The Labour party has called for an “immediate nationwide ban” to block the on-going “Just Stop Oil” demonstrations that have seen climate protestors blockading oil terminals, reports the Independent. The online newspaper adds: “Protests have caused ‘misery’ for motorists, the Labour Party said in a statement on Monday, citing statistics published by the Campaign for Fair Fuel that say around one in three petrol stations in southern England have been forced to close. Labour is demanding the government bring in an injunction that would ban protests not only at oil terminals but also to stop them across Britain’s roads network.” In response, Just Stop Oil has accused Labour of having “forgotten its history” of “struggle and resistance”. A spokesperson for the protest group is reported by the Independent as saying: “The Labour party is now betraying the youth of this country, of every country and are complicit in climate genocide.“ Politico claims that “punchy response” from Labour “landed well, winning praise from Labour sceptics and criticism from Corbynistas”. However, the outlet says it should be seen within the context of the looming local elections, which is why it says Labour “is having some joy with its pre-local election crime week announcements this week”. The Times says that the “climate activists plan more disruption this week”, adding that “the AA said that the shortages remained localised despite claims by the group Just Stop Oil to have caused widespread disruption by blockading oil terminals”.

In other UK news, the Press Association covers Labour’s announcement that “nuclear power must form part of the UK’s future energy mix to provide a long-term solution to rising bills”. The newswire continues: “Ahead of a visit [to Scotland today], both Sir Keir Starmer and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar have talked up the use of nuclear energy to ease the cost-of-living crisis in the long term”.

BusinessGreen covers a claim made by the UK government that its policies “have reduced the national flood risk by 5% following a six-year, multi-billion pound flood and coastal defence investment programme, which it said could prevent tens of billions of pounds of damage to property and infrastructure from worsening climate-driven floods in the coming years”. The outlet says: “During a £2.6bn programme of work carried out nationwide between 2015 to 2021, more than 850 projects aimed at better protecting against flooding and coastal erosion were completed, according to a report published today by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)…Emma Howard Boyd, chair of the Environment Agency, said the Agency had delivered the flood protection programme on time, on budget and on target.”

Elsewhere, an analysis piece by Madeleine Cuff in the i newspaper says that the “Russian invasion [of Ukraine] could push the government to approve a new coal mine in Cumbria – but it risks green backlash”. And the Times reports that “gas and electricity bills are likely to rise by a further £500 this autumn, ministers have been warned, as the war in Ukraine weighs on wholesale energy prices”.

Finally, Press Gazette covers new analysis published by Carbon Brief showing that “the number of UK newspaper editorials calling for more action to prevent climate change quadrupled in the three years to 2021”.

Chile has announced an “unprecedented plan” to ration water for the capital of Santiago, a city of nearly 6 million, reports Reuters. The move comes as the capital city’s “punishing, record-breaking drought enters its 13th year”. The newswire continues: “The plan features a four-tier alert system that goes from green to red and starts with public service announcements, moves onto restricting water pressure and ends with rotating water cuts of up to 24 hours for about 1.7 million customers. The alert system is based off the capacity of the Maipo and Mapocho rivers that supply the capital with most of its water and have seen dwindling water levels as the drought drags on. The government estimates that the country’s water availability has dropped 10% to 37% over the last 30 years and could drop another 50% in northern and central Chile by 2060.”

Meanwhile, in other news about extreme weather, Associated Press covers the “unusually early heatwave” that is affecting “large swath of India’s northwest, raising concerns that such weather conditions could become typical”. AP continues: “The India Meteorological Department forecast that the temperature in New Delhi would reach 41.8C on Monday, nearly eight degrees above normal…Vimal Mishra, an expert at the Indian Institute of Technology’s Water and Climate Lab, said the number of Indian states hit by heatwaves has grown in recent years, as extreme temperatures become more frequent and intense. ‘If you are looking for the clearest signal of climate change in India, then heatwaves are a classic example. They are unavoidable and will occur more frequently,’ Mishra said.”

Separately, Agence France-Presse covers a new study showing that a “string of deadly storms pummelled Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique with more intense rainfall because of climate change”. It adds: “Three tropical cyclones and two tropical storms hit south-east Africa in just six weeks in the first months of this year, causing widespread flooding. More than a million people were affected and at least 230 people died. The analysis was carried out by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) network of scientists, which has pioneered ways to speedily link extreme weather events to climate change. They said that it was climate change that had made the heavy rains brought by the back-to-back storms both heavier and more likely.” AP also covers the story.

China’s State Council – the state administrative agency – released new guidelines for “accelerating the building of a unified national market” on Sunday, China News Service reports. The state-run newswire notes that “in creating a unified market for factors and resources, the guidelines proposed establishing a unified national energy market and, at an opportune time, setting up a national electricity trading centre”. The piece highlights that the guidelines required “the creation of a unified national energy market” to be established under the premise of “effectively ensuring energy security supply…combined with the tasks of realising the carbon peak and carbon neutrality targets”. The instructions also called for the development of “a unified national market for the trading of carbon emissions rights and water usage rights” – as well as “the implementation of unified and standardised industry criteria and a trading regulatory mechanism” – on the basis of “the trading platform of public resources”, the piece adds. A host of outlets – including the 21st Century Business Herald, Yicai, Global Times, and Xinhua – cover the same news.

Meanwhile, China Electricity Power Newspaper reports that in the first quarter of 2022, China Energy Investment Corporation – a state-owned mining and energy company – produced “152m tonnes of coal, an increase of 6.7% compared with the same period last year”. It adds that the company “sold 196m tonnes of coal” during the quarter. The company generated 274 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity from January to March, “of which 235TWh was generated by thermal power, up 6.7% year-on-year”, according to the newspaper. Separately, Jiemian reports that China’s “leaders group for the works of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality” held a teleconference last Friday to discuss the “severe crackdown” on the fabrication of carbon data. (Read Carbon Brief’s explainer on the leaders group.) The meeting briefed on “carbon market data falsification issues and the deployment of efforts to crack down on carbon emissions data falsification”, the outlet says. Jiemian cites the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the state economic planner. The piece notes that the meeting stressed a “zero-tolerance” policy on carbon market data “falsification”.

Elsewhere, Reuters reports that Chinese oil “giant” CNOOC said on Monday that it would “raise 28.08bn yuan ($4.41bn) in a share listing in Shanghai”. The newswire says that CNOOC seeks to “take advantage of soaring global oil prices as Russia’s war on Ukraine pushes up already high energy prices”. CNOOC expects first-quarter profit to “jump 62%-89% from a year earlier, after registering record profit, and output in 2021”, the piece notes. Additionally, Bloomberg writes that US electric carmaker Tesla exported “just 60 cars produced at its Shanghai factory in March”, a “record low” as “strong” domestic demand “sucked up most of the output”, according to data released by China Passenger Car Association (a trade body in China) on Monday.

Canada’s top banks more than doubled their financing of highly polluting tar sands oil to $16.8bn in 2021, reports the Financial Times, “despite signing up to the UN’s Net-Zero Banking Alliance on greenhouse gas emissions”. The newspaper adds: “Lenders including Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce increased their financing to the top 30 tar sands producers and six tar sands pipeline companies by almost $9bn in 2021, according to data from the Rainforest Action Network, the activist group that produces an annual comprehensive report of fossil fuel financing. All five Canadian banks, which also included Scotiabank and Bank of Montreal, committed last year to reaching net zero emissions by 2050 across their operations and portfolios when they joined the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, led by Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.”

Meanwhile, in the US, Reuters reports that “New York pension officials on Monday said they will support shareholder resolutions filed at major banks seeking quick cuts to financing of new fossil fuel development, pushing climate issues to the fore of another springtime shareholder meeting season”. The newswire continues: “Shareholders should support resolutions filed at Bank of America Corp, Goldman Sachs and four other banks ‘in order to mitigate the systemic risks posed by unfettered climate change’, according to a statement sent by a representative of New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who oversees some $280bn in retirement assets”.

In other US news, the New York Times says that climate scientists, policy experts and environmental justice advocates have announced a “6-year, $41m project” to “better understand the contribution of thawing permafrost to global warming and to help Arctic communities cope with its effects”. It adds: “Led by the Massachusetts-based Woodwell Climate Research Center, the…project will fill in gaps in monitoring across the Arctic of greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, currently a source of uncertainty in climate models. The project is financed by private donors, among them the billionaire philanthropist Mackenzie Scott.”

Der Spiegel reports that the German ministry of economic affairs wants to help the renewables industry because “Germany’s solar, wind and power cable companies are plagued by enormous concerns”. Another Der Spiegel article says that “the number of new permits and applications for wind turbines in the first quarter of 2022 was below the previous year’s level”, which vice-chanceller Robert Habeck describes as a “pathetically bad year”. Last year, the increase in onshore wind power was less than 2GW. By comparison, the highest increase ever achieved was 5GW in 2017. Reuters also covers the story, focusing on Habeck’s comments: “While a raft of laws to hasten the green push will only become effective in 2023, the ministry would seek to improve the speed of permissioning and the framework for investments, remove hurdles around the prioritisation of air space in talks with military and aviation, and boost staffing levels, he said.“ Reuters also has a story about a German firm building a floating solar plant on quarry lake. It says that “the plant, with 5,800 modules on 360 floating elements will save 1,100 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year compared with the same amount of power produced from fossil fuels”.

Elsewhere in German media, WirtschaftsWoche reports that Germany has no plans for fracking, according to Habeck. It adds that “he is currently not aware of any application from a company for fracking in Germany – neither for test drilling, nor for actual funding”. Fracking is largely banned in Germany, but projects can be approved for research purposes. Meanwhile, Handelsblatt reports that Mercedes wants to halve its CO2 emissions by 2030: “The carmaker is relying on new battery technology, more green electricity and recycling to become climate-neutral.”

Elsewhere, NTV reports on the building of an subsea “electricity highway” between Germany and the UK. It says the “interconnector will transport up to 1.4GW of electricity in both directions from the mid-2020s and the [power cable] should be able to transport electricity for around 1.5m households”. Finally, Die Welt reports that “the entrances of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in Frankfurt am Main were doused in black paint by ‘Last generation’ climate activists on Monday”. The article explains that “since the Paris Agreement in 2015, Deutsche Bank has invested a total of €75bn euros in fossil fuel projects”.

The Financial Times carries a comment piece by Huw Price, the former Bertrand Russell professor of philosophy at Cambridge, who says that “we know of students whose PhDs are funded by fossil fuel companies and who are deeply uncomfortable about that, but feel they don’t have a choice if they want to work on projects that will advance decarbonisation”. He concludes: “Will we get the legislation we need to mitigate climate change if we continue to work alongside – and confer legitimacy upon – the institutions who lobby against it? That is unlikely. Universities are important cultural and intellectual institutions whose purpose is to generate knowledge and educate young people. To occupy such a role in the 21st century is to contend with the effects of fossil fuel funding for research. We hope that our institution and others will take this responsibility seriously – and act accordingly.” Separately in the FT, Leslie Hook has a “big read” on “the oil giants drilling among the giraffes in Uganda”. Writing from Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park, she says: “Life here is about to encounter a new threat, as the $10bn Lake Albert oil project run by French oil company TotalEnergies and Chinese state oil developer Cnooc roars into life, after a final investment decision was reached earlier this year.”

Elsewhere, several UK newspapers focus on the Just Stop Oil protests. An editorial in the Sun describes the climate protestors as “attention-seeking eco-loons getting their jollies from blockading oil depots”. An editorial in the Times says: “The protesters may have seized the moment; they have certainly harmed their cause. Christian patience will be in short supply this Easter.” Writing in the Times’ Thunderer column, Ryan Crighton, who is the director of policy and marketing at Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce, argues that Cambo oilfield in the North Sea is “vital” adding: “We all want to get to net-zero, and no one is in denial about the direction of travel. All we need to agree on are the steps to get there and, crucially, the order in which we take them. Be in no doubt that oil and gas must, in the short to medium term, be part of that mix.” Another comment in the Times argues that “we’ll care about the climate if it gets personal”. Will Pavia, the Times’s New York correspondent, argues that “snow-free slopes that ruin ski trips or gardens full of dead grass and mosquitoes would be a better focus for campaigners”. Finally, an editorial in the Daily Mail argues that the UK government should “slash” the “spurious green levies” on energy bills.

There is “little evidence” of “polarised echo chambers” within climate change debate on the social networking and discussion website Reddit, new research says. The study is the first to examine climate change discourse on Reddit. Analysing data since 2017, the researchers find that “while some communities are dominated by particular ideological viewpoints, others are more suggestive of deliberative debate”. The findings “challenge our understanding of social media discourse around climate change”, the authors say, and “suggest that platform architecture plays a key role in shaping climate debate online”.

Presenting people with many ways to reduce their impact on the climate can cause “mitigation overload” and reduce their pro-environmental behaviour, a new study suggests. The researchers ran experiments where participants were presented with either 1, 5, 10, or 20 pro-environmental behaviours. Those who saw a message suggesting 20 relatively easy ways they could engage in climate action “felt less efficacious”, the researchers say. One week later, these participants “also reported engaging in fewer mitigation behaviours compared to those who saw fewer ways to mitigate”, the study finds.