Republican presidential contender Donald Trump said yesterday that he would renegotiate America’s role in the UN Paris climate agreement, Reuters reports. A back-track by the world’s second biggest carbon-emitting country would severely impede the deal reached by nearly 200 nations last December, that for the first time found a common vision for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. “I will be looking at that very, very seriously, and at a minimum I will be renegotiating those agreements, at a minimum. And at a maximum I may do something else” Trump said in an interview with Reuters. “Those agreements are one-sided agreements and they are bad for the United States”, he continued. Trump said that he did not believe China, the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases, would adhere to its pledge under the Paris deal. The US and China have promised to formally approve the deal by the end of 2016, with the US promising a 26-28% domestic reduction in greenhouse gases by 2025 compared to 2005, while China pledged to halt increases in carbon emissions by 2030. Republicans have criticised the pact because while the US has pledged to cut emissions, emerging economies like India and China agreed to slow the rate of growth, the Hill says. Trump has said that he believes global warming is a concept that was invented by China to hurt the competitiveness of US business. Meanwhile his rival Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic contender, has advocated shifting the country to 50% clean energy by 2030. Climate Home, Carbon Pulse and Grist also cover the story.

The French government has reiterated its support for EDF’s plan to build an £18 billion nuclear power plant in Somerset, which would generate 7% of the UK’s electricity. “I am in favour of this project going ahead,” France’s President Francois Hollande told Europe 1 radio. “It’s very important to understand that we need a high-performance, highly secure nuclear industry in France and that we cannot let others take over terrain”. EDF, which is 85% owned by the French government, had been expected to make a final decision on the project this month, but the decision was delayed after a dispute with French unions and EDF workers, who fear that the plant would damage the company’s finances. The Guardian also has the story.

France will set a carbon price floor of about €30 ($33.95) a tonne in its 2017 finance bill as the government seeks to kickstart broader European action to cut emissions, the Guardian reports. Following a meeting with European Union ambassadors on the Paris climate agreement, France’s environment minister, Ségolène Royal, told journalists that France was also taking steps towards a floor price for carbon: “I told them that France will fix a carbon price in the next finance law of about €30 per tonne and it is very important that this momentum is followed by a coalition of other countries”.

The price of oil hit its highest level in seven months yesterday, with Brent crude touching a high of $49.47, as huge wildfires in western central Canada triggered further disruption to the country’s crude production. A massive wildfire in Alberta has threatened major oil sands production facilities, forcing the evacuation of thousands of workers, Canadian oil output by 1 million barrels a day Reuters reports. High temperatures and winds were working against firefighters, and the fire is forecast to move to the east, putting oil operations in its path, officials said, although none of the oil sands have caught fire yet. Reuters also has the story.

The boss of one the world’s largest oil companies has said it will continue to invest in the UK and that oil and gas production in the North Sea has a future, the BBC writes. “There is a future for the North Sea, no doubt about it,” said Patrick Pouyanne, speaking at the official opening of a new gas plant in Shetland. His comments follow an estimated 65,000 job losses in the industry and warnings about a collapse in investment.

Plans by Japan to build dozens of coal-fired power stations will cause at least 10,000 premature deaths, according to a joint report by Greenpeace and the environmental group Kiko Network. Japan’s plans to expand coal production after the Fukushima disaster closed down almost all of its nuclear plants come at a price to human health and “lock in carbon emissions for decades”, they say.

82 bodies representing more than 300,000 doctors, nurses and other health professionals from 30 countries, have today called on G7 leaders to accelerate transition away from coal-fired electricity, to minimise the risk to human health from poor air quality. The statement, which comes ahead of a G7 meeting later this month in Japan, adds to growing political pressure for action on air pollution. “Eliminating air pollution from coal-fired power plants provides immediate and significant air pollution related health benefits and health care savings,” the joint statement reads. “A coal phase-out also slows climate change, thereby reducing current and future illnesses and deaths from heatwaves, droughts, malnutrition, flooding, air pollution and wildfires.”

Sir David King, UK Special Representative for Climate Change, recently threw cold water on the prospects of carbon pricing as an effective tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But pricing carbon is key to spurring the quick deployment of existing low-carbon technologies that we need, argue Judy Hindley and Brian Utton in the Guardian.

Climate scientists Andrew King and Ed Hawkins outline why we’re already predicting that 2016 is going to be the hottest year on record, beating the previous record set in 2015. “The main reason why scientists are so sure that 2016 will be the hottest year is El Niño”, they write, which has been among the strongest on record. The contribution of climate change will not have changed much in a year: as in 2015, 2016 will be an estimated “1℃ hotter than it would have been without human-caused climate change”. “Even if El Niño is driving the 2016 record, we can say that the temperatures of this year…would be virtually impossible without climate change”.

Soil microbes are our “microscopic allies” in making dirt a major resource for storing excess carbon, says Esther Ngumbi in a guest blog for Scientific American. Therefore soil degradation not only threatens food security, but also the ability of the soils to sequester carbon. What’s more, these microbes can increase plant defences against insect pest populations that are expected to increase under climate change, and help them tolerate higher temperatures and drought brought about by climate change. “Protecting the soils that are home to our allies -soil microbes- is a game changer”, she writes.

A new study investigates how fish adapt to warmer waters using a unique “Biotest enclosure” – a coastal ecosystem in the Baltic Sea that has been warmed by 5–10 C by a nuclear power plant for over three decades. Monitoring European perch, the researchers find that the fish grow faster than those living at natural temperatures in adjacent waters, and their energy needs and cardiorespiratory functions are lower when at rest. However, the upper heat tolerance of the fish stays the same in the warmed conditions, the researchers say, which will limit the adaptive capacity of fish in a warming climate.