Over the weekend, there was continued coverage of The Trump administration’s plans to ease restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. In a plan expected to be made public in coming days, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to declare that Obama’s regulations exceeded federal law by setting emissions targets that power plants could not reasonably meet, according to a leaked document obtained by the Associated Press. The move would fit Trump’s agenda of pulling back Obama’s efforts to cut global warming and would follow his vow to exit the Paris Agreement. The Hill has also seen a draft of the 46-page document. “The EPA is proposing to repeal the CPP in its entirety,” the agency writes in the notice that would be published in the Federal Register, according to the Hill. “The EPA proposes to take this action because it proposes to determine that the rule exceeds its authority under the statute, that those portions of the rule which arguably do not exceed its authority are not severable and separately implementable, and that it is not appropriate for a rule that exceeds statutory authority — especially a rule of this magnitude and with this level of impact on areas of traditional state regulatory authority — to remain in existence pending a potential, successive rulemaking process.” However, the New York Times reports that the courts could thwart Trump’s efforts to diminish environmental regulations. The Wall Street Journal and CNN also have the story.

The Green Party is to challenge five UK cities to achieve zero emissions in their centres by 2023. Co-leader Jonathan Bartley is expected to tell local authorities in London, Sheffield, Bristol, Leeds and Oxford to commit to cutting inner-city emissions at the party’s annual conference. Bartley will tell the party: “The Government has allowed a public health crisis to unfold right under its nose. Its own plans to clean up our air are so bad they are illegal.” Meanwhile, a fringe event at the conference has been told that Brexit could be an opportunity for the UK to create new ambitious laws to restore the environment, DeSmogBlogreports. At a fringe event titled ‘What Brexit means for our environment’, Ruth Davis, Deputy Director of the Global Environment Programme for RSPB told the party’s annual conference in Harrogate: “We should not see Brexit as a vote for deregulation and reducing standards.”

The University of Cambridge’s £6.3bn endowment fund is facing renewed calls to stop its investments in fossil fuels. More than 60 academics and campaigners, including Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, and Noam Chomsky, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have called for an end to carbon-intensive investments that are “incompatible with the Paris climate agreement”. “Continuing to invest in fossil fuel companies is not only a financial risk to the University of Cambridge, but reputational too,” the coalition of academics and campaigners said in a joint statement.

The world’s leaders must do more to protect indigenous people in order to help the fight against climate change, the UN rapporteur has said. UN special rapporteur Victoria Tauli-Corpuz urged politicians to recognise the role that indigenous people play in protecting forests, which “act as the world’s lungs”. “It is in the self interest of states and even corporations in the medium and long term to protect and listen to these people – the question is, will they realise this in time?” said Tauli-Corpuz. Meanwhile, Sweden’s head of international development agency called for politicians to learn from the practices of indigenous people, Reuters reports. “Indigenous people often live and work from forests, land and water in different ways and they use them in a sustainable way because they need to survive,” Carin Jämtin told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In a preview of the government’s clean growth plan, expected on Thursday, the Telegraph’s business reporter Jillian Ambrose writes: “In the coming week, the Government’s clean growth plan will bring together a kaleidoscope of closely ­inter-related sectors through the prism of economic productivity. And the pattern that emerges will be decidedly green.” According to Ambrose, the plan is likely to touch on carbon capture and storage (CCS) for industrial areas and low-carbon methane for the gas grid, as well as the government’s “Faraday Challenge” to boost electric vehicle battery development and its 2040 ban on traditional cars. The preview also cites Tata Steel’s role in manufacturing materials for electric cars and the industrial boost from offshore wind factories in the northeast.

The three words that best describe recent hurricanes Irma and Maria are “unfamiliar”, “unprecedented” and “unfamiliar”, writes Dr Michael Taylor, a physicist based at the University of the West Indies. “Although the Caribbean islands are minuscule emitters of greenhouse gases, they have made bold commitments regarding future use,” he writes. “But in the end, the future viability of the region is premised on collective global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

CO2 emissions from coal-fired power stations in India could increase by 147% by 2025, a new study estimates. The increase would largely attributed to rising energy demand due to industrial development, followed by demand from the domestic and agricultural sectors. Such a rise would propel India to become world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases by 2025, the researchers say – dislodging the US.