The Times reports that the UK will need to eat “far less meat and dairy than previously thought” in order to meet the country’s goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, according to a government-funded report from the not-for-profit Energy Systems Catapult (ESC). UK households will need to cut their meat and dairy consumption by half, depending on what other measures are taken, according to the new report, the Times says. This is higher than the amount recommended in a report last year from the Committee on Climate Change – the UK government’s climate watchdog – which said consumption would need to fall by one fifth, the Times notes. BBC News reports that people in the UK will also need to make other changes to the lifestyle, such as by flying less often, in order to meet the target. It adds that the ESC report challenges the view of climate activist group Extinction Rebellion, which believes the 2050 target should be brought forward. According to BBC News, the report says: “A number of groups have called for net-zero to be accelerated to 2025, 2030 or 2040. Achieving net-zero significantly earlier than 2050 in our modelling exceeds even our most speculative measures, with rates of change for power, heat and road transport that push against the bounds of plausibility.”

There is continued coverage of the sudden oil price crash triggered by tensions between Russia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) nations and its implications for climate change. Bloomberg reports the price war “looked like the major oil-producing nations reasserting their supremacy in the short term”. “Instead, it may prove to be another step in a longer-term trend toward ending oil’s power to hold the world to ransom,” Bloomberg says. “The impact of the oil price on broader economic growth has been decoupling ever since the 1980s,” Shane Tomlinson, deputy chief executive officer at environmental thinktank E3G, tells Bloomberg. “We could see exceptional movements in the oil price in the next few months, but I don’t think that changes the fundamental need to address climate change.” The price of oil dropping may have some benefits for climate action, Bloomberg adds. “Renewable energy is a more mature industry than five years ago…At the same time, oil exploration is becoming less viable economically, with an increased risk that even those projects that go ahead no longer yield good returns and with worries about stranded assets growing.” Elsewhere, the Financial Times reports that the oil price drop “promises only limited economic benefits”. A second FT story says the price war has left “energy companies feeling the pain”. The crash has “sent shockwaves across the entire energy industry and triggered the biggest sell-off since the global financial crisis”, the paper says. “It has left some companies searching for strategies to protect profits and keep paying dividends. Others are fighting for survival,” the FT says. Meanwhile, DeSmog reports the price crash tests “the resilience of the Trump administration’s ‘energy dominance’ theory that argues domestic shale oil production benefits national security and insulates the US against the actions of other countries”.

Several Australian publications report on a new study finding an increase in the frequency of extreme weather brought by the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), a climate system affecting weather from East Africa to western Australia. The dipole has three phases: neutral, positive and negative, the Guardian says, with the positive phase bringing floods to East Africa and droughts to western Australia. Late last year, an extreme positive dipole played a role in driving bushfires in Australia and heavy rains in East Africa, the Guardian says. [See Carbon Brief’s coverage of the bushfires at the time.] By studying ancient coral records dating back to 1240, the study finds that the number of positive phases of the dipole has increased – and infers that future warming could bring more positive dipoles in the future. The Sydney Morning Herald notes: “While 1997 and 2019 recorded extreme positive IODs, both were dwarfed by one in 1675 that was as much as 42% than these.” The study is published in Nature, it adds. Australia’s News.com.au also covers the research.

The Financial Times reports that the coronavirus outbreak could put electric carmakers on alert over lithium supplies, which are currently largely sourced in China. The virus “will accelerate efforts by western carmakers to localise supplies of lithium for electric car batteries, according to US producer Livent”, the FT says. China produced about 79% of the lithium hydroxide used in electric car batteries last year, the FT says. Elsewhere, Reuters reports that China will “modify the environmental supervision of companies” to aid production disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak. Chinese ministers said this would give “firms more time to rectify environmental problems, but stressed it was not relaxing standards”, Reuters says. Bloomberg, however, says these stimulus packages could “devastate climate goals”. It carries a quote from Carbon Brief analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. In his Carbon Brief article, Myllyvirta writes: “The Chinese government’s coming stimulus measures in response to the disruption could outweigh these shorter-term impacts on energy and emissions.”

An editorial in the Financial Times says that US shale producers will be the “hardest hit” by the recent oil price crash. It says: “A period of sustained low oil prices would be bad news for an industry already out of favour with investors over its damaging impact on the climate…America’s shale industry would be among the biggest losers. Even before the coronavirus hit demand, there had been rising concerns about the sector’s health given the accumulation of dangerous levels of debt.” A second FT article explores how the crash could be “gaming the end of hydrocarbons”. In an opinion article for the FT, Bill Farren-Price, director at RS Energy group, says: “The prospect of plateauing global oil demand, and then retreat in the face of competing green energy alternatives, has been on the horizon for some time. But the inevitable response from OPEC and Russia was not expected to spark such a price vortex so soon.” In a separate column, the newspaper’s energy editor David Sheppard says: “It is possible that the price war will be over soon. But do not count on it. Russia appears more likely to dig in for a long fight.” Elsewhere, in Bloomberg, opinion columnist David Fickling explores what the crash means for climate change. “For those awaiting more aggressive action on climate change, it may look like a breaking point has finally arrived. A sudden collapse in fossil-fuel markets akin to the 2008 financial crisis has long been a scenario for how the world switches to a less carbon-intensive path…At the same time, there’s reason to be fearful, too. Russia’s finance ministry has said it could sustain oil prices below $30 for as long as a decade.” In reality, the “real impact is likely to be more nuanced — and positive for decarbonisation”, he concludes.

Several publications examine the potential interplay between climate change and coronavirus. Chelsea Harvey, climate science reporter at E&E News, looks at how warming could affect infectious diseases like coronavirus. She says: “The impacts of climate change on the coronavirus are unknown, but research related to other illnesses suggest that the risk of pandemics is growing as rising temperatures ignite animal migrations and other changes.”

Elsewhere, in the MIT Technology Review, James Temple looks at why coronavirus could be “terrible news for climate change”. Temple cites Carbon Brief analysis showing that the virus outbreak has caused a temporary pause in China’s CO2 emissions, adding: “It would be a mistake to assume that the rapidly spreading virus, which has already killed thousands and forced millions into quarantine, will meaningfully reduce the dangers of climate change…In the meantime, if the virus leads to a full-blown global pandemic and economic crash, it could easily drain money and political will from climate efforts.” In contrast, an article in the Conversation by researcher David Comerford says the response to the outbreak by people “should give us hope that we are able to tackle” climate change.

A new perspective article reviews different options for replacing palm oil – the rapid expansion of which has “led to substantial increases in greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss from carbon-rich tropical forest”. The options include “plant oils like rapeseed and sunflower oil, exotic oils such as coconut oil and shea butter, and microbial single cell oils”. The authors assess “each of these options from a technical, environmental and economic perspective, including the option to improve the sustainability of existing palm oil cultivation practices”.

A new study questions the received wisdom that “climate beliefs of those on both sides of the partisan divide are firmly held and invariable”. Using a “large panel survey of Oklahoma residents administered quarterly from 2014 through 2018”, the study finds that “partisans on the political right have much more unstable beliefs about climate change than partisans on the left”. An important implication of this findings is that “if climate beliefs are well anchored on the left, but less so on the right, the latter are more susceptible to change”, the authors conclude.

A paper explores a “new breed of radical proposals” that “have been advanced to manage a fair low-carbon transition”. The researchers “investigate the long-term effects of three scenarios: green growth, policies for social equity, and degrowth”. The findings indicate the green growth scenario “achieves a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions at the cost of increasing income inequality and unemployment”; the policies for social equity “result in an environmental performance similar to green growth while improving social conditions at the cost of increasing public deficit”; and the “degrowth scenario further adds a reduction in consumption and exports, and achieves a greater reduction in emissions and inequality with higher public deficit, despite the introduction of a wealth tax”.