Glencore, one of the world’s largest mining and commodities trading companies, has vowed to cap its coal production in what the FT calls the “face of pressure from big investors who are pushing natural resource companies to take firmer action on climate change”. The FT adds: “The mining and trading group led by Ivan Glasenberg on Wednesday said it would cap its production of thermal and coking coal at about 150m tonnes per annum, close to its planned output level in 2019, with further expansion of its coal business largely ruled out. The move is likely to send shockwaves across the coal industry because of the company’s bullish stance on the highly polluting fossil fuel. Glencore is the world’s top coal exporter and one of the biggest producers outside of China. Mr Glasenberg is himself a former trader and vocal champion of coal, which is used to generate electricity and also produce steel.” The Sydney Morning Herald says: “Glencore will instead focus on metals such as cobalt, nickel, vanadium and zinc, which are all key components of batteries as it targeted lower carbon industries as its customers…Glencore said it would examine its membership of trade associations to ensure those groups aligned with the Paris climate agreement and Paris goals.” Reacting to the news in the Australian Financial Review, columnist Matthew Stevens says: “It says everything about the intellectual savvy and raw power of the global anti-coal lobby that it has corralled [Glencore CEO] Ivan Glasenberg into a profound public concession on coal mining.” Glasenberg’s fierce reputation (and former pro-coal stance) is such that “his ear-battered competitors say the softest thing about Glasenberg is the enamel of his teeth”.

There is widespread coverage of the news – first reported by the Sydney Morning Herald – that the Australian government has officially classified a tiny island rodent known as the Bramble Cay melomys as “extinct” rather than “endangered”. It is claimed – a claim first made several years ago – to be the the first known demise of a mammal because of human-induced climate change. The Herald says: “The federal extinction listing comes almost three years after the Queensland government reached a similar conclusion, with a finding that the demise of the melomys ‘probably represents the first recorded mammalian extinction due to anthropogenic climate change’. The limited range of the animal, living on a five-hectare island less than three metres high, left it vulnerable to climate change.” The Sun and BBC News are among the other outlets carrying the news.

BBC News is among a number of outlets reporting the (heavily caveated – see New Climate Science section below) conclusions of a new study which finds that “growing meat in the laboratory may do more damage to the climate in the long run than meat from cattle”. BBC News adds: “Researchers are looking for alternatives to traditional meat because farming animals is helping to drive up global temperatures. However, meat grown in the lab may make matters worse in some circumstances. Researchers say it depends on how the energy to make the lab meat is produced…Researchers from the Oxford Martin School looked at the long-term climate implications of cultured meat versus meat from cattle. The scientists say that previous studies had tended to look at the various emissions from cattle and converted them all to their CO2 equivalent. The team says this doesn’t give you the full picture as methane and nitrous oxide have different impacts on the climate.” Reuters and the Independent also carry the story.

Separately, BBC News has a feature by Radio 5 presenter Sam Walker on the “best climate friendly foods”. “For BBC Radio 5 Live’s Cool Planet season, I wanted to find out how making small changes to our grocery choices can have a big impact on the planet, so I went shopping with Prof Mike Berners-Lee from Lancaster University who specialises in climate change and sustainable food systems.” Berners-Lee’s “golden rules” include “for the biggest impact, eat less meat and dairy”. Meanwhile, the Guardian covers a new study by the European thinktank IDDRI which concludes that “Europe would still be able to feed its growing population even if it switched entirely to environmentally friendly approaches such as organic farming”. The Guardian says the study “claims [pesticides] can be phased out and greenhouse gas emissions radically reduced in Europe through agroecological farming, while still producing enough nutritious food for an increasing population”.

Reuters reports that the European Union has agreed to reduce CO2 emissions from new trucks and buses by 30% by a 2030 deadline as part of its commitment to cut its output of greenhouse gases. It adds: “The European Parliament and the Council, which represents the 28 EU member countries, struck a compromise in the early hours that will reduce average CO2 emissions compared with 2019 levels, the European Commision said in a statement. There is also an interim 15% reduction target for 2025 and incentives for manufacturers to make low and zero-emission trucks. The 2030 target is also subject to a review in 2022.” Separately, Reuters reports that environmentalists have urged EU policymakers to take a tougher stance on air pollution from coal power plants in the Western Balkans, blaming the fumes for 3,900 deaths across Europe each year.

DeSmog UK has published new analysis showing how 35 thinktanks based in the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand which promote both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries’ interests have taken donations from the same interests. The analysis was conducted by MIT Associate Professor David Hsu who analysed the organisations in DeSmog’s disinformation database and the Guardian’s tobacco database. DeSmog UK writes: “While reviewing the Guardian’s database, Hsu recognized many of the names among those fighting tobacco regulations were the same as ‘those working to foment climate science denial’. Hsu tells the publication: “This is a well-funded movement…The strategies used in the tobacco debate are definitely strategies being used in the climate debate.”

The Independent reports from the Planetary Security Initiative, a conference launched in 2015 and sponsored by the Dutch government and several international organisations to address climate change and associated crises. The newspaper says that scholars and international officials have warned attendees this week that “the most volatile region in the world is about to be plunged into further chaos because ongoing climate change, with food scarcity and water shortages adding to the flood of displaced people, sparking wars, and providing opportunities for extremist groups”. The Independent says that Jamal Saghir, a professor at McGill University, told attendees: “Terrorist organisations like ISIS also capitalise on climate change to get new members. They find impoverished farmers to take advantage of – they are offered food, salaries, and other advantages.”

With an increasing number of Democrats declaring that they want to run for US president next year, the Guardian interviews Washington state’s Democratic governor Jay Inslee who says he wants to “put the pedal to the metal” on climate change. Inslee tells the newspaper: “We need a fundamental shift in our national priorities. There’s too much to risk to belittle climate change. You cannot overstate the scope of what needs to be done. We literally have to decarbonise our economy in the next few decades. That’s a huge transition. It’s the largest economic change in history.“ Separately, the Guardian reports that the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has also thrown his hat in the ring: “The progressive policies Sanders helped popularise in 2016 – Medicare for All, a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage, tuition-free college, demands to fight climate change more aggressively and to tax the wealthy at a higher rate – have now been broadly embraced by several other presidential candidates.” The Washington Post says that Sanders will “in the next few month” introduce his own green new deal proposal.

The veteran FT columnist writes: “Might the US move from being a laggard to a leader in tackling global climate change? Two recent announcements — the ‘economists’ statement on carbon dividends’ and the Green New Deal — suggest that it might. Intellectually, these proposals are from different planets. But they could be a basis for something reasonable. More important, influential people at least agree that for the US to stand pat is unconscionable.” He concludes: “Turning such a consensus into a workable, globally replicable and politically acceptable plan is going to be very hard. But despair is not an option. We can see some movement. Let us push hard for more.”

George Monbiot joins the chorus of columnists over recent days opining about last week’s climate strike by school pupils across the UK and beyond: “This one has to succeed. It is not just that the youth climate strike, now building worldwide with tremendous speed, is our best (and possibly our last) hope of avoiding catastrophe. It is also that the impacts on the young people themselves, if their mobilisation and hopes collapse so early in their lives, could be devastating. To help this movement win, we should ask why others lost…There are plenty of veterans, many of whom have far more experience than I do, who are ready to offer advice and help. Any support must come on the young strikers’ terms: they lead, we follow. But they carry a terrible burden: this is a struggle they cannot afford to lose. We will help them lift it if they wish.”

In a comment piece for Nature, Mike Muller, a visiting adjunct professor at the University of Witwatersrand School of Governance in Johannesburg, defends hydropower: “Hydropower projects, already controversial for their social and environmental impacts, are now routinely opposed because they are said to add to greenhouse-gas emissions and aggravate global warming. Yet dams that are well planned, constructed and managed can deliver decades of clean, cheap energy and help to mitigate climate change…The IPCC must engage more strategically with these debates. Its next assessment report, due in 2022, should review the state of knowledge about the freshwater carbon cycle and consider to what extent hydropower and other water-management activities could reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.”

A study uses modelling to compare the greenhouse gas emissions from lab-grown meat to beef cattle ranching for the next 1,000 years. To do this, the researchers use current carbon footprints of lab-grown meat and cattle ranching and look at varying levels of future meat consumption. The research finds that “under continuous high global consumption, cultured meat results in less warming than cattle initially, but this gap narrows in the long term [after 400 years] and in some cases cattle production causes far less warming”, the authors say. This is largely because cattle ranching mainly causes the release of methane (via cow belching), which is a “short-lived pollutant”, while lab-grown meat mainly causes the release of CO2 (mostly through the energy required to power the labs), which lasts longer in the atmosphere. However, this finding rests on the assumption that society does not transition to low and zero-emissions forms of energy production in the coming decades, the authors note. In addition, the researchers do not consider how cattle ranching causes deforestation, a major driver of CO2 emissions.