A weakening but still potent Hurricane Irma hit Florida’s Gulf Coast with heavy wind and rain late last night, leaving millions of homes powerless. Storms struck much of Florida’s western shore – from Naples and Fort Myers north through Sarasota, Tampa and St. Petersburg. There were no immediate reports of deaths in Florida, AP reports. Irma’s centre was about 25 miles (40km) northeast of the heavily populated Tampa-St. Petersburg area early this morning, though it has now been downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane with winds of 85 mph (135 kph). Irma has left at least 4.7 million people without power and millions temporarily displaced, says Bloomberg. As Irma approached on Friday, Miami’s Republican mayor blasted Donald Trump for ignoring climate change, Think Progress reports. “This is the time to talk about climate change. This is the time that the president and the EPA and whoever makes decisions needs to talk about climate change,” said mayor Tomás Regalado. “If this isn’t climate change, I don’t know what is. This is a truly, truly poster child for what is to come.” Meanwhile, more than 160,000 people waited in shelters across the state. In the Caribbean, where at least 28 people are known to have been killed by Hurricane Irma, the road to recovery remains uncertain, reports Reuters. Waves of up to 36 feet (11m) hit businesses along the Cuban capital Havana’s sea-facing front on Sunday morning. Further east in the Caribbean, battered islands such as St. Martin and Barbuda are starting to assess the extent of the damage wreaked by the hurricane. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the death toll on the Dutch part of St. Martin is currently at four, and that 70% of homes had been seriously damaged. Irma is likely to devastate Caribbean’s tourism-dependent economy, reports the Financial Times. The Guardian has a live blog following the latest coverage of Hurricane Irma.

Power from UK offshore windfarms is to be cheaper than electricity from new nuclear plants for the first time, it was revealed today. The numbers, from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, were revealed as the result of an auction for subsidies, in which the lowest bidder wins. Two companies announced today that they were willing to build offshore wind farms for a subsidy of £57.50 per megawatt hour. In comparison, new nuclear plants will have a subsidy of £92.50 per megawatt hour for 2022-23. The Guardianreports that the £290m-a-year of subsidies, paid out of customers’ energy bills, could bring enough clean power for 3.6m homes and create thousands of jobs. Richard Harrington, the energy minister, said: “The offshore wind sector alone will invest £17.5bn in the UK up to 2021 and thousands of new jobs in British businesses will be created by the projects announced today.” Alongside wind power, contracts were given out for dedicated biomass with combined heat and power, as well as advanced conversion technologies, City AM reports. The Telegraph notes that the record-low subsidies could herald an £11bn industrial boon for post-Brexit Britain, while reducing costs for energy consumers. The Financial Times and BusinessGreen also have the story.

UK Government ministers are ready to approve the swift development of a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs), the Telegraph reports. Industry players including Rolls-Royce, NuScale, Hitachi and Westinghouse have held meetings in past weeks with civil servants about Britain’s nuclear strategy. A report to be published by Rolls-Royce this week claims its consortium can generate electricity at a guaranteed price of £60 per megawatt hour – a third less than that of recent large-scale nuclear plants. A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which is set to announce the final contenders for funding, told City AM: “We are currently considering next steps for the SMR programme and we will communicate these in due course.”

China, the world’s biggest vehicle market, could be considering a ban on the production and sale of petrol and diesel cars. The move would mirror actions taken by France and Britain to outlaw the sale of fossil fuel cars and vans from 2040 in an effort to cut emissions. Xin Guobin, vice-minister of industry and information technology, told a forum in the northern city of Tianjin this weekend that his ministry had started “relevant research” and was working on a timetable for China. “These measures will promote profound changes in the environment and give momentum to China’s auto industry development,” he said in an interview broadcast by CCTV state television. Bloomberg and The Telegraph also have this story.

The destruction caused by Hurricane Irma shows that the UK government cannot afford to take a backseat in international efforts to battle climate change any longer, argues an editorial in the Independent. The government’s failure to address the role that climate change has played in the hurricane is “utter, arrogant nonsense”, the editorial argues. “To accept that if we are to reduce the number and suffering of future victims, we must recognise the signs of global warming for what they really are in the here and now.” And in The Observer, Bob Ward, communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, argues that Irma and Harvey reveal the “true cost” of Trump’s climate denial. “The president’s luxurious Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida may escape Irma’s wrath, but with the deaths of so many Americans, and billions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses, the costs of climate change denial are beginning to pile up at the door of the White House,” writes Ward. And in The Guardian Bill McKibben, US veteran environmental campaigner and writer, argues that the recent hurricanes, flash fires and droughts that have hit North America tell us that “we need to rethink how we live without delay”. “Even if we kept the promises we made at Paris (which Trump has already, of course, repudiated) we’re going to build a planet so hot that we can’t have civilisations,” he writes. “We have to seize the moment we’re in right now – the moment when we’re scared and vulnerable – and use it to dramatically reorient ourselves.” The Telegraph asks a number of scientists what role climate change plays in the recent run of destructive hurricanes and whether we can expect more in the future. In an editorial, the Guardian argues that recent extreme weather events show the pressing need for fossil fuel companies to be held accountable for their role in causing climate change in the courts. Meanwhile, in the Times, Matt Ridley claims that “whether or not tropical storms are becoming fiercer, our growing wealth and ingenuity helps us to survive them.” Writing in the Financial Times, Nick Butler points out that a week after Hurricane Harvey tore through Texas, oil production in the region has fallen by around 3.2m barrels a day. This suggest that most important lesson for the energy sector is that “the key issue of energy security is no longer physical shortages of fuel supplies, but the quality of the infrastructure system that takes energy to the final consumer,” he says.

The Trump administration’s decision to put a stop to a study investigating the health risks of mountaintop-removal coal mining marks another step in its war against science, argues a New York Times editorial. “From Day 1, the White House and its lackeys in certain federal agencies have been waging what amounts to a war on science, appointing people with few scientific credentials to key positions, defunding programs that could lead to a cleaner and safer environment and a healthier population, and, most ominously, censoring scientific inquiry that could inform the public and government policy,” the editorial argues.

Households growing drought tolerant varieties of maize in Zimbabwe harvested an average of 50% higher yields when compared to other types of improved maize, a new study finds. Researchers surveyed 200 randomly sampled smallholder farmers in two districts of Chiredzi and Chipinge in southeastern Zimbabwe. Average total maize yield was 681kg per hectare (ha) for households using drought tolerant maize, and 437kg/ha for other varieties, the results show. The higher yield gives an extra income of around $240/ha, the researchers say, or “more than nine months of food at no additional cost”.

The number of tornadoes striking the US each year has declined in the West, North Great Plains, South Great Plains, and Midwest regions between 1954 and 2016, a new study suggests, but increased in the Southeast. The analysis shows that the number of tornado days per year has reduced, but the average number of tornadoes per tornado day per year is increasing across the US. The study also finds that proportion of tornadoes forming in summer is declining, while it is increasing in autumn.