Phoebe Cooke
phoebecooke.bsky.social
Phoebe Cooke
@phoebecooke.bsky.social
Investigative journalist, writing/editing on climate, energy, food, farming and politics. Co-deputy editor at DeSmog UK @desmog.bsky.social‬ | she/her
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
NEW | A single carbon removal project at a biomass power station In the UK could cost £30 BILLION in government subsidies.

This would cost more than the UK government plans on spending for carbon capture programmes over 25 years.

https://loom.ly/XibxT4k
November 27, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
The center-right European People's Party voted with right-wing and far-right lawmakers in the European Parliament today to back a proposal to delay by a year and weaken the EU's anti-deforestation law.
EU conservatives vote with far right to weaken forest protections
It’s the second time the EPP has sided with far-right groups to weaken environmental rules this month.
www.politico.eu
November 26, 2025 at 1:50 PM
If you read one thing today…

Incredible months-long investigation by @lauravilladiego.bsky.social for @desmog.com & @euobserver.com delves deep into the ‘sustainability’ claims of EU’s 1.5 billion euros exports scheme, exposing a string of deeply misleading narratives.

Dive in here 👇
November 26, 2025 at 9:14 AM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🚨New: At COP30, the pesticide industry has been making big pledges to fight deforestation by turning Brazil's over-grazed pasturelands into new areas to grow crops. Small-holders fear it's all just a ploy to sell more of the toxic chemicals poisoning nature and harming human health. buff.ly/Yc8qocr
Pesticide Industry 'Hijacked' Climate Stage at COP30, Campaigners Say
Syngenta and other pesticide companies used the COP30 climate conference in Brazil to promote programmes to recover damaged pastureland that campaigners fear will drive increased use of toxic…
www.desmog.com
November 22, 2025 at 12:22 AM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🔴 NEW 🔴

Backed by Industry, Brazilian Hosts Seek COP30’s Blessing for Biofuels

📝 @clarecarlile.bsky.social & Maximiliano Manzoni

www.desmog.com/2025/11/20/b...
Backed by Industry, Brazilian Hosts Seek COP30’s Blessing for Biofuels
With the clock running down at the COP30 climate talks, the Brazilian hosts are working hand-in-hand with industry groups to secure backing for biofuels in the final text – despite fears that scaling ...
www.desmog.com
November 21, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
NEW: > 300 lobbyists representing industrial agriculture have attended this year’s UN climate talks taking place in the Brazilian Amazon, where the industry is the leading cause of deforestation 1/
👇
www.desmog.com/2025/11/18/m...
More Than 300 Lobbyists for Industrial Agriculture Attend COP30
Presence of high-polluting companies erodes trust in the UN process, say campaigners.
www.desmog.com
November 18, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🔴 NEW 🔴

More Than 300 Lobbyists for Industrial Agriculture Attend COP30

Presence of high-polluting companies erodes trust in the UN process, say campaigners.

www.desmog.com/2025/11/18/m...

📝 @rachelsherrington.bsky.social & @ninalakhani.bsky.social 👇
More Than 300 Lobbyists for Industrial Agriculture Attend COP30
Presence of high-polluting companies erodes trust in the UN process, say campaigners.
www.desmog.com
November 18, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
Absolutely terrible news of another Indigenous land defender killed in Brazil as #COP30 takes place

- Vicente Fernandes Vilhalva, a 36-year-old Guarani Kaiowá leader, was shot dead on Sunday morning

www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Cop30: calls for new urgency to talks as studies show global warming may reach 2.5C – latest updates
As the summit goes into its second week, complex issues remain with anxiety growing over conference outcomes
www.theguardian.com
November 17, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🔴 Overhauled EU Climate Law Faces New Threat from Consultancy Giants

After MEPs voted to gut Europe’s flagship climate transparency law, concerns are mounting that the Big Four will dominate and dilute corporate sustainability audits.
Overhauled EU Climate Law Faces New Threat from Consultancy Giants
This investigative work had been supported by the Centre for Investigative Journalism The European Parliament voted on Thursday (13 November) to significantly dilute key elements of Europe’s climate a...
www.desmog.com
November 17, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🔴 NEW 🔴

U.S. Oil Executives Flock to COP30

Access by major polluters ExxonMobil and Chevron to the summit is proof that Big Oil still holds “a dangerous sway” over the climate process, campaigners say.

📝 @phoebecooke.bsky.social

www.desmog.com/2025/11/14/u...
U.S. Oil Executives Flock to COP30
Top American oil and gas producers are using trade groups to gain access to this year’s COP30 climate summit in the absence of an official U.S. delegation, DeSmog can report. ExxonMobil and Chevron — ...
www.desmog.com
November 14, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🔴 NEW 🔴

Mapped: Big Food’s Routes to Influence at COP30

Interactive map shows the food & farming corporations, trade groups and initiatives at COP30 in Brazil and how these are set to navigate the summit

📝 @rachelsherrington.bsky.social & Gil Alessi👇

www.desmog.com/2025/11/10/m...
Mapped: Big Food’s Routes to Influence at COP30
In the city of Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil has kicked off the COP30 climate conference, a summit framed as a pivotal moment to reduce emissions and keep the Paris Agreement al...
www.desmog.com
November 11, 2025 at 9:30 AM
As COP30 gets underway in Belém, this great scoop by my colleague @clarecarlile.bsky.social shines a light on coordinated lobbying efforts to influence vital emissions standards.

Read all about it on @desmog.com here👇
November 10, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🔴 NEW - Nvidia Flogged AI for Brazilian Oil and Gas on Eve of COP30

The tech giant was in Rio de Janeiro hawking AI software to fossil fuel firms just days before crucial climate crisis negotiations in the Amazon.

📝 @rtakver.bsky.social
Nvidia Flogged AI for Brazilian Oil and Gas on Eve of COP30
As world leaders prepared to descend on the small city of Belém in the Brazilian Amazon for the COP30 climate summit, artificial intelligence (AI) chip-manufacturer Nvidia was instead peddling its ene...
www.desmog.com
November 7, 2025 at 12:42 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
Plans for intensive livestock farms in the UK could lead to over 35million more 🐷 + 🐔 farmed here each year.

Councils are green-lighting these operations despite with patchy or non-existent data.

✍️ for @desmog.com @theguardian.com on research by @sustainweb.org
www.desmog.com/2025/11/05/i...
Intensive Livestock Farms Fail to Declare Climate Impacts in ‘Emissions Scandal’
Plans for intensive livestock “megafarms” are omitting crucial climate impacts, it can be revealed. Campaigners last year celebrated a “beginning of the end” to polluting factory farming, after the la...
www.desmog.com
November 6, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🔴 NEW: Intensive Livestock Farms Fail to Declare Climate Impacts in ‘Emissions Scandal’

Data by @sustainweb.org reveals how councils are giving green light to large-scale pig and poultry farms with patchy or non-existent climate data.

📝 @clarecarlile.bsky.social

www.desmog.com/2025/11/05/i...
Intensive Livestock Farms Fail to Declare Climate Impacts in ‘Emissions Scandal’
Plans for intensive livestock “megafarms” are omitting crucial climate impacts, it can be revealed. Campaigners last year celebrated a “beginning of the end” to polluting factory farming, after the la...
www.desmog.com
November 5, 2025 at 11:44 AM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
Today a story I've spent months reporting and writing runs on @desmog.com and @theguardian.com.

It's based on hundreds of exclusive documents revealing how Exxon funded the rightwing Atlas Network to spread climate denial across Latin America and the Global South.

www.desmog.com/2025/11/03/a...
‘A Pretty Ugly History’: How Exxon Exported Climate Denial to the Global South
With Brazil about to host COP30, DeSmog has obtained copies of checks Exxon mailed to the right-wing Atlas Network in the 1990s to turn Latin America against climate treaties.
www.desmog.com
November 3, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
Stunning @desmog.com story from @geoffdembicki.bsky.social - showing how oil major ExxonMobil bankrolled climate science denial in the global south prior to crucial global summits...

www.desmog.com/2025/11/03/a...
‘A Pretty Ugly History’: How Exxon Exported Climate Denial to the Global South
With Brazil about to host COP30, DeSmog has obtained copies of checks Exxon mailed to the right-wing Atlas Network in the 1990s to turn Latin America against climate treaties.
www.desmog.com
November 3, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🔴 Timeline: How the Tories Copied Reform’s Anti-Climate Policies

Nigel Farage’s climate denial agenda has been pilfered by Kemi Badenoch’s party
Timeline: How the Tories Copied Reform’s Anti-Climate Policies
Four years after Boris Johnson’s Conservative government hosted the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, the party has ditched its environmental credentials – declaring that it would scrap the UK’s net ze...
www.desmog.com
October 29, 2025 at 11:32 AM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🔴 NEW 🔴

From regenerative agriculture to ‘efficiency is enough' and ‘we feed the world’ narratives - check out these 8 big greenwashing terms ahead of COP30 👇

📝 by @rachelsherrington.bsky.social & @hazelhealy.bsky.social

www.desmog.com/2025/10/26/b...
Look Out for These 8 Big Ag Greenwashing Terms at COP30
Food and farming companies will claim agriculture is the solution to the climate crisis at the Brazil summit — even though food drives a third of global warming.
www.desmog.com
October 27, 2025 at 11:43 AM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
📍NEW📍 According to satellite readings, levels of methane — a potent climate-heating gas — have risen all along the 878-km Trans Adriatic gas pipeline. At the pipeline's southern Italy terminal, activists are trying to hold regulators and operators accountable.
The Methane Hunters of Melendugno
Data from thermal camera raises questions over scope of climate-damaging pollution from gas imported via Adriatic sea.
buff.ly
October 21, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🔴NEW: How a ‘Pro-Climate’ Charity Channelled Cash to a Koch-Funded Think Tank

Opaque funds are masking donations to political causes at home and abroad.

Me, for @desmog.com
www.desmog.com/2025/10/15/h...
How a ‘Pro-Climate’ Charity Channelled Cash to a Koch-Funded Think Tank
A UK charity that portrays itself as a climate leader facilitated a £830,000 donation to the Mercatus Center, a conservative think tank heavily funded by U.S. oil billionaire Charles Koch, DeSmog can ...
www.desmog.com
October 15, 2025 at 1:10 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
Even if the world stopped burning coal, oil and gas tomorrow, what we eat would still be enough to heat the climate beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, warns the EAT-Lancet Commission.
Food is wrecking the planet. And Europe has lost its appetite for change.
A landmark study says food systems are breaching Earth’s limits. Europe once promised to lead the way, but the revolution fizzled.
www.politico.eu
October 3, 2025 at 11:43 AM
Regressive, bizarre, stupid... just three of the words that come to mind.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Tories pledge to scrap landmark climate legislation
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says her party would axe legally binding targets to cut emissions.
www.bbc.co.uk
October 2, 2025 at 7:55 AM
🔴 “We were treated like slaves,” recalls Mohammed, a graduate from Morocco who was exploited as a fruit-picker in southern France.

Shocking expose reveals how farm owners continue to get €€€ in subsidies despite allegations and convictions of labour abuse 👇

www.desmog.com/2025/09/29/r...
Revealed: EU Farm Subsidy ‘Bankrolls’ Widespread Labour Abuse
This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe. Farm owners convicted of exploiting migrant workers continue to claim millions in taxpayer-funded subsidies, DeSmog can reve...
www.desmog.com
September 30, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by Phoebe Cooke
🔴 Revealed: EU Farm Subsidy ‘Bankrolls’ Widespread Labour Abuse

New investigation reveals how farm owners convicted of exploiting migrant workers rake in millions in subsidies 👇

www.desmog.com/2025/09/29/r...
Revealed: EU Farm Subsidy ‘Bankrolls’ Widespread Labour Abuse
This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe. Farm owners convicted of exploiting migrant workers continue to claim millions in taxpayer-funded subsidies, DeSmog can reve...
www.desmog.com
September 30, 2025 at 7:15 AM