The White House’s $4 trillion budget proposal released on Monday
includes more than $10 billion for programs to both mitigate and
adapt to the effects of global climate change. This includes
stripping billions of dollars in tax breaks from oil and gas
companies and instead creating incentives for the renewable energy
sector. The proposal signals that President Obama will make climate
a central theme of his last two years in office, says Climate
Progress.

BP has reported a fall in profits and warned that it is
preparing for the “new reality of lower prices” by slashing
spending on new projects. The Financial Timesreports the warning
from BP chief executive Bob Dudley that the oil industry faces its
worst slump since 1986, with crude prices likely to stay at sharply
lower levels for “several years” after plunging more than 50 per
cent since last summer. While RTCCreports that BP did not follow
Shell’s move last week to back a shareholder resolution on climate
risk.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has dealt a major blow
to the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline by declaring the
project would lead “a significant increase in greenhouse gas
emissions”.Bloombergreports that the agency’s
long-awaited review says low global oil prices mean the Canadian
crude, which is relatively expensive to process, may not be
developed without a low-cost route to market such as the pipeline.
President Obama will make the final decision on Keystone and
signalled last year that he would reject the project if it was
shown to lead to increased climate change impacts.

A new study describes how efforts to reduce deforestation has
seen agriculture overtake it as the leading source of land-based
greenhouse gas pollution during the past decade. While UN climate
negotiations focus heavily on forest protections, the researchers
say, delegates to the talks ignore similar opportunities to reform
farming.

The health sector should get rid of its fossil fuel
investments on moral grounds, as it previously did with its tobacco
investments, according to a report by a coalition of medical
organisations. Climate change is “the biggest global health threat
of the 21st century”, the report says, and air pollution from
fossil fuels also causes millions of premature deaths a year. The
organisations argue that the health sector, and in particular the
£18bn Wellcome Trust, should not be helping to fund the harm they
exist to tackle.

India’s government defended its efforts to combat climate
change after US President Barack Obama urged the country to reduce
its dependence on fossil fuels. Environment Minister Prakash
Javadekar said the government was already turning words into action
on clean energy, but declined to say whether India would set itself
a target on reducing carbon emissions ahead of the UN climate
summit in Paris in December.

Water scarcity could lead to conflict between communities and
nations as the world is still not fully aware of the potential
water crisis caused by climate change, says the head of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Unfortunately, the
world has not really woken up to the reality of what we are going
to face in terms of the crises as far as water is concerned,”
Rajendra Pachauri told participants at a conference on water
security.

What is the best place to weather climate change? New
research ranks countries according to their vulnerability and and
readiness to adapt to climate change. The resulting maps suggest
that Norway, New Zealand, Sweden and Finland are best equipped to
deal with the pressures of climate change, while the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Eritrea,
Burundi and Chad are the worst equipped.

The US Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of
creating regulations on carbon pollution from power plants, and
Republicans in Congress hate the idea, says Dana Nuccitelli in the
Guardian. But rather than attempting to repeal the legislation,
Nuccitelli argues, an easier path would be to replace it with a
carbon pricing system.

Late last month, 15 Republicans in the US Senate finally
admitted climate change is real. A small minority agreed with the
rest of the world that it is caused by human activity. The Guardian
asked all 15 what they would do to solve the problem. They received
three responses, none of which supported a target for cutting
greenhouse gas emissions.

Envoys from nearly 200 countries will descend on Geneva from
February 8-13, tasked with crafting a draft of a proposed UN
climate change pact ahead of the final version in Paris in
December. RTCC take a look at what a global carbon cutting deal
would look like, how countries will get there and how it could pan
out.

MasterCard has introduced a new credit card in the US that
helps offset your personal carbon footprint. For every dollar you
charge, Sustain:Green, which manages the rewards program, will
offset two lbs of carbon dioxide. Writing in The Guardian, Erik
Assadourian describes the new eco-marketing venture as ‘ridiculous’
and says the concept “reinforces the idea that climate change – and
its solutions – can be solved on an individual level, and
manipulates consumers into feeling good about consuming”.

As the oceans continue to warm, nine of 12 coral species
examined in the Pacific and Indian Oceans will lose 24 to 50 per
cent of their current habitat by 2100, according to new research.
Some ‘winners’ at local scales will likely become ‘losers’ at
regional scales, the study notes. But when the researchers included
the ability to adapt to one degree of warming, two important
species managed to retain most of their current habitat, say the
authors.

New research investigates the effect of applying biochar on
the carbon footprint of rice production. This is a somewhat
controversial strategy to mitigate global warming, the paper notes,
but the new results suggest it holds considerable potential for
reducing the carbon intensity of crop production, providing it’s
done following a certain energy-efficient method.

The Arctic Oscillation drives a lot of the variation in
weather conditions we see in the northern hemisphere, particularly
in winter. But scientists’ ability to predict its phases and
consequences are still low. A new study explores different factors
that could improve predictability, including an urgent need for
better coupling of the troposphere and stratosphere in climate
models.