Jeff Bezos’s superyacht ‘Koru’ often travels accompanied by a smaller ‘support’ superyacht. Image by Conmat13 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license via wikimedia.
In response to the UNEP Emissions Gap Report published 4th November 2025, Nafkote Dabi, Climate Policy Lead at Oxfam, said:
“Just days before global leaders arrive in Brazil for COP30, this report is a blaring siren calling for greater climate action.
“Since the Paris Agreement, the richest 1% have used up more than twice the carbon budget of the poorest half of humanity. This inequality is more than unjust—it’s deadly. The extreme emissions of the richest people and countries are burning through the little remaining the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while avoiding climate disaster. Meanwhile, the poorest communities suffer the most devastating impacts.
“Governments cannot close the emissions gap without slashing the carbon footprint of the super-rich and addressing extreme inequality. COP30 must be a turning point. Global leaders must cut the emissions of the richest, tax rich polluters and their profits, and deliver a just transition—one that creates decent green jobs, builds resilient economies, and puts people and planet before profit.”
Image of a private jet by Andrew Thomas from Shrewsbury, UK.
Oxfam’s recent report, “Climate Plunder: How a powerful few are locking the world into disaster”, presents new data which finds that a person from the richest 0.1% produces more carbon pollution in a day than the poorest 50% emit all year. If everyone emitted like the richest 0.1%, the carbon budget would be used up in less than 3 weeks.
The “UN Emissions Gap report: Off Target” finds that global warming projections over this century, based on full implementation of updated government climate pledges, are 2.3-2.5°C, while those based on current policies are 2.8°C.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.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.
Since then, Reeves – now Britain’s chancellor – has barely mentioned the scheme that leases 300,000 cars a year to people with mobility problems, aside from criticising Tory cuts affecting its users.
Nor did it crop up in Labour’s manifesto, which promised to put disabled people’s “views and voices at the heart of all we do”.
But late last year, the idea that Motability was offering disabled people “free” BMWs and Mercedes became a repeated rightwing talking point fuelled by social media accounts on Elon Musk’s X.
In fact, the cars are funded by people’s disability benefit payments, topped up with their own contributions.
From there, articles began to spring up in the tabloid press reproducing social media memes calling for Motability vehicles to be made more ugly, and the furore spread to the speeches of Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage – and, finally, grabbed the attention of the Treasury.
At the budget, Reeves for the first time publicly identified the programme as a problem, saying it “was set up to protect the most vulnerable, not to subsidise the lease on a Mercedes-Benz”.
Parched land at Cueva de Las Niñas reservoir in the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, in March 2025. Photograph: Borja Suárez/Reuters
Exclusive: UCL scientists find large swathes of southern Europe are drying up, with ‘far-reaching’ implications
Vast swathes of Europe’s water reserves are drying up, a new analysis using two decades of satellite data reveals, with freshwater storage shrinking across southern and central Europe, from Spain and Italy to Poland and parts of the UK.
Scientists at University College London (UCL), working with Watershed Investigations and the Guardian, analysed 2002–24 data from satellites, which track changes in Earth’s gravitational field.
Because water is heavy, shifts in groundwater, rivers, lakes, soil moisture and glaciers show up in the signal, allowing the satellites to effectively “weigh” how much water is stored.
The findings reveal a stark imbalance: the north and north-west of Europe – particularly Scandinavia, parts of the UK and Portugal – have been getting wetter, while large swathes of the south and south-east, including parts of the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Romania and Ukraine, have been drying out.
Climate breakdown can be seen in the data, the scientists say. “When we compare the total terrestrial water storage data with climate datasets, the trends broadly correlate,” said Mohammad Shamsudduha, professor of water crisis and risk reduction at UCL.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.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.
As the sun set on the Amazon, the promise of a “people’s Cop” faded with it. The latest UN climate summit – known as Cop30, hosted in the Brazilian city of Belém – came with the usual geopolitics and the added excitement of a flood and a fire.
The summit saw Indigenous protests on an unprecedented scale, but the final negotiations were once again dominated by fossil fuel interests and delaying tactics. After ten years of climate (in)action since the Paris agreement, Brazil promised Cop30 would be an “implementation Cop”. But the summit failed to deliver, even as the world recorded a devastating 1.6˚C of global warming last year.
Here are our five key observations:
1. Indigenous groups were present – but not involved
Located in Amazonia, this was branded the summit for those on the frontlines of climate change. Over 5,000 Indigenous people were there, and they certainly made their voices heard.
However, only 360 secured passes to the main negotiating “blue zone”, compared to 1,600 delegates linked to the fossil fuel industry. Inside the negotiating rooms it was business as usual, with Indigenous groups remaining as observers, unable to vote or attend closed-door meetings.
The choice of location was nicely symbolic but logistically tough. Hosting the conference in the Amazon cost hundreds of millions of dollars in a region where many still lack basic amenities.
A stark image of this inequality: with hotel rooms full, the Brazilian government even docked two cruise ships for delegates, which per head can have eight times the emissions of a five star hotel.
2. The power of protests
But this was the second largest UN climate summit ever, and the first since Glasgow Cop26 in 2021 to take place in a country that permits real public protest. That mattered. Protests of various sizes happened every day during the two-week conference, most notably an Indigenous-led “great people’s march” on the middle Saturday.
Indigenous protesters scored some small wins – but weren’t involved in the main talks. Fraga Alves / EPA
The visible pressure helped obtain recognition of four new Indigenous territories in Brazil. It showed that when civil society has a voice it can secure wins, even outside of the main emissions negotiations.
3. US absence creates a vacuum – and an opportunity
In Donald Trump’s first turn as president, the US sent at least a skeletal group of negotiators. This time, in a historic first, America did not send an official delegation at all.
Trump recently described climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, and since returning to power the US has slowed renewables and expanded oil and gas. It even helped scuttle plans for a net zero framework for global shipping last month.
As the US is rolling back its ambition, it is allowing other oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia to ignore their own climate pledges and to try and undermine others.
China has stepped into the void and become one of the loudest voices in the room. As the world’s largest supplier of green technology, Beijing used Cop30 to promote its solar, wind and electric vehicle industries and court countries looking to invest.
But for many delegates, the absence of America came as a relief. Without the distraction of the US attempting to “burn the house down” as it did at the shipping negotiations, the conference was able to get on with the business at hand: negotiating texts and agreements that will limit global warming.
4. ‘Implementation’ through side deals – not the main stage
So what was actually implemented? This year, the main action happened through voluntary pledges, not the binding global agreement.
The Belém pledge, backed by countries including Japan, India and Brazil, committed signatories to quadruple sustainable fuels production and use by 2035.
Brazil also launched a major trust fund for forests, with around US$6 billion (£4.6 billion) already pledged for communities working to protect rainforests. The EU followed by pledging new funds for the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest rainforest.
These are useful steps, but they highlight how the biggest advances at UN climate summits now often happen in the margins, rather than in the main talks.
The outcome of those main talks at Cop30 – the Belém package – is weak, and will get us nowhere near the Paris agreement’s target of limiting global warming to 1.5˚C. Most striking is the absence of the words “fossil fuels” from the final text even though they were central to the Glasgow climate pact (2021) and the UAE consensus (2023) – and of course they represent the main cause of climate change.
5. The Global Mutirão text: a missed opportunity
One potential breakthrough did emerge in negotiating rooms: the Global Mutirão text, a proposed roadmap to “transition away” from fossil fuels. More than 80 countries signed it, from EU members to climate-vulnerable Pacific island states.
Tina Stege, climate envoy for one of those vulnerable states, the Marshall Islands, urged delegates: “Let’s get behind the idea of a fossil fuel roadmap, let’s work together and make it a plan.”
On the final Thursday, a small fire broke out in the pavilion area of the summit. Brazil Photo Press / Alamy
But opposition from Saudi Arabia, India and other major fossil fuel producers watered it down. Negotiations stretched into overtime, not helped by a fire that postponed discussions for a day.
When the final deal was agreed, key references to a fossil fuel phase-out were missing. There was a backlash from Colombia, due to the lack of inclusion of transition away from fossil fuels, which forced the Cop presidency to offer a six-month review as an olive branch.
This was hugely disappointing, as earlier in the summit there seemed to be huge momentum.
A widening gulf
So this was another divisive climate summit. The gulf between oil-producing countries (in particular in the Middle East) and the rest of the world has never been wider.
One positive to come out of the summit was the power of organised people: Indigenous groups and civil society made their voices heard, even if they weren’t translated into the final text.
With next year’s summit to be held in Turkey, these annual climate summits are increasingly migrating to nations with authoritarian leanings where protests are not welcome or completely banned. Our leaders keep stating that time is running out, yet negotiations themselves remain stuck in never ending circles of delays.
Simon Chin-Yee, Lecturer in International Development, UCL; Mark Maslin, UCL Professor of Earth System Science and UNU Lead for Climate, Health and Security, UCL, and Priti Parikh, Professor of Infrastructure Engineering and International Development, UCL
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.Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
More patients than promised in NHS England’s recovery plan are still waiting more than six weeks for an X-ray or scan. Photograph: Lankowsky/Alamy
Public accounts committee finds Labour’s progress ‘appears to have stalled’ despite billions of pounds in investment
The NHS has failed to cut waiting times as promised in its recovery plan despite billions of pounds in investment, the public accounts committee (PAC) has warned.
The influential parliamentary committee’s verdict raises serious doubts over whether Labour can fulfil its key pledge to voters to “fix the NHS” by ensuring that patients can once again get hospital care within 18 weeks by 2029.
In a scathing report, the cross-party PAC warns that improvements in providing faster tests and treatment have “stalled”. And it criticises Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, for ordering a costly, unplanned reorganisation of the NHS in England. It said this could damage care and was reminiscent of the shambles surrounding the HS2 rail project.
Far more patients than promised still have to wait more than 18 weeks for non-urgent hospital care – sometimes for more than a year – and more than six weeks for an X-ray or scan, it found. “Progress in reducing waiting times appears to have stalled, with the total elective care waiting list standing at 7.4m clinical pathways,” the report says – about 220,000 fewer than when Labour took power in July 2024.
The PAC’s conclusions will alarm ministers, who are keenly aware that the public’s top priority is to see NHS waiting times fall, and that Reform UK has recently supplanted Labour as the party that voters see as having the best policies on healthcare.
Its gloomy verdict contrasts sharply with the upbeat picture of progress in the NHS during Labour’s 16 months in power that Streeting painted last week.
… Reform UK has recently supplanted Labour as the party that voters see as having the best policies on healthcare. …
??? It’s remarkable that the electorate is so poorly informed …
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Nigel Farage attacks the NHSNigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
