DeBriefed 2 June 2023: US debt deal raises climate risk; Amazon under threat; China sizzles

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. 
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

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US debt deal

‘CLIMATE SHADOW’: A deal struck between US president Joe Biden and Republicans to allow the US to borrow more money inched towards becoming law after being approved by both chambers of the US Congress, BBC News reported – potentially “cast[ing] a shadow over climate politics in 2024”, according to Axios. The deal involves “compromises” on key climate measures, including a weakening of environmental review measures and the approval of the Mountain Valley pipeline, a major gas project in Virginia and West Virginia, according to Axios.

‘EGREGIOUS ACT’: The Guardian reported that environmentalists “reacted in outrage” to the deal. Peter Anderson, Virginia policy director at the campaign group Appalachian Voices, told the publication: “Singling out the Mountain Valley pipeline for approval in a vote about our nation’s credit limit is an egregious act.”

Eyes on Brazil

AMAZON COP: Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva this week confirmed that the country has been chosen to host the 2025 UN climate summit, COP30, CNN reported. Lula plans to host the event in the Amazonian city of Belém do Pará, according to the publication. It comes after Lula, fresh from an election victory, made waves at the COP27 climate summit in 2022 by promising to reach “zero deforestation” and install new rights for Indigenous people.

INDIGENOUS THREAT: But, despite winning praise overseas, Lula is struggling to enact his ambitious climate agenda at home. He was dealt a blow this week when members of Brazil’s conservative-dominated lower house overwhelmingly endorsed a bill that could threaten Indigenous land rights and pave the way for more Amazon deforestation, the Guardian reported. Lula’s plan to establish a ministry for Indigenous people is also under threat, said Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo.

China faces heatwave

SHANGHAI SWELTERS: China’s largest city, Shanghai, recorded its hottest May day in 100 years when temperatures hit 36.7C on Monday, Al Jazeera reported. According to the publication, the record was announced via a post on the city’s meteorological service’s official Weibo account.

40C FORECAST: The heat is expected to continue across many areas of China in the coming days, Reuters reported. Chinese forecasters said earlier today temperatures could exceed 40C in many areas, “putting power grids under strain as air conditioners are turned on full blast at homes, offices and factories”, the newswire said.

Around the world

• STRONGEST STORM: Super Typhoon Mawar, the strongest storm on Earth for two years, raged across the Pacific this week, striking Guam, the Philippines and Japan.
• NIGERIA FUEL CRISIS: Nigeria’s new president Bola Tinubu used his first address to announce an abrupt end to fuel subsidies, sparking national chaos as the public rushed to gas stations to stock up before prices rose, the Financial Times reported.
• AIRLINE CLIMATE CLAIMS QUERIED: Delta Airlines is facing a lawsuit after inaccurately claiming to be the world’s first “carbon-neutral” airline, Associated Press reported. The lawsuit alleges that the claim was based on “bogus” carbon offsets.
• INSURANCE TURMOIL: Lloyd’s has joined a string of big insurers in leaving the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA), a UN body set up in 2021 for insurers wanting to cut emissions and reduce climate risk, the Financial Times reported.

440GW: The amount of new renewable energy capacity that the world is set to add this year.

Latest climate research

• Seven out of eight “safe and just” boundaries for Earth have already been crossed, research in Nature said. Carbon Brief spoke to a range of scientists about why the findings are contested.
• There is “outstanding geographical inequality” between the emissions of individuals living in the global north and south, according to research in Scientific Reports.
• Human-caused climate change did not play a “significant” role in the heavy rainfall that led to recent flooding in northern Italy, a rapid attribution analysis concluded. Carbon Brief explained the details.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summarises of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured: US fossil-fuel job losses offset by net-zero

New research covered in-depth by Carbon Brief this week addressed a common trope from climate-sceptic Republicans that the transition to net-zero in the US could leave some communities jobless. The study, published in Energy Policy, found that, as the country shifts to net-zero, the loss of jobs in fossil-fuel rich regions would be more than offset by new jobs in low-carbon industries. This is true for both “red” (Republican-voting) and “blue” (Democrat-voting) states, as illustrated in the charts above.

Spotlight: UK minister’s oil and gas claims factchecked

The UK’s opposition Labour Party last weekend confirmed it would end new oil and gas developments if elected to power, after first announcing intentions to do so in 2021. This prompted the country’s current net-zero secretary, Grant Shapps, to tweet on Wednesday that Labour was pursuing a “just stop oil plan” (a reference to climate campaign group Just Stop Oil) that would “harm the economy”. Below, Carbon Brief factchecks his claims.

Is Labour’s pledge to end new oil and gas licences a ‘Just Stop Oil plan’?

The climate campaign group Just Stop Oil is certainly not the only one to call for an end to new oil and gas licences.

Back in 2021, the world’s most influential energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency, said there was no room for new oil and gas expansion anywhere in the world if the global energy system is to reach net-zero by 2050. Further analysis conducted since then has confirmed that there is a “large consensus” across all published pathways that new fossil-fuel expansion is “incompatible” with limiting global warming to 1.5C.

Several countries, including France, Ireland and Denmark, have already announced that they will no longer allow new oil and gas developments. Many climate scientists have called on the UK to follow suit. Setting an end date for new oil and gas licences was a recommendation of both a review of net-zero led by Conservative and former energy minister Chris Skidmore and a parliamentary report conducted by the Environmental Audit Committee, which is chaired by Conservative MP Philip Dunne.

Would ending new oil and gas development ‘harm the economy’?

The UK is currently reliant on fossil fuels for 78% of the energy it needs, mostly to heat homes and fuel vehicles. Resources in the North Sea are in decline and the UK is a net importer of both oil and gas, leaving it vulnerable to global energy price hikes. 

It is argued by some that ending new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea could increase the UK’s reliance on costly imports further, endangering the economy.

But, as Carbon Brief’s deputy editor Dr Simon Evans explained in a thread in January, it is unlikely that sourcing a greater share of our fossil fuels from overseas in the future would “harm our economy”.

Oil and gas licences typically take an average of 28 years to produce new fossil fuels. A new licence approved today may not produce oil and gas until the 2040s. By this time, the UK should be well on its way to meeting its legal target of net-zero emissions by 2050.

The journey to net-zero will see petrol cars replaced by electric cars, fossil-fuel boilers replaced by heat pumps and gas power stations replaced with low-carbon alternatives, such as renewables, nuclear and storage. All of this will see oil and gas demand plummet over the coming decades.

As oil and gas demand decreases, so too will the need to import costly fossil fuels. Even if the UK has to source a larger proportion of its oil and gas from imports because of ending new North Sea licences, it will need far less oil and gas than at present.

The reduced need to import oil and gas in the future is expected to improve the UK’s balance of payments deficit. (“Balance of payments” is a measure of cross-border transactions between the UK and the rest of the world.) This is one of the major reasons why meeting the UK’s net-zero target could boost the country’s GDP in the long run.

Watch, read, listen

FINANCE INVESTIGATED: Reuters published an interactive special report detailing how countries have used “climate finance” to fund chocolate shops, hotels and even coal-fired power plants.

COP28 CONCERNS: Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate outlined in Al Jazeera what COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber must do to ensure legitimate progress is achieved at the next UN climate summit in UAE later this year.

‘CARBON COLONIALISM’: The latest episode of the Green New Deal Media podcast speaks to geographer Dr Laurie Parsons about how rich nations “export their emissions to poorer ones”.

Coming up

Jobs

• Uplift, a group scrutinising UK North Sea oil and gas, is hiring a campaign manager | Salary: £46,739-£49,585. Location: UK (remote).
• UNICEF is hiring a national consultant for climate change | Salary: Unspecified. Location: New Delhi, India.
• The Green Africa Youth Association is hiring a climate officer. Salary: $200 a month. Location: Kampala, Uganda.

DeBriefed is written in rotation by Carbon Brief’s team and edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to [email protected].