The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that the coronavirus crisis may “lead to a slump in global carbon emissions this year”, reports the Guardian, but “the outbreak poses a threat to long-term climate action by undermining investment in clean energy”. The IEA “expects the economic fallout of Covid-19 to wipe out the world’s oil demand growth for the year ahead”, says the paper. However, IEA executive director Fatih Birol warned that “there is nothing to celebrate in a likely decline in emissions driven by economic crisis because in the absence of the right policies and structural measures this decline will not be sustainable”. With major economies preparing stimulus packages, “a well designed stimulus package could offer economic benefits and facilitate a turnover of energy capital which have huge benefits for the clean energy transition”, Birol said. Writing in Climate Home News, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) director Andrew Norton makes a similar point. While the coronavirus may see a drop in global carbon emissions, he says, “what counts in terms of meaningful action to address the climate crisis is long-term structural change”. Norton also warns of disruption to the “intensive programme of diplomatic activity” in the run up to the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November. He notes: “If international organisations can learn how to run these processes effectively and equitably with less long-haul flying something positive may come from this. But there is a real risk that poorer countries will be disenfranchised if the transition to virtual meetings is not handled with equality of voice in mind.”

Meanwhile, BusinessGreen reports that clean-energy analyst Bloomberg New Energy Finance has downgraded its expectations for solar, battery and electric vehicle markets around the world this year in the light of the coronavirus. And Climate Home News reports that the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has postponed a significant meeting on environmental protection. It says: “The IMO put off talks by the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC), which had been due to meet in London from 30 March to 3 April. The MEPC is reviewing proposals to improve the energy efficiency of ships.” The New York Times has a piece on “what climate change can teach us about fighting the coronavirus”. It focuses on “politics and psychology”, pointing out that “change is hard when there’s a powerful industry blocking it” and “as with climate change, our collective ability to confront the pandemic is shaped by our brains. We are bad at thinking about tomorrow”. Finally, InsideClimate News has a Q&A with an environmental health expert about the potential influence of climate change on the coronavirus pandemic.

The price of crude oil slid 7% yesterday after President Donald Trump restricted travel to the US from Europe to try to halt the spread of coronavirus, reports Reuters. A flood of cheap supply coming onto the market from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates compounded pressure on prices, the newswire adds. The Financial Times looks back “eight days that shocked the oil market – and the world”, focusing on the row between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia over cutting oil production that saw oil prices fall by more than 20%. “Saudi Arabia and Russia – once unlikely allies – are in a fresh battle for market share,” it says. Rolling Stone says the “new oil wars could upend Trump’s re-election bid”. It says: “As the world economy teeters, reeling from the dystopian implications of the coronavirus, Putin has decided this is a good time to stick a shiv deep into the heart of Trumpland by starting an oil-price war that could well decimate the oil-and-gas industry in places like Colorado, North Dakota and Texas.” Axios says the oil price collapse “isn’t expected to badly undercut electric vehicles, but the overall economic dislocation from coronavirus is a hurdle”. A piece in the Economist says “no one is likely to will the oil-price war”. Reuters says that “climate change commitments by banks, pension funds and asset managers face their first major test as markets reel from the twin shocks of coronavirus and a sliding oil price”.

Meanwhile, the Times reports that the oil price crash puts the future of Tullow Oil in doubt. Tullow warned that the “unprecedented” oil price crash “may threaten its ability to complete $1bn of asset sales it needs to meet conditions from its lenders”, says the paper. Tullow, which was founded in Ireland in 1985 and focuses on exploring in Africa and South America, “will axe a third of its staff after plunging to a $1.7bn (£1.3bn) pre-tax loss amid a ‘perfect storm’ of oil market woes”, says the Guardian. And the Financial Times reports that “a Hong Kong-based hedge fund battling Premier Oil over its $2.9bn refinancing is calling for the UK company to abandon $871m of North Sea acquisitions and focus on cash flow as oil prices remain under strain”.

Sir David Attenborough has backed calls for a halt to deep-sea mining, which conservationists warn could have huge impacts on wildlife and climate change, reports the Press Association. It continues: “A report from Fauna & Flora International (FFI) calls for a moratorium on moves to exploit the deep sea for minerals that are in increasingly high demand for use in items such as mobile phones and batteries. Scientists at the conservation organisation who have assessed the risks and potential impacts of deep seabed mining warn it could include the disruption of entire ecosystems that are home to largely unstudied wildlife.” The report warns that mining could also disrupt the oceans “biological pump” which takes carbon from the atmosphere and transports energy and nutrients through the oceans, PA adds. Attenborough, a vice-president of FFI, “wholeheartedly support[s]” the FFI’s call for a moratorium on on all deep-sea mining. In a foreword to the report, he writes: “Mining the deep sea could create a devastating series of impacts that threaten the processes that are critical to the health and function of our oceans.” The Guardian notes that “dozens of exploratory licences, two of which are sponsored by the UK, have already been granted for huge tracts of the sea bed”. But, it adds, “the rules to govern the responsible exploitation of this global resource are not finalised – they are expected to be completed at a meeting in July at the UN International Seabed Authority”. The licenses “enable companies to explore for minerals across about 1.5 million square kilometres of seabed in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans”, says the Times.

The UK government has announced a review into the building of thousands of homes on land at the highest risk of flooding following the worst winter storms in years, reports the Guardian. It continues: “The housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, told MPs on Thursday that officials would review the policy of building homes on high-risk flood plains and bring forward changes ‘in the coming months’.” Jenrick said the review would prioritise steering new developments “away from needless urban sprawl and the ruination of the countryside” and away from areas at the highest risk of flooding, which is about 10% of land in England. The announcement “will have significant implications for the government’s aim to build 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s to ease the chronic housing shortage”, notes the Guardian.

A public inquiry into a botched green-energy scheme which brought down Northern Ireland’s government is due to publish its findings later today, the Press Association reports. The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) was designed “to encourage businesses to burn more sustainable fuels like wood, but flaws in its design meant it cost more than originally intended”, the PA says: “This was because there was no cap on subsidy payments designed to cover the extra cost of buying wood-burning boilers and running them. The more you burned, the more you earned.” Sir Patrick Coghlin’s investigation, which was established in 2017, “is expected to cover the role of First Minister and Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster, her special advisers and officials”, the newswire notes. The Guardian says “the report is expected to deliver a damning verdict on the politicians and civil servants implicated in a saga of incompetence and apparent sleaze at the heart of Stormont, a scandal that toppled a power-sharing government in 2017 and paralysed politics for three years”.

In a piece for the Conversation, Giulio Corsi, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, looks into the climate-sceptic argument that the term “climate change” largely replaced “global warming” as part of “a sophisticated cover-up” because the world wasn’t warming. Corsi, who researches “climate disinformation strategies”, analysed 30 years of articles from academic literature, the Times, the Guardian and from US climate sceptic group the Heartland Institute. Looking back to 1990, academic literature has “always preferred the more comprehensive term climate change”, says Corsi. Newspapers use the two terms more interchangeably, says Corsi, but climate change “is generally the most common term” – particularly after the Kyoto Protocol entered into force in 2005. In contrast, the Heartland Institute “used the two terms with roughly the same frequency until 2013, when we finally see a decoupling as the use of global warming dropped while the use of climate change remained constant”, notes Corsi. This shows that “global warming” was “widely used by climate change deniers over this 30-year period”, concludes Corsi: “Perhaps this is because the phrase is relatively specific, which allowed them to contrast it with simple arguments like saying that the planet cannot be warming as it’s cold outside.” The article has also been reposted on the fact-checking website Snopes.

After being hit by several devastating heatwaves in recent years, Europe experienced an exceptionally hot June in 2019, a new study says. It continues: “This June is the hottest one on record over Central Europe both in the monthly-mean and in terms of the number of extremely hot days”. The above-normal hot condition was caused by an anomalous long-lasting anticyclone in the upper troposphere, the paper says, which brings warm air from the Sahel and Mediterranean region and enhances incoming solar radiation. The anomalous anticyclone results from an unusually-intensified atmospheric pattern over Europe, the authors note.

Despite the economic importance of the tourism sector and its close relationship to the environment and climate, substantial gaps remain in the investigation of climate change impacts on tourism, a new paper says. The study focuses on the impacts of climate change on the attractiveness of destinations. More specifically, the paper provides an economic measurement of climate-induced environmental changes on the coast of Mallorca (Spain), one of the Mediterranean’s leading sun-and-beach destinations. A choice experiment is used to elicit the willingness to pay of tourists for the introduction of policies aimed at reducing three climate-induced environmental changes. The estimated results show the positive willingness to pay of tourists to reduce climate impacts and provide evidence of different preferences among individuals with different socioeconomic and travel characteristics.