The Big Story
Get the big picture on climate narratives shaping our era, with insights, context and connection across themes.
Weeks Into the West Asia Crisis, How Is India Really Doing?
As the Indian government postpones price hikes, the country’s informal economy has grabbed its opportunity
Beyond Capacity: Unlocking the Full Potential of India’s Clean Energy
As geopolitical tensions rise in West Asia, India finds itself in a paradox — record renewable capacity on one hand, and wasted solar power on the other. To get a clearer picture of India’s energy vulnerability, it is important to not just look at how much oil and gas it imports, but how efficiently it uses the clean power it already produces. Even as India raises its climate ambition under its newly released Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) 3.0 — with higher clean energy and emissions reduction targets — the challenge is no longer just building capacity, but using it effectively.
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West Asia Shock Ripples Through India’s Kitchens, Factories and Supply Chains
The mood is tense in Malur Industrial Area. About 45 kilometres to the east of Bengaluru, it has a melange of small and medium industrial units. Walking through it, you will see firms making diverse products — laboratory glassware, farm equipment, steel products and plastics. The road leading into the industrial area adds yet more diversity — car batteries, hydraulic pumps, steel scrap.
Even as India worries about shortages of cooking gas, industries are starting to worry about something else — the raw materials that come from petroleum. Two weeks have passed since the US and Israel attacked Iran. In the days since, between Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz and exporters like Qatar Petroleum shutting down oil and gas exports, an unprecedented energy shock has begun to ripple across the world. India, which gets 80-85% of its LPG; about 55% of its crude; and 60% of its LNG from the Persian Gulf, is amongst the worst affected.
West Asia escalation can put India’s energy security to the test
As the attack by America and Israel on Iran enters its third day, the world is torn between incomprehension and comprehension. What happens next in the war theatre is anyone’s guess. How long will the battle last? Can Iran inflict enough damage for the US and Israel to withdraw?
India’s Climate Disasters Are Triggering a Silent Mental Health Crisis
Pradeep Panwar’s, 32, life collapsed in a matter of seconds on August 5, last year, when a massive flood and landslide tore through Dharali village in the Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand, killing more than 50 lives. His shop and taxi—his family’s only sources of income—were destroyed.
Beyond Compensation: What Coastal Communities Lose to a Rising Sea
Part 1 of CarbonCopy’s series on non-economic loss and damage examines how climate impacts along Odisha’s coast are eroding identity, culture and belonging beyond what compensation frameworks recognise
Climate action in a fractured world: Trends for 2026
On January 13, US President Donald Trump slapped a 25% tariff on any country doing business with Iran. The news was received with consternation in Iran and beyond. Oil is Teheran’s biggest export — with China accounting for 80% of Iran’s petroleum exports. If the middle kingdom fell in line with
Can green trade barriers save the environment?
Oil palm is hard to miss in Malaysia. Its plantations are visible along the highway between Kuala Lumpur International Airport and Kuala Lumpur itself. A few days later, when CarbonCopy travelled to the eastern province of Sabah in Borneo, oil palm was omnipresent there as well. Flying over Sabah’s forested interior, we saw large geometric patches, each a much lighter shade of
What COP30 reveals about the next phase of multilateralism
COP30 did not collapse. This may feel like a win in a year when climate diplomacy has seen a major churning. The process survived extreme weather, fire scares, and the COP30 presidency’s strategy to mainly focus on closed-door negotiations. But just surviving is far from enough. Two weeks after the Belém COP
The G20 Has Outrun COP on Climate Finance
While negotiators in Brazil debated language, the G20 delivered structure. South Africa continued on the groundwork laid by India and Brazil in the past two years to ensure that the Global South — not the G7 — was driving that shift. This is not about the Global North vs South. It’s about leverage: who
As COP30 rolls out a tropical forest fund, how are India’s natural forests doing?
A conflict of interest has dominated India’s forest cover estimates for a long time. While the Union Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) oversees the country’s forests, Dehradun-based Forest Survey of India (FSI) monitors their extent and condition. The FSI, however, is not an independent watchdog. It reports to the MoEFCC.
Can multilateralism still deliver at COP30?
COP30 is upon us. Amid a global geopolitical churn, where climate has slipped down the priority list, the world will head to Belém, Brazil, for what the COP30 Presidency has called the “Implementation COP”. Last year, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) grappled