The Pakistani cricket-star turned politician Imran Khan launched the green mission in Khyber Pakhtunkhaw in the north-west of the country to restore forests wiped out by decades of felling and natural disasters such as floods. The ‘Billion Tree Tsunami’ aims to slow down the effects of global warming in Pakistan which ranks in the Top 10 in a list of countries most likely to be affected by the phenomenon. The effort has so far surpassed an international commitment after it restored 350,000 hectares of forests and degraded land, the Independent writes. “The glaciers that are melting in the mountains, and one of the biggest reasons is because there has been a massive deforestation. So, this billion tree is very significant for our future”, Khan said.

The stock value of Clean200 list, which ranks firms according to their clean energy revenues, overtook fossil fuel benchmark after one year with a 16.5% return. Whereas its fossil fuel benchmark, the S&P Global Energy Index, saw a decline of 1.2%. “While some feared that the political climate change in Washington DC would put a damper on clean energy stocks to the benefit of fossil fuel stocks, the opposite has happened,” said Toby Heaps, CEO of CorporateKnights, which compiles the report. To qualify for the Clean200 list, companies must have a market capitalisation of at least $1bn and generate 10% of their revenues from clean sources, BusinessGreen writes.

Three studies published on the same day in three different journals all confirm climate change’s risk to Europe, Climate News Network reports. The first warns that heatwave temperatures could reach 55C in some parts of continental Europe – if humans go on burning fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate. Think Progress, has also written up the study, which looks at “humid heat waves at different warming levels” up to 4C. The second study predicts that by the century’s end weather-related disasters could expose 350 million Europeans to harmful climate extremes every year. The third looks at flooding, and confirms that the spring floods in Western Europe now arrive up to 15 days earlier than they did in 1960. The Financial Times has also reported on this study, which is says has implications for insurers and hydroelectric generation. Elsewhere, the Guardian has run a piece showcasing photos of wildfires in Europe, fanned by heatwaves.

The climate sceptic lobbying group the Global Warming Policy Foundation has admitted that it shared an “erroneous” temperature dataset to support its chairman Lord Lawson’s false claims to the BBC last week that global temperatures aren’t rising. According to a series of tweets, the graph was originally produced by US meteorologist Ryan Maue, an adjunct scholar of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute co-founded by Charles Koch, DeSmog writes. Last week, Carbon Brief conducted a factcheck of Lawson’s inaccurate claims.

The Sierra Club, a US environmental organisation, yesterday sued the Department of Energy for its “secrecy” over a study on the reliability of the US electric grid. In April the Energy Secretary Rick Perry ordered a study into the reliability of the electric grid, examining whether the growth of renewable power — and the decline of coal and nuclear generation — is putting the country’s electricity system at risk the Hill writes. “If the Trump administration refuses to be transparent in accordance with the law and continues to raise suspicion that it will interfere with the process, we have no choice but to take them to court”, said Mary Anne Hitt, the director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, in a statement. Reuters also has the story.

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund, a sovereign wealth fund that helps pay for pensions in New Zealand, has sold or reduced shares in 300 firms including Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP, in order to reduce exposure to firms emitting greenhouse gases. 40% of its huge investment portfolio will now be low carbon as a result of the changes. “We think that climate change represents a material risk, one that is not being properly priced by the markets”, Matt Whineray, its Chief Investment Officer said.

Climate change will reduce rice production in the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, while simultaneously increasing potato output in the region from 3.46% to 7.11% by 2030, predicts the parliamentary standing committee on agriculture. Climate change is also expected to negatively impact milk production in the area.

“The impacts from human-caused warming are no distant threat”, says an editorial in USA Today, “but are punishing populations right now… more heat and drought in the American Southwest, larger and fiercer storms along the Pacific, and greater rainfall elsewhere.” “Could proof grow any more powerful that humanity is responsible for a dangerously warming planet?”, the editorial says. “The question now is how the Trump administration, which is stocked with climate skeptics and is pulling the United States out of the Paris accord, will react to the latest scientific findings”, it continues. By “defying the overwhelming scientific consensus about human-caused climate change and actively working against global efforts” the US president is “placing the future of the planet, and the lives of its inhabitants, in jeopardy”, it concludes.

American news site Axios takes a look at what’s driving Republican politicians into the positions they hold on climate change. Harder groups the Republicans into three categories regarding climate change: “True skeptics”, “Passive watchers” and “Quiet backers”, with most falling into the second category. “The biggest experience Republicans have with voting on climate change is bad: Some House Republicans were voted out of office in 2010 after voting yes on a sweeping climate bill conservative groups called a tax”, Harder writes, continuing: “Why would a Republican stick their neck out on an issue his constituents don’t care about that could cost him his job?”

In a commentary piece for the scientific journal Nature Climate Change, Peters and Geden discuss the need for policies that incentivise research and development into carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies – otherwise known as negative emissions technologies. “In principle, the governments that signed and ratified the Paris Agreement accept the IPCC consensus that CDR cannot be avoided if ambitious climate targets like 1.5 °C or 2 °C are to be met”, they write, yet “the political implications of large-scale CDR have remained largely out of the debate.” “Most, if not all, discussions of CDR have been at the global level. This is an unhelpful abstraction, as individual actors must deliver CDR”, they note. They recommend that: “before the next round of updates to the Nationally Determined Contributions, starting with the UNFCCC’s ‘facilitative dialogue’ in 2018, countries should begin negotiating differentiated CDR responsibilities, to indicate potential pathways to net-zero emissions and volumes of CDR that may be achieved.” Climate Home has written about the comment piece.

Over the past two decades, Bangladesh’s rural population has been pouring into its cities, with a smaller, but significant, number of displaced people crossing borders. An in-depth illustrated feature in Climate Home looks at how many “climate migrants” are likely to flee vulnerable parts of the country in the future, and what will become of them. Bangladesh’s prime minister has forecast that the number will be 30 million, but this is “is widely disputed, inside and outside Bangladesh”, Darby, who is Climate Home’s deputy editor, writes. She continues: “But if the medium-term prognosis is not as clear-cut as official rhetoric implies, the ultimate destination of human-caused global warming is sobering…Unchecked pollution locks in sea level rise that ultimately swamps half the country, including its three biggest cities: Dhaka, Chittagong and Khulna. The timescale for this could be anywhere from 200 to 2,000 years.”

Wind and solar power helped to prevent up to 12,700 premature deaths in the US in 2015, a new study finds. From 2007 to 2015, energy generation from solar and wind increased rapidly while fossil fuel price changes slashed overall electricity-sector emissions. In the new study, the researchers evaluated the effect of solar and wind energy production on public health in the US over this time period. “We find cumulative wind and solar air-quality benefits of 2015 US$29.7–112.8 billion mostly from 3,000 to 12,700 avoided premature mortalities, and cumulative climate benefits of 2015 US$5.3–106.8 billion,” the researchers say. Wind and solar energy production is thought to improve public health by reducing the need for combustion-based electricity which drives harmful air pollution.

Tropical rainforests are currently considered to be carbon sinks because they soak up more CO2 than they release. However, as climate change causes rainforests to become warmer and drier, a new study suggests they could “transition from a sink to a source of carbon”. Researchers studied the carbon dynamics of a Puerto Rican forest to design a mathematical model that can project how global warming will affect the activity of rainforests. “Under a future warming and drying climate scenario, the model predicted reductions in carbon storage and tree growth, together with large shifts in forest community composition and structure,” the researchers say.