Your correspondent is feeling a tad guilty for not being in Turkey this week for the 31st global climate talks—my only excuses are deep fatigue from the fall election, and the chance to address the big renewable energy trade show in Las Vegas. (That’s currently in question as I’ve been swept up in the nationwide air traffic imbroglio, but if I make it, a full account next time). But of course I’ve been following events in Antalya, and talking with lots of people on the ground there.
The first week—which is when the world leaders visit—is over. The weekend—when protesters take to the streets—is winding down. Now it’s the second week when the actual work of agreeing on a new text takes place.
The first week’s rhetoric was important and strong. Greta Thunberg returned to the talks for the first time in five years. (At Glasgow, in 2021, she’d pointed out that they were an exercise in “blah blah blah”). She kept up that theme this time around, telling reporters “We’ve had 31 COPs now, and we’re still speeding in the wrong direction.” Since Thunberg doesn’t fly, she arrived via “trains, buses and sleep deprivation,” and said the data center fight was part and parcel of the climate battle
“They’re both the same issue,” Thunberg said, noting both the environmental toll of data centers as well as the way they overshadow more fundamental needs. “We’re detaching ourselves from our human values.”
Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres gave what may be the last in a series of epic climate speeches, since he is stepping down at the end of December. Guterres’ tenure has been defined in no small part by climate concerns, and to his immense credit he has never pulled a punch, abandoning diplomatic language to focus on the bankers and fossil fuel execs who drive the crisis. It’s worth reading the transcript of his remarks to see how a world leader can address this crisis if he’s not worried about appeasing commercial interests. (Pope Francis, and now Leo, are the only comparable examples).
The case for fossil fuels is collapsing.
Three-quarters of humanity live in countries that import fossil fuels.
Hostage to price shocks they did not create and they cannot control.
Recent conflicts make clear that this is a recipe for chronic insecurity and a cost-of-living meltdown.
It’s time to accelerate a science-aligned, just orderly and equitable transition to renewables.
But let’s not underestimate the scale of the challenge.
Fossil fuels must go the way of the dinosaurs.
But that won’t happen on its own.
The dinosaurs did not have a lobby.
But fossil fuels do.
And their strategy is simple:
Distort the science. Delay the policy. Delay the action. Delay the accountability.
It’s time to kick the habit – and end the fossil-fuel addiction.
In many ways, it should be a year for the world to accelerate progress. The war in Iran has made it crystal clear that fossil fuel is a threat not only to the global climate but also to its economy and its security. In fact, it appears that the world’s carbon emissions will fall this year, simply because people couldn’t get the oil and gas to burn. As Brad Plumer explains,
Globally, emissions from oil consumption are expected to drop nearly 2 percent this year, while emissions from natural gas will decline roughly 0.3 percent. By contrast, carbon dioxide emissions from burning of coal are expected to rise roughly 0.6 percent, thanks to increased consumption in places like China and India. (Even though coal pollutes more than oil or gas, the uptick in coal consumption was smaller in comparison.)
“I would call it unexpected,” said Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo and one of the authors of the report. “It’s pretty rare to see a drop in oil demand this big.”
The Times cautions that the dip may be temporary: “if the war with Iran ends and the Strait of Hormuz reopens, oil and gas demand could easily bounce back.” But there’s increasing evidence that the decline is structural. As Justin Mikulka points out
We were told natural gas was going to replace coal and this would drive big future demand. But believing that required not understanding basic economics. Gas demand destruction is happening in 2026 because renewables plus storage are replacing it in power generation.
Mikulka quotes one other expert who explains the base reality:
“A billion dollars’-worth of solar farms will provide roughly 10 times as much electricity over their lifetimes as the same amount of money spent on liquefied natural gas.”
Indeed, the emerging buzzword at the Turkey talks is “electrification,” with the host nation boosting a 35% by 2035 plan—which is not all that fast, but at least heads in the right direction. Electrifying everything is of course crucial to progress—as a new paper from Jan Rosenow and colleagues this week makes clear, EVs and heat pumps are so efficient that they could cut primary energy use in half on this planet, compared with the present world where combustion wild amounts of waste heat.
We find that system-wide losses (rejected energy) fall by 61%, while the contribution of ambient environmental heat captured by heat pumps rises approximately twentyfold; under conventional energy-balance conventions this corresponds to a fall in primary energy inputs of nearly half.
But science is one thing and political power is another, and who knows what will happen this week—the fossil fuel industry is of course willing to electrify as long as its natural gas that gets to play a lead role in the process. Standing up to that is hard—as the EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra told the Bloomberg team,
a “certain degree of pragmatism” was warranted to bring as many countries on board as possible, he told reporters. While curbs on methane are mentioned in the summary text, that’s no guarantee the issue will make it into a final text
On boosting electrification, some debate has focused on whether the goal should include any reference to requirements for clean electricity. Hoekstra said the 27-member bloc isn’t seeking to add restrictions, and hopes the initiative can retain broad appeal.
By “broad appeal” he means, in part, “not getting vetoed by the Saudis,” who, now that the Americans boycott the proceedings, have emerged as the foremost defender of overheating the earth. (Trump’s puppet government in Caracas has joined in too). As Al Gore—as so often a tribune of common sense—said on the sidelines of the talks
“The idea that one individual country like Saudi Arabia can block anything the entire world wants to do is literally insane. We are facing the most serious threat to the future of humanity that we have ever faced.”
China would of course be the obvious new leader in this global fight—they are producing the key technology, and now that the U.S. has withdrawn they are, for climate negotiations, the sole superpower. But they seem reluctant to grab the reins—indeed, they declined even to host 2028’s talks, which are scheduled, in the continental rotation, to be held in Asia. As Fiona Harvey reports
Gareth Redmond-King, the international lead at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, said China’s position as an industrial powerhouse would have made it a formidable contender to hold the summit.
“It would undoubtedly be significant for the world’s biggest emitter and second-biggest economy to host a climate Cop,” he said.
“They’re leading the world on investment, manufacture and deployment of clean energy tech, and their emissions have started to tick down. As a leadership story, China hosting Cop33 would be a big deal.”
The time that we have to deal with this crisis grow short, and each year’s limp global talks means that the window has closed a little further. Events—the war in Iran, the falling cost of renewables—are conspiring to help, but without any of the global guidance that could speed the process. Movements will need to put more pressure on governments—the history of these negotiations suggests that without that pressure the leaders simply won’t do more than the minimum. So I’m glad we’re planning for things like Sun Day; right now the wheel isn’t squeaking enough, and as a result it’s getting way too much oil.
In other energy and climate news
+The BAAJA melee has been slightly muted these past days, because the Senate has to wait five working days to move to the next stage. But action continues. On Tuesday at 2 opponents will rally in the House Triangle, reminding legislators how much of the last election was fought on data centers. Friends of the Earth put out a briefing paper explaining why Oklahoma Senator Alan Armstrong (appointed to replace Homeland Security Chief Markwayne Mullin, currently screwing up the nation’s air traffic system) is backing the bill—because it closely fits the agenda of the Williams pipeline company, where he has long been an executive. As he explained in May, before being named to the Senate”
The permitting process [is] very exposed to litigation and to obstructive environmentalists throwing wrenches in projects and filing suits that tie the projects up. So, that’s the piece that the judicial reform in the legislative process needs to be fixed and we’re certainly going to work on that.”
Meanwhile, 17 state attorneys general came out against quick passage of the bill, tribal and historic preservation groups rallied on the Capitol to stop it, and a new poll found voters want to wait until the new Congress to take on permitting reform. At least some of the Democratic Senators supporting the bill do so out of disdain for “the groups”—volunteer environmental campaigners like the members of the Sierra Club, justice advocates like the NAACP—that have come out against the bill. (The Times had a lackluster editorial supporting the bill, where that disdain shone through). But of course Dems depend on these groups to turn out the vote—many of us have just gotten back from the campaign trail.
Which is why I noticed one interesting trial balloon floating above the climate talks in Turkey. California governor and presumptive presidential candidate Gavin Newsom came out for phasing out fossil fuel, a more aggressive take than many candidates ran on this fall, much less what they’re endorsing in BAAJA, which foresees a long and drawn-out switch to clean energy.
“When you have a product that is obviously superior, which clean energy is for the climate and the economy, why wouldn’t you make that shift as quickly as possible?”
Someone is going to run for president at least in part on the environment, and my prediction is they’ll find a constituency in the primaries.
At any rate, the drama resumes with votes in the Senate on Monday and Wednesday, and if it passes then it’s on to the House, where Big Oil should have sufficient votes to push it through, especially given the full-throated support of the president, not to mention prime minister Stephen Miller, who identified permitting reform this week as one of his key goals, part of an effort to “bring back men” to the GOP. Ugh.
+In a significant ruling, Norway’s high court has found that the government had wrongly approved several new offshore oil fields because it didn’t take the climate effects into account. As Dana Drugmand writes
The court’s decision was based on what it said were “procedural errors” by the government, which must now reassess the permits. The decision itself does not require the fields to shut down. But environmental advocates celebrated the verdict as a landmark win for climate accountability.
“This historic ruling changes Norwegian oil policy forever, and sets a precedent the world cannot ignore,” said Haldis Tjeldflaat Helle, head of Greenpeace Nordic, one of the environmental groups that filed the lawsuit against Norway’s Energy Ministry. “Norway can no longer ignore the global damage caused when its oil and gas are burned abroad. Norwegian authorities are now obligated to take into account the enormous climate damage caused by Norwegian oil and gas.”
Helle called the court’s decision a “momentous victory for global climate justice.”
+Copper is, of course, essential to the ongoing electrification of the planet, and now Africa’s largest copper mine is running around the clock on solar-plus-batteries—indeed, the biggest solar farm in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Dhybrid says its universal power platform (UPP) acts as the central control layer for the entire plant, coordinating the solar and battery inverters, power quality meters, protection relays, meteorological sensors, UPS and HVAC units and managed network switches, equating to over 1,300 devices in total.
A statement from the company explains the UPP’s forecasting algorithm tells the operator twenty-four hours ahead what the plant can deliver. “The operator sets the value, and the platform decides every second how to split up to 180 MW of solar between the mine and the batteries, how far to charge for the night, and how to hold the setpoint through cloud cover and load swings,” the statement explains. “The customer only sees constant power output.”
I confess I don’t know as much as I should about working conditions at this mine, but apparently 95 percent of its staff are unionized
+Organizers of the LA Olympics have signed up Phillips 66 as the Official Carbon Dioxide Fuels Supplier of the 2028 Games. If that seems a bit askew to you (remember, LA is less than two years past one of the greatest urban firestorms in world history), you could sign this petition. Details from Sammy Roth, who has been covering Phillips 66 and its sportswashing from the jump.
When I checked in Thursday with a member of LA28’s sustainability working group, they were understandably livid but not ready to give up. They asked me not to use their name but said they’d been “working hard to help the Games showcase sustainability and catalyze best practices here in L.A.”
“This partnership with Phillips 66, a company many of us have been urging the Dodgers to stop partnering with, is a serious setback. It runs counter to everything we have been working toward, and is not the face we want LA to present to the world,” they said. “I urge LA28 to reconsider this partnership and to hold its sponsors to the same sustainability standards it has set for itself.”
+Jeva Lange offers excellent coverage of what may be the greatest climate disaster so far this year—the wildfires across a droughty Indonesia. As she reports, the worst effects come from
toxic smoke blanketing Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Timor-Leste. For months, those emissions have been in every breath taken by the region’s 12.5 million inhabitants, about 4% of the world’s population.
In Indonesia alone, authorities estimate the smoke has caused 400,000 respiratory infections. As of a few weeks ago, more than 75,000 cases had been recorded in children between birth and age 5. “Behind those numbers are worried families, parents keeping watch, and children struggling to breathe,” Herawati Supolo-Sudoyo, a trustee of the Indonesian Open Science Voice Foundation and chair of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences’ Commission on Medical Sciences, said during a recent public health webinar. “Babies certainly cannot say, ‘My chest feels tight.’ They rely on us to protect their breath.”
Children are especially vulnerable to wildfire smoke because their lungs are not fully developed, and they breathe in more air relative to their body weight than adults. Reports from local hospitals are harrowing. “Yesterday, in the inpatient ward, I saw three toddlers struggling to breathe,” one mother, whose 14-month-old died suddenly after experiencing shortness of breath, told BBC Indonesia (as translated by Mongabay). The Indonesian Philanthropy Association, a nonprofit, has taken to describing the children of Indonesia as the “lost generation” due to the suspected physical and cognitive toll of the relentless smoke exposure. Timor-Leste, which borders Indonesia to the west, has one of Asia’s youngest populations, with about 44% of its inhabitants under 18.
+The Climate and Community Institute offers up a data-rich take on the midterm elections, showing that candidates that they described as “green economic populists” performed well across the country.
CCI analysis shows three key takeaways: 1) candidates gained momentum around campaign promises to change the economic status quo, 2) there is an emergent bloc of electeds that embed climate action within an economic populist agenda, 3) candidates who ran on a strong climate and economy platform fared almost identically to candidates who took the mainstream advice of not saying anything about climate at all in terms of their performance relative to the 2024 baseline.
The new elected officials that combine climate with the cost of living had platforms that made connections between the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis, and how the same bad actors—such as utilities, oil companies, corporate landlords, and data center developers—are driving both. These candidates also argued that the way to bring costs down for working people is to take back power from the elite and invest in cheap clean power, green homes, and green technologies built by union labor.
Meanwhile, Michael Thomas reports that newly elected governors could pause 41 percent of planned data centers around the country
Much attention has gone to Democrats’ flip of both the US House and Senate. But for the AI infrastructure boom, the races that mattered most this week were further down the ballot
Nine states now have a governor or governor-elect who has promised or already imposed a pause on new data centers. Those states hold 158.6 GW of planned capacity, or 41% of the US pipeline.
Another 69.2 GW (18%) is in states where the winner wants to change tax breaks or other rules but hasn’t backed a pause.
And in the same vein, MIT’s Technology Review surveys the data on whether AI has yet done anything to slow greenhouse gas emissions. Not really
Companies across these sectors have announced plenty of initial efforts to incorporate AI into various business practices. But an AI-assisted review of public information from significant market actors in each sector, conducted and reviewed by the second author of this piece, found that few have announced they’re pursuing the specific emissions-reducing routes that informed the projections in the study—and fewer still claim they’ve used them to achieve meaningful climate progress.
+Florida bucked the blue wave on election day—but they may be setting themselves up for a wave of a very different kind. Voters in the Sunshine State passed an initiative to cut property taxes, which local officials say will imperil the effort to bolster seawalls and other defenses against a rising ocean. From Jenny Staletovich:
In South Florida, the water management district that covers about a third of the state encompassing 16 counties and provides flood control for about 9.3 million people is expected to lose $415 million over the next five years. The district maintains the sprawling regional system that acts as the primary drainage network.
Counties, cities and smaller drainage districts maintain smaller systems that act as the first line of defense. And officials worry those aging systems are running out of time.
In recent years, as climate impacts have worsened flooding, they’ve sped up efforts to plan and construct bigger systems. Now, the tax cut and staggering losses in funding will need to be factored in.
Over the next five years, according to a state analysis, Miami-Dade County is expected to lose $3.5 billion. Broward County will see $2.1 billion less in property tax revenue and Palm Beach County will lose $2.5 billion.
“The only reason that we’ve received federal authorization to fix our canals, and now we’re hoping to get the funding, is because Broward County put $5 million into our budget to fund half,” Geller said. ”There’s gonna be a very rude awakening on the part of the voters when they see how badly this is gonna hurt.”
+Heat and drought have combined to produce the worst British grain harvest since records began in 1984, Tom Lancaster reports
Climate change is now undermining the very fundamentals of our food security, a fact that should create more urgency to reduce emissions to net zero and bring our climate back into balance.
“Farmers will also need more support in the short term to adapt to the inevitable impacts baked in to projected warming, making green farming schemes such as England’s Sustainable Farming Incentive [3] vital to the resilience of English food production.”
+Good news from the Bay Area, where rules to mandate heat pumps instead of gas hot water heaters took final form this week’. As Alison Takemura reports:
In 2023, the Bay Area Air District board passed first-in-the-nation regulations setting zero-nitrogen-oxides (NOx) emissions standards on new home water heaters and space-heating systems sold in the region.
Last week, board members voted on final amendments for the water-heater measure, ensuring it will now take effect in 2028 — one year later than planned. The regulation includes several exemptions to address affordability concerns; about half of Bay Area installations are expected to qualify. Rules regarding the sale of home heating systems have yet to be finalized.
“The vote is an enormous victory for clean air and the climate in the Bay Area — and really, for the nation,” said Sam Fishman, senior sustainability and resilience policy manager at the nonprofit San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association. The regulations put forward “a new model for how to transition the market away from polluting equipment in our buildings to clean equipment in a way that ensures a smooth, affordable, and equitable implementation.”
+The Ember thinktank has an excellent new “atlas” of renewable energy, making the point that we should be building out windpower faster than we are:
Our analysis shows just how much that matters. Adding wind to solar and batteries cuts the cost of meeting 90% of electricity demand by nearly a fifth globally, and by two-fifths in northern regions. Solar and wind follow different daily and seasonal cycles, and even prolonged periods of weak output rarely coincide. Combining them makes power more reliable, reduces storage needs and lowers costs almost everywhere.
With wind, three-quarters of global electricity demand lies in regions where renewables could already meet 90% of demand for under $100/MWh. For the same money, adding wind can raise that share from 80% to 95%. Most planned coal and gas capacity is already in regions where fully reliable power built around renewables could cost under $100/MWh. The lesson is an old one from farming: growing different crops gives you a more stable and economic harvest.
+Finally, indoor solar cells? As Karin Kloosterman reports
Imagine an e-reader that never needs charging, a smartwatch that generates its own electricity or a wireless sensor (maybe a security camera? in your summer home) that operates for years without anyone changing its battery. California-based startup RadianX wants to make these possibilities commercially viable using a new generation of solar cells that work indoors as well as outside.
Most people associate solar energy with large silicon panels mounted on rooftops or in fields, soaking up direct sunlight. RadianX is developing a different approach, using perovskites, a family of materials that can convert light into electricity. Perovskite solar cells are attracting increasing interest because they can be manufactured as thin layers and engineered for different lighting conditions.
RadianX says its technology can harvest indoor light at roughly twice the efficiency of conventional solar panels under comparable conditions. This matters because many electronic devices spend their entire working lives inside buildings, exposed to artificial lighting rather than direct sunlight.
+Oh, and here’s the “Mermaid of Manhattan” mural that went up in New York this week, to draw attention to rising sea levels.
Inspired by New York’s diversity and the people of Pacific Island nations, the artwork offers a poetic reflection on our relationship with the ocean. Half-human and half-sea creature, the mermaid symbolizes our deep connection to the sea and our vulnerability in the face of climate change. Her fragile refuge evokes the homes, land, and communities threatened by rising waters. The oysters depicted in the mural are a nod to Billion Oyster Project, whose restoration of oyster reefs in New York Harbor contributes to coastal resilience.
