Pope Francis has said it is “absurd to permit the continued exploration and expansion of fossil fuel infrastructures”, Reuters reports, quoting him saying that the world “must listen to science and institute a rapid and equitable transition to end the era of fossil fuel”. The newswire says: “[Pope] Francis has made the protection of the environment a cornerstone of his pontificate, noting in his landmark 2015 ‘Laudato Si’ (Praised Be) encyclical that the planet was ‘beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth’.” (Carbon Brief covered the encyclical at the time.)

Axa, Allianz and Scor have quit the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA) amid growing political pressure in the US and legal fears, reports Financial Times. The three – including the group’s chair Axa – are the latest of seven insurers to leave, following a number of Republican US state attorneys-general raising “serious concerns” about the alliance complying with antitrust laws, the article continues. Earlier this week, Swiss Re announced its exit “with immediate effect” from the alliance, which forms part of the broader Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) umbrella, launched at COP26, reports BusinessGreen. Munich Re announced its departure from NZIA in March, and Zurich and Hannover Re in April, it adds.

According to sources familiar with the group, NZIA held talks on Thursday to discuss what its options were in response to the 23 state attorneys’ letter, which gave the alliance a month to respond, according to Reuters. Given the exodus this has prompted, NZIA should make rules less prescriptive, chief executive of Lloyd’s of London – another NZIA member – John Neal told Reuters this week. “There are five objectives, and you have 12 months to meet one of them and 36 months to meet three of them,” he told the newswire. “NZIA need to have another look at what their objectives are or the alliance will fall apart.” 

By the end of April, China’s installed capacity of wind and solar power reached 820 gigawatts (GW), accounting for 31% of the country’s total installed power generation capacity, of which wind power accounts for 14% and solar 17%, reports China Electric Power News. From January to April, the newly installed capacity of wind and solar reached 63GW, accounting for 74% of the country’s new installations, an increase of 11.5 percentage points year-on-year, the state-run industry newspaper adds. 

Meanwhile, citing a recent report by World Resources Institute China, Chinese news site ScienceNet.com says that the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in China’s food and land use systems from 2005 to 2015 was agricultural production, accounting for 44% of the total emissions. The second largest contributor was the “post-production and consumption stage”, accounting for 31% of the total emissions, the report adds. (Earlier this year, Carbon Brief published an analysis explaining what China’s food production means for climate change and how the country plans to address the sector’s emissions.) 

In other news, the Global Times says that China has made contributions to the “peaceful use” of nuclear technology to tackle climate change and food security by “developing and officially registering 1,050 irradiation induced-mutant varieties across 46 plant species”.  China Daily writes that climate change is “speeding up habitat loss and fragmentation, altering the features of some animals, decreasing the numbers of many species, and eventually harming global biodiversity”, according to experts at the National Climate Center. The Yangtze alligator, also known as the Chinese alligator, is “encountering challenges posed by the impacts of global warming”, the state-run newspaper highlights. 

Separately, Xinhua state newswire reports that Kang Shichang from Chinese Academy of Sciences says: ”Through the analysis of snow samples from Mount Everest, it has been discovered that solid pollutants have minimal impact on the Everest environment. This reflects the achievements of China’s long-standing ecological conservation efforts in the Everest region.” Inside Climate News writes that a recent innovation led by the Climate Action Reserve, a US NGO, could reduce the emissions of nitrous oxide from chemical facilities in China. The outlet adds that the initiative also addresses “a void in international climate agreements and China’s environmental regulations”. Finally, the Financial Times says that Moscow is pushing for a clear commitment from China to launch the Power of Siberia 2, a gas pipeline across Mongolia, that the Chinese president Xi Jinping promised to the Russian president Vladimr Putin during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic. But Beijing “is driving a hard bargain”, the outlet says.

UK energy and climate minister Graham Stewart has insisted that new oil and gas licences are “compatible” with climate goals, BusinessGreen reports. It quotes Stewart saying: “We are committed to new oil and gas licences in the North Sea…We are a net importer of gas and oil, we reject the idea that maximising recovery from a fast declining basin – declining more quickly than is required globally – and, thus, the minimising amount of imports [is the wrong course of action].” The Press Association quotes Stewart saying the government “would never” approve licences if they were incompatible with net-zero and the 1.5C target. BBC News reports Stewart “defend[ing] the United Arab Emirates’ appointment of oil executive Sultan al-Jaber as head of this year’s UN COP28 climate summit”. Another BusinessGreen article reports Stewart’s separate comments at the Innovation Zero summit yesterday: “His pitch to the audience of assorted investors and entrepreneurs was clear: the UK is leading the world when it comes to decarbonisation; it is encouraging to see the US and EU belatedly playing catch up; Great Britain has delivered the deepest and fastest emissions reductions in the G20 over the past decade; renewables have gone from 3.5% of the power mix in 2010 to 46.2% for the last quarter. He may have glossed over the small matter of three different prime ministers in the past year, but he insisted the Climate Change Act and the broad political consensus in support of net zero meant ‘the most stable and secure place to invest in the clean energy transition is the UK’.”

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has summoned his environmental and Indigenous affairs ministers for “emergency talks after a congressional committee passed a bill gutting the ministries’ environmental oversight powers”, Reuters reports. It continues: “The measure, which requires approval on the lower house floor and the Senate to pass, represents Lula’s first major clash with a newly conservative Congress following significant gains by right-wing lawmakers in last year’s election.” The newswire adds: “Lula is under pressure to generate jobs in a long-lagging economy that has grown more dependent on environmentally threatening agricultural exports. Yet, he has staked his international reputation on slowing deforestation which surged under his predecessor, far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.”

The latest domestic energy price cap announced by energy regulator Ofgem yesterday will see average household bills fall by more than £400 a year, the Guardian reports. However, it notes that the new cap of £2,074 per year from July remains high by historical standards: “Under the new cap, the average energy bill will remain almost double the level seen in October 2021 – when Russia began restricting supplies of gas to Europe in a move that sent wholesale prices soaring. Before the energy crisis, the typical household paid £1,271 a year for gas and electricity.” The Times quotes Ofgem head Jonathan Brearley saying prices would remain high “in the medium term”. The Financial Times says Brearley characterised this timescale as “at least two years”. The Daily Telegraph, citing the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), reports that bills will remain high “until 2030” and quotes the ECIU’s Simon Cran-McGreehin saying: “If we don’t get on with insulating homes, installing heat pumps and building more renewables, gas demand will remain high and that means bills will too.” Reuters quotes Simon Francis of campaign group End Fuel Poverty Coalition saying: “The government needs to use the summer to fix Britain’s broken energy system…This means ramping up energy efficiency programmes, helping the public with energy debt and reforming energy pricing arrangements.” The Daily Express hands its lead comment slot to prolific climate-sceptic columnist Ross Clark, who argues that the energy market “needs deep reform”. He criticises the current system of marginal pricing [which is used in almost all commodity markets] and says net-zero “will make the problem worse” because, he claims incorrectly, it will make the UK dependent on “expensive energy storage”. [The government’s advisory Climate Change Committee recently outlined how the UK could decarbonise electricity supplies “cost-effective[ly]”, including storage, but also other solutions, as reported by Carbon Brief at the time.]

There is widespread UK media coverage of the latest protest by Just Stop Oil, which took place at the Chelsea Flower Show. Three protestors threw paint over a garden at the show, Sky News reports: “A spokesman for the group added: ‘Cries of dismay could be heard from the public, though this later changed to applause.’” The Daily Mail devotes its entire frontpage to the story, under the headline: “Will anyone stop these eco-clowns?” The paper quotes Conservative MP Peter Bone saying: “We are not talking about peaceful protest. This completely ruins the lives of the vast majority of people. We just can’t carry on like this.” An accompanying Daily Mail editorial, also partially carried on the paper’s frontpage, says: “With every moronic, destructive and wanton act, militant environmentalists turn the very public they need to engage with more heavily against them.”

According to a survey for Der Spiegel by the pollsters Civey, half of Germans “want less speed in climate protection”, while about a third want more speed. The article notes that the majority of supporters of the Greens (92%) and Social Democrats (53%) favour a faster pace in climate protection policy. However, among people who lean towards other parties, the number of those who would like climate policies to slow down predominates, adds the outlet. The newspaper explains that the reasons “are likely to be the concern about the financial burden of the planned laws”. Moreover, Table.Media reports that 82% of Germans agree with the chancellor Olaf Scholz’s verdict that the actions of climate activists such as Last Generation, whereby they glue themselves to roads, are “completely nutty”. 

Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph reports that soaring energy prices have “pushed Germany into recession”, making it the only G7 country suffering a technical recession amid Russia’s attacks on Ukraine. The outlet notes that Germany’s dominant industrial sector has long depended on Russian energy supplies and “the loss of oil and gas dealt a heavy blow to growth”. The leader of the country’s main opposition party, Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has called the economic decline a “wake-up call” for Olaf Scholz, reports the Guardian. Scholz responded by referencing the expansion of clean energy which could “unleash the strengths of the economy”, referencing significant investments into semiconductors and battery factories, adds the newspaper. However, German vice chancellor and economy minister Robert Habeck warned earlier this week that Germany faces potential budget cuts of up to €22bn next year, reports Politico.

Elsewhere in German media, Die Zeit reports that the German Free Democrats (FDP) are trying to delay the adoption of the heating law, which would see a ban on installing oil and gas boilers in German households from 2024. The outlet explains that Social Democrats and the Greens want to introduce “the controversial” draft law to the German federal parliament before the summer break. But the FDP argues that the law should be revised. Robert Habeck has accused the FDP of “breaching its word” in the dispute. In addition, the German news website Golem.de reports that the German parliamentary group CDU/CSU is calling for the “strengthening of fusion research to a world-class level” in Germany due to increasing demand for electricity.

Finally, EurActiv reports that the EU wants Germany to split up the country’s wholesale electricity market “bidding zones”, making users from coal-dependent regions pay more for their energy bills than users with the predominant generation of electricity from renewables, as done in Italy and Sweden.

Writing for Conservative Home, Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network, says that the environment is popular with “all parts of [the Conservative Party’s] voter coalition”. Hall writes: “Some have argued that the Conservatives must talk more about culture war issues to win back socially conservative, red wall voters. Some of these commentators attempt to brand net-zero policies as ‘woke’, like trans rights and cancel culture. But dragging climate action into the culture wars is irresponsible and would not work politically with the voters this approach is trying to appeal to.” He continues: “There is, in fact, no part of the electorate that net-zero scepticism plays well with…The threat to the Conservatives in the red wall is not from anti-net zero parties like Reform UK, which won just six councillors in the local elections despite trying to make net-zero the next front in the culture war, but from Labour, whose leader included clean energy in his five missions for government.”

Meanwhile, writing for the Daily Telegraph, climate-sceptic Conservative peer David Frost reprises his speech at the annual lecture of the UK climate-sceptic lobby group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, in which he attempts to argue that those criticising net-zero are facing “smears and cancellations”. He says: “[T]he cross-party agreement on the totemic policy of our time – net-zero 2050 – is troubling. By all means accept the scientific consensus: it doesn’t seem to me to depict ‘climate catastrophe’. But net-zero 2050 isn’t science.” [The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said the world needed to reach net-zero by the “early 2050s” in order to limit warming to 1.5C. The report also said further delay in action on climate change “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”.]

Similarly, the Times Red Box section carries the views of James Orr, chair of the NatCon UK organising committee, which recently convened a conference attending by hard-right members of the Conservative party: “We have a net-zero policy that incentivises business to deindustrialise and offshore industry to competitors who burn far more coal than we do. This is costing us higher prices, jobs, security and the opportunity to tackle climate change in a way that doesn’t make our most socio-economically vulnerable permanently colder and poorer…scrapping the Equality Act, net-zero or pulling out of the ECHR doesn’t mean we’ll become unequal, environmentally irresponsible or inhumane. Quite the opposite.” The Scottish edition of the Times carries the views of Prof Steven Thomson, reader in agricultural economics at Scotland’s Rural College, under the headline: “Success of net-zero transition requires honesty about costs.”

France’s ban on domestic short haul flights is a “tiny step toward changing the way people think about flying”, writes Shannon Osaka for the Washington Post. It follows the nation’s ban on flights between destinations that can be reached in two-and-a-half hours or less by train coming into force this week, she explains, which will impact three routes – those between Paris-Orly and Bordeaux, Nantes or Lyon – and cut 3% of France’s aviation emissions. However, Osaka argues that it is unlikely that the US would follow-suit, writing: “Congress has shied away from taking any steps that would make climate policy seem inconvenient or burdensome for peoples’ lives, and the Environmental Protection Agency has stopped short of issuing strict regulations on aircraft emissions. And Amtrak is far from being a high-speed rail – even the Acela is only about half as fast as bullet trains in other countries.”

This is echoed in Axios, which highlights that short-haul flights made up around half of the domestic market in 2019, while rail alternatives are rare in the US. Additionally, the passenger rail and, in particular, high-speed rail have lagged behind other countries, the article says. Axios’ Ben Geman writes: “Beyond the logistical challenges, there’s little political appetite in the US for these kinds of restrictions on consumer behaviour and choices.”

A new study finds that the risk of rapid-onset drying, known as “flash drought”, will likely increase over much of the world’s cropland by the end of the century. Researchers combine projections of future climate change with data on land use and historical drought to determine how the risk of flash droughts will change over the next several decades. They find that “flash drought occurrence is expected to increase globally among all scenarios”, with the largest increases in risk occurring in the scenarios with the highest future fossil-fuel use. They conclude: “Following low-end and medium scenarios compared to high-end scenarios indicates a notable reduction in annual flash drought risk over cropland.”