Hurricane Beryl is “wreaking havoc in parts of the Caribbean – and putting the role of climate change under the spotlight”, reports BBC News. The hurricane has a maximum sustained wind speed of more than 160mph (257km/h) and became the earliest category five Atlantic hurricane in records going about around 100 years, it continues. While the causes of individual storms are “complex, making it difficult to fully attribute specific cases to climate change”, high sea surface temperatures are seen as a key reason Beryl is so powerful, it adds. The hurricane has now hit Jamaica after leaving an “Armageddon-like” trail of devastation in Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), including killing at least seven people, reports the Guardian. Hurricane Beryl, which has dropped to a category four storm, hit the island’s southern coast on Wednesday afternoon with maximum sustained winds of 140mph (225km/h), it adds. After Jamaica, the hurricane is set to hit the Cayman Islands, reports the Washington Post. Beryl is then expected to turn further west and continue weakening before reaching the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, it adds. This story is also covered by Al Jazeera, Le Monde and the Independent among others.

Around 28,000 residents have been forced to evacuate after a wildfire broke out in northern California, as the “state simmers in a brutal and potentially historic heatwave”, reports the Guardian. The Thompson fire has quickly spread across more than 3,5000 acres near the city of Oroville, about an hour outside of California’s capital Sacramento, it continues. More than 1,400 fire personnel were deployed to tackle the fire, which was at “0% containment” as of Wednesday afternoon, the Guardian notes. Eight injuries have been confirmed, at least half of whom were firefighters, it adds. Authorities have not yet confirmed how many structures have been damaged, although local news sources say homes and vehicles have been “consumed”, reports the New York Times. Several state water facilities have been affected by evacuation orders, but the California Department of Water Resources has said there is no risk to the Oroville Dam, the tallest dam in the US, it adds. “The conditions out there in our county this summer are much different than we have experienced the last two summers. The fuels are very dense, the brush is dry and, as you can see, any wind will move a fire out very quickly,” Butte Fire Unit chief Garrett Sjolund tells the Washington Post. The state has seen wet winters and mild fire seasons over the past two years, but this year fires have erupted across the state, including in Central Valley and southern California last week, where the largest was the 14,000-acre Basin Fire in Fresno, it adds. Officials in Oroville have now cancelled its annual Fourth of July fireworks celebration, citing the evacuations and damage caused by the Thompson fire, reports the Associated Press. This story is also covered by CNN, Los Angeles Times, Forbes and the Independent among others.  

Reuters reports that EU countries are “wavering over whether to back additional tariffs” on Chinese “new energy” vehicle (NEV) imports, underscoring the bloc’s “challenge in building support” as countries, such as Germany, seek to stop the tariffs with looming “wide-ranging retaliation” from Beijing. Another Reuters article says that a report released by the European Commission in April shows that “the Chinese government has focused support” for its NEV makers since 2005 and “trade experts see [the report] as a supporting document for [the commission’s] anti-subsidy investigation into EVs and as a signal to both China and reluctant European Union member states that it means business”. State-run newspaper China Daily reports that “talks remain the most effective way to prevent the escalation of bilateral economic and trade tensions” between China and the EU. Energy is an “anchor” in the relationship between China and Central Asian countries, another China Daily article says. Economic newspaper Caixin reports that the Japanese government is expected to “offer financial assistance” for a power project in Indonesia, in order to counter China and “become a player in Southeast Asia’s grid development”.

Meanwhile, state news agency Xinhua reports that Chinese premier Li Qiang has called for “unswerving efforts” on flood control and disaster relief following continuous heavy rainfall across the country. Reuters reports that rising water levels in the Yangtze River have “prompted eastern regions downstream to prepare for possible flooding”. State-controlled newspaper Global Times also covers the story, saying that “authorities across the country are trying their best to fight the flooding”. The articles do not mention climate change.

Separately, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports that China’s Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has vowed to “support a wide range of basic research related to natural resources” on topics including “negative ocean emissions technology…and seamless forecasts for the ocean and climate”, to make the country “self-reliant in key technologies”. China Securities Journal reports that China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has urged central state-owned enterprises to reduce pollution and carbon emissions. Economic newspaper Nikkei Asia reports that China overtook Denmark in 2023 to “become the world leader in wind turbine patent competitiveness”. China City News reports that the cumulative installed capacity of newly built and operational new energy storage projects in China has reached 35.3 gigawatts in the first quarter of 2024, increasing over 210% year-on-year. 

Finally, the Financial Times has published a comment piece by Prof Adam Tooze under the headline: “Stifling China’s green energy boom would be a disaster.” He twice cites analysis published by Carbon Brief: “In 2023, according to calculations by the CREA thinktank, green energy investment was the single largest driver of China’s economic growth. Between now and the spring of 2025, China has to formulate its new commitments to decarbonisation under the Paris climate accords. The question is whether Beijing’s planners have the courage and conviction to throw their weight behind the startling pace at which China’s businesses are driving the energy transition, or whether they retreat to a more cautious line. As Lauri Myllyvirta, one of the west’s leading China energy experts, has noted, there is a worrying gap between the pace of change actually achieved in the past few years, and the future vision seemingly favoured by Beijing’s top energy bureaucrats.”

Wildfires in the Brazilian Amazon during the first half of 2024 were the worst in 20 years, with 13,489 fires registered, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP), via Colombia’s El Espectador. Citing satellite data gathered since 1998 by the National Institute for Space Research, AFP points out that only 2003 and 2004 surpassed this year’s records, with 17,143 and 17,340 fires, respectively. 

Meanwhile, in Mexico, Hurricane Beryl could impact at least 10 states, according to El Universal. The outlet notes that Mexico’s secretariat of public education will cancel classes in some states ahead of Beryl’s arrival, as the hurricane is expected to land over the Yucatán peninsula on Thursday or Friday morning. In a separate article, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico has told the newspaper that three in every five hurricanes “are increasing in intensity, due to warming ocean temperatures”.

In other news from Latin America, Argentina’s government has sent £2.5m (3bn Argentine pesos) and food assistance to communities in the province of Santa Cruz after being hit by a cold wave, with “extreme temperatures and heavy snowfall”, that has “forced the closure of access roads and the suspension of classes, and also had a negative impact on the rural sector”, La Nación reports. 

In Brazil, more than 320 scientists and researchers led by Greenpeace have called on public authorities to “permanently act” to address climate change, according to Míriam Leitão’s blog for O Globo. The scientific community emphasises that governments can no longer be “surprised” by extreme events, when diagnostic tools already exist, the newspaper adds.

In other news, El Comercio reports that Peru’s ministry of energy and mines is working on a national energy policy for 2050, focused on renewable energy. The general director of electricity says the ministry intends to finish the plan by December 2025 and has announced Peru’s “readiness to attract investment in renewable energy and green hydrogen”, the outlet notes. Finally, Amazon Indigenous communities have asked the Colombian government to fulfil its promise to formalise their territories, granting them “a status similar to municipalities”, El Espectador reports. The government had promised to formalise seven Indigenous territories by the end of 2024, however, “only four [territories] have advanced further…in the process”, the outlet adds. 

Google’s greenhouse gas emissions were up by 48% in 2023, compared to 2019, according to its latest environmental report, says BBC News. The tech giant has put this down to the increasing amounts of energy needed for its data centres, exacerbated by the growth of artificial intelligence, it adds. Google is targeting net-zero emissions by 2030, but has admitted that “as we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging”, notes BBC News. In January, Google committed to investing $1bn (£788m) in the UK to build a new data centre in response to demands around AI, reports the Independent. In 2023, its greenhouse gas emissions were up 13% on 2022, as well as up just under 50% since 2019, it notes. An explainer in the Guardian looks at whether the “climate can survive” the “insatiable energy demands of the AI arms race”. It highlights that, in addition to Google’s growing emissions, Microsoft, the biggest financial backer of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, has admitted its 2030 net-zero  “moonshot” might fail due to its AI strategy.

Most of the UK’s right-leaning newspapers make one last attempt to sway voters away from choosing Labour, by citing their net-zero policy agenda as an apparent reason to reject the party. An editorial in the Times states that, while the Labour party is ontrack for a landslide victory in today’s UK general election, the “secrecy about its intentions bequeaths a lingering sense of unease”. The editorial claims that questions “abound” about Labour policies, including whether it is “determined to stick to its doctrinaire and wholly unobtainable 2030 target for a green energy grid and the phasing out of petrol vehicles”. The Times writes that, while “change” is an easy pitch, actual change in the form of “boosting productivity, taking on vested ­interests in the public sector, achieving energy sovereignty, reforming the health service, ­creating affordable homes and modernising infrastructure will be hugely challenging”. (See Carbon Brief’s “UK election 2024: What the manifestos say on energy and climate change.”) Meanwhile an editorial in the Daily Express calls for readers to vote Conservative, questioning whether anyone thinks energy bills will fall under the plans “green zealot Ed Miliband is enforcing a radical brand of the net-zero agenda”. 

In the Daily Telegraph, former home secretary Priti Patel writes: “Eco-zealots like Ed Miliband and Sadiq Khan will push forward a net-zero agenda that will punish motorists with higher taxes on fuel and the risk of Ulez-style road pricing schemes, while households will pay through the nose for their green schemes”. And the publication’s defence and foreign affairs editor Con Coughlin argues that boosting climate change cooperation will remain “unattainable so long as anti-Western, autocratic regimes such as Russia and China maintain their commitment to fossil fuels”. In contrast, an editorial in the Sun, which features on its frontpage, announces its support for the Labour party.

The next UK government must be “bold and brave”, as slow and incremental change “just won’t cut it”, writes outgoing Green MP Caroline Lucas in the Guardian. Lucas says that when she first entered parliament in 2010 she “used every possible trick in the book to push the environment up the UK’s political agenda”, but things changed during her tenure, with the environmental movement become the political mainstream. While much has changed for the good, she writes, as she steps down as an MP, she “can’t help but reflect on how much further we have to go if we’re to avert environmental disaster”. Lucas concludes: “We will need a new generation of Green MPs in parliament more than ever, demanding that the next government is bold and brave enough to offer real hope and real change.”

Elsewhere, former energy minister Chris Skidmore and RenewableUK CEO Dan McGrail call in BusinessGreen for the incoming government to decarbonise the grid: “A decisive mission to deliver a net zero grid provides this certainty and clarity, and above all the consistent purpose that a future government will be committed to placing net zero at the forefront of its vision for the UK’s future.”

The rate of ice loss on an Alaskan ice field has “accelerated sharply” since 2005, new research finds. The authors use glacial mapping, satellite imagery and ice surface elevation datasets to assess shrinkage and thinning on the Juneau ice field in Alaska, US. They find that the ice field area shrunk five times faster over 2015-19 compared to rates during 1979-90. Volume loss of glaciers on the ice field doubled between 1979-2010 and 2010-20, the study adds. Ice field “thinning” has also been “pervasive” since 2005, the researchers write. Further thinning could hinder glacier regrowth, “potentially pushing glaciers beyond a dynamic tipping point”, the researchers write.