The government must act urgently to ensure nuclear power stations stay open as the future of Britain’s power supply has been jeopardised by Brexit, a group of MPs warned today. The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) committee said nuclear trade and research and power supplies could be severely inhibited by the UK leaving the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), and urged the government to delay exit and or set up transitional arrangements which may need to be longer than the three years proposed by the European parliament. Iain Wright, the committee’s chair, said: “The impact of Brexit on Euratom has not been thought through. The government has failed to consider the potentially severe ramifications of its Brexit objectives for the nuclear industry. … The continued operations of the UK nuclear industry are at risk.” The MPs also said there was a long-term risk the UK could become a “rule taker”, where it was unable to influence the European rules and standards that it still had to comply with, the Independent reports. The Financial Times reports the committee also said co-operation with EU partners on energy and climate “was generally mutually beneficial” and that “arrangements mirroring the status quo should be sought and implemented as far as possible”. The BBC , Reuters and the Express. also covered the story. Meanwhile the Telegraph reports that CGN Power – the Chinese nuclear developer involved in three of the UK’s planned new nuclear power plants – has warned the decision to leave Euratom as part of Brexit will “create some uncertainties” for its UK plans. Separately, the Times reports that Toshiba plans to “mothball” its Moorside new nuclear scheme in Cumbria. Carbon Brief has previously looked at Moorside’s place in UK plans to decarbonise the power sector.

Environment ministers from Britain’s 19 overseas territories have claimed the government has cut funds and been distracted by Brexit. The ministers complained that the government had almost halved Foreign Office spending on the climate, despite the islands being highly vulnerable to climate change. Monserrat environment minister Claude Hogan said: “To protect the island and adapt to climate change we need to put in sea defences – but we only get enough money to go from one consultancy to the next.” But a spokeswoman for the government called climate change and energy work a “network-wide priority”.

US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke officially began the process Monday to expand the country’s offshore drilling for oil and natural gas by signing a secretarial order to start formulating a new five-year plan for drilling rights sales. On Friday the Telegraph reported President Trump signing an executive order Friday on the same topic. “We’re opening it up….Today we’re unleashing American energy and clearing the way for thousands and thousands of high-paying American energy jobs,” Trump said as he signed the order. The order seeks to increase offshore oil drilling in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic Ocean, and the Atlantic Ocean, but leaves out the Pacific Ocean and Eastern Gulf regions, Think Progress reports. The review is likely to “make millions of acres of federal waters eligible for oil and gas leasing,” says the Washington Post. In the wake of the order, communities along the east coast are steeling themselves for a fresh round of angst and protest over offshore drilling, reports the Guardian. The order also prevents the US secretary of commerce from designating any new marine monuments and sanctuaries or expanding existing ones, USA Today reports, and directs him to review all designations and expansions of marine monuments or sanctuaries designated under the Antiquities Act within the last 10 years. However, Inside Climate News reports, it’s not clear just how much Trump can legally accomplish when it comes to drilling in the Arctic, and any attempt to overturn existing protections will likely face a protracted legal battle from environmental advocates. The news was widely covered elsewhere, including in the BBC, Scientific American. Meanwhile, BNEF reports that Ryan Zinke also said Monday that the US is in the position to be energy-dominant, not just independent, thanks to fracking and plans to loosen drilling regulations.

Theresa May should drop “crazy” plans to cap energy bills, says climate sceptic former chancellor Lord Lawson, in comments to the Daily Telegraph. He claimed bills were rising because of government policy [see Carbon Brief coverage of this claim, as well as our reporting showing bills have fallen since 2008]. In a letter to the Times, Lawson and others say only “failed economies” resort to price controls.

A group of developing countries including China and India has expressed concern about the “undue influence” of large companies at the UN climate talks, the Financial Times reports. The group known as the Like Minded Developing Countries are pushing for tighter rules on business groups attending the meetings, arguing that possible corporate influence over climate talks needs to be made clearer to avoid conflicts of interest. “We want to make the process more transparent and accountable,” said Walter Schuldt, chief negotiator for Ecuador, a member of the Like Minded group.

On Saturday protesters from all over the UK came out to challenge Theresa May’s government about its climate record ahead of Britain’s 2017 general election, DeSmogUK reports. Around 300 people came together as part of a protest held in solidarity with the People’s Climate March in Washington and 375 similar events worldwide. Thousands marched in the US meanwhile to demand US President Donald Trump rethink plans to reverse the climate change policies, the Guardian reports. The protest marked Trump’s 1OOth day in office. The protests were widely covered including by Reuters, The Hill, the New York Times, Think Progress, the Telegraph, the Independent and the MailOnline.

A group of Brexit climate science deniers have over the weekend launched a coordinated attempt to persuade the UK to cut green regulations ahead of Theresa May revealing the Conservative Party’s 2017 general election manifesto, DeSmog UK reports. In op-ed columns and letters to the editor in The Times and the Telegraph authors from Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), Civitas, Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), and the TaxPayers’ Alliance criticised the UK Climate Change Act for increasing energy prices and called for looser regulations after Brexit. In his column for the Telegraph, Charles Moore – the paper’s former editor and member of the GWPF’s board of trustees – wrote: “Out of the EU, Britain could copy Trump’s bonfire of controls, igniting it with good old fossil fuels.”

The New York Times “really shouldn’t have” hired conservative Bret Stephens as a columnist for its opinion page, writes David Roberts in Vox. The main reason: climate change. “[W]hen he discusses climate change, Stephens uses incorrect facts and terrible arguments. At a time when we desperately need a conversation about climate change more sophisticated than ‘is it a problem?’ he makes the debate dumber.” The newly hired columnist – who previously wrote for the Wall Street Journal – faced a wave of backlash for obscuring the science behind climate change, writes Think Progress after his first column for the New York Times was riddled with “errors, misstatements, unfair comparisons, straw men, and logical fallacies” to undermine the effort to prevent catastrophic global warming.

DeSmog UK’s Mat Hope travels to a small town in Lancashire that has become England’s fracking frontline. Hope meets the residents of Little Plumpton, who have been protesting over Cuadrilla’s plans to frack for shale gas for two months. He says: “At the end of two days, two notebooks, and two tanks of petrol I have a story about what happens when a central government tells local people what to do, what happens when the police protect profit and not people, and what happens when 25 metres of sleepy countryside roadway gets turned into a symbolic battleground for a whole country’s energy debate.”

Scientists have developed a new method of monitoring gross primary production – a measure of the total amount of energy produced by plants. The first regional assessment of gross primary production using carbonyl sulphide (COS) as a tracer suggests the growing season in the Midwest exceeds any other region in North America, a finding that is replicated in the new ecosystem land components in the latest generation of climate models (CMIP6).

Borneo’s iconic and diverse ecosystems are deteriorating rapidly due to wildfires, according to a new study that aims to better predict the area burnt by such events. The authors highlight the importance of hydrological drought for wildfire prediction, with the Borneo landscape experiencing a substantial drying trend since the early 20th century and clusters of fires coinciding with strong El Nino events.