UK Labour party leader Keir Starmer is increasingly facing pressure from vocal Conservative voices [see comment section below] over his pledge to end new licences for oil and gas licences in the North Sea if elected to power, [first made in 2021]. The Guardian reports that Starmer is set to reconfirm his commitment to the policy in a net-zero speech in Scotland this month. It adds that it has “received the backing of an eclectic range of high-profile groups, including environmental campaigners, trade unions and even the Women’s Institute”. According to the Guardian, a letter from 139 such organisations to Starmer reads: “We urge you to stand firm on Labour’s policy of no new oil and gas developments and its significant investment in well-planned, nature-positive renewables and energy efficiency, and to confirm more details on how Labour will support workers to transition from fossil fuels to good quality, secure green jobs during your speech in June.” It comes as a frontpage story in today’s Times says that two large unions have criticised the policy. Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB [and frequent critic of efforts to address climate change], on Sunday told Sky News that the policy was “naive” and displayed “a lack of intellectual rigour and thinking”, according to the Times. The Guardian and the Daily Mail also report on Smith’s comments. In a reported feature, the Sunday Times explores “how Ed Miliband powered Labour’s green agenda – but Starmer may pull the plug”. The article is critical of Miliband, reminding readers of his 2010 general election loss. On the controversy over the ending of new oil and gas licences policy, the Sunday Times says: “The question at the heart of the party’s green agenda is one that bedevils all Labour leaders: how to combine an inspiring vision for the country with fiscal rectitude that comforts voters…Yet the question of radicalism versus that New Labour watchword – reassurance – is a far more pressing and existential, with senior sources suggesting the green spending commitments may have to be reined in.” [The first edition of Carbon Brief’s new climate weekly newsletter DeBriefed factchecks the claim that ending new oil and gas licences would be bad for the economy.] Amid the controversy, Starmer has recommitted to boosting nuclear power in the UK, both the Guardian and Daily Mirror report.

It comes as the Daily Telegraph reports that the licensing decision for Rosebank, one of the largest new oil and gas fields in decades, is set to be issued by regulators this month.

Ajay Banga officially became the 14th president of the World Bank on Friday, as the institution faces “new pressure to become a more ambitious player in the fight against climate change”, the New York Times reports. In a message to staff seen by the New York Times, Banga defined the bank’s mission as aspiring to “create a world free from poverty on a livable planet.” According to the New York Times, the note adds: “Making good on our ambition will require us to evolve to maximise resources and write a new playbook, to think creatively, take informed risks and forge new partnerships with civil society and multilateral institutions.” Banga was nominated for the role by US president Joe Biden in February after previous president David Malpass, a Donald Trump appointee, resigned following comments he made doubting the science of climate change, the New York Times says. Reuters reports that Banga also told staff the time for approving new financial assistance must be slashed. The Financial Times notes that Banga is already under pressure “following a call for $100bn in fresh capital to drive climate and development finance ahead of a summit in Paris to be co-hosted by the leaders of Barbados and France”. The FT reports: “The proposal for extra capital and $100bn in foreign exchange guarantees are central to a big update, put forward by Barbados’s prime minister Mia Mottley, of last year’s so-called Bridgetown Initiative to overhaul the lending institutions, in a consultation document seen by the Financial Times…The ‘Bridgetown 2.0’ consultation document calls for new funding proposals to cut the ‘excessive risks’ that poorer countries have to take to borrow to fund green investments.” Mottley has been a vocal voice for World Bank reform to enable developing nations to more easily address climate change, the FT adds.

US president Joe Biden’s administration announced on Friday that it would stop issuing new oil and gas drilling leases within 10 miles of the Chaco Culture National Historic Park, a region central to ancestral heritage in northwest New Mexico, Reuters reports. The New York Times says the site is “one of the nation’s oldest and most culturally significant Native American sites” and that tribes had requested it be protected for decades. It adds that the move “will not affect existing oil and gas leases on the land or drilling on private property within the 10-mile radius”. The Hill also covers the news.

The UK government is facing a legal challenge to its decision to cut investment in walking and cycling in England “over claims that the move bypassed legal processes and risks scuppering commitments over the climate emergency and air pollution”, the Guardian says. It adds: “Lawyers acting for the Transport Action Network (TAN), a campaign group, have written to the Department for Transport (DfT) to formally seek a judicial review of the cuts announced in March by Mark Harper, the transport secretary.”

In other UK news, the Financial Times reports that boiler manufacturers are “pushing back” against UK government efforts to force them to rapidly make more heatpumps. The FT says: “The government plans to fine companies from next year unless they meet stringent quotas for heat pump production and installation. But bosses are lobbying Whitehall to delay and amend the plans. They argue the quotas are unrealistic given sluggish demand for heat pumps and strains on the number of installers, and claim that penalties of £5,000 per missing heat pump could push up costs for consumers and put investment and jobs at risk.” The Sun also reports the story with the headline: “Net-zero goals mean that households face paying £300 more for new gas boiler in future.” [See the new Twitter thread by Carbon Brief’s Dr Simon Evan debunking the claim.]

It comes as the Sun on Sunday reports that the UK government is considering ditching plans for a “‘green’ hydrogen levy” tax on energy bills, [which was not tabled to come in until 2025]. The Sun on Sunday also reports that ministers are considering new legislation to take away the driving licences of environmental campaigners charged with public order offences.

Separately, the Guardian reports that the UK’s electricity system operator, owned by National Grid, has a new plan to “tell energy developers to get on with their projects or get out of the queue for a grid connection as it struggles to manage the growing backlog of delayed green energy projects”. 

Saudi Arabia will seek to boost oil prices by cutting production by 1m barrels a day, the Financial Times reports. The kingdom announced the move “after a fractious meeting of the Opec+ group of producers in Vienna on Sunday”, according to the FT. The Daily Telegraph says the move “is likely to inflame tensions with US president Joe Biden and risks reigniting inflation in Britain and Europe”. Bloomberg opinion writer David Fickling covers the news with an op-ed headlined: “Saudi Arabia is taking the oil market back to the future.”

According to the China Meteorological Administration, a total of 446 national meteorological stations across the country have recorded “daily maximum temperature [that has] reached or exceeded the historical extreme values for May”. The authority also adds that China experienced a total of “five heavy rain processes” in May, which led to flooding and waterlogging in some areas. 

Several outlets also cover the extreme weather events in China. The South China Morning Post writes that last week’s heavy rain in China prompted local governments to “accelerate the harvesting and drying up of damaged wheat” to save the crops. A study – published by the peer-reviewed research journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science – finds that the anticipated consequences of a “hotter world”, such as changing seasonal patterns, extreme temperatures and droughts, will have a detrimental effect on crop production, the outlet notes. CNN quotes Sheng Xia, chief agricultural analyst for Citic Securities, who says that, “for China, the El Niño event will easily lead to increased climate uncertainty in the Yangtze river basin, causing flooding in the south and drought in the north, and cold summer in the northeast”.Over recent days, news coverage in China has been predominantly focused on reports of farm animals killed by extreme heat, the article adds. 

Separately, the state-run People’s Daily reports that the 2023 China energy industry development annual conference, jointly held by China Energy News and China Energy Research Society, opened last Thursday in Beijing. China News Service carries several industry experts’ views on the path to building a new energy system at the conference. Shi Yubo, chairman of China Energy Research Society, is quoted saying that “the key to accelerating the planning and construction of a new energy system” lies in “building a new power system”. Deng Jianling, director of China Huaneng Group, a state-owned electricity generation enterprise, said that China should accelerate the construction of a nationwide unified electricity market, the state news service notes. 

Finally, Fiona Harvey, Guardian’s environmental editor, has published a feature previewing the latest round of UN climate negotiations which begin today in Bonn, Germany. It is titled: “‘The window is closing’: COP28 must deliver change of course on climate.” She writes that “rich countries may prefer to try to take longer over the [loss and damage] fund, setting out only the structure of such a fund this year, without considering ways to provide the cashflows”, but the question that remains is “who should contribute”. She says that when the UN framework convention on climate change was signed in 1992, “many of the countries that classed as developing nations – and therefore not required to contribute finance – are now much richer, including China and oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia, and the UAE”.

Germany expects to spend around €14bn by the end of the decade to help decarbonise its gas and heating networks, reports Bloomberg. It says the annual cost for upgrading each respective network is estimated to be around €1bn for the next seven years. However, the outlet continues, the transition is becoming a political issue as the government faces “pressure” to reconsider its plan to ban new fossil-fuel boilers from next year. Energy Post reports on the “fierce resistance” to the building energy draft law from German opposition parties, the right-wing media and from within the “increasingly estranged” government coalition, which wants all newly installed heating systems to run on at least 65% renewable energy from the start of 2024. Currently, more than 80% of Germany’s heating demand is met with fossil fuels, making heating responsible for 15% of the country’s emissions, notes the outlet. However, the debate is mainly focused on the higher cost of “climate-friendly” boilers, while proponents of the law argue that heat pumps’ operating costs are much lower than conventional systems’ because of higher efficiency and Germany’s rising CO2 price for heating. Der Spiegel quotes German chancellor Olaf Scholz saying that everyone is “a little bit right” when it comes to the law, but the conflict can only be solved “by proceeding as pragmatically as possible, by not being too proud to accept criticism, and then working out a good solution”. The outlet explains that one of the political parties from the ruling coalition, Free Democrats (FDP), has so far “prevented” the draft law from being dealt with in the federal parliament. Table.Media quotes former North Rhine-Westphalian environment minister Bärbel Höhn criticising the dispute: “When I see the effects of the worst drought in East Africa with over 40,000 deaths or the extreme weather in southern Europe with extreme drought and flooding, then I have no understanding for the dispute over heat pumps in Germany.”

Meanwhile, Tagesspiegel reports that “the price that the FDP is paying for the delay in the heating law is high”. In return, the Greens are currently blocking almost all legislative projects of the FDP, notes the outlet. As a result, German transport minister Volker Wissing (FDP), in particular, cannot push on with accelerated planning of transport projects, including expanding motorways, the article adds.

Elsewhere in German media, Der Spiegel reports that climate activists Last Generation are now planning targeted actions to “draw attention to the reckless waste of the rich”, focusing the campaign on Bavaria and Berlin. The newspaper adds that since the climate activists started repeatedly blocking streets in Berlin and other cities in January 2022, the Bavarian public prosecutor’s office has searched 15 apartments and business premises of the group in seven federal states, accusing Last Generation of “formation or support of a criminal organisation”.

The business pages of the Daily Telegraph feature the latest column by assistant editor Jeremy Warner who argues: “Whatever one’s views about the origins of climate change, we do at least know that global warming is a real and present danger. We don’t yet know that about AI [artificial intelligence].” He continues: “For real-life evidence of the already highly destructive nature of climate change, you don’t need to be guided by the counterproductive bleatings of Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. Ask the insurance industry instead. The average payout in claims over the first 10 years of the century was in the order of $50bn (£40bn) per annum. Since then, it has doubled to $100bn, and in 2022, it was an all-time record of $132bn. Part of the explanation is inflation, together with growing instances of shoddy workmanship in construction. But the overwhelming cause is climate change. Extreme weather events have grown steadily more frequent and destructive. The trend is undeniable, and if maintained will soon render large parts of the world uninsurable against wildfires, floods and hurricanes, if not outright uninhabitable. What we also know is that globally, emissions are still going up, not down, so it is highly likely that these trends will persist, and possibly accelerate. The threat posed by climate change is, in other words, a good deal more real than that of AI, which ironically could soon be offering solutions by helping to devise the cost effective technologies needed to suck vast quantities of carbon back out of the atmosphere and bury them anew beneath the North Sea and other suitable depositories.”

Elsewhere across the UK’s right-leaning newspaper, there is a torrent of criticism about efforts to tackle climate change. Most of the newspapers aim their ire at the opposition Labour party. An editorial in today’s Daily Mail begins: “Should any proof be required of the unbridled chaos a Labour government would wreak on this country, look no further than Sir Keir Starmer’s near obsession with net-zero. Already, industry experts predict his controversial plans to ban new North Sea oil and gas projects will cost 45,000 jobs – not to mention millions in lost tax revenue. Far from making our energy cheaper and greener, Britain would be forced to spend billions importing it, thus increasing our carbon footprint as well as our dependence on often volatile regimes. Meanwhile, his pledge to splurge £28bn a year on green initiatives would likely result in further inflationary pressures, forcing more painful interest rate rises. Such proposals are therefore not only economically reckless but irresponsible” It ends: “No doubt Sir Keir hopes the eco lobby and his new political allies at Just Stop Oil will react warmly to his plans. But the truth is they will leave the rest of us colder, poorer and ever more reliant on foreign dictators.” An editorial in today’s Sun follows a similar line: “It is madness for the government to think aggressive tax rises and bullying are the route to an unrealistic net-zero.” The Sun on Sunday carried its own editorial in which it reported with glee that climate protestors could have their driving licences removed if they block roads: “Eco-loons who inflict misery on motorists could soon have their comeuppance…if you glue yourself to a road as part of a group called ‘Just Stop Oil’, you should be happy to give up your licence.” Meanwhile, Saturday’s edition of the Sun has an editorial about electric vehicles: “Government can’t solve climate change alone. The only way is to get business and consumers on board, too. Sales of electric cars have fallen since subsidies for buyers were withdrawn. The answer is simple. If battery-powered vehicles are cheaper, safe, reliable and can be quickly and easily charged, then customers will buy them in millions. Interfering in the market doesn’t work.” The Sun on Sunday also has a column by Tony Parsons headlined: “Sir Keir should brandish green gift with pride…Labour and net-zero zombies are on same recyclable page.” An editorial in the Times claims that “anti-oil campaigners halting traffic are undermining the cause they champion”. It adds: “If Just Stop Oil activists think their antics will garner enough publicity to force an immediate halt to all investment in new oil and gas fields, their smugness is matched only by their naivety.” (The Times also carries an interview with Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity and a donor to both Just Stop Oil and the Labour party.)

Finally, the Sunday Times’ climate-sceptic columnist Dominic Lawson writes that “across Europe, a revolt is growing against the policies imposed to meet the ‘net-zero’ carbon emissions target”. He then focuses on the “heinous…racket” whereby “the government has subsidised the wood-chip burning (‘biomass’) of Drax to the extent of many billions of pounds”.

The British comedic actor Rowan Atkinson has written a piece for the Guardian on why he feels “duped” by electric cars. The article has been widely criticised for containing a number of factual inaccuracies that are addressed in Twitter threads by climate analyst Gniewomir Flis and researcher and long-time electric cars myth debunker Auke Hoekstra. The motoring journalist Quentin Wilson has also published a rebuttal. Carbon Brief has a detailed factcheck on why electric cars help to tackle climate change.

The impact of extreme atmospheric rivers – which are responsible for most of the “severe” rainfall and “disastrous flooding” in coastal mid-latitude regions – is expected to “increase almost linearly” with global warming, a new study finds. The research uses new techniques to examine how global warming will impact extreme atmospheric rivers, which are long, narrow stretches in the atmosphere that transport water. It finds that, under a very high greenhouse gas scenario, there will be at least a global doubling in the occurrence and rainfall associated with extreme atmospheric rivers by the end of the century. For extreme atmospheric rivers that make landfall, a tripling is expected.

The generation of energy from waste incinerators contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, thus “undermining” US climate goals, a new paper argues. The research finds that incinerators emit more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of electricity produced (1707 g CO2e/kWh) than any other power source (range: 2.4 to 991.1 g CO2e/kWh). They also emit more air pollutants than other sources of energy, such as fossil gas, which disproportionately affect vulnerable communities, the research says. The authors say: “Incineration’s inclusion in ‘renewable’ or ‘clean’ energy standards is thus counterproductive, as they also divert more than $40m in subsidies annually from cleaner energy sources.”