The Observer reports that “several of the world’s leading scientists plan to launch an independent expert group this week to advise, warn and criticise global policymakers about the climate and nature crises”. The new body, called the “Climate Crisis Advisory Group”, will be chaired by the former UK chief scientific adviser Sir David King. The newspaper says it is “inspired by Independent Sage – the cluster of British scientists who have held UK ministers and civil servants to account for their lack of transparency and mishandling of the Covid pandemic”. It adds: “[The group], comprising 14 experts from 10 nations and every continent, aims to have more of an international reach and provide the global public with regular analysis about efforts to tackle the global heating and biodiversity crises…[It] will issue monthly updates about the state of the global environment at meetings that will be open to the media and the public. These online gatherings will be chaired by the BBC presenter Ade Adepitan.” The group’s new twitter account yesterday revealed the group’s members, who include the International Energy Agency’s executive director Fatih Birol and Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. The Observer continues: “While Independent Sage has pushed for more transparency in pandemic decision-making, the Climate Crisis Advisory Group will press for more urgency. Currently, there is a large amount of data from the IPCC and in academic journals about the long-term risks of global heating, but little in the way of rapid response to new developments. A draft launch statement warns the Earth may have already passed several dangerous tipping points, including melting ice sheets, the slowdown of Atlantic circulation and the dieback of the Amazon rainforest, which highlight the need for speed. ‘Only by acting quickly and robustly will we be able to stabilise climatic conditions, ensure a just transition and protect vital biodiversity and ecosystem functions for the next generation,’ the statement says.”

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said in a new “staff paper” that agreement by some or all of the G20 countries on a flexible global carbon price floor would help limit global warning to below 2C, reports Reuters. Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, told an event on Friday: “We see an international carbon price floor as a viable option to reach such an agreement and will continue our work on it.” The newswire adds: “Driving up the cost of polluting energy sources would provide powerful incentives for increasing energy efficiencies, said the paper, co-authored by Vitor Gaspar, head of the IMF’s fiscal affairs department, and Ian Parry, a top environmental fiscal policy expert at the fund. The paper, which is still being discussed with the IMF board and the fund’s members, argues that adopting a flexible and differentiated carbon tax floor with prices ranging from $25 to $75 a tonne could reduce emissions by 23% by 2030.” The Guardian also covers the story, adding: “If a carbon price were adopted by the G20, it would also affect the proposals some countries are now bringing forward on carbon border taxes.”

Patricia Espinosa, the head of climate change at the UN, has warned that world leaders are still “‘far away’ from securing a deal to limit the disastrous effects of global heating, with less than five months to go before a key summit in Glasgow”, reports the Observer. Speaking to the newspaper after the recent G7 meeting in Cornwall, Espinosa says: “Regarding finance, I’d have really hoped for a clearer signal on how and when we will be able to see the commitment to mobilise the $100bn fulfilled…This is one condition to be able to have a good basis to have a successful COP26. It is essential. We cannot afford a lack of success. COP26 should be able to give some sense of hope to the world. There isn’t much time. We are already in the second half of June.” EurActiv also says that “climate finance remains a stumbling block on [the] way to COP26”. Inside Climate News says that the latest round of UN climate talks were “slowed by Covid woes and technical squabbles”. See Carbon Brief’s detailed summary of the UNFCCC talks which were held online over the past three weeks.

BBC News says that UK prime minister Boris Johnson has set out plans to cement the UK’s place as a “science superpower”: “He will chair a new National Science and Technology Council to provide ‘strategic direction’ on how research is harnessed for the ‘public good’. And Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser to the government, will lead a new Office for Science and Technology Strategy. He will take up the role of the new national technology adviser, alongside his current role.” Pallab Ghosh, BBC News’s science correspondent, says: “This government plans to put its money where its mouth is as it talks about plans to reinforce the UK’s position as a global science superpower. It aims to increase research spending from nearly £15bn a year to £22bn by 2025. The stated aim is to use the extra money to tackle societal challenges, such as the impact of climate change, level up across the country and boost prosperity around the world…On the one hand it puts science at the heart of government, but on the other there’s concern that there will be more political control on research budgets that could mean money being diverted toward pet projects – rather than spent on what is independently judged by experts to be best for science – as happens currently.”

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Johnson says: “Some imperatives are already obvious. We need science urgently to accelerate the solutions that will help us to tackle climate change. We need progress on efficient power storage, hydrogen manufacture, net-zero aviation and other knotty problems raised in our 10-point plan. We have a huge challenge to meet net-zero by 2050, and not much time. But the vaccine programme has shown that, when the pressure is on, humanity can produce feats of Manhattan Project-like speed as the research of decades is compressed into months.”

In other UK news, the Financial Times reports that Howard Davies, who led a nearly three-year £15m inquiry into airport capacity, which recommended a new runway at Heathrow, has said he is no longer sure whether it was needed due to reduce demand caused by Covid-19 and climate change policies. The FT says: “He said he would have to ‘redo the numbers’ to see whether the economics of a third runway still made sense – but that if it was needed in the south-east, it should still be at Heathrow.” Meanwhile, the Sunday Times has a frontpage story about the tensions between chancellor Rishi Sunak and Johnson over how the prime minister “has grown addicted to making ever more grandiose spending promise”. The newspaper’s Tim Shipman writes: “Ministers and aides are warning that Johnson and Sunak…have to navigate this autumn what has been called in Whitehall a ‘spending sandwich’. ‘Bread’ will be needed for ministerial pledges at the Conservative Party conference at the start of October. A month later Johnson will host the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, where he will want to show the world that the UK is leading the world towards its net-zero carbon target. A long-delayed review of what is needed to meet the target is likely to come with a heavy price tag in green taxes. The filling between the two is the public spending review, which will determine the budgets of Whitehall departments for up to three years.”

Separately, the i newspaper reports that the Met Office is “to start issuing extreme heat warnings after a record-breaking number of heatwave deaths in England last summer”. BBC News has a feature on COP26 president-designate Alok Sharma, who says he has spent his political career trying to be “extremely boring”. And the Press Association covers a protest by the London branch of the UK Student Climate Network, which has been staging an “occupation” of the Science Museum in protest at its decision to accept sponsorship from Shell.

There is continuing coverage of the heatwave affecting the western US, with the Guardian reporting that extreme weather is “simultaneously breaking hundreds of temperature records, exacerbating a historic drought and priming the landscape for a summer and fall of extreme wildfire”. Kathleen Johnson, an associate professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, tells that newspaper: “This current drought is potentially on track to become the worst that we’ve seen in at least 1,200 years. And the reason is linked directly to human caused climate change.” A separate news feature in the Guardian focuses on how Las Vegas is “cooking” in the heatwave with temperatures reaching 46.6C. Daisy Dunne, the Independent‘s climate correspondent, “assesses what is known about the impact of the climate crisis on US heatwaves – and how episodes of extreme heat are likely to change in the future”. Quartz has a feature on how “climate models predicted heatwaves like America’s record-breaking weekend”. And the Guardian also carries a comment piece by author Kim Heacox on how the drought in US south-west, which is “the worst” in 1,200 years, “might be here to stay”.

Experts have told S&P Global Platts that China’s national emissions trading scheme (ETS) will work more like “a marathon with long-term goals rather than a 100-metre dash focused on immediate heavy-handed regulations”. The outlet highlights that economic growth “is being prioritised” by China and that “several other” factors would need to “fall in place” for a carbon market to be “successful”. The national ETS is due to start trading by the end of June.

Meanwhile, Miami’s mayor has said that the city is “working to lower” its electricity cost to attract Chinese crypto operators, reports CNBC. The channel says that Chinese bitcoin miners are “scrambling to find a new home” after Beijing intensified its crackdown on the practice. However, CGTN, the English arm of China’s state broadcaster, says that Chinese bitcoin miners plan to “green” their energy consumption. A Chinese bitcoin company chief executive tells the channel that most Chinese bitcoin miners use hydropower in the wet season. He adds that in China, the cheapest energy is often “clean energy” and “won’t produce much more carbon emissions”.

Elsewhere, Zhao Penggao, deputy director of the Environmental Resources Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, has instructed that all regions must cut energy intensity by 3% this year – the annual targets given to local governments – according to National Business Daily. Reuters reports that China’s new energy vehicle sales are expected to grow more than 40% each year in the next five years. The newswire cites a senior official at the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Separately, Reuters reports that “China’s state planner and market regulator have jointly launched an investigation into coal prices and will crack down on speculation and hoarding”.

Reuters covers the news that the Australian government has rejected plans for a A$36bn wind, solar and hydrogen project in a remote area of Western Australia. The newswire says it leaves “what would have been one of the world’s largest green energy projects in limbo for now”. Environment minister Sussan Ley has ruled that the project – known as the Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH) – “will have clearly unacceptable impacts” on internationally recognised wetlands and migratory bird species. Reuters adds: “The AREH project, located in the state’s Pilbara region, was designed to initially build 15 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity, eventually to be expanded to 26GW and produce green hydrogen and ammonia for export.” The Financial Times also covers the news, saying that the decision has left “green groups fum[ing]”.

Meanwhile, Reuters separately reports that the Japanese government has said it will tighten its rules on support for exports of new coal power plants, in line with a pact by the G7 to halt new government backing for “unabated coal power” by the end of 2021. “Our rules to support coal power exports will become more strict, but no details have been set yet,” says Hiroshi Tsuchiya, the director of the coal division at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Tim Lord, a former UK senior civil servant working on climate and energy who is now a senior fellow on net-zero at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, writes in a blog post that “it’s certainly true that formal democratic endorsement of net-zero is limited”. He looks to the recent Swiss referendum where a new climate law was narrowly rejected by voters. He says: “Here in the UK, as in Switzerland, the argument that climate action is by and for ‘elites’ will of course be used to argue against climate action – indeed, it already is. While there is irony in this – as it is the poorest who will be most severely affected by unconstrained climate change – there is also a real challenge in delivering the net-zero transition in a way that is fair and delivers tangible benefits to people and communities across the country. And that means that the political scope for turning net-zero into an ‘us and them’ issue is easy to see…The lessons must be heeded by those who advocate for action to deliver net-zero. That means engaging people and communities in developing solutions, rather than assuming that they will sign them off at the ballot box; tailoring messages and messengers to appeal to different groups of voters, rather than retreating to a ‘core vote’ approach; recognising and dealing with trade-offs in an honest way, rather than hiding them behind rhetoric that climate action is all ‘win-win’; and placing fairness at the heart of policy design.”

Highlighting Lord’s point, there is a flurry of comment pieces in the UK’s right-leaning newspapers attacking climate policies. In the Sunday Times, climate sceptic columnist Dominic Lawson argues that the “world’s biggest economies won’t follow our ‘climate leadership’” in the UK. Sunday Telegraph editor Allister Heath warns Boris Johnson in the Daily Telegraph that last week’s by-election defeat for the Conservatives “is only the start of a southern revolt against your high-tax, eco-extreme agenda”. Douglas Murray in the Sunday Telegraph asks: “Why would any true conservative vote for this soft-Left bunch of eco-extremist, Tory statists?” In the Spectator, Pieter Cleppe says: “Boris shouldn’t write off fossil fuels just yet.” In today’s Daily Telegraph, climate sceptic Matt Ridley rails against “flawed modelling”, including climate models. And an editorial in the Wall Street Journal says that “Democrats know they can’t banish fossil fuels or impose carbon taxes democratically, so the Biden Administration is preparing a backup plan: use courts to impose the anti-carbon policies by decree”.

Meanwhile, Financial Times columnist Camilla Cavendish says that “new gene-editing techniques could also transform farming, and play a vital role in combating climate change, but they are still widely shunned as creating ‘Frankenfoods’”. She continues: “With climate change the next big threat, the huge carbon footprint of farming must be addressed. Genetic engineering offers the possibility of ending dependence on fertilisers which use fossil fuels, and of making crops more resilient. It will allow us to engineer rice to produce less methane and ultimately grow meat in the laboratory, which would drastically reduce the number of intensively farmed animals.”

A new study finds that, over 1981-2010, urban regions in eastern North America experienced “aggravated heat-stress conditions due to relatively higher temperatures”, but saw a decrease in humidity. The authors run two regional climate simulations over eastern North America between 1981 and 2010 – one with and one without urban regions. They find that average temperatures rose and average rainfall levels dropped, due to the lower albedo (reflectiveness) and soil moisture in urban regions. The authors add that the number of extreme heat spells lasting six days or more doubled over coastal urban areas in the region. The study “demonstrates the need for better representation of urban regions in climate models to generate realistic climate information”, according to the paper.