DeBriefed 25 April 2025: Brazil calls for country emissions plans; Global coral bleaching; Where top pope contenders stand on climate

Josh Gabbatiss

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

§ This week

Push for new climate targets

MISSED DEADLINE: During a virtual meeting of 17 world leaders, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and UN secretary general António Guterres urged countries to come forward with their overdue climate plans, according to Folha de São Paulo. Diplomats from Brazil, which is hosting COP30, are working with UN officials to encourage countries to launch their new 2035 “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) by September, Reuters explained. Carbon Brief analysis showed nearly every country missed the original deadline to submit new NDCs in February.

CHINA PLEDGE: Chinese president Xi Jinping announced during the meeting that China will submit its new NDC, covering all economic sectors and all greenhouse gases, ahead of COP30 in November, according to Xinhua. In addition, China Daily reported that Xi told attendees China would not slow down its climate action, “regardless of changes in the international landscape”.

Worst coral bleaching on record

NO END IN SIGHT: Coral bleaching has struck 84% of the world’s reefs in what the International Coral Reef Initiative has described as the worst global bleaching event on record, the Associated Press reported. The ongoing incident, caused by warming oceans, began in 2023 and it is “not clear” when it will end, according to the news outlet. 

GLOBAL THREAT: In total, reefs in at least 82 countries and territories “have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white”, according to the Guardian. Scientists in north and central America “were among the first to raise the alarm” after record ocean temperatures in the summer of 2023 and in recent weeks bleaching has spread to east African reefs, the newspaper added.

§ Around the world

  • CLIMATE-DRIVEN: The early arrival of an April heatwave in north India and Pakistan that saw temperatures reach 49C was “largely driven” by climate change, according to a new analysis by the French organisation ClimaMeter, reported by the Times of India.
  • TRADE WAR: The US has announced plans to impose tariffs on solar-panel imports from four southeast Asian countries – with some Cambodian exporters facing duties as high as 3,521% – according to BBC News. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has responded to rumours by stating it has no plans “at this time” to attempt to remove tax exempt status from US climate NGOs, Reuters reported.
  • NEW MARKET: Brazil is taking the “initial steps” to launch South America’s first-ever carbon market for major emitters within the country, which is expected to be operating by 2029, according to E&E News.
  • AUSTRALIA ELECTION: As Australia’s election looms, right-leaning Coalition leader Peter Dutton has confirmed that he would “scrap a popular tax break” for electric-vehicle drivers, the Guardian reported. Carbon Brief examined where Australia’s major parties stand on climate, energy and biodiversity loss.
  • HIGH ENERGY: An energy-security summit hosted in London by the UK government and the International Energy Agency saw prime minister Keir Starmer issue “some of his strongest comments yet” in support of net-zero policies, according to BusinessGreen. 

§ $28 trillion

The scale of the climate-related damage caused by emissions from 111 of the world’s biggest companies, according to a new Nature paper that the Washington Post said could “fuel” global climate litigation.

§ Latest climate research

  • A new study in Nature Climate Change concluded that the urban heat island effect – where cities experience higher temperatures than their surrounding rural areas – increases heat-related deaths, but also currently curbs deaths during cold spells at a higher rate.
  • A paper in Nature Reviews Clean Technology, also covered in a Carbon Brief guest post, explored “realistic” roles for hydrogen in the global energy transition, concluding that fuel-cell cars and space heating are “among the least promising applications”.
  • Sudden shifts from extreme warm to cold temperatures – and vice-versa – have become more frequent, intense and rapid over the past 60 years, according to new research published in Nature Communications.

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

§ Captured

Image - Conservative election win could add 800m tonnes to Canada’s emissions by 2035 (note)

A Conservative victory over the Liberals in the upcoming Canadian election could lead to nearly 800m extra tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade, according to Carbon Brief analysis. Modelling by researchers from Simon Fraser University and University of Victoria shows that if the Conservatives follow through on their pledges to cut various climate policies, Canadian emissions would likely start to creep up in the coming years. However, as the analysis shows, even the Liberals’ policy platform would not put Canada on track to meet any of its climate targets, on the way to net-zero emissions by 2050.

§ Spotlight

How do the top papal candidates compare on climate?

Following the death of Pope Francis, Carbon Brief explores the various papal contenders’ views on climate issues.

Pope Francis, who died this week, has been praised for making climate action a core part of his work as the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

His influence extended far beyond the church and included directly lobbying oil companies, engaging in UN climate talks and criticising world leaders’ lack of action.

In 2015, the pope published Laudato Si – the first papal encyclical dedicated to the environment. As Carbon Brief reported at the time, it drew heavily on climate science and even called for fossil fuels to be phased out. 

There is much speculation about whether Francis’s successor will continue his relatively progressive agenda, including on climate change.

Below, Carbon Brief examines the climate credentials of the cardinals that have been tipped as most likely to be chosen as the next pope during the church’s secret “conclave” process.   

Image - Papal candidates (left to right) Peter Turkson, Luis Antonio Tagle, Robert Sarah and Pietro Parolin. (note)

Pietro Parolin

The current favourite to become pope is Pietro Parolin, an Italian cardinal who has served as the Vatican’s secretary of state since 2013. He leads the Holy See’s delegation at UN climate summits. 

He has stressed the “unequivocal” evidence and “scientific consensus” behind climate change. Speaking on behalf of Francis at COP28, Parolin described environmental destruction as “an offence against God, a sin that is not only personal, but also structural”.

The Holy See ratified the Paris Agreement in 2022 and has been actively involved in COP negotiations. In 2024, Parolin’s delegation attracted controversy when diplomats accused it of aligning with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia to block gender discussions at COP29.

Peter Turkson

Ghanaian cardinal Peter Turkson, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, has been influential in international climate politics. 

During his time as president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Turkson spent 18 months guiding the drafting of Laudato Si. He was described by the Guardian as “the public face of Pope Francis’s war on global warming”.

The encyclical was launched to influence the nascent Paris Agreement and commentators have pointed to similarities in wording and themes between the documents. Turkson attended the Paris summit with a Vatican delegation and the goal of being a “catalyst” for action.

Luis Antonio Tagle

Another frontrunner, cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle has not had as much high-level involvement in climate politics as other candidates. However, he has often been compared with Francis due to his focus on social justice.

Tagle has been a vocal supporter of Laudato Si and has been involved in climate activism in his native Philippines. He has been active in the response to extreme weather in his country and has made the link between such events and climate change. 

Robert Sarah 

A conservative cardinal from Guinea, Robert Sarah has been welcomed by multiple right-leaning media outlets and is viewed by some as an “anti-woke” successor to Francis.

However, he has cited Francis’ teachings on the environment and pointed to the role of foreign interests in exploiting African resources. “They pollute the environment and leave the continent in endemic poverty,” he wrote in 2019.

Other contenders

There is huge uncertainty surrounding the conclave voting process to choose the new pope and several other candidates are thought to be in the running.

Among them are the Italian cardinal Matteo Zuppi, another progressive who has called for “bold” action on climate change.

Another is Péter Erdő, a leading conservative candidate from Hungary. While Erdő has not been vocal on climate change, he has close ties with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, a strong opponent of climate action.

§ Watch, read, listen

SILENT MAJORITY: Covering Climate Now has launched “the 89% project”, a global media collaboration based on the idea that there is a “silent majority” of people around the world who want climate action.

ATTRIBUTION AND LITIGATION: Dr Friederike Otto and Dr Joyce Kimutai from the World Weather Attribution project at Imperial College London appeared on the New Scientist Weekly podcast to talk about how climate attribution science can be used to achieve climate justice, in part through litigation.

NIMBY NEWSCAST: Tortoise Media’s Slow Newscast investigated the “so-called zealots” who have been taking legal action against everything from road-building to energy projects in the UK, in an episode titled “nimby nation”.

§ 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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