有持续广泛覆盖在美国啊f the wildfires, with the Guardian saying that “the death toll from wildfires choking the west coast of the US continued to rise on Sunday as authorities feared more bodies were likely to be found in the charred ruins of towns across several states, and politicians lambasted Donald Trump for his response to the escalating crisis”. it adds: “In Oregon, where emergency managers warned the public to expect “a mass fatality incident”, 40,000 fled their homes, more than half a million were under some level of evacuation order, flames scorched more than a million acres and the state fire marshal was replaced. At least 35 people are known to have died since mid-August: at least 10 people have been killed in the past week throughout Oregon, with officials saying the number is likely to rise. In California, 24 people have died, and one in Washington state.” TheNew York Times访问regi预览唐纳德·特朗普的预期on later today: “When President Trump flies to California on Monday to assess the state’s raging forest fires, he will come face to face with the grim consequences of a reality he has stubbornly refused to accept: the devastating effects of a warming planet.”CNNsays Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti told the broadcaster yesterday that “it’s been very clear that years of drought, as we’re seeing, whether it’s too much water and too much rain in parts of our country right now, or too little…This is climate change and this is an administration that’s put its head in the sand.”BBC Newsreports that California governor Gavin Newsom has said that the debate over whether climate change is worsening the wildfires is “over”. He adds: “Just come to the state of California. Observe it with your own eyes.” TheGuardian, meanwhile, says that “as fires burn the west, top Democrats stay quiet on the climate crisis”, adding: “Some national Democratic leaders also have been slow to call attention to the fires in California, Oregon and Washington which have killed more than 20, forced millions to breathe ash from orange-tinted skies that are blocking out the sun, and seen hundreds of thousands of people flee their homes. Climate activists say the tepid political response, particularly from the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is yet another sign that US politicians are far from ready to take concrete steps to deal with the realities of climate change, let alone write laws to stop burning fossil fuels in order to slow its effects.” AnotherGuardianarticle highlights how “most wildfire coverage on American TV news fails to mention link to climate crisis”. TheGuardian,Voxand theLos Angeles Times所有携带讲解员why climate change is intensifying the wildfires. [Also see Carbon Brief’s 2018factcheckexplaining how global warming has increased US wildfires, as well as Carbon Brief’s recentexplainerabout how climate change is affecting wildfires around the world.]

There is also widespread comment reacting to the fires. TheGuardianhas an opinion piece by Peter Gleick, a climate scientist based in San Francisco. He writes: “We’re reaping the consequences of more than a century of using the thin, delicate layer of atmosphere that surrounds the planet as a dumping ground for the major waste product of burning fossil fuels – carbon dioxide. For more than half a century, scientists have been warning of the growing threat of climate change. My own work on climate and water 35 years ago found that rising temperatures would alter California’s snowpack, water availability, and soil moisture in ways we’re now seeing in our mountains and rivers…Projections have turned to reality. The future has arrived. What we’re seeing now, with massive wildfires, worsening storms, unprecedented heat, and record droughts and floods is just the beginning of the climate changes to come.” TheGuardianalso has an article by Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labour, who says: “Trump has been the most anti-environmental president in history…Americans have a clear choice. In a few weeks, when they decide whether Trump deserves another four years, climate change will be on the ballot. The choice shouldn’t be hard to make. Like the coronavirus, the dire consequences of climate change – coupled with Trump’s utter malfeasance – offer unambiguous proof that he couldn’t care less about the public good.” Also in theGuardian, Kirsten Tranter asks: “Is San Francisco’s nightmarish echo of Sydney’s summer now a template for fire seasons to come?” InNew Yorkmagazine, David Wallace-Wells writes: “Of course, we must move much more quickly. But in planning a path forward, through fire, California cannot wait, or hope, for climate action—for a Green New Deal, electrified everything, and global decarbonisation. For one thing, it would take too long — the climate impacts of even extremely aggressive global decarbonisation, scientists believe, won’t be even observable for decades.” In theWashington Post, Helaine Olen observes that “the climate-related catastrophes seem all but endless…There is only so much disaster we can focus on at a time…Trump is just an accelerant, not the originator of our woes, environmental or otherwise.” And in theLos Angeles Times, scientists Peter Kalmus and Natasha Stavros write: “Climate scientists have been sounding these warnings for decades, and as climate scientists we take absolutely zero pleasure in being right. We are terrified, and it is a psychological strain to be messengers. But we cannot look away, for the sake of our families, for the sake of people we don’t know and for the sake of the natural world.”

Several outlets cover a new set of forecasts by energy major BP which, says the Financial Times in a front-page article, warn of a “peak in oil demand within the next few years, signalling that the coronavirus pandemic is ushering in an earlier than anticipated decline for the fossil fuel era”. The FT adds: “The company, in its annual energy outlook published on Monday, modelled three scenarios for the world’s transition to cleaner fuels that all see oil demand falling over the next 30 years. In the ‘business as usual’ case, which assumes government policies, technologies and societal preferences evolve in a manner and speed as in the recent past, oil demand rebounds from the Covid-19 hit then plateaus in the early 2020s. In two other scenarios that model more aggressive policies to tackle climate change, oil demand never fully recovers, implying 2019 levels of 100m barrels a day will be the peak for consumption. The new report marks a dramatic change from last year when BP’s base case expected consumption to grow over the next decade reaching a peak in the 2030s.” TheGuardiansays “BP’s influential annual report on the future of energy…says oil will be replaced by clean electricity from windfarms, solar panels and hydropower plants as renewable energy emerges as the fastest-growing energy source on record…The report in effect sounds a death-knell for the growth of global oil demand after two of the report’s three energy scenarios for the next 30 years found that demand reached a peak in 2019.”Reuterssays “fossil fuel consumption is set to shrink for the first time in modern history as climate policies boost renewable energy while the coronavirus epidemic leaves a lasting effect on global energy demand, BP said in a forecast”. TheDaily Telegraphreports the outlook under the headline: “Renewables growing faster than any fuel in history, says BP.” TheTimesalso covers the news saying BP “is in the midst of a radical overhaul under Bernard Looney, its chief executive”.

Emily Gosden, theTimes’s energy editor, says “BP will lay out details this week of how it plans to achieve a new green strategy as it tries to convince investors that it can make a success of renewables”. She adds: “Three days of briefings, dubbed ‘BP week’ by the company, begin today after it surprised the market last month by announcing the key pillars of its strategy alongside the decision to halve its dividend.” TheFinancial Timessays “Looney makes his long-awaited pitch to investors on the future of BP this week, the chief executive is expected to hammer home one message: that BP will be a stronger company when it produces less oil and gas.”

Meanwhile, theGuardianreports that “institutional investors that collectively manage more than US$47tn in assets have demanded the world’s biggest corporate polluters back strategies to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and promised to hold them to public account”. It adds: “The Climate Action 100+ group, representing 518 major investor organisations across the globe, has written to 161 fossil fuel, mining, transport and other big-emitting companies to set 30 climate measures and targets against which they will be analysed in a report to be released early next year.” TheFinancial Timesalso covers the story.

The Guardian says that the UK’s leading business group, the CBI, will launch its “green recovery roadmap” later today, with its director-general, Carolyn Fairbairn, expected to say that “Britain needs to step up and become a global leader in climate action, creating a number of green jobs and boosting productivity to help the economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic”. The newspaper adds that Fairbairn will call on the government to “take ambitious steps nationally and use the rest of this year to reignite global efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050”.BusinessGreensays the CBI will urge the government to “publish the long-awaited energy white paper, so as to explain how a net-zero energy system can be delivered, and release the promised National Infrastructure Strategy, which has now been delayed several times”.Reuterssays the CBI will call for the government “to accelerate the delivery of electric vehicle charging points, pledge at least £1bn to fund hydrogen testing programmes and create jobs by setting up schemes to make homes more energy efficient”.

Meanwhile, theTimesreports that UK prime minister Boris Johnson “is preparing to back floating wind turbines and greener steel plants to help Britain to meet its carbon reduction targets”. The newspaper adds: “The emerging technologies are the frontrunners as Mr Johnson looks for emission-cutting projects that deliver jobs and investment to ‘red wall’ seats. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, meanwhile, is ready to give firms a full tax break on capital investment in the budget in a move that would help to foster cleaner technology. Mr Johnson is to deliver a speech setting out how the UK will reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. Whitehall departments were given until last Friday to submit proposals to be included in the address…Downing Street is also expected to disclose that Mr Johnson plans to use new post-Brexit state-aid freedoms to foster green industries for coastal and post-industrial communities…Plans to ban peat-burning appear to have been abandoned.”

TheSunday Timescovers a report by consultancy LucidCatalyst which claims that “using nuclear power to generate hydrogen could help limit global warming and clean up heavy industries”. It adds: “The nuclear industry is on a last-ditch lobbying push as ministers prepare to publish a much-delayed energy white paper that will explain how they plan to cut emissions while keeping the lights on – as well as powering the growing fleet of electric cars.” Separately, thei newspaper报道,美国疾病控制和预防中心集团、英国的发展inance agency, is “once more under fire” for its investments in fossil fuels: “Catholic charity Cafod said the agency is undermining UK’s leadership on climate change by ploughing hundreds of millions of pounds into fossil fuel projects, including gas and coal power plants, via funds operating in developing countries.”

Reuters says it has seen a draft document showing that the European Commission will propose that the European Union further tighten its emissions limits for car manufacturers. The move has, says the newswire, “prompt[ed] a pushback from Germany’s car industry, the region’s biggest”. It adds: “Under the proposal, by 2030 the average CO2 emissions of new cars should be 50% below 2021 levels. The bloc’s current plan calls for a 37.5% reduction over that period…Germany’s auto association VDA said it would firmly reject a further tightening of the targets, which the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung first reported. The draft document, due to be published next week, sets out the commission’s broader plan for the EU to set a 2030 target of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% against 1990 levels, and how it can achieve this goal. The bloc’s current 2030 target is for a 40% cut in emissions from 1990 levels.” In related news, anotherReutersarticle says “the world’s biggest carbon trading market faces a major overhaul under European Union climate change plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions faster this decade, a draft seen by Reuters shows. Under the EU emissions trading system (ETS) factories and power plants have to buy pollution permits to cover the greenhouse gases they emit, while airlines must do so for flights within Europe.”

Meanwhile, in Germany,Reutersreports that the economy minister Peter Altmaier “is expected to announce” that “Germany will have to raise the price for CO2 emissions from transport and heating buildings to meet [the European Commission’s] ambitious climate goals”. The newswire adds: “Altmaier, an ally of Angela Merkel, said the chancellor’s business-friendly conservative party had disappointed many voters by being slow to embrace stricter climate goals. Germany holds a general election next year in which the ecologist Greens are expected to make big gains.”Clean Energy Wirehas more details about Altmaier’s comments, adding that “the conservative politician called rapid and determined measures to curb global warming ‘the key task of our generation’ and warned that especially young people could become alienated from politics if lawmakers failed to act on their concerns about climate change”. Separately, in Poland,EurActivreports that Poland’s deputy climate minister Adam Guibourgé-Czetwertynski has said “climate neutrality is something that we are committed to…in what may be the strongest signal yet that Warsaw is now ready to formally endorse the EU’s 2050 climate goal”.

Justine Greening, the former Conservative minister, writes in the Independent that “reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions is the right – and smart – thing to do. Britain must play its part in protecting our planet.” She adds: “From investment in hydrogen to replace natural gas and the use of lower carbon biomass instead of traditional coal power, to the study of innovative carbon capture solutions reducing emissions from industrial processes, Britain can lead the way in the green energy transition. And reaching net-zero is the smart thing to do, because it’s how we can deliver the high-skill, high-salary, high-productivity economy that politicians of all political colours say they want for our country. Crucially, if delivered the right way, a net-zero economy can turbocharge the government’s levelling up agenda.” In theGuardian, economics editor Larry Elliott argues that “new thinking is needed [after Covid] because of [the] economic turmoil since 2008 and environmental concerns”, adding: “It goes without saying that some new thinking is needed – and long overdue because since 2008 the world has experienced a near meltdown of the financial system, two severe recessions, a decade of flatlining productivity and an ever-rising threat from global heating…Carefully nurturing the technologies and industries of the future needs to be part of that mix. The question for the UK is whether it learns from its multiple crises or is overwhelmed by them.”

Meanwhile, an editorial in theGuardianwelcomes the findings of last week’s UK Climate Assembly report (summarised in depth by亚慱官网). But it adds: “Democracy must be about respectful discussion, not just voting. The climate assembly was set up by six parliamentary select committees in response to demands from the green campaign group Extinction Rebellion, which regrettably rejected its recommendations as ‘too timid’. Parliamentary sovereignty needs to be better grounded in the people and buttressed by deliberative debate. We need to slow down and understand more…With the climate emergency upon us, we need institutions like citizens’ assemblies, and a politics of mutual respect that can focus on insights and evidence to fit people together rather than pull them apart.”

Separately, theMail on Sundaycarries a column by John Humphrys in which he argues that it is “foolish to allow the fear of nuclear weapons to colour our attitude to nuclear energy”. He adds: “Many leading greens have abandoned their opposition to nuclear power…What they are not saying is that we don’t need renewable energy. Wind and solar power are playing an increasingly vital part…Nuclear power is not just about keeping the lights on. It is about the future of our children and grandchildren. And theirs.” And in theFinancial Times, city editor Jonathan Ford claims that “repetition is the key to cutting nuclear costs, not innovation”.

There is continuing comment in the UK newspapers about Extinction Rebellion (XR) following the group’s targeting of Rupert Murdoch-owned printworks last weekend. An editorial in the Times says “the speed at which it is forfeiting the goodwill of the public and many of its own activists should be a warning…[if] it continues down the path of transforming itself into yet another radical leftist fringe group that bullies the public and its own employees in pursuit of a wider political agenda, it can expect to continue to haemorrhage what little public goodwill it still retains”. TheTimesalso has a feature about how “allegations of bullying, racism and power-trips are hurting Extinction Rebellion’s credibility”. TheFinancial Timesalso carries a feature – trailed on the paper’s front page –about XR, saying that the group is seeing “funding return as it tries to find its feet back on streets”. TheObserverhas published a letter signed by 150 public figures including “Stephen Fry, Mark Rylance and a former Archbishop of Canterbury” which hits “back at government moves to classify the climate protesters…as an ‘organised crime group’”.

Meanwhile, in theSun, Jeremy Clarkson says the police should have acted more forcefully against the XR protestors: “Blocking a highway is against the law. Preventing the free press from operating is even worse. And I’d have recognised that and armed my officers with bulldozers and tasers and permission to use both. But I was not in charge of the police that night. A wettie was.” In theDaily Telegraph, Juliet Samuel argues that “Extinction Rebellion has made itself very unpopular with all of us who care about the environment”. She adds: “The problem is that environmentalism as a political movement isn’t just about the environment. It has hitched its wagon to all sorts of other weird and wonderful vehicles, almost all highly unpopular, like anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, Europhilia, class war, radical feminism, the trans movement, anti-Israel activism, pro-migration advocacy, universal basic income, votes for 16-year-olds, drug liberalisation and so on. For any conservationist with broadly mainstream political views, these radical, tag-along vehicles are big, red flags.” In theSunday Telegraph, Julie Burchill写道:“警告XR:走得woke and you might go broke. It’s might be fashionable for retailers to support environmental issues, but it’s basically a stupid idea.”

《星期日邮报》把摘录从先生David Attenborough’s new book “A Life on Our Planet”, in which he looks ahead to the coming decades: “People, quite rightly, talk a lot about climate change. But it is now clear that man-made global warming is only one of a number of crises in play. A team of esteemed scientists led by Johan Rockstrom and Will Steffen have identified nine critical thresholds hard-wired into Earth’s environment: climate change, fertiliser use, land conversion, biodiversity loss, air pollution, ozone-layer depletion, ocean acidification, chemical pollution and freshwater withdrawals. If we keep our impact within these thresholds, we can have a sustainable existence.” (Last night,BBC1aired an hour-long documentary fronted by Attenborough which highlighted the threat of mass species extinctions.)

Republican voters in the US are less likely to evacuate during a hurricane than Democrat voters, new research suggests. Combining GPS data for 2.7m smartphone users in Florida and Texas with 2016 US presidential election precinct-level voting results, the researchers “examine how conservative-media dismissals of hurricane advisories in 2017 influenced evacuation decisions”. The results show that “likely [Donald] Trump-voting Florida residents were 10 to 11 percentage points less likely to evacuate Hurricane Irma than [Hilary] Clinton voters (34% versus 45%)”, the authors say.

Long duration weather patterns, which can lead to extreme conditions, are occurring more often in Asia “as the Arctic warms faster than mid-latitudes”, a new study suggests. Tracking consecutive days in which the atmosphere over the Asian continent stays in a particular pattern, the researchers measure the frequency of events that last longer that three days. The findings indicate a higher likelihood of long-duration events, “both in the recent past and in model projections for the twenty-first century assuming unabated greenhouse gas emissions”, the researchers say. This provides “insight into the types of disruptive weather events that will become more prevalent as particular patterns become more common”, they conclude.

Hot weather could result in a drop in trading on stock exchanges, a new study suggests. The researchers analyse trading volumes on the French stock market and weather patterns in Paris over 1995-2019. The findings indicate that, on average, “trading volumes fall significantly (between 4% and 10%) when maximum daily temperatures exceed 30C”, the study says. The research “contributes to the literature on behavioural finance by demonstrating the existence of a ‘hot weather’ effect on financial markets”, the authors conclude.