There is continuing coverage of the damage that Hurricane Ida has been causing across southern states in the US. Reuters reports that “the damage to Louisiana’s power grid from Hurricane Ida is so extensive that the US Coast Guard has joined the task of assessing the wreckage, a departure from its maritime security duties…More than 1m homes and businesses along the US Gulf Coast are without power following Ida’s landfall late Sunday.” It adds: “Power officials have told leaders in Jefferson Parish in the New Orleans area that its roughly 440,000 people could be without electricity for a month or longer.”

Meanwhile, many outlets discuss how climate change has likely affected the storm. Scientific American speaks to atmospheric scientist Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center who says: “We’re warming the atmosphere with the burning of fossil fuels and we’re warming the oceans. With those two factors, there’s more moisture in the atmosphere now because it can evaporate from the oceans more readily into a warmer atmosphere that can accept more water vapour. And this is all contributing to the fuel that tropical storms need to intensify.” Bloomberg quotes Greg Foltz, an oceanographer with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: “It’s a known effect of climate change. Increasing ocean heat is causing strong hurricanes to become stronger. Surface temperatures in the Gulf now are about 0.5C to 1C above the 1971 to 2000 mean. This gives more fuel to hurricanes and increases their wind speed limit.” The New York Times says Ida provides a “very scary” preview of future hurricanes. The New York Times also carries a comment piece by Alexandra Tempus, who is writing a book about climate adaptation, under the headline: “When climate change comes to your doorstep.” An editorial in the Washington Post says: “Hurricane Ida shows the huge investments to protect New Orleans after Katrina paid off. It’s a lesson for other cities.”

In other US news, Thomson Reuters Foundation reports that “climate-driven extreme heat threatens $500bn in new US costs by 2050”, citing thinktank the Atlantic Council. Reuters reports that “the Biden administration plans to make federal lands cheaper to access for solar and wind power developers after the clean power industry argued in a lobbying push this year that lease rates and fees are too high to draw investment and could torpedo the president’s climate change agenda”. And the Times says that a “big wildfire is edging towards one of America’s most popular tourist destinations, sending thousands of people fleeing from their homes”. It adds: “Evacuation warnings became evacuation orders on Monday as the Caldor fire barrelled towards the resort city of South Lake Tahoe, population 22,000”.

The Times joins many UK news outlets in covering a new report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, which recommends the introduction of road pricing. The newspaper says: “Traffic jams could paralyse the road network in coming years, a report said this week, with low-emission vehicles, which escape fuel duty, making it cheaper to drive. The report…recommends the introduction of road pricing. Motorists would be taxed on the size of their vehicle and the time they used the roads, with higher charges during peak hours. The report said that Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, is facing a black hole of £30bn in lost taxes because people in electric cars no longer pay fuel duty or vehicle excise duty. Asked whether the government was considering road pricing, the prime minister’s spokesman said that Johnson would not ‘seek to place burdens on hardworking families’, but added that taxes needed to reflect the rising number of electric cars.” The Daily Mail says: “One Whitehall source said that while officials were not yet working ‘proactively’ on road pricing schemes, ‘there is a circle to be squared there’…But the idea was rejected by motoring groups, with the AA saying a road pricing scheme is ‘likely to backfire’ because many drivers will see it as a ‘poll tax on wheels’. The group added that motorists should be given a guaranteed ‘free miles allowance’ before any charges kick in.” The Sun says the report warns that “Britain’s roads could be entirely gridlocked in 20 years due to the electric car revolution”. The Daily Express runs the story under the headline: “Nightmare: Car tax changes in electric cars could lead to £30bn loss.” The Daily Telegraph has published a comment piece by climate sceptic writer Ross Clark in which he claims that “road pricing would obliterate the incentive to buy an electric car”.

Meanwhile, several outlets cover the introduction of the E10 blend of petrol across much of the UK this week, in which the amount of ethanol added the fuel is 10%, up from the previous standard of 5%. BBC News says a “more eco-friendly petrol is coming to British filling stations this month, but a quarter of drivers do not know whether their cars can run it, new research says”. It adds: “It contains less carbon than other fuels and more ethanol, a kind of alcohol manufactured from plants. But according to the RAC, 24% of motorists are unaware of it, while 27% do not know if their car is compatible.” The Times says “new greener petrol will be introduced to service stations across Britain from today despite fears that hundreds of thousands of drivers still do not know whether their car can use it without being damaged…Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, said the move would reduce CO2 emissions from millions of petrol cars before the transition to far cleaner electric vehicles in the coming decades.” The Sun is live-blogging the development.

Separately, the Guardian reports that “Shell has announced its aim to install 50,000 on-street electric vehicle charging points in the UK over the next four years, in an attempt to provide a third of the network needed to hit national climate change targets”. And the Daily Telegraph says that “North Sea oil and gas investment collapsed to its lowest level since 1973 last year, amid warnings from the energy industry that Britain could end up relying on imports of fossil fuels from other parts of the world”. [The UK has been a net importer of oil since 2013 and gas since 2004.] Separately, Sky News reports that Greenpeace has launched a legal challenge to the UK government’s granting of a permit to BP for the Vorlich oil field in the North Sea, in 2018. The outlet says this is the first time an offshore permit has been challenged in court.

Greta Thunberg’s comments to BBC Scotland that “she doesn’t regard Scotland as a world leader on climate change” have been widely picked up by other media outlets. The Swedish climate campaigner told BBC Scotland she recognised that some countries “do a bit more than others”, but that none were coming close to what was needed. BBC Scotland adds: “On the Scottish Greens’ deal to enter government, she said some politicians were ‘less worse’ than others. But she said tackling climate change was not as easy as voting for a green party. The 18-year-old said: ‘Of course there might be some politicians that are slightly less worse than others. That was very mean but you get the point. It’s a hopeful sign that people want something that’s more ‘green’ – whatever green means – but in order to solve this we need to tackle this at a more systemic approach. The Scottish government has previously described its climate change legislation as ‘world leading’.” An editorial in the Scotsman welcomes the words of “plain-speaking Greta Thunberg”: “Is the UK planning to announce [the] Cambo [oil field off Shetland] will go ahead just before COP26 or will it kick the feet from under any agreement by slipping the news out a few weeks later? Will the Scottish government continue to remain silent on the central question of whether Cambo should be allowed or not? The world is currently losing the fight against climate change. So, if nothing else, the self-declared ‘leaders’ of the struggle should refrain from patting themselves on the back quite so much and do more to make that deeply alarming fact crystal clear to all.”

Meanwhile, in other COP26 news, the Independent reports that campaigners have warned that the “world’s most vulnerable [are] still waiting on the UK to meet [its] vaccine promise”. It adds: “The UK has so far not administered any vaccines to those hoping to attend the conference, say campaigners from the COP26 Coalition, a UK-based coalition of campaign groups.”

BBC News reports that “at least 30% of the world’s tree species face extinction in the wild”, according to the State of the World’s Trees report published by a coalition of conservation groups known as Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI). The outlets says the report calls for “urgent protection efforts amid threats such as deforestation, logging and climate change”. It adds: “The report…found that at least 30% of the 60,000 known tree species face extinction. Some 142 species have already vanished from the wild, while 442 are on the very edge of extinction, with fewer than 50 individual trees remaining. The biggest threats to trees globally are forest clearance for crops (impacting 29% of species), logging (27%), clearance for livestock grazing or farming (14%), clearance for development (13%) and fire (13%). Climate change, extreme weather and sea level rise are growing threats to trees. But the authors say with conservation action, there is hope for the future.” The Daily Telegraph says: “While climate change is a growing threat to tree species, the report found that agriculture and logging represent the greatest risks.” Reuters says: “Among the most at-risk trees are species including magnolias and dipterocarps – which are commonly found in Southeast Asian rainforests. Oak trees, maple trees and ebonies also face threats, the report said.” The Times focuses largely on the report’s findings for the UK, but adds: “Climate change is the ninth most serious problem affecting tree populations, but the report warns: ‘Climate change has the potential to become the principal driver of collapse in most, if not all, types of forest ecosystem.’”

Reuters reports that “climate change has surfaced as a key issue for Norwegian voters in an upcoming parliamentary election that polls show could usher in more lawmakers who want to curtail oil and gas drilling”. The newswire continues: “The better the pro-environmental parties perform in the 12-13 September election, the more likely they will be able to force through curbs on oil companies, such as limiting where they can look for new fields…Since the publication of a United Nations report on 9 August warning that global warming was dangerously close to spiralling out of control [see Carbon Brief’s coverage], parties that prioritise climate change, such as the Green Party and the Socialist Left, have seen their popularity rise in polls. The Greens saw a 25% rise in their party’s membership. Still, it will be a tall order to call time – as the Greens want – on a sector that accounts for 42% of national exports and employs around 160,000 people.” A comment piece in the Financial Times by Nordic and Baltic correspondent Richard Milne argues that “Norway’s $1.4tn oil fund tests the logic and limits of some of the hype around responsible investing”. He adds: “Can an investor funded entirely from oil and gas revenues take a credible stance against climate change? Can a fund ultimately controlled by Norway’s parliament and government make decisions on what to invest in – and, more crucially, what not to – and not be thought of as acting politically? These questions and more have come to enliven a tepid national election campaign that looks set to see a return of the centre-left to power after eight unprecedented years of centre-right rule in Oslo.”

Separately, the FT also carries a piece by Milne under the headline: “Finland’s forests fire up debate over EU’s strategy for going green.”

Writing in the Guardian, writer and campaigner George Monbiot asks: “New infrastructure projects are all the rage, post-pandemic. But who benefits from a rising tide of concrete?” He continues: “Sure, we need some new infrastructure. If people are to drive less, we need new public transport links and safe cycling routes. We need better water treatment plants and recycling centres, new wind and solar plants, and the power lines required to connect them to the grid. But we can no more build our way out of the environmental crisis than we can consume our way out of it.” Monbiot lists the “eight golden rules of infrastructure procurement” which include: “The primary purpose of new infrastructure is to enrich the people who commission or build it…The environmental benefits of new schemes are routinely overstated while the costs are underplayed…Greener infrastructure will produce a greener outcome only if it’s accompanied by the deliberate retirement of existing infrastructure.” He concludes: “The overarching rule is this: if you want a greener world, resist the rising tide of concrete.”

In other comment, an editorial in the Times says that Extinction Rebellion protestors are “attempting to suppress a free press”. It adds: “XR is engaged in activities to disrupt the life, transport and commerce of many big cities. Last year its activists used vehicles to blockade the printing press of the Times to stop this newspaper and others from being produced and distributed. Yesterday they turned their attention to blocking roads outside our offices by London Bridge. Their actions suggest their main aim is not so much to protect the planet as to stamp out debate on how to do it, along with all other elements of public discourse.” Separately, the Financial Times has published a “big read” under the headline: “Carbon offsets: a licence to pollute or a path to net-zero emissions?” It says: “The stakes are high: done right, it could inject huge sums into underfunded climate solutions; done wrong, the number of poor quality offsets – failing to deliver on carbon savings promises – could proliferate.”

Meanwhile, a special edition of the International Monetary Fund’s in-house magazine F&D is focused on climate change and COP26. It includes a wide range of comment pieces by the likes of Joseph Stiglitz, Kristalina Georgieva and Mark Carney, as well as the UK’s Alok Sharma and Anne-Marie Trevelyan.

Meat and dairy consumption was “one of the most discussed issues on Twitter” following the 2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on land, according to a new study. The authors examined more than 6,000 posts on Twitter, in English, to determine how frequently different topics were mentioned. They then assess each post’s “levels of toxicity and sentiment polarity as an indication of contention and controversy”. They find that the issue of diet “had similar, high levels of toxicity to strongly contentious issues in previous IPCC reports”, adding: “We suggest that this is in part a reflection of increasingly polarised narratives about meat and diet found in other areas of public discussion and of a movement away from criticism of climate science towards criticism of climate solutions.”

The increase in demand for cooling over 1950-2030 is more pronounced than the reduction in heating demand, new research suggests. The authors calculate the number of “heating and cooling degree-days” in 30 global climate models. They find that, over continental areas, the demand trends for heating and cooling changed by less than 10% over 1950-90. However, they become stronger over 1990-2030, changing by more than 10%, according to the study. The authors note that changes in cooling are “highly variable”, ranging from “a few to several hundred percent in most of the densely populated mid-latitude areas”.