Democrats in the US Senate have set out their proposals for a $400bn-a-year climate plan, Reuters reports. The article quotes Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer saying: “When Democrats retake the majority in the Senate…passing climate legislation will be a top priority.” The Hill says the 200-page climate plan “has the broad goals of increasing federal spending on climate action to 2% of gross domestic product each year”, adding: “It also calls for the whole world to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.” For Vox, David Roberts says that Senate Democrats “want to build a climate coalition that can take on the Kochs”. He writes that the new plan is “noteworthy for two reasons”. First, Roberts argues that the Senate plan’s “alignment with climate activists is no small thing”, given it is “typically seen as one of the stodgier and more conservative Democratic institutions”. Second, he says the Senate plan is “focused on the political barriers to [climate] action, getting allies on the same page, and overcoming well-funded opponents”. A piece in the Atlantic says Democratic senators “are trying to save climate policy from the Senate”, describing the institution as “the world’s greatest obstacle to dealing with climate change”. A news analysis from the New York Times reports that while Democrats are united to defeat incumbent President Trump, there is “plenty of daylight between [their] plans and what progressives want to see” on issues such as climate change. Meanwhile, analysis for the Washington Post runs under the headline: “Trump and the RNC [the Republican National Convention taking place this week] ignore the biggest crisis of all.” The piece says: “Across the United States, there are signs of climate disaster…Yet if you listen to the Republican National Convention this week, talk of the threat posed by climate change will be wholly, if predictably, absent.”

In other US news, the Hill reports that green groups are challenging a Trump administration plan that would “open 82% of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to drilling”.

The Guardian reports new analysis showing that Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are being “underestimated” by about 10% due to the way methane is included in the figures. The paper notes that the Australian government has “committed to a ‘gas-led recovery’” from the coronavirus pandemic. Separately, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel “has defended his position on the use of natural gas after being criticised by some of the nation’s leading climate change scientists, saying it would remain one of the nation’s key energy sources”. The Guardian also reports on Finkel’s response. It notes that the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) “last month found additional gas-fired power was an option, but not essential, for an electricity grid increasingly based on renewable energy”. It continues: “Guardian Australia asked Finkel in June why his assessment on gas differed with a draft version of Aemo’s plan, and whether there was modelling or empirical analysis to support his belief that more gas was critical to the national grid. He said he was basing his assessment ‘on the real-world experience of Britain, California and South Australia’.” Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Penny Sackett, Australia’s chief scientist from 2008-2011, argues that contrary to her successor’s view, “gas is not a transition fuel to a safe climate”. She concludes: “Gas will have a role in the near term, certainly, but the science is clear. The role of gas needs to be a significantly declining one, not a growing one, if we are to avoid the worst of climate change so that Australia’s future is safe, sustainable and competitively modern.” An editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald, published yesterday, runs under the headline: “Environmental doubts over natural gas cannot be ignored.”

In other news from Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that air pollution from coal-fired power stations is “killing 800 Australians a year”, according to a new study. The Guardian, meanwhile, reports that the Australian government has finalised a A$3.6m grant to a company proposing a new coal-fired power station in the country. The money will pay a feasibility study into the Collinsville scheme, the paper says. A second Guardian story reports that the proposed coal plant “will never proceed as renewables are cheaper”, according to several Liberal MPs from the ruling Liberal-National coalition.

The financial impacts of extreme weather events, such as fires, floods, hurricanes and droughts, has quadrupled since 1980, InsideClimate News reports, citing a new study commissioned by NGO the Environmental Defense Fund. According to the outlet, the report finds that costs are expected to rise as global warming increases. Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald covers a separate report showing that extreme fires in New South Wales are to become “more frequent” as a result of climate change, with the increase “overwhelming any gains” due to hazard-reduction burning.

In related developments, an editorial in the Los Angeles Times says that with the California fire season only just beginning, the state has already had two of the three largest wildfires in history. It says “this terrifying start to fire season was entirely predictable”, adding: “Forecasters have repeatedly warned that climate change will fuel larger, more frequent and more devastating wildfires in the state. And that’s what we’re seeing.” A piece for New Scientist reports: “Scientists say climate change helped set the stage for the hot and dry conditions” that are behind the current fires. Vox looks at “what makes California’s current major wildfires so unusual” and Bloomberg speaks to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, “[who] has emerged as one of the foremost voices explaining how California became a climate tinderbox”. A feature for the New York Times looks at how the “heat, smoke and Covid are battering the workers [in California] that feed America”.

Finally, the Financial Times reports that California is “bet[ing] on batteries to ease blackout worries” after a “record heatwave pushed California’s electric grid to the brink last week”.

A slump in demand due to coronavirus has pushed Asian coal prices down by 25% this year, says Reuters, reporting the view of “traders and analysts” that the fuel was unlikely to see rising prices before the end of the year. A second Reuters piece reports that India is planning to “significantly reduce” its imports of thermal coal, used to generate electricity. The piece quotes a senior official in India’s coal ministry saying: “Future of coal is not as bright as it used to be in past, but it is not as bleak as some people might say because coal continues to be an important player in the energy mix of the country for at least next 30 years.” A Deutsche Welle news feature reports that India remains “wedded to coal even as solar prices plummet”. The piece notes: “According to the IEA [International Energy Agency], Indian solar power is now nearly 75% cheaper than power from coal.” In other coal news, BNamericas reports that the lower house of Chile’s congress is “pushing plans to accelerate the country’s coal retirement plan”. The draft proposal “would shut down all coal-fired plants by 2025”, the website reports, much earlier than the 2040 date agreed between the government and energy firms last year.

Several outlets report that Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has returned to school after a gap year. According to Reuters, in her gap year Thunberg has “emerged as the voice of young people trying to save the planet from global warming and a thorn in the side of politicians she sees as dragging their heels over change”. BBC News looks back at the highlights from her year off and the Independent also has the story.

“Rising consumption by the affluent has a far greater environmental impact than the birth rate in poorer nations,” writes Guardian columnist George Monbiot. He argues that the link between people’s environmental footprint and population “is widely used as a blanket explanation of environmental breakdown” and adds that the “excessive emphasis on population growth has a grim history” that includes racism. He says: “So a good way of deciding whether someone’s population concerns are genuine is to look at their record of campaigning against structural poverty.” Monbiot concludes: “Panic about population growth enables the people most responsible for the impacts of rising consumption (the affluent) to blame those who are least responsible.”

The quality of organic milk from dairy cows can be reduced by heat stress, according to a study conducted in Spain. The authors collected data from 23 weather stations and 14,424 milk test-days for milk yield and milk fat and protein content from July 2011 to June 2013. As an indicator of heat stress, the researchers used the maximum daily temperature–humidity index (THI) from 2 days before the milk test date. The authors say: “Although the milk yield of cows in the organic farming systems analysed appeared resilient to heat stress conditions, milk quality, a major selling point for organic dairy products, was negatively affected.”