The Great Climate Betrayal: How Four "Planet Wreckers" Sabotaged the Paris Agreement

Wazzup Pilipinas!? 

A new, explosive report from Oil Change International—Planet Wreckers: Global North Countries Fueling the Fire Since the Paris Agreement—reveals a devastating truth: a handful of wealthy nations have not only failed to meet their climate obligations but have actively driven global oil and gas expansion, all while withholding essential climate funds from the developing world. This is not just a policy failure; it is a profound betrayal of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.

The Four Countries Fueling the Fire

The report singles out four Global North nations as the "Planet Wreckers" overwhelmingly responsible for blocking global progress on phasing out oil and gas production: the United States, Canada, Australia, and Norway.

A decade after the Paris Agreement committed governments to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 ∘C, fossil fuel extraction and use have continued to rise and hit record levels. The remaining carbon budget for the 1.5 ∘C limit could be depleted in just three years if current carbon pollution remains consistent.

The actions of these four countries directly contradicted global efforts during this critical period:

The Global Derailment: Collectively, the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Norway increased their oil and gas production by nearly 40 percent between 2015 and 2024, adding over 14 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d).

A World in Retreat: In the same period, the combined oil and gas extraction in the rest of the world actually dropped by 2 percent (a reduction of 2.37 million boe/d). This means that the total global output rose only because of the massive expansion in these four countries.

The U.S. Engine: The United States alone accounts for over 90 percent of the net global increase in extraction through 2024, driving up its production by nearly 11 million boe/d. This surge was more than five times the increase in any other country during this time.

Proportional Extremes: Australia, meanwhile, led all top 15 producers in the rate of increase, with its output surging by 77 percent.

The hypocrisy is stark: these wealthy nations, which are most responsible for the climate crisis and possess the highest economic capacity, are not only failing to phase out their own production (as they should before 2035) but are actively planning for the majority of the world's expansion through 2035.

The Financial Double Standard: Profits vs. Payments

Compounding the production betrayal is a stunning financial failure: Global North governments are enabling record fossil fuel profits while refusing to pay the climate finance they legally owe to the Global South.

Profits Trillions Apart: Since the Paris Agreement, Global North countries as a whole paid only $280 billion in grant-based climate finance to the rest of the world. In the very same period, they enabled oil and gas companies headquartered in their countries to rake in at least $1.3 trillion in profits.

Five-Fold Disparity: These company profits were five times the amount of climate finance paid by the Global North.

The Big Oil Six: The sheer scale of corporate profit is highlighted by the fact that just six oil majors (ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, TotalEnergies, BP, and Eni) made over $580 billion in profits—more than twice the amount of all Global North climate finance combined.

Policy Failure: This profit windfall is a direct result of government policies, including handing out $465 billion in cumulative subsidies for fossil fuel production and infrastructure since 2015.

While the Global North pushes unrealistic proposals for private investors to bankroll the transition, the reality is that Global South countries need at least $1 to $5 trillion per year in grants to fund a just transition and address escalating climate impacts.

The Path Forward: From Betrayal to Action

The report issues an urgent call to action, demanding that Global North governments take decisive steps to align with the 1.5 ∘C limit and support a just and equitable fossil fuel phase-out globally.

Phase Out First and Fastest:

Put an immediate halt to issuing new licenses and permits for fossil fuel expansion.

Implement domestic phase-out plans with clear timelines, and make fossil fuel companies responsible for decommissioning, clean-up, and transition support for affected workers.

Cease promoting dangerous "distractions" that prolong the fossil fuel industry's business model, such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and fossil fuel-based hydrogen.

Pay Up and Reform:

Present new commitments to provide at least $1 trillion per year in grant-based and highly concessional public finance.

Free up public funds by ending fossil fuel handouts and taxing the ultra-wealthy and corporations. The Global North can mobilize at least $6.6 trillion a year through redistributive policies.

Support financial system reform, including efforts to adopt UN debt and tax conventions, to dismantle the "climate colonialism" embedded in global economic rules.

As nations look toward the next round of global climate talks (COP30) in Brazil, the message is clear: the hypocrisy must end. Governments cannot claim to be working towards the Paris goals while approving new oil and gas extraction and failing to pay their fair share of climate finance.

The Light That Refuses to Obey: Filipino Scientists Capture the Invisible Dance of Photons

Wazzup Pilipinas!? 

A team from UP Diliman has achieved what was once thought nearly impossible—measuring an elusive light phenomenon in everyday materials that could revolutionize semiconductor technology

In a darkened laboratory at the University of the Philippines Diliman, a laser beam strikes a silicon surface. To the naked eye, nothing unusual happens—the light bounces off at a predictable angle, obedient to the laws of reflection we all learned in high school. But peer closer, with instruments sensitive enough to detect shifts smaller than a human hair, and something extraordinary reveals itself: the light doesn't land quite where it should.

It shifts. Sideways. Impossibly subtle, yet undeniably real.

This ghostly displacement, known as the Goos–Hänchen shift, has haunted physicists since its theoretical prediction nearly a century ago. Now, for the first time, a team of Filipino scientists has successfully measured this elusive phenomenon in the very materials that power our modern world—semiconductors and photonic devices—opening doors to applications that could transform everything from quality control in chip manufacturing to our fundamental understanding of how light behaves.

The Phantom in the Mirror

The Goos–Hänchen shift is one of nature's most mischievous tricks. Named after German physicists Fritz Goos and Hilda Hänchen who first observed it in 1947, the effect occurs when light undergoes total internal reflection—the same principle that allows fiber optic cables to carry information at the speed of light. But instead of reflecting from a precise point, the light beam appears to penetrate slightly into the reflecting surface before bouncing back, causing it to emerge shifted from where classical physics says it should.

"Imagine throwing a ball at a wall," explains Jared Joshua Operaña, lead researcher from the UPD College of Science's Materials Science and Engineering Program. "You expect it to bounce straight back. But what if, impossibly, it seemed to pass partway through the wall before returning—and came back shifted to the side? That's essentially what light is doing."

The shift is vanishingly small—typically measured in wavelengths of light, or mere hundreds of nanometers. For context, a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers thick. Detecting such minute displacements requires extraordinary precision and, until now, had only been reliably observed in metals or specially engineered exotic structures where the shifts are relatively large.

Breaking Through the Impossible

The real challenge lay in materials that barely interact with light at all—so-called "low-loss dielectrics" like silicon and gallium arsenide, the workhorses of the semiconductor industry. Theoretical physicists had long predicted that these transparent materials should produce unusually large Goos–Hänchen shifts, but there was a catch: the effect would only manifest within an impossibly narrow range of angles, making it nearly undetectable with conventional measurement techniques.

"Until now, GH shifts were mostly observed in metals or exotic layered structures, because these are the materials where GH shifts are relatively larger and thus are easily observed," Operaña said. "But theoretical studies have long suggested that even ordinary, uncoated dielectrics with very little light absorption should produce unusually large GH shifts."

It was a prediction waiting decades for confirmation.

Working in the Structured Light and Applications Lab at the National Institute of Physics, Operaña and his collaborators—Drs. Niña Zambale Simon and Nathaniel Hermosa—spent countless hours perfecting their experimental setup. The breakthrough came when they developed a method sensitive enough to capture shifts occurring within those razor-thin angular windows.

The results were stunning.

Silicon's Secret Revealed

When the team trained their laser beams—at wavelengths of 543 and 633 nanometers—onto silicon surfaces, they measured shifts up to 100 times the wavelength of the light itself. In the quantum world, this is enormous. Even more remarkably, the size of the shift varied dramatically depending on how much light the material absorbed. Silicon, which absorbs less light than gallium arsenide, produced larger shifts—a counterintuitive finding that reveals just how sensitive this phenomenon is to a material's optical properties.

"We showed that silicon, which absorbs less light than gallium arsenide, produces a shift up to 100 times the wavelength of the laser beam," Operaña noted, his voice carrying the quiet pride of someone who has just proven the skeptics wrong.

This marks the first experimental confirmation of theoretical predictions made decades ago, transforming the Goos–Hänchen shift from an academic curiosity observed only in specialized materials into a measurable phenomenon in the semiconductors that underpin modern technology.

From Laboratory Curiosity to Industrial Revolution

The implications ripple outward in unexpected directions. The extreme sensitivity of the Goos–Hänchen shift to minute variations in material properties suggests a powerful new tool for both industry and research.

In semiconductor manufacturing, where the difference between success and failure can come down to impurities measured in parts per billion, the ability to detect subtle variations in light absorption could revolutionize quality control. "In the commercial setting, compact instruments based on GH-shift detection could be developed for quality control in semiconductors, photonics, and advanced coatings, where precise control of material properties is critical," Operaña explained.

Imagine a handheld device that could instantly verify the optical quality of a silicon wafer without touching it, or identify defects in photonic components before they're assembled into devices. The technology could catch manufacturing flaws that current methods miss, potentially saving millions in rejected products.

But the reach extends beyond industry. In academic laboratories, this method provides researchers with an unprecedented window into light-matter interactions. How do different materials manipulate photons at the nanoscale? Can we engineer surfaces that control the Goos–Hänchen shift for novel applications? The questions multiply with each possibility.

The Road Ahead

The UP Diliman team isn't stopping at visible light. Their next goal is to expand their method across the electromagnetic spectrum, testing wavelengths beyond what the human eye can see—perhaps into the infrared or ultraviolet regions where semiconductors operate most efficiently. Other researchers might modify material properties to enhance or suppress the shift for specific applications.

The study, published in Optics Letters and funded by the Department of Science and Technology's Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD) and the UP Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development, represents more than just a technical achievement. It's a reminder that Filipino scientists continue to push the boundaries of what's possible, often with limited resources but unlimited ingenuity.

The Poetry of Light

There's something profoundly beautiful about the Goos–Hänchen shift. In an age where we often take light for granted—flipping switches without thought, streaming data through fiber optics without wonder—it reminds us that photons still hold mysteries. Even something as simple as a reflection harbors hidden depths, quantum subtleties that challenge our classical intuitions.

That a team working in Manila has now illuminated one of these mysteries, measuring what was thought nearly unmeasurable, speaks to the universal nature of scientific inquiry. The same laser light that bounces off silicon in a Philippine laboratory obeys the same laws that govern starlight crossing the cosmos. And now, thanks to Operaña and his colleagues, we understand those laws just a little bit better.

The light shifts. And so does our understanding of the universe.

Olympic Champion Carlos Yulo Leads the Charge at Run to Zero 2025

Wazzup Pilipinas!? 

The Philippines' golden boy takes on a new challenge as Run to Zero returns bigger and bolder

PARAÑAQUE CITY – From vaulting to victory at the Paris Olympics to hitting the pavement at home, two-time Olympic gold medalist Carlos Yulo is set to inspire thousands of Filipino runners at the third edition of Run to Zero, happening November 16, 2025, at Parqal, Aseana City.

The 25-year-old gymnastics sensation, who made history as the first Filipino to win multiple Olympic gold medals in floor exercise and vault at Paris 2024, will be making a special appearance at the event as a SIP Plus Ambassador, bringing his message of progress, perseverance, and healthy living to the running community.

A Champion's New Mission

Yulo became the Philippines' first-ever multiple-time Olympic champion when he delivered two stunning performances in Paris that captivated a nation. His precision, power, and grace under pressure turned him into a household name overnight. Now, he's channeling that same energy into promoting movement and healthier habits for all Filipinos.

"Progress is eternal," Yulo reminds runners. "No matter where you are in your fitness journey, the road welcomes you."

His appearance at Run to Zero isn't just ceremonial. The Olympic champion will participate in a special meet-and-greet, giving fans a rare opportunity to connect with the athlete who brought home not just medals, but immense national pride. After his Olympic victories, Yulo was showered with rewards including a two-bedroom condominium valued at over $414,000 and lifetime supplies of various perks from grateful Filipino companies, but he remains grounded in his mission to inspire the next generation.

Run to Zero: More Than Just a Race

Organized by Hyve Sports PH, a leading name in promoting emerging sports across Asia, Run to Zero 2025 returns with renewed energy and purpose. The event goes beyond the typical fun run formula, creating an experience that celebrates everyday movement and healthy choices.

This year's theme, "Back to the 80's," adds a vibrant, nostalgic twist to the proceedings, promising an electric atmosphere filled with color, music, and retro energy. But beneath the celebration lies a serious commitment to wellness, powered by SIP Plus, a zero-sugar, low-calorie electrolyte drink designed for health-conscious individuals.

Participants can choose their challenge across three distances:

5KM – Perfect for beginners or those seeking a lighter challenge

10KM – The sweet spot for regular runners

21KM – A half-marathon test for seasoned athletes

A Star-Studded Lineup

Yulo won't be running alone. The event features an impressive roster of athletes and personalities, all united in promoting active lifestyles:

Mauro Lumba – Celebrity coach and fitness influencer

Fino Herrera – Actor and wellness advocate

Min Capones – Seasoned runner and SIP Plus Ambassador

Steve Near – Philippine Flag Football Team athlete

Jai Agpangan – Fitness enthusiast

Kath Figuracion – Running mom inspiration

This diverse mix of participants reflects the event's inclusive spirit. Whether you're a competitive athlete, a weekend warrior, or someone taking their first steps toward a healthier lifestyle, Run to Zero creates a welcoming environment for all.

An Exclusive Discount from a Champion

In a gesture that demonstrates his commitment to the cause, Yulo is offering all participants a special discount. Runners can use the code "RTZYULO" at checkout to receive up to ₱500 OFF their registration fee—a golden opportunity from a golden champion.

The Deeper Mission

Run to Zero isn't just about crossing finish lines. Powered by SIP Plus, the event embodies a larger movement toward smarter health choices. SIP Plus offers zero sugar, pure hydration in 350ml and 500ml bottles, aligning perfectly with the growing awareness among Filipinos about the importance of proper hydration without unnecessary sugar intake.

The partnership between Yulo and SIP Plus feels natural. Both represent excellence in their fields, and both share a commitment to helping Filipinos achieve their goals—whether that's an Olympic podium or simply completing a first 5K.

From Paris to Parañaque

Yulo's Olympic journey was nothing short of spectacular. His vault performance earned him a 15.116 average score, making him the only athlete to score above 15 in the men's vault finals at Paris 2024. The following performances on floor exercise showcased the difficulty and artistic mastery that have defined his career.

Despite his newfound fame, Yulo has expressed his preference for a quiet life, though he recognizes the responsibility that comes with representing his country at the highest level. His appearance at Run to Zero reflects this balance—using his platform to inspire while remaining accessible to everyday Filipinos.

A Growing Running Culture

Run to Zero takes place amid a booming running culture in the Philippines. From the Metro Manila 10 Miler Series to various themed runs throughout the year, Filipinos are increasingly embracing running as both recreation and lifestyle. The event's location at Parqal, Aseana City, places it in the heart of Metro Manila's emerging sports and entertainment district.

The timing also couldn't be better. As the Philippines continues to celebrate its Olympic successes and looks ahead to future competitions, grassroots sporting events like Run to Zero play a crucial role in building the foundation for tomorrow's champions.

Looking Ahead

For Yulo, Run to Zero represents another chapter in his evolving role as a national icon. He's already setting his sights on defending his Olympic titles at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, but in the meantime, he's committed to inspiring Filipinos to move, to challenge themselves, and to make healthier choices every day.

"Stay hydrated, healthy, and unstoppable," has become the event's rallying cry—words that could easily describe Yulo's own approach to gymnastics and life.

Join the Movement

Run to Zero 2025 isn't just another race on the calendar. It's a celebration of progress, community, and the shared drive to move with intention. With Carlos Yulo leading the charge and a vibrant atmosphere promised, November 16 looks set to be a day when thousands of Filipinos take positive strides—literally and figuratively—toward healthier, more active lives.

Whether you're chasing a personal best, running for fun, or simply want to meet an Olympic champion, the road welcomes you.

EVENT DETAILS

Date: November 16, 2025

Location: Parqal, Aseana City, Parañaque

Categories: 5KM, 10KM, 21KM

Special Offer: Use code "RTZYULO" for up to ₱500 OFF

Registration: tinyurl.com/RunToZero2025

Facebook: facebook.com/runtozeroph

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runtozeroph/

Organized by: HYVE SPORTS PH

Powered by: SIP Plus – Zero Sugar Electrolyte Drink

Let's run it back. Everyone's invited.