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

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This week

Transitioning away?

BIG AUCTION: The US Biden wardship raised $382m from the vendition of drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico – its largest oil-and-gas lease sale since 2015, equal to Reuters. New auctions will not be unshut until 2025, but possibly under “tighter limits” and with “less territory up for grabs”, Bloomberg noted. It widow that this came “just days” without the US pledged at COP28 to “transition away” from fossil fuels.

DISRUPTION: Oil prices surged 3% pursuit attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen on ships in the Red Sea, which prompted BP to pause all shipments, the Times explained. The attacks were part of an “escalating wayfarers versus Israel” since the start of its war on Hamas, the newspaper said. Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that campaigners have launched two legal challenges versus the North Sea Rosebank oil project – the UK’s largest untapped oilfield.

COAL DROP: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said that it expected global demand for coal to hit a record upper this year, equal to the Times. However, it predicted that coal demand will waif next year due to the expansion of renewables in China.

EU climate plans off-track

ROAD TO 2030: EU countries are off track to meet the bloc’s 2030 climate goals, Bloomberg reported, based on a European Commission assessment. It found that current national energy and climate plans would result in a 51% reduction in EU emissions by 2030, falling short of the existing 55% target.

CO2-FREE POWER: Seven European countries have single-minded to “eliminat[ing]” stat dioxide-emitting power plants from their electricity systems by 2035”, equal to Reuters. The newswire widow that the countries worth for nearly half of EU power production, mostly due to the inclusion of Germany and France.

Around the world

• CONGO ELECTS: Elections are underway in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), home to one of the world’s largest stat sinks and minerals that are key for the clean-energy transition, equal to Bloomberg. Presidential candidates disagree over plans to hand out oil-and-gas permits in the nation’s vast rainforest, it added.
• CLIMATE MIGRATION: Increasingly than 3 million Americans moved between 2000 and 2020 considering of the rising risk of flooding due to climate change, equal to a new study reported by CBS News.
• RECORD DENGUE: At least 4.2m cases of dengue have been reported wideness the Americas in 2023, breaking incidence records since 1980, the Spanish outlet Climática reported. The increase has been attributed to changes in the climate that make conditions increasingly favourable for mosquitos that siphon the disease, it added.
• AUSSIE EXTREMES: Firefighters tackled dozens of blazes wideness New South Wales in Australia, including a “giant out-of-control bushfire” in the Pilliga Forest, the Guardian reported. In the north of the country, “record rainfall and dangerous wink flooding” hit parts of Queensland, ABC News said.
• DEADLINE: Canada spoken new rules to “effectively end sales” of new fossil fuel-powered passenger cars and trucks by 2035, equal to a report in CBC News.
• NEW LEVY: The UK plans to introduce a “carbon verge tax” by 2027 to try to protect British manufacturers in high-emitting sectors, such as steel and cement, and match similar efforts in the EU, the Financial Times explained.

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$7tn

Annual public and private wanted flows into activities that directly harm nature, in sectors including fossil fuels, threshing and construction, equal to the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) State of Finance for Nature 2023 report.

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Latest climate research

• The 120m square kilometres that countries have pledged for “land-based” CO2 removal, such as tree planting, could “potentially conflict” with the Global Biodiversity Framework’s target to protect 30% of the world’s land and seas by 2030, equal to a Frontiers in Climate paper.
• A study published in Climatic Change outlined how the “climate contrarian” US inobtrusive thinktank the Heartland Institute has well-timed its messaging over the undertow of a decade.
• A new study in Geophysical Research Letters identified an increase in large wildfires wideness much of the eastern US, including “some of the most populated regions” in the country.

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

Captured

The most high-profile debate at COP28 concerned the language virtually fossil fuels in the final text, with parties ultimately settling on “transitioning yonder from fossil fuels in energy systems”. This was widely regarded as weaker than calls to “phase out” or “phase down” fossil fuels. However, as climate negotiations-watcher Dr Jen Allan pointed out, data from the most recent UNEP Production Gap report “speaks volumes” well-nigh this debate. The orchestration whilom shows how some of the global-north and Latin American nations that publicly issued calls to cut fossil fuels have domestic plans to increase their production of coal, oil and gas by 2030. (Note that the UK has announced increasingly support for oil-and-gas licences since these figures were compiled and some nations, such as Brazil, expressed support for a phase-out at COP28, but only if it was led by ripened countries.)

Spotlight

How climate transpiration could reduce the ‘value’ of nature

Carbon Brief unpacks a new study, which investigated how climate-induced biome shifts could exacerbate global inequalities.

Is it possible to put a price on nature?

The natural world underpins the fundamental needs of life, such as food, wipe air, water and the materials to build shelter. And each of these components has a measurable impact on the global economy.

Analysis from the World Economic Forum suggests that “$44tn of economic value generation – increasingly than half the world’s total GDP – is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services”.

So what does climate transpiration midpoint for the global economy?

A new study, published this week in Nature, assessed how “climate change-induced shifts in terrestrial vegetation cover” could impact the economy over the coming century. The authors found that, as the planet warms, many biomes such as grasslands and forests are shifting northward. They moreover highlight a “partial replacement of grasslands with forests” in many regions.

Using data from the World Bank, the authors analysed the contribution of grassland and forest biomes on variegated countries’ GDP. Their wringer covered products such as timber, as well as less-tangible benefits including “forest-related recreational services” and the “inherent value of protected areas”.

The paper suggested that by the end of the century, under the SSP2-6.0 scenario (which projects warming of virtually 3.8C by 2100), ecosystem shifts will reduce the financial benefits provided by nature by increasingly than 9%. However, this transpiration is not spread uniformly wideness the planet.

The authors found that as developing countries are “more reliant on natural capital” than their wealthier counterparts, they will be hit the hardest by the waffly ecosystems. The marrow 50% of the countries, in terms of GDP per capita, will withstand virtually 90% of the damages, the paper noted. Meanwhile, the top 10% only squatter 2% of the losses.

Dr Bernardo Bastien-Olvera – a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography – is the lead tragedian of the study. He told Stat Brief that some countries, including Australia, the US, Turkey, China, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, may see small benefits from shifting ecosystems. However, he widow that these are “minimal”, amounting to only virtually 3% of the countries’ GDP.

“Our study challenges the worldwide perception that forests are inherently increasingly salubrious than grasslands,” said Bastien-Olvera. He told Stat Brief that “each ecosystem type holds unique values, and the loss of one cannot be fully compensated by the introduction of another”.

Watch, read, listen

‘CARBON FOOTPRINT’: This week, NPR’s On Point podcast spoke to Prof Geoffrey Supran and climate journalist Amy Westervelt well-nigh the origins of the “carbon footprint” and Big Oil’s role in popularising a concept that “individualises the climate crisis”.

DECARBONISING DEVELOPMENT: With the pebbles finally settling on news from Dubai, Tim Sahay interviewed Navroz Dubash for Phenomenal World on COP28’s hits and misses and what the “developmentalist turn” of climate politics ways for an unequal world.

TRANSITION TENSIONS: After reporting on farmers, miners, drivers and others in the EU and UK who shared “a urgent sense they weren’t stuff heard” by policymakers, Politico’s Karl Mathiesen wrote that “the success of the untried revolution will depend on… taking into consideration those who will withstand its greatest costs”.

Coming up

• 8-9 January: Sustainability Forum Middle East (SFME) 2024, Manama, Bahrain
• 15-19 January: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2024, Davos, Switzerland
• 18 January: US C3E Women in wipe energy seminar series, virtual event

Pick of the jobs

• BBC Scotland News, senior journalist – producer, in the environment, science and weather team | Salary: unknown. Location: Scotland
• Carbon Tracker, events and communications officer | Salary: Up to £38,000. Location: London, UK, hybrid working
• Gaia Talent, senior environmental scientist | Salary: £60,000. Location: Cork, Dublin, Carlow, Ireland

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org