Program chief David Beasley to prove, as Beasley had stated, that a small fraction of Musk’s wealth could help address world hunger. He pledged to donate $6 billion by selling his Tesla stock if the WFP could prove the contribution would “solve world hunger.”
The WFP responded with a report detailing how $6 billion could feed 42 million at-risk people and prevent them from going hungry for a year. But Musk didn’t follow through with his pledge, instead donating $5.7 billion of his Tesla shares to his own foundation.
This year, Musk spearheaded a push to slash government spending on foreign aid, with the US Agency for International Development a key target. The cuts have already proven deadly for children in impoverished nations.
Cobham on Monday pointed to research showing that the skyrocketing wealth of the richest 1% of Americans over the past 40 years has not led “to more investments, and instead resulted in dissaving among non-rich households.”
“We now have plenty of evidence showing that extreme wealth shrinks economies, makes people poorer, and threatens democracy,” said Cobham. “The best way to protect people, economies, and planet from the harms of extreme wealth is to end the special tax treatment that collected wealth gets over earned wealth. We must tax extreme wealth more effectively to protect the earner way of life we all rely on. Whether you’re a wealth collector or a wealth earner, we all have an equal responsibility to pitch in our fair share.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
I’m rushing this out because I’ve been experiencing hardware problems, very likely to be changed and elaborated.
Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy shows that he intends to extend US influence globally. The problem is that he and by extension his administration is complicit in Israel’s genocide, is racist, imperialist, disregards and has a disdain for human rights, democracy and the rule of law and not only denies the climate crisis but actively pursues and promotes climate destruction. He aggressively pursues and is inseparable from the super rich responsible for destroying the planet. Trump should be recognised as a stupid Neo-Fascist little Hitler and opposed by all. Trump & Co are similar to what our ancestors fought during the Spanish Civil War and World War 2. We should stand up and oppose this Fascism as our ancestors did.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
It is not only Donald Trump and the United States. In the UK, we have Keir Starmer’s Labour government supporting and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide and pursuing authoritarian policies and actions against those who oppose them according to democratic norms and conventions. Palestine Action protesters are criminalised as terrorists and legal procedures are manipulated to keep them imprisoned without trial or due process. £15 million damage, we recognise that as total BS from Stamer’s Zionist government.
