Brian Rhoads

1 week ago | scmp.com | Brian Rhoads

With US President Donald Trump levying extra 145 per cent tariffs on China this year, and Beijing responding nearly in kind, it would be easy to assume Chinese green technology companies would be facing a reckoning after losing the vital US export market. After all, China is the world’s top producer of electric vehicles, photovoltaic cells for solar panels and lithium-ion batteries.

1 month ago | scmp.com | Brian Rhoads

The epicentre of leadership in the fight against climate change is undergoing a tectonic shift. A recent flurry of news has emerged from the United States as it dismantles safeguards and institutions once considered key to environmental protection under previous presidents but now out of favour with the new administration of President Donald Trump. On the first day of his second term, Trump withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords. The action has not stopped since.

2 months ago | scmp.com | Brian Rhoads

Gloom and doom seem the only way to describe the battle against climate change of late. US President Donald Trump in January again withdrew the world’s second-largest polluter from the landmark Paris Agreement limiting green house emissions to curb rising temperatures. Argentina’s President Javier Milei, a climate sceptic, last week said he, too, may leave.

Jan 16, 2025 | scmp.com | Brian Rhoads

When you head to the United States for the holidays with friends and family, you would expect to spend your final week of leave saying goodbyes, packing and preparing to part ways before heading home. You do not expect wildfires to rage out of control on three sides of your home-away-from home, forcing your relatives to pack up along with you to prepare to evacuate.

Nov 14, 2024 | scmp.com | Brian Rhoads

For the second time in a decade, UN climate talks are being overshadowed by an unsettling feeling, call it deja vu. As in 2016, American voters have chosen to send Donald Trump to the White House, starting the clock ticking on a US withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, wrenched the United States out of the Paris climate accord during his first term.