Clean Power Funding Surpasses Fossil Fuels, But Rich Nations Keep Bankrolling Dirty Energy: Report

“Laggards, including the United States and Japan, are continuing to prop up the fossil fuel industry.”


Wind turbines rise above thick fog at dawn in Jacobsdorf, Germany, on October 7, 2026.
(Photo by Patrick Pleul/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Oct 14, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

For the first time on record, major international public financial institutions are providing more financing for clean energy around the world than for fossil fuels. But wealthy nations, including the United States, continue to pour billions into oil and gas, hampering the global energy transition, according to a new report.

On Wednesday, two environmental advocacy groups—Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth US—published an analysis of new data on public financing from Group of 20 (G20) nations and multilateral development banks for clean energy projects, such as wind and solar, and planet-warming fossil fuels, including oil, gas, and coal.

They found that from 2023-25, public financing for clean energy averaged at least $52.7 billion annually, compared with just $36.3 billion for fossil fuels. The report attributes the shift mostly to multilateral development banks, while G20 nations’ own development and export financing continued to favor fossil fuels.

“This new dataset represents a tipping point. Clean energy financing overtaking fossil fuel financing for the first time is an important milestone,” said Claire O’Manique, public finance researcher at Oil Change International. “But it doesn’t mean we can sit back and count our wins.”

The level of clean energy financing, the group said, is still far below what is needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, a threshold beyond which the risks of devastating climate impacts increase.

That’s largely thanks to four main culprits. Canada, Japan, the United States, and Italy accounted for around 75% of fossil fuel financing from G20 countries during this period.

Canada provided an annual average of $12.5 billion in fossil fuel financing—mostly for domestic projects. Japan averaged about $4.5 billion annually despite a G7 commitment to end public support for new international fossil fuel projects by 2022. Italy likewise averaged $3.8 billion annually, breaking a pledge to end international fossil fuel financing.

Over the same period, the US provided an annual average of about $3.6 billion in fossil fuel financing, mostly through its Export-Import Bank, compared with just $1.5 billion for clean energy.

The data from 2025, the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, is particularly striking. That year, the US provided nearly $8 billion in financing for fossil fuel projects compared with just $2.5 million for clean energy—roughly 3,200 times as much.

This included a loan of up to $4.7 billion for a liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique, despite allegations that soldiers guarding the project committed war crimes. British and Dutch backing has since been withdrawn from the project.

“Important progress is being made to move the world’s largest economies away from supporting fossil fuels and shift that financing toward renewable energy projects,” said Kate DeAngelis, economic policy deputy director at Friends of the Earth US. “Unfortunately, laggards, including the United States and Japan, are continuing to prop up the fossil fuel industry instead of helping countries transition to sustainable economies.”

The report also found that less than 2% of the clean energy financing tracked reached low-income countries, despite their unmet energy needs. Meanwhile, nearly half of the funds went toward projects in the highest-income countries, according to World Bank classifications.

The five largest recipients of clean energy financing were all high- or middle-income countries: France, Poland, and Spain fall into the former category, while Brazil and India fall into the latter.

“A just transition will not happen at the scale required without governments actively steering it through redirecting and mobilizing public finance,” O’Manique said. “Wealthy governments must move first and fastest to phase out fossil fuels at home and meet their climate finance obligations.”

“We are running out of time,” she said. “Without a fossil fuel phaseout and public finance being redirected to drive a just energy transition, we will continue to see escalating climate disasters that come at a huge human and economic cost, such as the deadly glacial flood disaster in Nepal.”

INTERVIEW

Extreme Weather Disasters Cost Hundreds of Billions. Let’s Make Polluters Pay.


As the Trump administration guts disaster aid, it’s time for an extreme weather superfund paid for by fossil fuel firms.

By C.J. Polychroniou ,

Truthout

October 10, 2026

A sign is seen at a "People Over Profits" vigil for those affected by Hurricane Helene to protest against the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors' meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, on August 30, 2026.Allison Joyce / AFP via Getty Images

One of the most visible consequences of global warming is the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as the powerful nor’easter that hammered the East Coast and mid-Atlantic for several days in late September with heavy rain, winds, and flooding. Indeed, a wide array of scientific studies over the past couple of decades have shown how human-caused climate change affects the intensity, frequency, and impact of extreme weather — from wildfires in the U.S. and Australia to record-setting flooding in China. And now, a major study prepared by two dozen scientists from across the globe has found a link between industrial emissions and the warming of the snow-capped Himalayan region that led to the collapse of the glacier that caused the catastrophic floods in Nepal and Tibet last month, in which over 1,300 people were killed while thousands are still missing.

In light of such developments, programs designed to address climate disasters are urgently needed. In the interview that follows, economist Michael Ash makes the case for the establishment of an Extreme Weather Superfund to protect U.S. communities from extreme weather events like those discussed above. Ash is professor of economics and public policy and co-director of the Corporate Toxics Information Project at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The interview that follows has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

C.J. Polychroniou: This past summer was the hottest on record in the United States as well as in western Europe. Indeed, new data shows that global warming is accelerating and the UN says that exceeding the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal above pre-industrial levels looks now unavoidable. As such, extreme weather events like last month’s nor’easter storm that produced strong winds, large waves, and coastal flooding along the East Coast, and Hurricane Helene, which ripped across the U.S. Southeast two years ago and was responsible for at least 250 fatalities, are expected to become more intense. Yet, instead of increasing funding for extreme weather, the Trump administration has actually slashed disaster aid programs and gutted agencies whose mission is to protect communities against extreme weather disasters. Can you talk a bit about the problem at hand with extreme weather events?

Michael Ash: Top weather and climate disasters, typically hurricanes, have costs running into hundreds of billions of dollars. In addition to its war on climate policy, the Trump administration has been utterly derelict in protecting communities from extreme weather disasters or rebuilding after disasters.

Hurricane Helene brought horrendous damage to uplands North Carolina, making very clear that the impact of climate change will not be limited to low-lying coastal areas. Immediately after becoming president in 2025, Donald Trump went around North Carolina saying, “the days of betrayal and neglect are over,” while simultaneously planning to institutionalize betrayal and neglect by getting rid of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), remarking: “If it was up to me right now, I’d end it right now.”

The Trump administration squeezed out 4,300 staff from FEMA in 2025. Its plan to reduce another 11,000 employees this year has been stopped by the courts for now. FEMA’s capacity is degraded. As The Nation article recounts, the North Carolina recovery funds have been delivered in an ineffective trickle.

How should we explain the Trump administration’s complete disregard of the risks associated with extreme weather events, which should be of deep concern to voters in the upcoming midterm elections?

It fits important patterns: climate denialism in service to fossil fuel companies; callous disregard for human suffering; and federal abdication of responsibility for the general welfare.

How much more likely and how much more destructive are episodes of extreme heat or rainfall, droughts, or hurricanes because of climate change? The science is increasingly precise and clear. Attribution science — the subject of a terrific new National Academies publication, “The Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts” (2026) — can establish with remarkable accuracy how much anthropogenic climate change (human contribution of greenhouse gases to Earth’s atmosphere) has contributed to extreme weather events.

To address the problem of extreme weather events, and as part of the Game Changers: Economic Policies for a Working America project that has been launched by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, you and your colleague James K. Boyce have called for the establishment of an Extreme Weather Superfund (EWS). What would be the actual mission of an EWS?

The Extreme Weather Superfund is modeled on the original Superfund: the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, which was designed to clean up land and water contaminated with toxic substances. There were two key principles: the polluter pays; and joint and several liability, which keeps polluters from dodging responsibility by pointing the finger at other parties or declaring bankruptcy.

The original Superfund empowered the Environmental Protection Agency to find and sue responsible parties and collected a valuable trust fund that paid for many useful cleanups. My son went canoeing with friends last month on Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, which was horribly polluted for more than a century, declared a Superfund site in 2010, and is now on the road to cleanup.

The Extreme Weather Superfund works from the Superfund model: quantify the harms, identify the responsible parties, and make the polluters pay. Except here, the harm is the introduction of greenhouse gases by carbon majors.

Can you discuss more specifically the central features of this policy and the benefits that U.S. communities can derive from it?

The big point is that communities all over the U.S. are already seeing damage from the carbon that the fossil fuel giants brought into our economy and atmosphere.

We face high costs of recovery from these disasters and high costs of adaptation, to build protection, hardened infrastructure, from these foreseeable and growing threats. Preparation makes a huge difference, but it needs investment up front.

The Extreme Weather Superfund will levy a total annual assessment of $100 billion per year on all fossil fuel corporations with a business presence in the United States that contributed more than 1 billion tons to global carbon dioxide (CO2)-equivalent emissions over the past 30 years. We call 1995 to 2024 the historical reference period: By 1995, the danger from fossil fuels was completely clear. (Some of the major carbon emitters, or what I call “carbon majors,” had suppressed evidence as early as the 1970s; so there is no “Who could have known” defense for 1995.)

The $100 billion is an estimate of the annual costs of disaster response and infrastructure adaptation for the foreseeable future. We would expect $75 billion in infrastructure hardening and, thanks to attribution science, $25 billion in response to current disasters. The 1 billion ton CO2 threshold means that we are talking about carbon majors. The responsible parties are big fossil fuel companies.

The big fossil fuel companies designated as responsible parties will split the $100 billion annual levy in proportion to the emissions from the fuels that they extracted from the earth and introduced to the world’s economy. To give an idea of the magnitude, ExxonMobil brought 19 billion tons of CO2-equivalent into being between 1995 and 2024; that’s roughly 6 percent of the total CO2 the carbon majors introduced over that period. So ExxonMobil would pay 6 percent of the $100 billion total annual assessment, or $6 billion per year. With nearly $400 billion in annual corporate revenue and $40 billion in profits in recent years, ExxonMobil can afford $6 billion per year as its share of cleaning up the mess it has made.

We have some important additional provisions, including a supplemental levy in years when exceptional climate-related extreme weather damage exceeds the expected $25 billion cost of disaster cleanup. FEMA has regularly received supplemental appropriations to respond to exceptional disasters, and we need to consider an acceleration in the frequency and impact of extreme events.

The policy would also require a document disclosure, forcing the carbon majors to come clean with information about how and when companies understood the link between their products and extreme weather events — and their efforts to conceal this knowledge from the public. This provision is based on the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement of 1998, which exposed an extraordinary history of companies’ knowledge about the harms from their products and intentional hiding of these harms from the public.

How does the Extreme Weather Superfund differ from carbon-pricing policies?

The Extreme Weather Superfund is retrospective. It assesses and addresses responsibility for the damage that we are already suffering from past carbon emissions. The point is to collect compensation from parties that have already done terrible climate damage — the responsible parties.

In contrast, carbon pricing is focused on reducing carbon emissions going forward. The Extreme Weather Superfund addresses the consequences of climate destabilization from past emissions, and it pays for adaptation and disaster response to carbon that has already been emitted. What’s interesting about the retrospective approach in the Extreme Weather Superfund is that the opportunities for passing through costs to customers are limited. Current fuel prices are set in the world market. Carbon pricing raises the cost of bringing fuels into the economy, and fuel companies pass through some of the carbon pricing as higher fuel prices for customers. The Extreme Weather Superfund is much harder to pass through. A company trying to pass through its Extreme Weather Superfund liabilities as higher fuel prices would be noncompetitive in the current market.

At the top of the responsible party list are companies owned abroad: Saudi Aramco would owe $15 billion per year and Russia’s Gazprom would owe $13 billion. U.S.-based ExxonMobil is next on the list with $6 billion per year. Of the top 10 responsible parties, only two — ExxonMobil and Chevron — are U.S.-based; when we look out at the top 20, we add four more U.S. companies, including two from big coal: Peabody Energy, with a $3.5 billion share of the annual levy and Core Natural Resources with a $3 billion share.

Is the EWS something that states alone can pursue? In other words, can it be financially sustained without federal participation?

An important feature of the Extreme Weather Superfund is that it could be carried out by individual states without federal participation. That’s crucial, given the current federal climate of climate denial and extreme-weather neglect.

New York State and Vermont have already passed climate responsibility legislation.

The scale is smaller, and there are some additional challenges involved in pursuing state-level Extreme Weather Superfunds. First, the scope of naming responsible parties would be limited to companies doing business in the state. For large states with lucrative markets, such as New York or California, the carbon majors are less likely to withdraw than to accept the Superfund fines.

The biggest danger for the Extreme Weather Superfund at the moment may be less federal neglect and more federal involvement. We are likely to see a huge push by the carbon majors for liability protection, along the lines of how the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (2005) shielded the gun industry from being held accountable for the harms the gun industry had caused.

The carbon majors — that is, the oil industry, the coal industry, and the natural gas industry — will seek federal preemption to undermine state legislative efforts and lawsuits in state courts to seek redress for the damage these industries have caused.

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments in Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. Suncor, a Canadian energy company active in the Alberta tar sands, is arguing that U.S. federal law preempts local governments from bringing claims for climate-related damages against fossil fuel companies. This would be a terrible precedent.

So it’s already in the courts, and we’ll likely soon see a federal bill providing protection for these polluters.

The Extreme Weather Superfund will take taxpayers off the hook and put the carbon polluters on the hook for disaster response and adaptation investments to limit future damages.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

C.J. Polychroniou
C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a columnist for Global Policy Journal and a regular contributor to Truthout. He has published scores of books, including Marxist Perspectives on Imperialism: A Theoretical Analysis; Perspectives and Issues in International Political Economy (ed.); and Socialism: Crisis and Renewal (ed.), and over 1,000 articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into a multitude of languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. His latest books are Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021); Illegitimate Authority: Facing the Challenges of Our Time (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2023); and A Livable Future Is Possible: Confronting the Threats to Our Survival (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2024).

 

Electrification, AI and fossil fuels: What to expect as Türkiye hosts major climate summit next month

Copyright AP Photo/Khalil Hamra

By Angela Symons with AFP

Published on 06/10/2026 - EURONEWS

The UN talks in Antalya next month will be backdropped by the energy crisis, extreme heat and Nepal's flood disaster.

All eyes will be on Türkiye next month as the country hosts the world's biggest climate summit.

COP31 opens in the seaside city of Antalya on 9 November, bringing 197 countries together to grapple with record global temperatures, mounting climate damage, and growing pressure to shift away from planet-heating fossil fuels.

While Türkiye won out as host country, the marathon negotiations will be steered by Australia in an unprecedented arrangement reached after both nations bid to stage the world's premier climate gathering.

This year's formal UN talks are set to be light on big-ticket items, with voluntary climate pledges taking centre stage.

Alongside these, the host intends to push electrification as one path to reducing emissions and dependency on fossil fuels. Critics have warned that electrification must be pursued in tandem with clean power if it is to deliver on decarbonisation.

How will a devastating year of climate disasters and turmoil in global energy markets shape discussions inside and outside the negotiating rooms?

Related

• Methane is responsible for 30% of global warming – so why is the EU trying to delay rules to cut it?
• Storms are intensifying as temperatures rise. Which countries are most at risk?

Will a fossil fuel phaseout be on the table at COP31?

Efforts to reach a global consensus on setting concrete targets or pathways for phasing out fossil fuels have stalled and the perennially thorny issue is not a formal item in the COP31 negotiations.

In the absence of consensus, Brazil is expected to release a voluntary 'roadmap' to guide the transition away from coal, oil and gas after nations failed to agree on the process at last year's COP.

But frustration over the fossil fuel impasse could reignite in Antalya. This year, about 60 nations demanding faster action on fossil fuels staged their own breakaway conference outside the United Nations process.

It is unclear how they may be accommodated at COP31 but Türkiye and Australia have promised predictability at COP31 and no last-minute surprises.

Why a focus on electrification could be problematic

Türkiye and Australia want the focus instead on electrification – essentially, replacing technologies that burn fossil fuels directly, like diesel cars and gas heating, with electric alternatives.

Their flagship initiative in Antalya urges countries to commit to a voluntary target to raise the share of final energy demand met by electricity from about 20 per cent today to 35 per cent by 2035.

The hosts say boosting electrification could cut heat-trapping emissions and reduce reliance on costly fossil fuel imports – a major concern for nations after the Middle East war triggered a global energy shock.

But around one-third of the world's electricity is still produced using coal, and the electrification target does not explicitly state how that extra power should be produced, raising questions of credibility.

What voluntary climate pledges are expected on the sidelines of COP31?

Apart from the centrepiece electrification goal, Türkiye is spearheading a range of voluntary initiatives on themes including artificial intelligence, methane and waste reduction, and climate-resilient cities.

These non-blinding pledges are slated for a separate 'action agenda' which runs parallel to the formal COP talks, where decisions are taken by consensus and nations must agree on every line of the text.

This year the hard-fought negotiations contain few headline-grabbing items and deal mostly with technical issues carried over from previous conferences.

Related

• Fallen firefighter given standing ovation as Von der Leyen promises action on wildfires

Climate finance in the wake of the Nepal floods

Another recurring sore spot at COPs, the amount of financial assistance provided by wealthy countries will be scrutinised again in Antalya, especially after devastating floods in Nepal linked to climate change.

Kathmandu's appeal for assistance has revived longstanding calls for historic polluters to cough up more to help poorer nations shift to renewable energy, adapt to climate impacts, and recover from disaster.

Türkiye has pitched itself as a bridge between developed and developing countries and incoming COP31 President Murat Kurum said closing the climate finance "chasm" would be a key priority in Antalya.

Who will host COP's 'global stocktake' in 2028?

At COP33 in 2028, countries will undertake a 'global stocktake' of progress on climate action. These take place every five years and assess where the world has fallen short in meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.

But this crucial COP doesn't have a host yet after India withdrew its candidacy.

China is mulling a bid, according to sources familiar with the matter, as Beijing seeks to burnish its reputation as a global leader on climate change, particularly in the absence of the United States.

A decision does not have to be taken this year but the prospect of a politically-charged Beijing COP is expected to be a hot topic in Antalya.

Led by Florida and Texas, US Book Bans Surge to Record 12,000

“In several cases, AI recommended banning books that were banned elsewhere, creating a snowball effect for frequently banned books while the expertise of librarians and the communities they serve are ignored.”


Suzette Baker, former head librarian at the Kingsland Branch Library in the Llano County Library System, holds some banned books at the Edwards Law office on March 4, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
(Photo by Aaron E. Martinez/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Oct 05, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


PEN America released a report on Monday documenting nearly 12,000 book bans involving more than 7,300 individual titles in US schools during the 2025-2026 school year, which the organization said were the largest censorship case numbers it had ever recorded.

The state of Texas accounted for more than 8,100 book bans—roughly three-fourths of the nationwide total and more than double that of Florida, which was the second-most censorious state with over 3,200 book bans.

PEN America said that the surge in Texas book bans came from SB 13, a state law passed in 2025 that banned a broad array of books that censorship proponents view as “profane” or “indecent.”

According to PEN America, the Texas book bans carried out over the last year have been particularly broad because officials in the state used artificial intelligence to make a recommended list of banned books.

“In several cases, AI recommended banning books that were banned elsewhere,” the report notes, “creating a snowball effect for frequently banned books while the expertise of librarians and the communities they serve are ignored.”

Sold, a 2006 young adult novel by journalist Patricia McCormick about a teenage girl in Nepal who gets sold into sexual slavery, was the most frequently banned book in the US.


Popular horror writer Stephen King was the most banned individual author, according to the report.

Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said that banning popular young adult titles was a particularly harmful policy given the broad decline in reading throughout the US.

“Schools should be doing everything possible to connect kids with reading by introducing them to engaging stories and formats,” Meehan said. “Instead, many are doing the opposite, banning books that help kids see themselves in literature, deepen their understanding and empathy of others, and develop their imaginations.”

Philomena Polefrone, senior manager of the Freedom to Read program, said the broad books bans documented by the PEN America report are due to “chilling directives from state politicians” that “have created chaos and fear.”

“Unsure how to comply, districts are removing books en masse, sometimes with the ‘help’ of crude AI tools that only make the problem worse,” Polefrone said. “Increasingly, these bans are invisible. Thousands of these cases are only recorded because of public information requests by Florida Freedom to Read and Texas Freedom to Read. Books paid for by taxpayers are being removed from shelves and the local community may not even know about it.”

Pacific leaders urge climate action as UN pre-COP talks open in Fiji

Pacific leaders urged action on climate change as UN pre-COP talks opened in Fiji's Nadi on Monday, ahead of next month's COP31 summit in Turkey. Discussions in Fiji and Tuvalu will focus on limiting warming to 1.5C, improving access to climate finance and protecting oceans as rising seas threaten communities.


Issued on: 05/10/2026
By: FRANCE 24

Climate negotiators are heading to Fiji to lay the ground for global decisions on climate change © LEON LORD, AFP


The UN "pre-COP" climate gathering kicked off on Monday in the Fijian city of Nadi, where Pacific leaders are seeking to draw the world's attention to life on the frontline of climate change.

The South Pacific is among the most vulnerable regions in the world to global warming -- from rising sea waters jeopardising homes to increasing temperatures causing coral bleaching.

This week's talks in Nadi and on the atoll nation of Tuvalu are a precursor to the larger UN-sponsored global climate summit -- known as COP31 -- to be held next month in Turkey.

Pacific leaders are pushing for the world to stick to a target of limiting global warming to 1.5C, enhance access to climate finance and give more attention to the impact on oceans.

"Our prime minister will carry three clear messages to the leaders this week: keep 1.5 degrees within reach, make finance reach the communities that need it and give the ocean its rightful place in the climate regime," Fiji's climate minister Lynda Tabuya told the opening ceremony.

Sea levels are rising at a record pace, driven by warming oceans and glacier melt, according to a UN report.

Up to 1.2 billion people could be displaced by 2050, with Pacific island countries experiencing sea level rise at twice the global average, the report released in August said.

It also highlighted a financing gap, with developing countries needing $310-$365 billion to adapt, yet having only $26 billion in adaptation finance available in 2023.

"Today in Fiji, we are again calling on the world to match ambition with delivery," said Australia's climate minister Chris Bowen, who is also president of negotiations for COP31.

He said talks at the pre-COP would focus on "capturing, capitalising on, and putting to work the knowledge of those who've been dealing with climate change here at its forefront, here at its cutting edge".

Regional leaders have pitched the pre-COP as a chance to bring the world to the Pacific.

Limited guest list

But officials have been forced to concede that the guest list will be smaller than they had hoped.

Fewer than a dozen world leaders have publicly confirmed that they will attend.

On the streets of Nadi, most locals seemed unaware that a global summit was even taking place.

Australia said last month 4,000 people from 60 nations would attend, without providing a full breakdown.

Among those attending will be Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal of Nepal, which is still reeling from August's Himalayan flood disaster which killed nearly 1,500 people and left 5,800 missing in Nepal and China.

Top delegates to the Pacific talks will also hold a one-day retreat on low-lying Tuvalu, already laying plans to relocate the population if it is consumed by the ocean.

The highest point in the capital Funafuti is just two metres (6.6 feet) above sea level, and two of its nine coral atolls are already largely swamped by rising waters.

'Act now decisively'

"Sea-level rise is not a future threat, it is a present reality," Tuvalu Prime Minister Feleti Teo told the UN General Assembly ahead of the climate talks.

"Tuvalu's message is clear: the world must act now decisively, collectively, and with urgency to protect the future for generations to come."

Only a handful of leaders are expected to join the Tuvalu leg of the trip.

"It does make you think nobody cares," said marine scientist Rajneel Singh, part of a team that reported large-scale coral death around Tuvalu.

"It's very, very sad."

As leader of the climate talks, major coal exporter Australia has faced accusations of hypocrisy.

Australian officials have insisted the country is rapidly expanding its renewable energy sources.

But activists accuse Australia of "double talk" on climate change, and have urged leaders to listen to Pacific communities most affected by global warming.

"As Australia prepares to chair the upcoming COP31 talks in partnership with the Pacific, it must do much more to turn empty rhetoric into real action to end the fossil fuel chokehold," Greenpeace's Shiva Gounden said.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

New Research Strengthens the Link Between Warming and Extreme Weather

By Felicity Bradstock - Oct 03, 2026

• Carbon Brief’s database of more than 900 attribution studies covering almost 1,000 events and trends finds that 77% were made more likely or more severe by climate change, while 85% showed some human climate influence.
• 
  
• NASA satellite observations indicate that major droughts and extreme wet periods have become more frequent and intense, with their combined intensity closely associated with global warming.
• 
  
• A 2026 World Weather Attribution assessment found that warming and permafrost degradation likely contributed to instability behind the catastrophic Himalayan rock-ice avalanche and resulting floods.

There is an increasing body of evidence connecting climate change and severe weather events. In 2004, a group of researchers published one of the first studies linking human-caused climate change to a specific extreme weather event – the 2003 European summer heatwave, which killed over 70,000 people across Europe. The scientists determined that human involvement had at least doubled the risk of such an extreme heatwave, prompting other researchers to investigate the links between human-driven climate change and severe weather.

The UK-based organisation Carbon Brief, which specialises in the science and policy of climate change, has mapped every published study on how climate change has influenced extreme weather – totalling over 900 studies and covering almost 1,000 extreme weather events and trends – to make the growing body of knowledge easier to access.

Across all these cases, 77 per cent were made more likely or severe because of climate change, according to Carbon Brief. Several studies also showed that an extreme weather event was nearly impossible without human influence on global temperatures. Meanwhile,

Around 8 per cent of the mapped events and trends were made less likely or less severe by climate change. Therefore, overall, 85 per cent were likely influenced by human-caused climate change.

In 2025, NASA released new data revealing the dramatic increase in the intensity of weather events such as droughts and floods over the previous five years. The NASA study suggested that severe weather events were becoming more frequent, longer-lasting, and more intense, with figures from 2024 reaching twice the 2003 to 2020 average. The events were tracked by NASA's GRACE satellite.

The organisation cited climate change as the most likely cause of the more extreme events, even though the intensity of these events seems to have risen faster than global temperatures. It is worth noting that the researchers said they would need another decade or more to confirm the findings and decide whether to call it a trend conclusively.

Bailing Li, from the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, a co-researcher on the study, stated, “We can’t prove causation yet – we would need a much longer dataset. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what’s happening here, but other events suggest that (global) warming is the driving factor. We are seeing more and more extreme events around the world, so this is certainly alarming.”

Over the past century, as human-produced greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere, global temperatures have risen substantially. In 2025, the average global surface temperature was around 1.44 degrees Celsius above the 1850–1900 preindustrial average. Researchers have linked this warming to increases in the frequency and severity of many types of extreme weather events

Most recently, scientists have linked industrial emissions to the warming of the snow-capped Himalayan region, where a rock collapse caused devastating floods in Nepal and Tibet in August. The September report was prepared by two dozen researchers from around the globe and published by World Weather Attribution. It demonstrates how rising temperatures most likely contributed to the disaster, as warmer temperatures destabilised the ice and permafrost that underlay the mountain slopes.

The researchers acknowledged that climate change was not the only factor that caused the floods. They suggest that the 2015 Nepal earthquake may also have played a role in destabilising the slope. However, they suggest that human-caused warming had a “very strong linkage” to the disaster.

Although the report has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, the new evidence could be used to support Nepal’s request for financial assistance from the United Nations’ climate aid fund. Over 1,300 people were killed in the disaster, with thousands more still missing. Nepal expects recovery and rebuilding efforts to cost around $5 billion.

The researchers involved in the study found that in the days leading up to the disaster, temperatures were higher than usual around the northern face of Langtang Lirung, the mountain where the rockslide occurred, at around 12 degrees Celsius. They also saw that July and August in the area were unusually warm overall, reflecting high global temperatures, which set a tied record for Earth's hottest month.

Scientists have discovered in recent years that global warming, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, has significantly increased mercury levels at high elevations in this part of the Himalayas compared with preindustrial levels. This has gradually left permafrost within the rocky slopes more exposed to above-freezing conditions more frequently.

Permafrost, a mix of soil and sediment held together by ice, acts as a seal that prevents water from permeating the cracks in the bedrock. Therefore, when permafrost thaws, more water can seep in. When this water refreezes, it can widen the cracks, thereby weakening the surrounding rock, according to Walter Immerzeel, a mountain hydrologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who contributed to the new report.

A wide array of scientific studies from the past two decades link human-driven climate change to extreme weather events. While climate change may not be the sole cause of severe weather, research suggests that global warming may be exacerbating these events and making them occur more frequently.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com 

 

LSTM announces new £4.5 million partnership to tackle neglected tropical diseases

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

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A patient with lymphatic filariasis

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Credit: Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

 

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) has announced a new partnership to develop innovative, acceptable and feasible tools to accelerate progress towards eliminating two neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).

 

ENDPOINT (rEsearch aNd DeveloPment fOr elimInation of NTds) is a major UK aid-funded initiative coordinated by LSTM’s Centre for Drugs and Diagnostics and Centre for Neglected Tropical Diseases, working with the LSTM-led Infection Innovation Consortium (iiCON) and The Leprosy Mission in Nepal, University of Buea, Cameroon and University of Bonn in Germany.

 

The programme focuses on the filarial parasitic infections lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis. Together these debilitating diseases affect an estimated 78 million people, with a further one billion at risk, causing major health problems and significantly undermining economic prosperity in endemic communities.

 

As a cross-disciplinary product development partnership (PDP), ENDPOINT will advance a pipeline of innovative diagnostic and treatment tools, while generating evidence on their acceptability and feasibility within affected communities and health systems, as well as potential policy and regulatory pathways.

 

The £4.5m project is funded by UK aid through the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) as part of the Global Research and Technology Development fund, launched earlier this year, which supports PDPs like ENDPOINT to tackle global challenges like neglected tropical diseases.

 

Professor Joseph Turner, co-director of the Centre for Drugs and Diagnostics and research director of the PDP, said: “We are immensely grateful for this valuable FCDO investment in our CDD iiCON filarial NTDs product development portfolio.

 

“With our partners in Nepal and Cameroon, our pipeline of innovative diagnostic and therapeutic candidates have been selected to overcome specific barriers to lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis elimination.

 

“We will evaluate candidate product effectiveness and acceptability by affected communities in order to refine and accelerate their onward development.”

 

ENDPOINT brings together a portfolio of complementary projects:

• a wearable microwave biosensor diagnostic to support non-invasive detection and surveillance of lymphatic filariasis in Nepal;
• repurposing the oral antibiotic fusidic acid as a shorter-course treatment for onchocerciasis (the second leading infectious cause of blindness worldwide), complementing the LSTM-led FAME study;
• early development of a new class of fast-acting anti-Wolbachia drug candidates in the UK, with the potential to treat or prevent onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis and veterinary zoonotic filariasis.

 

Dr Rachael Thomson, Endpoint CEO, said: “To receive this funding is a real achievement for ENDPOINT and LSTM. This investment strengthens the global research pipeline for NTDs and reinforces our commitment to delivering equitable, impactful solutions for affected communities.”

 

By combining cutting-edge technologies with strong in-country partnerships, ENDPOINT aims to generate high-quality evidence, support and de-risk the development of scalable solutions that are acceptable to communities and health systems, and strengthen national research and development capacity in endemic countries.

 

FAME is a complementary clinical trial funded by a £4.9 million award from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP3), with additional support from the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi).

The study is generating critical evidence on the potential of repurposing the antibiotic fusidic acid to treat onchocerciasis and support the future uptake of antibiotic-based tools for filarial disease elimination.

Together, ENDPOINT and FAME represent nearly £9.4 million in new investment reaffirming LSTMs long-standing leadership in research and development to progress filarial NTD elimination.

Find out more about research and innovation at LSTM.