At least four people have been killed after “[s]urging floodwaters and a torrent of mud swept through a village” in the northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, Reuters reports. Footage shows how the mudslide “cleaved through” the village of Dharali, “sweeping away houses and roads as people ran for their lives”, the newswire adds. It points out that Uttarakhand is prone to landslides and floods – “which some experts blame on climate change” – and that many of the 10,000 glaciers in the Indian Himalaya are “​​receding due to a warming climate”. According to the Times of India, “more than one cloudburst” hit the high-altitude district of Uttarkashi on Tuesday, triggering flash floods, with cloudburst risks in the Himalayan region “projected to increase with climate change”. BBC News says “more than 100 people are missing”. 

The Guardian quotes climate activist Harjeet Singh, who says the tragedy is a “deadly cocktail” of global warming “super-charging our monsoons with extreme rain, while, on the ground, our own policies of cutting hills, unscientific, unsustainable and reckless construction, and choking rivers”. NDTV quotes Himanshu Thakkar from the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People (SANDRP), who says: “[C]limate change should not be used as a carpet under which we can push all kinds of accountability and misgovernance. We know these events are [likely] increasing and we better be prepared for them rather than blaming it on climate change.”

MORE ON INDIA: 

• The Hindustan Times quotes Donald Trump saying he “never said a percentage” when specifying the exact rate of tariffs on India, days after he “threatened” more tariffs on the country for being Russia’s “largest buyer of energy”. Officials quoted in the New York Times say that the Indian government had “not given any direction to oil companies” to cut back on Russian oil imports.
• A comment piece by Anil Trigunayat and Kaviraj Singh in the Indian Express argues that the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) makes “global cooperation on climate change impossible”. 
• Reuters reports that India has “scrapped” a central pricing system for renewable energy projects after developers flagged that it was “slowing down power deals”.
• A state government effort to divert 1,742 hectares of land in “one of India’s last remaining old-growth forests” for coal mining is “triggering a political row”, reports the Hindustan Times.
• A Deutsche Welle documentary profiles a “grassroots alliance” between unions, activists and the India Meteorological Department to protect Delhi’s informal workers from extreme heat.

New data shows how more of China’s renewable power is “increasingly going unused” in “far-flung provinces”, such as Tibet and Qinghai, as the country “rushes to build more long-distance transmission and energy storage to bridge the gap”, Reuters reports. Around 30% of Tibet’s wind power was “wasted” in the first half of the year, compared with 2% a year ago, while Qinghai “curtailed 15% of its solar power”, up from 9% during the same period last year, the newswire adds. By contrast, it says, regions with higher electricity demand, such as Shanghai, Chongqing and Fujian, “continued to report low curtailment rates”. However, even the worst curtailment rates now “pale in comparison to those faced during China’s earlier renewables booms”, Bloomberg reports, when one province curtailed “nearly half the wind power generated in the province for six months”. 

MORE ON CHINA

• China has issued a plan to “create greener, safer and more livable environments” in the face of “intensifying global climate change”, reports Xinhua.
• Germany will “diversify” where it sources permanent magnets and rare-earth minerals from to reduce dependency on China for “offshore wind turbines”, Reuters reports.
• Henan province saw temperatures reach 30.5C in July, 3.2C higher than normal, CCTV reports. Reuters says Henan and other flood- and drought-hit regions have received government funds to “support recovery of agricultural production”.
• Reuters: “Hong Kong reels from heaviest August rain since 1884.”
• The NDRC outlined “key tasks” for the rest of 2025, including “comprehensive transformation under dual control of carbon emissions”, says China Energy Net.

A coalition of non-profits, tribes and local government is suing the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, over the Trump administration’s decision to “abruptly terminate” a $3bn program to “protect communities from climate disasters and environmental hazards”, reports the Guardian. The coalition told a court yesterday that the decision was unconstitutional and should be overturned, as there is a legally binding mandate from Congress to fund the Biden-era initiative, the article adds. “The $3bn ECJ program was created by Congress…to help historically disadvantaged communities come up with local solutions to improve resilience in the face of worsening climate shocks and environmental degradation,” explains the newspaper. The proposed class-action lawsuit would be the first of its kind, forcing the EPA and Zeldin to reinstate the program and each individual grant if it is successful, the Guardian adds. Relatedly, Reuters covers a move by a federal judge to block the Trump administration from diverting $4bn from a grant program designed to protect communities against natural disasters.

MORE ON US

• Reuters reports that the Trump administration is considering ending a $7bn grant program that helps low- and moderate-income households install solar energy. 
• The Guardian covers wildfires across Canada and parts of the US that have put 81 million Americans under air quality alerts.
• Electricity demand in the lower 48 states has “hit fresh all-time highs on two days in the last week of July due to surging temperatures”, reports Reuters. 

A new report has found that the Great Barrier Reef suffered “its biggest annual drop in live coral in two out of three areas monitored by scientists since 1986”, reports the Guardian. The Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims) report is the first to fully document the “devastating impacts” of a bleaching event in 2024, which was the “most widespread and severe on record for the Great Barrier Reef”, it adds. The article quotes Dr Mike Emslie, who leads the long-term reef monitoring program at Aims: “It has been a pretty sobering year of surveys with the biggest impacts I have seen in the 30-plus years I have been doing this. This volatility is very likely a sign of an unstable system. That’s our real concern. We’re starting to see record highs in coral cover that quickly get turned around to record falls.” Le Monde reports that the bleaching is the “most spatially extensive” since records began almost 40 years ago, “driven by sweltering ocean temperatures in 2024 that triggered ‘unprecedented levels of heat stress’”. The mass bleaching in 2024 was the fifth since 2016 on the reef and had the largest spatial footprint, reports the Independent. Elsewhere, a ‘big read’ in the Financial Times, which is featured on its frontpage, covers efforts to save beaches around the world from a “sand shortage”. 

A heatwave in Iran is “straining the country’s water and power supplies, prompting local authorities to order the closure of public buildings and banks in the capital Tehran and several other provinces”, reports Reuters. Nine of the country’s 31 provinces are on “orange alert” for the rest of the week, with temperatures forecast to reach highs of 50C for several days in some areas, it adds. The Associated Press notes that Iran produces 62,000MW of electricity per hour at its peak, but needs about 80,000 MW to meet its needs amid the heat. “In recent years Tehran has contended with recurring heat extremes and weakened infrastructure. Wednesday’s planned office closures echoes a similar one-day public holiday in July 2024 and a two-day action in 2023,” adds AP. 

MORE ON EXTREME WEATHER 

• The Times reports that there has been a twentyfold increase in businesses reporting the impact of heatwaves and floods on trading over the past decade in the UK. 
• Reuters reports that Japan has set a new record high temperature, reaching 41.8C on Tuesday.
• Semafor reports that South Korea has now had 22 consecutive “tropical nights,” where temperatures do not fall below 25C. 
• The South China Morning Post reports that floods have cost $724m in annual trade to a bridge and container depot, “exposing [the] cost of climate-vulnerable infrastructure”. 

Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) accounted for a fifth of all new car sales in the UK last month, reports BusinessGreen. New figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show EV sales continue to grow, “despite some motorists holding off on purchases ahead of the full introduction of the government’s new electric car grant scheme”, it continues. Sales of new cars fell 5% in July following two months of growth, however, EV sales grew 9.1% year-on-year and plug-in hybrid EVs grew 33%, it adds. The Financial Times reports that the SMMT figures show that Tesla sales fell 60% in July. “Tesla’s sales have declined in large European markets this year on the back of a consumer backlash to Musk’s political activism and increased competition from rivals including BYD, whose registrations in the UK rose more than fourfold year on year to 3,184 in July, according to SMMT,” it adds. The Times notes that separate figures last week showed Tesla sales declining across other European markets, including a 27% fall in France and a 52% drop in Denmark. This story is also covered by the Wall Street Journal, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Bloomberg and others.

MORE ON EVS

• The Guardian covers comments by US president Donald Trump dubbing automotive company Jaguar Land Rover as “seriously woke”.
• The Press Association reports on new figures from the RAC Foundation that show the average age of a vehicle on UK roads is now nearly 10 years, which is “bad news for the environment” as it is slowing the switch to EVs.

In the Guardian, Australia climate and environment editor Adam Morton questions whether the Labor government will “abandon its risk-averse past and take an aggressive stance on emissions?”. He writes that Trump, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its impact on global gas markets, inflation and other factors mean “Australia’s climate political landscape is barely recognisable from four years ago”. There is now an opportunity for the Labor government to be much more aggressive in its approach to climate, he continues, before concluding: “An ambitious climate goal would be demanding. But it could also trigger a range of positives. Who knows? If well-handled, they might even include the government being rewarded by the bulk of the population, who have now hinted more than once it is what they want.”

MORE IN COMMENT

• The New York Times’ Climate Forward newsletter writes that big tech’s net-zero goals “are looking shaky”. 
• In the Financial Times, columnist Edward Luce argues “Trump is letting China win the industrial race to clean energy”. 
• The climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph carries a piece arguing that “on oil and gas, Donald Trump is right and Britain’s energy secretary is wrong”.

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Molly Lempriere, with contributions from Aruna Chandrasekhar, Henry Zhang and Anika Patel. It was edited by Leo Hickman.

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