The European Parliament has approved “sweeping reforms” to make EU climate change policies more ambitious as part of its “Fit for 55” package, Reuters reports. This comes after two years of negotiations between the parliament, the Council of the EU and the European Commission, which first proposed the reforms. (See Carbon Brief’s coverage of the initial proposals.) Reuters notes that the laws, which are designed to help the bloc cut greenhouse-gas emissions 55% by 2030 against a 1990 baseline, still need final approval from EU member states, which will assess them in the next few weeks. It notes that components of the overhaul include “an upgrade of the bloc’s carbon market that is set to hike the cost of polluting in Europe” and a “world-first plan to phase in a levy on imports of high-carbon goods from 2026”. The Financial Times reports that 167 MEPs, “mainly from green, left-wing and far right groups”, voted against plans to expand the bloc’s emissions trading scheme (ETS), or carbon market, to cover housing and transport fuels, as well as power facilities and heavy industry. They argued that the plans could spark public opposition to rising energy costs, with some French members citing the gilets jaunes movement that arose in response to a carbon tax on fuel. Politico acknowledges that this is a “hugely contentious issue”, but says “to avoid such a scenario, legislators also backed a €86.7bn Social Climate Fund to help governments soften the blow of higher prices for vulnerable consumers”. It says the revision of the ETS includes fully integrating aviation and shipping, and also compelling power generators and heavy polluters to cut their emissions by 62% by 2030. According to Reuters, airlines could be in line for €2bn in EU funding to help them switch to sustainable fuels as part of the reforms, as the market would “use proceeds from 20m CO2 permits to compensate airlines that use sustainable fuels”.

Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph reports that Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas supplier, has stated on Twitter that Europe made it through winter despite cuts in Russian gas supplies owing to mild temperatures, but warned there “is no guarantee that nature will make such a gift” again. However, at the same time, the Financial Times reports that the EU is “storing record levels of natural gas after a milder than anticipated winter, bolstering hopes that the bloc can wean itself off imports from Russia”.

Finally, Reuters reports on comments from a senior government official that Germany sees “a chance” that a deal to accelerate phasing out fossil fuels could be done at this year’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

The Australian government has released a strategy outlining how it plans to scale up electric vehicle sales across the nation, according to ABC News. One core component is a new fuel-efficiency standard, which will be developed after consultation and will require car makers to meet certain emissions limits for their entire fleet or else face penalties, the news outlet explains. It notes that the strategy also aims to provide Australians with a greater choice of electric vehicles to buy, increase the ease of electric vehicle charging, make them more affordable and increase local manufacturing and recycling of electric vehicles and their components. According to Reuters, prior to this “apart from Russia, Australia was the only developed country to either not have or be developing fuel efficiency standards”. As a result, it notes that new cars in Australia use 40% more fuel than the EU and 20% more than the US. On top of not providing clarity on what the fuel-efficiency standard would look like, the Guardian notes that the new strategy also avoids setting new targets for electric vehicle uptake. It adds that as it stands just 3.8% of new car sales in Australia are electric compared with 9% globally.

Meanwhile, in the US, the Hill reports that senator Joe Manchin has “blasted” recently proposed, scaled-up vehicle emissions standards from the Environmental Protection Agency, marking “the latest salvo from the Democrat against the Biden administration’s environmental policies”. Manchin claims the proposals would make the US more reliant on Chinese manufacturing.

Finally, Reuters reports that Nissan’s chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta has said that the Japanese company aims to have seven electric vehicle models by 2026 and 80% of its line-up to be electric by 2030.

Up to 48 million people across western and central Africa will go hungry in the coming months as efforts to contain inflation contribute to food shortages, according to a warning from the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), reported by Bloomberg. It says the “increase in the number of people in the region facing food insecurity to the highest level in a decade is being driven by coastal nations including Togo and Benin, which have requested food assistance for the first time”. Crucially, Reuters reports that this 10-year high is also being spurred by other factors including “climate shocks”. Chris Nikoi, regional director of West and Central Africa for the WFP, tells Axios: “If you go deeper, climate is a large contributor to why these things have now reached the level they have reached.”

Dr Sultan Al Jaber, president-designate of this year’s COP28 summit, has said China presents a “strong model” for how a country can “continue to grow while simultaneously tackling the green energy transition”, reports the National. He said the country has “significant” potential to promote “sustainable low carbon economic growth” and that the UAE-China partnership “will be a key asset to the COP28 presidency as we seek innovative solutions to boost industrial decarbonisation, expand access to clean technologies, and ensure a just energy transition”. In his recent two-day trip to China, Dr Al Jabel met with top officials, including Huang Runqiu, minister of ecology and environment and Xie Zhenhua, China’s special envoy for climate change, the outlet adds.

Meanwhile, the foreign ministers from the G7 countries highlighted yesterday the importance of collaborating with China to tackle global challenges, as they concluded their meetings in Japan, reports the Voice of America. While the ministers acknowledge the significance of cooperating with China to deal with issues such as climate change and global health security, they expressed “concerns” over “China’s actions in the East and South China Seas and its stance toward Taiwan” in a joint communique. Similarly, on climate change, many EU leaders view a dialogue with China as being “pivotal” toward any “substantial progress” in reducing CO2 emissions, writes the CNBC.

In other news, Bloomberg says that China’s energy and commodities output “roared” ahead in March as producers in the country raced to serve a resurgence in economic activity. These encompass new highs for coal mining, natural gas production, and oil refining in a single month, “broadly tally” with a “robust” set of import figures last week, the outlet adds. The Financial Times carries an article which says Toyota and other Japanese carmakers “are suffering the sharpest sales decline in China among foreign brands” due to “sluggish EV rollout”. Finally, Nikkei Asia has published a comment piece by Alistair Ritchie and Yi Chen from the Asia Society Policy Institute. They write that to make the most of China’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), certain design issues must be addressed quickly, including expanding the ETS beyond the power sector and addressing current allocation benchmarks. 

Around 30,000 people are expected to gather in central London from Friday for an Extinction Rebellion (XR) event dubbed the “big one”, which the Times says will mark “the biggest climate change protest in years”. The newspaper says it raises the prospect of disruption for the London marathon, which also takes place over the weekend. It notes that while XR organisers have said they do not intend the event to be disruptive, as in their previous large-scale protests, a separate group Just Stop Oil “refused to rule out disrupting the marathon and said it expected many of its supporters to be there”. The Financial Times says that the event is expected to be “the UK’s largest ever climate protest”. It says a coalition of 40 environmental groups, including XR and Greenpeace, have called for ministers to stop approving new oil, coal and gas projects and set up emergency citizens’ assemblies to “let the people decide how to end the fossil fuel era quickly and fairly”. According to the newspaper, the demands come four months after XR said it was “quitting its focus on civil disruption and switching to building alliances with other organisations in a bid to unite as many people as possible”.

The UK’s right-leaning press is predictably furious about the new wave of protests, with a frontpage Daily Mail story asking: “When will someone get a grip on the eco fanatics?” In its coverage, the newspaper quotes various Conservative MPs including the party’s deputy chairman Lee Anderson and former leader Iain Duncan Smith saying police and judges “must end the country’s growing wave of chaotic eco protests”.

An article in Novara Media asks: “Is Extinction Rebellion still ‘beyond politics’?” It speaks to various current and former members of the group, in a bid to understand the changing tactics, politics and structure of the organisation, which has stated in the past that it is not wedded to any particular ideology. 

According to the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) forecast, heatwave conditions over east India are likely to continue for the next four days, the Hindu reports. On 17 April, most parts of Central and East India recorded maximum temperatures in the range of 40-44C, while maximum temperatures were “above normal” by 3-5C in North India.

The heatwave has already extracted a deadly toll, report the nation’s media. Among the 13 people who died of heatstroke at a government-sponsored award ceremony on Sunday, the youngest was aged 30 and the oldest 65 years, Scroll.in reports. Police officials tell the outlet that “no authority was at fault if people died due to heatstroke”, while experts said “to hold an open-air event between noon and 3pm was a fatal mistake” and a “man-made disaster”. While “politicians, media and VIPs were seated in a covered hangar, the crowd sat in the sun”, the story points out. According to Dr Babasi Kalel, the forensic expert who performed autopsies, “their kidney, liver, lungs and brains had shrunk…[t]his seems to be the effect of sun exposure for at least six to seven hours”.

Meanwhile, the Lancet estimates that India saw a “55% rise in deaths due to extreme heat between 2000-2004 and 2017-2021”, BBC News reports, with heat exposure resulting in loss of incomes equivalent to about “5.4% of the country’s GDP”. But the country still underfunds heat action plans and lacks a “granular understanding of which neighbourhoods have most people working in jobs where they are exposed to heat and whether they could afford to buy a cooler or afford to skip work,” researcher Aditya Valiathan Pillai tells BBC News. The IMD has predicted “above-average temperatures and heatwaves until the end of May”. As India braces for an even hotter summer, there is also “concern about power failures as people turn up their air-conditioners and push the grid to the limit”, Bloomberg reports.

“Big six” energy supplier Ovo Energy has warned that the UK will miss its net-zero goals without bolder action from the government and energy industry to cut emissions from homes, CityAM reports. It says Raman Bhatia, chief executive of Ovo, “has argued suppliers need to encourage customers to improve the energy efficiency of their home, reduce energy usage, and embrace the shift from gas to electricity”. BusinessGreen reports that Ovo Energy has announced that it is ditching “greenwashing” renewable energy certificates commonly used by many of the UK’s energy suppliers. This refers to a pledge to stop using Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin (REGO) certificates, which the news outlet notes “allow energy suppliers to claim they offer customers 100% renewable electricity, yet do not require any direct investment in new clean power capacity”.

The Herald reports that fossil fuel extraction has resumed at the Pierce field in the North Sea “following a major upgrade that has brought gas production on stream alongside the oil that has been extracted from the site since 1999”. It says peak production at the Shell site is expected to be more than double the volume prior to redevelopment, reaching 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, mainly consisting of gas. The Times says “the company has sought to highlight its North Sea investment as it seeks to counteract criticism over its tax payments”. It also notes that Shell has been critical of the UK’s windfall tax on oil major profits, and that chief executive Wael Sawan had threatened to “think twice about investing in more oil in the UK”.

Many of the op-ed pages in today’s right-leaning UK newspapers are taken up with articles attacking climate activist groups, such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, as a fresh wave of protests gets underway. “The privileged eco-activists engaging in these puerile stunts, from targeting the Grand National to throwing soup at priceless art in galleries, are more interested in virtue-signalling than saving the planet”, according to a Daily Mail editorial. It says that police and judges are not being harsh enough, complaining that most protesters only receive “a slap on the wrist”. It adds: “Most people know it makes sense to wean Britain off fossil fuels and on to renewable energy. But they are also pragmatic and understand this will not happen overnight – however loudly the eco-warriors shriek.” The Sun, too, calls for more draconian measures, with an editorial titled: “We need unsympathetic judges and meaningful jail terms to crackdown on eco-yobs’ attention-seeking stunts.” It dismisses Just Stop Oil protesters such as the ones who interrupted the World Snooker Championships as “hot-headed young toffs with fashionable causes”.

Also in the Daily Mail, Mick Hume, founding editor of libertarian blog Spiked and founder of the now-shutdown Living Marxism magazine, also dismisses the protesters and calls for tougher punishments. “I suspect that the longer these protests go on without attracting proper punishment, the more we will see ordinary people stepping in where the police and the courts so often refuse to. It could get nasty,” he writes. Writing in the Daily Express, Esther Krakue asks “why do activists get to break the law with impunity and suffer no real consequences?” Meanwhile, Daily Express columnist Tim Newark says the protesters are “middle class” and, therefore, trying to assuage their guilt about their relative comfort in life with “virtue signalling”. Newark writes: “It is time now for experts to dial down the alarmist rhetoric and tell us the truth about climate change: that it is happening, but we can adapt to mitigate any of the worst aspects of it without punishing ourselves by ruining our economies.” [The idea that the world can rely merely on “adapting” in response to climate change, meaning it is nothing to worry about, is a classic trope of climate scepticism, and is not borne out by the evidence.] Another climate-sceptic columnist, Allison Pearson, also has some opinions to share on climate protesters in the Daily Telegraph. Unsurprisingly, they are almost identical to those of her contemporaries at other right-wing newspapers. “I’m angry that spoilt, callow kids…are assuming the moral high ground while our country is morally blackmailed into a self-inflicted disaster that will bring down the standard of living for millions who didn’t know they’d voted to be poorer or colder,” Pearson writes. [Again, this parrots the climate-sceptic viewpoint that climate action will “impoverish” the UK, which is contradicted by evidence gathered by, most recently, the likes of Conservative net-zero tsar Chris Skidmore who describe it as a huge economic opportunity that stands to save people money over the longer term.] Finally, parliamentary sketch writer Madeline Grant has a piece in the Daily Telegraph under the headline: “Just Stop Oil are just spoilt, narcissistic show-offs.”

Despite this slew of climate-sceptic content in UK newspapers, climate media researcher Dr James Painter has an article in the Conversation explaining his new research showing the decline of climate scepticism on global news channels, including the UK. His team assessed coverage of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report from 2021 and find that, among mainstream news channels, scepticism about climate science has largely vanished. However, such scepticism still lingers on right-wing news channels, such as Fox News in the US and GB News in the UK. Carbon Brief’s Josh Gabbatiss has written a Twitter thread on the research.

Veteran climate campaigner Bill McKibben has a piece in Mother Jones arguing in favour of building more infrastructure. “I’m an environmentalist, which means I’ve got some practice in saying no,” he writes, citing efforts to block pipelines and dams. “But we’re at a hinge moment now, when solving our biggest problems – environmental but also social – means we need to say yes to some things: solar panels and wind turbines and factories to make batteries and mines to extract lithium. And new affordable housing that will make cities denser and more efficient while cutting the ruinous price of housing. And – well, it’s a long list.” He lays out some “frameworks” for making decisions about projects and concludes: “Saying no is relatively simple, and sometimes right. But we live in a moment when our future – and the future of everyone and everything – depends on sometimes learning to offer a resounding yes.”

Separately, Nigerian climate scientist Chukwumerije Okereke has a piece in the New York Times titled: “My continent is not your giant climate laboratory.” In it, he argues strongly against turning Africa into a “testing ground” for solar geoengineering.

Kelp forests sequester 4.91 megatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year, according to new research. The authors estimate the ecological and economic potential of six major types of “forest forming” kelp. They find that, globally, kelp provides ecosystem services worth $465bn-562bn per year through fisheries production, nutrient cycling and carbon removal. “These values are primarily driven by fisheries production and nitrogen removal,” the authors say. These findings “highlight the ecological and economic value of kelp forests to society and will facilitate better informed marine management and conservation decisions”, they conclude.