Carbon Brief

Guest post: What 1.5C overshoot would mean for climate impacts and adaptation

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Original article by multiple authors republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license. 

With average global temperatures set to see another record high this year, the chances of holding warming to no more than 1.5C continue to dwindle.

Keeping warming below 1.5C by the end of the century – in line with the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement – now likely involves “overshooting” 1.5C and then bringing temperatures back down later by removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. 

(What this means for “net-negative” emissions is covered in a previous guest post.)

This raises a number of unknowns in terms of what overshoot means for the impacts of climate change on the planet, people and ecosystems. 

For example, even if global temperatures can be brought back down again by the end of the century, will the impacts of climate change also reduce? Will coral reefs be able to recover or will glaciers reform? What will it mean for the world’s coastlines, food production and endangered species?

For the past three years, we have been working on a Horizon Europe-funded project called PROVIDE to dive deeper into what overshoot really looks like for countries, regions and cities. 

This data is available on the Climate Risk Dashboard – a tool to help people see how climate change will affect them and how it depends on the actions taken today.

Until carbon emissions are reduced to net-zero, the world will not stop warming. Delay will result in ever more intense climate impacts – and increase the risk of crossing irreversible thresholds. 

Urban heat stress under overshoot

One of the clearest and most acute impacts of climate change is on extreme heatwaves. Our findings suggest that, were global average temperatures to decline, extreme heat events in most locations will also decrease, on average. 

But achieving a new balance in local climates would be a slow process, influenced by ongoing climate system adjustments for decades – if not centuries – to come.

Reversing climate change would most probably take several decades, even if overshoot is limited to a few tenths of a degree. This implies that the climate risks that generations alive today will be exposed to are largely determined by collective actions today. 

We can illustrate these differences for the risks of extreme heat stress for the Indian city of Chennai, one of 140 cities for which we modelled urban heat stress risks at 100-metre spatial resolution.  

The chart below shows the projected annual number of days of extreme heat stress in Chennai – defined as days where wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) goes over 31C. (WBGT is a metric that combines air temperature, humidity and exposure to direct sunlight.)

This level of heat stress approaches the limits of human survivability (without adaptation) – for example, physical outdoor labour is almost impossible under these conditions.

Under current 2020 climate policies, leading to a best estimate of about 3C of warming in 2100, extreme heat days increase pretty much unchecked. By the end of the century, around half of the days (180) per year would experience extreme heat stress conditions (or even higher). 

In contrast, in a 1.5C low-overshoot scenario (the IPCC Shifting Pathway), the number of extreme heat stress days would peak mid-century at around 120 days , before declining again to around 110 days by 2100 as global average temperature decreases from just above 1.5C to around 1.3C. This is a modest decline in extreme heat risk, yet a profound difference from a 3C world. 

Projected days a year with extreme heat stress in Chennai from 2020 to 2100
Projected days a year with extreme heat stress in Chennai from 2020 to 2100 under the climate policies of 2020 (blue) and 1.5C low-overshoot scenario called “IPCC Shifting Pathway” (green). Source: PROVIDE Dashboard

Irreversible consequences from overshoot

There are many other impacts of climate change that will be irreversible – for centuries to millennia – at peak temperatures, let alone if society is able to bring warming back down.

Coral reef loss, glacier loss, sea level rise and the loss of many species and ecosystems all fall into this category.

Yet, a lot of these losses can still be avoided by stringent mitigation. For example, our multi-scenario framework allows us to explore glacier futures showing unavoidable, or “locked-in”, risks even under the lowest emission scenario we have explored, and compare them with the avoidable risks through stringent mitigation. 

Below, we provide an example for glacier volume projections for Peru, where glaciers serve as an essential freshwater resource during the extremely dry season of June to September. Due to past warming, glacier loss will continue over the coming decades. Under a current policy scenario (blue dots), 50% of the glacier volume might be lost as early as 2050.

Yet this does not need to happen. In fact, stringent mitigation pathways (green dots) are still possible that give a four-in-five chance of preserving 50% of today’s glacier ice in Peru, avoiding the worst and helping to maintain some of their vital uses.

Chart illustrating risks of losing 50% of 2020 glacier volume for Peru today and in 2030, 2050 and 2100
Chart illustrating risks of losing 50% of 2020 glacier volume for Peru today and in 2030, 2050 and 2100, under the climate policies of 2020 (blue) and 1.5C low-overshoot scenario called “IPCC Shifting Pathway” (green). Shading highlights the avoidable risk. Source: PROVIDE Dashboard.

Overshoot risks for the biosphere

Climate change represents a major threat to biodiversity globally. We modelled species at risk from local extinction for about 135,000 terrestrial fungi, plants, invertebrates and vertebrates based on the Wallace Initiative. 

Under the assumption that the 1950-2000 reference climate was suitable for the species at question, we model the proportion of species for which the local climate becomes unsuitable under ongoing climate change. 

In the chart below, we illustrate the risks to species in one of the countries with the world’s richest terrestrial biodiversity, Brazil. Under the current policy scenario (blue dots), the likelihood of 50% of species being at risk of local extinction rises to 74% by 2100. Yet, our analysis shows that this likelihood can still be avoided almost entirely by stringent mitigation (green dots). 

Chart showing the likelihood of 50% of Brazilian species being at risk of local extinction today and in 2030, 2050 and 2100
Chart showing the likelihood of 50% of Brazilian species being at risk of local extinction today and in 2030, 2050 and 2100, under the climate policies of 2020 (blue) and 1.5C low-overshoot scenario called “IPCC Shifting Pathway” (green). Shading highlights the avoidable risk. Source: PROVIDE Dashboard.

It is important to highlight that species loss does depend on a range of factors – of which climate suitability is only one. Yet there is a range of other human-caused stressors to biodiversity loss and a complex interdependencies of species and food webs in particular in the most biodiverse ecosystems implies the risk of knock-on effects and ecosystem tipping points. 

We also note that our results do not necessarily imply global species extinction and do not allow us to quantify if and how species survival under different overshoot trajectories would emerge. 

Overshoot will stress adaptation planning

Overshoot outcomes matter for climate risk assessments. Yet, in contrast with the prominence of overshoot pathways in the climate mitigation literature, their implications for adaptation planning have not been widely explored.

Overshoot would increase the threat of climate change that society needs to adapt to – and make that adaptation more difficult. Some options may become unavailable due to limits of adaptation. 

Also, timescales matter. Reversing an overshoot will take decades. Even assuming reversibility of climate hazards in the future as temperatures come down, this might only matter for adaptation decisions that involve a planning horizon of 50 years or more.

This is illustrated in the chart below, from our recent Nature study. This shows a stylised trajectory of warming (top chart) with overshoot (red bars) and how it compares to planning horizons for some example adaptation options (green bars), the lifetime of those measures (blue bars) and the intergenerational equity they involve (bottom chart).

The possibility of reversing long-term impacts in the future does not reduce the urgent need to act now on closing the wide gap in current adaptation efforts.

Figure showing stylised temporal evolution of a reversible climate impact driver
Figure showing: a) stylised temporal evolution of a reversible climate impact driver under a peak and decline scenario. Dashed lines indicate a low and high overshoot outcome with median timescales of global temperature reversibility typically in line with those from the IPCC AR6 database; and b) stylised illustration of adaptation-relevant timescales starting in 2030, including different planning horizons for adaptation planning (green bars) and lifetimes of individual adaptation measures (blue), and the effect of applying discounting (reflecting societal preferences towards intergenerational equity) to future damages and adaptation benefits. Source: Schleussner et al. (2024)

Limit peak warming and aim for long-term decline

While our results clearly underscore the importance of limiting peak warming to as low as possible, there are also very good arguments for aiming for a long-term global temperature decline, irrespective of the peak warming level. 

For a wide range of time-lagged climate impacts, such as ice sheet, peatland and permafrost loss, as well as large-scale irreversible tipping points, achieving temperature decline well below 1.5C is key to limiting long-term risks from global warming. 

Overshoot is clearly not an alternative way to achieve a similar climate outcome. Effectively limiting climate risks requires restricting peak warming as low and as close to 1.5C as possible – and then aim for long-term decline to reduce the climate impact legacy of human-caused emissions.

This guest post is by:

Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner leads the integrated climate impact group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and is a scientific advisor at Climate Analytics, Berlin.

Prof Rachel Warren, professor of global change and environmental biology at the University of East Anglia.

Dr Fabien Maussion, associate professor in glaciology at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, UK.

Dr Niels Souverijns, urban climatologist at VITO Belgium and guest professor at KU Leuven.

Dr Quentin Lejeune, a climate scientist who has led the development of the PROVIDE Climate Risk Dashboard at Climate Analytics.

Original article by multiple authors republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license. 

Continue ReadingGuest post: What 1.5C overshoot would mean for climate impacts and adaptation

Revealed: UK ‘double counting’ £500m of aid for war-torn countries as climate finance

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Original article by JOSH GABBATISS republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license.

The UK government has reclassified nearly £500m of aid for war-torn and impoverished countries as “climate finance”, in a bid to meet its international commitments under the Paris Agreement.

This follows reports that the UK’s pledge to spend £11.6bn on climate aid between 2021-22 and 2025-26 is slipping out of reach, due to government cuts.

A freedom-of-information (FOI) request by Carbon Brief reveals how, after the reclassification, money for humanitarian work in nations including Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia is now being double-counted as climate finance to help the UK hit its goal.  

The projects being double-counted include work to provide food and basic necessities that have no explicit link to climate action, Carbon Brief’s analysis reveals. Some of their internal reports even state clearly that they are not climate-finance projects. 

This is part of a wider revision of climate-finance accounting, introduced by the government in 2023 to ensure the UK achieves its £11.6bn target. 

By redefining existing funds pegged for development banks, investment in foreign businesses and humanitarian aid as “climate finance”, the government expects to add £1.72bn to its total.

Experts tell Carbon Brief it is “problematic” and “unjust” to relabel existing funds as climate finance rather than providing new money. One says the UK could meet its target, at least in part, by “double counting development and climate finance”.

The chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group at UN climate talks says the UK’s actions are a “clear deviation from the path to climate justice”.

‘Moving the goalposts’

The UK government has committed to spending £11.6bn on international climate finance (ICF) between 2021-22 and 2025-26. This is the nation’s contribution to climate action in developing countries, which it is obliged to provide under the Paris Agreement. 

Developed countries, such as the UK, have committed to sending “new and additional” climate finance to developing countries. This is generally interpreted as spending extra money on top of existing foreign aid.

The UK government itself has described the £11.6bn goal as “dedicated ring-fenced funding that is distinguishable from non-climate [aid]”.

However, reports began to emerge in 2023 that the government was not on track to meet its target.

Experts attributed this to the government cutting its overall foreign aid budget. In November 2020, the government suspended a target to give 0.7% of national income as overseas aid – reducing it to 0.5% as a “temporary measure”. 

The government is also spending more of the remaining funds on supporting refugees within the UK. The latest figures show that in 2023, the UK spent more of its aid budget on supporting asylum seekers and refugees in the country than on overseas projects.

In order to remain on track for the £11.6bn goal, development minister Andrew Mitchell announced in October 2023 that the government was changing the way it calculated ICF spending.

This immediately sparked concerns that the government was inflating its climate-finance figures without providing any new aid money for developing countries. Mitchell provided limited details of how the government was getting its target back on track.

More information came in a report released in February by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI). It concluded that, by “moving the goalposts”, the government had reclassified £1.72bn of spending as climate finance between 2021-22 and 2025-26.

This figure includes four tranches of funding that had not previously been considered ICF:

  • £746m from assuming that a share of the “core” funding the UK gives to the World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) will be assigned to climate-related projects.
  • £497m from automatically labelling 30% of the humanitarian aid spent in the 10% of countries that are most vulnerable to climate change as ICF.
  • An estimated £266m from defining more payments into British International Investment (BII), the UK’s overseas development finance institution, as ICF.
  • £215m from civil servants “scrubbing” the aid portfolio – namely, going back over existing projects and adding any climate-relevant funding they had previously missed.

The figures cited by ICAI are based on unpublished government analysis, which Carbon Brief has now obtained via FOI. 

The analysis includes the annual contributions each of these sources are expected to provide over the period from 2021-22 to 2025-26, which can be seen in the coloured sections of the chart below.

Annual UK ICF spending, £bn, by financial year for the period 2011/12 to 2025/26. The grey area indicates ICF spending under the original accounting methodology used until October 2023. Beyond 2022/23 the figures are forecasts, with the light grey area indicating the upper bound and the darker grey indicating the lower bound. The coloured areas indicate the funding newly reclassified as counting towards ICF, following methodology changes introduced in October 2023. For multilateral development bank contributions, Carbon Brief understands that the UK will pledge £495m to the World Bank in 2025/26, and the remaining contributions that make up the £746m total are spread evenly across the 2011/12-2025/26 period. Source: UK government.

As the chart indicates, even with the methodology changes, the £11.6bn target is still “backloaded”, with a significant uptick in ICF spending required beyond 2023-24 to meet it. 

ICAI notes that, since the government cut its aid spending from the UN-backed benchmark of 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income (GNI), “serious concerns remain over whether the heavily backloaded spending plan can be delivered”.

Core funding

The largest tranche of redefined ICF – some £740m – comes from the government starting to assume that a share of its “core” MDB funding counts as climate finance.

This is money that the UK government already hands to these organisations to distribute according to their own priorities, primarily through loans. None of this money has previously been counted by the UK government as ICF, even though some went towards climate action.

MDBs, including the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and others have placed a growing emphasis on climate change in recent years. The World Bank, for example, has a target of spending 35% of its finance on climate-related projects.

Following the reclassification, the UK government will simply assume that 35% of the money it gives to the World Bank – some £495m of £1.4bn total due in 2025/26 – counts as ICF.

It will use a similar approach for its funding of other MDBs, with these changes adding a total of £740m to the amount of the UK’s aid spending that is classified as ICF.

This move will not result in the UK providing any new funds for climate action, as it was already planning on distributing this money. In fact, the government has cut its spending on MDBs in recent years, due to the overall cut in the UK’s foreign aid budget.

Humanitarian aid

The second-largest tranche of newly reclassified climate finance is from projects in climate-vulnerable countries, an additional £497m of which is being counted as ICF.

The government dataset obtained by Carbon Brief via FOI reveals the 28 humanitarian projects and five more general, country-specific funds that will contribute to this additional £497m. 

The projects are based in some of the poorest and most war-torn countries in the world – Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

They largely focus on essential provisions, such as food and basic infrastructure.

Prior to the recent changes, these programmes would have contributed just £47.5m to ICF, according to the government data released to Carbon Brief.

By automatically counting 30% of their spend as ICF, this figure has now multiplied more than 10 times. The chart below shows, in red, these additional ICF funds.

Annual UK ICF spending, £m, sourced from humanitarian aid projects for the 10% most climate-vulnerable countries, as defined by the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative. Blue columns indicate the ICF spending that was expected from these projects prior to the methodology change, and red columns indicate ICF spending from these projects after the change. Source: UK government.

For the 23 of the 28 projects with documentation available online, Carbon Brief assessed the relevant sections of their “business case and summary” documents for evidence that they were related to climate action.

Many of the project documents reference climate change and say they will provide climate benefits. For example, all four projects in Somalia, a nation that has faced devastating drought and floods in recent years, mention the importance of climate resilience in their work.

However, some of the projects explicitly state that they are not intended to provide climate-finance. 

The summary document for the Assurance and Learning Programme (ALP) in Afghanistan, published in 2021, states: “The programme will not be eligible for ICF nor will it monitor ICF funded programmes.”

Similarly, the Congo Humanitarian, Resilience and Protection (CHRESP) Programme summary document, also published in 2021, notes “we do not anticipate that any of our programming under this programme will be eligible as ICF”.

Another project, titled Yemen: Access, Logistics, Liaison, and Accountability, will provide “few opportunities” to address climate change, according to the summary document. A further four project documents do not contain any reference to climate change. 

Despite this, following the government’s reclassification, these seven projects will collectively contribute £166.9m of UK climate finance in the coming years.

Euan Ritchie, a senior development finance policy advisor at the thinktank Development Initiatives, says blanket approaches to assigning climate finance are “problematic”. He tells Carbon Brief:

“Just because humanitarian aid is going to a country that is vulnerable to climate change doesn’t mean it addresses that vulnerability. And these projects have already been screened for their climate focus.”

He points to one of the projects, the Somalia Humanitarian and Resilience Programme, as an example. Ritchie says, based on International Aid Transparency Initiative data, that officials had already decided around 12% of this programme’s spending was ICF, and asks:

“So what rationale is there for bumping it up to 30%? Were officials wrong the first time?”

Fatuma Hussein, a programme manager at the thinktank Power Shift Africa, tells Carbon Brief such an approach is “unfair and unjust” as it “risks conflating” the “distinct needs” of climate aid and other humanitarian objectives.

In its guidance for categorising what counts as climate finance, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee recommends scoring many humanitarian projects “zero”, indicating programmes that “generally do not qualify” as climate aid.

More private investment

The third-largest tranche of reclassified development aid relates to state-backed private sector investment under British International Investment (BII).

The UK government will also now count more of its payments into BII as climate finance, amounting to around an extra £266m by 2025-26. Unlike aid spending, these are investments in the private sector and are expected to yield a financial return for the UK.

Previously, the government counted a fixed 30% of BII spending as climate finance. It now intends to include a higher percentage to reflect a growing focus on climate investments.

The new approach to BII investments assesses the share of each project that should count towards UK climate finance case-by-case, rather than using a blanket 30% share.

It will record 100% of investments in a programme covering the Philippines, Indonesia and other parts of south-east Asia as ICF, as part of the government’s “Indo-Pacific tilt”. Investments in other regions also contribute a higher share of ICF – rising as high as 46% in 2022-23.

The chart below shows the extra BII investment money (red) that now counts as ICF.

Annual UK ICF spending, £m, from British International Investment (BII) contributions. Blue columns indicate the ICF spending that was expected from BII prior to the methodology change and red columns indicate ICF spending from BII after the change. Source: UK government.

The figure above shows that the government expects private sector investment via BII to play an increasingly large role in its climate finance in the future.

Many observers have expressed concerns about the government leaning more on private investment through BII to boost its ICF spending. 

A report last year by the parliamentary international development committee criticised BII’s investment in, among other things, fossil fuels and “high-net-worth individuals”.

BII prioritises loans and projects in middle-income nations where there is money to be made, rather than the nations that are most in need of climate finance. 

ICAI highlighted this in its review of the UK’s climate finance commitments earlier this year, stating that private investment “is not always the most appropriate, realistic or preferred form of climate finance in the poorest and most fragile contexts”.

Not new, not additional

Developing countries will require trillions of dollars of investment in the coming years to meet their climate goals. 

To help achieve this, developed countries, such as the UK, are expected to provide finance under the UN climate system that is “new and additional”. Discussions around a new climate finance goal will take centre stage this year at the COP29 climate summit in Baku.

Experts tell Carbon Brief that the UK government’s changes to its ICF undermine the notion that it is providing new, “ring-fenced” funding. Regarding the “arbitrary” labelling of humanitarian funds as ICF, Ritchie says:

“If the UK is counting a fixed share of projects as ICF it can no longer claim that ICF is distinguishable from non-climate [aid].” 

Gideon Rabinowitz, director of policy and advocacy at the international development network Bond, tells Carbon Brief:

“The change of definition means they will be able to reach the target by spending less money than they would have done otherwise through double counting development and climate finance.”

Development NGOs say the best way for the UK to scale up its climate finance would be to return its foreign aid budget to 0.7% of GNI. However, with an election looming, neither the ruling Conservatives nor their Labour challengers have indicated a willingness to do this.

There will be considerable pressure on developed countries in the coming months to commit to providing plentiful, high-quality climate finance in the run up to COP29. 

Evans Njewa, the chair of the LDC group, to which nearly all of the UK’s humanitarian aid ICF recipients belong, tells Carbon Brief:

“Reclassifying existing donor aid as climate finance is a clear deviation from the path to climate justice, and closing the finance gap cannot be achieved this way.” 

Climate-finance reporting has been described as a “wild west”, with countries announcing figures based on vastly different definitions. This has led to nations counting money for coal, hotels and films in their totals, as there is no binding international standard to guide them.

The UK government noted last year that its changes are in line with other countries’ methods. But experts point out that the UK was previously viewed as setting a high standard for other countries to reach. 

In contrast, the new approach “risks breeding cynicism and mistrust because you are going to find programmes that have very little to do with climate change, but end up being reported in the pot as climate finance”, Rabinowitz says.

Hussein agrees, telling Carbon Brief:

“This not only highlights the disparity between western countries’ rhetoric on climate finance and their actual financial commitments to developing countries but also risks undermining trust that underpins global climate action.”

She argues that nations should agree on common definitions and accounting methodologies for climate finance to ensure that governments cannot backslide as the UK has.

Responding to Carbon Brief’s questions about the government’s methodology changes, a spokesperson from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said:

“Since 2011, UK funding has helped more than 100 million people cope with the effects of climate change, given 70 million people access to clean energy and reduced or avoided over 86m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The UK remains on track to meet the £11.6bn international climate finance commitment.”

Original article by JOSH GABBATISS republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license.

Continue ReadingRevealed: UK ‘double counting’ £500m of aid for war-torn countries as climate finance

US Leads Charge as Surge of Oil and Gas Projects Threaten Hope for Livable Planet

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

There are over 1,100 oil-producing wells in the McKittrick oil field, just north of the town of McKittrick, California.
 (Photo: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“The science is clear: No new oil and gas fields, or the planet gets pushed past what it can handle,” said one analyst.

Fossil fuel-producing countries late last year pledged to “transition away from fossil fuels,” but a report on new energy projects shows that with the United States leading the way in continuing to extract oil and gas, governments’ true views on renewable energy is closer to a statement by a Saudi oil executive Amin Nasser earlier this month.

“We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas,” the CEO of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, said at an energy conference in Houston.

A new report published Wednesday by Global Energy Monitor (GEM) suggests the U.S. in particular has abandoned any plans to adhere to warnings from climate scientists and the International Energy Agency (IEA), which said in 2021 that new oil and gas infrastructure has no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C.

Despite the stark warning, last year at least 20 oil and gas fields worldwide reached “final investment decision,” the point at which companies decide to move ahead with construction and development. Those approvals paved the way for the extraction of 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe).

By the end of the decade, companies aim to sanction nearly four times that amount, producing 31.2 billion boe from 64 oil and gas fields.

The U.S. led the way in approving new oil and gas projects over the past two years, GEM’s analysis found.

An analysis by Carbon Brief of GEM’s findings shows that burning all the oil and gas from newly discovered fields and approved projects would emit at least 14.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.

“This is equivalent to more than one-third of the CO2 emissions from global energy use in 2022, or all the emissions from burning oil that year,” said Carbon Brief.

GEM noted in its analysis that oil companies and the policymakers who continue to support their planet-heating activities have come up with numerous “extraction justifications” even as the IEA has been clear that new fossil fuel projects are incompatible with avoiding catastrophic planetary heating.

The report notes that U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) “supported ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil field, arguing that the Alaskan oil and gas industry has a ‘better environmental track record,’ and not approving the project ‘impoverish[es] Alaska Natives and blame[s] them for changes in the climate that they did not cause.'”

Carbon Brief reported that oil executives have claimed they are powerless to stop extracting fossil fuels since demand for oil and gas exists for people’s energy needs, with ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods telling Fortune last month that members of the public “aren’t willing to spend the money” on renewable energy sources.

A poll by Pew Research Center last year found 67% of Americans supported the development of alternative energy sources. Another recent survey by Eligo Energy showed that 65% of U.S. consumers were willing to pay more for renewable energy.

“Oil and gas producers have given all kinds of reasons for continuing to discover and develop new fields, but none of these hold water,” said Scott Zimmerman, project manager for the Global Oil and Gas Extraction Tracker at GEM. “The science is clear: No new oil and gas fields, or the planet gets pushed past what it can handle.”

Climate scientist and writer Bill McGuire summarized the viewpoint of oil and gas executives and pro-fossil fuel lawmakers: “Climate emergency? What climate emergency?”

The continued development of new oil and gas fields, he added, amounts to “pure insanity.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingUS Leads Charge as Surge of Oil and Gas Projects Threaten Hope for Livable Planet

Analysis: Record opposition to climate action by UK’s right-leaning newspapers in 2023

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Original article by JOSH GABBATISS & SYLVIA HAYES republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license.

Graphic by Joe Goodman for Carbon Brief shows record opposition to climate action by UK’s right-leaning newspapers in 2023.
Graphic by Joe Goodman for Carbon Brief shows record opposition to climate action by UK’s right-leaning newspapers in 2023.

Last year saw a record number of UK newspaper editorials opposing climate action – almost exclusively from right-leaning titles – new Carbon Brief analysis shows.

The analysis is based on hundreds of UK national newspaper editorials, which are the formal “voice” of the publications.

The 354 editorials published in 2023 relating to energy and climate change add to thousands more collected in a long-running project started by Carbon Brief.

Newspapers such as the Sun and the Daily Mail published 42 editorials in 2023 arguing against climate action – nearly three times more than they have printed before in a single year.

They called for delays to UK bans on the sale of fossil fuel-powered cars and boilers, as well as for more oil-and-gas production in the North Sea. In response to such demands, prime minister Rishi Sunak performed a “U-turn” in September on some of his government’s major net-zero policies.

Last year also saw a surge in hostility towards climate protesters, with editorial attacks doubling compared to recent years.

This analysis is part of a project assessing the attitudes of UK newspapers to climate change and energy since 2011. It shows that after a period of embracing climate action, right-leaning publications have largely returned to their historic stance of arguing against climate action.

Record opposition to action

Carbon Brief captured 354 articles in its database of climate- and energy-related newspaper editorials last year, touching on topics ranging from UK energy bills to flooding in Libya.

Roughly half of these – 174 in total – specifically called for either more or less climate action. The main focus of these editorials was the UK government’s net-zero target and the policies it is implementing, or failing to implement, in order to achieve this goal. 

As the chart below shows, the 42 editorials arguing for less action last year marked a new record for the past 13 years of climate coverage.

Number of UK newspaper editorials arguing for more (yellow) and less (red) climate action, 2011-2023. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.
Number of UK newspaper editorials arguing for more (yellow) and less (red) climate action, 2011-2023. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.

There was a clear partisan divide in attitudes towards climate action.

Nearly every editorial published in left-leaning and centrist titles that offered an opinion on climate action advocated for more to be taken. These made up around three-quarters of the articles calling for “more action” overall.

The Guardian, for example, published editorials calling for an end to oil exploration in the UK and for the world to get rid of fossil fuels “entirely”.

By contrast, around half of the climate-related editorials published in right-leaning titles, such as the Sun and the Daily Mail, actively opposed climate action. Only one-third of these editorials supported climate action and the remainder expressed a mix of views.

As the chart below shows, the past two years have seen a dramatic fall in the share of right-leaning newspaper editorials supporting climate action – and a rise in the share opposing it. 

Prior to this downward trend, right-leaning titles with long histories of climate scepticism had been showing growing enthusiasm for climate action. The Daily Express and the Sun even launched special climate initiatives in 2021, as the UK prepared to host the COP26 summit.

The drop in support for climate action among right-leaning newspapers was followed by the government rolling back some of its climate policies in 2023. (See: Cost of net-zero.)

The share of right-leaning UK newspaper editorials arguing for more (yellow) and less (red) climate action, 2011-2023, %. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.
The share of right-leaning UK newspaper editorials arguing for more (yellow) and less (red) climate action, 2011-2023, %. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.

Carbon Brief also analysed a smaller set of 64 editorials from the 354 published in 2023 that discussed notable energy sources – specifically, renewables, nuclear power and fracking for shale gas. 

Within this group, there were 14 editorials that were explicitly anti-renewable energy. 

This is the highest number since 2013, when there was widespread opposition to wind energy within the right-leaning press. 

Some of the criticism last year was reminiscent of that era. The Sun, for example, said solar and wind generation “will never reliably power a country this size and with such variable weather”.

(While other low-carbon energy sources would be needed, the Climate Change Committee has concluded that the UK could achieve a reliable decarbonised power system by 2035 in which wind and solar meet 70% of demand.)

A Sunday Telegraph editorial said that “supposed progress” in renewables had “only been achieved thanks to lavish subsidies”. (In fact, wind and solar remain the cheapest way to generate electricity in the UK.)

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Cost of net-zero

By far the most common anti-climate action narrative in newspaper editorials last year was the economic impact of what the Sun on Sunday called “bonkers net-zero policies that will just push prices up”. (Energy prices remain elevated thanks to expensive gas.)

The cost of net-zero, especially the up-front cost of buying electric vehicles and heat pumps, was consistently framed by right-leaning newspapers as something British people, in the words of the Sun, “just cannot afford”. (These papers invariably fail to mention the costs of inaction.)

This has been a popular topic among some right-wing and climate-sceptic commentators since the net-zero target was first proposed. This is in spite of analysis indicating that a net-zero transition would, ultimately, save UK households money. 

As the chart below shows, costs emerged as an even bigger talking point in 2023, with one-third of all climate-related editorials referencing the issue. There were twice as many editorials in the past year mentioning the high costs of action than there has ever been. 

Annual number of climate-related editorials mentioning the economic costs of climate action (red), with remaining climate-related editorials published that year indicated in grey, 2011-2023. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.
Annual number of climate-related editorials mentioning the economic costs of climate action (red), with remaining climate-related editorials published that year indicated in grey, 2011-2023. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.

Many, such as the Daily Mail, cited the wider economic situation in the UK as a reason not to act on climate change:

“When net-zero was made legally binding by 2050, Britain had not had Covid, the Ukraine war and rampant inflation. Now the country is skint and can’t afford it.” 

(It is worth mentioning that publications such as the Daily Mail have been making similar arguments since long before any of these issues emerged. In 2017, it stated that climate action had only come at a “crippling cost to Western economies”.)

In light of what they argued were “unaffordable” costs, these publications argued that the best course of action would be to abandon “unrealistic” net-zero policies. 

(The Office for Budget Responsibility has said that the costs of failing to act on climate change would be “much larger” than the costs of taking action.)

Right-leaning publications published numerous editorials calling for the government to delay or scrap plans to phase out gas boilers and internal combustion engine cars, introduced under former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson. One Daily Telegraph editorial said:

“There would surely be huge political benefits to scrapping all these pointlessly punitive measures.”

On 20 September, Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak gave a speech in which he announced a series of rollbacks of net-zero policies that he said would protect “hard-working British people” from “unacceptable costs”. These included delays to the phase-out of fossil fuel-powered vehicles and boilers, as well as efficiency rules.

(Far from reducing costs, the rollbacks are expected to cost renters £2bn per year and drivers £6bn cumulatively, by leaving homes more draughty and cars more expensive to run.)

As the chart below shows, the speech followed a flurry of editorials warning of the costs of net-zero. After Sunak’s announcement, these editorials almost stopped entirely. 

Monthly number of editorials mentioning the cost of climate action in UK newspapers in 2023. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.
Monthly number of editorials mentioning the cost of climate action in UK newspapers in 2023. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.

Left-leaning and centrist publications rejected the notion that net-zero policies would inevitably place an economic burden on people in the UK. 

The Guardian noted that, while “reaching net-zero will be costly and disruptive”, this just made it vital to have a “well-thought-out plan to share the cost equitably”. The Financial Times made the case for “green growth”, stating:

“True leadership…would involve finding ways to carry voters with [Sunak] through the challenges ahead and seizing on the green transition to rekindle growth and spur innovation.”

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Labour criticism

Sunak’s net-zero rollback was widely perceived by the UK press as an attempt to put “clear blue water” between himself and Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour party.

Meanwhile, there was a concerted effort in the right-leaning press to discredit Labour’s two flagship climate announcements – namely, pledges to spend £28bn each year on “green” investment and to stop issuing new oil-and-gas licences.

This was particularly evident in the Sun and the Daily Mail, the UK’s two most widely read national newspapers. Of the 128 climate- or energy-related editorials from these newspapers captured in Carbon Brief’s database last year, 31 took aim at Labour’s climate proposals.

Number of climate- and energy-related editorials published in the Sun and the Daily Mail in 2023 that focused on criticising Labour’s plans to end new North Sea oil and gas licensing (dark red) and other Labour climate policies (light red). The grey area represents other climate- and energy-related editorials in those newspapers that did not focus on Labour. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.
Number of climate- and energy-related editorials published in the Sun and the Daily Mail in 2023 that focused on criticising Labour’s plans to end new North Sea oil and gas licensing (dark red) and other Labour climate policies (light red). The grey area represents other climate- and energy-related editorials in those newspapers that did not focus on Labour. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.

The debate around North Sea oil and gas was a major talking point last year, with many right-leaning editorials stating that new drilling licences would be vital for the UK’s energy security. (After a surge of interest in 2022, fracking was virtually forgotten last year, with just two editorials mentioning it in 2023.)

Labour officially announced in May that it planned to stop all new oil-and-gas developments. 

Right-leaning newspapers responded by implying that environmental activist group Just Stop Oil and low-carbon energy tycoon Dale Vince were responsible for setting Labour’s policies. This claim was based on the fact that Vince, who had financially supported Just Stop Oil, had also given £1.5m to Labour. 

In total, there were 16 editorials in the Sun, the Sun on Sunday and the Daily Mail about Vince’s support for Just Stop Oil and Labour. They described Vince as “bankrolling” Labour and helping to “dictate its green agenda”, framing Labour as “allies” of Just Stop Oil and “in their pocket”. 

(Vince’s £1.5m in donations to Labour were spread over 10 years. The Labour Party has received donations totalling nearly £30m in the most recent 12 months for which official data is reported. The Conservatives have received £43m over the same period.)

These narratives were later picked up by then net-zero secretary Grant Shapps, who wrote a letter to Starmer in July concerning Vince’s support, and called Labour the “political wing of Just Stop Oil”.

(Responding to criticism, Starmer said in August that Labour would honour existing North Sea licences and maintain oil-and-gas fields “for decades to come”. He called Just Stop Oil’s more radical demands “contemptible”. Vince announced in October he would stop funding Just Stop Oil.)

More broadly, there was also an effort to frame Labour’s “green” policies as what the Sun called a “turn-off for much of the electorate”. This was particularly true following the Uxbridge by-election in July, where the Labour London mayor Sadiq Khan’s anti-air pollution policy, the ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ), was viewed as significant in Labour narrowly missing out on winning the seat.

There were also many editorials throughout 2023 attacking shadow net-zero secretary Ed Miliband, with the Sun stating: 

“Labour wanted to gamble a monstrous £28bn a year in borrowed money on a ‘green industrial revolution’ dreamed up by Ed Miliband, a man voters rejected in 2015 as incompetent.”

The media continues to fuel speculation over Labour’s £28bn “green prosperity plan”, which Starmer recently defended.

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Targeting climate activists

Climate activists have been a major target for right-leaning newspapers in recent years, especially since Extinction Rebellion’s mass protests in 2019.

Yet their hostility towards climate activists reached new levels last year. There were 56 editorials taking aim at these groups, with 43 of these targeting Just Stop Oil. As the chart below shows, this is more than double the previous record of 25, set in 2022.

Editorials in the Sun and the Daily Mail described Just Stop Oil as a “criminal cult”, “eco-loons” and “deranged”. The Sun devoted entire editorials to targeting individual activists for taking flights or driving a car to the supermarket to buy fruit.

Number of editorials in right-leaning UK newspapers criticising climate activist groups between 2019 and 2023. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.
Number of editorials in right-leaning UK newspapers criticising climate activist groups between 2019 and 2023. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.

In a year that saw the government introduce strict and controversial new legislation to crack down on protests, UK newspapers were vocal in their support for tougher treatment of climate activists.

Prior to new penalties being introduced under the Public Order Act, a Times editorial about Just Stop Oil protests stated that “the law is as asinine as the tactics of those narcissists”.

The Sun, meanwhile, said the police were “too busy with fashionable woke causes and politely escorting Just Stop Oil protesters to bother with catching crooks”.

Methodology

This is a 2023 update of previous analysis conducted for the period 2011-2021 by Carbon Brief in association with Sylvia Hayes, a PhD researcher at the University of Exeter. The 2022 update can be found here.

The full methodology can be found in the original article, including the coding schema used to assess the language and themes used in editorials concerning climate change and energy technologies. 

The analysis is based on Carbon Brief’s editorial database, which is regularly updated with leading articles from the UK’s major newspapers.

Original article by JOSH GABBATISS & SYLVIA HAYES republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license.

Continue ReadingAnalysis: Record opposition to climate action by UK’s right-leaning newspapers in 2023

Zero onshore wind plans submitted in England since de facto ban was ‘lifted’

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A wind turbine at Black Moss by Ian Greig, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
A wind turbine at Black Moss by Ian Greig, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/27/zero-onshore-wind-plans-submitted-in-england-since-de-facto-ban-was-lifted

…

Analysis of the government’s renewable energy planning database shows that no applications for new onshore wind projects have been submitted since the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, claimed that the government would overturn the onshore wind ban in September 2023.

At the time, the National Infrastructure Commission advised the government to go further and restore onshore wind to the government’s Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects process, which would encourage more applications.

The government rejected this recommendation and said the measures announced in September were enough.

Analysis by Carbon Brief estimates that if onshore wind had continued to be built at the same rate it was in 2017 – before the ban started to come into effect – 7GW of onshore wind would have been built. This would have knocked £5.1bn off energy bills, or £182 for each UK household, in the year from July 2022 to June 2023.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/27/zero-onshore-wind-plans-submitted-in-england-since-de-facto-ban-was-lifted

Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reads 1% RICHEST 100% CLIMATE DENIER
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reads 1% RICHEST 100% CLIMATE DENIER
Continue ReadingZero onshore wind plans submitted in England since de facto ban was ‘lifted’