There is widespread coverage of the extreme heatwave affecting large parts of the US Pacific Northwest and Canada. BBC News says the “sweltering heatwave” is “sending records tumbling”. It adds: “The US National Weather Service (NWS) has issued excessive heat warnings and watches across nearly all of Washington and Oregon state. Parts of California and Idaho are also affected. Multnomah county, in Oregon, has warned of ‘life-threatening’ heat. Some cities have opened cooling centres, where residents can escape the heat in air-conditioned buildings. The soaring temperatures are due to a dome of high pressure hovering over northwestern United States and Canada. Experts say climate change is expected to increase the frequency of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, however linking any single event to global warming is complicated.” (See Carbon Brief‘s explainer and map showing how climate change affects extreme weather.) Associated Press, via the Guardian, says that “Canada has set its highest temperature on record after a village in British Columbia reached 46.1C on Sunday”. It continues: “The temperature in Lytton, in the south of Canada’s western-most province, surpassed the previous national high of 45C, set in Saskatchewan in 1937.” Reuters reports how cooling centres began opening across the US Pacific Northwest on Friday in preparation for the heatwave. It says: “Experts say extreme weather events such as the late-spring heatwaves that have descended on parts of the US this year can’t be linked directly to climate change. But more unusual weather patterns could become more common amid rising global temperatures, NWS meteorologist Eric Schoening told Reuters in an interview last week.” The New York Times reports from Seattle where “air-conditioning was once taboo”, but “not anymore”. Another New York Times feature looks at how, “from Alaska to Florida, Native Americans are facing severe climate challenges, the newest threat in a history marked by centuries of distress and dislocation”. The Los Angeles Times says that “California’s drought and wildfire conditions are accelerating at unprecedented rates, according to state officials, and residents should brace for a summer of widespread burning and mandatory water conservation measures in some regions”. Meanwhile, Bloomberg covers the heatwaves in eastern Europe and Siberia, saying the “extreme temperatures are linked to variations in the jet stream, a phenomenon that’s also influencing heat and drought in the Western US”.

In other US news, the Hill says that “environmental advocates are shifting their focus to a multi-trillion, Democrat-led spending package after seeing that a smaller bipartisan infrastructure deal is unlikely to include many of their priorities”. It continues: “The bipartisan agreement is expected to include some scaled-down versions of President Biden’s climate proposals, but activists are optimistic that they can achieve many of their goals through a Democrat-only measure that is poised to advance alongside the smaller $1.2tn package.” The Financial Times says that Biden’s climate credentials are being “challenged by oil pipeline brawls”. Separately, the Hill carries a comment piece by climate scientist Dr Katharine Hayhoe who says: “The record-breaking heat and intensifying drought engulfing the western US right now are a stark reminder of how climate change is loading the weather dice against us…Yet, what we see today is just a fraction of what’s anticipated unless serious and immediate actions are taken to reduce carbon emissions.” USA Today chooses to use the heatwave as a time to run a comment piece by climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg arguing that “climate change coverage ignores heavy impact of heat on cold deaths”.

Reuters reports that European Union negotiators struck a deal on Friday on reforms to the bloc’s farming subsidy programme, introducing new measures aimed at protecting small farms and curbing agriculture’s environmental impact. The newswire adds: “The deal ends a near three-year struggle over the future of the EU Common Agricultural Policy, which will suck up around a third of the EU’s 2021-2027 budget, spending €387bn on payments to farmers and support for rural development. Representatives from EU member states and European Parliament clinched the agreement, which aims to shift money from intensive farming practices to protecting nature, and rein in the 10% of EU greenhouse gases emitted by agriculture…Campaigners and some lawmakers said the deal failed to align farming with EU goals to fight climate change, warning that many measures to encourage farmers to shift to environmentally friendly methods were weak or voluntary.” Reuters continues: “The deal would require countries to spend 20% of payments to farmers from 2023-2024, rising to 25% of payments between 2025-2027, on ‘eco-schemes’ that protect the environment. Examples could include restoring wetlands to absorb CO2, or organic farming, although the rules did not define what would count as an eco-scheme. Any funds below those limits that are not spent on eco-schemes must be spent on green measures in other areas instead.” The Guardian says the environmental claims of the reforms have been described as a “paper reality” and that there is “far too much wriggle room for national governments over the commitments to green spending”. It adds: “Europe’s largest federation of environmental groups, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), said that about three-quarters of the €270bn budget for direct payments to farmers would still go to intensive farms under the new policy.” Politico says that “Green members of the European Parliament were quick to warn that the agreement had been gutted of environmental ambition”. It continues: “Climate and environmental NGOs, who saw the future CAP as crucial to reaching the EU’s flurry of 2030 and 2050 climate and environmental goals, blasted the deal. Harriet Bradley from BirdLife Europe slammed the new CAP as ‘a free-for-all dressed up as system change’.” Food systems writer Daniela De Lorenzo in Forbes says that the deal “still doesn’t place the future of EU farming on the right path for sustainable transition”.

Meanwhile, in other EU news, Bloomberg says that the “European Commission plans to phase maritime transport into the EU Emissions Trading System from 2023 and improve a mechanism to control the supply of carbon permits as part of the biggest overhaul of the market to date, according to a draft law seen by Bloomberg”. It adds: “The reform, due to be unveiled on 14 July, is also set to increase the rate at which the emissions caps shrink each year and to toughen the rules to get carbon allowances for free.” Reuters also covers the story. Finally, Politico has a feature on how “delivering on the numerous promises of the Green Deal is putting Commission staff under increased pressure”.

The Mail on Sunday reports that it “can reveal that Treasury officials have met with senior figures in the pensions industry over the controversial scheme that would unlock some of the UK’s £2.2tn retirement pots and parcel it out to fast-growing businesses, transport projects, real estate and carbon-friendly investments”. It explains that the UK government has held “private talks over plans to channel tens of billions of pounds of pension money into infrastructure and start-up companies to boost the economic bounceback”. Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph reports the views of Oliver Griffiths, chief executive of the UK’s post-Brexit tariffs watchdog known as the Trade Remedies Authority. He warns that “the huge sums of public money pumped into Covid support and green subsidies will lead to a new wave of trade disputes”.

In other UK news, the Sunday Telegraph says that Boris Johnson’s investment tsar Lord Grimstone has said that the UK is aiming to seize on an imminent £8bn “spending spree” by international manufacturers to “catch the wave” of electric cars. A Daily Telegraph news feature looks at how “Tesla’s Berlin battery bust-up [is] set to boost Britain”. A separate Daily Telegraph comment piece by Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith rails against the government’s “dangerous obsession” with electric cars.

The Mail on Sunday reports that “major oil and gas firms including BP and Shell could face fresh legal action by activist groups as investors demand stock market-listed firms align with Paris climate goals”. And the Observer says it has learned that “prospective oil projects in the North Sea with the capacity to produce more than a billion barrels will avoid a new test designed to assess their impact on the climate crisis”.

Finally, several outlets report on the latest protest by Extinction Rebellion, which targeted some newspapers over the weekend. The Independent says: “Six people were arrested after Extinction Rebellion (XR) dumped a pile of manure outside the offices of the Daily Mail as part of a planned ‘Free the Press’ protest. Climate activists dropped 7 tonnes of the fertiliser outside the entrance of Northcliffe House, in Kensington, west London, at 6.40am on Sunday and also targeted the offices of the Daily Telegraph at Victoria. The environmental group said in a statement it wants to send a message to ‘the four billionaire owners of 68% of the UK’s print media’”. An editorial in the Sun criticises the “hard-left eco-fanatics”. It adds: “The twisted narrative of the protesters is that papers like this one are in the pocket of the government. Oh, and hiding the truth about climate change. What rot!”

The Sunday Telegraph reports on the views of the UK government’s environment secretary George Eustice who, the newspaper says, believes that “Britain can achieve its climate change goals without lecturing people to eat less meat”. It adds: “Eustice said keeping British livestock that was fed on grass rather than grain would be ‘one of the key components of our work to get to net-zero’. The environment secretary’s comments were echoed by Chris Skidmore, the former business minister who signed the legislation in 2019 committing the UK to become carbon neutral…[Eustice, who is a farmer,] was speaking at Groundswell, an annual event on regenerative agriculture that emphasises the importance of soil health to lock up carbon.” The article continues: “Mr Eustice has repeatedly raised the prospect of carbon border taxes on agricultural products, but that would entail similar carbon taxes on British products, likely to hit meat and dairy production. An upcoming food strategy written by Henry Dimbleby, the Government’s food tsar, is expected to say some form of meat tax might be needed at some point for health and environmental reasons, according to reports this week. But Mr Eustice said any border carbon adjustments on agriculture would not happen in ‘the foreseeable future’.” An accompanying comment piece by Skidmore is headlined: “Prepare for the populist backlash, if net-zero becomes an elite project.” The Sun has an “exclusive” about Dimbleby’s “draft report” which, it says, shows he wants “Brits to pay meat taxes even though it may risk riots”. It adds: “Processed meats such as burgers, bacon, ham, sausages and chicken nuggets could face a levy, the Sun understands. Sources said the document was ‘still a work in progress’, but did not dispute the push to make some meats costlier.”

Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday has an “exclusive” about how “leading brands including M&S and Costa [are] to display pioneering traffic-light style labels backed by the government to show customers the environmental impact of making their products”. The Sunday Times also has the story, adding: “Products including fruit, milk and meat will be graded on their carbon emissions, impact on biodiversity, water usage and water pollution by analysing every stage from farm to fork.” Separately, the Daily Telegraph reports that “households will have to spend more time sorting food waste from other ­rubbish under £10bn proposals to boost recycling and cut greenhouse gas ­emissions”.

China’s state broadcaster CCTV has reported that the giant Baihetan hydropower plant on the upstream branch of China’s Yangtze river has begun generating electricity for the first time, reports Reuters. The newswire adds: “The project will eventually consist of 16 such units, making its total generation capacity second only to the Three Gorges Dam once it is fully completed in July next year…[It] is located on the border between the southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan. It is part of a cascade of dams on the Jinsha river, which is the upstream section of the Yangtze…The project is part of a national scheme to generate electricity and deliver it to high energy-consuming regions on the eastern coast, and is also designed to strengthen control over water flows during the heavy summer flood season.”

In other China news, the National Energy Administration (NEA) plans to launch a “pilot” project to promote rooftop solar power generation across counties, cities and districts, reports Shanghai Securities News. A proposal stipulates that photovoltaic (PV) panels should cover no less than half of the rooftop of government buildings and at least 40% of the rooftop of public facilities. There are lower standards for industrial and commercial buildings as well as rural residential houses. Meanwhile, China’s first 10 gigawatt (GW) wind farm has been completed in Jiuquan in north-western China, reports Jiuquan Daily. The project, the Number One Wind Farm of Guazhou County, took 13 years to develop and build, the report says.

Separately, the first deepwater gas field fully operated by a Chinese company started production on Friday, reports Reuters, citing China’s national offshore producer CNOOC. The newswire says that the project is expected to reach peak production of 328m cubic feet of natural gas and 6,751 barrels of condensate per day in 2022. According to state broadcaster CCTV, the gas field has a deep-sea semi-submersible platform, Shenhai-1, which can reach a maximum depth of 1,500 metres. China Energy News reports that the project is situated to the southeast of Hainan island, in the South China Sea.

Elsewhere, a report from China Dialogue looks at how Shanghai – a megacity of 24 million people – is rejigging its energy mix and cutting industrial emissions in a bid to achieve the emission-peaking and “carbon neutrality” goals ahead of China’s national timeline. (Last week’s Carbon Brief China Briefing has explained Shanghai’s efforts in developing hydrogen-fuelled vehicles.) Another article from China Dialogue discusses if China’s Inner Mongolia – the nation’s former crypto-mining hub – can reach its emission peak within this decade.

Finally, in a letter to the South China Morning Post, the chief executive of the World Coal Association argues that China should pursue “clean coal” in its push for “carbon neutrality” by 2060.

A new report by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) says that traditional food gathering techniques of indigenous communities are under threat from accelerating climate change and economic pressures, reports Reuters. The newswire adds: “Food systems used by different indigenous peoples were found to be among the world’s most sustainable in terms of efficiency, avoiding waste and adapting to the seasons, said an FAO analysis…Because their diets rely mainly on renewable resources found close to home, indigenous communities adjust land use according to seasonality. Until recently, ‘waste’ was an unknown concept in their food systems, the report said. It cited as an example Finland’s Inari Sami people, whose diet depends heavily on fish and reindeer meat.”

An editorial in the Guardian comments on last week’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) report on the UK’s progress towards net-zero. It says: “A strategy setting out how the UK intends to meet its net-zero pledge is promised before the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November. But there is little sign so far that ministers grasp the scale of the challenge. Not a single government department, the CCC finds, is moving at the necessary pace.” While the UK is “far from the only country that is falling far short on its commitments”, the paper says, “as host of COP26, and as one of the biggest historical emitters due to early industrialisation, the UK has a special responsibility to stop prevaricating”. The buildup to November’s summit is a “unique and historic moment”, the article concludes: “So far, the partnership of Boris Johnson and the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has delivered nothing on climate…If this doesn’t change in response to the latest warnings, the risk of a diplomatic and environmental catastrophe following not far behind the pandemic will continue to rise.” (See Carbon Brief’s in-depth summary for more on the report’s findings.)

Meanwhile, writing in the Times Red Box, Simon Clarke – Conservative MP for Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland and former exchequer secretary to the treasury and minister for local government and regional growth – says that “it’s time for Tory sceptics to get behind net-zero”. He writes that the “remarkably modest” costs of climate action “have in any case been dwarfed by the many benefits, chief among which is the boom in green jobs”. He adds: “I won’t pretend there aren’t some big challenges – not least heat decarbonisation. We must bring everyone with us, including those within my own party who have legitimate concerns about how the investments required to meet net-zero will be paid for.” Clarke concludes: “When debating [the] costs [of net-zero], we mustn’t ignore the costs of not acting…So I hope my colleagues will join me in recommitting to net-zero…This is an opportunity to seize, not a burden to manage.”

FT columnist and former environment correspondent Pilita Clark says that the idea of “ecocide” has “inched a fraction closer to reality” with a panel of lawyers from around the world unveiling a legal definition of the crime. She continues: “It describes ecocide as ‘unlawful or wanton acts’ committed in the knowledge that there is a high chance they could cause ‘severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment’. If adopted, it would put severe environmental ruin on a par with war crimes and open a path to putting chief executives and presidents on the stand. And even if that never happens, campaigners are banking on the mere legal existence of ecocide to change the behaviour of large corporations, along with their financiers and insurers.”

In other comment, Tom Rees in the Sunday Telegraph has a news feature under the headline: “Counting the cost of going green as inflation and climate change collide.” Rees writes: “Going green could be expensive for consumers. The two big challenges for the post-Covid economy, inflation and the climate transition, are set to collide in the coming years, potentially causing headaches for the Bank of England and global rate-setters…Rises in the cost of living for families as a result of climate change will be driven not only from the negative effects of a warming planet, but also the policies and technologies put in place to combat it. But who will pick up the tab?…In the coming years, the climate crisis could compound inflationary pressures currently causing jitters in financial markets. The transition comes with a huge up-front bill, carbon pricing will hike costs for the biggest polluters, and food and energy prices will become more volatile as extreme weather events become more frequent. Yet some forecasters expect green policies to eventually pull down prices.”

Meanwhile, writing for BusinessGreen, Sam Robinson of the Conservative thinktank Bright Blue says that “broad-based environmental tax reform can drive changes needed to put the economy on a pathway to net-zero”.

The Belo Monte dam – built on the Xingu River in Eastern Amazonia – has caused a threefold increase in emissions of methane and carbon dioxide (CO2), a new study finds. The authors measured methane emissions at multiple sites on the Belo Monte reservoirs and downstream of the dam, as well as methane and CO2 emissions from the soils of islands and marginal areas of the Xingu River. They find that “reducing flooded areas and prioritising the power density of hydropower plants” lowers the emissions of Amazonian reservoirs. The study argues that, as dams increase emissions in the area, hydropower expansion in Amazonia should be avoided, “regardless of the reservoir type”.

A new study finds that models in the sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) simulate rainfall over land 5.4 hours too early, and simulate 0.81mm per day too little rainfall over the ocean. The paper assesses the limitations in the way both CMIP6 and CMIP5 models simulate 24-hour rainfall cycles by comparing the results of model runs to satellite observations. The authors note that, while CMIP6 models show “marginal improvements” compared to CMIP5 models, both still “precipitate too early over both land and ocean”.

Almost 40% of emissions from the 2019 fires in the Amazon were caused by drier fuel, driven by low precipitation and relative humidity, according to new research. The authors find that the dry conditions are linked to “southerly wind anomalies over southern Amazonia”, driven by changing sea surface temperature patterns in the Indian Ocean. The study “reveals how cold sea surface temperature anomalies in the tropical eastern Pacific link the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the preceding December–January to the dry-season fires in Amazonia”, according to the paper. The authors note that the findings of this study could improve extreme fire prediction over Amazonia, as the dry conditions that lead to extreme fires are becoming more common in the region.