This is your monthly roundup of climate news, including the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It draws from these sources:

November 2025

Good
  • The UK government has ruled out any new North Sea oil and gas exploration and rejected calls for lower taxes on fossil fuel companies.
Bad​
​Gap widens between climate policy ambition and implementation- Momentum on climate action across 96 countries slowed for a third consecutive year in 2024, widening the gap between climate commitments and policy delivery (see chart below). OECD input to the COP30 climate conference also showed that in 2023, aggregate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 50 OECD and partner countries were 8% (around 2.5 Gt CO₂e) above the level required to stay on track with their 2030 targets.

October 2025

Good
  • FRACKING BAN: UK energy secretary Ed Miliband has announced that the government will bring forward its plans to permanently ban fracking, in a move designed to counter a promise from the hard-right Reform party to restart efforts to introduce the practice.
  • Clean energy has met 100% of Great Britain’s electricity demand for a record 87 hours this year so far, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. This is up from just 2.5 hours in 2021 and 64.5 hours in all of 2024. 
  • Pope Leo XIV has issued a strong call for global climate action, urging faith communities and civil society to pressure governments into implementing stricter environmental protections. Speaking at the “Raising Hope for Climate Justice” conference at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope declared that harming nature is incompatible with Christian values, emphasizing the need for both personal and structural ecological conversion
  • Some 86% of the global population are concerned about climate change, according to a survey of 280,000 people in 142 countries and regions | Climate Policy
  •  The UK Government gives the green light to the 500MW Lincolnshire solar farm, one of the UK’s largest.
  • The UK's National Wealth Fund allocates over half of its initial investment to clean energy projects.
Bad
  • The world has reached its first climate “tipping point” as global warming pushes warm-water coral reefs towards an irreversible decline. The report, co-authored by more than 160 scientists in 23 countries, also warned the world is “on the brink” of reaching other tipping points, including the dieback of the Amazon, the collapse of major ocean currents and the loss of ice sheets.
  • Carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere reached the highest level ever recorded last year, according to a new report by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) covered by the Associated Press, which said it was fuelling “more extreme weather”. On top of burning fossil fuels, an increase in wildfires contributed to the rise in CO2 levels over the last year.
  • DECLINING SINKS: The Guardian said WMO scientists are also “concerned” that the natural land and ocean “sinks” that remove CO2 from the air are “weakening as a result of global heating”. Separate new research concluded that Australia's tropical rainforests are among the first in the world to start emitting more CO2 than they absorb, Agence France-Presse reported, with the decay of dead trees emitting more than the growing trunks and branches can store.
  • €44.5 billion The cost of extreme weather and climate change in the EU in the last four years – two-and-a-half times higher than in the decade to 2019, according to a European Environment Agency report covered by the Financial Times
​Ugly
  • Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservatives, pledged to scrap the 2008 Climate Change Act if elected.
  • The Energy Department has added “climate change,” “green” and “decarbonization” to its growing “list of words to avoid” at its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Other terms officials must ditch include “energy transition,” “sustainability/sustainable,” “‘clean’ or ‘dirty’ energy,” “Carbon/CO2 ‘Footprint’” and “Tax breaks/tax credits/subsidies.” DOE spokesperson Ben Dietderich said “We’ll look into the validity of the email and if necessary take steps to correct any emails perceived as official direction”.​

September 2025

Good
  • UN ‘high seas’ treaty clears ratification threshold, to enter into force in January. It establishes legally binding rules to conserve and sustainably use marine biodiversity, share benefits from marine genetic resources more fairly, create protected areas, and strengthen scientific cooperation and capacity building.
  • Global investment in renewable energy grew 10% year-on-year to a record $386bn in the first half of 2025.
Bad
  • Recent analysis showed that more than 16,000 heat deaths that occurred from June to August this year in the EU can be attributed to fossil-fuelled global warming, reported the Guardian.
  • Europe’s summer of extreme weather caused €43bn of short-term losses.  The greatest damage was done in Cyprus, Greece, Malta and Bulgaria – each of which suffered short-term losses above 1% of their 2024 “gross value added” (GVA), a measure similar to GDP. They were followed by other Mediterranean countries including Spain, Italy and Portugal. (Europe’s summer of extreme weather caused €43bn of short-term losses, analysis finds | Extreme weather | The Guardian)
  • Scientists announce that 7 of 9 key 'planetary boundaries' have been crossed
  • The UK government approved a second runway at London’s Gatwick airport, said BBC News. The Sunday Times reported that it was also “poised to soften” its ban on new drilling in the North Sea.
Ugly
  • Donald Trump used a nearly hour-long speech to the UN general assembly to deliver what the Bloomberg Green newsletter called a “blizzard” of “climate misinformation”. He attracted blanket coverage – and multiple factchecks – for false claims including that climate change was the “greatest con job ever” and that warming predictions were “wrong”. FACTCHECK: Contrary to Trump’s claims, human-induced warming is an “established fact”, according to the IPCC, as is an increase in the strength and frequency of extreme weather. Regarding climate models, Carbon Brief climate science contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather noted on Bluesky that projections of warming have been “pretty spot on”.

AUGUST 2025

Good
  • New government data reveals that renewable energy generated more than half of the UK’s electricity for the first time in 2024, demonstrating a continued shift in the nation's energy landscape. -
  • As climate-related disasters intensify, the financial cost of inaction is rising — projected to reach $38 trillion annually by 2050. Against this backdrop, the economics of disclosure are clear: companies that measure and manage environmental risks are better positioned to unlock the ‘disclosure dividend’ – reaping tangible financial returns from climate action.
  • Drawing on analysis from disclosures of nearly 25,000 companies in 2024, CDP’s new report, The 2025 Disclosure Dividend, reveals that every $1 spent on addressing physical climate risks could deliver a return of up to $21 for some firms, with an average return of up to $81. The study also found that a median $33.1 million worth of opportunities per company could await firms that take environmental action, for just $4.6 million in costs to realize them. (CDP - Acting on climate data could deliver up to $21 for every $1 invested - Climate Action
Bad
  • RECORD HEAT: Multiple countries experienced record heat this week. Nordic countries were hit by a “truly unprecedented” heatwave, where temperatures reached above 30C in the Arctic Circle and Finland endured three straight weeks with 30C heat, its longest heat streak in records going back to 1961, said the Guardian. Reuters reported that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is facing “surging temperatures this summer”, following its hottest spring ever.
  • FANNING THE FLAMES: Wildfires “fanned by a heatwave and strong winds” caused havoc across southern Europe, Reuters reported. It added: “Fire has affected nearly 440,000 hectares (1,700 square miles) in the eurozone so far in 2025, double the average for the same period of the year since 2006.
  • UK WILDFIRE RISK: The UK saw temperatures as high as 33.4C this week as England “entered its fourth heatwave”, BBC News said. The high heat is causing “nationally significant” water shortfalls, it added, “hitting farms, damaging wildlife and increasing wildfires”.
  • FIRE WEATHER: Some 81 million Americans were under air quality alerts as hundreds of wildfires burned across Canada and parts of the US, reported the Guardian. Meanwhile, a “massive” wildfire in California has “become the biggest blaze in the state so far this year” amid an intensifying heatwave, reported the Associated Press.
  • TORRENTIAL RAIN: A “torrent of mud” has killed at least four people in the northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, Taiwan News said that “torrential rain in central and southern Taiwan over several days has left three dead, four missing, 49 injured and prompted 85 rescues”. Flash floods in a Myanmar-China “border town” have killed six people, according to the Straits Times.
  • Australia’s Great Barrier Reef devastated by worst coral bleaching on record, new report finds.
Ugly
  • BP has announced its largest oil and gas discovery in 25 years, located in the Bumerangue block of the Santos Basin, 400 km off Brazil’s east coast. The find, covering a 500-metre hydrocarbon-bearing zone, marks a significant shift in the company's strategic focus, with plans to build a production hub at the site as it doubles down on fossil fuel development.
  • the U.S. Energy Secretary announced that the administration is “revising” past National Climate Assessments (NCA) after removing the originals from government websites and claiming the reports “weren’t fair in broad-based assessments of climate change.”
  • NASA has been told to end two satellite missions that monitor carbon dioxide and plant growth globally. It is deliberately killing the evidence—so that the destruction of a safe, liveable climate for today’s young people and all future generations can continue in the shadows, unmeasured, unproven, and unpunished.

July 2025

Good
  • The International Court of Justice (ICJ) published its long-awaited advisory opinion on climate change. It concluded that there is a human right to a healthy climate and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea which said states have a legal responsibility to control greenhouse gases. States have to take due regard of the interests of future generations and the long-term implications of their actions when making climate policies, says the court.
  • “The world court’s stunning opinion could be a major watershed for climate law and climate justice in the US and worldwide. The US is chief among climate offenders, especially with Trump at the helm. This ruling should bolster the case for climate action in courts of law and the halls of climate diplomacy”.
  • Renewable energy generated more than half of the UK’s electricity for the first time in 2024, demonstrating a continued shift in the nation's energy landscape.
  • While China excels at clean energy manufacturing, most of the emissions reductions created by things it builds will go to other countries; and a new analysis by Carbon Brief highlights the huge impact this is having at the global scale. In 2024 alone, China’s booming exports of clean-energy technologies—including solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, and wind turbines—are estimated to have slashed global carbon emissions by 1 percent (or 220 million tonnes of CO2).
  • Ireland has joined the UK and a slew of other nations in burning its last lump of coal – the most polluting fossil fuel – to generate electricity. Coal use ceased on 20 June at Moneypoint, the country’s last coal-burning power station, in line with a 2019 government pledge. Spain and Italy are expected to become the next European countries to leave behind coal power, according to Beyond Fossil Fuels.
 
Bad
New analysis by Carbon Brief this week revealed that 2025 is on track to be the second or third hottest year on record.
‘CLIMATEFLATION’: a thinktank report said the UK faces “climateflation” impacts that could “drive up food prices by more than a third by 2050”.

Around 1,500 of the 2,300 heat deaths during the heatwave that “seared Europe at the end of June” can be attributed to climate change, according to World Weather Attribution analysis.
 
Ugly
  • In a major reversal of U.S. climate policy, the Trump administration is seeking to revoke the Endangerment Finding, the legal basis for federal greenhouse gas regulations. the repeal would gut the federal government's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, including the rollback of vehicle emissions standards and methane limits on oil and gas operations.
  • Politicians in Brazil approved a bill to ease environmental licensing, a move criticised as the country’s “most significant environmental setback in nearly 40 years”.
  • Tenders for oil development are now available across “more than half” of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a new report from Earth Insight and other groups found. The government recently launched a licensing round for 55 oil blocks, the report said – a “dramatic expansion” which poses “major threats” to forests and protected areas.