Several US publications report that the US interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, has blamed environmentalists for the wildfires burning across California and claimed that climate change had “nothing to do” with them. Instead, he claimed that limits on logging had worsened the blazes. “America is better than letting these radical groups control the dialogue about climate change,” Zinke told KCRA, a TV station in northern California, on Sunday. “Extreme environmentalists have shut down public access. They talk about habitat and yet they are willing to burn it up.” His interview comes after he published an opinion article in USA Today, where he claimed that environmentalists were “partly responsible” for the fires because of the actions of some to reduce forest logging. The Hill reports that environmentalists have refuted the claims, saying that “cutting down the mature timber favoured by logging groups will actually speed up the spread of fires”. A second story by the Hill covers a tweet by Bernie Sanders in response to Zinke’s comments. Sanders tweeted: “No, Secretary Zinke. The record-breaking wildfires in California have everything to do with climate change. We must confront the reality that climate change is already destroying tens of thousands of lives, and take concrete steps to avoid its worst consequences. Slate Magazine and Time also cover the story. Last week, Carbon Brief published a detailed factcheck showing that “in the western US, climate change has made – and will continue to make – fires larger and more destructive”.

The Financial Times reports that Australia’s government has ordered an audit of a A$443m grant that was awarded to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, a “charitable foundation which has developed experimental technologies aimed at saving the Great Barrier Reef”. The FT reports that the foundation had just six full-time employees when it was awarded the government grant in April and has a board that includes former oil executives including John Michael Schubert, a former Esso Australia chairman and managing director. Buzzfeed Newsreports that the foundation spent tens of thousands of dollars hosting Australian business leaders at a “luxury island resort” after being awarded the government funding.

The BBC’s new editorial director has signalled an end to the “polarising” debates on its news broadcasts, the Times reports. The Times reports that Kamal Ahmed also questioned whether a debate between two opposing sides about one issue was “the most illuminating way of explaining”. The article reads: “The BBC has been criticised for giving unwarranted weight to marginal views to adhere to its guidelines on impartiality and give the other side of an argument. Its coverage of climate change has been particularly criticised.”

The Daily Telegraph reports that two Japanese energy firms are to help fund a giant offshore wind farm off the coast of Lincolnshire after pledging £1bn in exchange for a major stake in the project. Innogy, the German renewables company behind the wind farm project, announced that it will sell 41% of the project to the two firms – Japan’s Electric Power Development, known as J-Power, and Kansai Electric Power. The Times adds that the two companies will share in a “generous subsidy contract”, pledged by the government last year, which guarantees the wind farm a fixed price for the electricity it generates for 15 years.

Elon Musk has offered more details on his plan to take Tesla private and said that he has discussed financing the deal with Saudi Arabia. In a blog post, Musk said that a Saudi sovereign wealth fund had approached him “several times”. He said: “They first met with me at the beginning of 2017 to express this interest because of the important need to diversify away from oil.” MailOnline also has the story.

Scientist and Guardian writer Dana Nuccitelli analyses a tweet from President Donald Trump “nonsensically blaming the wildfires on environmental laws”. Nuccitelli’s article draws on analysis by Carbon Brief showing that there is a strong correlation between recent temperature rise and the total area of forests burned in the western US. The New York Times also explores the drivers of California’s unrelenting wildfires.

The Guardian has published four stories from a series called “Sweltering Cities”. The first, “Heat: the next big inequality issue”, explores how, in the world’s densely populated cities, the ongoing heatwaves have brought the “disparities between rich and poor into sharp relief”. Correspondents in Cairo, Jerusalem and Phnom Penh contribute to the long read. The second, “Halfway to boiling: the city at 50”, by global environment editor Jonathan Watts and Guardian Cities commissioning editor Elle Hunt, looks at the impacts of extremely high temperatures on city life. The third, published this morning, uses a series of interactive maps to answer the questions: “Which cities are liveable without air conditioning – and for how much longer?” The fourth, by critic Rowan Moore, explores how air conditioning has transformed the architecture of modern cities

Electricity demand for air conditioning in New York City is likely to increase by around 8% for every degree of global average temperature rise, a new study suggests. The research combines a high-resolution weather model, a building energy model and global climate projections to assess how building cooling demand could change. The results show a increase in peak summer cooling demand for the entire city of between 5-27% by 2100.

Increasing extreme summer weather may see a reduction in the oversight of public servants and the emergency services, a new study suggests. Using US data from millions of regulatory police stops, fatal vehicle crashes and food safety violations and inspections between in the 21st century, the researchers find that “cold and hot temperatures increase fatal crash risk and incidence of food safety violations while also decreasing police stops and food safety inspections”. Projections for the second half of this century suggest that hotter seasons may “diminish regulatory oversight while simultaneously amplifying the hazards government workers are tasked with overseeing,” the study concludes.