Former Labour leader Ed Miliband has joined a cross-party attempt to persuade voters that leaving the EU would damage the environment. Miliband has signed a joint declaration with environment secretary Liz Truss, former energy secretary Ed Davey, and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas. Setting out ten “green reasons” for staying in Europe, the document says “collective action is the only solution to rising seas and rising temperatures. The European Union is central to both these challenges.” The publication also attacks the green credentials of key figures in the Leave campaign such as Nigel Lawson, Owen Paterson and Douglas Carswell, saying they “demonstrate a cavalier ignorance about climate matters which embodies the extreme and outdated outlook of those who want to leave,” reports iNews. MailOnline also has the story.

The French government is prepared to sell shares in some of the country’s leading companies to fund a €3 billion aid package to help EDF build the Hinkley Point nuclear project. Among the assets that could be sold include airports in Nice and Lyons, and shares in Renault and Safran – the aerospace and defence group, reports the Financial Times. “People close to the discussions” tell the FT that the shares are being sold in order to ensure that there will be no extra cost to French taxpayers for the investments by the majority-state owned EDF.

Over the last five years, Britain has “quietly become a star in the world of green power,” reports the FT. A record 25% of electricity generated last year came from wind farms, solar panels and other renewable power sources, up from 9% in 2011. While much of this energy comes from traditional wind farms and solar panels, “much of the change has happened well out of sight.” A second FT article lists 24 of the more unusual projects, including an anaerobic digestion plant at a sweet factory, which turns leftovers from making sweets into gas, and Thames Water’s floating solar farm, which is the biggest in Europe.

A “towering fireball” from a ruptured pipeline linking Pittsburgh to New York has worried energy markets and provided new fuel for critics of fracking. On Friday, the Texas Eastern pipeline, a major artery in North America’s natural gas network, burst into flames in Pennsylvania. The explosion seriously burned a man fleeing his house and carved a crater into the ground, authorities said. Energy companies have been adding pipeline capacity to manage Pennsylvania’s excess gas. Elsewhere, a new study suggests that fracking in the US is causing a global surge in ethane, reports the Independent. Ethane is a prominent greenhouse gas and also reacts with sunlight and the atmosphere to make ground-level ozone, which causes breathing problems and eye irritation. Levels of ethane in the atmosphere had been falling since the 1980s, but in 2010 a sensor in Europe picked up a surprise increase.

With his 90th birthday on the horizon, Sir David Attenborough has been reflecting on his life and career. Discussing climate change, Attenborough tells iNews that he “certainly had worries and concerns about what was happening a long time ago.” But, he tells the Times, “it wasn’t until I was quite sure that the whole of scientific opinion was at that point [of agreement]” that he became more outspoken on the topic. Attenborough says he is optimistic about the future: “A lot of progress has been made on climate change. The Americans have changed – and the Chinese have changed. They were the worst offenders and they are well aware they’ve go to do something about their pollution. Progress is being made.”

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton began a two-day tour of coal country on Monday, pledging support for local economies distressed by the downturn in coal. She outlined a $30 billion plan to create alternative jobs in the region and invest in clean-coal technologies. Clinton praised the role coal played in powering the US in the past but acknowledged it’s facing tough economic, environmental and political headwinds today: “Some people want to make it all political, but there are market forces, there are global challenges, there’s also the upswing in fracking … which has proved to be a very serious competitor to coal.” In response, Republican senator Rand Paul called on Clinton to apologise to people who have lost their jobs and are “suffering under her War on Coal.” In March, Clinton was criticised by Republicans and the coal industry for saying she would “put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business” if elected president.

India has criticised western restrictions on investing in foreign coal projects, claiming that they will hinder efforts to tackle climate change. Piyush Goyal, India’s energy minister, said that tighter rules imposed for spending on coal-fired power stations by lenders in the US and Europe were undermining efforts to install cleaner and more efficient equipment, and were forcing generators to keep ageing plants in service. “If I don’t get enough capital, I won’t be able to replace [them] with energy-efficient plants or less-polluting plants,” Mr Goyal says, “I will continue to spew more carbon into the atmosphere because of this ill-conceived embargo.

The Obama administration warns that the US will need to deal with a wave of “climate refugees” as the Arctic continues to warm. In her first official visit to Canada, US secretary of the interior Sally Jewell expressed alarm over how climate change is affecting indigenous communities. “We will have climate refugees,” Jewell said. “We have to figure out how to deal with potentially relocating villages. Elsewhere, the New York Times has a feature on resettling the first American “climate refugees” from Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana.

“30 years after Chernobyl, Russia’s nuclear industry is making an unlikely comeback,” writes Pagnamenta. Rosatom – Russia’s state nuclear supplier and the same company that built Chernobyl – currently has orders for new nuclear plants worth $101bn in Russia, Vietnam, China, India, Bangladesh, Belarus and Hungary. “As well as offering relatively cheap reactors, Rosatom is luring customers by trying to spin Chernobyl as an unlikely selling point,” says Pagnamenta, “Who better to understand nuclear safety than the company that has been through the worst accident ever?” Elsewhere, the Guardian takes a look at how the Chernobyl disaster affected the number of nuclear plants built.

Saudi Arabia’s grand plan to shift its economy away from oil is “completely unrealistic,” writes Butler. “To say, as Mohammed bin Salman did last week, that by 2020 Saudi Arabia will no longer be dependent on oil revenue is beyond a dream.” But the real problem is implementation, says Butler: “Last week’s policy statement makes no reference to any of the difficulties of delivering what is promised.” Without a serious analysis of the how the changes will be delivered, Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is “meaningless rhetoric,” concludes Butler, and “for those outside the kingdom, the naivety of the approach is another unwelcome source of instability and danger.”

A new study discusses the possibility of storing CO2 offshore in the sea bed, distancing any potential leakage from inhabited areas and, thereby, taking away some of the opposition to the technology. The authors investigate the possible impacts on temperature increase and ocean acidification if leakage occurs at a global level, concluding that, on economic grounds at least, onshore and offshore CCS should account for anywhere between 20 % and 80 % of all future CO2 abatement efforts.

Scientists have analysed 44 local adaptation plans in the US, concluding that while the offer a promising approach for addressing local climate change impacts, they often fail to provide details about how they should be implemented. This raises concerns about whether adaptation plans will translate into on-the-ground reductions in vulnerability, say the authors.

The contribution of sea ice loss to the pace of warming in the Arctic appears linked to a natural climate fluctuation called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, according to new research. Arctic warming is larger during the negative phase of the cycle and smaller during the positive phase, an observation that could add a certain amount of predictability to future sea ice patterns. The authors speculate that the recent shift to the positive phase may see the pace of sea ice decline slow in the near future.