Nothing shows the urgency of fighting the climate crisis more dramatically than the harm human-caused global heating is already wreaking on people and places, writes Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington.
Today brings the latest example, with the news that the direct economic damage caused recently in the Philippines by Super Typhoon Fung-wong was increased by about 40%, because of the CO2 pumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. That’s homes, businesses, hospitals, roads and more, all hit much harder because of climate change.
The estimate, made by researchers at Imperial College London, used a method called attribution. This involves comparing the actual intensity of the typhoon today, with a modelled typhoon in a world without global heating – more details here.
With fossil fuel emissions setting a new record in 2025, typhoons will become even more destructive. In a world with 2C of global heating, the economic damage would be 62% higher than an unheated world, the scientists found.
The study also found that human-induced warming of the climate intensified Fung-wong’s rainfall by 10.5% and strengthened its wind speed by 5%. The climate crisis also intensified Typhoon Kalmaegi, which also struck the Phillipines, where it killed at least 224 people.
“Our studies capture only a partial view of the far-reaching human and economic costs caused by Typhoons Kalmaegi and Fung-wong,” said Dr Emily Theokritoff at Imperial College. The analysis does not, for example, include the long-term harm to health.
“As Cop30 unfolds, this serves as a powerful reminder of the urgent economic case for cutting emissions now, and the moral responsibility to rapidly scale up international finance for loss and damage and adaptation in vulnerable countries,” she said.
The climate crisis is already causing many searing heatwaves that would have been impossible without fossil fuel emissions, and heat is killing about one person per minute on average. Attribution studies are also increasingly relevant in lawsuits aiming to hold polluters to account. Carbon emissions from the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies were directly linked to dozens of deadly heatwaves for the first time in September.
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Dharna Noor
Today, the international youth climate group Fridays for Future are holding a global climate strike in cities across the world. I met the organizers of the march in Belém early this morning by the city’s port as they prepared for the strike.
Among the first to arrive: Sueley Cavalcante, a 26-year-old Fridays for Future organizer and art history student. She came to Cop from Sao Paolo, Brazil.
“We have to face a lot of contractions at this Cop,” she told me. The biggest one, she said, is the exploitation of resources taking place to make the conference happen.
“Brazil wants to be considered a global climate leader but they just do this to show off. It’s just discourse,” she said. “They cannot do that while opening new oil exploration. For us, doing this Cop in the most sensitive zone in the Atlantic is even worse.” Read more about those concerns here.
Officials say the oil exploration will create jobs for families who need them, but oil jobs require a lot of technical expertise and experience, Cavalcante told me. “The oil is not going to help those families,” she said.
Fridays for Future is the “first contact” many young Brazilians have with activism, said Cavalcante.
“Fridays for Future is an invitation for young [people] to discover themselves, to discover that if they care about climate there are so many ways for them to get involved.”
Luca Ernemann from German youth climate organization Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union has come to the youth strike to pressure governments to do more on climate.
“Cops happen, but emissions go up. Our governments have to make real solutions and have more ambitions especially on the NDCs,” he said. (That’s Cop-talk for “nationally determined contributions, or countries’ plans to curb carbon pollution.”)
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Some more pictures of this morning’s protests are coming through. And my colleague Oliver Milman has arrived at the scene and says Cop president Andre Correa do Lago is now talking to the protesters.
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My colleague Dharna Noor has this update on the day ahead.
Negotiations at Cop30 are moving along, but it has become clear which issues will become major sticking points. Among those problems: trade, transparency regarding emissions reporting and finance, and the need for countries to regularly submit action plans (known in Cop-talk as “nationally determined contributions”) to draw down planet-heating pollution. We’re hoping to have an update on these challenges on Saturday from Brazilian officials.
Parties are also working through disagreements on finance for adaptation to the climate crisis. But Cop is not merely about politicians’ negotiations. This year, the conference has also sparked a colorful array of events held by civil society groups. “That’s where it’s really all happening,” Susana Muhamad, former environment minister for Colombia, told my colleague Jon Watts and I on Wednesday evening.
Friday will bring the continuation of the people’s summit, where movements from around the world are holding events focused on promoting climate justice. There, the programming, put together by 1,100 organizations, is focused on themes such as land and food sovereignty, environmental racism, the need for climate policy to uplift workers, the preservation of democracy, sustainable and just development, and gender equity.
Meanwhile, youth in Belem and around the world will hold a climate strike demanding the swift and justice-oriented phaseout of fossil fuels. Follow the blog to see our coverage!
The issues being raised during Cop, both inside and outside the negotiations, may seem too vast to grasp. But remember: the climate crisis is reshaping every facet of society. The UN’s top climate science body told us back in 2019 that averting climate catastrophe will require “unprecedented changes across all aspects of society”.
In other news: If you’ve been following the drama over which country will host Cop31, know that Australia and Turkey are still butting heads. We’ll keep you posted!
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Good morning Matthew Taylor here and I will be hosting the liveblog for the next few hours.
We are getting reports from Belem that dozens of Indigenous protesters are blocking the front of the COP30 summit venue demanding that the Brazilian government halt all development projects in the Amazon, including mining, logging, oil drilling and the building of a new railway for transporting mining and agricultural products..
The protesters staged a sit-in creating long queues and forcing delegates to use a side entrance to resume their negotiations on tackling climate change.
Colleagues are on their way to the protests and we will should have more information soon.
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