US president Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris have toured the areas hit by Hurricane Helene, reports Agence France-Presse. Harris visited Georgia, while Biden surveyed Asheville, North Carolina by helicopter, where the “staggering destruction” includes “collapsed bridges, debris-filled lakes, demolished buildings and washed-away roads”, the newswire notes. The White House has authorised the deployment of more than 1,000 troops to areas hit by Hurricane Helene, joining 6,000 national guards and 4,800 federal workers on the ground already, reports the Financial Times. The troops will assist with the ongoing delivery of food, water and other aid to communities in the “devastated regions”, it adds. Helene is now the second deadliest to hit the US after Hurricane Katrina, which killed nearly 1,400 people along the Gulf Coast in 2005, notes the Times. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia were the states worst affected by Helene, with estimates that the damage and economic losses caused will fall between $36bn and £160bn, it adds.

Climate change made Hurricane Helene’s rainfall more severe, writes Carbon Brief climate science contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather on his Climate Brink blog. “Simply put, warmer air can ‘hold’ more water before it precipitates out and the amount of moisture in the atmosphere is expected to increase by up to 7% per degree of warming”, his post explains. This is expected to increase the severity of heavy precipitation events across the world, he continues, even if the average amount of rainfall does not change.

In related news, major storms such as Helene have a longer and more devastating impact upon lives than previously thought, reports the Guardian. A new study published in Nature has found that major storms contribute to thousands of deaths up to 15 years after they have swept through, the newspaper states. Hurricanes are generally thought of as “short, sharp events”, it continues, with Hurricane Helene killing 150 people across five states as it “tore across the southern US as a category 4 storm”. The new research, however, finds that such storms have an impact on mortality that lasts for “up to 15 years”, causing far more deaths than is first apparent, the article states. It notes that the findings will “prove controversial” and will be followed by many other studies of long-term mortality from natural disasters suggests Prof Kerry Emanuel, a scientist who specialises in hurricanes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who was not involved in the paper. However, Emmanuel tells the Guardian that the results of the study are “persuasive, given how well the model explains the excess deaths” and that the thousands of extra deaths per hurricane were “truly astounding”. The study finds that, on average, a major storm in the US contributes to the early deaths of 7,000 to 11,000 people over the past 15 years, dwarfing the government’s current average aftermath toll, reports the Associated Press. The study’s authors say that, even with Hurricane Helene’s growing death count, many more people will die partly because of the storm in coming years, it continues. The article quotes Stanford University climate economist Solomon Hsiang, a study co-author and a former White House science and technology official, who says: “Watching what’s happened here makes you think that this is going to be a decade of hardship on tap, not just what’s happening over the next couple of weeks.” The study looks at 501 events from 1930 to 2015, finding that, overall, during the period, “tropical storms killed more people than automobile crashes, infectious diseases and combat for US soldiers”, says the New York Times. “It’s such a big number – especially compared with the 24 direct deaths caused by hurricanes on average, according to federal statistics – that the authors spent years checking the math to make sure they were right,” the article adds. The authors estimate that between 2050 and 2015, tropical storms and hurricanes had caused between 3.6m and 5.2m excess deaths, reports Scientific American. The article notes that such storm-related deaths involve people from certain groups more than others, marking an “important and understudied contributor to health in the US, particularly for young or Black populations,” the authors add.

The European Commission is planning to delay a controversial anti-deforestation law for a year following concerns from trading partners, reports the Financial Times. The article quotes the commission, which said, “given feedback received from international partners about their state of preparations, the commission also proposes to give concerned parties additional time to prepare,” while publishing compliance guidance for exporters. The law is intended to stop European consumers from contributing to deforestation, by stipulating that commodities, including cocoa, coffee, rubber, wood and palm oil, cannot enter the bloc if they are grown in deforested areas, the newspaper explains. Last week, 27 European business associations called for the law to be delayed, echoing calls already made by several governments, it adds. Critics of the law say it discriminates against countries with forest resources and would hurt exports, reports the Associated Press, while supporters say it will help save forests on a global scale. Deforestation is the second-biggest source of carbon emissions after fossil fuels, the article notes. In response to the proposed delayed, Indonesia said it was a “good step”, but that a more pressing issue was implementation of regulations rather than the timeframe, reports Reuters. Airlangga Hartarto, an economics minister, tells the publication that the EU should “cancel its country benchmarking on deforestation, where the commission will classify nations as high, standard or low risk in terms of compliance”. A former environment official has hit out at the EU’s credibility on climate commitments, following the one-year delay, reports the Guardian. Virginijus Sinkevičius, a Lithuanian MEP who was the environment commissioner until mid-July, said postponing the deforestation regulation would be “a step backward in the fight against climate change”, the article notes. Sinkevičius, who drafted the legislation, said the delay would put “80,000 acres (32,375 hectares) of forest at risk each day, fuel 15% of global carbon emissions, break trust with the EU’s global partners and damage its credibility on its climate commitments”, the article continues.

China accounts for 40% of “all new low-emission hydrogen production projects that have received the financial green light” in 2023, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), reports the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP). The newspaper adds that the country will expand its capacity to make electrolysers – which use renewable electricity to produce “green hydrogen” – and drive down the cost of the technology, which is “critical for producing low-emission hydrogen from renewable or nuclear electricity”. (Read more about China’s “green hydrogen” in the upcoming China Briefing, which will be published later today.) The Financial Times reports that Chinese official statistics indicate “Beijing’s booming ‘green-tech’ sector” is increasingly driving investments from China to global energy and “cleantech” manufacturing markets.

Meanwhile, France, Greece, Italy and Poland, which  represent “39% of the EU population”, will support the EU’s tariffs vote on Friday, says Reuters. Germany, however, says negotiations with China on electric vehicles (EVs) must continue, according to another Reuters report. Xpeng, a leading Chinese EV maker, is looking to “localise production” in the EU and “sidestep” the bloc’s tariffs on Chinese EVs, Bloomberg reports. Harvard Business Review quotes Kyle Chan, a researcher at Princeton University, saying that “global automakers should capitalise on the substantial public and private investments already infused into China’s domestic EV supply chain”, which not only “ensures regulatory compliance”, but also “taps into the policy support that empowers Chinese EV manufacturers”.

Elsewhere, state news agency Xinhua carries a comment article arguing that China’s EV sector “exported roughly 12.5% of its output last year” and offers no “supply shock”, but an “opportunity” for the world as “it will be a huge boost for the global climate change battle”. State-run newspaper China Daily publishes a comment article, titled: “Ottawa’s protectionist moves will boomerang.” The newspaper argues that “Ottawa has not even bothered to provide any evidence to justify its protectionist moves” despite China’s “strong opposition” to Canada’s tariff hikes on Chinese products, including EVs.

Oil prices have breached $75 a barrel amid reports that Israel could strike Iranian oil facilities, reports the Times. Reports suggest Israel could target the oil facilities in retaliation for Iran’s missile attack on the country, which has increased “fears of full-scale war” in the Middle East and consequent disruption to supply, it continues. About £3.5bn was added to the market shares of London’s oil majors Shell and BP, with shares closing 2.2% and 1.6% higher, respectively, as a result, it adds. US majors Exxon Mobil and Chevron rose 1.7% and 1.5%, respectively, reports Reuters, along with others gaining amid the tensions. Brent crude climbed towards $75 while West Texas Intermediate was above $71, notes Bloomberg. “The oil market has been transfixed by the latest crisis in the Middle East, which comes after a year of turmoil as Israel faces off against Iran and its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere”, it continues. The Middle East accounts for about a third of global oil supply, leading traders to be concerned about the latest escalations, the article notes. A major escalation in the war could “easily take the oil price to $100” an analyst tells the Daily Telegraph. Rising oil prices could lead to higher petrol prices and higher inflation, potentially causing a “headache for the Democrats” in the upcoming US election, the article notes.

Colombia’s National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) has announced a plan to address drought and high temperatures in the Amazon, El Espectador reports. The outlet notes that UNGRD will “provide motor pumps, hoses and humanitarian emergency food assistance” to nearly 10 Indigenous communities and intends to initiate an exploration contract for underground water sources.

Elsewhere, Chile’s La Tercera reports on the drought affecting wider areas of South America, with an increase in extreme heat days, dryness and a higher risk of fires. An international study cited by the outlet indicates that these events have intensified in the north Amazon, Maracaibo and the Gran Chaco, leading to “biodiversity loss, heatwaves and pollution”. In addition, Brazil has experienced a 26% increase in periods of “consecutive dry days” over the past six decades, according to a study covered by Folha de São Paulo.

In other Latin American news, Mexico’s new president Claudia Sheinbaum “could mark a change” in the country’s energy transition, as her agenda proposes using the state oil company as a “bridge” towards renewables while setting up “tax incentives for clean energy”, says Aleida Azamar, a professor at Mexico’s Metropolitan Autonomous University, in El Universal.

Finally, Argentina’s Environmental Science Academy has questioned Javier Milei’s position at the recent UN general assembly and instead endorsed the UN’s 2030 Agenda and the Pact for the Future, according to Argentina’s La Nación.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer will struggle to make a better deal with the EU if he fails to make a pro-European argument at home, argues an editorial in the Guardian. This follows Starmer travelling to Brussels this week for an official bilateral meeting with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen as part of efforts to “reset” relations, it explains. The discussions include a focus on the defence and security pact, which would “go beyond military cooperation”, to encompass agreements on energy supplies and “combating the climate crisis”, the article states. “The foundations of an improved EU-UK relationship are now in place, but building on that requires greater clarity of purpose and courage in expressing the conviction that Britain’s interests are served by restoring ties that should not have been severed in the first place,” it concludes. 

In other comment, UK ambassador to Japan Julia Longbottom writes about the “historic moment” the UK’s last coal power plant closed this week in the Japan News. The Daily Telegraph’s climate-sceptic financial columnist Matthew Lynn tries to argue that “net-zero is becoming synonymous with economic suicide” in a comment piece looking at the closure of coal and steel plants in the UK. 

Elsewhere, an editorial in the Sun cautions chancellor Rachel Reeves to continue the freeze on fuel duty in the upcoming autumn budget as oil prices rise in response to tensions in the Middle East. Over a full page in the print edition of the Daily Mail, climate-sceptic columnist Ross Clark compares carbon credits to the “mediaeval sale of ‘indulgences’”. (Carbon Brief published a special series of articles on carbon offsets, including carbon credits, last year).   

The US market is too small to give Washington leverage over Chinese software, argues columnist Alan Beatie in the “Trade Secrets” column in the Financial Times. The global battle for “EV supremacy” has entered a new phase with the EU and the US eying a software ban and an anti-subsidy tariff on Chinese EVs respectively, he explains. However, these amount to very different things, with the EU eying integration with Chinese industry while the US looks to decouple, despite China’s “extraordinary” supremacy in the EV space, he writes. The lure of US market access is weaker than it ought to be, with traditional partners such as the UK and Australia unlikely to follow the US’s example on this matter, he states. “Without enough domestic production and ownership to give it overwhelming leverage, US trade and technology policy on EVs will struggle to have an impact on a global market that has rapidly developed without it”, Beatie concludes. 

In other comment, people “fleeing climate disasters” are going to “transform” the American South, writes Abrahm Lustgarten, an environmental reporter for ProPublica and the author of “On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America”, in a comment piece in the New York Times. 

National rates of partner violence against women can be higher two years after some climate “shocks”, such as storms, landslides and floods, a new study finds. However, the authors find that earthquakes, wildfires and extreme temperatures have “no measurable association” with partner violence. The findings suggest an “urgent need” to address higher violence rates “likely to come about through climate shocks due to climate change”, the researchers add.

Winter cold extremes in mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere have “strongly decreased” in frequency and intensity since 1990, according to a new study. The researchers compare trends in models and observations between 1970-2022, finding that a previously reported increase in mid-latitude winter cold extremes was “overestimated”. The researchers conclude that “because of internal variability, temporary, regional increases in cold extremes are still expected to occur”.