Climate change could dramatically alter plants and lawns in British gardens, a new report from the Royal Horticultural Society has said, with flood-proof flowerbeds, exotic plants, and new pests and diseases all increasingly likely amidst rising temperatures and higher rainfall. Traditional English lawns will also be replaced with synthetic grass, The Times reports, with gardens in the southeast and East Anglia the most likely to make this switch. The report, which was compiled with input from Met Office experts and university academics, also found a north-south divide in what gardeners can expect, Yahoo News UK reports. Dr Eleanor Webster, who coordinated the RHS report, told the BBC: “The key thing is that the south of England is going to be hotter and drier throughout the year with some heavy rain showers and then the north of England is going to be certainly milder but it is also going to be wetter in the summer and in the winter.” Extreme weather events and the disappearance of parks and village greens also likely outcomes when summer temperatures soar over the next few decades, The Express says.

White House advisers and Trump administration officials are set to meet later today to discuss whether the United States should remain in the Paris climate agreement, a White House official said on Wednesday. The meeting was postponed earlier this month. Several of Trump’s close advisers and Cabinet secretaries, including Jared Kushner and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, are said to support staying in the deal, notes Politico, although chief strategist Steve Bannon and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt strongly oppose the pact. Bloomberg report details how Germany yesterday said Rick Perry’s suggestion to renegotiate the Paris accord is “absurd” and fired back at his criticism of Europe for not living up to its vow to fight climate change. Meanwhile China has suggested the US could buy foreign carbon credits to help meet a shortfall in the country’s international emission goals, reports Carbon Pulse. BusinessGreen, and The Washington Post also run the story.

An uptick in China’s economy after a four-year slowdown in growth threatens to reverse improvements in greenhouse gas emissions, the Financial Times reports. China has seen an annual growth rate of 6.9 per cent in the first quarter this year, a recovery in commodity prices and a rise in steel consumption. This has already contributed to a rise in smog in some areas of China after three years of improving air quality and falling coal consumption.

Oxfam is warning the drought in East Africa, where nearly 11 million people are already affected by food shortages, is threatening to become a humanitarian “catastrophe”. The Independent reports that the aid charity is issuing a “desperate” appeal for the international community to meet a request from the United Nations for about £1.5bn of aid. The charity also said the worst drought in living memory demonstrated why the world must act to reduce global warming. “It pointed to several scientific studies which found evidence that climate change was likely driving up temperatures and making the situation significantly worse,” says the Independent. Reuters also covers the story.

Transport for London is set to spend £18m on upgrading the capital’s power grids to charge the first generation of battery-powered black cabs, the Guardian reports. The money will pay for network reinforcements to enable British Gas owner Centrica and other energy companies to install 300 rapid electric-car charging stations by 2020. London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone requirements mean all new black cabs are required to be battery-powered electric models by law from January 2018.

Alice Thomson is right that we urgently need a co-ordinated energy strategy and a new Clean Air Act, writes Rachel Solomon Williams, managing director of climate policy thinktank Sandbag, responding to a comment article in the Times yesterday. She agrees that “energy strategy has for too long been subject to political uncertainty” and that “it is not right that the public should be penalised for the poorly informed policy decisions that resulted from inaccurate information about the apparent benefits of diesel cars”. However, she writes, she cannot agree with her view that taking action on climate change is therefore a mistake, or that the Climate Change Act is harmful. “On the contrary, the act is supporting a clean technology revolution that will have benefits to health, the climate and the economy.” Hugh McNeal of RenewableUK writes separately that independent economic analysts, from Bloomberg to Baringa, have also reported that onshore wind is the cheapest way to generate electricity, bar none — including gas.

Tasmania is being chewed away by the sea, writes Justin Gillis for the New York Times, “The roots of trees that have stood for decades now dangle perilously over a fast-eroding shore. A few miles away, a seaside coal mine once worked by the convicts is under similar assault by the waves.” Gillis also notes that “In country after country, managers of national parks and other historic sites are realising that climate change, with its coastal flooding and erosion, rising temperatures and more intense rainstorms, represents a profound risk to the heritage they are trying to preserve.”

Scientists and doctors are beginning to trace a worrying rise in invasive fungal infections to human activity and changes in the environment, writes Lindsey Konkel in Ensia. Invasive fungal infections kill about 1.5 million people worldwide every year, and experts say these deadly diseases are on the rise. Most fungi thrive in moist, temperate climates, and as the world warms, that temperate range is increasing, says Robin May, a microbiologist at the University of Birmingham in the UK. And the fungi are keeping pace. Fungal diseases also cause more than two-thirds of all crop losses worldwide. “Major fungal diseases such as rice blast, wheat stem rust and corn smut challenge the global food supply,” says Sarah Gurr, chair in food security at the University of Exeter in the UK.

“President Trump’s efforts to resuscitate coal are unlikely to get far,” writes Robin Pagnamenta in the Times, “because environmental rules are not the industry’s biggest headache”. Instead, the US shale gas industry is the “real problem” for coal, Pagnamenta says, responsible for half the decline in US coal use since 2011. For Bloomberg, Tom Randall says that “coal won’t cut it” in the face of a “cheap energy revolution” from wind and solar.

Scientists have developed the first-ever global-scale historical coral bleaching database, increasing the number of observed mass bleaching reports in recent decades by 79%. While existing databases are limited by the voluntary nature of the contributions and variations in the spatial scale of bleaching reports, the authors extracted data from the literature and personally contacted scientists and divers working in under-reported locations, the paper explains.

New research finds that while a warmer climate, and associated Arctic sea ice loss, has increased the abundance of green plants across North American caribou territory, the species has seen a paradoxical decline in numbers. Contrary to previous research proposing that caribou might see a benefit from climate-induced greening, the new study suggests it has been accompanied by a decline in pasture quality.

A new study has, for the first time, demonstrated the potential for mussels to adapt to ocean acidification over the long term, with larval populations adapted to a CO2-enriched environment better able to cope with high CO2 conditions than those from non-enriched natural habitats. The experiments, which suggest adaptation occurs over three generations, represent a promising approach to estimating the response of this key bivalve species to global change, say the authors.