There is widespread coverage in the UK media of results from the Citizens Assembly on climate change, in which 108 representative members of the British public were tasked by Parliament with laying out how they would like to see the nation reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The i newspaper reports that after more than 6,000 hours of expert advice and discussions, the members urged the government to take “radical steps to speed emissions cuts across the economy”. The Financial Times notes that the “vast majority” of assembly members agreed on taxes for frequent flyers and longer journeys made by air in order to cut aviation emissions. Bloomberg reports that the assembly wanted to hand the government “more powers” to meet its climate targets and said the almost 80% of the group, “which included climate skeptics”, emphasised the need for a “green recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic, involving limited investments in polluting industries and spending on clean infrastructure. Other priorities highlighted by the final report, according to the Guardian, include more government investment in low-carbon buses and trains, an early shift to electric vehicles, a reduction in car use by 2-5% per decade and cuts to meat and dairy consumption by between 20% and 40%. Reuters notes that the assembly focused on principles of fairness and freedom of choice, and called for strong, consistent government support as well as cross-party consensus on ways to reach net-zero emissions. A piece by BBC News’ environment analyst Roger Harrabin concludes the report’s “radical conclusions may offer political cover to ministers who’re typically nervous of a public backlash against policies that affect lifestyles”. Carbon Brief has published an in-depth Q&A about the assembly’s conclusions.

The Press Association reports on the announcement of projects being supported with £65m under the UK government’s industrial strategy challenge fund. These include robots to inspect and maintain nuclear power stations, and “next-generation” batteries for electric vehicles and wind turbines.

Finally, BBC News reports that the UK’s former climate minister Claire O’Neill has criticised prime minister Boris Johnson over failings ahead of next year’s climate summit, COP26, which is set to be held in Glasgow. In particular, she said the government’s talk of ambition on climate is undermined by the appointment of Australian climate sceptic Tony Abbott as a UK trade ambassador, according to the news website.

A move to cut EU emissions 55% by 2030 has been backed by the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), “Europe’s largest and most influential political faction”, despite previous misgivings about a target higher than 50%. According to the news website, the group previously said it would not go further without a “thorough cost-benefit analysis” and comparable commitments from big polluters, such as the US and China. Following reports earlier this week, the Financial Times says it has seen a draft document confirming the European Commission will unveil the plan next week to increase the target to “at least 55%”, an increase from the current 40% target.

Meanwhile, Politico reports that, while the EU is “locked into a domestic political process aimed at slashing emissions even further”, China and other big emitters are waiting for US presidential election outcome before deciding whether – and by how much – to increase the ambition of their climate commitments. “If Trump wins reelection, the EU would be much more alone in pushing the climate agenda,” the article notes.

Reuters reports that Greece plans to spend €5bn to phase out coal in power generation by 2028 and cut emissions in line with EU climate targets by 2050. Politico has a story on France’s “new green recipe”, which involves using electricity generated by its nuclear fleet to make emissions-free hydrogen.

Concentrations of greenhouse gases hit a record high this year, according to “United in Science 2020”, a new report coordinated by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and covered by Reuters. The newswire notes that the economic slowdown brought by coronavirus-related lockdowns had “little lasting effect” and only represented “a blip” in the build up of CO2 in the atmosphere. Bloomberg notes that emissions from fossil fuels dropped by an “unprecedented” 17% from the previous year during the peak of the lockdown in April, but, by early June, “they had mainly returned to about 5% below 2019 levels”. Crucially, the news website notes that “the drop won’t slow climate change”. Bloomberg also has a separate feature titled “it’s a race against heat, and humanity is losing”, in which it examined recent trends including record temperatures in Death Valley and Siberia, and low water levels in the Panama Canal.

Another global report, this time from the the International Energy Agency (IEA), concludes that the transformation of the power sector “will only get the world one third of the way to a goal of achieving net zero emissions by mid-century”, Reuters reports.

Additionally, there is continued coverage from yesterday of a new study mapping erosion of the Thwaites glacier in the Antarctic. The Guardian reports that scientists mapped cavities “half the size of the Grand Canyon” that are allowing warm ocean water to melt the glacier, but notes these channels are “not yet as large as had previously been assumed”.

The world’s animal population has fallen by more than two-thirds in the past 50 years, according to WWF’s latest Living Planet Report, which has received wide coverage, including in the Financial Times. The study examines more than 4,000 species of mammal, fish, bird, reptile and amphibian, and finds “large declines” in population numbers in the two years since the last report was released, the newspaper says. It highlights agriculture and land-use change as some of the key drivers of these declines, as well as climate change. It “comes at a time when wildfires have swept across the US west coast and fire seasons have increased in length in many areas, posing greater danger to animals”, the FT states.

There is also continued coverage of a report by the thinktank the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). According to the Guardian, the findings reveal 1.2bn people face being displaced by 2050 as climate change and rapid population growth drive an increase in migration with “huge impacts” for both developing and developed nations.

A feasibility report commissioned by the Department for Transport (DfT) and reported by the Guardian proposes adding up to £1,500 to the cost of new petrol and diesel cars in order to subsidise electric car purchases. A so-called “feebate” system would be one of the most effective ways to encourage a faster switch to electric vehicles, although the car industry said it was opposed to such measures, according to the newspaper. The Daily Telegraph says that other ideas proposed in the report by the Behavioural Insight Team, often known as the “nudge unit”, include dedicated electric vehicle parking spaces painted green and installing charge points at supermarkets and tourist sites.

A feature in the Guardian as part of a series on the “green recovery” considers how Australia’s abundance of “white gold” – namely, the lithium that is vital for making electric car batteries – can help drive a low-carbon economy. “The two factions of Australia’s climate wars have reached an uneasy truce” on the topic, the article notes. Separately, an opinion piece by Alex Grant in the Financial Times examines lithium and how new extraction technologies can “help remove questions” over the key battery chemical.

New analysis suggests that developing Australia’s untapped gas reservoirs to their full extent could lead to three years’ worth of global greenhouse gas emissions, the Guardian reports. A report by the thinktank the Australia Institute found that there were 22 major gas production and export projects proposed across the country, as well as proposals for fracking in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, the paper explains. The report concludes that “if all potential gas resources were tapped it could lead to emissions equivalent to three times current annual global emissions, or twice as much as the combined historic emissions of the major industrial emitters Chevron, Exxon, BHP and Rio Tinto”, the Guardian says. It adds: “Nobody expects all the potential gas resources will be extracted, but the Australia Institute’s climate energy director, Richie Merzian, said the analysis illustrated what could be available to the industry if it were subsidised by taxpayers.”

As wildfires burn across the state of California once again, an editorial in the Los Angeles Times says “we are living in the future that climate scientists have been trying to warn us about for years now”. While climate change did not start these fires, the article says “climate change has played a role in the conditions — in particular, the drier, hotter air and deeper droughts creating more flammable ecosystems — that are making these fires bigger and more dangerous”. It concludes with a call to end the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. “We need to better and more forthrightly take on the responsibility to fix what we have broken. We need to do so much that it can be overwhelming, and dispiriting. But we dare not succumb to it. Wildfires don’t care.”

Meanwhile an opinion piece by Charlie Warzel in the New York Times is headlined: “I need you to care that our country is on fire.” He reflects on the psychological toll the fires can take on people, describing them in detail, explaining “there is a surrealness to these wildfires and their profound impact that remains difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced them”. He adds: “The point of this column isn’t to guilt people for where they live or what they’ve experienced, but to convey the desperation that so many Americans are feeling right now. It’s an anxiety that deepens each year. One that turns cloudless summer days in July into harbingers of misery.”

A Daily Telegraph article by international business editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard criticises Extinction Rebellion as “out of date”, stating there are already the technical means to solve climate change at no net economic cost. “Extinction Rebellion was an anachronism even before it began. The movement is a throwback to the early 21st century, before leaps in technology and the vast mobilising power of market capitalism entirely changed the climate equation,” he writes. He notes that he shares the “emotional leanings” of the campaigners, but points to recent trends, such as the EU’s green deal and Democratic US presidential candidate Joe Biden’s promise of a “$2tn blitz on clean energy”, as examples to demonstrate his point. “So all I can say to Extinction Rebellion is thanks for your pious intentions, but our elected leaders and our creative capitalists already have the matter in hand,” he concludes.

There are two pieces in right-leaning newspapers, one in the Daily Mail and one in the Daily Telegraph, by Extinction Rebellion member-turned-nuclear advocate Zion Lights, explaining why she “changed tack” over the future of energy. She writes in the Mail: “In fact, after years as a member of one campaigning group or another, I now believe passionately that environmentalism — that umbrella term for the loose collection of organisations that have existed for decades trying to bring about an end to climate change — has failed.” She goes on to say that if “we are going to service our ever-burgeoning energy needs, then the only way forward is nuclear”.

The present rate of species decline across the world “is remorseless”, says a Times editorial, commenting on the latest Living Planet Report from WWF. According to scientists, the planet is undergoing a sixth mass extinction, the paper says, noting that “this time the extinction is due not to natural causes but to the influence of a single species, humankind”. The damages to biodiversity caused by humans “prominently include the spread of invasive species, overexploitation of natural resources, urbanisation, pollution and climate change”, the paper says. However, “there is no need for fatalism”, it concludes: “Using renewable energy resources rather than fossil fuels will curb emissions and prevent encroachment on the habitats of threatened creatures such as mountain gorillas. Limiting the use of fertilisers can stop them entering coastal ecosystems. Switching to healthier diets can reduce intensive rearing of livestock. The task may seem immense and the effects of change small, but practically and symbolically, they can mount up.”

The likelihood of the UK seeing a hotter summer than 2018 is 11% in the current climate, a new study says. The research uses a large collection of climate model simulations to assess the likelihood of such a hot summer as 2018 in an effort to offer “improved understanding of risk, relevant for policy and contingency planning”. The likelihood of hotter summer than 2018 has “increased sharply over the last few decades”, the researchers note. Investigating the drivers of hot UK summers, the study finds “a causal relationship” between “springtime high sea ice anomalies in the Sea of Okhotsk and low anomalies in the Barents/Kara seas” and the “summertime circulation over the North Atlantic and northern Europe”.

New research says it has solved the “Dust Bowl paradox”, where central US grasslands responded unexpectedly to a decade of hot, dry conditions in the 1930s. Specifically, “grass species adapted to high temperatures with higher water use efficiency (C4 grasses) decreased, while those preferring cooler climates (C3 grasses) increased”, the authors explain. They “reproduced this surprising response by experimentally imposing extreme drought in two native grasslands”. A “previously unidentified shift in seasonal precipitation patterns during extreme drought years provides a mechanism for C3 grasses to increase despite overall hot, dry conditions,” the authors say. This suggests that changes in rainfall seasonality can be as important for ecosystems as overall reductions in rain, the study concludes.