A coal power station in Ohio, US. Donald Trump has declared his support for coal and other fossil fuels. Photograph: Jason Whitman/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Bleak report finds greenhouse gas emissions are still rising despite ‘exponential’ growth of renewables
Coal use hit a record high around the world last year despite efforts to switch to clean energy, imperilling the world’s attempts to rein in global heating.
The share of coal in electricity generation dropped as renewable energy surged ahead. But the general increase in power demand meant that more coal was used overall, according to the annual State of Climate Action report, published on Wednesday.
The report painted a grim picture of the world’s chances of avoiding increasingly severe impacts from the climate crisis. Countries are falling behind the targets they have set for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which have continued to rise, albeit at a lower rate than before.
Clea Schumer, a research associate at the World Resources Institute thinktank, which led the report, said: “There’s no doubt that we are largely doing the right things. We are just not moving fast enough. One of the most concerning findings from our assessment is that for the fifth report in our series in a row, efforts to phase out coal are well off track.”
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.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.
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.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump,
Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner are called
evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Keir Starmer picked Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador in Washington, DC. (Photo: Carl Court / Alamy)
Britain’s ambassador to the US asked the convicted paedophile to help vet an Israeli consultant in London.
Lord Peter Mandelson asked Jeffrey Epstein to assist with a background check on an Israeli political consultant, Declassified can reveal.
The Labour party grandee and lobbyist – who is now Britain’s ambassador to the US – has always denied having “any kind of professional or business relationship with Epstein in any form”.
But leaked messages show Mandelson contacted him from his work email address in 2013, more than five years after Epstein had pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution with a minor.
Mandelson signed off the email in his capacity as chairman of Global Counsel, the multi-million pound lobbying firm that he co-founded.
…
It is not clear whether he got a response, but records show that Epstein forwarded the message to Barak’s personal email address.
The correspondence is contained in a huge leak of Barak’s emails, published by a file-sharing website, Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS).
An Israel Defense Forces F-15 fighter takes off in this photo posted on the IDF’s website on May 19, 2025. (Photo: Israel Defense Forces)
“It would be a catastrophic mistake to be led into a war by the same neocons that claimed the Iraq war would be a cakewalk,” warned one group.
Israel is likely preparing to bomb Iran even as the Trump administration works toward a nuclear deal with Tehran, stoking fears of Iranian retaliation against U.S. military bases and other American or allied sites in an already inflamed region, and prompting calls for urgent diplomacy to avoid war.
U.S. and European officials told Western media Thursday that Israel is preparing to unilaterally attack Iran as negotiations between Washington and Tehran draw closer to a preliminary framework for an agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear development. The government of fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes any such deal.
“If this escalates, innocent lives will be caught in the crossfire in Iran and across the region.”
American intelligence agencies have periodically concluded over the past two decades that Iran—which has not started a war since the 19th century but supports proxy attacks on Israel—is not developing nuclear weapons.
While President Donald Trump—who has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran if a nuclear deal is not reached—has publicly opposed an Israeli attack on Iran, numerous observers are warning that Tehran and its proxies would very likely view the U.S. as complicit in any such action.
“If Israel does strike Iran in the next days or hours, and even if they do so in defiance of Trump’s warnings, the likelihood that the Iranians will perceive it as an independent act by Israel in defiance of Trump is essentially zero,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said Wednesday on social media. “There is no plausible deniability.”
Vahid Razavi, an Iranian American advocate for human rights and ethics in technology and founder of ParentsPlea.com, told Common Dreams Thursday that “Israel will only attack Iran with the support and blessing of the United States.”
“The ‘good cop/bad cop’ game that Trump and Israel are playing in the region is a distraction,” Razavi added. “There is no substantial difference in U.S. and Israeli policy toward Iran.”
Iran has threatened an “unprecedented response” if Israel attacks.
“In case of any conflict, the U.S. must leave the region because all its bases are within our range, and we will target all of them in the host countries regardless,” Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said Thursday during a televised address.
Nasirzadeh’s remarks followed a Wednesday threat by an official from Ansar Allah that the Yemeni rebel group also known as the Houthis is “at the highest level of preparedness for any possible American escalation against us.”
“Any escalation against the Islamic Republic of Iran is also dangerous and will drag the entire region into the abyss of war,” the unnamed official toldNewsweek.
The Trump administration stands accused of war crimes in Yemen amid an escalation of the decadeslong U.S. bombing of the country as part of the so-called War on Terror. Successive U.S. administrations also backed a Saudi-led war on Yemen that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, while Israeli and British forces have bombed the country since 2024 in retaliation for Houthi missile attacks on Red Sea shipping and Israel.
Last October, Iran launched a limited missile strike on Israel in response to the assassinations of Hassan Nasrallah, who led the Lebanon-based resistance group Hezbollah, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. This prompted retaliatory Israeli attacks on targets in and around Tehran, including the headquarters of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The prospect of another Israeli attack on Iran prompted the U.S. on Wednesday to order the evacuation of some diplomats from Iraq and call for the voluntary departure of American military families from the region.
Meanwhile, numerous observers stressed the need for a diplomatic resolution to avoid a wider war in the Middle East—and possibly beyond.
The Iran nuclear crisis is resolvable through diplomacy, not a bloody war. It would be a catastrophic mistake to be led into a war by the same neocons that claimed the Iraq war would be a cakewalk.
There’s time for diplomacy – but hardline demands must give way to compromise. https://t.co/uNFNWr7LGR
“We must face the reality: if this escalates, innocent lives will be caught in the crossfire in Iran and across the region, and at home there may be new, dire threats to the civil liberties of our community,” the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said in a statement Thursday.
“We are working to ensure our leaders hear us loud and clear: We need diplomacy, not catastrophe,” NIAC added. “We are organizing multiple actions in the coming days against a potential war and in support of peace and ask for your support to fuel this vital effort.”Former Democratic Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner succinctly said Wednesday: “No war with Iran. No war, period.”
