Is a billionaire’s opinion important just because they are a billionaire? A new We Don’t Have Time analysis exposes how the world’s most influential philanthropist quietly shifted his climate agenda, bankrolled a think tank known for promoting climate delay, and released a well-timed message that eclipsed the UN Secretary-General’s most urgent warning yet.
More than 50,000 people have descended on Belém, the small Amazonian city hosting this year’s COP30 climate summit. Cruise ships, school dormitories, and even army barracks have been turned into makeshift lodgings. It’s a logistical challenge — and a sign that this conference will be anything but ordinary.
The reappearance of banned pesticides through imported fruits and vegetables exposes the fragility of Europe’s food safety system. What was meant to protect people and the planet is being undermined by global trade loopholes. As long as the EU doesn’t apply identical standards to imported goods and domestic production, its promise of safe and fair food remains only partially fulfilled.
Oxfam’s new report, Climate Plunder, exposes how the world’s richest one percent are not only responsible for a disproportionate share of carbon emissions, but also for shaping the very policies meant to stop them. As the planet passes the 1.5 °C threshold, billionaires and big corporations continue to profit from an economy that is literally overheating.
A team at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has reached a new milestone in quantum computing: a functioning system with 6,100 qubits. These are so-called neutral-atom qubits held in place by optical “tweezers.” It is the most extensive and most stable qubit array ever built. For the global quantum community, this is considered a breakthrough: for the first time, scalability is being combined with high accuracy and long coherence.
Instead of winding down coal, oil, and gas as promised, governments around the world are preparing to expand fossil fuel production — a move that scientists warn could blow past global climate goals.
In real-world driving conditions, the CO₂ emissions of plug-in hybrid cars are nearly five times higher than official tests suggest, according to an analysis by the European Environment Agency. Automakers often present plug-in hybrids as a more conventional alternative to fully electric vehicles, as they combine a gasoline or diesel engine with an electric motor and a battery that can be charged from the power grid.
The Trump administration has moved to halt construction on the nearly finished offshore wind farm Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut. At the same time, Google President and CIO Ruth Porat is steering the company toward fossil fuels to power its fast-growing AI operations. For Porat, it’s a déjà vu moment: during the financial crisis, she was at Morgan Stanley, deeply tied to the subprime mortgage bets that nearly sank the global economy. Now, critics warn, she risks repeating history — only this time with energy instead of housing.
The European Patent Office (EPO) allowed a patent on bush-type watermelon plants and their fruits as technical inventions. However, the bushy growth of the plants was a random natural occurrence and, according to the patent description, was simply discovered. European law does not allow patenting such plants.
As hydrogen infrastructure is rolled out in the EU, refuelling stations must be distributed according to the same principle in all countries. However, a study from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden now highlights shortcomings in EU regulations. Using an advanced model, the researchers show that the distribution of refueling stations may be incorrectly dimensioned and lead to losses of tens of millions of euros a year in some countries.