Daily Briefing: Climate’s ‘health harms’ accelerating | Trump’s methane blow | IPCC ‘must be saved’

28.10.26

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Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon Brief sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to thousands of subscribers around the world. The email is a digest of the past 24 hours of media coverage related to climate change and energy, as well as our pick of the key studies published in peer-reviewed journals.

News

Climate change is a ‘global health emergency’ and the harms are accelerating, Lancet report warns

Matthew Glasser, ABC News

The “health harms” caused by climate change are “accelerating”, according to the findings of a new Lancet report covered by ABC News. The outlet says: “Researchers found evidence that heat was linked, on average, to more than 540,000 estimated deaths per year from 2016, when the Paris Agreement went into effect, through to 2023.” It adds that 68% of these deaths were attributed to climate change. Bloomberg notes that the report was compiled by an international group of scientists. It adds: “Annual heat-related deaths were nearly 36% higher in the period 2016 through 2023 than from 2006 through 2015.”

There is coverage of the Lancet report around the world. For example, the Indian Express says it shows that “climate change [is] worsening heat stress and disease risks in India”. CBC News in Canada runs the story under the headline: “Deaths associated with wildfire smoke up about 275% in Canada, new report says.”

US: Trump loosens rules for oil firms to cut methane, a potent warming gas

Brad Plumer, The New York Times

US president Donald Trump has announced plans to “weaken federal rules designed to force oil and gas companies to cut their emissions of methane”, reports the New York Times. The newspaper says the Trump administration had already delayed the rules, which were imposed under Joe Biden, from taking effect. Bloomberg describes it as the “latest big move to unravel federal regulations designed to address human-caused climate change”. The Guardian says Trump claims it will “save consumers and energy producers $45bn and unlock 210m barrels of oil”. The Associated Press reports: “Oil and gas operations are the largest industrial source of methane…[which is] far more potent to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide in the short term.”

MORE ON US

The Guardian: “Trump’s cuts have exposed the US to ‘cascade’ of El Niño dangers, experts warn.”

National climate plans now promise half the emission cuts expected by UN

Matteo Civillini, Climate Home News

An annual UN assessment shows that national climate plans would “cut global emissions only half as much by 2035” compared to last year’s findings, reports Climate Home News. A “major factor” in this change is the US exit of the Paris Agreement, which excludes its climate plans from the assessment, explains the outlet. Emissions would fall to 6% below 2019 levels by 2035, compared to 12% in last year’s assessment, says Climate Home News. The findings “put the world on course for between 2.1C and 3.2C of warming by the end of the century”, it adds. The outlet notes that the higher projections are also due to new national climate pledges that are “less ambitious than the earlier UN modelling had hoped for”.

MORE ON EMISSIONS

Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached record-high levels last year, according to World Meteorological Organization figures covered by Agence France-Presse.

Healey puts UK energy reform at centre of his ‘do no harm’ budget

George Parker, Sam Fleming, Claer Barrett and Jim Pickard, The Financial Times

UK chancellor John Healey has indicated aims of “long-term reforms to Britain’s energy market” as part of the budget due to be announced later today, reports the Financial Times on its frontpage. The newspaper adds that reducing energy bills “will be a major budget theme”. The Times says on its frontpage that the chancellor will “cut energy bills by scrapping green levies” and adding them to “general taxation”. The Independent says Healey is “expected to announce a freeze in fuel duty as well as plans for longer-term reforms”. According to the Times, the budget calculations assume that the Rosebank oilfield “will be approved despite deepening cabinet splits on the plan”. The Guardian also covers budget forecasts on its frontpage.

Amid weeks of reports about what will be included in the budget, heat-pump installers are worried about the possibility of reduced subsidies, says the Guardian. Chris Packham and other campaigners are calling on Healey to move £24bn of “fairytale” carbon-capture spending towards “funding green schemes that can reliably cut emissions and lower energy bills”, reports the Guardian.

MORE ON UK

A “powerful parliamentary inquiry” has described the Sizewell C nuclear plant in Suffolk as a “terrible deal” for UK taxpayers, reports the Financial Times, Times and Guardian.
The government-backed “warm home loans scheme” providing loans to fund heat pumps, batteries and solar panels launches today, reports the Guardian.
“Government insiders” tell the Guardian that the Rosebank oilfield “can be approved without breaching the UK’s emission targets”.
The Tony Blair Institute has called for the government to approve Rosebank and “instil confidence in the future of the North Sea”, says the Times.
Environmental campaigners have criticised a decision from Scottish ministers to approve a new gas power station, reports the Independent.

China: Conference targets climate change in global south

Lu Wanqing, China Daily

Huang Runqiu, head of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), has reaffirmed China’s commitment to “green development cooperation” under the belt and road initiative (BRI) at the Belt and Road Green Innovation conference 2026 in Hong Kong, according to the state-run newspaper China Daily. Huang said China has signed more than 80 “cooperation documents” with more than 50 countries and called for them to “better align their green strategies, deepen practical cooperation, make greater use of technological innovation and expand an open and inclusive system for green investment and financing”, according to the newspaper. A report released at the conference said that the global south faces “major obstacles” to climate adaptation, it continues. State news agency Xinhua also covers the story, saying that the conference announced three cooperation agreements between China, Mongolia, Cambodia and Kenya to address environmental issues and climate change.

MORE ON CHINA

Climate Home News: “Tensions set to flare over trade at COP31 as China makes it a priority.”
A new NDRC measure has brought medium- and long-term contracts for coal for power generation, electricity and gas supply under a “unified regulatory framework”, reports Xinhua.
China’s electricity market traded 31,000GWh of “green electricity” in September, up 6.9%, reports China Electric Power News.
China’s traditional and emerging industries have seen “continued improvements in industrial decarbonisation” since the beginning of 2026, reports CCTV.
China’s largest offshore solar project in Jiangsu province has recently surpassed 1GW of grid-connected generating capacity, reports Science and Technology Daily.
A Global Times editorial says treating rare-earth magnet recycling as a “shortcut to shake off reliance on China’s supply chain” underestimates “industrial realities”.

Comment

Global climate body fights for survival: why the IPCC must be saved

Editorial, Nature

An editorial in Nature says that the UN’s climate science body “faces an even more serious problem” than its widely reported “timeline fights”: “It is running out of money.” The editorial says that, “for the first time” in the history of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “it might not have the funds to finish an assessment report”. Voluntary donations from governments and others have dropped since 2023, it notes. The editorial says: “The IPCC needs more than 20m Swiss francs [£18m] to stay operational until the end of 2029 and to complete AR7 [seventh assessment report]. Nations must consider increasing their contributions immediately.” It concludes: “The [timeline] dispute must not be allowed to distract from the most important matter of all: ensuring the continued survival of the IPCC itself.”

MORE COMMENT

Three directors of Amnesty International have a comment piece in Climate Home News headlined: “COP31 must amplify people power, not oil lobby voices.”
Prof Jan Rosenow from the University of Oxford and Maria Mendiluce from the We Mean Business Coalition write in Time: “The rise of electrostates could redraw the global economy.”
Bloomberg columnist Liam Denning writes about the “cockroach-like will to live” of renewable energy around the world, “despite the mass extinction event known as the second Trump administration”.
Vasudevan Mukunth, science editor at the Hindu, writes: “Lula’s win gives Brazil an opportunity to cement its climate leadership, but challenges remain.”
India should “reframe” issues around climate change “as a set of national crises arising from unequal energy use, rather than as a global temperature goal driven by emissions”, writes former UN diplomat Mukul Sanwal in the Hindu.
An editorial in the climate-sceptic Sun calls for “urgent relief…from sky-high energy prices” in the UK, saying: “That means cutting wasteful green subsidies before household energy bills hurtle towards £2,200 in the spring”. (See Carbon Brief’s Q&A on the real reasons for high energy bills.)

Research

Two out of three sea ice-ocean models project a decline in primary production from sub-ice algae by the end of the century, but the differences “highlight the need for improved observations and experiments” | Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
A study of 82 Austrian adults found that higher bedroom temperatures during sleep were associated with lower self-reported productivity the following day | Journal of Environmental Psychology
Timber-harvesting strategies that account for tree age can increase forest carbon stocks in China by 4.2%, compared to current low-intensity harvesting practices | National Science Review