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The BBC has dropped a bombshell story, in partnership with the Center for Climate Reporting, claiming that the UAE presidency of the UN’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai has been secretly using COP negotiations to strike new oil and gas deals that would increase global fossil fuel production.

With serious flaws and omissions, this story is extremely misleading. Yet it has been seized on by my fellow environmental campaigners to suggest that the COP28 negotiations are nothing more than a cover to protect a ploy to expand global fossil fuel production.

I write from the COP28 summit, at which I am working to support a number of developing countries, and where I delivered a keynote presentation on the inevitable obsolescence of fossil fuels.

I have been reporting on these issues as an investigative journalist for 23 years. In that period, I’ve broken major exclusives on how fossil fuel interests have fatally compromised climate negotiations, such as at the COP26 summit hosted by the UK. And earlier this year, I wrote an open letter to the COP28 president, Dr Sultan Al Jaber, offering a deep systems-based critique of parts of the COP28 presidency’s agenda.

Since then, I also offered a systems assessment of how the COP28 presidency’s policy agenda is the most ambitious compared to any previous UN climate summit – and that if implemented, its core proposals would make a significant impact in accelerating global system transformation toward a world consistent with staying within the 1.5C safe limit recognised by the Paris agreement.

The UAE’s role as a major global oil producer has been the focal point of reporting on its COP28 presidency. To some extent, this is reasonable, understandable and necessary. But the BBC story is so over-simplifying, it is in danger of misleading readers in many important ways.

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The job of journalism is not to reinforce a pre-existing bias – but to get at what’s really going on, even if that’s complex; and to acknowledge if something is uncertain. In my analysis, the BBC has not done that.

In its first major scoop, the BBC cited leaked briefing documents prepared by the COP28 presidency team for meetings with at least 27 foreign governments ahead of the COP summit. The story has not only gone viral, but has been seen as 'smoking gun’ proof of how the COP28 presidency is 'greenwashing’ plans to expand fossil fuel use around the world.

Having studied it carefully, I am convinced that the leaked documents cannot really be used to validate this. I haven’t seen these myself, so I can only comment on what the BBC has reported about them. But going from the BBC’s reporting, some of its conclusions are at the very least not fully proven.

The Background

The background documents offer ‘talking points’ about the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) and Masdar, the UAE’s state-owned energy giants. The BBC presumes that preparing talking points on areas of commercial cooperation between the UAE and other governments is necessarily proof of intent to use diplomatic dialogues focused on the COP process to pursue other commercial interests.

While that might appear to be the case at first glance, my first instinct as an investigative journalist is stop and ask: but is it?

The first thing that drew my attention to the weakness of the story is a key contradiction in the BBC’s reporting.

In the COP28 team’s initial response to a request for comment, it simply stated that these were “private meetings”. The BBC claimed that it didn’t deny using the meetings for business discussions – but later on in the piece the BBC also said that, according to the COP28 team, it was “simply untrue” that the commercial talking points “always need to be included” in the briefing notes.

What I didn’t quite understand was why the BBC would insist that the COP28 team had not denied their accusations, when the BBC simultaneously acknowledged that the COP28 team did deny that commercial talking points had to be part of the briefing notes.

The way the BBC chose to present the information it had to hand is questionable. By claiming that the COP28 team “did not deny” using ministerial meetings to strike business deals, it seemed to vindicate its story – but its own reporting within the same article seems to contradict this.

Days later, the COP28 president ran a press conference explicitly denying that his meetings with ministers were about drumming up oil and gas expansion deals. He said that he had not actually seen the commercial talking points that had been leaked to the BBC.

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What Were These Notes?

If that is true, it means that these talking points leaked to the BBC may well have just been part of wider general background guidance notes that are regularly prepared for diplomatic teams before entering into bilateral discussions.

Equally, they may well have been part of a raft of various such notes that someone in the COP28 team believed could be an important contribution to understanding the UAE’s relationship with these countries. Identifying overlapping areas of commercial interest is a routine component of diplomacy.

So the next unanswered question I had was about the email exchange between COP28 staff members asking the talking points to be included in briefings.

The BBC report did not specify precisely who it is that emailed COP28 staff members about including commercial talking points in background briefing notes.

This is important because any UN COP country presidency is a giant, bureaucratic operation with multiple senior and junior directors whose jurisdiction often overlaps.

Did Al Jaber Use Them?

The next question is whether there is anything in the BBC’s reporting which can decisively prove its unequivocal assertion that Dr Sultan Al Jaber was using these background notes to conduct business dealings with governments in his pre-COP meetings?

At this crucial point, the BBC’s reporting gets vague. It acknowledges that: “It is not clear on how many occasions Dr Jaber and his colleagues raised the talking points in COP28 meetings with foreign governments. We know, on at least one occasion, a nation followed up on commercial discussions brought up in a meeting arranged by the UAE's COP28 team. However, 12 nations have told the BBC there was either no discussion of commercial activities during meetings, or a meeting did not take place.”

That’s pretty weak. The Center for Climate Reporting’s version of the story says that it found only one other confirmation. Both confirmations came from whistleblowers who saw these background notes.

If the BBC could only confirm two instances of a pre-COP meeting touching on areas of commercial cooperation, based on the same whistleblower who leaked the documents, that is more consistent with Al Jaber’s statement that he didn’t actually read or use these briefing notes.

The BBC also concedes that 12 governments either confirmed no meetings happened or that no commercial issues were raised in meetings which did happen.

CNN also tried to verify the story by contacting 15 of the countries. Of these, four confirmed meetings, but said either no business discussions took place or did not confirm whether they did. A further two replied to say no meeting occurred.

This too is crucial – because it suggests that the background briefings notes obtained by the BBC were not consistently used by the COP28 presidency. By its own reporting, for nearly half of the countries in question, we have no evidence these notes were used or applied. That in itself demonstrates that the BBC had no good reason to assume these leaks represented the highest levels of COP28 decision-making.

The BBC has therefore overreached in this conclusion. It may have made for a hot exclusive, but a serious investigation cannot just take documents at face value without actually investigating them and their context properly – which, in my view, the BBC failed to do.

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Increasing Fossil Fuel Projects?

What about the specific content of the background notes in terms of supporting the idea that the UAE was planning to use ministerial pre-COP meetings to win new deals to increase fossil fuel production in a way that undermines that Paris agreement?

It seems to me that the BBC systematically misrepresented the contents of the documents.

The BBC mentions six specific cases. Perhaps there are more. But of the ones it identifies, I found no evidence to support the BBC’s claim that they represent an effort to increase oil and gas production.

And the only case which actually talks about expanding something, is a wind farm project in the UK.  

Let’s go through it in detail and look at the key facts.

Fossil Fuels in Partnership with China?

The BBC states: “They included proposed ‘talking points’, such as one for China which says Adnoc, the UAE's state oil company, is ‘willing to jointly evaluate international LNG [liquefied natural gas] opportunities’ in Mozambique, Canada and Australia.”

The first step to understanding this is to look deeper into the context of the countries and projects mentioned.

All three countries are coal producers. Mozambique last month was eyeing up receiving $200 million to invest in ramping-up coal production. Canada is the world’s 13th-largest coal producer, though its production is declining; while Australia is expanding production dramatically. Canada is also, of course, the world’s major producer of oil from tar sands, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels.

For the past few years, most scientific life-cycle studies have shown that LNG’s carbon emissions are around 50% lower than coal. This is the view of the International Energy Agency, the US Department of Energy, and the wider literature.

The main outlier is research by Cornell University ecologist Robert Howarth offers the main critique of this research – he recently released a paper concluding that LNG produces higher emissions. This paper is not peer-reviewed, however. Howarth’s body of work has been widely contested in the scientific community. His famous 2011 paper claiming that shale gas has higher emissions than coal, on which his new LNG work builds, was heavily critiqued by other Cornell University scientists for inappropriate assumptions and misinterpreting his own data.

All in all, there’s a strong scientific case for the idea that LNG can work as a bridge fuel to accelerate the disruption of coal and oil, reducing emissions by as much as half, while we are still building out renewable energy.

Exploring LNG opportunities in these countries with China might well count, technically, as being open to ‘new’ fossil fuel projects. But what the BBC report completely ignores is that, rather than leading to a total increase in fossil fuel production, these would potentially drive a net decrease in overall emissions significantly by disrupting existing oil and coal projects.

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Fossil Fuels in Colombia?

The BBC goes on to state: “The documents suggest telling a Colombian minister that Adnoc ‘stands ready’ to support Colombia to develop its fossil fuel resources.”

As the only quotation here is “stands ready”, it is not at all clear that this implies a commitment to help Colombia launch new fossil fuel projects, as opposed to helping them develop existing oil and gas projects.

Colombia has famously committed to issuing no new oil and gas exploration licenses, and is only continuing with oil exports from existing reserves. With production declining, and oil revenues comprising 10% of GDP, Colombia is currently focused on reviving and developing already-awarded blocks.

The background notes provide no reason to assume it concerns trying to identify and exploit new reserves.

Fossil Fuels in Germany?

The BBC goes on: “There are talking points for 13 other countries, including Germany and Egypt, which suggest telling them Adnoc wants to work with their governments to develop fossil fuel projects.”

But then, in describing the details of what the notes say, there’s once again nothing that specifically implies launching new fossil fuel production projects.

For instance, according to the BBC: “Germany was to be told by Adnoc: ‘We stand ready to continue our LNG supplies’.”

This is a straightforward confirmation of simply continuing an existing supply stream, rather than creating a new one.

Fossil Fuels in Brazil?

The background notes suggest asking the Brazilian Environment Minister for help “securing alignment and endorsement” for Adnoc’s bid to buy a key stake in Braskem.

The BBC describes Braskem as “Latin America’s largest oil and gas processing company”, but to be more clear, it’s a petrochemicals company – not a fossil fuel producer – which means it uses fossil fuels to produce chemicals.

Increasingly, though, Braskem has developed a reputation for pioneering innovative technologies for sustainable chemicals.

Either way, this is about a bid for a stake in an existing company, rather than a new fossil fuel project.

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Fossil Fuels in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela?

The final example of a fossil fuel project mentioned by the BBC is a reference to Adnoc talking points suggesting “the oil-producing nations of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela be told ‘there is no conflict between the sustainable development of any country’s natural resources and its commitment to climate change'”.

Although this is a general statement of support for the idea that these countries can combat climate change while ‘sustainably’ developing their resources, which of course include fossil fuels – it doesn’t specify fossil fuels and offers no discussion of any specific new fossil fuel production projects.

Is the BBC Story Accurate?

In asserting definitively that the documents “appear” to support new fossil fuel production projects around the world, the BBC story doesn’t accurately represent their contents.

The BBC’s verdict that they provide clear proof of the COP28 presidency trying to strike commercial deals under the cover of its climate negotiations also remains unproven.

What the leaked documents do show, unequivocally, is that someone inside the COP28 presidency had requested some background research and talking points to be prepared to guide diplomatic discussions. But it’s not clear who, and what happened next.

The leaks raise important and legitimate questions about the COP28 presidency’s relationship with the UAE’s state-owned energy companies (anyone who understands how the UAE works, however, would hardly consider the blurring of lines between the state and these companies a mind-blowing revelation).

But it is simply not clear what happened with these documents, and whether they were indeed used in the way the BBC assumes. In fact, out of 27 countries, the BBC could only identify two cases of commercial issues mentioned in these notes being followed up by countries.

Overall, then, the BBC’s claim that these notes are evidence of ‘oil and gas deals’ that “appear” to increase fossil fuel production is, in this context, misleading.

This story was originally published by Hakai Magazine.

The sun sits low in the sky as David Borbón walks from one young mangrove to another, treading carefully so as not to disturb their roots. A golden glow lights the plants as he delicately checks for flowers and new growth, removing strands of dried algae and seagrass that accumulate on the saplings with the coming and going of tides. Every so often, he lets out a joyful cry upon finding a new propagule — a small, green bean–shaped seedling — growing on a tree he has planted: “My grandchild!” He takes out his phone to capture a picture of the new family member. It has taken him over a decade to get to this moment — a shoreline filled with thriving mangroves where before there was only sand — his devotion to his work unwavering.

Back in his boat, we slowly navigate the narrow channels from Borbón’s mangroves to his nearby home in the small fishing community of Campo Delgadito, mindful of our course with the dropping tide. Shorebirds scurry on the exposed mudflats, digging for their next meal. Situated on the Pacific coast about halfway down the peninsula of Baja California, Mexico, El Delgadito — “the little narrow one” — is a long spit of land jutting northwest into the mouth of Laguna San Ignacio. It’s home to 54 permanent residents, with up to 85 inhabitants during the most important fishing seasons.

White pelicans rest on a sandbar exposed at low tide. Behind them, scores of shorebirds forage for food. Over 200 bird species have been identified in Laguna San Ignacio, representing almost half of all the species found in the state of Baja California Sur, Mexico. The mangroves serve as excellent resting places and feeding grounds for many of these species. Credit: Gemina Garland-Lewis
To the left of Campo Delgadito, Mexico, lies the Pacific Ocean and many of the small islets where David Borbón focuses his work. On its right, mangroves grow right up and into residents’ backyards. The community is located at the southern entrance of Laguna San Ignacio, part of the Whale Sanctuary of El Vizcaíno. The sanctuary is an important site for gray whales during their birthing and breeding season and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Credit: Gemina Garland-Lewis

Borbón first arrived in El Delgadito as a young man in 1980, and he returned seasonally for the fishing — lobster, sea bass, halibut and clams. “[Back then], mangroves were just branches that were in the way of navigating to go fishing. I didn’t have the slightest idea of their importance,” he recalls. By the time he permanently settled in the community in the early 2000s, he was hearing stories of overfishing, even in this remote area. Fishermen boated farther, used more gear and more gas, yet still came back with smaller catches and smaller fish. Borbón and his wife, Ana María Peralta, could see the changes but weren’t sure what to do. A conversation with their daughter, who was away at university, gave them insight into their next steps. She told them what she had been learning about mangroves: how they prevented coastal erosion, stored carbon and provided a nursery habitat for myriad fish and crustacean species, many the same as those Borbón and other fishermen in El Delgadito were catching. The trees he had barely paid any attention to became the sole focus of his attention.

Gemima Garland-Lewis

Tens of thousands of shells of callo de hacha, the pen shell clam, are piled deep surrounding the dump in Laguna San Ignacio. This species is one of several clams that form an important part of the income in this area. Many in El Delgadito, as the community is known by those who live there, believe that their children will not be able to make a living fishing as they have done. “We are taking and not putting back,” says one of El Delgadito’s fishermen.

Four species of mangroves — red, white, black and sweet — grow throughout the state of Baja California Sur, which covers the lower half of the Baja California peninsula, and elsewhere in tropical and subtropical latitudes around the world. Mangroves are perhaps not what jumps to mind in desert ecosystems like that of El Delgadito, however, which sits less than one-half of one degree south of all mangroves’ northern limit in the entire eastern Pacific. Mangroves here grow short and stunted compared with their tropical counterparts — even when fully developed, a species that reaches over 25 meters in height in the tropics may barely make two meters in this region. Their small stature doesn’t make them any less mighty from the standpoint of the ecological services they provide. Studies in Baja California Sur and the adjacent Gulf of California have shown that not only do fisheries landings increase in areas where there are more abundant mangroves but also that these mangroves match or even outperform tropical mangrove ecosystems in their carbon sequestration abilities.

Borbón stops to clean debris off some of the oldest mangroves in the area, estimated to be around 250 years old. Shortly after learning about mangroves from his daughter, a serendipitous visit from a researcher doing her thesis project on the vulnerability and resilience of the mangroves on Baja California’s Pacific coast provided him an opportunity to understand more about the life cycles of the different mangrove species and the threats they are facing. When people in his community told him he was crazy for starting to plant mangroves, she offered encouragement. To this day, he still keeps a copy of her thesis in his home. Credit: Gemima Garland-Lewis

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The “prop” roots of the red mangrove. Studies show that Baja California Sur’s desert mangroves grow on top of their own root remains, forming a type of peat that serves as a highly efficient environment for carbon sequestration. This peat extends to depths of more than three meters, and core samples indicate that, in some areas, it has been storing carbon at the same rate for over 5,000 years. It has also historically provided mangrove ecosystems in this region with a mechanism for keeping pace with sea level rise. Credit: Gemima Garland-Lewis

Baja California Sur is the least densely populated state in all of Mexico, and extreme loss of mangroves is concentrated in the urban spaces of La Paz and Los Cabos. Construction of fishing camps around El Delgadito in the 1980s led to the removal of some of the area’s mangroves, but nothing has done as much damage in recent years as climate change, says Borbón. Higher tides and stronger currents undercut the sandbars that support the mangroves, carving underwater caves that eventually cause the entire root system to collapse, especially among younger trees.

Credit: Gemima Garland-Lewis

Mature mangroves in this desert ecosystem barely stand out in the background, size-wise. El Delgadito sits less than one half of one degree south of all mangroves’ northern limit in the entire eastern Pacific, making even these centuries-old trees look short and stunted. Although mangroves make up less than one percent of the terrestrial area of the Baja California peninsula, they store about 28 percent of the total below-ground carbon in this arid climate. This makes them by far the biggest carbon sink in the region, a feature that Borbón and his wife, Ana María Peralta, know will be monumental in tackling the local impacts of climate change.

Rising sea temperatures trigger mass die-offs of seagrasses, which are swept by the currents onto mangroves, often smothering them or ripping their young roots from the substrate. Borbón painstakingly removes these deposits both from trees he has planted and from those that have grown naturally. Credit: Gemima Garland-Lewis

Though never formally trained in the sciences, Borbón has an incredible aptitude and devotion toward experimentation. Taking what he knew from being raised in an agricultural region of Mexico, he carried out early iterations of his work growing mangroves in a greenhouse. He soon found that the young trees couldn’t handle the shock of being transplanted, so he and Peralta started “playing scientists,” as he calls it, planting propagules in the places surrounding El Delgadito where they ultimately wanted them to grow. Over the years, they have perfected the process to a point where they may very well know more than anyone else about growing mangroves in this desert ecosystem, though they never stop experimenting with new ideas.

Borbón checks on some of his two-year-old trees. When he first started, he’d experiment with spacing between the plants as well as their distance from the high tideline. He also tested how wind, current, waves, and cardinal direction to these natural forces changed his success. “Do you know what the most important thing is?” he asks me. “Not science, not technology. Heart.” Credit: Gemima Garland-Lewis

Peralta and Borbón with the mangroves across the dirt road from their home. In recent months, Borbón has been invited to present at international conferences, heard pitches from the World Bank, and been asked to begin a train-the-trainers program for others trying to restore mangroves in their communities. “We are not talking about sustainability,” he says, “we are talking about regeneration — and it’s worth fighting for, whatever is required, because it’s necessary. It’s very necessary in these communities to avoid emigration, to create opportunities for both young and old, for men and women, for people on the coast and people on ranches in the sierras [mountain ranges], because this is wonderful.” Credit: Gemima Garland-LewisToday, Borbón and Peralta have a team of over 20. It is paid work—the only of its kind in this area that isn’t from fishing. Funding now comes from partnership with a US-based environmental services company instead of from the couple’s own pocket. Their team members range in age from 19 to 60, though the majority are youth. “Our focus is more with the younger than the older generations,” explains Peralta. “You can’t change what they’re accustomed to. But the young people are learning. They’re the future of here, the future of Mexico, the future of everything, to continue with the mangroves.”

Borbón helps Victoria, one of his core team members, transplant a year-old mangrove. He is worried he planted last year’s trees too close together and is experimenting with moving them farther apart while they are still young. These year’s propagules will be placed farther apart from the get-go. Credit: Gemima Garland-Lewis

Credit: Gemima Garland-Lewis

Borbón and Peralta soak the propagules for eight to 11 days in fresh water to stimulate the growth of root nodules. Then, with their team of young community members, they count the propagules and place them in buckets to take into the field, doing quality control along the way. Borbón has learned over the years that it’s best to target those that have developed to the point where they are still attached to the parent tree but fall off easily, like ripe fruit.

During the summer months, they take scouting trips to monitor the development of new red mangrove propagules and tend young trees. Come October, they harvest the propagules and soak them in fresh water for just over a week. At the restoration site, one person walks a transect line using a wooden tool to punch a small hole into the sediment while another follows with the propagules. It takes just a second to plant each one, and over the past 12 years they’ve planted an estimated 1.2 million and watched stretches of bare sand transform to green. It’s still too soon to see the impact on local fisheries, but Borbón has no shortage of hope: “The fact that we plant mangroves generates life. We expand the possibilities of helping nature by allowing them to naturally repopulate and recover.” He adds that the “constant attack” from fishing limits recovery, but he’s not deterred. “That is why it is so important that we continue with our efforts.”

Working as a team, community members of El Delgadito plant new red mangrove propagules alongside one-year-old trees from last season’s work. Borbón and Peralta have found that, aside from the direct investment in mangroves, hiring youth also takes away some of the impact of local fisheries by providing people with an economic alternative. “We need jobs for young people. Because many can’t get an education, and they get married very young and want to do the same as their parents, they become fishermen and fish as much as they can. They need jobs, another type of work,” Peralta explains. Credit: Gemima Garland-Lewis

Credit: Gemima Garland-Lewis

Areas that started as bare sand quickly developed vegetation once the young red mangroves stabilized the soil. Species like Salicornia and white mangroves sprout on their own, forming a cover of green.

In early September 2022, Hurricane Kay made landfall several hours north of El Delgadito. Colder surface waters on the Pacific coast of Baja California have historically made it rare for a storm system to make its way this far north along the peninsula. Mangroves have been shown to absorb 70 to 90 percent of a wave’s energy, and the storm put Borbón and Peralta’s work to the test. Areas that had their first mangroves planted 10 years prior were destroyed, leaving almost nothing but sand where the highest branches once reached overhead. The couple was devastated, and Borbón’s eyes filled with tears when he broke the news to me. He estimates that, in addition to those first trees he planted, close to 300,000 young trees were lost. Soon after, a marine biologist friend brought an impact assessment expert from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to see El Delgadito. She looked at the proximity of the mangroves that had been destroyed to the community and told the couple that their work very likely prevented the loss of much of their community.

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The researcher’s comments provided hope for the future and validation to Borbón and Peralta that their efforts weren’t for naught. Today, looking out from the driver’s seat in his small boat, Borbón envisions what is to come. “My dream for this region has no limits; what can be done is wonderful. We have dedicated ourselves to conservation because it is very clear to me that the day mangroves end, life ends in this region.” Tomorrow, he’ll wake at dawn and drink a cup of coffee before driving down the road to his boat, never missing a beat in his dedication to making his vision a reality.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

The post Generating Life on the Baja Peninsula, One Mangrove at a Time appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

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Virgin Atlantic claims to be flying the first 100% “sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF) plane from London Heathrow to JFK airport in New York today (28 November).

The Transport Secretary Mark Harper himself was on the jaunt - with a Government announcement boasting: “The flight – made possible by up to £1 million in funding from the government - is a major milestone towards making air travel more environmentally friendly as we move towards our goal of net zero by 2050.”

The Boeing 787 test flight is being powered by 50 tons of so-called sustainable air fuel, coming from used cooking oil and “waste fats”, including waste from corn production in the United States. Richard Branson’s firm claims the fuel has  "lifecycle emissions up to 70% lower" than conventional kerosene.

But all may not be as it seems. 

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Alethea Warrington, a senior campaigner at climate charity Possible, told Byline Times it was a “gimmick”.

“They can’t use used cooking oil to power more than a tiny tiny fraction of the aviation industry's kerosene flights. If they tried to scale it up, it would cause all these other problems. There's going to be more palm oil entering the supply chain, and more deforestation and the environmental issues that come from that.”  

The tailpipe emissions from burning used cooking oil are “exactly the same” as kerosene made from fossil fuels, Warrington says. “The claim from industry is that SAF equates to ‘up to 70% emissions reductions’. The way they're working that out is often quite dodgy. 

“They're using a carbon accounting methodology which is often not looking at the wider systemic issues…Is additional land needed to grow crops for oil? Are others using fossil fuels instead of the ‘waste’ oil that’s now going in flights?” 

Helena Bennett, head of climate policy at Green Alliance UK added: “It’s being hailed as a “monumental milestone”, but that’s not quite right. Reporting states that the use of 100% SAF will reduce emissions significantly. [But] emissions from the jet are the same as fossil fuels.”

“Virgin Atlantic’s flight comprises around 90% “used cooking oil” in its flight today - which is obviously limited, and is already used in biodiesel for other transport…[This] stock will be scarce,” she said. 

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And Bennett claimed that most planes in the current fleet will be able to take “far less” than 100% SAF. “The engine in the flight today is not like other engines. So emissions reductions from using SAF in the existing fleet are far less than today’s flight.”

She urged readers to “beware [of] greenwashing today that this is a huge achievement. It’s looking likely that SAF will not be a considerable contributor to reducing aviation emissions.”

Alethea Warrington urged airlines to “start being honest” about the real carbon cost of flying - including with SAFs - and called for governments to help reduce demand. 

Matt Finch, UK Policy Manager at Transport & Environment, backed up the comments, saying: “There will be a lot of noise about how this flight will “usher in an era of guilt-free flying” but it will do nothing of the sort.”

Even under the Government’s own ‘Jet Zero’ strategy, fossil jet fuel will be burnt until well after 2050. 

He noted that SAF is not a “single thing”, but an umbrella term for lots of different ways of making jet fuel. “Some of them are good for the environment, but some of them are terrible. Virgin has opted for the terrible option,” Finch added. 

However, ministers appear focussed on “technological innovation” to decarbonise aviation, - without tackling the easy (but unpopular in the industry) wins such as increasing the price of fossil jet fuel, making planes fly in straight lines or banning airlines from tankering [too much] fuel.”

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One climate campaigner noted that Virgin’s SAF mix still draws on “crop-based biofuels [which] compete with food security.” 

For the rest of the sector, the think tank Transport and Environment notes that “buying SAF does not mean flying on SAF. SAF is not physically available at all airports, mainly because they are produced only in a limited number of locations.”

A Chatham House study published last week found: “Most supply-side options for reducing aviation carbon emissions – such as zero-emissions aircraft and sustainable aviation fuels – are yet to be scaled and are still at the R&D phase…Acting prudently, and reducing demand for flights in the short term, would offer the best chance of enabling the sector to play its role in achieving net zero.”

Last month, a test electric-powered flight went from Vermont to Florida, a 1,400 mile, 16-day trip that required the Beta Technologies pilot to take nearly two dozen stops to rest and recharge. Batteries are incredibly heavy and electric flight is only expected to be used for small-scale, private-jet style transport in the next couple of decades. 

Also today, the Green Party demanded a ban on all private jets taking off or landing at UK airports. The party says this form of transport, favoured by the super-rich, is the ultimate symbol of ‘climate inequality’. A new Oxfam report has found that the richest 1% of the population produce as much planet warming pollution each year as the five billion people who make up the poorest two-thirds of the global population. 

Greenpeace has found that European private jets emitted a total of 5.3m tonnes of CO2 between 2020 and 2023, with the number of flights multiplied by five during that time, reaching 573,000 in 2022. 

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A group linked to Extinction Rebellion is planning legal action against the Telegraph newspaper for its climate change coverage. 

The potential international case, inspired by the UK Youth Climate Coalition's (UKYCC) legal challenge against oil giant BP which is now at the International Criminal Court, aims to hold the media accountable for what the group perceives as misleading and inadequate reporting on the climate crisis.

Climate activist Jon Fuller has been working with a group called Climate Genocide Act Now as well as UKYCC, with two researchers analysing the Daily Telegraph and all its output on climate related issues. 

“We're planning to get a dossier of evidence covering six months, and submit a case to the International Criminal Court to say that this is evidence of incitement of crimes against humanity. We think we've got a chance of getting there", Fuller told Byline Times.

The group has conducted around four months of research so far, and have at least two months to go. “On one day recently, there were 13 articles in the paper campaigning against net zero. Next to them, all the adverts to “fly here, there and everywhere”,” Fuller said in an interview. 

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The Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph together have an estimated print circulation of around 300,000 copies, but in August the media group announced that it had hit one million subscriptions overall due to a surge in digital subscribers, as well as reaching around 14 million people online each month. It is viewed as the 'house newspaper' of the Conservative Party.

The titles are currently up for sale after Lloyds Bank seized the titles over unpaid debt from the Barclay family earlier this year. The sale could go through within weeks, with senior Conservatives calling for the Government to intervene over a billion-pound bid by Abu Dhabi-backed investment fund RedBird IMI. The United Arab Emirates does not have a free press. 

The main focus of climate campaigners’ work on the Telegraph is to record and analyse articles that undermine efforts to tackle climate change. “This looks at how readers are informed about the scale of the threats, or the number of people being killed, and the campaigning in favour of ongoing use of oil and gas and coal. Because those policies get lots of people killed,” the campaigner told Byline Times.

The group say they are getting “very good” legal advice from climate lawyers. “We have had a professional legal opinion, noting that the policies that cause climate change can be prosecuted using international criminal law, and there is no lawful impediment. The impediments are purely political,” Fuller said.

“The emphatic evidence from experts in international criminal law is that there’s a case. The more people and more groups that do it, the sooner we make the breakthrough. The sooner we can get a breakthrough, the sooner politicians are forced into action,” he added. 

The news comes after analysis by climate outlet DeSmog found that nearly one in five (18 percent) of 1,930 Telegraph opinion pieces reviewed by the investigative site featured an attack on climate science, policy or environmental groups. Nearly one in 10 of the Telegraph’s editorials expressing the views of the newspaper addressed the environment in some way - and every single one of these were anti-green.

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Climate Genocide Act Now’s efforts revealed today spring out of Extinction Rebellion's media-focused campaign "Tell the Truth” in 2019, which aimed to push the BBC and other major outlets to fully address the climate emergency in their coverage. 

The group asserts that the media - and in particular right-wing papers like the Telegraph -  have consistently failed to report the current death toll from climate-related disasters and the severity of “impending climate feedback” loops, like climate change leading to permafrost thaw which itself triggers high levels of methane emissions - further exacerbating the climate crisis. Meltic sea ice in the Arctic also weakens sunlight reflection that cools the climate, known as the albedo effect.

Through protests and negotiations with media giants like the BBC and ITN, Extinction Rebellion has pushed for “more transparent and comprehensive” climate reporting. While some progress has been noted, particularly with ITN's enhanced coverage, the group believes media still falls short, especially in covering climate-induced crises in regions such as the Horn of Africa.

Supporters of the climate activists Extinction Rebellion - including Jon Fuller (front) - protest outside Southend Council offices before a council meeting to and ask the council to declare a climate disaster. Penelope Barritt/Alamy Live News

Climate Genocide Act Now accuses the Telegraph in particular of spreading misinformation and actively campaigning against renewable energy technologies and emissions-reducing tools like heat pumps, potentially contributing to climate misinformation.

The group is also highlighting the “hostile and often abusive” rhetoric levelled at climate activists in the media, pointing out instances which they claim border on incitement to violence. Complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) have yielded mixed responses. 

Fuller details instances where the Telegraph and similar outlets have been caught propagating misleading information. One notable example involves publishing incorrect figures about the cost of reaching Net Zero, which were later withdrawn by the think tank Civitas but continued to be cited by several right-wing newspapers. 

For Fuller, the incident highlights a wider pattern where these publications allegedly prioritise sensationalism over factual accuracy, especially concerning climate change.

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By downplaying the immediacy and severity of climate threats and discrediting sustainable technologies, the newspapers are accused of contributing to a delay in critical climate actions. 

The failure to adequately connect extreme weather events, like Storm Ciaren and the 2022 heatwaves in England and Wales, to the broader narrative of climate change is another point of criticism.

Fuller draws attention to the direct human costs of climate change, with the 2022 heatwaves in England and Wales resulting in over 3,000 deaths. 

The campaigners also point to recent incidents where thousands of people have lost access to water due to extreme weather events, illustrating the tangible, immediate impacts of climate change on everyday life. 

For Climate Genocide Act Now, efforts to tackle the climate crisis rely on "theft" from future generations - with the burden of responsibility put on those who didn’t cause the biggest damage. 

Extinction Rebellion has also flagged abusive language that appears about climate groups in the press, in a dossier seen by Byline Times. Newspapers have often referred to “climate fanatics”, “eco-zealots” and “eco mobs” when covering those protesting the government’s inaction over climate issues.

The Daily Star refers to campaigners like XR as “Tarquins”, to portray them as “toffs” - individuals who lecture working class people. 

Writing for the Sun this June, controversial columnist Rod Liddle said that if he came across anybody blocking the street over climate change he would run them over. He wrote in the paper: “If it were up to me I would advance towards them in a steamroller. ‘Glued your arse to the road have you? Well you won’t be needing it much longer’”.  

Articles in other outlets have suggested protesters should be punched in the face. And Dan Wootton, the disgraced former presenter on GB News, appeared to egg on a driver who was later convicted of ramming Insulate Britain protesters with her car in 2021. During the interview, Wootton asked the woman, Sherrilyn Speid: “How tempted were you, Sherrilyn, to go a little bit harder into those women?”. 

Update: Lib Dem group Liberal Reform has condemned the planned legal action as a "textbook example of vexatious litigation" on Twitter/X, while conservative media critic Dan Gainor branded it a SLAP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), viewed as an attack on free speech. Progressive commentator Sunder Katwala also dismissed it as a "stunt".

Telegraph Media Group did not respond to a request for comment. 

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Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.

So for more from him...

Subscribe to Byline Times

Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com