Paying with fire: Most oil and gas executives are rewarded for chasing growth, but shareholders could get burned. Graphic: Carbon Tracker Initiative

Fanning the Flames: How executives continue to be rewarded to produce more oil and gas at odds with the energy transition

13 March 2020 (Carbon Tracker) – Company pay practice doesn’t yet live up to climate ambition, with the gap between stated ambition and demonstrable action widening. The energy transition is a challenge to the traditional business model of the oil and gas industry, and companies are increasingly exposed to transition-related financial risks. Over the past […]

Oregon state Senate President Peter Courtney pauses after declaring in the state Senate on Tuesday, 25 February 2020, that amid a boycott by Republican senators, not enough lawmakers were present to reach a quorum. The drastic move by Republicans in Oregon highlights how pitched the debate over how to respond to global warming is becoming, with the GOP saying leaving the Capitol was the only way to halt legislation they view as too extreme in a Legislature dominated by Democrats. Democrats warn that doing nothing at this point is too dangerous. In an interview with The Associated Press, Courtney, the longest-serving legislator in Oregon history, said he has not found a way out of the impasse and is broken hearted. Photo: Andrew Selsky / AP Photo

Republican lawmakers walk out after Oregon climate bill advances

By Andrew Selsky 25 February 2020 SALEM, Oregon (AP) – A rebellion by GOP politicians in liberal Oregon intensified Tuesday when Republican members of the House joined their Senate counterparts in a walkout, freezing legislation on climate change, wildfire mitigation, homeless assistance and a landmark compromise between the timber industry and environmentalists. [cf. last year’s […]

Residents look on as flames burn through bush in Lake Tabourie, Australia, on 4 January 2020. Photo: Brett Hemmings / Getty Images

15 years after the Kyoto Protocol went into force, the climate crisis is worse than ever – “If the U.S. had been in from the start, it would have been a different trajectory altogether”

By Rosie McCall 16 February 2020 (Newsweek) – The Kyoto Protocol went to force a full 15 years ago today—and yet, the climate crisis is more urgent than ever. On Sunday, 15 years will have passed since the Kyoto Protocol was ratified on February 16, 2005, which was eight years after it was negotiated back […]

Breakdown of total fossil fuel support in PIDG, 2002-2018, by sub-sector ($USD). Data: Source: Private Infrastructure Development Group Annual Report 2018. Graphic: Global Witness

Obscure investment fund uses UK aid money to finance fossil fuel projects – “A farcical situation where the Government, on one hand, spends aid money to mitigate climate change, and on the other hand finances fossil fuels all over the world”

6 February 2020 (Global Witness) – We are at the beginning of a year of climate spin by the British Government. This year, the UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow. While the Government claims to be a ‘climate leader’, we reveal how a little-known investment group funded by the […]

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg listens to a speech by President Trump during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, 21 January 2020. Photo: Gian Ehrenzeller / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

As Trump lashes out at “prophets of doom” in Davos, Greta Thunberg calls for climate action – “I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.”

By Rick Noack 21 January 2020 (The Washington Post) – Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and President Trump offered two opposing visions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, with Trump lashing out at what he said were “perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse” as Thunberg inveighed against […]

Net U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by sector, 2005-2019. Graphic: Rhodium Group

Preliminary U.S. carbon emissions estimates for 2019 – Coming up short on climate targets

By Trevor Houser and Hannah Pitt 7 January 2020 (Rhodium Group) – After a sharp uptick in 2018, we estimate that US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions fell by 2.1% last year based on preliminary energy and economic data. This decline was due almost entirely to a drop in coal consumption. Coal-fired power generation fell by […]

Animation showing pathways for reducing carbon emissions to prevent breaching the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5C target by year, 2000-2019. Graphic: Carbon Brief

The sad truth about our boldest climate target – Limiting global warming to 1.5˚C is almost certainly not going to happen. Admitting this need not end hope.

By David Roberts 3 January 2020 (Vox) – In the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the countries participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed to a common target: to hold the rise in global average temperature “well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even […]

Youths pull out an ox stuck in muddy waters in the drying Mabwematema dam in Zimbabwe on 25 December 2019. Photo: Zinyange Auntony / AFP / Getty Images

The 2010s were a lost decade for climate. We can’t afford a repeat, scientists warn.

By Sarah Kaplan 31 December 2019 (The Washington Post) – At the start of the last decade, Kallan Benson was 5 years old, her favorite story was “The Secret Garden,” and Earth was in the midst of its warmest year on record. Benson had heard about climate change (her mother is an environmental scientist), but she […]

Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. When asked about abrupt clikmate change, she says that we’re witnessing an exciting “feminist climate renaissance”. Photo: Violetta Markelou / Huffington Post

We spoke to five climate experts about what gives them hope – “I have a tenuous relationship with hope these days, but I am certainly bolstered by the fact that we already have all the solutions we need”

By Kyla Mandel 26 December 2019 (Huffington Post) – This year comes to a close after an onslaught of bleak and terrifying revelations about the state of our planet. Glaciers are melting, species are dying, forests are burning and climate tipping points ― thresholds which, if breached, will usher in uncontrollable warming ― are about […]

Climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP25 in Madrid, Spain on 11 December 2019. Photo: Cristina Quicler

Five reasons the COP25 climate talks failed – “The world is screaming out for climate action but this summit has responded with a whisper”

25 December 2019 (AFP) – The climate summit in Madrid earlier this month did not collapse — but by almost any measure it certainly failed. Five years after the fragile UN process yielded the world’s first universal climate treaty, COP25 was billed as a mopping-up session to finish guidelines for carbon markets, thus completing the […]

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