The world is facing a new kind of climate denial, veteran Brazilian diplomat André Corrêa do Lago, president-designate of the upcoming COP30 climate summit, has warned in an interview with the Guardian. He tells the publication: “There is a new kind of opposition to climate action. We are facing a discredit of climate policies. I don’t think we are facing climate denial. It’s not a scientific denial, it’s an economic denial.” According to Corrêa do Lago, this economic denial could be just as dangerous as attacks on climate science, the article continues. He “wants to spur a new global effort to persuade people that remodelling the economy away from a reliance on fossil fuels and towards a clean energy future will reap benefits for all people”, it adds. He tells the Guardian: “The new populism is trying to show [that tackling climate change does not work]. It’s the turn of those who believe in the fight against climate change to show and to prove that fighting climate change is possible, and that it can come with economic advantages and with a better quality of life.”

A Swiss glacier has collapsed, partially destroying the village of Blatten, reports BBC News. The village’s 300 inhabitants had been evacuated on 19 May after geologists monitoring the area warned that it was unstable. However, one person has been reported missing, it adds. Many homes have been completely flattened by the collapse, and the Swiss government has promised to provide funding to ensure that residents can stay locally, the article states. “Climate change is causing the glaciers – frozen rivers of ice – to melt faster and faster, and the permafrost, often described as the glue that holds the high mountains together, is also thawing,” BBC News notes. According to an official of the canton of Valais, where Blatten is located, 90% of the village was covered by the landslide, reports Reuters. Millions of cubic metres of rock and soil have tumbled down since Blatten was first evacuated when a part of the glacier began to crumble, and experts began to warn that it could bring the ice mass down, it adds.

A German court has rejected a lawsuit brought by Peruvian farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya against energy giant RWE, reports BBC News. The “long-awaited decision” follows Lliuya arguing that the company’s emissions contributed to the melting of a glacier in Peru, ultimately threatening his hometown of Huaraz, it adds. The ruling confirmed the legal principle that polluters could be held accountable for climate damage, but found that, in this case, the flood risk from the glacier was not high enough, reports the Financial Times. “The setback for climate litigators could slow the momentum of related ongoing cases in Europe against big polluters, including Swiss cement company Holcim and French energy company TotalEnergies”, the article adds. German energy giant RWE, which has never operated in Peru, denies legal responsibility and instead argues that climate change is a global issue with many contributors, reports the Associated Press. Lliuya argued that RWE should pay for 0.5% of the flood defences as it had emitted 0.5% of global emissions since the industrial revolution, or about $17,500, explains Reuters. The decision at the Hamm Higher Regional Court against Lliuya rests on an expert finding that the flood risk is not high enough to “investigate the existence of a causal link between RWE’s CO2 emissions and the alleged danger to the plaintiff’s property”, reports Inside Climate News. Despite the dismissal of  Lliuya’s case, which now cannot be appealed, many have welcomed it as a positive step for climate litigation as it sets a precedent that polluters may be held liable for the costs of climate change, reports the Guardian. This could encourage more communities to “seek justice through the courts”, notes Climate Home News. It quotes Dr Delta Merner, of the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union for Concerned Scientists, who says: “The ruling confirmed that climate science can provide a basis for legal liability, which is a critical precedent in the broader push for climate accountability.” This story was also covered by Bloomberg, Euronews, Al Jazeera and others. 

The UK’s nature-friendly farming budget is to be slashed in the upcoming spending review, so that only small farms can apply for it, the Guardian reveals. According to sources in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the post-Brexit fund will be severely reduced as part of a “swathe of cuts to departments”, it adds. The Labour government’s promise to provide £5bn over two years, from 2024 to 2026, will be honoured, but following this funding will be “slashed for all but a few farms”, the article notes. “The nature-friendly farming fund is a package of payments that replaced the EU’s common agricultural policy and paid land managers for the amount of land in their care, with the aim of paying farmers to look after nature, soil and other public goods, rather than simply for farming and owning land. Many farms rely on these payments to make ends meet”, the Guardian explains. The move to “slash lifeline subsidies” is part of chancellor Rachel Reeves’ attempts to find £30bn in cuts within the upcoming spending review, reports the Daily Mail. 

In other UK news, spring was the sunniest on record, with a warm summer set to follow, reports the Times. The Met Office found that the UK recorded 630 hours of sunshine from 1 March to 27 May, it adds. This beats the previous record set in 2020, and means that seven of the top 10 sunniest springs have all happened since 2000, reports the Daily Mail. A change to planning rules will make it easier for heat pumps to be installed in the UK, reports BBC News. 

Elsewhere, there is continued coverage of claims made by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage that, if elected, he would fund tax cuts by scrapping net-zero, (covered in yesterday’s Daily Briefing). Farage said this would save £45bn a year, citing calculations by the Institute for Government, reports the Guardian. However, Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the institute, said this was a figure for both private and public spending, and the “bulk of spending on energy infrastructure is going to come from the private sector”, the newspaper adds. Experts have dubbed his plans to spend £85bn if he wins the next election as “implausible”, with others arguing that the “sums don’t add up”, adds the Daily Mail. 

A letter by Brazil’s COP30 president-designate André Corrêa do Lago has called on countries to “restore multilateralism” and strengthen their climate commitments ahead of UN climate talks in Bonn in June this year, Folha de São Paulo reports. This is the third letter released by the COP30 presidency and the first time it refers to fossil fuels, the newspaper says. The Brazilian presidency states that it is working “to usher in a new era of putting into practice what has already been agreed, such as ending deforestation and achieving the energy transition”. At climate talks in Bonn, Germany next month, Brazil will push for “early deals” on just transition and the implementation of recommendations from the “global stocktake” so that these decisions can be approved at COP30, reports Climate Home News. The outlet adds that climate negotiations kicked off at climate week in Panama last week. Meanwhile, the Guardian covers criticism raised by environmental activists in Brazil, who question the potential approval of a bill which “would dismantle licensing processes and increase the risk of widespread destruction”, with projects in mining, infrastructure, energy and farming. 

In other Latin American news, Mexico’s environment ministry presented an updated national climate change strategy, which ratified the country’s commitment to reduce 35% of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and stressed the need to create a national adaptation plan, La Jornada reports. 

Finally, El Espectador reports that Colombia’s environment ministry announced measures to tackle deforestation and protect environmental officers, including increased funding, new nature reserve zones and intercultural governance.

China is asking its coal-fired power plants to increase thermal coal stockpiles by 10% and import less in an effort to “shore up domestic prices” and “support miners whose profits are under pressure”, according to unnamed sources, Reuters reports. The newswire adds that China’s coal sector, which is already facing “rising stockpiles” following the “shortages and blackouts” in recent years, is “churning out more coal than even the world’s largest thermal power fleet can consume”. State-run newspaper China Daily reports that China’s “robust economic growth” will require “massive renewable energy buildout and significant grid upgrades”, according to a new report released by the State Grid Energy Research Institute, which predicts that China’s primary energy consumption will peak after 2035 at over 7bn metric tonnes of standard coal equivalent. 

Nikkei Asia reports that China’s export restrictions on rare earth minerals could “halt production at European manufacturers within days”, according to the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. China’s Ningbo-Zhoushan port will cooperate with two other major ports in Germany and Spain to “construct green shipping corridors…between China and Europe”, Xinhua reports. China Daily publishes an opinion article by Yu Hongyuan, professor at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, and Greenpeace East Asia’s He Jing arguing that China’s “large-scale production capacity” and the EU’s leading position in areas such as “green infrastructure”, smart grids and energy-efficient buildings provide a “solid foundation for bilateral cooperation” in low-carbon development.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports that China, southeast Asian nations and six Gulf states have pledged to “foster closer cooperation with a strong emphasis on economic integration and energy collaboration”, adding that they also call for cooperation in areas including “green energy”. Tanjiaoyi reports that Sun Jinlong, party secretary of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), visited Russia and the United Arab Emirates last week, where he emphasised the “importance of multilateralism in addressing climate change”. China Daily says that Brazil is “increasingly looking toward China” as the country seeks to “reshape” its economy to be centred on “expanding renewable energy”.

Reuters reports that China “issued alerts for heavy rain and flooding in southern regions, forecasting the most intense storms of the year so far”, adding that “China faces longer, more intense heat waves and more frequent and unpredictable heavy rain which meteorologists attributed to climate change”. Zhao Ke, a director at the MEE, says that the draft of China’s “ecology and environment code” will set principles for future legislation in areas such as climate change response, Xinhua reports.

Bloomberg Opinion columnist Rosa Prince argues that there is an opportunity for the UK’s Green Party to become a “genuine player seeking to wield power at a national level” in the run-up to the party’s leadership election. Several factors make the election more significant than others, including the election of four Green MPs last year, success in recent local elections and the party “drawing closer to their rivals in terms of predicted vote share”, she continues. “After a couple of decades in which the main parties vied to capture the votes of those concerned about climate change, the turf has recently been vacated by Labour and the Conservatives, partly due to cost-of-living pressures making the path to net-zero seem unaffordable but also to pressure from the decidedly not-environmentally-friendly Reform,” Prince argues. She concludes that, “as the big parties abandon net-zero”, the Green party becomes more relevant than ever, but that the leadership must “resist the pressure to pander to progressives and focus on building a coalition that transcends the left-right divide”. 

In other comment, Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover questions Farage’s budgetary claims, writing that it is neither “practicable, or indeed desirable” to scrap net-zero entirely, and adding that he doubts “any British government can simply pretend that climate change doesn’t exist”. Also in the Daily Mail, climate-sceptic writer Ross Clark questions how Starmer can square his “absurd net-zero drive” with plans to expand datacentres. In BusinessGreen, the chief executive of the Wildlife Trust, Craig Bennett, argues that nature isn’t holding back growth, following news that Labour plans to cut wildlife protections for some small housing developments. In the Daily Telegraph, economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth writes that “New York’s monstrous new windfarm threatens environmental disaster”. 

Variations in concentrations of air pollutants, such as tropospheric ozone, have contributed to an increase in the global methane sink in recent decades, a new study finds. The researchers use observations and models to measure how variations in air pollutants influence the methane sink. They find that enhanced tropospheric ozone, increased water vapour and decreased carbon monoxide levels contributed to a growth in the global methane sink of 1.3-2m tonnes per year from 2005-21. This “buffer[ed] atmospheric methane growth rates”, the study authors note.