Flooding in eight districts across Bangladesh has left more than 3 million people stranded, according to Bangladeshi newspaper the Daily Star. It adds that locals reported they had not seen “such massive flooding” – driven by “incessant rains” and rising river levels – for 37 years. “At least” five people have died due to the floods, according to Agence France-Presse. The newswire explains that Bangladesh “is among the countries most vulnerable to disasters and climate change”, adding that “annual monsoon rains cause widespread destruction every year, but climate change is shifting weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events”. Reuters points to an analysis from 2015 by the World Bank Institute, which estimated that 3.5 million people in Bangladesh were at risk of annual river flooding. It adds that “scientists attribute the exacerbation of such catastrophic events to climate change”. CNN also makes the link with climate change, but says “multiple residents” living near the Gomati River in the city of Cumilla told the outlet that they blame India for the flood. It notes that much of Bangladesh comprises deltas from rivers that flow from India through Bangladesh towards the sea. According to the Hindustan Times, the Indian external affairs ministry issued a statement denying responsibility, following reports that the floods were triggered by the opening of India’s Dumbur dam in the bordering, northeastern state of Tripura. The newspaper says some reports “even implied” that India “resorted to such a step” following the fall of the government of former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India earlier this month amid a student-led uprising. The Daily Star reports on comments supporting such narratives by Nahid Islam, an information and broadcasting adviser in the interim government, who told a press briefing that India had shown “inhumanity” by opening a dam without giving prior notice and, therefore, causing flooding in Bangladesh. Indian news outlet the Wire notes that various Bangladeshi media outlets, including the Dhaka Tribune and the Business Standard, have reported the claims about the dam sluice gates being opened. However, it stresses that Indian officials emphasised that the catchment areas of the Gumti river, which covers both India and Bangladesh, “have witnessed the heaviest rains of this year over the last few days”.

Meanwhile, Jagadishwor Karmacharya, the head of Nepal’s hydrology and meteorology department, has told Climate Home News that China’s failure to provide information about its Himalayan glacial lakes is “endangering mountain-dwellers in neighbouring flood-prone Nepal”. After two lakes burst last week, destroying homes, there are “fears that global warming is likely to cause more such disasters as glaciers melt in high mountain ranges”, the article explains.

China has built 39 nuclear reactors over the past decade, “roughly quadrupling power capacity”, Japanese media Nikkei Asia reports. Together with Russia, it has accounted for “most of the world’s new reactors”, pushing the global nuclear capacity to an “all-time high”, the outlet adds. Meanwhile, China has unveiled an action plan to raise the investment for the “large-scale renewal of equipment in the key areas in the energy sector” by more than 25% by 2027, compared with 2023 levels, China News Network reports. The Ministry of Water Resources says the government has invested 689.4bn yuan ($96bn) in water conservancy projects in the first seven months of the year, a year-on-year increase of 12.8%, the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily reports. 

Elsewhere, the financial news outlet Jiemian’s news bulletins says an “emergency recovery” fund of 200 million yuan (nearly $28m) for heavy rains and floods damages has been issued in Liaoning and Jilin province. China’s power consumption in July expanded by 5.7% year-on-year to 939.6 terawatt-hours (TWh), state news agency Xinhua resorts. Another Xinhua report says that the Chinese government is mulling “large-scale battery upgrades for city buses”. China’s Ministry of Natural Resources says it has found some places in the country failing to protect “farmland” and violateing the “ecological redlines”, state broadcaster CCTV reports. (Read Carbon Brief’s Q&A: “How is climate change affecting China’s cropland?”) 

In other news, a joint study by thinktank Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air covered by the Straits Times reveals that, in the first half of 2024, about 41 gigawatt (GW) of coal plants – more than 90% of the world’s total – were under construction in China, despite the fact that the approval for new construction went down. (The finding is in line with new Greenpeace analysis covered in Tuesday’s Daily Briefing.) Reuters, Bloomberg and the Guardian cover the same report. Sinopec Group, “the world’s biggest producer of green hydrogen”, has set up an alliance with other state-owned companies to ”speed up the building of a supply chain for green hydrogen and accelerate the nation’s transition to non-polluting fuels”, reports Bloomberg. 

Finally, Global Times, a state-supporting newspaper, says Chinese officials have “lashed out at the European Commission (EC) for its newly released draft definitive findings of the probe against Chinese electric vehicles (EVs)”. The foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Wednesday denounced the EU’s findings as “disrespects WTO rules” and “go[ing] against the trend of history”, adds the outlet. China will defend itself against the EC’s “wrong, unreasonable and noncompliant move”, says an editorial in state-supporting China Daily, while a Global Times editorial calls on the EC to “act in the interests of all of Europe, meet China halfway, and accelerate discussions to find an appropriate solution”. A commentary by Xinhua writers Cao Bin and Zuo Wei says the EC’s decision “ignores a bare truth: the shared weal and woe along industrial chains”.

Australia is on track to see its hottest August on record as a “heat engine fuelled by climate change” drives high temperatures during the nation’s winter, the Guardian reports. This refers to a weather system in the centre of the country that could push temperatures towards 40C in northern South Australia, the southern Northern Territory and western New South Wales, the newspaper explains. It adds that this is more than 10C above average temperatures. Prof Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate researcher at the Australian National University, tells the Guardian that the lengthening of spring and summer currently being experienced across the country is “only going to intensify with climate change”. Meanwhile, Sky News reports on “unseasonably warm weather” and a “winter heatwave” across Australia’s east in the coming days. ABC News reports that temperature records are “likely to be annihilated across the country’s interior during the coming days”. It points to the central town of Alice Springs, which is facing eight days above 32C, “easily eclipsing” current winter records. The article says the unseasonable weather has threatened to shorten the Australian ski season for the second consecutive year.

A study examining the effectiveness of 1,500 climate policies implemented over the past two decades has concluded that just 63 – or 4% – of them “substantially reduced emissions”, according to the New York Times. The newspaper says that, while these effective policies cut emissions by much as 1.8bn metric tons of carbon (GtCO2), the UN estimates that emissions must fall by 23GtCO2 by 2030 to reach targets laid out in the Paris Agreement. It notes that, with this goal in mind, the research “could provide models for the best paths forward”. The study, which analysed 42 countries with policies in an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) database, has been widely covered by the media, including by New Scientist. As with many outlets, the science magazine has a negative slant on the results, noting that the “vast majority of climate policies fail to significantly reduce emissions and so make little difference to stopping climate change”. It explains that the scientists used machine learning to identify moments when countries’ emissions dropped considerably and matched these moments with policies implemented, as captured in the OECD database. Others, such as CNN, focus on the policies that “worked best”, according to the research. The outlet explains that single policies, such as bans on new coal plants or fossil fuel-powered cars, did not yield big emissions reductions unless combined with other policies, such as taxes on fuel. The Financial Times also leads on this outcome, noting that “the most successful moves in nations such as the UK, Norway, the US and China, involved a mix of policies that included subsidies as well as regulations and pricing mechanisms”. According to Semafor, the idea that policy mixes work best “is not new” and supports previous work done in this area. Major successes that rely on such mixes include the UK decarbonising its electricity system and the US cutting emissions from road transport, CBC News says.

In the UK, the Daily Telegraph has a couple of questionable stories about government climate policies. The first covers a statement by US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, in which he blames the UK’s “self-destructive” net-zero policies for causing the recent far-right riots. This is inaccurate. As the newspaper notes, the rioting has been “widely blamed on misinformation, far-right agitators and criminal opportunists”. Separately, another Daily Telegraph article is headlined “[Ed] Miliband to preside over biggest North Sea oil projects in decades”. It infers that the net-zero secretary is acting hypocritically, as he previously described the Rosebank and Cambo projects as “climate vandalism” when they were approved by the previous Conservative government. However, as the article notes, Labour said in opposition “it will not revoke any drilling permits issued during the Conservatives’ time in office”. (See Carbon Brief’s recent article: “Analysis: UK could approve 13 new oil and gas projects despite North Sea pledge.”) There is also an editorial in the Daily Telegraph bemoaning the Labour government’s plans to extend windfall taxes on oil and gas profits, and block licensing for new oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

Electricity generation from solar energy in Germany reached a “record high” in July, reports Die Zeit. The newspaper quotes Germany’s economy minister Robert Habeck saying: “In July, around 10TWh of solar power were produced, more than ever before in a single month, even though [sunshine levels were] lower than last year.” The outlet adds that, last year, the addition of new capacity nearly doubled compared to the previous year, reaching nearly 14 gigawatts (GW), according to figures from the Federal Network Agency. Stern reports that, according to the economy ministry, the total capacity of installed solar power systems exceeded 90GW by the end of June, meaning that Germany’s target of 88GW of installed capacity for the year 2024 was already achieved in the first half of the year. The outlet explains that, in 2030, the installed solar capacity in Germany is expected to reach 215GW.

Meanwhile, Handelsblatt carries an article looking at “biomethane” in Germany, noting that it can be a “key element for decarbonisation”, given its potential to leverage renewable energy from agricultural waste, “promote a circular economy and drive economic growth”. It notes that the revised Building Energy Act recognises biomethane as a means to meet renewable energy needs. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) explains that Habeck has recently announced a “comprehensive biomass package”, noting that “biogas can continue to play an important role in the future energy system”. 

Finally, FAZ reports that the grain harvest in Germany has been a “nerve-wracking” experience for farmers this summer, according to Joachim Rukwied, the president of the German Farmers’ Association. The newspaper says that Rukwied cites climate change and reduced cultivation areas as reasons for this decline: “Extremely wet weather from autumn to early summer, a lack of sunshine and repeated rainfall during harvest time – all of this has presented our farmers with challenges this year.”

There is commentary from John Bowden, the Independent’s Washington DC correspondent, about the lack of focus on climate policy in the agenda being set out by Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris. He notes that her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, has run a “typically conservative-coded playbook” on climate and energy, which includes courting “the climate-denier right”. Bowden writes that the more pertinent comparison is with the current president Joe Biden, who ushered in the landmark Inflation Reduction Act and is, therefore, “no conservative when it comes to climate policy”. So far, Bowden says Harris “is in no rush to develop any daylight between herself and the president” on climate change. He points to an announcement by Harris that she no longer supports a ban on fracking or offshore drilling – seen as an effort to win over voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest. “Even as Harris moderates her rhetoric on energy policy heading into the general election, it’s clear that her party’s younger generations are increasingly eager to pursue pro-climate policies even in states and regions where they’ve been historically unpopular,” the article continues. While the ambition of Harris’ climate policies is “still purely hypothetical”, Bowden says climate advocates remain optimistic. “Given the wide disparity in views on climate policy between Harris and Trump, it’s no surprise that even the more progressive climate groups are firmly behind Harris’s campaign,” he says. The Washington Post has an article titled: “Why Democrats are so quiet about climate change right now.” Published on Thursday morning, it says a speaking slot for interior secretary Deb Haaland offered a chance to speak on these issues at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (Indeed, as reported by USA Today, Haaland did make the case that Harris would be the “better candidate to handle the climate crisis”.)

Separately, an editorial in the climate-sceptic comment pages of the Wall Street Journal criticises the Biden administration’s policies to drive the sales of electric cars in the US – blaming federal and state initiatives for the recent decision by Ford to shift its electric vehicles strategy. “Automakers’ problem is that California and the Biden administration are forcing them to make increasing numbers of EVs that are piling up on dealer lots,” it claims. [As outlined in yesterday’s Daily Briefing, Ford shifted its electric vehicle strategy amid competition from lower priced competitors.]

A new study finds that “socially vulnerable” communities – a term that encompasses a range of factors, including high levels of poverty and unemployment, disability status and access to transportation – are more likely to be affected by wildfires, “despite accounting for only a small proportion of high wildfire hazard areas”. Researchers use a social-vulnerability index and a fire model to simulate wildfire risk in parts of Washington state, then compare the risk maps to lived experience of fires. They find “consistent positive associations between social vulnerability and community fire experience”, but that less vulnerable communities have higher fire risk according to standard metrics. They argue that socioeconomic conditions should be accounted for in wildfire risk models.