Antigua and Barbuda prime minister Gaston Browne has hit out at the “empty” and “grossly inadequate” climate pledges, saying wealthy nations have failed to meet obligations to limit damages from carbon emissions, reports Reuters. Speaking at the Summit for Small Island Developing States on Monday, Browne called for more climate financing, a global carbon tax on oil companies, an end to fossil fuel subsidies and a faster transition to renewable energy sources, the newswire says. Reuters adds that he urged “rich nations to honour a pledge to send $100bn a year to poorer countries to help reduce emissions and mitigate extreme weather”. An earlier “exclusive” Reuters article said: “The world’s small island states plan to join forces to push for debt relief and more climate investment ahead of this year’s COP29 climate summit, part of a 10-year strategy to help save some of them from extinction, a draft document seen by Reuters showed.” Meanwhile, the Guardian reports: “The world has a ‘moral responsibility’ to support the fight for survival being faced by small island states, according to a leading UN agency chief. Ahead of the fourth annual conference of small island developing states (Sids) being held in Antigua and Barbuda this week, Jorge Moreira da Silva, the executive director of the (Unops), called for recognition of the problems faced by what he called ‘some of the most vulnerable economies in the world’ who contributed less than 1% to global carbon emissions.” (See Comment below.)

Reuters reports that temperatures in Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh have risen “above 52C”. According to the Pakistan Meteorological Department, it is the “highest reading of the summer and close to the country’s record high amid an ongoing heatwave”. The newswire adds: “Extreme temperatures throughout Asia over the past month were made worse most likely as a result of human-driven climate change, a team of international scientists have said.” Rubina Khursheed Alam, the prime minister’s coordinator on climate, said at a news conference on Friday: “Pakistan is the fifth most vulnerable country to the impact of climate change. We have witnessed above normal rains, floods.” A separate Reuters article says: “Indian voters braved temperatures of nearly 45C in parts of the country as they headed to polling stations in the penultimate phase of the world’s largest election on Saturday.” (See Carbon Brief’s “India election 2024: What the manifestos say on energy and climate change.”)

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the “first major cyclone of the year lashed the coastlines of India and Bangladesh on Monday, killing at least 16 people and cutting power to millions”. It adds: “The winds had not stopped as night fell, with water rising in many places and overwhelming drainage systems, Bangladeshi climate expert Liakath Ali said…Cyclone Remal is the first of the frequent storms expected to pound the low-lying coasts of the south Asian neighbours this year as climate change drives up surface temperatures at sea.” And the Associated Press reports that “renewed heavy rains have triggered more flash floods in Afghanistan, killing at least 15 people, including 10 members of the same family in the north-east, officials said Sunday”.

Separately, the Guardian says: “Severe drought in Zambia is threatening hunger for millions of people, cutting off electricity for long periods and destroying the country’s social fabric and economy, the environment minister has warned, in a harbinger of what is in store for the region as the climate crisis worsens. Collins Nzovu said the ‘crippling drought’ his country was experiencing hammered home the message that developing countries were facing catastrophe from the climate crisis, even as richer countries failed to muster financial help for the most afflicted.”

In addition, there is widespread reporting of a landslide in Papua New Guinea, which has been caused by “weeks of heavy rain and other wet conditions in the area”, says BBC News. The country’s national disaster centre said the landslide had buried more than 2,000 people, reports Sky News. The New York Times, CNN, Al Jazeera, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Independent and Mail Online all have the story.

With the UK’s general election looming and parliament concluding its business, the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has published a new report on the electrification of Great Britain, reports BusinessGreen. The MPs on the committee argue that there is “sufficient clean power capacity in the pipeline to meet the current government’s target of a clean power system by 2035, but progress was being hampered by grid capacity and lengthy planning delays”, adds the outlet. The Daily Telegraph covers another committee report rushed out before parliament concluded on Friday. The outlet writes: “Heat pumps are too expensive for ordinary families to install and run, the energy secretary Claire Coutinho has been warned by MPs. The government must urgently make low-carbon heating systems cheaper if it wants to reach its goal of net zero emissions by 2050, according to a report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).” The story is trailed on yesterday’s frontpage. The Times covers comments made by Baroness Brown of Cambridge, chairwoman of the adaptation sub-committee of the Climate Change Committee, who argues that state subsidies for new offshore wind projects “may not be generous enough to drive the projects needed to achieve targets for boosting clean energy”. The Daily Telegraph says that “energy secretary [Claire Coutinho] is considering moving green levies from electricity bills to gas bills or shifting them into general taxation”. The article sits under the headline: “Gas bills could rise by £1,000 to pay for wind power.”

Meanwhile, in other election-facing news, the Daily Express says that former prime minister Liz Truss, who is still promoting her book, has “called on her successor, Rishi Sunak, to ditch all net-zero targets in order to win the election”. The Daily Telegraph adds that Truss believes this would “deliver the conservative policies the public actually want”. [UK polling consistently shows that there is widespread support for action on climate change.] The Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph separately covers comments made by oil industry “analysts” and “experts” who argue that a Labour victory in the looming election “threatens the end of the North Sea oil industry”. The Daily Telegraph also trails on its frontpage a story headlined: “Net-zero efforts could cause rise in air pollution deaths.” The Financial Times covers the views of Greenpeace which says “Labour should break fiscal rules to fund the energy transition”.

Finally, in non-election news, the Daily Mail has published “exclusive analysis” about the “Archbishop of Airmiles”, adding that “Justin Welby is accused of hypocrisy after racking up 48,000 miles on foreign trips to Africa, Gaza and Pakistan since September despite lecturing people about climate change and advocating for net-zero”. The Times “reveals” that Lambeth council in London, “that’s been failing vulnerable children and leaving social housing tenants to live in squalor, has spent more than £25m on climate and ‘active travel’ initiatives since 2019”.  And the Daily Telegraph says: “The UK’s wet and wild spring will spark inflation-busting price rises on summer favourites including beer, barbecue meat, bread, pasta, salads and new potatoes, experts warn.”

State broadcaster CGTN reports that China’s Foreign Ministry has rejected the “unilateral accusation of implementing ‘non-market’ policies and practices” that the ministers from G7 countries made over the weekend. The accusation of overcapacity was reiterated at the G7 meeting of financial ministers who raised a “unified voice to counter some of the concerns they had over China’s trade policies”, according to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports that a US-China “high-level event on subnational climate action” is scheduled to be held in Berkeley, California, this week. The outlet adds that the meeting will be the first since the US’s tariff hikes on Chinese “new energy” vehicles (NEVs) and is expected to focus on “industrial decarbonisation, carbon markets and clean energy deployment”. Bloomberg and Reuters also cover the story

Separately, Bloomberg says the US, Europe and China are “entering a new, combative phase”, adding that the latest Biden tariff on Chinese NEVs and other “green products” is a move to “defend US interests, with subsidies now at the core of policy and without fear of retaliation”. State news agency Xinhua quotes Baris Doster, a Turkish academic, saying that the US tariffs on Chinese NEVs “underscores the hypocrisy and double standards of the US in its proclaimed support for free markets, liberalism, capitalism and free enterprise”. SCMP quotes Mary Lovely, a US economist, saying at a congressional panel in the US that the country should reform its existing tariffs on Chinese goods, focusing on “knowledge-intensive sectors” as the aim of the tariffs is “to reduce sales of Chinese firms that have profited from ill-gotten technology [and] coverage of high-technology imports should be increased”.

In other China stories, the energy news outlet BJX News covers new analysis of China’s electricity power, saying that the total electricity consumption across the “society” in 2024 will increase by 6.5% compared to 2023. The outlet adds that new energy installations this year will account for more than 40% of the total installed power generation capacity, with solar installations accounting for more than 25%. State broadcaster CCTV reports that China’s Ministry of Commerce has said that China has “always encouraged and supported” various industries in transitioning towards a “green and low-carbon future”. Xinhua carries an article arguing that, “despite the ‘decoupling’ and ‘derisking’ rhetoric hyped by some US politicians”, China’s NEV industry is attracting the interest of foreign investors.

The German energy company RWE has approved the construction of offshore wind farms in the North Sea, with a total capacity of 1.6 gigawatts (GW) to be implemented in two phases by 2029, reports Manager Magazin. “This is a positive signal for the energy transition in Germany and for RWE,” Sven Utermöhlen, head of RWE’s offshore wind division, is quoted saying. Euronews adds that the project, known as the Nordseecluster, will consist of 104 wind turbines producing 6.5 terawatt hours (TWh) of “green electricity annually”. Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) carries an article outlining the progress of renewable energy expansion in Germany towards the government’s target of achieving 80% of electricity generation from renewables by 2030. It says that, in 2023, “too little” wind power was built, so the capacity “remained 1.3GW below the target”. However, the annual target for solar energy was exceeded by 7.6GW in 2023 and is expected to reach 215GW by 2030, notes NDR. 

Meanwhile, EurActiv reports that, as part of their EU elections campaign, German conservative parties the CDU and CSU are opposing the ban on new combustion engine cars by 2035, a law approved by the European Parliament in February. “For us, the European elections are also a vote on the future of the combustion engine…The climate targets can also be achieved very well with the combustion engine,” CDU lawmaker Christoph Ploß is quoted as saying. The outlet notes that the CDU has launched a website called “Yes to the car,” where users can indicate whether they support revising the 2035 deadline for the sale of new petrol or diesel cars. 

Finally, T-Online reports that several climate activists in Berlin are on a hunger strike, demanding a government statement from the country’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, regarding German climate policy. Despite their efforts, the outlet adds, Scholz has rejected their demand, referring to the hunger strike as “violence against oneself”.

Bloomberg reports that “top Biden administration officials, including treasury secretary Janet Yellen, are set to lay out the first broad US government guidelines for carbon markets [this] week, a major win for advocates of emission offsets as a weapon against global warming”. The outlet adds: “The move is a bid by the US to encourage a new era of what it calls ‘high-integrity carbon markets’ and help rehabilitate a climate solution that’s been dogged by controversy. Although there’s increasing interest in using offsets to unlock billions of dollars for decarbonisation, the credits have drawn intense criticism after revelations that multiple projects never delivered on their emission-cutting claims.”

Writing in his regular column in the New York Times, Nobel economist Paul Krugman focuses on how the “emerging sewage crisis [on the US’s eastern seaboard where many homes use septic tanks] is only one of many disasters we can expect as the planet continues to warm”. He continues: “It seems to me to offer an especially graphic illustration of two points. First, the damage from climate change is likely to be more severe than even pessimists have tended to believe. Second, mitigation and adjustment – which are going to be necessary, because we’d still be headed for major effects of climate change even if we took immediate action to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions – will probably be far more difficult, as a political matter, than it should be…There has been a trend in recent studies to mark up estimates of the damage from climate change. The uncertainty remains huge, but it’s a good guess that things will be even worse than you thought…Spending on that scale will almost surely require new tax revenue. How quickly do you think right-wing culture warriors will agree to that? So I’m very worried about the climate future.”

Writing in the Guardian on the topic of climate finance, Mohamed Muizzu – the president of the Maldives – warns that “the current global financial architecture is outdated and not fit for purpose”. He says that “its use of legacy metrics such as gross national income (GNI) and gross domestic product (GDP) skews our economic reality, painting Sids [Small Island Developing States] as wealthier than we are, barring us from critical funding opportunities”. For example, Muizzu writes, “thanks to the Maldives’ healthy tourism industry, we are ranked as an emerging economy and therefore shut out from the cheaper financing set aside for the lowest income countries”. He continues: “Unless we urgently reassess how funding is delivered and interest rates are calculated, and what projects are deemed worthy of climate resiliency funding, millions of people living across Sids risk losing their homes.” In addition, Muizzu warns that the ”other core issue is what can be funded”. He says that because projects such as Ras Malé, which “aims to be the Indian Ocean’s first eco city”, are “classed as infrastructure work in the eyes of some climate financiers and multilateral banks, climate funding for such projects – running from the millions to billions of dollars – is not forthcoming.” In light of these issues, at the UN’s fourth International Conference on Sids in Antigua and Barbuda this week, “we will be calling for the global adoption of a multidimensional vulnerability index (MVI), a new measure that reflects Sids’ inherent vulnerabilities”, Muizzu writes: “If it is adopted, we can start to rethink the criteria used to decide how projects are funded and spark a wave of sustainable development across our nations.”

Also in the Guardian, Prof Sir David King – chair of the global Climate Crisis Advisory Group and former chief scientific adviser to the UK government – sets out a “4R planet” pathway to tackling climate change. This means, he says: “reducing emissions; removing the excess greenhouse gases (GHGs) already in the atmosphere; repairing ecosystems; and strengthening local and global resilience against inevitable climate impacts”. Funding for the development of the four Rs “will fall on advanced and emerging economies”, he notes: “Heads of G20 countries must lead the way. Vision and understanding from our leaders, coupled with a global public demanding more, are essential. Beyond policy changes and investment, a seismic cultural shift is imperative to steer humanity away from self-destruction towards a just and sustainable future. We must realign our political will, economic priorities and societal values to recognise that ecological wellbeing is matched to human wellbeing.”

With the UK general election being set for 4 July, most of the UK newspapers are full of comment pieces and editorials seeking to make the case for how to vote. An editorial in the Daily Mirror says: “Labour will not inherit the healthy economy Tony Blair did in 1997. Growth is now key to getting it back on track after 14 years of Tory mismanagement. That is why the new publicly-owned Great British Energy company is so essential. Doubling onshore wind power, trebling solar and quadrupling offshore wind could cut our annual bills by £1,400 and create 500,000 jobs. Even Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt admits getting green technology right would be worth £1tn to British business by 2030. It would turn economic growth into financial boom. But to get there we need less of the flair of Blair and more of the common-sense, down-to-earth steer of Keir.” A separate editorial in the Daily Mirror argues: “Chief executives of Britain’s 10 biggest energy firms raked in a combined £50m last year…There is no justification for such bumper salaries. There is every justification for a proper windfall tax on the oil and gas giants.”

The Sunday Express carries a reader Q&A with Labour’s Ed Miliband and the Conservative’s Claire Coutinho. Meanwhile, the Tory-supporting, climate-sceptic comment pages of outlets such as the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Sun have been pushing out articles under headlines such as: “We have six weeks to save Britain from Labour’s green dystopia”; “Labour’s net-zero plans for energy are too good to be true – they’d make snake oil salesman blush with embarrassment”; “From National Service to net-zero, it is policy not punditry that matters” and “How the climate establishment went to war over net-zero jargon”. An editorial in the Daily Mail claims that “families will welcome the Tories’ pledge to curb spurious green levies on fuel bills”.

Finally, the Financial Times’s Henry Mance has lunch with the former National Farmers’ Union president Minette Batters. The article says: “Batters fairly argues that farmers must be compensated for the green transition. She also wants a return to some fixed subsidies to compensate farmers for the effects of climate change. ‘Whichever party says, ‘We know that you’re going to be dealing with drought, flooding events and extreme weather – and we’re going to have a land payment that deals with stability,’ farmers are going to say, ‘You’ve got my vote.’” And an editorial in the Guardian looks at how a radical-right reset in the Dutch government will “challenge European unity” over issues such as how to tackle climate change.

By the end of the century, the surface area of lakes on the Tibetan Plateau will increase by over 50% (around 20,000km2) and water levels will rise by around 10 metres, even under a low emissions scenario, new research finds. If no adaptation measures are introduced, this lake expansion will submerge more than 1,000km of roads, approximately 500 settlements and around 10,000km2 of land such as grasslands, wetlands and croplands, the research estimates. The research uses field surveys, remote sensing observations and numerical modelling to assess future changes to “endorheic” lakes, bodies of water that do not drain into the sea.