The UN’s head of climate change Simon Stiell has urged citizens to “raise their voices” over climate change, as more than half of the world goes to the polls this year, reports the Financial Times. In a speech at Chatham House in London yesterday, Stiell said there is a “disconnect” between the climate action ordinary people wanted their countries to take and the response from governments, it continues. Stiell warned that humanity has just two years left to “save the world” by making dramatic changes to emissions and even less time to get the finances for this shift, reports the Associated Press. Stiell said that he knows his warning may sound “melodramatic”, but action over the next two years is “essential”, it adds. He noted that the years to 2025 will be pivotal because of “record shattering heat” and a race between countries to “a new clean energy economy”, reports the Times. In his speech, Stiell also said that the World Bank must take a “quantum leap” to provide climate finance, or face a “climate-driven economic catastrophe” that would bring the world’s economies to a halt, reports the Guardian. “Averting a climate-driven economic catastrophe is core business”, Stiell continued, promising global economic renewal for both developed and developing nations, if they shift to a low carbon economy, the newspaper notes. Stiell has proposed a range of new climate finance sources as “It’s hard for any government to invest in renewables or climate resilience when the treasury coffers are bare, debt servicing costs have overtaken health spending, new borrowing is impossible and the wolves of poverty are at the door”, reports Inside Climate News. He pointed to propositions from the chair of the G20 Brazil to bring in minimum tax on billionaires and the International Maritime Organization to put a price on shipping emissions, it adds. This story was also covered by Reuters, the Independent, BusinessGreen, Energy Mix and others.

Global coal-fired power capacity grew by 2% in 2023, driven by new builds in China and decommissioning delays elsewhere, reports Reuters . A new report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM) – also covered by Carbon Brief – concluded that last year saw the highest annual increase in coal power capacity since 2016, clocking in at nearly 70 gigawatts (GW) of power commissioned across the world last year, including 47.4 GW in China, the newswire says. Outside of China, coal capacity grew for the first time since 2019, while just 21.1GW was shut down worldwide, the article notes. New coal plants were built in Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Japan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, South Korea, Greece and Zimbabwe, as well as China, reports the Guardian. The report’s authors said coal plants needed to shut at a faster pace, and that China needed to adopt stricter controls on its expansion of capacity, it continues. Scientists have warned that all coal plants should be shut by 2040 if warming is to be limited to 1.5C above pre-industrialised levels, and this requires plants to shut at a rate of at least 6% each, it adds. China accounted for two-thirds of the world’s newly operating coal plants last year, reports the New York Times. The country is planning to continue building coal power plants over the coming years, and if it builds all of its proposed plants this would equate to the equivalent of one-third of its current operating fleet, it adds. China currently accounts for 60% of the world’s coal use, followed by India and then the US, it notes. 

Separately, a report by LSEG found that the US is on track to cut the share of coal in national power generation to record lows over the coming months, explains a commentary in Reuters. Over the first three months of 2024, coal’s share in the power mix has been around 16%, down from 17% during the same period in 2023 and 24.3% in 2021, it adds.

Canada is at risk of another “catastrophic” wildfire season, the federal government has warned, as spring and summer temperature are forecast to be higher-than-normal, boosted by El Niño weather conditions, reports Reuters. In 2023, Canada endured its “worst-ever fire season”, with more than 6,600 fires burning 15m hectares of land, an area around seven times the annual average, it continues, adding that eight firefighters died and 230,000 people were evacuated from their homes. The article quotes Harjit Sajjan, Canada’s minister for emergency preparedness, who said: “The temperature trends are very concerning. With the heat and dryness across the country we can expect that the wildfire season will start sooner and end later and potentially be more explosive.” Persistent drought and above-average temperatures have now raised the potential of a repeat of last year’s fires, reports the Canadian Press. A briefing document prepared by the government forecasts that the fire risk for the spring shows conditions are “already ripe this year for an early and above-normal fire risk from Quebec all the way to British Columbia in both April and May”, it adds.

In other extreme-weather news, Russia and Kazakhstan have ordered more than 100,000 people to evacuate after melting snow swelled rivers beyond bursting point, leading to the worst flooding in the area for at least 70 years, reports Reuters. The meltwater has “overwhelmed scores of settlements in the Ural Mountains, Siberia and areas of Kazakhstan close to rivers such as the Ural and Tobol”, the article says, with local officials saying water had risen by metres in a matter of hours to the highest levels ever recorded. While it is not immediately clear why this year’s floods have been so severe, scientists say climate change has made flooding more frequent worldwide, the article notes. 

Elsewhere, sea surface temperatures 0.5-1.5C hotter than expected for this time of year have led to the Great Barrier Reef suffering the “most severe mass coral bleaching event on record”, reports the Guardian. Footage has been released showing bleaching damage 18 metres below the surface, following news last week that more than half of 1,000 individual reefs surveyed have been rated as having high or very high levels of bleaching, less than 10% had extreme bleaching and just a quarter were relatively unaffected, it adds.

China will raise “almost 300 environmental and safety standards by 2025” as the government “encourages upgrades of older machinery”, according to an action plan issued by China on upgrading consumer goods, reports Bloomberg. The plan entails “stricter rules for energy consumption and pollution emissions” and “higher standards for cars and home appliances”, it adds. State news agency Xinhua says the action plan covers equipment renewal, consumer goods trade-in and recovery and recycling, and calls for “strengthening research on low-carbon technology standards”. Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily says that the plan is not only a “powerful measure to enhance the momentum of economic growth”, but also an “appropriate measure to promote high-quality development”. Meanwhile, China also released a plan on upgrading equipment in the industrial sector, energy newspaper IN-EN.com reports, adding that it calls for the adoption of “high-tech, highly efficient [and] highly reliable” equipment in the solar, battery and bio-fermentation industries. The state-run newspaper China Daily quotes an official from the ministry of industry and information technology (MIIT) saying that the plan will “promote the high-end, intelligent and green development of the manufacturing industry”. Separately, Xinhua reports that Chinese premier Li Qiang recently signed a State Council decree to “establish the basic rules of a compensation system for ecological protection”, which will be effective from June 2024.

Elsewhere, the Financial Times quotes Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the thinktank Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), saying that US treasury secretary Janet Yellen’s trip to China “seemed like the best indicator yet that new tariffs on China will be coming”, and Ma Wei, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, saying that Yellen “knew China could not and probably would not make the changes she was suggesting in a short time”. In its own coverage of Yellen’s visit, Reuters quotes an anonymous Chinese government adviser saying that “there will be no global trade if there is no overcapacity”. 

In Brazil, president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and the minister of the environment and climate change, Marina Silva, launched a programme to reduce deforestation and forest fires in the Amazon, which will have $73m Brazilian reals ($144m) of funding, according to Folha de São Paulo.

Elsewhere, Argentina’s health ministry points out that the country surpassed 200,000 cases of dengue fever this year, making it an unprecedented epidemic, La Nación reports. This figure is 54% higher than last year, according to the ministry. The newspaper adds that heat, intense storms and floods contributed to the spread of the epidemic.

Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, asked the ministry of mines and energy to reform the mining law in force since 2001, El Espectador reports. It adds that the reform aims to prohibit new coal exploration and exploitation contracts and strengthen the state’s role in exploiting strategic minerals.

Separately, new analysis shows that renewable energy capacity may not be sufficient to meet Mexico’s expected electricity demand by 2050, challenging the achievement of net-zero emissions by that year, Dr Gerardo Hiriart, coordinator of the energy committee at the College of Civil Engineers of Mexico (CICM), writes for El Universal.

In other Latin American news, El Mercurio reports that a research initiative will analyse the DNA sequence of 1,000 native species in Chile to protect them from climate change. Camila Manzzoni, a scientist at the Leibniz Institute, tells El Mercurio that the species genome reveals its evolutionary history and potential response to climate change.

Finally, Maricielo Sánchez, an agronomy engineering student at UPAO, writes for El Comercio that Peru’s northern region, known for its production of rice, sugar cane, mango and other crops, “is more prone to climate change”. She suggests adopting sustainable agricultural practices and strengthening farmers’ adaptation capacity. 

Lawrence Stroll, the executive chairman of UK-based automotive manufacturer Aston Martin, has said his company will continue to make petrol hybrid vehicles well into the mid-2030s, and will not end its production of sports cars with petrol and diesel engines until legislators and regulators stop them, reports the Times. The company has already pushed back the delivery date of its first electric model from next year until 2027, because of “what it sees as collapsing demand for zero-emission vehicles”, the article notes. “It was a prudent decision to delay the electric vehicle programme and we will invest more heavily in plug-in hybrids,” said Stroll, the article notes. Elsewhere, Volkswagen has seen sales of its electric cars in Europe during the first quarter of 2024 fall by almost a quarter, compared to the same period last year, reports the Daily Telegraph. It says: “Electric vehicle (EV) sales fell by 24% in the first three months of the year as high inflation and rising energy prices dampened demand. Globally, all-electric sales at the owner of Audi, Skoda and Porsche dropped by 3% to 136,400, while sales of combustion engine cars climbed 4% to nearly two million.” In the US, overseas automakers are taking advantage of a loophole that allows foreign-made EVs to receive the same tax credits as those reassembled in America, reports Nikkei Asia.

Strains are emerging as governments and automakers work to convert the market to electric vehicles (EVs) and phase out internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030, says an editorial in the Financial Times. Amid the cost of living crisis, car buyers are “balking at the prices” and concerns remain about the lack of reliable and fast charging networks, it notes. The “lull in EV sales is having a damaging impact on the auto industry” and “raises the worry that European and US carmakers will be unable to make an EV transition profitably and will be overtaken by Asian rivals”, the FT says. Governments and carmakers must work together to reduce obstacles to adoption, the article concludes, noting “while Airbus is a flawed model, public investment is needed alongside private capital to make the EV transition work. Otherwise, consumers may keep revolting.”

There is continued reaction to the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in favour of a group of Swiss women who argued their human rights had been violated by their government’s insufficiently tough policies on climate change. Reporter Andrew McDonald explores the “shock ruling” in Politico, noting that it “could hardly have been more explosive for a British political landscape already gripped by election fever”. He writes: “The court is already controversial in the UK, where critics point to its use of so-called ‘pyjama injunctions’, named because they were often granted by judges hauled out of bed in the middle of the night, to frustrate government attempts to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. As the general election expected by the end of the year creeps inexorably closer, the ruling Conservatives have flirted with putting the ECHR front and centre of their campaign by pledging to pull out of the European Convention of Human Rights, and therefore the court. Those calls are only likely to get louder following the climate judgement.”

Much of the UK’s right-leaning media reacts to the ruling with outrage. An editorial in the Sun says it is an example of “creeping overreach” of judges “both at home and especially in Europe”. It adds: “We should be deeply alarmed by what amounts to a kind of judicial activism which serves only to encourage eco fanatics to launch endless legal challenges to every government scheme.” In the Daily Telegraph, Allister Heath – editor of the Sunday Telegraph – says the ruling is an “incendiary judicial coup” and “shows why the UK must now leave the court without delay”. In the Daily Mail, Frank Furedi – an emeritus professor of sociology and writer at online magazine Spiked, which has often provided a platform to those opposed to action on climate change – says that the “absurd ruling” shows that the UK “must quit the ECHR. Finally, Times columnist Iain Martin writes that the “rather mad judgement” risks “unleashing Brexit-like forces and history repeating itself”. He says: “This is spectacular judicial overreach. The court is involving itself directly in democratic politics, adjudicating on policy questions that are properly left to governments and leaders accountable to electorates. Today, climate change. Tomorrow…where next might the court expand its remit? Perhaps those of us who think we are entering a war era should take a case to Strasbourg seeking judicial support to compel governments to spend much more on defence and deter Russia from threatening our right to life.”

A new study examines the energy consumed globally by the agricultural practice of irrigation, and the associated carbon emissions. Currently, pumping groundwater sources for irrigation contributes 216m tonnes of CO2 emissions per year – representing 15% of greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural operations. While projections indicate a potential 28% increase in energy use from irrigation under 3C of global warming, the paper reports that “embracing highly efficient, low-carbon irrigation methods has the potential to cut energy consumption in half and reduce CO2 emissions by 90%”.

New research explores the “overlooked” impact of heat stress on health in the Indian Sundarbans – a cluster of 103 low-lying islands in the Bay of Bengal delta. The study uses survey results and “social network analysis” to explore the extent of “interconnectedness” between 747 households in nine village settlements during instances of heat stress and health problems The findings highlighted “collective adaptive behaviour and the role of social connections in combating climatic stress”. For example, sharing advice about water intake, rest pauses during work, changing food habits and other personal measures.