Tag: Paris Climate Accord

Climate protesters march on COP30 in Brazil with costumes and drums demanding to be heard

Some wore black dresses to signify a funeral for fossil fuels. Hundreds wore red shirts, symbolizing the blood of colleagues fighting to protect the environment. And others chanted, waved huge flags or held up signs Saturday in Belem, Brazil, in what’s traditionally the biggest day of protest at the halfway point of annual United Nations climate talks.

Organizers with booming sound systems on trucks with raised platforms directed protesters from a wide range of environmental and social movements. Marisol Garcia, a Kichwa woman from Peru marching at the head of one group, said protesters are there to put pressure on world leaders to make “more humanized decisions.”

An Indigenous group blocks an entrance to the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit as attendees walk around them, Friday, Nov. 14, 2025, in Belem, Brazil.

Fernando Llano / AP

Protestors demand to be heard during climate march

The demonstrators walked about 2.5 miles on a route that took them near the main venue for the talks, known as COP30. Protesters earlier this week twice disrupted the talks by surrounding the venue, including an incident on Tuesday where two security guards suffered minor injuries.

A full day of sessions was planned at the venue, including talks on how to move forward with $300 billion a year in annual climate financial aid that rich countries agreed last year to give to poor nations to help wean themselves off fossil fuels, adapt to a nastier, warmer world and compensate for extreme weather damage. Global temperatures, greenhouse gas emissions and sea levels all reached record highs in 2024, the State of the Global Climate report confirmed.

Many of the protesters reveled in the freedom to demonstrate more openly than at recent climate talks held in more authoritarian countries, including Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Thousands of people joined in a procession that sprawled across most of the march’s route.

An Indigenous group blocks an entrance to the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Friday, Nov. 14, 2025, in Belem, Brazil.

Fernando Llano / AP

Youth leader Ana Heloisa Alves, 27, said it was the biggest climate march she has been part of. “This is incredible,” she said. “You can’t ignore all these people.”

Alves was at the march to fight for the Tapajos River, which the Brazilian government wants to develop commercially. “The river is for the people,” her group’s signs read.

Pablo Neri, coordinator in the Brazilian state of Para for the Movimento dos Trabajadores Rurais Sem Terra, an organization for rural workers, said organizers of the talks should involve more people to reflect a climate movement that is shifting toward popular participation.

United States skips talks after Trump calls climate change a scam

The United States, where President Trump has ridiculed climate change as a scam, is skipping the talks. This is the second time the Trump administration has withdrawn from the 10-year-old Paris Agreement, which is being celebrated as a partial achievement here in Belem.

Mr. Trump’s actions damage the fight against climate change, former U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Todd Stern said.

“It’s a good thing that they are not sending anyone. It wasn’t going to be constructive if they did,” he said.

Two U.S. governors, California’s Gavin Newsom and New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham, were in Brazil to attend the summit, representing state-level U.S. efforts to curb emissions. Newsom, a Democrat, criticized the Trump administration’s decision not to attend, saying earlier in the week that Brazil is a country the U.S. “should be engaging with, not slapping with 50% tariffs.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom answers questions on the sidelines of the COP30 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Belem, Para State, Brazil, Nov. 11, 2025.

MAURO PIMENTEL/AFP/Getty

One demonstrator, Flavio Pinto, from Para state, took aim at the U.S. Wearing a brown suit and an oversized American flag top hat, he shifted his weight back and forth on stilts and fanned himself with fake hundred-dollar bills with Trump’s face on them. “Imperialism produces wars and environmental crises,” his sign read.

Vitoria Balbina, a regional coordinator for the Interstate Movement of Coconut Breakers of Babaçu, marched with a group of mostly women wearing domed hats made with fronds of the Babaçu palm. They were calling for more access to the trees on private property that provide not only their livelihoods but also a deep cultural significance. She said marching is not only about fighting and resistance on a climate and environment front, but also about “a way of life.”

The marchers formed a sea of red, white and green flags as they progressed up a hill. A crowd of onlookers gathered outside a corner supermarket to watch them approach, leaning over a railing and taking cellphone photos. “Beautiful,” said a man passing by, carrying grocery bags.

The climate talks are scheduled to run through Friday. Analysts and some participants have said they don’t expect any major new agreements to emerge from the talks, but are hoping for progress on some past promises, including money to help poor countries adapt to climate change.

Attendees wait to get into the venue for the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit after an entrance that was closed during a demonstration has been reopened, Friday, Nov. 14, 2025, in Belem, Brazil.

Fernando Llano / AP

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November 15, 2025
Ocean heat shatters record with warming equal to 5 atomic bombs exploding “every second of every day” for a year. Researchers say it’s “getting worse.”

During World War II, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, wiping out 90% of the city. Last year, researchers say, the ocean heated up an amount equal to the energy of five of those bombs detonating underwater “every second for 24 hours a day for the entire year.”

John Abraham, a professor at the University of St. Thomas, is among more than a dozen scientists who revealed this week the ocean in 2022 was “the hottest ever recorded by humans.” It increased by 10.9 Zetta Joules, an amount of energy equivalent to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and an amount of heat about 100 times more than the electricity generated worldwide in 2021.

Four basins of the seven world ocean regions – the North Pacific, North Atlantic, Mediterranean and southern oceans – had the highest heat records since the 1950s.

This marks the fourth time in a row that ocean heat content has surpassed records broken the year prior. And while it may seem like a “broken record” at this point, Abraham said this is anything but “normal.”

“This is a continuing, ongoing trend,” he said. “It’s getting worse every year.”

Here’s what the findings, published in the Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, mean for the current state of the planet, and the future.

More fuel for extreme weather

Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science as well as a senior scientist at Breakthrough Energy, told CBS News that the ocean “is the pacemaker of the climate systems response to our CO2 emissions.”

“The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is increasing year by year. And these greenhouse gases, trap energy in Earth’s system prevent it from going to space, and most of that energy goes into the ocean, which causes the ocean to warm,” he said.

From there, some of the ocean heat is transferred back to the atmosphere, Abraham said, as is moisture and humidity, creating a surge of more energy that “makes storms more powerful.”

“So when oceans warm and when the Earth warms, it makes our weather wilder,” Abraham said. “We go from one extreme to the other, more rapidly.”

The most recent example of this can be seen in California, which has undergone weeks of heavy flooding and record-breaking rain as a series of atmospheric rivers barrage the West Coast. Climate change didn’t cause those atmospheric rivers and storms, but a warmer atmosphere has been linked to making storms more intense.

Global upper 2000 m OHC from 1958 through 2022 according to (a) IAP/CAS and (b) NCEI/NOAA data. 1 ZJ = 1021 Joules. The line shows (a) monthly and (b) seasonal values, and the histogram presents (a) annual and (b) pentad anomalies relative to a 1981-2010 baseline.

Advances in Atmospheric Sciences

Oceans are facing another problem. When it rains, the fresh water from the clouds helps decrease salinity in the ocean as new water comes down. But data shows that rain isn’t providing equal coverage across the seas, with areas that typically get a lot of rain experiencing even more in the past year, reducing their salinity. Meanwhile those in usually dry environments become even drier, increasing those levels as more water evaporates than comes down.

Because of this, the salinity-contrast index – essentially the difference between the highest and lowest salinity levels in the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean – also reached its highest level on record last year.

A high salinity-contrast index and high ocean temperatures can individually make weather events more severe.

“And they are now conspiring together,” Abraham told CBS News. “Their effects are additive.”

Ocean regulation has become “problematic”

The increasing measures of temperature and salinity have also led to another issue within the ocean – it’s ability to self-regulate. Water usually experiences vertical mixing, in which water from the top carries valuable gases and heat to the bottom of the ocean while water from the bottom moves up, carrying with it vital nutrients.

The latest study explains that this process is “a central element of Earth’s climate system.” But since 1960, researchers estimate that stratifcation, or the separation of water layers that makes this process more difficult, has increased by 5.3% in the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean and up to about four times that amount in the upper 150 meters.

“What we’ve discovered is mixing is happening less,” Abraham said. “…Because of climate change and because we’ve heated the surface waters so much, they aren’t able to fall downwards … And that is problematic.”

That’s because if heat from the surface can’t mix with the cooler water below, that surface will only get warmer and reduce how much carbon the water can store – an ability that is vital to extending the global warming process. The ocean is like a sponge for carbon emissions, taking in about 90% of the heat from the worldwide total, but if its ability to do so is diminishing as emissions are only increasing, experts say the planet will only warm faster, making the worst impacts of climate change happen sooner.

Investing in climate solutions a “no brainer”

All of this data gathered leads Abraham to believe that “we will never hit the Paris Accord goals” of keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. Even the United Nations has said that the world is more on track to hit nearly 3 degrees Celsius by the time today’s children are grandparents.

We can’t undo the damage that has already been done, Caldeira said, but we can prevent it from getting worse.

“Right now, our carbon dioxide emissions from our energy system are around 100 times bigger than all of the carbon dioxide emissions from every volcano and mid-ocean ridge and geothermal vents and everything that exists in nature,” he said. “…The most important thing we can do is transition to an energy system that doesn’t use the atmosphere and the oceans as a waste dump.”

“We can solve this problem today with today’s technology, we just need to get off your asses and start doing it,” Abraham added, saying that doing so “is a no brainer” when you consider the the exorbitant costs of climate disasters, which topped $165 billion in the U.S. alone last year.

The cost of green energy, for example, has substantially decreased in recent years, and in many cases, is now comparable or even cheaper to coal. Over the past decade, the cost to install solar panels has dropped more than 60%. And last year’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act also created numerous opportunities for discounted home upgrades, electric vehicles and more.

“We’ve reached an economic tipping point where it’s starting to make economic sense to use clean energy,” Abraham said. “…Earth’s climate is a heavy locomotive. And if you want to stop a heavy locomotive, you’ve got to put the brakes on and it’ll take you like a mile to stop. … You’ve got to start taking actions early and give it time give time for those actions to have measurable outcomes.”

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Li Cohen

Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending reporter for CBS News, focusing on social justice issues.

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January 13, 2023
Why India may be

A guard walks between photovoltaic panels at a solar farm in Pavagada, Karnataka, India, February 24, 2022.

Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty

New Delhi — When the COP27 United Nations climate conference kicks off this weekend in Egypt, India will likely approach the international gathering with a well-earned boast about its success in going green and an appeal for more help to continue down that path. But despite significant strides that one analyst says have made India the only nation with anything to brag about, it may find an international community with little appetite for generosity.

Ahead of the climate summit, and clearly aiming to impress, India has set itself tougher targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions and increasing its clean energy generation capacity by 2030, largely off the back of significant progress in its solar power industry.

Setting the bar higher

As all nations were asked to do ahead of COP27, India submitted its updated “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in August.

Under the terms of climate treaties signed by the COP nations, every country must submit its own goals for reducing emissions and explain how they’ll be met — and every year the nations are expected to show progress and make their goals more ambitious. With India’s new NDCs, it has pledged to reduce the intensity of the emissions from its national economic output by 45% by 2030, compared to its 2005 level. The target was previously set at 30%.

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India has also promised to increase its total share of installed renewable power capacity to 50% by 2030. Currently it’s less than 30%, as 70% of India’s electricity still comes from coal.

The country has also added a new target: It has pledged to create a “carbon sink,” to absorb the equivalent of 2.5 to 3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, through mass-tree planting.

Besides these official commitments, the Indian government also released an ambitious draft National Electricity Plan (NEP) in September. The plan is a policy document released every five years that guides the power sector’s expansion.

This year’s plan seems to exceed commitments made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at COP26 in Glasgow last year. The NEP aims to achieve 57% renewable capacity by 2027 and 68% by 2032. It also plans for a 24% increase in solar power production targets for 2027 compared to the previous plan.

A solar powerhouse?

India has set its ambitious targets based largely on significant progress made in its solar energy sector. The country has a current solar energy generation capacity of 59 gigawatts. That makes it the fifth-highest producer, behind the U.S. and China, but given the country’s solar capacity growth rate of 47% annually between 2016 and 2021, many hope to see it emerge quickly as a global hub for solar energy.

In September, online retail giant Amazon announced its first three solar farm projects in India, which it said would produce a total of 420 megawatts of clean energy. The company will also set up 23 new solar rooftop projects on its fulfilment centers across 14 Indian cities.

“This indicates the fact that corporates are now really embarked on their decarbonization journeys,” said Sumant Sinha, founder, chairman and CEO of ReNew Power, which is developing one of the solar farms for Amazon, a 210 MW plant in Rajasthan.

A file photo from June 2021 shows workers inside a solar photovoltaic panel manufacturing facility at Central Electronics Ltd. in Ghaziabad, India.

Sakib Ali/Hindustan Times/Getty

“Almost a quarter of our new capacity is being directly picked up by corporates. A couple of years ago, this was just two or three percent,” he told CBS News. “They are doing it for two reasons: One is that they want to decarbonize their own operations, and two, because it’s cheaper for them.”

Several other major global corporations are also investing in India’s solar industry. Netherlands-based SHV Energy, a big player in the oil and gas industry, has acquired a majority stake in Sunsource Energy, one of the top solar companies in India, and Malaysia-based Petronas has also acquired a leading solar rooftop company in India.

Solar panel arrays are seen on the rooftops of apartment buildings in Bengaluru, India, February 21, 2022.

Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg/Getty

Indian entrepreneurs are also investing in medium and micro-scaled solar power projects, and the government is backing a solar energy program for the country’s vast agricultural sector, paving the way for the installation of 3.75 million solar-powered irrigation pumps over the next three years.

“There is no way you can exclude India from the energy mix in the global scenario from now on,” Subrahmanyam Pulipaka, CEO of the National Solar Energy Federation of India, told CBS News. “I believe India will end up achieving the solar capacity target of 350 GW earlier than 2030.”

Touting success, and seeking help

India emits more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than every other individual nation apart from China and the U.S. With a growing economy and some 1.35 billion people, it has faced pressure from more developed countries to phase out coal and end subsidies for oil and gas.

While India’s energy transition is happening at an impressive rate, it argues that abandoning fossil fuels too quickly would risk its economic development, and in a nation where so many remain mired in poverty, it can’t afford that option. At least not without significant financial help from wealthier nations.

“India’s energy needs will grow, which means that in the short run, its emissions almost certainly will also grow, whether [for] five or 10 years, that is unclear,” Navroz Dubash, a professor with the India-based Centre for Policy Research, told CBS News. He said that for the next decade or two, India should stress that it is “committed to a low-carbon future, but one that allows us to develop and meet our energy needs.”

An Indian shopkeeper sits near solar panels placed outside his stall in a temporary settlement along the Yamuna river in New Delhi, on World Sustainable Energy Day, June 22, 2022.

Pankaj Nangia/Anadolu Agency/Getty

India has a relatively good report card to show off at the upcoming COP27 summit, and it will tout the success of its energy transition thus far to seek more global funding to decarbonize and mitigate the dangerous impacts of climate change, experts told CBS News.

“India has demonstrated that in the past, it has been able to add more clean energy alternatives and has set up huge ambitions,” Vibhuti Garg, an energy economist at the Institute for Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), told CBS News.

“India is the only country that has something to show as progress at COP27,” said Subrahmanyam Pulipaka, CEO of the National Solar Energy Federation of India. “Our renewable energy generation has not decreased but increased, even during the COVID pandemic and [Ukraine] war.”

At the last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought $1 trillion in climate finance for India over the coming nine years, to help it meet its 2030 targets.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers a speech during the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 2, 2021.

Robert Perry/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty

India did see an increase in renewable energy investments last year compared to previous years, but Garg, the IEEFA economist, said the country would need “about two to three times more investment to meet the 2030 target.”

A recent report by the New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute estimated that India would need $10.1 trillion in investments to achieve its pledge of complete carbon neutrality by 2070.

But with the Ukraine war creating huge disruptions in the global energy supply chain and fueling geopolitical uncertainty, it’s not clear if developing countries like India will be able to secure significant new financial commitments at COP27.

Already developed nations have broken a promise they made at COP15 to ringfence $100 billion annually to help developing countries decarbonize and deal with the impacts of climate change.

“And now that some of these developed countries are facing crises like rising prices of food and fuel in their own countries, things are becoming worse,” Garg told CBS News. “So, I don’t know how much finance they are going to make available to other countries to help them transition.”

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November 4, 2022