Many publications report that the US Senate has defeated the “green new deal” resolution that called for radical action to tackle climate change. The vote was 57 against the resolution in the 100-member chamber, with 43 Democrats voting “present,” avoiding an up-or-down vote, Reuters reports. A second Reuters story offers more detail on the reaction to the defeat. Democrats called the vote “a political stunt” by Republicans and said the “issue will not die”, Reuters says. “Democrats have said the plan…was designed to spur debate during the 2020 campaign on the intricate problem of how to tackle climate change while boosting the economy, not to force the party to take sides in a quick vote,” Reuters says. “But Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell forced a vote before the plan had the chance for a national debate or hearings in Congress.” The move reveals a Republican plan to “try to sow discord among Democrats, painting their rivals as shifting to socialism and embracing extreme policies”, Reuters adds. President Donald Trump also spoke out against the plan, which the White House called “job crushing”, the Guardian reports. The Guardian also had a live blog covering the vote “as it happened”. A third Guardian story carries a “fiery speech” from congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has played a large role in pushing for a green new deal. The Atlanticoffers more detail on the three democrats who voted against it. Senator Bernie Sanders, a co-sponsor of the resolution and leading presidential candidate, voted “present” with the rest of the Democrats, Politico reports. The Hill reports on how one senator mocked the green new deal with “a poster of Reagan riding a dinosaur”. The New York Times and Axios also cover the vote.

Labour’s shadow treasury minister Clive Lewis and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas are set to jointly table a private members bill that would require the UK government to deliver a “green new deal” and ramp up efforts to tackle climate change, report BusinessGreen and others. The “Decarbonisation and Economic Strategy Bill” calls on the government to deliver a “radical” 10-year strategy for public investment to help cut emissions, introduce stricter environmental regulations, protect and restore natural habitats and “eradicate inequality”, BusinessGreen reports. The Independent says the move is “inspired by the measures being championed by Democrat representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the US”. Climate Home News also has the story.

The devastation caused by Cyclone Idai rings “yet another alarm bell” about climate change, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said yesterday, according to Reuters. “While scientists say single weather events cannot be attributed to climate change, they say global warming is causing more extreme rainfall and storms, sweltering heatwaves, shrinking harvests and worsening water shortages around the world,” the article adds.

In reaction to the US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calling for a vote on the green new deal, New York Times lead editorial writer Michelle Cottle asks: “Where’s your climate plan?” She writes: “The Senate majority leader, like so much of his party, has zero interest in climate change – or rather, he has no interest in pursuing policies to address what many regard as the defining crisis of our time. Mr McConnell is, however, passionate about making life politically awkward for the opposition.…The green new deal is by no means a fully baked proposal for combating climate change. But for all its flaws, it is a more promising first step than the Republican leaders’ chosen strategy of inaction and sneering denial.”

Climate scientist Ben Santer writes on how to deal with innate “chaos” – both in climate models and politics. “I am obsessed with “large initial-condition ensembles”— LICE. These are climate models that run multiple scenarios to reflect uncertainties about the system’s past,” he says. “In the real world, of course, we don’t have many slightly different parallel Earths or a handy time machine. We cannot tell the US voters of 2016 that by 2019, students around the world will be striking to protest government inaction on climate change. We cannot tell 2016 voters that some of them will witness the death and destruction caused by hurricanes Harvey, Maria, Florence and Michael. That Paradise will be lost in a firestorm.”

China is likely to peak its emissions “well in advance of 2030” if it implements all of its current policies, successfully concludes its power-sector reform and fully implements its national emissions-trading system (ETS), a study finds. To determine if current climate policies are sufficient, researchers combined survey results from 18 experts on China’s energy and climate policies with modelling. The authors found that an early peak in carbon emissions is “likely”, assuming full implementation of existing and announced policies.

Climate change could cause subalpine rainforests, such as those found in Tasmania, to become less resilient to fire, a study finds. The research uses ancient pollen and charcoal records to explore how past climates could have influenced fire resilience in Tasmania’s rainforests. The research shows warming is associated with a loss of resilience to fire. “This heralds a significant threat to this and other slow growing, poorly dispersed and fire sensitive forest systems that are common in the southern mid to high latitudes,” the authors say.