By Phil McKenna , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the world’s largest ongoing infrastructure program, has a substantial climate impact. More than half its emissions stem from steel, the majority of which was produced in China. ...More than 130 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions are tied to the construction of transportation, energy, building and water projects that were part of China’s Belt and Road international development initiative from 2008 to 2024, according to a study published Monday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. ...The Belt and Road Initiative is China’s trillion-dollar development effort designed to help expand Beijing’s global influence. ...Carbon-intensive steel accounted for 53 percent of the projects’ total emissions, according to the study. ...China produces more than half of all steel worldwide, and its manufacturing accounts for approximately 15 percent of the country’s total carbon dioxide...

By Damien Gayle , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The UK government vastly underestimated the climate impact of artificial intelligence, it has emerged, after officials raised their estimate of carbon emissions from AI by a factor of more than 100. According to new data quietly published this week, energy use by AI datacentres in the UK could cause the emission of up to 123m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) ...over the next 10 years. That latest figure replaces a previous estimate ...that claimed emissions would reach a maximum of 0.142m tonnes of CO₂ in a single year. There is  increasing alarm  at the carbon impact of AI and with calls to reduce global emissions to mitigate the climate emergency becoming increasingly urgent. ... The latest estimates were revealed in a  revision  to the UK “compute roadmap”, which sets out the government’s plan “to build a world-class compute ecosystem” for delivering artificial intelligence in the UK.... However, AI datacentres require ...

By Amanda Holpuch , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Manufacturers will no longer get a credit toward vehicle emissions standards by installing engines that automatically stop at red lights. ...The start-stop feature is meant to save fuel and reduce emissions, but the Trump administration rejected the scientific finding that the government used to support vehicle emission reduction regulations, making it possible to eliminate the credit. ...Research shows that start-stop reduces fuel use and cuts emissions. Depending on driving conditions, stop-start improved fuel economy between 7.27 and 26.4 percent during testing, according to a  2023 technical paper  by SAE International, an organization formerly known as the Society of Automotive Engineers....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/business/energy-environment/epa-tax-credits-stop-start-ignition-cars.html . 

By Paul Voosen , Science.  Excerpt: Global greenhouse emissions will soon flatten or decline—a historic moment driven by China’s surge in renewable energy. In July, a team of scientists assembled...to study an anomalous wobble in a data curve. ...it was a surprising decline in a quantity that has grown relentlessly throughout the Industrial Age: the amount of planet-warming greenhouse gases dumped by humanity into the atmosphere each year. The researchers were members of Climate TRACE, a collaboration of academics, environmental think tanks, and companies that tracks how much coal, oil, and natural gas the world is burning—and where—using a mix of energy statistics, satellite observations, and artificial intelligence (AI). As the group began to push out monthly estimates for January, February, and March, it was unmistakable that levels were lower than at the same time last year. ...overall emissions have crept up by some 1% each year. Although Europe and the United States reached p...

By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Global fossil fuel emissions are on track to soar to record highs in 2025 and show no signs of declining overall, although there are indications of a recent slowdown in China’s emissions, researchers said on Wednesday. This year, nations are projected to emit roughly 38.1 billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide by burning oil, gas and coal for energy and by manufacturing cement, according to  data from the Global Carbon Project . Those sources are the largest contributors to human-caused climate change. The total is roughly 1.1 percent more than the world emitted in 2024. Not everywhere saw a large increase. Emissions appear to have stayed nearly flat in China and Europe, but rose significantly in the United States and much of the rest of the world. ...A relatively small number of countries account for most of the world’s emissions, with China responsible for 32 percent, the United States at 13 percent, India at 8 percent an...

By A. Samuel Pottinger et al, Science.  Abstract: Plastic production and plastic pollution negatively affect our environment, environmental justice, and climate change. Using detailed global and regional plastics datasets coupled with socio-economic data, we employ machine learning to predict that, without intervention, annual mismanaged plastic waste will nearly double to 121 Mt (100 - 139 Mt 95% CI) by 2050. Annual greenhouse gas emissions from the plastic system are projected to grow by 37% to 3.35 Gt CO 2  equivalent (3.09 - 3.54 CO 2 e) over the same period. The United Nations plastic pollution treaty presents a unique opportunity to reshape these outcomes. We simulate eight candidate treaty policies and find that just four could together reduce mismanaged plastic waste by 91% (86% - 98%) and gross plastic-related greenhouse gas emissions by one third.  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr3837 .  See also A world without plastic ...

By Damian Carrington , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Analysis of 19m flights between 2019 and 2023 reveals 50% rise in emissions, condemned as ‘gratuitous waste’. Private jet flights have soared in recent years, with the resulting climate-heating emissions rising by 50%, the most comprehensive global analysis to date has revealed. ...Private flights, used by just 0.003% of the world’s population, are the most polluting form of transport. The researchers found that passengers in larger private jets caused more CO 2  emissions in an hour than the average person did in a year. The US dominated private jet travel, representing 69% of flights.... A  private jet takes off every six minutes  in the UK. ...Industry expectations are that  another 8,500 business jets  will enter service by 2033, far outstripping efficiency gains and indicating that private flight emissions will rise even further. The researchers said their work highlighted the vast global inequality in em...

By Oliver Milman , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Exported gas emits far more greenhouse gas emissions than coal, despite fossil-fuel industry claims it is a cleaner alternative, according to a major new research paper that challenges the controversial yet rapid expansion of gas exports from the US to Europe and Asia. ...amid  a glut of new  liquefied natural gas (or LNG) terminals, primarily in the US. ...the research, which itself has become enmeshed in a political argument in the US, has concluded that LNG is 33% worse in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period compared with coal. ...Howarth’s paper finds that as much as 3.5% of the gas delivered to customers leaks to the atmosphere unburned, much more than previously assumed. Methane is about 80 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, even though it persists for less time in the atmosphere, and scientists have warned that  rising global methane emissions  risk blowing apart agre...

By Manuela Andreoni , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The wildfires that ravaged Canada’s boreal forests in 2023 produced more planet-warming carbon emissions than the burning of fossil fuels in all but three countries, research published on Wednesday has found. Only China, the United States and India produced more emissions from fossil fuels than the Canadian fires, according to the study, which was  published in the journal Nature . The wildfires last year call into question how much carbon the forests will absorb in the future, scientists said....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/climate/canada-wildfires-emissions-carbon.html . 

By Michael B. Mahon et al, Nature.  Abstract: Anthropogenic change is contributing to the rise in emerging infectious diseases, which are significantly correlated with socioeconomic, environmental and ecological factors. Studies have shown that infectious disease risk is modified by changes to biodiversity, climate change, chemical pollution, landscape transformations and species introductions. However, it remains unclear which global change drivers most increase disease and under what contexts. Here we amassed a dataset from the literature that contains 2,938 observations of infectious disease responses to global change drivers across 1,497 host–parasite combinations, including plant, animal and human hosts. ...reducing greenhouse gas emissions, managing ecosystem health, and preventing biological invasions and biodiversity loss could help to reduce the burden of plant, animal and human diseases, especially when coupled with improvements to social and economic determinants o...

By PAUL VOOSEN , Science.  Excerpt: Over the decades, supercomputer simulations of Earth’s climate have yielded unprecedented insights into how the interplay of atmosphere, ocean, and land shapes the planet’s response to rising levels of greenhouse gases. But as these climate models have grown in complexity, researchers have started to worry the simulations have a substantial climate footprint of their own. Running them can take weeks or longer on a supercomputer, consuming megawatts of electric power—some of it likely from fossil fuels. ...Nearly 50 modeling centers worldwide contributed to the last round of [ Coupled Model Intercomparison Project ], which ended in 2022, simulating hundreds of thousands of years and creating 40 petabytes of data. ... centers accounted for nearly 1700 tons of carbon dioxide  (CO 2 ) released to the atmosphere, according to a study published this month in Geoscientific Model Development led by Mario Acosta, a climate modeler at the Ba...

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj6233 By MEGAN HE et al, Science. Intro/summary: The Athabasca oil sands in Alberta, Canada represent the world’s largest deposit of crude bitumen—a dense, extremely viscous form of petroleum. Extracting oil from these deposits generates harmful carbon emissions, which have a significant impact on air quality. Although companies are often required to monitor and report these emissions, new research suggests these reports contain major gaps—and that the true amount of pollution is much higher than previously thought. ...Using an aircraft belonging to the National Research Council of Canada, scientists directly measured carbon concentrations in the air above multiple facilities in the Athabasca oil sands. Their analyses suggested that the region emits more carbon than all the cars in Los Angeles each year—and the same amount as all other Canadian emission sources combined. Most notably, the aircraft-based measurements exceeded industry-r...

https://nca2023.globalchange.gov By U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) . Excerpt: The effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States. Rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions can limit future warming and associated increases in many risks. Across the country, efforts to adapt to climate change and reduce emissions have expanded since 2018, and US emissions have fallen since peaking in 2007. However, without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow. ...In addition to reducing risks to future generations, rapid emissions cuts are expected to have immediate health and economic benefits (Figure  1.1 ). At the national scale, the benefits of deep emissions cuts for current and future generations are expected to far outweigh the costs. { 2.1 ,  2.3 ,  13.3 ,  14.5 ,  1...

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/climate-tipping-points-could-be-triggered-by-committed-warming By Rebecca Owen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Unless we rapidly reach net zero emissions, the climate will inch closer to a point of no return—even after greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. As the planet warms, climate  tipping points , such as the melting of ice sheets or loss of the Amazon rainforest, become increasingly likely. ...A new study by  Abrams et al.  examines  committed global warming , or warming that continues after greenhouse gas emissions are held constant until a new thermal balance is achieved. It’s a bit like how turning a running faucet from hot to cold doesn’t immediately change the temperature of the water, because there is still hot water in the pipeline. The authors present three scenarios for how the global mean temperature could rise and trigger tipping point events. One represents an increased use of fossil fuels, another represents rapidly r...

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2395586-why-chinas-clean-energy-tech-will-determine-our-climate-future/ By James Dinneen , New Scientist. Excerpt: As the world’s biggest carbon emitter and the largest producer of clean energy tech, China is crucial to our climate future, .... In 2023, which will be a record year for global development of renewable energy, more than half of all new wind and solar capacity is set to be installed in China. It is also adding more new nuclear power and hydropower than anywhere else, and in August overtook Europe as the largest builder of offshore wind. In June, two years ahead of schedule, fossil fuels made up less than half of China’s electricity generating capacity, though coal remains a big and growing part of its energy mix. ...China boasts record adoption of electric vehicles too, with these making up more than a fifth of all new vehicles sold in China in 2022, as well as the world’s largest high-speed train syste...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/business/food-companies-emissions-climate-pledges.html By Julie Creswell , The New York Times. Excerpt: Five years ago McDonald’s said it planned to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than a third in parts of its operations by 2030. A few years later, it pledged to be “net zero” — cutting emissions to as close to zero as possible — by 2050. But in its most recent  report , McDonald’s disclosed that things were moving in the wrong direction: The company’s emissions in 2021 were 12 percent higher than its 2015 baseline. McDonald’s is hardly alone. An examination of various climate-related reports and filings for 20 of the world’s largest food and restaurant companies reveals that more than half have not made any progress on their emissions reduction goals or have reported rising emissions levels. The bulk of emissions — in many cases more than 90 percent — come from the companies’ supply chains. In other words, the cows and wheat used to make b...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/31/emissions-divide-now-greater-within-countries-than-between-them-study By Fiona Harvey , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The difference between the carbon emissions of the rich and the poor within a country is now greater than the differences in emissions between countries, data shows. The finding is further evidence of the  growing divide between the “polluting elite” of rich people  around the world, and the relatively low responsibility for emissions among the rest of the population. It also shows there is plenty of room for the poorest in the world to increase their greenhouse gas emissions if needed to reach prosperity, if rich people globally – including some in developing countries – reduce theirs, the analysis has found. ... a growing body of work suggests that a “polluting elite” of those on the highest incomes globally  are vastly outweighing the emissions of the poor. ... rich people in developing countries have m...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/13/private-jet-emissions-quadrupled-davos-2022 By Helena Horton , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Private jet emissions quadrupled as 1,040 planes flew in and out of airports serving  Davos  during the 2022 World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting. Climate campaigners accused the rich and powerful of hypocrisy in flying in on private jets to a conference discussing climate breakdown....

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aca4e8 By Stuart Jenkins, et al, Environmental Research Letters.  Excerpt: ...an opportunity: to open a conversation about applying the principle of extended producer responsibility (EPR) to fossil fuels. ...Implementing EPR through a combination of geological CO 2  storage and nature-based solutions can deliver net zero at comparable or lower costs than conventional scenarios driven with a global carbon price and subject to constraints on CO 2  storage deployment. It would also mean that the principal beneficiary of high fossil fuel prices, the fossil fuel industry itself, plays its part in addressing the climate challenge while reducing the risk of asset stranding. ...Under EPR as implemented in France, for example, a 'producer', meaning 'any natural or legal person who develops, manufactures, handles, treats, sells or imports waste-generating products', 'may be required [...] to provide or contribute to the pre...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/09/oil-and-gas-greenhouse-emissions-three-times-higher-than-producers-claim By Fiona Harvey , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas facilities around the world are about three times higher than their producers claim, new data has shown. Climate Trace, a project to measure at source the true levels of carbon dioxide and other global heating gases, published a  new report on Wednesday  showing that half of the 50 largest sources of greenhouse gases in the world were oil and gas fields and production facilities. Many are underreporting their emissions, and there are few means of calling them to account. Oil and gas production can leak methane, and the gas is also frequently flared intentionally, ostensibly for safety reasons but sometimes for convenience. Atmospheric levels of  methane, a greenhouse gas  about 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, have been rising strongly in recent ...