There is widespread coverage of ongoing extreme heat in western Europe. The Guardian reports that France’s national heat index – an average of the day and night-time highs – reached a record-high 29.8C yesterday. Since 18 June, 40 people have drowned while swimming amid daytime temperatures of above 40C that have “left parts of western France suffering”, the newspaper reports. A liveblog from the Libération contained accounts of the heat from across France, including on worker strikes. French farmers are “seeing livestock die and are racing against time to harvest cereals without sparking fires in the tinder-dry crops”, reports Agence France-Presse. Le Monde says the heatwave “spells uncertainty” for some nuclear reactors, but that the wider power grid is “secure”. Climatologists tell Le Monde that they are weary, angry and disappointed that their repeated messages about the harms of human-caused climate change “have not been taken more seriously” by politicians. Another Le Monde article looks at the impacts for older people. The Louvre and the Eiffel Tower are shutting earlier than usual in the heat, reports Bloomberg. BBC News says that “France, Spain and Italy have been hardest hit by the heatwave so far”. 

In the UK, “searing heat” has left schools, hospitals, transport networks and water companies “struggling to cope”, the Guardian reports on its frontpage. The newspaper says temperatures reached highs of 34.6C in Surrey and could rise to 38C today and 39C tomorrow. Northern Ireland and Scotland reported their hottest days of the year so far, reports BBC News. The Independent lists the hundreds of schools in England and Wales closing or finishing early due to the heat. Parents are “buying air conditioning units for schools”, reports the Financial Times. Businesses and the government pushed back against calls to introduce a “maximum working temperature”, says the Financial Times. The climate-sceptic Daily Mail describes workers and schoolchildren staying home in the heat as the “great British bunk off”. BBC News discusses different ways of “coping” with the heat and the Guardian covers “innovative” ways to cool your home. A number of UK newspapers cover the extreme heat on their frontpages including the Times, i newspaper and Daily Telegraph. 

A climate science professor tells BBC News: “We expect increasing temperatures and the breaking of temperature records due to climate change…What is so extraordinary, however, is the margin by which the record will be broken.” Reuters explains the “omega block” weather pattern sustaining the heat in western Europe. The heat is a “stark reminder that [Europe] is the world’s fastest-warming continent”, says Agence France-Presse. The Associated Press explains the “heat dome”, which is also driving temperatures. The New York Times says scientists are assessing the “upper limits of what the warming climate can dish out” in current heatwaves. Reuters looks at the health risks of extreme heat. 

MORE ON EXTREME WEATHER

• The Guardian says scientists are “alarmed” after two wildfires were reported in Greenland in one week. 
• BBC News looks at what a “super” El Niño would mean for North America. 
• “Extreme heat in London has led to the cancellation of a climate event on the topic of extreme heat”, according to the Independent. 
• The Guardian: “Majority of datacenters are vulnerable to climate threats like floods and fires, study finds.” 
• JPMorgan executives believe that “more frequent heatwaves come with profound implications for energy demand”, reports Bloomberg.

UK homes face “higher energy bills because the country is not moving to heat pumps and electric cars fast enough”, says a new report from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) covered by the Financial Times. The newspaper reports: “A typical household could save around £1,200 a year on their energy bills by using an EV, a heat pump, solar panels and a time-of-use tariff, with this rising to £1,900 for some rural houses.” Bloomberg says the report adds that the decarbonisation focus needs to “shift to electrifying demand to absorb growing volumes of renewable power”. The coverage in BBC News focuses on heat pump figures in the report, noting that installations “grew just 7% last year – down from a bumper 56% in 2024”. The broadcaster adds that the drop came “after the government withdrew a controversial grant scheme to help poorer households install the technology”. The Guardian reports that CCC chair Nigel Topping says weakening net-zero policy would disrupt business and damage the economy. Reuters, BusinessGreen and the Daily Telegraph also cover the report. [Read Carbon Brief’s coverage here.] 

MORE ON UK 

• Andy Burnham has faced “demands to rule out” appointing energy secretary Ed Miliband as chancellor, if Burnham becomes the next prime minister, according to the Daily Mail. In a frontpage story, the i newspaper quotes Miliband “allies” who say he is “prepared to soften his stance on North Sea gas drilling in a move that would smooth his path to becoming chancellor”. 
• Miliband and UK net-zero policies were criticised at a conference described as the “anti-woke Davos”, reports the Guardian. A separate Guardian article notes that dozens of economists have written to the leader of trade union Unite to “reject” her claim that Miliband would “destroy jobs” as chancellor. 
• Campaigners who claimed the UK government “had not properly assessed [the] climate impact” of expansion at Gatwick Airport have lost two high court challenges, reports BBC News. 
• The government is planning rules to ensure certain goods sold in the UK, such as coffee and cocoa, have not been produced on illegally deforested land, says Reuters.  
• The climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph says: “The boss of Britain’s biggest garden centre chain has warned that Ed Miliband’s rush to hit net-zero risks saddling it with millions of pounds in extra costs.” 
• A retired gamekeeper told MPs that “Labour’s rewilding drive risks fuelling deadly fires in the countryside”, reports the Daily Telegraph.

China’s Ministry of Emergency Management said yesterday that China is likely to experience an “above-average number of extreme weather events during this year’s main flood season”, with both droughts and floods occurring, reports business news outlet Jiemian. Shen Zhanli, a spokesperson for the ministry, said five major rivers could face “severe flooding”, adding that the number and intensity of typhoons may also be above average, says the outlet. State-run newspaper Guangming Daily quotes Chen Lijuan, a forecaster at China’s National Climate Centre, saying extreme weather events will become more “frequent, intense and widespread”, with the “primary driver” being climate change. Meanwhile, China’s AI weather agent, MAZU, is being deployed across developing countries to combat severe “climate risks”, according to state-run newspaper China Daily. It adds that the software is a “critical component” of China’s contribution to the UN’s “early warnings for all” initiative, which “aims to protect every person on Earth from hazardous climate events by the end of 2027”.

MORE ON CHINA

• Chinese premier Li Qiang said advanced nuclear power equipment is of “great significance to national energy security” and can better support low-carbon development, reports Xinhua.
• China’s NEA has released a notice supporting the issuance of “green certificates” for renewable energy generation projects connected to “non-public power grids”, reports BJX News.
• As “summer Davos” starts in Dalian, the World Economic Forum’s Roberto Bocca writes an opinion article in Yicai that China “offers an example” of how the energy transition is also about “security and economic resilience”.
• Financial Times: “Renewable energy group to raise $3.6bn in China’s biggest IPO for four years.”
• Climate Home News reports that China’s new coal-to-chemical projects are “threatening China’s climate goals” and “reputation as a global clean energy leader”.
• The South China Morning Post says that China’s exports of “green” products, including batteries and solar cells, to the US have accelerated in May. A Global Times editorial says that BRICS members can forge a pathway that balances the economy with carbon reduction.

Former US government workers have “recreated a valuable climate-science website” shut down under the Trump administration last year, reports the New York Times. The newspaper says: “The new site, climate.us, is an effort by former staff members at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to present climate science previously housed at climate.gov, including data, reports, articles and congressionally mandated national climate assessments.” The information, which includes “data and reports on climate-change-related disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and drought”, is now available to the public for free. 

MORE ON US 

• The Associated Press: “Trump administration announces $17.5bn in loans for 10 new large nuclear reactors.” 
• The Atlantic explores how “America’s interest in talking about climate change is at an ebb”.

The ongoing extreme heat in western Europe “should focus minds on the UK’s lack of preparedness for the climate dangers ahead”, says an editorial in the Guardian. The article focuses on a recent climate adaptation report from the UK’s Climate Change Committee, which found that adaptation plans in all parts of the UK “lag behind where they need to be”. The report received a “muted initial response from ministers”, the newspaper says, but adds that the “hope must be that this week’s heat will focus minds – including Andy Burnham’s”. It adds that the UK’s next national adaptation plan is due in two years and Burnham, along with any other potential candidates looking to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister, “must decide whether to accept the committee’s proposal for around £11bn in annual spending…and if not, why not”. 

MORE UK HEAT COMMENT 

• Science commentator Anjana Ahuja says in the Financial Times that the current extreme heat shows that “political inaction in the battle against climate change is costly and getting costlier”. 
• Analysis by journalists Richard Adams and Fiona Harvey in the Guardian says: “Failure to plan for rising temperatures has left UK’s schools sweltering.” 
• In the Conversation, professors Ed Hawkins and Hayley Fowler write about their work recreating a major 1976 heatwave in “today’s climate”, finding that a comparable event would be several degrees higher in the current warmer world. 
• Writer Ysenda Maxtone Graham says in the climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph that “heatwave hysterics wouldn’t have lasted a day in 1976”.
• An editorial in the Daily Express tells readers to “stay safe” and check on vulnerable neighbours in the extreme heat. 
• The climate-sceptic Daily Express and Sun carry comment articles criticising concern about heat extremes.

James Murray, editor-in-chief of BusinessGreen, argues that Keir Starmer’s resignation speech “continued one of the flaws that defined his premiership – a refusal to promote the bold climate policies his government has enacted”. Murray says that Keir Starmer “did not see fit to mention climate change once” in his speech on Monday. He continues: “He made no claim to the agenda that has arguably been one of the few unalloyed successes of his government and which poll after poll shows plays well with Labour’s base and the voters it is losing to the Greens and Lib Dems. In so doing, he actively encouraged the idea that these achievements belong to Ed Miliband and not the prime minister who backed them.” 

MORE COMMENT 

• Terry Garcia, former deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, writes in the Guardian: “A super El Niño threatens disaster. Trump is handling it recklessly.” 
• The world must “electrify” to “avoid climate peril”, the president-designate of COP31, Turkey’s environment minister Murat Kurum, writes in Project Syndicate. 
• In the Financial Times, writer Alan Beattie says that the EU’s carbon pricing model is “being supplanted by Beijing’s green tech spending and Donald Trump’s oil price shock”. 
• In ProPublica, journalist Alex Cuadros details his experience calling Donald Trump to discuss the oil industry. 
• A Sun editorial describes the prospect of UK energy secretary Ed Miliband becoming the next chancellor as “terrifying”. 
• Deputy head of visual journalism at the Daily Telegraph, David Stevenson, writes: “How cli­mate change and the extreme hot weather could reshape the global eco­nomy.”

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Orla Dwyer, with contributions from Henry Zhang and Anika Patel. It was edited by Robert McSweeney.

Subscribe for free.