The European Parliament has voted to pass a “fiercely contested law to restore degraded natural ecosystems, salvaging the environmental measures that centre-right lawmakers had campaigned to kill off”, Reuters reports. The Nature Restoration Law passed with 336 votes in favour, 300 against and 13 abstentions, the newswire continues. The proposal includes binding restoration targets for specific habitats and species, says the Associated Press via France24, with the aim of covering “at least 20% of the region’s land and sea areas by 2030”. Legislators voted on more than 100 amendments to keep the plan flexible, adds AP, with those of which were approved now taken into further negotiations before the final law can be approved. The passing of the bill follows an “unexpectedly bitter political battle”, reports the New York Times, highlighting that lawmakers submitted more than 2,300 amendments “and accused one another of spreading disinformation”. It adds: “The law initially failed to pass three committee votes after marathon late-night sessions.” Opposition to the bill was led by the centre-right European People’s Party – for whom farmers are a key constituency – which argued the “proposed policy would threaten food production, cause a surge in inflation and harm farmers, who have already been hurt by the Russian invasion of Ukraine”, continues the New York Times.  The “outcome marks a major defeat for the EPP”, notes Politico, given their backing by the European Conservatives and Reformists, the far-right Identity and Democracy, as well as members of the liberal Renew Europe group. The passing of the bill follows MEPs also rejecting the EPP’s previous call to reject the Nature Restoration Regulation outright, which would have sent the European Commission “back to the drawing board”, continues Politico, with 324 votes against, 312 in favour and 12 abstentions. The European Parliament and the bloc’s 27 member states will now begin talks to decide “the final shape of the law”, says Bloomberg. Frans Timmermans, the commission’s executive vice president in charge of the Green Deal, tells the publication that his mission now is to convince “those who voted against today that this is a law that would really help European nature recovery”. The story is also covered by the Guardian, Inside Climate News and Politico, among others.

The National Weather Service has expanded its heat alerts to cover more than 112 million people in the US as heat continues to intensify with “no letup in sight for some areas”, reports Axios. The heatwave is already notable for its “scope, intensity and endurance”, the piece notes, as a heat dome moves to be centred over the Southwest. However, notes the outlet, it is maintaining its influence from the Southeast to the South-Central states, and impacting the Great Basin and California. The “sweltering conditions” are set to get worse over the coming weekend, reports Reuters, with a “ridge of stagnant air parked in the atmosphere causing the excessive temperatures”, according to Ashton Robinson Cook, a forecaster with the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center. “The mass blocks cooler air and storm systems from rolling through the area, so it is just full sun and heat,” the article continues. Temperatures in the Florida Keys are at their hottest on record, reports the New York Times, hitting 32.4C, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “The real worry, scientists say, is that it’s only July. Corals typically experience the most heat stress in August and September,” continues the newspaper. It only takes an increase of 1C to impact above the reef’s normal high temperature to trigger heat stress, adds the Guardian, which leads to bleaching. Farmers Insurance has become the latest property insurer to pull out of Florida, citing the “cascading risks” of climate change in the state, reports a separate article in the Guardian. In Texas, as businesses move to turn up their air conditioning, power use has hit a preliminary all-time high on Wednesday, reaching 81,112MW, reports Reuters.

Meanwhile, in Vermont, the cleanup has begun after severe flooding, which has been declared by New York Governor Kathy Hochul as a “one-in-1,000-year weather event caused by the climate crisis”, reports the Independent. The flooding wiped out highways, bridges and railroads, as months-worth of rain was “dumped” on Northeastern states  over a few days, the piece continues. The rain caused the Winooski river to break earlier this week, devastating the city of Montpelier, Vermont, where residents have described their “helplessness as the slow-moving storm,” reports the Guardian. The impact of the floods is so severe that it can be seen from space, a separate article in the Independent notes. In Arkansas, the National Weather Service has issued flash-flood warnings, as storms produce two to three inches of rain per hour, says the Guardian. The Biden administration has announced a £90m push to help US buildings withstand climate emergencies, reports the Washington Post. Grants will be awarded to “help cities, states, tribes and organisations implement stronger codes for new and renovated construction”, the article notes, as the climate disasters battering the US give Biden a “another chance to use climate carrots instead of sticks”.

Nine cities have issued red alerts as a 44-year-old Italian road worker becomes the latest to die from Europe’s heatwave, reports the Daily Telegraph. The heatwave – dubbed “Cerberus” after the three-headed dog of Greek mythology – has seen temperatures in Italy nudge 40C, as cities including Florence, Bologna, Rome and Rieti warn the heat “is so intense that it presents a threat not just to vulnerable categories, such as very young children and the elderly, but to the whole population,” the Times continues. The heatwave caused a man to collapse on Tuesday before dying in hospital in the northern town of Lodi , adds the Independent. “The climate is a cause of accident and also of death. This is a situation that could be repeated given the temperatures,” said Salvatore Cutaia, general secretary of Fenealuil Milan-Cremona-Lodi-Pavia, reports the Independent. Temperatures are expected to continue to intensify next week, reports the Times and could break the 48.8C European record. In another article for the Times, it explains the causes behind the heat covering parts of Spain, Italy and Greece this week, adding Dr Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, calls climate change a “game changer” for heatwaves. In Spain, the heatwave is driving drought – already impacted by low rainfall – with reservoir levels sitting at just 30% of their capacity in Catalonia for example, below the average of 46.5% for the whole of Spain, reports Bloomberg.

The number of people facing hunger increased by 122 million according to the UN’s latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, says the Daily Telegraph. In 2019, 691 million people went hungry, but this figure has grown to 783 million due to to “a ‘perfect storm’ of Covid-19, extreme weather events and ongoing conflicts, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and its blockade of the port of Odesa, exposing the world’s dependence on Black Sea grain and sunflower oil imports”, it continues. Hunger is on the rise across western Asia, the Caribbean and across Africa, reports the Guardian, with an estimated 900 million people (11.3% of the global population) suffering from severe food insecurity in 2022. Maximo Torero, chief economist at the FAO and the main author of the report, says that while the pandemic and war had affected hunger levels more in 2022 than climate change, it will have “a severe impact over time”, adds the Guardian. “Climate change is a constant problem, a constant vulnerability of the system, because of how concentrated exporting production countries are,” he says. One of the most “transformative pathways” to tackle global hunger and food insecurity, reports BusinessGreen, is “scaling up climate resilience across agrifood systems, including through climate risk monitoring and early warning systems, improved access and management of natural productive assets, and the adoption of more sustainable and climate resilient agricultural practices”.

Climate change is making the south Asian monsoon stronger and more erratic, “increasing the frequency and ferocity of the floods”, climate scientists tell Deutsche Welle. The ongoing floods in north India are “yet another example of how extreme events can be more disastrous in hilly regions than in plains”, says meteorologist Akshay Deoras, while climate scientist Dr Roxy Koll remarks that “South Asia has become the poster child of climate change”. A 2022 study by the Centre for Science and Environment cited in the story found that India “experienced extreme weather events on 314 out of the 365 days”. CSE chief Sunita Narain, quoted in the piece, stresses that “more needs to be done for climate adaptation” and that India “need[s] to relearn land and water-management strategies”. She warns that “the window of opportunity to deal with the crisis is closing” and that “[t]he moot question is: how fast can we learn in a climate-variable world?”

Meanwhile, in India’s capital New Delhi, key roads – including “the street outside chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s home” – have been flooded as “water from the Yamuna river has overflowed onto them”, while more than 16,000 people have been shifted to relief tents under the city’s flyovers, BBC News reports. Down to Earth reports that “heavy rains in Nepal have cause[d] erosion downstream in Bihar”, displacing hundreds and “threatening the existence of nearly a dozen villages”. In the hardest-hit state of Himachal Pradesh where many areas suffered without water or electricity for days, locals tell the Hindustan Times that, after the cloudburst, hydropower projects released “tonnes of water…without any warning causing huge loss to us”. Experts tell the newspaper that “warming of the hills in recent decades due to anthropogenic factors”, such as infrastructure development and loss of forest cover, “has made the monsoon more erratic”, attributing the heavy impact of recent rains to the “proliferation of hydro projects, unregulated construction and rampant river-bed mining”.

A bill to amend India’s key forest conservation act to align it with the country’s climate targets could dilute the rights of Indigenous and other forest-dependent communities, the Quint reports. A parliamentary committee “set up to examine controversial proposed amendments…endorsed the bill in its entirety”, in spite of widespread objections from states and environmental groups, the Hindu reports. The bill is expected to be tabled in parliament ahead of the monsoon session on 20 July. In an editorial, the Hindu calls the changes “greenwashing”.

Separately, CNN Business reports that the tomatoes are “off the menu at homes and restaurants across the country after prices soared by more than 400% due to crop failures following scorching heatwaves and heavy rains”.

The “climate breakdown” is the most likely cause of the world’s oceans changing colour, as it becomes increasingly green due to changes in plankton populations, reports the Guardian. Areas near the equator in low latitudes are being particularly affected, the newspaper continues, with the change detected over 56% of the world’s oceans. Researchers have used the MODIS instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite to monitor the radiance coming from the ocean between 2002 and 2022, reports New Scientist, finding “significant” changes to the ocean’s colour. Researchers then theorised that this is due to how nutrients are distributed in the ocean, with the upper layers becoming more stratified as the Earth warms, making it harder for those that feed green phytoplankton to rise to the surface, says Forbes. Scientists are “concerned about possible knock-on effects”, adds the Times. “Phytoplankton are the foundation of the marine food web and changes to the balance of species could affect creatures ranging from krill to whales. The microbes also play a major role in capturing and storing carbon dioxide,” it continues. This story is also covered by NDTV, the Daily Mirror and CNN, among others.

In a letter to the Financial Times, several climate ministers have jointly called for a phaseout of unabated fossil fuels and the tripling of renewable energy capacity, “placing further pressure on the COP28 summit host”, reports the newspaper. Real financial assurances must be provided to developing countries, say the ministers, which will “driv[e] energy access and economic development”. The pace of energy efficiency development must also be doubled and the $100bn climate finance must be built on to “better support the most vulnerable”, they add. The letter follows the recent Climate Finance Summit held in Paris, which was covered in depth by Carbon Brief. It is signed by ministers and envoys from Canada, Germany, Kenya, Malawi, Vanuatu, Belgium, Austria. In an interview with the Guardian, president-designate of COP28, UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber, calls the “phase down” of fossil fuels “inevitable and essential”. Al Jaber continues: “What I’m trying to say is you can’t unplug the world from the current energy system before you build the new energy system. It’s a transition: transitions don’t happen overnight, transition takes time.”

The Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment has announced that John Kerry, the US climate envoy, will visit China from 16-19 July, reports Xinhua. The two sides will engage in “in-depth discussions on collaborative efforts to address climate change”, the state news agency adds. Financial media outlet Caixin writes that Kerry will be the “third member of the Biden administration’s cabinet” to visit China in recent weeks, following treasury chief Janet Yellen and secretary of state Antony Blinken. Axios says that “the Biden administration’s full-court press on climate change cooperation with Beijing could hinge on” the “first formal climate talks between the two countries in nearly a year”. The US-China collaboration on climate issues could facilitate “smoother negotiations” during the upcoming COP28 summit, the US news website adds. Thom Woodroofe, a senior fellow at the Asia Society, is quoted saying “the area of climate change represents one where they can put meat on the bone and test whether the Chinese want to build a constructive relationship”. He adds that Kerry has a “personal relationship and history” with his counterpart Xie Zhenhua, China’s special envoy on climate change, which could be “leveraged for a substantive outcome from the trip”. Reuters and CNBC also cover the visit. 

Meanwhile, a separate Xinhua story reports that China issued a series of policy documents on Tuesday at a meeting hosted by president Xi Jinping. The China Electricity Council’s media outlet Dianlianxinmei cited energy expert Liu Manping saying that three documents among the reforms are directly related to China’s “dual carbon” goals: reforming the electricity system; reforming the gas and oil market; as well as shifting controls from energy consumption to both the total volume and intensity of energy use (known as carbon “dual control”). Wu Jiang, a professor at the School of Applied Economics of Renmin University of China, says that, in the new energy system, wind power and solar will become conventional energy sources, adds the outlet. Bloomberg writes that, at the meeting, Xi urged “greater efforts to curb carbon dioxide emissions”, a signal that China “won’t backslide on climate targets even as it turns to fossil fuels for energy security”. Bjx.com carries an analysis by Yin Ming, who writes that the meeting outlined the “five major characteristics” the power system in China should have, including that market mechanisms should be improved and there should be a higher proportion of renewable energy. 

On renewable power, the state broadcaster CCTV reports that “the pace of constructing China’s new energy system continues to accelerate” and that “clean-energy sources” accounted for nearly 30% of electricity supply this summer. China Energy Investment Corporation, one of the world’s largest generators of coal-fired power, says “the volume of electricity it produced on Monday had hit a daily record”, with “recorded total electricity generation of 4 terawatts hours”, reports CNN. The China Electricity Council says that China is expected to “come up with more green energy sources in 2023 with non-fossil fuel energy sources, including wind and solar power, which is expected to constitute approximately 60% of the country’s total installed electricity generation capacity by the end of 2023”, reports China Daily. China’s planning body National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) says that China’s energy intensity, the amount of energy consumed per unit of GDP, decreased 26% in the past 10 years, reports Xinhua. China News Service, citing a report from CCTV, says that China has achieved a “dual breakthrough in both the scale and technology of renewable energy”.

In other news about China’s carbon market, Xinhua quotes Guo Fang, vice minister of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, saying that “China has established the world’s largest carbon market, covering global greenhouse gas emissions. As of June 30, 2023, the cumulative trading volume of carbon emission allowances reached 237m metric tons.” In a separate Xinhua article, Liu Wenbo from the same ministry says that the national carbon market is currently “operating smoothly and orderly, with trading prices remaining stable and showing a moderate increase”. Finally, according to the data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China’s new energy vehicles (electric vehicles) continue to maintain a “rapid growth momentum” in June.

Ahead of the African Climate Action Summit in September, governments and international partners must “commit to working toward universal energy access, accelerating the deployment of renewables and boosting investment in green industries on the continent…otherwise, Africa may be left out of the clean-energy future,” writes William Ruto, president of Kenya, and Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency for Project Syndicate. For the world’s most vulnerable populations, renewable energy technologies are more than just a path to tackle climate change, they continue: “By creating jobs, improving health, and increasing social mobility and gender equality, they build a path to a more prosperous future.”. Despite its solar potential, Africa only has the same installed capacity as Belgium, they add, highlighting that the continent’s “natural endowments” could be leveraged to help drive forward economic and social benefits. But meaningful investment will be required, they say: “Currently, only about 3% of energy investments worldwide are made in Africa, even though the continent is home to 17% of the world’s population (over 1.2bn people) – a figure that is expected to double in the next 30 years.” If done right, Ruto and Birol conclude, a new energy pact could create lasting benefits for the continent: [However,] if Africa is left out of the clean-energy future, the entire planet stands to suffer.”

Separately, writing in Fortune, Birol together with Sultan Al Jaber, president-designate of COP28, argue that the “world needs to come together at COP28” to fund an energy transition and “defeat” climate change. They point to the growth in the deployment of solar, EVs, heat pumps and the number of governments “rallying” behind energy efficiency improvements, as shown in the International Energy Agency’s “Roadmap to Net Zero Emissions by 2050” report. “But let’s be clear: these positive trends on their own are still nowhere near enough. A high cost of capital weighs heavily on many potential new clean energy projects,” continue Birol and Al Jaber. Wind, hydropower, and biofuels are all lagging behind, and transmission networks are not expanding fast enough to manage the increased demand, they say. “Even more worryingly, there is a major global divide in the funding needed for the clean energy transition,” they continue, highlighting that to hit 1.5C investment in clean energy in emerging and developing economies will need to triple to $2.8tr a year by the early 2030s. “We call on all countries, companies, and other actors to come together at COP28 to deliver an ambitious outcome that drives real action to fund a just transition for all emerging and developing economies,” the article concludes.

Alok Sharma, Conservative MP and president of COP26, and Richard Nugee, a former chief of Defence People who led a review into climate change policy for the UK’s Ministry of Defence, call in the Times for the creation of an independent UK centre for climate security. “Climate change is one of the most destabilising forces of our time” they write, pointing to its impact on food and water insecurity, as well as the prevalence of pests and diseases and its impact on loss of life, livelihoods and infrastructure. These factors displace people, undermine political stability and lead to conflict, they say, adding: “We should not underestimate the links between climate change and national and international security…While the establishment of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is a welcome step in embedding a significant amount of climate policy delivery in one department, we need to go much further.” Sharma and Nugee call for the creation of a new Centre for Climate Security, modelled on the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. This could provide the government with “horizon-scanning capabilities, assessing which countries, regions or issues pose the greatest climate security risk to the UK,” they says before concluding: “Ultimately, climate security is synonymous with national and global security. The government should prioritise setting up an independent Centre for Climate Security to consider the international security implications of climate change and its impact on the UK.”

Elsewhere in the UK, laws designed to “stop eco-zealots from causing chaos” could be torn up by Labour, reports the Daily Mail. Party leader Keir Starmer has “banked £1.5m from Just Stop Oil backer Dale Vince” and now the party is looking to amend measures brought in by the Public Order Act 2023 earlier this year, it continues.  An editorial in the Daily Mail asks: “A coincidence? Or compelling evidence that Sir Keir has been on the fanatics side all along?”

Low-latitude oceans have become greener in the past 20 years, according to a new study. The authors use 20 years of data from a satellite-based sensor to track changes in ocean colour. They find “significant” changes in colour in 56% of the world’s ocean surface – mostly in the waters between the latitudes of 40º S and 40º N. To see if the shifts could be linked to climate change, the researchers compared the observations to the results of a model that simulated how marine ecosystems might respond to increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The observed changes matched those in the model.