Photo credits Artek from Getty Images
- Off-the-charts, extreme weather events in the summer of 2023 have shocked the climate scientists’ community. While some experts report that their climate models predicted these developments, others believe that the climate crisis is undergoing a dramatic acceleration. Read the Guardian article ‘Off-the-charts records’: has humanity finally broken the climate? and the Phenomenal World analysis of Global Boiling.
- The International Monetary Fund has published a paper on global governmental subsidies for the fossil fuel sector. In 2022, fossil fuel subsidies amounted to a record 7 trillion dollars or 7.1% of GDP. For a summary, read the IMF blog post and a good analysis by Axios.
- A new report by UK think tank New Economics Foundation takes a critical look at the planned reform of the EU’s fiscal rules and calls it ‘irresponsible’, jeopardising ‘the public investments needed to combat climate change’. A similar critique is made by Isabelle Brachet of Climate Action Network Europe (CAN) in an opinion piece for Euractiv.
- ‘Is green growth happening?’ This is the question asked in a new empirical analysis by Jefim Vogel and Jason Hickel published in the Lancet Planetary Health. The two researchers looked at carbon emission reductions by 36 high-income countries and their increasing GDPs. Although 11 of these high-income countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK) achieved absolute decoupling, these rates of decoupling are insufficient to meet the climate and equity commitments of the Paris Agreement.