Scott Pruitt, the US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, has criticised the Paris climate agreement, calling it a bad deal. “You know, what was wrong with Paris was not just that it was, you know, failed to be treated as a treaty, but China and India, the largest producers of CO2 internationally, got away scot-free,” he said during an interview on ABC. “They didn’t have to take steps until 2030. So we’ve penalized ourselves through lost jobs while China and India didn’t take steps to address the issue internationally,” he continued. “So Paris was just a bad deal, in my estimation.” He also confirmed that Trump will sign the “Energy Independence Executive Order” tomorrow, which will “address” Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The Guardian is among the other publications also reporting the forthcoming executive order. Mashable asks whether the Trump administration has “actually read the Paris Agreement”: “It doesn’t penalize one country and reward another.” Meanwhile, on Friday, the Guardian reported that Trump signed a presidential order giving the go ahead to the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Pakistan’s parliament has passed a climate change bill that officials promise “will fast-track measures needed to implement actions on the ground” in a country that Reuters says has so far lagged on climate action. The new law establishes a policy-making Climate Change Council, along with a Climate Change Authority to prepare and supervise the implementation of projects to help Pakistan adapt to climate impacts and hold the line on climate-changing emissions. Reuters says: “The legislation has received cautious backing from climate change experts, who say they welcome its potential but question whether the government should instead be offering more direct support to provinces to implement environmental projects. Pakistan has earlier passed measures to address climate change, but most have been little implemented, critics charge.”

Foreign investors are “queueing up” to back nuclear energy projects in the UK, reports the Observer: “The latest is South Korea. Its biggest power company is in talks to join the consortium backing a nuclear power station in Cumbria, in a sign of the continuing allure of Britain’s atomic ambitions to international companies. Kepco said last week it was interested in taking a stake in NuGen, which is 60% owned by Japan’s Toshiba and 40% by France’s Engie, confirming what had been an open secret in the industry for months.” The paper adds that one expert, Mycle Schneider, called the UK the “last hope” for the nuclear construction giants of the world.

Harvard engineers who launched the world’s biggest solar geoengineering research program may get a dangerous boost from Donald Trump, environmental organisations are warning. Under the Trump administration, enthusiasm appears to be growing for the controversial technology of solar geoengineering, which aims to spray sulphate particles into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s radiation back to space and decrease the temperature of Earth. Sometime in 2018, Harvard engineers David Keith and Frank Keutsch hope to test spraying from a high-altitude balloon over Arizona, in order to assess the risks and benefits of deployment on a larger scale. “Clearly parts of the Trump administration are very willing to open the door to reckless schemes like David Keith’s, and may well have quietly given the nod to open-air experiments,” said Silvia Riberio, with technology watchdog ETC Group. “Worryingly, geoengineering may emerge as this administration’s preferred approach to global warming.”

Lights were symbolically switched off around the world on Saturday evening to mark the 10th annual Earth Hour and to draw attention to climate change. The initiative began in Australia in 2007 as a grass roots gesture by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Australia against man-made carbon dioxide emissions. This year, 2017, lights were switched off in 7,000 cities across 172 countries. Landmark buildings participating included Sydney’s Opera House, London’s Houses of Parliament and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Stelzer, a climate sceptic and critic of the “green agenda”, writes in his Sunday Times business column that there “is little doubt that Trump is putting a serious crimp in green plans for a fossil-free American future”. However, he adds that “when the original shock wears off, they just might find that the world has not changed quite as much as they fear. For the far more reliable private sector, driven by the need to maximise long-run profits, might accomplish what here-today, gone-tomorrow governments cannot.” Meanwhile, in the Financial Times, Nick Butler focuses on the controversial sale of the UK’s Green Investment Bank arguing that “the worst outcome would be that the dithering of the men from the ministry puts off potential investors”.

The veteran US environmental campaigner focuses on the Adani Carmichael coal mine in Australia saying that there is “nowhere else on the planet right now where the dichotomy between two potential futures – one where we address the climate change crisis, one where we ignore this momentous threat and continue with business as usual”. He adds: “I now implore all Australians to take a stand – for the sake of the world’s climate – to ensure this mine never goes ahead.”

People living close to a potential carbon capture and storage (CCS) site are significantly more likely to oppose the idea of CCS, a new study suggests. In 2011, the whereabouts of 408 potential CCS sites in Germany were released. Using survey data from across the country, the researchers find that residents are less likely to accept CCS if they live near a potential site or in a coal-mining region.

Rising global temperatures could reduce the nutritional value of grasses used for foraging, causing an increase in how much methane livestock produce, a new study says. In a meta analysis, researchers analysed published data on grass nutrition value, climate and land management. The results suggest a previously unknown positive climate change feedback, the researchers say, where elevated temperatures reduce the nutrition in grasses, increasing methane production from livestock and wild ruminants by 0.9 % for every 1C of temperature rise.