The US Atlantic coastline recovers from the damage wreaked by Hurricane Matthew, which tore through killing at least 11 people in the United States and close to 900 in Haiti. A Category 5 hurricane, the most powerful classification of storm, Matthew was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone on Sunday as it headed away from the North Carolina coast. A separate article looks more closely at the damage caused in Haiti, as winds and torrential rains left 1.4 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and officials warned about the risk of cholera. TIME looks at why Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti so hard compared to other Caribbean countries, such as Cuba and the Bahamas. Five Thirty Eight explains why wind speed alone isn’t the best way to measure the strength of a hurricane or its potential for destruction.

While most of the second televised debate between presidential nominees focused on tax returns, Donald Trump’s “locker room talk” and Hillary Clinton’s email account, energy policy got over four minutes of stage time, reports Grist. Asked how they intend to meet the country’s energy needs, Trump said energy was “under siege by the Obama administration”, blaming environmental regulations for putting energy companies out of business: “I’m all for alternative forms of energy, including wind, including solar, et cetera. But we need much more than wind and solar…There is a thing called clean coal. Coal will last for 1,000 years in this country.” Clinton, by contrast, talked about moving toward more clean, renewable energy as quickly “as we can” and touted natural gas as a “bridge to alternative fuels.” The Washington Post has a handy run down of everything that was said in last night’s debate. Carbon Brief is tracking what the candidates and their campaign teams say on climate and energy right up to election night.

India will face pressure to speed up its plans for cutting greenhouse gases used in refrigerators, air conditioning and aerosols when governments meet this week to hammer out an agreement for limiting HFCs. While more than 100 other nations including the United States, the European Union and African states, favour peaking emissions of the potent greenhouse gas in 2021, India wants a peak in poor nations’ rising emissions only in 2031, to give industries time to adapt. Analysts suggest India’s proposal would add the equivalent of almost a year of global carbon emissions to the atmosphere, says Reuters. A global deal on HFCs would be the third big step this month to curb global warming after the 2015 Paris Agreement gained enough backing to enter into force and governments agreed a deal to limit emissions from aviation.

Predictions of a sea ice-free Arctic in summer are an example of another “alarming” scientific prediction that hasn’t come to pass, suggests the Telegraph. The piece quotes two scientists, Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University and Prof Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in California, who have repeatedly forecast the loss of ice by 2016. However, the article makes clear these views are outliers among the scientific community, noting that most experts have said for at least a decade to expect sea ice free Arctic summers around mid-century on current emissions trends. The piece quoted Dr Ed Hawkins from the University of Reading, among others, explaining why natural variability means the decline in sea ice won’t be smooth. But the downward trend is clear, the newspaper notes: “Satellite data since 1981 shows an “undeniable downward trend in sea ice over the past 35 years”. Carbon Brief explained how this year’s second lowest summer low on record fits into the bigger climate picture.

The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, has outlined a five-point plan to meet the goals set out in last year’s Paris agreement, focusing of the need to slow down growth in the construction of coal-fired power stations. Speaking at a ministerial meeting in Washington during the group’s annual meeting, highlighted a number of other target areas in the fight to bring down emissions, including climate-resilient investment in developing countries, green finance, greater energy efficiency and less use of hydrofluorocarbons, synthetic chemicals used in fridges and air conditioning. This week, countries will gather in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, to discuss ways to tackle HFCs. Carbon Brief has all the details.

Rising sea levels could undo the proud status of some British mountains, reducing them to the status of a lowly hill, according to the Ordnance Survey. To qualify as a mountain, a peak must be at least 609.6 metres (2,000ft) above sea level but the standard “baseline” was established almost a century ago, since which time sea levels have risen. Peaks in greatest danger of demotion include a peak in the Yorkshire Dales. While some hill-lovers won’t be happy to see their cherished mountains downgraded, others are open to change, reports the Guardian. Myrddyn Phillips, an amateur surveyor, is quoted as saying, “Certainly for the hill bagging community it is essential to get hill classifications correct.”

The Telegraph ponders last week’s momentous decision by 191 countries in Montreal to adopt a global market-based system to tackle the rise of carbon emissions from international air travel, asking whether it could deliver “a fatal blow to the gilded decades of low-cost flights”. The revolution in air travel in the second half of the last century is quickly giving way to an industry-wide bust, even with fuel prices at record lows, says Ambrose: “there seems little doubt that there will be further pressure to ratchet costs higher. The direction of travel raises the question: is the golden age of cheap European air travel losing its gleam?” Elsewhere, BusinessGreen looks at whether the aviation agreement signed last week is a soaring success or timid take-off, concluding: “The aviation deal is a step in the right direction, but needs an explicit link to the Paris Agreement goals and a credible offsetting system to really set the industry on a climate-friendly flight path.

The shale gas sector’s claims that fracking could reinvigorate British manufacturing may seem appealing as Britain’s decision to leave the EU comes at the same time that its self sufficiency is ebbing away but British frackers probably shouldn’t get too carried away, says Pagnamenta. That it hasn’t yet been demonstrated whether UK shale will be economic to extract and the fact that Lancashire, and other parts of Britain, are likely to be far tougher to develop because of stricter planning rules and dense population makes it hard to see how domestic shale gas extraction amounts to a compelling business model. As long as Britain remains increasingly reliant on gas for electricity generation, the solution may be to “follow Ineos’s example and import shale gas from the US by ship”, he concludes. Elsewhere, an article in The Conversation by Joanne Hawkins, a lecturer of business law at the University of Leeds says that ignoring local concerns, the government has given fracking a legitimacy problem.

The FT’s chief leader writer argues that any UK energy policy that “involves excessive spending is ultimately self-defeating”, unless the world follows Britain’s lead. Citing the costs of nuclear and offshore wind against the Environmental Protection Agency’s estimate of the “social cost” per tonne of carbon emitted, Ford postulates: “Some technologies are so costly in terms of the benefits they deliver that arguably it is rational to prefer climate change and its harms to the economic damage caused by their adoption.” He argues the UK’s energy strategy should be “evolutionary”, a speed that is “dictated by the progress of the technology”, rather than following a course of subsidising low emission sources which he says “simply turning the screw further”.

A new study investigates the potential impacts of climate change on the Olympia oyster – the only native oyster species on the US west coast. The findings suggest that warming temperatures may benefit the oysters, provided they have enough food, as they will grow more quickly. However, warmer conditions will also benefit two species of “oyster drillers” – predatory snails that bore into the oysters and eat them alive. This could “greatly reduce the abundance of the native oyster, a species of conservation and restoration focus,” the researchers conclude.

Ocean acidification could limit the tolerance of Atlantic cod to ocean temperature extremes, a new study suggests. Researchers exposed fertilised cod eggs to ocean conditions for two levels of atmospheric CO2 (400 and 1100 parts per million) and five different temperatures (0, 3, 6, 9 and 12C). Elevated CO2 conditions caused a significant decrease in hatching success, particularly at cold (3 and 0C) and warm (12C) temperatures, the study finds. The researchers conclude that ocean acidification limits the thermal tolerance of cod embryos, which has “important implications for the susceptibility of cod to projected climate change”.