As pressure to act grows, with street protests and extreme weather around the world, the UN’s new report brings a “grim assessment” of “how off-track the world remains”, according to the Washington Post. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) emissions gap report concludes that emissions globally must start falling by 7.6% each year from 2020, “a rate currently nowhere in sight”, the Post notes, to meet the Paris Agreement’s ambitious aims. The Guardian notes “the only time in recent history when emissions have fallen in any country at a similar rate came during the collapse of the Soviet Union,” with the US and Japan’s emissions falling by about 6% during the financial crisis and recession, but quickly rebounding. According to the Financial Times, the report’s authors found “no sign” that atmospheric emissions would peak soon, with global pledges so weak they correspond to about 3.2C of warming by the end of the century. The findings have been released ahead of the COP25 climate talks in Madrid next week and are intended to spur world leaders to limit climate change, Reuters says. One of the report’s authors authors tells CNN that national climate commitments will have to be “significantly strengthened” at next year’s critical summit in Glasgow if future crisis is to be averted. The Times runs the story with the headline: “UN warns of 30ft sea surge unless emissions cut now.” The story features on the front page of the New York Times, which also mention’s Carbon Brief’s recent analysis showing a decline in coal use in 2019. (Carbon Brief’s analysis has received continuing coverage by outlets such as CNN, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung and Foreign Policy magazine.)

The Daily Telegraph points out that while the UK was named in the report as one of the few countries to have adopted net-zero legislation by 2050, a parliamentary report earlier this year warned that even this proposal was at risk of being derailed due to inadequate action by the government. In the US, Vox highlights a new survey showing “a generational and ideological divide among Republicans” when it comes to action on climate change, with younger people caring about it more.

The European Commission is considering a proposal to ease EU banking rules, in an attempt to drive green investment across the continent such as financing energy-efficient homes and zero-emissions transport, the Financial Times reports. The paper notes that the plan “underlines the environmental ambitions of the next European Commission”, but says it is also likely to create conflict with regulators at the European Central Bank, where there is concern about tampering with rules designed to make lending less risky.

Separately, Reuters reports that China has criticised an EU proposal to establish a “carbon border tax”, which the Asian nation says will damage global efforts to take joint action on climate change. According to the news service, the new tax is aimed at protecting European firms from unfair competition by raising the cost of products from countries that are not taking enough action on climate change. Reuters also reports on claims by Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which says European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen wants to invest around €3tn (£2.58tn) in climate measures over the next decade. A third Reuters piece reports on a call from industrial and civil society groups to the European Commission for a global carbon pricing system “to speed up progress towards net-zero emissions by mid-century”.

Meanwhile, the Guardian and EurActiv report that the European parliament is split over whether to declare a “climate emergency” before next week’s crucial UN summit. DeSmogUK reports that this discussion about the need for a climate emergency declaration comes “days after a network of climate science deniers held a hearing in the European Parliament declaring the exact opposite”.

Elsewhere, in an interview with Reuters, Spain’s acting energy minister Teresa Ribera criticises some nations’ “silent complicity” over climate change and said the upcoming meeting, which her country is co-hosting, must not be treated as a “trade fair.”

A survey conducted by Sky News concludes that tackling climate change “could be emerging as a new political fault line in the UK”, with 58% of those who voted Labour at the last election saying their party’s prioritisation of the climate mattered “a great deal”, compared to 30% of Conservative voters. It also found a split between Leave and Remain voters, with the latter seeing the climate issue as a bigger priority. Elsewhere, coverage of the UK general election continues. In a video for BBC News, chief environment correspondent Justin Rowlatt picks out out some of the key issues from the upcoming election surrounding climate and the environment. BBC Radio 4’s Today programme also broadcast a feature this morning by its environment analyst Roger Harrabin looking at the various manifesto climate pledges. Carbon Brief has assembled an interactive table with all of the key climate and energy pledges made by party manifestos so far, in order to easily compare them.

The Independent links the new UN report to the on-going UK general election, noting that prime minister Boris Johnson has failed to appear on a TV debate about climate change, “despite the UN’s dire environmental warning”. Meanwhile, with tree-planting featuring prominently in his own party’s manifesto pledges, the Daily Mail reports Johnson has praised its campaign to get thousands of volunteers across the UK planting trees.

Finally, the Press Association reports on scientists, speaking ahead of the launch of a report from the Royal Academy of Engineering, who say protest group Extinction Rebellion may have a “blind spot” when it comes to solutions to climate change.

An editorial in the Times considers the new UNEP “emissions gap” report, describing its call for greenhouse gas emissions cuts of 7.6% a year each year between 2020 and 2030 an “extremely tall order”, but noting that “the cost of failure could be very serious indeed”. It adds that climate scientists have been issuing warnings and nations responding by making pledges for years, noting the commitments made at the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro as far back as 1992. “Part of the problem is that countries are reluctant to stick to agreements if they fear that competitors will cheat, particularly since they will not see any direct benefit from their actions. Yet the costs of failure to address this collective action will be ultimately felt by everyone,” the editorial says, pointing to potential temperatures rises that could “render many areas at the Equator uninhabitable and put low-lying countries such as Bangladesh underwater”. While the kinds of changes in the new UN report appear “politically nigh-on impossible”, the Times says “nations have little choice but to take action”, as otherwise future measures will just become more extreme and expensive. It concludes that technology may offer some solutions, and while countries “should not rely on a coming technological utopia but they can encourage one. Conservatives everywhere should seize the opportunity and go green, encouraging new technologies and industries. One added advantage is that it will help to win over the young from being seduced by anti-capitalist activists.”

An opinion piece in the Guardian by William Todts, executive director of Transport & Environment, responds directly to a controversial piece also published in the Guardian this week by German economics professor Hans-Werner Sinn. In that article, Sinn made the case for an article he published back in April, apparently demonstrating that electric vehicles (EVs) produce more CO2 than conventional combustion engine vehicles. He argues that their emissions simply come “via the power plant not the exhaust pipe”. The new Guardian piece comes after a Financial Times article yesterday, which concluded the claims made by Sinn are “misleading at best”. That piece notes, firstly, that it is “odd to focus on the ‘German mix’ when the article is an attack on EU policy to reduce emissions,” pointing out that Germany is unusually reliant on coal for electricity generation. It also says that “developments in battery technology are expected to elongate ranges and reduce the need for recharges”. In the latest Guardian piece, Todts says: “Whenever you read a newspaper article claiming EVs are worse than diesel or petrol cars, that article will be based on a report that deliberately makes EVs look worse than they are”. He continues by noting that “there will always be a new study with some flawed assumptions” about EVs, comparing them unfavourably to petrol and diesel cars: “The advantage for the oil and diesel industry is that articles and reports, however poor, keep the controversy alive.” All of this chimes with a Carbon Brief factcheck of the claims about electric cars, published in May, which concludes electric cars do have a key role to play in tackling climate change.

In a new issue and an accompanying online collection, the journal Nature Climate Change explores the impact of climate change on migration. As an editorial explains, “there is no question that climate change will impact human migration”, yet “when, where and how people will be forced to move as a consequence of climate change remains elusive, as are definitions about what it means to be a climate migrant and how best to govern the problem”. Included in the issue are comment pieces on the policy challenge of rising sea levels and “climate migration myths”, as well as a perspective on international migration “in an era of hardening borders” and a feature on managed retreat (a topic previously covered by a Carbon Brief guest post).

Climate change has a mixed effect on migration in farming households in Nigeria, a new study suggests. The study continues: “In particular, climates closer to ideal farming conditions are associated with a higher propensity to migrate, whereas in the least favourable climatic conditions, the propensity to migrate declines.” Looking ahead to the future, the number of migrant households could rise by 3.6-6.3 million people between 2031-60 and 2071-2100 because of a warming climate, the study says. Most of this migration would be internal, the study notes.