The UN’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO) is set to release its final strategy today, a deal which aims to deliver net-zero emissions for the sector “close to 2050”, reports the Financial Times. Throughout this week, the London-based organisation has held discussions on a proposed shipping tax designed to help decarbonise the industry, but, the FT continues, the proposed plans fall short of the target laid out by the UN, which has said global emissions must fall by 45% by 2030. An updated draft strategy was released on Thursday morning, which included a target to strive for 25% emissions reduction by 2030 and 75% by 2040, but these figures were “slammed” by Australia’s negotiator for being “not ambitious enough”, reports Climate Home News. Albon Ishoda, negotiator for the Marshall Islands, told journalists that the “science has already told us that anything less than 36% by 2030 and 96% by 2040 will be detrimental”, the article continues. But the New York Times says a “strong last-minute push” from small island nations and other poorer coastal countries has led to a provisional agreement being reached. It says: “The IMO agreement isn’t binding and is meant more as a signal to governments of where they should benchmark their own targets. It stipulates that, by 2030, governments should require shipping companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by ‘at least 20%’ as compared to 2008. By 2040, that increases to ‘at least 70%’.”

Meanwhile, an editorial in the Financial Times says: “A levy would create a more powerful incentive for shipping companies to invest in vessels using zero-carbon fuels. Since the commercial life of vessels can be 20 to 30 years, that shift needs to begin now. A levy could also raise sizeable revenues which could help fund development of new fuel technologies such as green hydrogen or ammonia and the transformation of shipping and port infrastructure…Richer countries that support a shipping emissions levy need to do more to make the case. Properly designed, the measure could provide significant funds to modernise shipping, including in emerging markets, as well as ensuring an equitable transition. And it could be key to accelerating decarbonising efforts in a genuinely global sector that has so far proved resistant.”

Earth’s average temperature set an unofficial record for the third time this week, as the planetary average rose to 17.23C (63F) on Thursday, reports the Associated Press. This surpassed the high of 17.18C (62.9F) hit on Tuesday and matched on Wednesday, which itself beat Monday’s new record, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer tool, AP continues. The UN has said that climate change is “out of control” in response to unofficial analysis of the Climate Reanalyzer data, which showed that average world temperatures in the seven days to Wednesday were the hottest week on record, says the Guardian. The average temperature was 0.04C (0.08F) higher than any week in the 44 years of record for the period ending Wednesday, it adds.

According to the EU’s climate monitoring service, last month was the hottest June on record, with temperatures over 0.5C above the 1991-2020 average and exceeding the previous record set in June 2019, reports Ireland’s Journal. Above-average temperatures were recorded in countries including India, Iran and Canada, while extreme heat in Mexico killed more than 100 and Beijing recorded its hottest ever June, adds Reuters. Ocean temperatures rose to their highest levels since at least 1991, according to a report from the Copernicus observation agency, making June the third month in a row to set a new record, with the extreme marine heatwave over the North Atlantic ocean taking sea temperatures to “unprecedented high”, reports Bloomberg. Marine heatwave conditions covered about 40% of the world’s oceans in June, the greatest area on record, says the Washington Post, with this area forecast to reach 50% of ocean waters by September. “A big reason we’re seeing so many records shattered is that we’re transitioning out of an unusually long three-year La Niña, which suppressed temperatures, and into a strong El Niño,” says Dr Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth and Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor, reports the New York Times. This means more heat is coming as the current El Niño is just beginning, with many researchers not expecting it to peak until December or January. Global temperatures could see another surge in the months thereafter, continues the New York Times. The new average record temperature is now approximately 0.9C higher than the same day 30 years ago, reports the Independent, when global temperatures were already influenced by the “human-caused climate crisis”. 

Amid the record heat, Chinese weather forecasters have issued a string of heat advisories for the northern parts of the country, as temperatures are expected to again breach 40C (104F), “stressing taxed power grids”, reports Reuters. In Beijing, officials have ordered employers to cease outdoor work as the city braces for the intense heat, after 10 consecutive days of temperatures above 35C, reports the Independent, in a “streak of weather not seen since 1961”. In England, the Met Office has issued a heat health alert for six regions as temperatures are forecast to hit highs of 28C on Friday and 30C on Saturday, reports the Independent.

Shell’s CEO Wael Sawan warning against cutting oil and gas production has been dubbed “irresponsible” by the head of the UN’s climate change body Simon Stiell, reports Reuters. Sawan told BBC News earlier this week that cutting oil and gas production would be “dangerous and irresponsible”, adds Reuters. The Shell boss said reducing production risked worsening the cost-of-living crisis by limiting global energy supplies and, thus, pushing up bills, reports the Guardian. Climate campaigners have condemned the “cynical” suggestions of Sawan, with Jamie Peters, head of climate at Friends of the Earth, saying it was “utterly ironic for Shell to be calling anything ‘dangerous and irresponsible’”, adds the Guardian. Sawan made the comments in response to calls from researchers and UN chief António Guterres who have said that investments in oil and gas in the face of climate change are an “economic and moral madness”, reports the Independent. CEOs of oil and gas companies have urged governments to focus on limiting oil demand to reduce emissions rather than curbing supply, saying that will only increase prices, reports Reuters. Oil demand growth is forecast to fall in 2024, although remain above-average, according to sources close to the OPEC group of oil-producing nations (who have been meeting in Vienna this week), an additional Reuters article reports. The newswire adds that next year could see a “small slowdown from 2023’s expected 2.35m barrels per day, or 2.4% growth due to the world moving out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Climate Home News reports that president-designate Sultan al Jaber of COP28, which will be held in December in Dubai, has called for the “phas[ing] down [of] the use of fossil fuels”, marking a slight shift in his previous language which supported a “phase out of fossil fuel emissions”,  as he calls for the oil and gas industry to “step up its game”.

US climate envoy John Kerry is set to travel to China later this month, writes Bloomberg, citing people “familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because it hasn’t yet been announced”. Kerry’s trip follows US treasury secretary Janet Yellen’s visit in Beijing on Thursday, state radio China National Radio reports. 

Elsewhere, an Indian government official says that India and the EU have formed “two teams” to engage in discussions regarding the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), reports India’s APAC Network News. Yicai, a Chinese financial outlet, quotes the EU climate chief Frans Timmermans saying: “If the CBAM prompts other countries to pay attention to their own carbon intensity and calculate how much they need to reduce to avoid being affected by CBAM, I believe it is a positive development.” (See Daily Briefing, 6 July.)

Separately, Tokyo-based Nikkei Asia reports that the Group of 77 developing countries and China convened a ministerial meeting in Cuba this week to “address environmental matters”. China’s state news agency Xinhua quotes the World Health Organization’s European regional director Dr Hans Kluge saying that the “triple threat” of “climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity to health” must urgently be addressed. 

Meanwhile, state-run China Daily says China is making ongoing efforts in combating extreme weather as “rain-triggered floods”, mainly seen in the areas along the Yangtze river, have triggered floods and “geological disasters”, disrupting the lives of more than 130,000 people. Radio Free Asia also covers the floods. People’s Daily, the newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, quotes Gao Hui from China’s National Climate Center saying that El Niño is just “one of the significant factors” that contribute to “unusual weather conditions in the country, especially extreme events like high temperatures and droughts”. 

In other coverage, the Guardian carries a comment piece by Li Shuo, senior policy advisor for Greenpeace East Asia, titled: “Is China really leading the clean energy revolution? Not exactly.” People’s Daily carries a comment piece by Zhang Jianghua, chief of the National Energy Administration (NEA), saying that “to contribute to China’s efforts in promoting its unique modernisation process, we will harness the power of energy resources”. S&P Global Commodity Insights has published infographics about the “energy transition” in China’s provinces. Finally, China Electric Power News writes that China has “led” to set up an international standard of “2023 road vehicles – functional safety – the application to generic rechargeable energy storage systems for new energy vehicles”. 

Bloomberg reports that, according to the dpa press agency, Germany is facing opposition from a regional government and activists against a “controversial” liquified “natural” gas (LNG) terminal project on the Baltic Sea island of Rügen. The outlet adds that Germany’s national parliament will vote today on the project, including fast-track approvals similar to those that helped accelerate LNG terminals during last year’s energy crisis. However, Die Zeit reports that German environmental non-profit Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) wants to stop the planned construction, calling it a “disaster for marine areas that are particularly worthy of protection”. It also criticises the amendment to the LNG Acceleration Act, which allows the building of two floating LNG import terminals and a pipeline on Rügen. In addition, Table.Media carries a guest article by lawyers at Client Earth and Green Legal Impact, who argue that, “if the LNG terminals planned in Germany are heavily utilised, the German climate target is threatened” because burning all gas imported through terminals would deplete a significant portion of Germany’s remaining CO2 budget. According to Germany’s climate goals, LNG pipelines may only transport fossil gas until 2033 and only “green hydrogen” afterwards. However, according to the Federal Administrative Court, it is currently not possible for operators to use their LNG infrastructure to carry green hydrogen before 2044, which is “a clear conflict” with the German Basic Law.

Meanwhile, Manager Magazin reports that the German ruling coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP now wants to pass the “controversial” Building Energy Act, which aims to see a switch to “climate-friendly” heating systems, to the beginning of September after the Federal Constitutional Court had stopped the passage of the law. Bloomberg calls the intervention of Germany’s constitutional court “highly unusual”. The outlet adds that polls show that the European electorate broadly supports net-zero goals, but is not ready to pay for them. In addition, the outlet says that Germany’s right-wing and “climate-sceptic” AfD party has overtaken German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats in popularity.

Sweden has charged climate activist Greta Thunberg for “disobeying the police” in June when she joined a group of young protesters blockading oil tankers at a port in Malmö, reports BBC News. The 20-year-old faces a six-month prison sentence, or a fine, for refusing to leave when asked by the police, continues BBC News. Three others out of around 20 protesters were detained alongside Thunberg for blocking the road and climbing on tankers to stop them entering or leaving the Malmö terminal, reports the Guardian. Prosecutor Charlotte Ottosen said: “You have the freedom to demonstrate, but you must not demonstrate in such a way that it causes disturbances for others,” according to Sky News. Thunberg is reportedly planning to defend herself in court on 24 July, says the Independent. Others including the Huffington Post, ITV News, Daily Telegraph and CNN cover the story.

The UK’s “retreat from climate leadership” is not in its national interest, argues Alex Urwin, former speechwriter and private secretary to the COP26 president’s private office, in Climate Home News. The Glasgow “highpoint” of the UK’s climate leadership, where the country won “friends and influence”, has “since faded”, with “our climate news now, insofar as it exists, is some combination of domestic nimby-ism, diplomatic disinterest, and new drilling”. The lines that could previously be drawn between international policy and the domestic agency, “no longer exist” when it comes to global climate leadership, he argues, adding: “It quickly follows that leadership on the global good of climate action is not in competition with national interest, it is central to it.” The UK must take “bold domestic decisions” that are needed to “protect and restore the country’s credibility overseas”, and this means committing the necessary resources internationally, not least to honour the “once-flagship but now at-risk climate finance pledge,” Urwin says. If this is done swiftly, “we might just be forgiven for our momentary post-COP26 blip”.

Meanwhile, as editorial in the Sun continues the right-leaning newspaper’s campaign against Labour’s proposed net-zero policies: “[Labour leader Keir Starmer has] already surrendered to [Just Stop Oil’s] main ‘demand’, to let our North Sea oil dwindle and die despite the economic harm and risk to our energy security. And Labour and the climate thickos are bankrolled by the very same tycoon. If Starmer really felt strongly about Just Stop Oil’s despicable arrogance and campaign of sabotage he would refuse to deal with the man funding it. And hand [Just Stop Oil and Labour donor] Dale Vince his millions back.”

A critique of growth emerged in the post-war years, writes veteran climate campaigner and author Bill McKibben in the New Yorker, with a team of MIT economists arguing that if we kept growing at the then-current rate the planet could expect ecological collapse in the middle of the 21st century. It is a prediction that “turns out to have been spot-on”, he says, pointing to a contested study in Nature that found we have already exceeded seven of eight “safe and just Earth system boundaries”. This has allowed the “limits to growth” critique to reemerge with “new vigour” bringing up questions around how to build out green technology “as a way to reduce the deadly hangover of the fossil-fuel era and also to help us move toward a more stable and stabilised civilization”, while moving away from a growth focus and ensuring supply doesn’t come with too high an environmental and social cost. In addition to the transition to greener technologies, “degrowthists” highlight that most whole live in rich countries could “easily make do with less”, pointing to studies that suggest we need to decrease out share of passenger-car transport in cities by 81%, limit per-person air travel to one trip per year, reduce living space by 25%, decrease meat consumption by 60% and so on. “People assume that going backward is impossible, but why? There’s little evidence that all this extra consumption has made us particularly satisfied, and more than a sneaking suspicion that it’s done the opposite,” concludes McKibben. 

Rising temperatures are causing methane from below the surface in the Arctic to escape through groundwater springs, new research finds. The researchers examined 78 areas in Svalbard where glaciers had retreated, leaving behind exposed forefields where methane – a potent greenhouse gas – can escape. Water samples collected from these springs during February to May in 2021 and 2022 were found to be supersaturated with methane, containing 600,000 times more than in the atmosphere. While previous research has focused on potential methane release from permafrost, the authors suggest emissions from groundwater springs could increase across the Arctic as glaciers continue to retreat.

A new study examines the widely held belief that younger people are more concerned about climate change than older people. Using data from three national surveys conducted in the UK in 2020, 2021 and 2022, the authors found no major differences across generations in beliefs about the reality and causes of climate change. Instead, the results suggest that a generational gap exists in the strength of emotional engagement. Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980), Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) and older groups were less worried about climate change compared to Generation Z (born after 1996), and less strongly felt the negative emotions of fear, guilt and outrage. Further research could examine whether similar patterns exist in other countries and cultures, the paper notes.