Most UK newspapers report the news that the plan to build the first power plant to utilise wave energy has been scrapped by the government. The scheme in Swansea Bay, Wales, involved building a six-mile u-shaped sea wall with turbines, to generate clean energy from the power of the tides. The UK’s business secretary Greg Clark said that the £1.3bn project was not value for money, despite a revised ‘cheaper’ offer by the developers, the BBC reports. More than £35 million had already been spent developing the project, but the government said that electricity from the lagoon would cost three times as much per unit as offshore wind and new nuclear power, the Times says. “The inescapable conclusion of an extensive analysis is, however novel and appealing the proposal that has been made is … the cost that would be incurred by consumers and taxpayers would be so much higher than alternative sources of low-carbon power that it would be irresponsible to enter into a contract with the provider”, Clark told parliament. The news has dashed “industry hopes of Britain leading development of a new source of renewable energy” and sparked “widespread criticism”, the Guardian writes. The shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, commented: “Once again the Tories have defied all logic and failed to make the right decision for our economy, the people of Wales and the future of our planet.” Wales Online, the Financial Times and the Independent also have the story.

The UK government has approved plans to build a third runway at Heathrow airport, winning the motion by 415 votes to 119 yesterday evening. The decision was made “despite fierce protests from environmental campaigners and concerns from local residents”, BusinessGreen reports. A “cross-party group of councils” is set to launch a legal challenge against the decision to allow Europe’s busiest airport to grow by 50%, the Times reports. The opposition of four west London authorities, which is backed by Greenpeace and London’s mayor Sadiq Khan, could delay the project by more than two years, experts told the paper. In a letter to Theresa May, they objected to the decision on the grounds of “excessive noise, air pollution, carbon emissions and the destruction of communities”. Elsewhere, the Independent has a Q&A on the expansion, and also investigates whether the third runway could prevent the UK from meeting its climate change targets. Leo Murray, director of campaigning group Fellow Travellers, told the paper that the future of domestic flights is very clear: “If Britain moves to a net zero 2050 target to honour the Paris agreement, all domestic flights will need to end pretty much immediately”.

A US judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought by two Californian cities against big oil companies over the costs of coping with climate change. The New York Times describes the decision as a “stinging defeat” for San Francisco and Oakland, and one that “raises warning flags” for other local authorities attempting similar legal battles. Judge William Alsup acknowledged climate change science and the risks to the planet – as did the fossil fuel companies involved in the case – but noted that the world has also benefited significantly from fossil fuels, ABC Newsreports. “The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case,” Alsup concluded. John Cote, a spokesman for the San Francisco city attorney’s office, said that it would decide its next steps “shortly”, but added that: “we’re pleased that the court recognised that the science of global warming is no longer in dispute”. The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and KFGO also carry the story.

Mysteriously high levels of a greenhouse gas banned under the 1987 Montreal Protocol were detected by a paper published in Nature last month. Now the Environmental Investigation Agency has identified eight companies in four Chinese provinces illegally using CFC-11 in the production of plastic foams, which damage the ozone layer and the climate. A factory owner in Shandong province told the New York Times that he only found out that the chemical was bad for the atmosphere last year, and that it was cheaper than substitutes.

Atlanta, a US city “in a deep red state”, has announced a plan reach 100% renewable energy by 2050, Inside Climate News reports, in an effort to “fight climate change, improve health and bolster the economy all at once”. This makes it the latest of more than 70 US cities to adopt a 100% renewable electricity goal, according to the Sierra Club, and the largest city in the South to make the pledge.

“Climate change is intangible and complicated, which makes it an easy target for our era of fake news,” writes Harder in her weekly Axios column. She continues: “I’ve been covering this issue for nearly a decade, and I still haven’t learned the science enough to know quickly and confidently the science behind why a certain piece of information — such as that sea level rise op-ed in the [Wall Street] Journal — is wrong, even when I know it doesn’t sound right. I seek out scientists and other reputable experts to help distill it.” But because “people take cue from leaders”, she concludes, “until or unless people in those positions either leave or change opinions, it could be difficult to change the masses”.

“Even discounting the effect of US emissions on the goal of limiting change to 2C, it’s simply very hard for international agreements to function without the US behaving as the enforcer”, argues David Graham in the Atlantic. “That makes Paris an interesting test case for whether global agreements can work with America withdrawing from the stage, and if so, whether anyone else can step up”. He continues: “China is an emerging superpower, and pundits have long speculated that it could replace the US as the dominant force in international agreements”, but “so far, however, that isn’t happening”. “It turns out that while American power has sometimes bullied other countries into doing what they don’t want, it’s also a useful tool for forcing them to do the things they want to do but can’t on their own”, he concludes.

The UK government is “offering a false trade-off” on the Heathrow airport expansion: job creation is irrelevant if we do not protect the planet for future generations, argues Amelia Womack, deputy leader of the UK’s Green Party, in the New Statesman. “So why isn’t climate change the major factor in the Heathrow conversation that it ought to be?”, she asks. “A huge part of the problem is that the anti-expansion side isn’t being led by environmentalists”, but by locals concerned about noise and air pollution. “The devastating effect expansion will have on local residents is vitally important. But it should be matched by the threat posed to our planet”. “Instead of investing money into flights, let’s put it into other forms of transport, like our railways; the best way to connect post-industrial parts of northern England and Wales to the rest of the country”, she concludes.

The New York Times investigates the work of a group of scientists in Philadelphia, who are studying what it takes to kill “super coral”, in order to better understand the impact of humans on the deep ocean’s reefs. “Much less is known about how humans are influencing reefs in the deep sea, where slow-growing cold-water corals may make up two-thirds of all coral species”, Klein explains. But offshore drilling, trawling and climate change are potential threats. The group is studying the widely abundant Lophelia pertusa, a “super coral”, that has been found to be “better at withstanding industrial and climatic stressors than other deep sea corals, and in some places more than others”. Now the group is investigating “just how much Lophelia can take”. The most hardy corals will be candidates for efforts to restore environments affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

Using low carbon energy to produce “negative emissions hydrogen” could be more than 50 times as effective at generating energy and removing CO2 from the atmosphere than biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), a new study suggests. The researchers assess the potential of producing hydrogen through electrolysis powered by non-fossil fuel energy, while at the same time removing CO2 through enhanced weathering. “Such energy systems could also greatly reduce land and freshwater impacts relative to BECCS, and could also be integrated into conventional energy production to reduce its carbon footprint,” the researchers conclude.

A new paper looks into the extent to which coastal societies will be able to adapt to rising sea levels during this century. The researchers pull together perspectives from coastal engineering, economics, finance and social sciences. They include a range of case studies from around the world, comparing technological limits, economic and financial barriers to adaptation and potential social conflicts.

Over the past 3.5m years, there have been several intervals when climate conditions were warmer than during the last 12,000 years. Although past intervals of warming were forced differently than future changes, such periods can provide insights into potential future climate impacts and ecosystem feedbacks. This study suggests that there is a low risk of runaway greenhouse gas feedbacks for global warming of no more than 2C. A global average warming of 1C to 2C has been accompanied by significant shifts in climate zones and the distribution of ecosystems. Sustained warming has also led to substantial reductions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, with sea-level increases of at least several metres. A comparison of palaeo observations with climate model results suggests that, due to the lack of certain feedback processes, model-based climate projections may underestimate long-term warming by as much as a factor of two, and thus may also underestimate long-timescale sea-level rise.