US president Donald Trump signed an order yesterday to undo the Obama administration’s climate regulations and revive the coal industry, effectively ending US leadership in international climate politics. Trump made it clear that the US has no intention of meeting the commitments his predecessor made to cut carbon emissions, “turning denial of climate change into national policy” the New York Times writes. The main target of Trump’s “energy independence” order is Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which required states to cut emissions from power plants. It also reverses a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, ends rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production, and reduces the weight of climate change in policy decisions, Reuters reports. “I am taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion and to cancel job-killing regulations”, Trump said while signing the order at the headquarters of the US Environmental Protection Agency. While the regulatory process could take years, the move “sends a clear signal domestically and internationally that [Trump] does not believe climate change to be anywhere near the crisis that Obama identified”, the Hill writes. And without these rules, the US is likely to fall far short of its 2015 Paris Agreement pledge, the New York Times reports. The order drew a swift backlash from a coalition of 23 states, local governments and environmental groups, which promised to fight the order in court, calling it a threat to public health. “President Trump’s decision to ax the Clean Power Plan cedes U.S. global leadership and increases the risk that climate change will continue to damage our state. We can’t afford to slow our efforts, and we won’t”, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee told the Hill. “We’re very confident that the EPA cannot simply dismantle the CPP and leave nothing in its place”, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said yesterday, who is part of a coalition of 17 Democratic attorneys general and city attorneys considering what legal actions could be taken to block Trump’s order. The governors of California and New York said that they would push ahead with their aggressive climate change policies despite the order, AP reports. Elsewhere, leading conservationist Jane Goodall called Trump’s climate change agenda “immensely depressing”, the Guardian reports. This latest executive order is “seen as a prelude to the US following through with the campaign commitment to withdraw from the Paris deal”, the Guardian Australia reports, and Australian conservatives are watching events in the US “closely”, with some backbenchers suggesting that Australia should review their climate commitments if Trump withdraws from the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile EU leaders expressed “regret” over the order, the Washington Post reports. European commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete confirmed that “Despite all the current geopolitical uncertainties, the world can count on Europe to maintain global leadership in the fight against climate change. We will stand by Paris, we will defend Paris, and we will implement Paris.” FiveThirtyEight, New Scientist, Nature, Climate Central, Telegraph, the Times, the Guardian, Carbon Pulse, Inside Climate News, Climate Home and Politico also have the story.

More than 350 million people living in ‘megacities’ will be hit with deadly heat waves every year by 2050, regardless of if nations reach climate change targets, researchers from Liverpool John Moores University have warned. Even if countries limit global warming to below 2C (3.6F), as required by the Paris climate deal, 44 of the most populated cities in the world will still experience the lethal heat events, the Mail Online reports.

Just three out of the 28 European Union countries appear to be in favour of creating a tough new law that would set binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new analysis. Sweden was the sole member state whose attitude towards a key piece of proposed EU legislation was rated as “good”, in a ranking was developed by Carbon Market Watch and the European Federation for Transport and Environment. Germany and France’s stances were only described as “moderate”, but this was enough to claim second and third place. The Guardian also covers the story, adding: “The UK is in fifth position in the table which assesses policy actions taken by EU states to meet Europe’s pledge of a 40% cut in carbon emissions by 2030. Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain and Italy are judged to be propping up the league, due to their support for forestry and carbon accounting dodges that weaken the greenhouse gas reduction effort.”

Since January the Trump administration has begun a “slow, incessant march of deleting datasets, webpages and policies about the Arctic”, writes Victoria Herrmann, managing director of the Arctic Institute. “Each defunct page is an effort by the Trump administration to deliberately undermine our ability to make good policy decisions by limiting access to scientific evidence”, Herrmann argues, noting that they “come at a time when the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average”.

A number of prominent US newspapers have devoted editorials to Trump’s executive order. The Washington Post is enraged: “Children studying his presidency will ask, “How could anyone have done this? Climate science is complicated, but the basics are easy enough for those schoolchildren to understand…The nation had a climate policy. Now it does not…Instead, the president has put the country on a know-nothing path to an endangered planet.” The New York Times describes Trump’s order as “madness”, adding: “Perhaps most important, Mr. Trump’s ignorance has stripped America of its hard-won role as a global leader on climate issues…The truth is that Mr. Trump has, for all practical purposes, repudiated Paris…This raises two very real dangers. Either other big countries also pull out of the agreement. Or they decide to seize the initiative on clean energy sources, which would be good for the climate but bad for American industry.” In contrast, the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial endorses the order saying it is “a welcome return to regulatory modesty”: “As for climate change, President Trump’s order will have the same practical effect on rising temperatures as the Clean Power Plan: none.” The WSJ adds that dumping of the social cost of carbon is good because it relied on “guesswork” and “the models surely wouldn’t survive a rigorous peer review”. An op-ed in the WSJ by Paul H Tice says Trump now “needs to target the EPA’s 2009 ‘endangerment finding,’ which labeled carbon dioxide as a pollutant” arguing that “much of the scientific data upon which it was predicated—chiefly, the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—was already dated by the time of its publication and arguably not properly peer-reviewed as federal law requires”. Meanwhile, the New York Post‘s editorial says Trump’s orders does not “doom the planet — because the Obama policies weren’t saving it”, adding “Trump’s move not only helps the economy and delivers on a promise, it also takes a step toward restoring America’s constitutional system, in which Congress passes laws — not a dictatorial president”.

One thing is clear from Trump’s executive order, says the Guardian’s head of environment: “The slash-and-burn of federal climate action in the US is making one of humanity’s greatest ever challenges more difficult, just at the time when it needs to start getting easier.” He adds: “There are good reasons to think that scrapping the Clean Power Plan may fall a long way short of delivering the huge coal revival Trump has promised. Even the coal barons themselves don’t see that happening…It is doubtful that Trump’s blitzkrieg on ‘bullshit’ climate change will herald the end of civilisation. But, given the issue’s critical importance for all nations and their unprecedented cooperation to date, it might just signal the end of the US’s dominance as the world’s pre-eminent political and economic power, with others taking up the mantle. Trump’s campaign pledge was ‘Make America great again’ – his legacy could be ‘Made China great again'”. Elsewhere, an editorial in the Economist argues that Trump’s “‘Energy Independence’ order won’t bring energy independence, environmental protection, or jobs”. While the Financial Times notes that “this is very much an opening shot rather than a knockout blow for the Paris climate accord adopted in December 2015”.

Extensive summer Arctic sea ice loss has occurred within the Beaufort, Chukchi, East Siberian, and Laptev Seas over the last decade. While this has increased the temperature and moisture content of the air during autumn, it hasn’t affected cyclone activity, a new study says. Tracking of individual cyclones indicates no particular increase in cyclone frequency or intensity associated with sea ice loss, the researchers say. They also find no northward shift of extreme cyclones.

The expansion of evergreen conifer forests in Siberia under climate warming is likely to continue despite cooler periods during natural fluctuations in climate, a new study says. The area of evergreen forest increased by 10% between 2001 and 2012, the researchers find, even during a period of significantly cooler winters. Over the same period, deciduous forest reduced by 40%, the study finds, suggesting that year-to-year variability may not reverse the trend in shifting forest composition in Siberia.