Authorities in eastern Libya say at least 2,000 people have been killed and thousands more are missing after “a massive flood ripped through the city of Derna following a heavy storm and rain”, Reuters reports. According to the newswire, Ahmed Mismari, the spokesperson for the Libyan National Army that controls eastern Libya, estimates that 5,000-6,000 people are missing. It adds: “Earlier on Monday, the head of the Red Crescent aid group in the region had said Derna’s death toll was at 150 and expected to hit 250. Reuters could not immediately verify either figure.” The Guardian says: “The precise number dead is hard to gauge with communications down and administration hampered by a decade-long battle for power between two rival governments each backed by their own militias.” BBC News reports that authorities have declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew, ordering schools and shops to close. “Authorities in the east declared Derna a disaster zone on Monday after floodwaters burst through its two ageing dams, inundating wide swaths of the city and leaving muddy, churning river in their wake,” the Washington Post says. Sky News says that foreign governments offered support on Monday. And Axios adds: “The storm comes as the Mediterranean has been hammered by multiple natural disasters that are linked to human-caused climate change, including Greece’s devastating wildfire season and multiple record-breaking heat waves.” The Associated Press, the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph also carry the story.

The US has set a record for the largest number of natural disasters recorded in a single year that cost $1bn or more, with four months of the year left to run, the Guardian reports. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration finds that the US has seen 23 disasters costing more than $1bn this year, costing more than $57.6bn in total, the paper says. “The record figure does not include major disasters such Tropical Storm Hilary last month, as the cost of damage is still being totaled,” the paper adds. Axios lists all 23 events, including Hawai’i’s wildfires and Hurricane Idalia. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that climate change is “causing an insurance crisis in Louisiana”, as damages from hurricanes pushes insurers to “close their doors or hike rates”.

Yesterday, a group of nine Pacific and Caribbean island nations appeared before an international court, asking it to rule that excessive greenhouse gases are pollutants that violate international law, the New York Times reports. The newspaper continues: “Arguments will revolve around the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the legal framework that covers uses of the oceans and their resources, including the obligation to protect the marine environment. The convention has been ratified by 168 nations, though not by the US. But the convention, negotiated in the 1970s, does not mention emissions of greenhouse gases and their effects on the warming and acidification of the oceans, and on sea-level rise. For the tribunal, this will be a test case: The Oceans Court, as it is also called, has ruled on issues like fisheries, rights of passage, and seabed mining and pollution, but it has never heard a case on greenhouse gases and their impact on climate change and the oceans.” It adds that the two-week session of the court in Germany has “drawn wide attention”, with representatives of more than 50 counties asking to participate orally or through writing. The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, told the tribunal that it was time to speak of “legally binding obligations, rather than empty promises that go unfulfilled, abandoning peoples to suffering and destruction”, Climate Home News reports. It continues: “[The] Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law members hope that a strong opinion from the tribunal will prompt governments to take tougher action on climate change. While not legally binding, the opinion could also form the basis of future lawsuits.” EuroNews adds: “After the two-day hearing, the tribunal will issue an advisory opinion…If successful, the case will extend countries’ obligations under the UN convention to include carbon-emission reduction and protection of marine environments already hit by CO2 pollution.” Agence France-Presse and the Journal also cover the story.

China’s top economic planner the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has warned four provinces over their “lax” supervision and “slow progress” towards energy-saving targets for 2025, reports the South China Morning Post. (See Carbon Brief’s China Briefing from March 2022 on China’s 14th five year plan for the energy sector.) The state broadcaster CCTV also covers the body’s meetings with local officials, saying the NDRC called for a “close watch” on energy-saving targets and “stringent constraints” on energy intensity. 

Chinese energy website IN-EN.com has published “important” remarks made by Zhang Jianhua, the director of the National Energy Administration, at a conference. It says Zhang stressed that China should prioritise innovation of “green hydrogen, advanced energy storage, next-generation nuclear energy and carbon capture, storage and utilisation”. The “blue book of China’s energy transition index 2023”, which establishes the first quantitative assessment of China’s energy transition, was also launched at this conference, reports Communist Party-backed newspaper the People’s Daily. The state newswire China News, citing a report by CCTV, says that issuance and trading volume of “green certificates” for low-carbon electricity in China has “significantly increased”, and that the number of certificates issued between January and July 2023 is already 2.6 times higher than the number issued for the whole of 2022.

Meanwhile, Hellenic Shipping News writes that liquefied natural gas (LNG) suppliers are “betting on China” to drive long-term demand for the fuel, as the country has secured “multi-year supply deals”. The state-run industry newspaper China Energy News carries a speech by former Chinese Academy of Engineering vice dean Xie Kechang, a prominent proponent for the use of “clean coal”, in which he highlighted that China should strengthen the “clean and effective use of coal”. And China Dialogue reports that “China’s energy system is undergoing profound changes”, adding that “spot markets are crucial for establishing a unified electricity market, which would promote renewable development and reduce reliance on new coal power”.

Elsewhere, the state-run newspaper China Daily reports that during Chinese premier Li Qiang’s meeting with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak at the G20, Sunak said that the UK is willing to “jointly address” the challenge of climate change with China.

The Financial Times reports that 60 researchers have signed a letter urging prime minister Rishi Sunak to support a “moratorium” on deep-sea mining. According to the newspaper, the researchers have warned the government that “pressing ahead with the industrial-scale exploitation of the seafloor could have grave consequences for both marine life and the ability of the oceans – one of the planet’s biggest carbon sinks – to absorb carbon dioxide”. 

In other UK news, BBC News reports that BMW “plans to invest hundreds of millions of pounds to prepare its Mini factory near Oxford to build a new generation of electric cars”. Speaking at the plant in Oxford, business secretary Kemi Badenoch said that Britain needs China to reach its net-zero targets, the Daily Telegraph reports. This comes “as Cabinet ministers insisted a row over spying should not result in a breaking of ties with Beijing”, the paper says.  Bloomberg quotes Badenoch saying “the UK needs Chinese batteries to get to net-zero”.

Elsewhere, Bloomberg covers a new report warning that “if the UK doesn’t significantly ramp up renewables investment at a time when oil and gas is in decline, as many as 95,000 potential offshore energy jobs will be at risk”. Unearthed reports that “more than half of oil accidentally spilled in UK waters reached marine protected areas”. And the Press Association reports that “the wet spring with heatwaves in the summer could mean trees are red, gold and orange for longer”.

The executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, writes in the Financial Times that global demand for oil, gas and coal will peak this decade. Every  year, the IEA’s world energy outlook “maps out potential pathways the global energy system could take in the coming decades to help inform decision-making”, Birol writes. This year’s report will be released next month and shows that the world is “on the cusp of a historic turning point”, he says. He adds: “This is the first time that a peak in demand is visible for each fuel this decade – earlier than many people anticipated.” [Last year the agency said coal would peak “within the next few years”, gas “by the end of the decade” and oil “in the mid-2030s”. Now it is saying oil will peak by 2030.] Birol says the shift is mainly driven by “the spectacular growth of clean energy technologies such as solar panels and electric vehicles, the structural shifts in China’s economy and the ramifications of the global energy crisis”. He adds that the shift shows “efforts to avoid the worst effects of climate change are making headway” but continues: “The projected declines in demand we see based on today’s policy settings are nowhere near steep enough to put the world on a path to limiting global warming to 1.5C. That will require significantly stronger and faster policy action by governments…The declines in demand also won’t be linear. Although fossil fuels are set to hit their peaks this decade in structural terms, there can still be spikes, dips and plateaus on the way down…And even as demand for fossil fuels falls, energy security challenges will remain as suppliers adjust to the changes.” A Financial Times news article on Biro’s comments was leading the paper’s website at the time of writing, under the headline: “World at ‘beginning of end’ of fossil fuel era, IEA says.”

Another Financial Times article runs under the headline: “G20 ‘missing in action’ on fossil fuels even as it boosts green energy goals.” The paper notes that the G20 declaration agreed to triple renewable energy by 2030 and to phasedown unabated coal, but “failed to include any reference to the phase out of oil and gas, despite the burning of fossil fuels being the biggest contributor to human-induced global warming”.

Dr Sania Nishtar, a senator in Pakistan and former special assistant to the prime minister on poverty alleviation, argues in the Daily Telegraph that “whether it’s malnutrition, malaria or the eradication of polio, we can’t lose momentum on critical progress in the face of challenges like the climate crisis”. Disasters like last year’s flooding, which left large parts of Pakistan underwater “have the ability to reverse decades of health and development progress, especially for the world’s poorest”, Nishtar writes. She continues: “When storms wipe out sanitation systems and cause wastewater to overflow, water-borne diseases like cholera and dengue spread amongst the most vulnerable. Incapacitated by such diseases, communities don’t have the capacity needed to bounce back in the aftermath of a crisis.” She adds: “For health, climate mitigation starts with life-saving vaccines. They provide a first line of defence against disease outbreaks, which make emergency situations even worse and put further pressure on health systems when they’re hyper fragile.”

In the South China Morning Post, Edwin Lau, executive director of NGO the Green Earth reflects on record rainfall in Hong Kong last week, writing that “even climate change sceptics must see the need to prepare for extreme weather”. He notes that while the city’s drainage systems were designed to withstand up to once-in-200-years rainstorms and floods, the flooding last week amounted to a quarter of the city’s average annual rainfall. “The disruption brought by the latest storm shows there is certainly room for more improvement, especially in anticipation of more intense rainstorms and rising sea levels in the future,” he says. Lau adds that authorities should also implement ‘nature-based solutions’ to “effectively retain stormwater in urban environments”.

In other comment, Kalia Ruth Barkai, German chancellor fellow from South Africa based at the University of Potsdam, writes in Climate Home News that people should stop using the phrase “climate refugee”. She says: “Unfortunately, ‘refugee’ is increasingly being used to describe people as either victims with little agency or as security threats…Rather than try to reduce the experience of climate mobility into one, provocative, label, we need discussions and international policies capable of creating comprehensive labels that recognise the diversity of experiences and address the context-specific needs of people on the move due to climate change.”

The UK government’s failure to attract any bids for offshore wind ‘contracts for difference’ in its latest auction is “both worrying and embarrassing”, according to an editorial in the Financial Times. The newspaper calls the UK a “genuine world leader in wind”, noting that it is second only to China for its offshore wind energy capacity. It continues: “The latest auction failed primarily because the government did not promise a high enough maximum unit price for electricity…The government must of course balance the need to develop renewable energy with costs for billpayers and taxpayers. This may explain why it tried to lowball the maximum price. But with electricity generated from offshore wind set to remain notably cheaper than gas for the foreseeable future, the failed auction in effect locks households and businesses into the more expensive and volatile fossil fuel for longer. RenewableUK, a trade body, said the lost wind farms eligible for the auction could have saved consumers £2bn a year.” The paper says the government needs to “learn from this failure”, concluding that “when it comes to energy security and cutting emissions, wind is a strength Britain must lean into”.

Elsewhere, Greek former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, leader of MeRA25 party in Greece’s parliament, writes in the Guardian that the EU cannot “power ahead” with “green subsidies” in the same way as US president Joe Biden’s because “unlike their US counterparts, EU policymakers still face the roadblocks of no money and no common treasury”. An editorial in the Sun says that Conservative former chancellor Phillip Hammond is “on the money” about net-zero. It continues: “Complacent politicians of all stripes, he says, are forcing through draconian eco policies without being honest with voters about the mind-boggling cost…Delay the arbitrary deadlines for banning oil and gas boilers and petrol cars until their replacements work just as well – and ordinary people can afford them.” [While in office, Hammond infamously leaked a letter to then-prime minister Theresa May to the Financial Times, warning of the cost of reaching the net-zero target she was about to enact, but failing to mention the benefits in terms of fossil fuel cost savings, which substantially offset the bill overall, even before accounting for the benefits of avoided air pollution and climate change.]

Flying insects could find it harder to migrate to higher elevations, leaving them more vulnerable to rising temperatures than flightless insects, according to a new “brief communication”. The research examined “metabolic constraints” across more than 800 species to find that “upslope migration is slower in insects that rely on nature’s most expensive locomotor strategy: flight”. The findings show that “even if thermally suitable environments are nearby, the capacity for species to disperse and persist in those habitats will be dictated by more than just their thermal preferences”, the authors say.