Daily Briefing

Many outlets report that EU leaders have reached a “historic” deal on a stimulus plan for battling coronavirus following an at-times fractious summit that lasted almost five days. Reuters says summit chairman Charles Michel tweeted “deal” shortly after the 27 leaders finally reached agreement at 5.15am local time during a plenary session. The deal will see €750bn of joint debt given to member states to help coronavirus recovery efforts, Bloomberg says. “Almost a third of the funds are earmarked for fighting climate change and, together with the bloc’s next €1tn seven-year budget, will constitute the biggest green stimulus package in history,” Bloomberg says. The deal also dictates that all spending must be inline with the goals of the Paris Agreement, Bloomberg adds. EurActiv reports, however, that the deal also saw the downgrading of a proposed just transition fund. It says: “One of the biggest losers is the just transition fund, which was downgraded from the Commission’s €40bn climate action war-chest to just €10bn, illustrating how low down the pecking order environmental policies ultimately fell during the talks.” The final deal also saw the “watering down” of a demand to link access to the green transition funds to signing up to the EU’s target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, the Guardian reports. Poland, which opposed this demand, is the only EU member not to have signed up to the 2050 net-zero target, the Guardian adds. Politico and the Financial Times also report on the EU’s new deal.

There is continued coverage of the UK’s own plans for a “green recovery” following a speech yesterday by the environment secretary George Eustice. BBC News reports that at an event held for environmental groups Eustice said “protecting nature will be at the heart of the UK’s recovery” and that “leaving the EU allows the UK to develop smarter rules to safeguard green spaces”. According to BBC News, Eustice said: “There is no point leaving the EU to keep everything the same. The old model (including EU farm subsidies) hasn’t stopped the decline in our natural world. We must think creatively, to innovate and to avoid clinging to procedures just because they are familiar. On environmental policy, we can do better.” He then announced a consultation in the autumn on changing the way environmental impacts are assessed as part of the planning process, BBC News says. “Green groups fear it means developers will be able to fast-track damaging projects,” BBC News reports. The Daily Telegraph says Eustice indicated that “companies operating in the UK could have to prove their supply chains are not contributing to deforestation in the Amazon”. Meanwhile, the Independent reports that the environmental groups present at the event called Eustice’s plans “a real failure”. The Independent says Eustice “did little to allay fears held by many groups concerned about the potential for existing environmental protections to be watered down as the government pursues a ‘build, build, build’ policy.” The i newspaper also reports on the reaction from environmental groups. Separately, BusinessGreen reports that a group of MPs have today called for the government to “dramatically scale up” its plans to reach net-zero emissions as part of its green recovery plans. And a second BBC News story reports that housing bodies in Wales are urging the Welsh government to take more action to encourage the retrofitting of homes in order to tackle emissions.

Elsewhere, in other green-recovery news, the Guardian covers a report finding nearly 80,000 Australian jobs could be created through a stimulus plan that aims to rebuild the Australian economy from recession. The report “focuses on 12 areas including creating large-scale renewable energy projects, restoring degraded ecosystems, better dealing with organic waste, retrofitting inefficient public buildings and expanding electric vehicle networks”, the Guardian says.

Many publications report on a new study which finds that polar bears could face steep population declines in coming decades. If little action is taken to tackle climate change (a high-emissions scenario known as “RCP8.5”), almost all existing polar bear subpopulations in the Arctic could disappear by the end of the century, the results say, according to the i newspaper. The Guardian reports that, under this scenario, “polar bears will likely probably only remain in the Queen Elizabeth Islands – the northernmost cluster in Canada’s Arctic archipelago – at the end of the century”. If moderate action is taken to tackle emissions (a scenario known as “RCP4.5”), “it is still likely that the majority of polar bear populations in the Arctic will experience reproductive failure by 2080,” the Guardian says. Climate change is driving the rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice (see Carbon Brief’s interactive explainer), which polar bears use to hunt, explains New Scientist: “The bears’ reliance on sea ice to hunt seals means the last 26,000 are being pushed towards physiological thresholds for how long they can fast each year as the Arctic warms.” BBC News adds: “As the ice breaks up, the animals are forced to roam for long distances or on to shore, where they struggle to find food and feed their cubs.” The study was published in Nature Climate Change, BBC News adds. It is also covered by the New York Times, Press Association, MailOnline, the Daily Mirror and the BBC’s children’s news service Newsround. Meanwhile, Yale Climate Connections reports on how warm weather this year has seen Arctic sea ice reach its lowest mid-July level on record. The Washington Post also reports on how Arctic sea ice “is on a downward spiral” this year.

The Guardian reports that the UK government could face a legal battle after offering more than $1bn in financial support to help build a gas project in Mozambique despite its climate commitments. “Under the deal, UK taxpayer funds will be used to help develop and export Mozambique’s gas reserves, in one of the largest single financing packages ever offered by a UK credit agency to a foreign fossil fuel project,” the Guardian says. The government’s foreign credit agency, UK Export Finance (UKEF), will offer loans worth $300m to UK companies working on the gas project and will also guarantee loans from commercial banks worth up to $850m, the Guardian adds. In response, campaigners at Friends of the Earth have accused the government of failing to take into account the project’s impact on efforts to tackle climate change and warned that they may call for a judicial review of the decision, the Guardian says. Climate Home News adds the UK is one of seven countries to back the gas project, which represents Africa’s largest ever investment project.

Ban Ki-moon, the South Korean politician who served as UN secretary general from 2007-16, writes in the Guardian that US president Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change is “politically shortsighted, scientifically wrong and morally irresponsible”. He continues: “By leaving the Paris Agreement, he is undermining his country’s future. Every single day, we see the effects of climate change across the US. From catastrophic forest fires in California to rising sea levels in Miami and devastating flooding in Texas, these changes are a real and present danger. Our climate is visibly changing and the consequences will be disastrous for everyone.” He adds: “His actions lessen America, a country that has always taken pride in doing the right thing, at the right time, and seized opportunities for technological and economic transformation. But it is not yet too late to find a way back and this is one error that can be undone. We can only hope that America recognises this before it is too late.” (The link for this article was not working at the time of writing, but can be accessed via Google cache.)

An editorial in the Financial Times calls for China to follow Japan in ending its support for coal plants in developing countries. The editorial cites a report finding that China is currently accountable for a quarter of the coal plants being developed worldwide outside its own borders. It says: “There are many reasons why this must stop, starting with global temperatures. A raft of new coal plants undermines the main goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which aims to keep global warming well below 2C…China is now the world’s largest emitter by far and if its model is followed by countries signed up to the Belt and Road Initiative, it is hard to see how the Paris agreement targets could be met.”

For the Guardian, Julian Brave NoiseCat, director of green new deal strategy for the progressive think tank Data for Progress, argues that the democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has endorsed the green new deal “in all but name”. The article says: “Over recent months, public opinion research from Data for Progress has shown that climate change is a uniquely favourable general election issue for Biden and Democrats. When it comes to climate and clean energy priorities, voters trust the Democratic party more than the Republican party by an 18% margin. Climate change is a strong mobilisation issue for the young voters Biden has struggled to attract to his campaign.” Meanwhile, in her Axios column, climate reporter Amy Harder explores how Biden is aiming to bring unions into his plans for renewable energy.

Arctic sea ice decline is likely to see polar bears spend more time on land, increasing how long they are required to fast and putting their survival and ability to reproduce at risk, a new study warns. Seasonal sea-ice melt forces bears ashore each summer, “where they rely on body energy reserves for survival and lactation due to the absence of energetically adequate food”, the authors explain. Declining sea ice over recent decades shows that “[cub] recruitment and survival impact thresholds may already have been exceeded in some subpopulations”, the study finds. Future projections suggest that even “moderate emissions mitigation…is unlikely to prevent some subpopulation extirpations within this century”.

Using international trade to help reduce global hunger is a key component of climate change adaptation, a new study says, but “it needs sensitive implementation to benefit all regions”. Without adaptation through trade, the impacts of climate change could lead to an additional 73 million people being undernourished in 2050, the study says. But “reduction in tariffs as well as institutional and infrastructural barriers would decrease the negative impact to 20 million people”. The adaptation effect is strongest for hunger-affected import-dependent regions, the study finds. However, “in hunger-affected export-oriented regions, partial trade integration can lead to increased exports at the expense of domestic food availability”.

Researchers have produced a new publicly available dataset of human thermal comfort indices. ERA5‐HEAT (Human thErmAl comforT) is the first historical dataset of mean radiant temperature (MRT) and the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) as spatially gridded records at the global scale. ERA5‐HEAT consists of hourly gridded maps of MRT and UTCI at 0.25 × 0.25 degrees spatial resolution and currently spans from 1979 to present. The dataset is aimed at a “wide range of end users, from scientists to policymakers, with an interest in environment–health applications at any spatial and temporal scale”, the authors say.