DeBriefed 11 April 2025: Trump tariff chaos; Climate penalties for shipping; Why is biodiversity loss overlooked?

Daisy Dunne

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

§ This week

Trump tariff chaos

90-DAY PAUSE: Donald Trump has announced a 90-day pause for most countries hit by higher tariffs, but escalated his trade war with China, BBC News reported, as US foreign policies continued to send ripples through global energy and commodity markets. Time reported on how higher tariffs could affect the manufacturing of electric vehicles, solar panels and batteries. The New York Times explained how Trump’s tariffs war could harm his quest to “drill, baby, drill”.

COAL RESURRECTION: Trump also signed multiple executive orders aimed at expanding the mining and burning of coal, the New York Times reported. This included an order to explore whether coal-power plants could serve new AI data centres, the newspaper said. The Guardian noted that energy experts say “any bump for coal under Trump is likely to be temporary because natural gas is cheaper and there is a durable market for renewable energy no matter who holds the White House”.

CLIMATE CUTS: Reuters reported that Trump issued an additional executive order aimed at blocking the enforcement of state laws to reduce the use of fossil fuels and combat climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to cut requirements for industrial facilities to collect and report their greenhouse gas emissions, revealed ProPublica. The White House is also ending funding for the US Global Change Research Program, which produces the federal government’s “pre-eminent climate report”, said the Guardian.

Climate penalties for shipping

EMISSIONS FEES: Countries have agreed to a new set of policies to try to drive the global shipping sector to net-zero, including financial penalties for ships that fail to cut their emissions from 2028. The rules, agreed around midday today at the UN International Maritime Organization (IMO) headquarters in London, represent the world’s first meaningful global carbon-pricing scheme on any industry polluter.

TARGETS MISSED: Global shipping accounts for around 3% of total greenhouse gas emissions. The package of measures agreed could result in an 8% absolute emissions reduction for the sector by 2030, according to the maritime consultancy UMAS. This falls short of the IMO’s own goals of a 20% emissions reduction by 2030, “striving for 30%”.

COUNTRIES CLASH: In an unusual move, countries passed the deal by a majority vote, after a group of largely petrostates expressed opposition. It comes after the US walked out of the talks earlier this week, urging others to follow. Pacific island nations were left disappointed with the level of ambition. Carbon Brief has just published in-depth coverage of the deal.

§ Around the world

  • INDIA HEAT: India is sweltering in an early heatwave, with temperatures reaching above 43C in 26 cities, the Times of India reported.
  • COP COUNCIL: Brazil has proposed setting up a new UN “climate council” to speed up decisionmaking, but “key developed countries” are “cautious”, said the Indian Express. The Brazilian government also told Reuters it will hold a two-day “pre-COP” a month before the COP30 climate summit.
  • LOSING CHARGE: The UK government announced a weakening of electric vehicles sales targets, citing turmoil caused by Trump’s tariffs, BBC News reported. It comes as right-leaning UK newspapers continue to aggressively push the government to “drop net-zero”.
  • GERMAN COALITION: Carbon Brief examined what the new German coalition government, comprising the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and centre-left Social Democratic Party, means for climate change.
  • ‘CARBON GRABS’: The head of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, told the Financial Times that multinational companies are “paying derisory prices” for carbon credits for offsetting projects in the continent, adding: “We used to have land grabs. Now we are having carbon grabs.”

§ 60

The number of countries that have dramatically scaled back their coal-power plans since the Paris Agreement in 2015, according to new Carbon Brief analysis of Global Energy Monitor data.

§ Latest climate research

  • Trade risks to energy security decrease in 70% of countries examined under future net-zero scenarios due to a reduced reliance on imported fossil fuels, a study in Nature Climate Change found.
  • Half of the world’s mangroves will be at “severe levels of risk” from climate change and sea level rise by the end of the century, research in Communications Earth and Environment found.
  • New research covered by Carbon Brief revealed that “very few” Africans place responsibility for climate action on “rich countries” – despite the long history of carbon emissions from the most developed nations

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

§ Captured

Image - Solar added more than twice as much to global generation in 2024 as any other siurce. Debriefed chart. (note)

Solar dominated electricity generation growth for the third year in a row in 2024, adding 474 terawatt hours, according to analysis by the thinktank Ember covered by Carbon Brief. Despite the record growth of solar and wind, global power-sector emissions hit an all-time high in 2024, the analysis found.

§ Spotlight

Guest post: Biodiversity loss still in climate’s shadow

Image - Dr Christos Mammides, an associate professor of conservation science from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (note)

Dr Christos Mammides, an associate professor of conservation science from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, explains how biodiversity loss measurably receives less media coverage than climate change – and pop icon Taylor Swift. 

In December 2022, signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity convened in Canada for the 15th  Conference of the Parties (COP15) to finalise and adopt the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

This landmark framework outlines 23 “action targets” aimed at halting biodiversity loss by 2030, representing a critical step toward the broader vision of living in harmony with nature by 2050.

It comes as biodiversity continues to decline at an unprecedented rate. Because of humans, one million animal and plant species now face extinction, many within decades.  

COP15 – and the adoption of the GBF – was widely anticipated and seen as a key opportunity to address the shortcomings of the previous global biodiversity targets, which the world fell short of achieving in 2020.

Yet, despite the significance of GBF in addressing one of the most urgent environmental challenges of our time – alongside climate change – COP15 attracted minimal global media attention.

According to our study, now published in npj Biodiversity, the conference received nearly seven times less coverage than COP27, the climate-focused summit held just a month earlier in November 2022 in Sharm El-Sheikh.

Our findings align with earlier research on media coverage in the US, Canada, and the UK, which similarly found that biodiversity topics are consistently overshadowed by climate change news.

In our study, we also compared the coverage of COP15 to that of pop icon Taylor Swift and found that the singer received twice as much media attention during the same period.

The diminished media coverage of COP15 was evident across numerous countries, including biodiversity-rich nations. 

‘Missed opportunity’

In our paper, we argue that the insufficient global media coverage of COP15 signifies a missed opportunity to enhance public awareness about biodiversity loss and the strategies to address it.

While media coverage does not always translate into action, research on climate change reporting suggests that, under the right conditions, it can help mainstream the issue and foster public engagement.

Although our study did not examine the reasons for the dissimilar coverage in depth, several factors have been proposed as potential drivers.

Climate change, for instance, has attracted support from high-profile advocates – including world leaders and celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio.

Moreover, its impacts oftentimes manifest in dramatic, headline-grabbing events, such as floods and wildfires.

In contrast, biodiversity loss often unfolds more gradually and through less visually striking processes, such as species extinctions and ecosystem degradation.In our research, we note there is a need for conservation stakeholders to collaborate more closely with the media to create compelling narratives that convey the urgency of biodiversity loss, highlight practical solutions and emphasise its deep interconnectedness with climate change.

§ Watch, read, listen

LAST CHANCE: Guardian Australia has released a six-part video documentary series about the nation’s extinction crisis ahead of its general election.

FISHING VS MINING: Al Jazeera reported on how fishing communities are protesting a government plan to develop offshore mining in Kerala, India.

DISTRACTION PIECES: DeBriefed’s editor Daisy Dunne had a lengthy chat about her career and the work of Carbon Brief on UK rapper, writer and actor Scroopius Pip’s Distraction Pieces podcast.

§ Coming up

§ Pick of the jobs

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to [email protected].

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