There is widespread media coverage of the UN climate summit in New York that concluded last night. The New York Times says the collective outcome fell short of expectations: “Despite the protests in the streets, China on Monday made no new promises to take stronger climate action. The US, having vowed to pull out of the Paris Agreement, the pact among nations to jointly fight climate change, said nothing at all. A host of countries made only incremental promises.” However, it adds that there were “some” concrete measures: “The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in closing remarks that 77 countries had announced efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, several asset fund managers said they would aim to get to a net-zero portfolio of investments by the same year, and dozens of businesses said they would aim to abide by the Paris Agreement targets.” Climate Home News and the World Resources Institute published detailed liveblogs tracking all the speeches and announcements. (For example, Russia, the world’s fourth largest emitter, has now formally adopted the Paris Agreement, drawing an end to months of national tensions on the subject, according to Climate Home News.) In a separate piece for Climate Home News, Chloé Farand gathers a range of reaction from attendees. The lack of any announcement by India on how to reduce its reliance on coal was noted regretfully by several people.

However, most column inches have been devoted to teenage activist Greta Thunberg, who made an emotional speech at the summit. BBC News quotes her saying: “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” She added: “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” The Guardian has published the video in full – as well as the text of the speech. The Independent highlights a later moment in the day when Thunberg “glared” at Donald Trump as he passed in front of her. The video of the moment “went viral”, says the Independent: “Cameras captured the moment in which the 16-year-old’s expression changes from a slight curiosity to what looks like steely anger as the American president walked by.” Politico reports how Trump later “mocked” the teenage Swede on Twitter. He wrote: “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!” Buzzfeed covers the apology by Fox News after one of its pundits described her on air as “mentally ill”. Meanwhile, just a few blocks away from the summit, oil and gas executives met to highlight how their sector is seeking to curb methane emissions, says the Financial Times: “The meeting of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative highlighted the dilemma of addressing growing demand for energy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the Earth.” Christiana Figueres, the former head of the UN climate secretariat, spoke at the meeting, where she said: “Frankly, my dear friends, I think you have a rough road ahead.” In Chicago, Australia’s prime minister, who chose not to attend the New York summit, used a speech, says the Guardian, to say that “newly developed” China should must do more on climate change.

Coverage of the Labour party’s conference in Brighton continues with a number of outlets reporting that the UK’s main opposition party has pledged to invest billions of pounds in electric car production and offshore wind farms to accelerate the “green industrial revolution”, if it wins power. BBC News says: “A future Labour government would take equity stakes in car producers in return for a £3bn capital investment in new electric models and machinery. Thirty-seven publicly-owned wind farms will be built, with the profits used to regenerate deprived coastal areas.” The Guardian adds that the conference is due today to debate how to accelerate the pace of decarbonisation: “Labour is promising to build dozens of new state-owned offshore windfarms, at a cost of £83bn in public and private money. The plan comes as members prepare to debate the climate emergency at their party conference in what could be a fierce contest between heavyweight unions and grassroots campaigners. On Tuesday, delegates will be asked to vote on the party’s target to cut the UK’s carbon emissions to net-zero. Two motions are to be put to members, one with a target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2030 – which would be much more stringent than the government’s current target of net-zero by 2050 – and one backed by the GMB union, which does not set a date.” The Guardian has a separate article headlined: “Labour’s climate policies: what are they and what do they mean?” Meanwhile, Labour’s former leader Ed Miliband has said, reports the Guardian, that the party needs a “wartime” mobilisation on the climate emergency in the next decade as he warned the party not to splinter over fixed decarbonisation targets.

The Times reports on a letter sent to the UK’s transport secretary by the government’s official climate advisors saying that frequent flyers should face higher taxes to help reduce aviation emissions: “The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) suggests that a ‘frequent flyer levy’ would be an effective way of managing demand for air travel, which is set to be the biggest source of emissions in Britain by 2050. In a letter to Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, Lord Deben, the Tory peer who chairs the CCC, writes that the aviation industry is ‘highly unlikely’ to be able to eliminate emissions by 2050, despite its claims to be developing biofuels and electric aircraft.” The Guardian says: “Ministers are likely to have to choose among options including hikes to air passenger duty, new levies on frequent flyers and changes to air taxation relative to rail and road in order to limit burgeoning demand for cheap flights in the next few years.” It adds: “The committee’s findings throw into doubt the government’s green light for a new runway at Heathrow, the consultation on which ended last week. The Department for Transport has previously conceded that the net-zero target, enacted by Theresa May after the Heathrow decision was taken, could provide arguments towards a review.”

Reuters covers the latest annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report, which concludes that nuclear power is losing ground to renewables in terms of both cost and capacity as its reactors are increasingly seen as less economical and slower to reverse carbon emissions. “Stabilising the climate is urgent, nuclear power is slow,” says Mycle Schneider, lead author of industry group’s report. “It meets no technical or operational need that low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper and faster.”

The Daily Telegraph takes a sceptical look at the UN climate summit: “In theory, all of the 185 countries that have ratified the Paris climate change pact should be prepared to adopt tougher climate targets next year – yet just one third are doing so…Last year, emissions were higher than ever.” However, it takes a positive view about the future: “But political pressure to reduce them, especially from young voters, is growing. Those countries that have ambitious targets, such as the UK, are often targeted by activists who would do better to expend their efforts in countries like China and India. The US, while remaining one of the biggest carbon emitters, has seen its output decline as a result of a switch to greater natural gas use. Boris Johnson has announced up to £1bn of funding to develop new technologies aimed at tackling climate change in developing countries. One practical approach would be to share the technology that will help lower carbon-based energy production as widely as possible.”

Meanwhile, in the Times, Alex Massie argues: “The reality of global warming is beyond dispute. There is no need to ‘debate’ this any longer…[But] change is happening and for once the UK has a good story to tell even if, bafflingly, the government is inclined to keep quiet about it…It is possible to pursue policies that are green and growth-orientated. Becoming wealthier is not an obstacle to green policy; it is a requirement for it.” Separately in the Times, the paper’s financial editor Patrick Hosking says that “when fuel is £3 a litre, you’ll know we’re serious about climate change”. He adds: “The notion of fuel at £3 a litre will have petrolheads fuming. But it might be a lot more effective, quicker, liberal and certainly less onerous than the £26,000 per household bill envisaged by Labour’s modern-day New Dealers.”

Meanwhile, in the Financial Times, Robert Shrimsley also looks at the Labour party’s proposed “Green New Deal” climate policies and argues that a “sizeable chunk of voters is likely to be alienated by environmental radicalism”. He asks: “As Labour shifts stance [by becoming more strident on climate], might [the UK’s political] broad consensus [on climate change] be in jeopardy?” He concludes: “To Conservatives this is watermelon politics (green outside, red inside); a Trojan horse to break up the economic and financial underpinnings of capitalism. Brexit allowed the Tories to ally with nationalist working-class voters. Job fears might offer another alliance if the Conservatives see electoral advantage in defending industry from green socialists…So far the split does not undermine the political and scientific consensus. The energy of climate action movements convinces Labour it can shift the centre ground. Tories meanwhile see a dividing line between apocalyptic or optimistic environmentalism. The worry is if the radicalism pushes the Conservatives into Trump-Morrison groove. The previous consensus may have been too cosy but there is little comfort in no consensus at all.”

The “ecoregion” of geographically separate populations of the same species can better describe how they respond to climate change than genetics, a new study suggests. Using data from museums, wildlife agencies, individual researchers, and scientific literature, the study authors analyse the causes of variable responses to climate among different populations of the American pika. They find that the distribution of the pika does not simply reflect its evolutionary history, but instead more strongly relates to characteristics of their habitat. The findings “have important implications for site-specific management and restoration needs for species of concern”, says an accompanying News & Views article: “Specifically, a management approach that is successful in one area may be irrelevant, or even disastrous, in another.”