“We’re not in Kansas anymore. But we might be underwater in Kitimat” . . . Climate Action Tiger (“C.A.T.”) channeling Dorothy, Mark Twain, and an overheating Earth.
Welcome to Earth, 3rd July 2025: a Baker’s dozen articles. 1 overheated hemisphere. 17 SDGs begging for a lifeboat.
Welcome to the 3rd July 2025, where Bloomberg + Financial Times news articles include: heat-domes are baking Europe & USA like a convection-oven set to “climate vengeance” + California redrew its wildfire maps so that housing developers can build in fire zones and floodplains + JPMorgan tokenizes carbon credits while Meta tokenizes hope + Germany greenlights gas drilling inside a UNESCO World Heritage site.
SDGs 1, 2: No Poverty & Zero Hunger
Climate disruption = inflation + eviction + starvation. When heatwaves crush wheat harvests and floods ruin rice crops, food prices spike globally. When floods hit Pakistan, droughts hit Spain, and methane pollutes croplands in Louisiana, it’s the poorest who pay first and worst. No SDG exists in a vacuum. And none are on track.
SDGs 3, 8, 10, 16: Health, Decent Work, Reduced Inequality & Justice
In Germany, the government authorized gas drilling beneath the Wadden Sea, a United Nations’-protected marine reserve. They framed it as energy security. The local ecosystem? Collateral. A Greenpeace Germany scientist called it “unforgivable.” A UNESCO advisor just called it “predictable.”
In Canada, Mark Carney’s “energy superpower” vision includes massive LNG exports and fast-tracked environmental reviews. But it also reignites Indigenous opposition, like that of the Wet’suwet’en nation, who say these rushed pipelines trample rights, land, and democracy itself.
SDG 4: Quality Education
Back in the City of London, Aberdeen’s outgoing chairman Sir Douglas Flint called ESG a mistake. Not because it failed . . . but because it over-promised. “We’re saving the world,” he mocked, describing ESG as a feast for litigation lawyers.
He’s missing the point: the REAL mistakes are apathy, silence and inaction.
As Standard Chartered’s Bill Winters put it: “Greenhushing is shameful.” When CEOs stop speaking truth because it’s “politically inconvenient,” we lose not just momentum . . . we lose moral clarity.
SDG 5: Gender Equality
Let’s not pretend climate injustice falls evenly.
As front-line communities lose homes to fire and flood, women . . . especially Indigenous women . . . shoulder disproportionate burdens of displacement, food insecurity, and unpaid care-giving. It was Indigenous women like Crystal Smith of the Haisla Nation who negotiated equity ownership in the Cedar LNG project. That’s what SDG 5 should look like: not just rights, but power.
SDGs 6, 11, 15: Clean Water, Sustainable Cities & Life on Land
California dreams of building 2.5 million new homes. But much of its remaining land is now either wildfire fuel or sliding into the sea. Developers are pouring billions into housing projects marked highest fire risk on state maps. Evacuation routes are choked. Insurance is vanishing. And still, we build.
From Malibu to Phoenix, from coastal erosion to aquifer collapse, we are discovering the hard way: there is no “safe zone” from climate chaos anymore.
SDGs 7, 9, 12: Clean Energy, Industry & Innovation & Responsible Consumption
Edward Lee, a James Beard chef and Iron Chef veteran, did what billion-dollar supply chains and hotel conglomerates still haven’t: eliminate plastic. No cling wrap. No squeeze bottles. No disposable gloves. His 35-seat nonprofit restaurant in D.C. replaced them all—and tracked the cost.
It wasn’t cheaper. It was just right.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan is tokenizing carbon credits on the blockchain. What about past scandals where offsets counted as reductions . . . even after the forests burned? Daniel Hanna at Barclays called out the failure of “climate finance” to earn community trust. Commoditizing nature, he warned, risks repeating the same alienating mistakes.
SDG 13: Climate Action
Europe’s 2040 emissions goal . . . cutting net greenhouse gases 90% . . . should have been a triumph. Instead, it’s watered down with carbon offsets and bureaucratic “flexibility.” Politicians from Warsaw to Paris to Prague are already bracing to kill it. Why? They fear manufactured backlash from farmers, fossil lobbies, and voters trapped in fear.
At the same time, the United States baked under dual heat domes, with 40°C+ days blanketing the Midwest and Europe alike. Scientists say this isn’t an anomaly . . . it’s a new atmospheric architecture. The jet stream has become a “quasi-resonant amplifier,” a phrase that sounds like bespoke hi-fi equipment . . . but instead describes our planetary lungs suffocating . . . in place.
SDGs 14 & 17: Life Below Water & Partnerships for the Goals
Then came the silence from above: MethaneSAT, a satellite funded by Google and Jeff Bezos, was built to spot hidden methane leaks in oilfields. It quietly lost power last week, drifting into the void. Its final gift: a few months of precious data on an invisible gas more potent than CO₂ and 80 times more urgent in the short term.
We’ve still got a dozen methane trackers in orbit. But FEW are open-access. Most protect corporate secrets. Methane emissions remain widely underreported and deliberately obscured by energy giants with lobbyists in every capital.
Final Scorecard? All 17 SDGs. All under threat. If this were a basketball game, we’d be down 14 points with two minutes left in the fourth quarter. Our star defenders? Benched by lobbyists. The floor’s slick with oil. The shot clock’s ticking . . . and our team-owners just sold the playbook to Big Methane.
This IS crunch time. Decency NEEDED.
Here are the referenced news articles for context:
▷ Financial Times: Meta’s AI climate tool raised false hope of CO₂ removal, scientists say . . . Meta has been accused of using faulty data to train an artificial intelligence climate tool, with scientists claiming the Big Tech group raised false hopes about the feasibility of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at scale https://on.ft.com/3I4aBsD
▷ Bloomberg: America’s Hot Garbage Problem https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-america-hot-garbage-problem-toxic-landfills/?srnd=phx-green
▷ Financial Times: Deadly ‘early summer’ heatwave moves across Europe as climate scientists ring alarm bells . . . Fire evacuations in Greece and Turkey while temperatures in Spain and Portugal hit 46°Celsius https://on.ft.com/4nxhLpi
▷ Bloomberg: How Extreme Heat Is Testing the Human Body’s Limits https://www.bloomberg.com/explainers/extreme-heat-dangers?srnd=phx-green
▷ Financial Times: Canada’s bid to become an energy superpower . . . The government has a plan to exploit its abundant fossil fuel resources to help ward off the ill effects of Trump’s tariffs https://on.ft.com/44fjHv6
▷ Bloomberg: Europe’s Climate Resolve Faces Test as EU Unveils 2040 Goal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-02/europe-s-climate-change-resolve-faces-test-as-2040-emissions-goal-unveiled?srnd=phx-green
▷ Financial Times: The US is failing its green tech ‘Sputnik moment’ . . . Prejudice and protectionism are dismantling Joe Biden’s environmental legacy https://on.ft.com/4evJpir
▷ Bloomberg: Barclays Senior Banker Calls Out Mistakes of Climate Finance https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-02/barclays-senior-banker-calls-out-mistakes-of-climate-finance?srnd=phx-green
▷ Financial Times: Dry weather pushes up UK food inflation as harvests suffer . . . Price increases in June hit highest rate in more than a year, according to British Retail Consortium https://on.ft.com/4lwFwMv
▷ Bloomberg: JPMorgan’s Blockchain Unit Explores Tokenizing Carbon Credits https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-02/jpmorgan-s-blockchain-unit-explores-tokenizing-carbon-credits?srnd=phx-green
▷ Financial Times: Rising aviation emissions threaten UK climate targets, official advisers warn . . . Flights now contribute more greenhouse gas than electricity sector, Climate Change Committee says https://on.ft.com/4kbOMEO
▷ Bloomberg: California Is Running Out of Safe Places to Build Homes Due to Fires, Rising Seas https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-07-02/fires-sea-level-rise-limit-places-california-can-build-homes-as-climate-changes?srnd=phx-green
▷ Financial Times: Transcript: The future of the postwar system . . . The FT’s chief economics commentator Martin Wolf talks to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman https://on.ft.com/3IqhCUv
▷ Bloomberg: Bezos-Backed Satellite Conducting Climate Research Loses Power https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-01/bezos-backed-satellite-conducting-climate-research-loses-power?srnd=phx-green
▷ Financial Times: EU to exempt heavy industry from carbon tax on exports . . . Concessions to support European producers in the face of foreign competition follow calls to ease climate targets https://on.ft.com/4nMeJOn
▷ Bloomberg: Germany Gives Go-Ahead for Gas Drilling in Protected Marine Zone https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-02/germany-gives-go-ahead-for-gas-drilling-in-protected-marine-zone?srnd=phx-green
▷ Financial Times: Aberdeen chair says ‘save the world’ claim by asset managers was a ‘mistake’ . . . Douglas Flint criticises ‘ridiculously extravagant claims’ https://on.ft.com/3ImYWoB
▷ Bloomberg: IEA Sees Bargains in $100 Billion LNG Clean-Up Proposal . . . The world’s liquefied natural gas supply chains spew roughly 350 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year — more than Italy’s annual emissions. For roughly $100 billion, that climate footprint could be cut by 60%, according to the International Energy Agency https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-20/iea-sees-bargains-in-100-billion-lng-clean-up-proposal
▷ Financial Times: How the next financial crisis starts . . . The climate shocks that could trigger wider market turmoil https://on.ft.com/46dSz0R
For ALL Financial Times Climate Capital news articles: https://www.ft.com/climate-capital
For ALL Bloomberg Green news articles: https://www.bloomberg.com/green
