The Trump administration has announced its intention to withdraw the US from the world’s overarching climate treaty, reports CNN. The move to leave the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), alongside 65 other international organisations, was announced via a White House memorandum that states these bodies “no longer serve American interests”, adds the news outlet. The New York Times explains that the UNFCCC “counts all of the other nations of the world as members” and describes the move as cementing “US isolation from the rest of the world when it comes to fighting climate change”. The Associated Press lists all the organisations that the US is exiting, including other climate-related bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The Washington Post notes this also means the withdrawal of US funding from these bodies. Bloomberg says these climate actions are likely to “significantly limit the global influence of those entities”. Politico says the US “quitting” the “pivotal 1992 climate treaty” is a “massive hit to global warming effort”.

MORE ON US

• The Trump administration has finalised a rollback of regulations related to the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to consider the possible environmental impacts of projects before approving them, reports the Associated Press.
• Wind energy giant Ørsted has filed a lawsuit against the suspension of its Sunrise Wind project, off the coast of New York, by the Trump administration, according to Agence France-Presse.
• US lawsuits arising from climate-related disasters have more than doubled over the past decade as extreme weather damage increases, according to data obtained by the Financial Times.
• A year on from the deadly wildfires that struck Los Angeles, CNN is among the news outlets covering the slow progress rebuilding communities. It quotes Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, who notes the need to prepare for “more frequent and severe climate threats”.

US officials have laid out a “sweeping albeit bare-bones” plan to take control of oil sales from Venezuela, according to the New York Times. The newspaper says cabinet officials sought to “fill in the gaps” after US president Donald Trump announced that Venezuela would hand over tens of millions of barrels of oil to the US. BBC News reports that the US will control Venezuelan oil sales “indefinitely” as it prepares to roll back sanctions on the country’s oil, according to the White House. Energy secretary Chris Wright said sales would be “done by the US government and deposited into accounts controlled by the US government”, according to Axios. Money from these sales will be released back to Venezuela “at the discretion of the US”, reports CNBC. 

The Guardian and Axios both have articles pointing out the difficulty of expanding oil production in Venezuela. The Financial Times has an interactive article exploring the “catastrophic” state of Venezuela’s oil facilities, which it says “could pose major obstacles” to US plans. Inside Climate News focuses on Venezuela’s oil deposits, noting that while the country has the world’s largest reserves, “on a barrel-for-barrel basis, they pack the most climate pollution”.

MORE ON VENEZUELA

• The New York Times reports that “western oil companies have been fighting to recoup tens of billions of dollars that they say Venezuela owes them”, noting that these debts could affect US efforts to compel more oil extraction.
• A Guardian analysis states that the first “overt” US attack on an Amazon nation will contribute to a rivalry with China, which will ultimately decide whether the “vast mineral wealth of South America” helps to drive the energy transition or a “buildup of military power to defend…fossil-fuel interests”.
• Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into what US oil companies may have known about the Trump administration’s plans to take control of Venezuela’s oil industry before the attack last week, according to the New York Times.
• US intervention in Venezuela has “sent shivers down the spine of oil buyers in China”, who rely on oil supplies from the Latin American nation, reports the Financial Times.

Both France and Italy are calling on the European Commission to exempt imported fertilisers from the EU’s new carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), which came into force at the start of the year, reports Reuters. The member states argue that the exemption to the CBAM, which adds emissions-related fees onto imported goods, is “needed to protect struggling European farmers”, according to the newswire. French and Italian officials are concerned that the agricultural sector will be exposed to a “significant increase” in costs, with the French estimating that fertiliser prices could rise by around 25%, according to Euronews.

MORE ON EUROPE

• Two reports by Human Rights Watch and the cross-party law reform organisation Justice have concluded that “the right to protest is under attack in England and Wales”, exemplified by the treatment of climate protesters, reports the Guardian. 
• The “boss of one of Europe’s largest grid operators”, Bernard Gustin of Elia Group, has warned that “speculative and unprepared” projects are holding up European grid connections for energy projects, according to the Financial Times.
• CNN explains how thousands of Berlin residents “lost power for days after climate activists struck” last week, with a fire damaging high-voltage cables near the city’s Lichterfelde power plant.
• Germany produced 18% of its electricity using solar power last year, meaning solar overtook both coal and gas, reports Electrek. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that in recent days snow has covered solar panels across Germany, cutting renewable output and raising power prices.

Mexico’s National Weather Service expects a “deficit in rainfall” from January to March, mainly in the northwest, centre and northeast Mexico, reports Excélsior. It adds that the weather agency also points out that the rainfall deficits would reach 42%, 30% and 32% below historic mean records for January, February and March, respectively. The regions that will not be as affected include southeast Mexico, in states such as Chiapas and the Yucatan Peninsula.

MORE ON LATIN AMERICA

• Chile’s outgoing president Gabriel Boric has “banked on the success of the country’s green hydrogen industry, which only has 17 of 83 projects underway, while electromobility is being boosted by other Latin American countries, leaving behind Chile, with only 2% of its vehicle fleet being electric”, according to an analysis by BioBioChile’s director Christian Leal.
• El Espectador covers the challenges of a recently approved law that acknowledges “climate displacements” in Colombia, which is “pioneering in Latin America” and aims to create a record of people and families affected by climate change.
• Argentina’s livestock CO2e emissions accounts for 38% of the nation’s total, according to a member of the country’s academy of agronomy and veterinary science writing in La Nación. However, they add that the country has weakened its climate mitigation goal from 359m tonnes of CO2e by 2030-35 to 375m tonnes.

China’s National Energy Administration has issued new trial rules for managing its “green electricity certificates” (GECs) system, reports industry news outlet BJX News, which adds that the rules aim to support “consumption” of clean energy and to standardise the issuance of GECs. Another BJX News article says that the implementation rules “primarily address” several “core needs”, including “clarifying procedural standards” for stages such as GEC issuance or cancellation, “clarifying rules for aligning GECs” with other climate policies – such as the voluntary carbon market (CCER) – and “resolving issues of interest to market participants”, such as handling of data disputes. It adds that the rules “establish a well-structured, clear-responsibility mechanism for the full lifecycle management of GECs”.

MORE ON CHINA

• China has issued its first “national corporate climate disclosure standard”, which could reduce “greenwashing risks”, reports ESG News.
• China “experienced another exceptionally warm year” in 2025, reports China Daily, adding that the “national average temperature reached 11C last year, exceeding the long-term average by 1.1C”. 
• On the frontpage of the People’s Daily print edition, an article by “Zhong Caiping” – a byline used by the outlet for the first time – says policies for “ecological governance” and “new quality productive forces” must be “adapted” for “local conditions”.
• International Energy Net reports that China’s average “CO2 emission factor of electricity” for 2023 decreased by 1.1% year-on-year, according to new emissions factors released by the government.
• The government held a press conference on “green consumption”, according to an article in the People’s Daily print edition, in which it notes that almost 60% of the vehicles sold under the cash-for-clunkers-style trade-in programme in 2024-2025 were new energy vehicles. CCTV and the Paper also cover the press conference.

Commentary on the US intervention in Venezuela continues, with Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo publishing an article by columnist Marcelo Leite looking at the climate impact of extracting more oil from the nation. He writes that Trump’s commitment to extracting more oil from Venezuela “is in line with his policy of denying global warming”. Citing calculations by Tasso Azevedo, creator of SEEG, the Brazilian Climate Observatory’s greenhouse gas emissions estimation system, he notes that extracting all of Venezuela’s oil would emit at least 150bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (150GtCO2e). He notes that an expansion of oil supplies from the region would “blow past” the planet’s carbon budget. “This is the calculation that [the Trump administration] refuse[s] to make,” he concludes.

The Financial Times’ senior trade writer, Alan Beattie, writes that the “limited amount of oil that the US can take from Venezuela in the medium term” is unlikely to benefit the US much, noting that Venezuela’s deposits are “famously hard to extract”. Similarly, a Financial Times article by Michael Haigh, head of FIC and commodities research at Société Générale, notes that Venezuela is a “unique case in the global energy landscape”, due to its vast oil reserves that “have not translated into significant oil supply or export revenues”.

Writing in her newsletter, Heated, climate journalist Emily Atkin says following US actions in Venezuela there is a need to use more “overtly conspiratorial language” in describing what is happening. “When a president deploys military might and taxpayer dollars to expand Big Oil’s power, journalists and climate advocates shouldn’t be afraid to say why that’s really happening,” she writes.

MORE COMMENT

• Ross Matzkin-Bridger, a former senior advisor at the US Department of Energy under both presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, writes in the Hill about the need for nuclear energy development in the US to avoid energy price increases.
• Adam Topping, a partner at the law firm HFW, has a Times column headlined: “Complex EU green trade rules are hitting consumers in the pocket.”
• Climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph columnist Allister Heath – who edits the newspaper’s Sunday edition – uses a column on “impotent, useless Britain” to attack net-zero, while a Sun editorial criticises the government for reversing a long-standing freeze on fuel duty.