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Wildfire Season Is Already Devastating North America
Current conditions: Eastern Bolivia declared an extreme weather state of emergency through the end of the year • The Chinese province of Fujian has recorded 1.6 feet of rain since Wednesday • Rain in Paris is threatening to make for a soggy Olympics opening ceremony.THE TOP FIVE1. Huge wildfires burn in Canada, California, Oregon Massive wildfires are burning in western states and in Canada, sending plumes of smoke fanning out across the U.S. Triple-digit heat has fueled the fire conditions, but some cooler weather is expected over the weekend.California’s Park Fire: The 165,000-acre inferno is located in Butte and...
Trump Is Onto Something About the Green New Deal
“They’ve spent trillions of dollars on things having to do with the Green New Scam. It’s a scam,” said Donald Trump in his recent convention speech. His running mate J.D. Vance echoed the sentiment, saying in his speech that the country needs “a leader who rejects Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Green New Scam.” To get the reference, you would have had to understand that they were talking about the Green New Deal — which most Americans probably recall dimly, if at all — and have some sense of both what was in it and why you shouldn’t like it....
Climate Tech Investors Aren’t Too Worried About Trump
Plenty has changed in the race for the U.S. presidency over the past week. One thing that hasn’t: Gobs of public and private funding for climate tech are still on the line. If Republicans regain the White House and Senate, tax credits and other programs in the Inflation Reduction Act will become an easy target for legislators looking to burnish their cost-cutting (and lib-owning) reputations. The effects of key provisions getting either completely tossed or seriously amended would assuredly ripple out to the private sector. You would think the possible impending loss of a huge source of funding for...
EPA Union Gets Behind Harris
Current conditions: Typhoon Gaemi made landfall in Taiwan with the force of a Category 3 major hurricane • Large hailstones pelted Verona, Italy • Tropical Storm Bud formed in the Eastern Pacific, but is expected to dissipate by the weekend. THE TOP FIVE1. Vineyard Wind turbine fiasco linked to manufacturing defect The blade that snapped off an offshore turbine at the Vineyard Wind project in Massachusetts on July 13 broke due to a manufacturing defect, according to GE Vernova, the turbine maker and installer. During GE’s second quarter earnings call yesterday, CEO Scott Strazik and Vice President of Investor Relations Michael...
The Upside of Tesla’s Decline
Tesla, formerly the golden boy of electric vehicle manufacturers, has hit the skids. After nearly continuous sales growth for a decade, in May sales were down 15% year-on-year — the fourth consecutive month of decline. Profits were down fully 45% in the second quarter thanks to soft sales and price cuts. The only new model the company has produced in five years, the Cybertruck, has gotten weak reviews and been plagued with problems. Electrifying transportation is a vital part of combating climate change, and for years Tesla benefited from the argument that as the pioneering American EV company, it was...
Why the Vineyard Wind Blade Broke
The blade that snapped off an offshore turbine at the Vineyard Wind project in Massachusetts on July 13 broke due to a manufacturing defect, according to GE Vernova, the turbine maker and installer. During GE’s second quarter earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Scott Strazik and Vice President of Investor Relations Michael Lapides said there was no indication of a design flaw in the blade. Rather, the company has identified a “material deviation” at one of its factories in Gaspé, Canada. “Because of that, we're going to use our existing data and re-inspect all of the blades that we have...
This Is the Best Permitting Reform Deal We’re Going to Get
We now know what a real bipartisan permitting overhaul could look like. Senators Joe Manchin and John Barrasso on Monday unveiled the Energy Permitting Reform Act, the product of months of negotiations over how to craft a sweeping change to the nation’s federal energy project approvals system that could actually pass through Congress. It’s got a little bit of everything: For the oil and gas folks, there’s mandatory offshore oil and gas lease sales and streamlined permitting requirements; for renewables, there’s faster permits for “low-impact” construction jobs and new deployment goals; for transmission, there’s siting authority for interstate lines,...
Global Temperatures Hit a New Record High – Again
Current conditions: Torrential rain from Typhoon Gaemi brought the Philippines’ capital to a standstill • California’s Santa Barbara County is dealing with an infestation of aggressive red fire ants • Monsoonal thunderstorms could bring flash flooding to the Great Basin region this week.THE TOP FIVE1. Daily temperature record broken for 2 days in a rowSunday was the hottest day ever recorded, and Monday was even hotter. Data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service shows the global average surface air temperature reached 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit Monday, which is just a touch higher than the all-time high of 62.76 degrees...
The Real Hero of ‘Twisters’ Is Geoengineering
This weekend, millions of Americans were reminded that we are living in extraordinary times. At moments, it almost seemed like you could feel our place in the great continuum of history — at once stretching backward to those who came before us while also extending forward, onward, to those who’ve been passed the torch. I am talking, of course, about the Twister sequel. Twisters touched down in theaters last Friday, nearly 30 years after its precursor was released on LaserDisc and VHS with a message from the FEMA administrator to “never try to outdrive a tornado.” For Hollywood reboots and the...
Humanity’s Most Abundant Material Is a Huge Climate Problem
Jesse is on vacation until August, so this is a special, Rob-only summer episode of Shift Key. The world uses about 30 billion tons of concrete every year — more than any other material except water. It is the most ubiquitous human-made substance in the global economy. It’s also a huge climate problem. Producing cement, which is the key ingredient in concrete, generates roughly 8% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions. Cody Finke has a plan to change that. He is the chief executive officer and cofounder of Brimstone, a startup that says it can cheaply produce ordinary Portland cement —...
This Is the Worst Possible Moment for an Offshore Wind Debacle
Vineyard Wind’s turbine blade failure couldn’t have come at a worse time for offshore wind. The industry is still dealing with the high inflation and supply chain issues that turned 2023 into a parade of horribles. Now opponents to American offshore wind — most prominently former president Donald Trump — are one election away from storming the gates of the federal bureaucracy. We don’t know yet whether the Vineyard Wind blade breakage was a fluke or the result of a problem with the blades themselves, but that hasn’t stopped critics of offshore wind from shouting about it — and...
The Vineyard Wind Turbine Fiasco, Explained
It’s been just over a week since one of the 350-foot-long blades of a wind turbine off the Massachusetts coast unexpectedly broke off, sending hunks of fiberglass and foam into the waters below. As of Wednesday morning, cleanup crews were still actively removing debris from the water and beaches and working to locate additional pieces of the blade.The blade failure quickly became a crisis for residents of Nantucket, where debris soon began washing up on the island’s busy beaches. It is also a PR nightmare for the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, which is already on the defensive against...
Manchin and Barrasso Just Released a Big Permitting Reform Bill
Current conditions: Taiwan is bracing for Typhoon Gaemi • A volcanic eruption from Mt. Etna closed Sicily’s Catania International Airport • Data suggests Sunday was the hottest day in Earth’s recorded history.THE TOP FIVE1. Manchin and Barrasso release bipartisan permitting reform legislationSens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso released a permitting reform bill last night that “is expected to bolster the buildout of both renewable and fossil fuel energy sources,” as The Hill reported. The legislation would impose a timeline on legal challenges to federal authorizations for energy projects, require annual lease sales of both offshore wind and offshore oil...
Trump’s Suspicious Pivot on EVs
Update, July 24: Elon Musk told Jordan Peterson in an interview Monday evening that “I am not donating $45 million a month to Trump,” adding that he does not belong to the former president’s “cult of personality.” Musk acknowledged, however, that helped create America PAC to promote “meritocracy and individual freedom,” and that it would support Trump while also not being “hyperpartisan.”When former President Donald Trump addressed a crowd of non-union autoworkers in Clinton Township, Michigan, last fall, he came with a dire warning: “You’re going to lose your beautiful way of life.” President Biden’s electric vehicle transition, Trump...
Heat Records Don’t Stand a Chance
While the Northeast might start breathing more easily this week, the heat will intensify again in the West. Keep reading to discover what sweltering lies in store. The Pacific Northwest takes its turn in the hot seat The weekend brough intense heat to the Northwest, with many cities inching close to their all-time temperature records. While the potential for record-breaking heat is set to decrease throughout the week, temperatures in the region will remain above average, Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service, told me. Cities like Spokane, Washington and Boise, Idaho will continue to see triple-digit temperatures...
Why Climate World Loves Kamala
Kamala Harris quickly rang up endorsements from Democratic elected officials and convention delegates Sunday afternoon after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign, making Vice President Harris the likeliest Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States. Many of these plaudits came from figures in the climate policy space, but few were quite as vociferous as the one from Gina McCarthy, a director of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama and White House climate advisor under Biden.“Vice President Harris would kick ass against Trump,” she said in a statement. “She has spent her whole life committed to...
Examining Kamala Harris’ Climate Credentials
Current conditions: England’s wet and cold summer has been linked to a concerning decline in insect populations • At least 11 people died in northern China after torrential rain caused a bridge to collapse • The West Coast’s record-breaking heat wave will last at least through Wednesday. THE TOP FIVE 1. A quick look at Kamala Harris’ climate record President Biden announced yesterday he will not run for re-election and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, for the 2024 Democratic ticket. Tributes from his colleagues poured in quickly, with many hailing Biden’s decision as brave and patriotic, and others recounting his accomplishments...
American Climate Policy Needed Biden
What is so striking, in immediate retrospect, about many of Joe Biden’s accomplishments as president is how many of them depended on him. Democrats had tried and failed for 30 years to pass a climate law through the Senate. Biden succeeded. Now Biden, the 46th president of the United States, is dropping out of the presidential race. He announced the news today on the social network X, endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris, who will now presumably take over the party’s nomination.Biden has not done everything climate activists wanted. He has not declared a “climate emergency,” a legally controversial...
Backstage, the RNC Was All About All of the Above
The longest presidential nomination acceptance speech in history included not one single second on climate change. That’s table stakes, though, for the party of Donald Trump. More noteworthy, perhaps: During Trump’s 92-minute speech Thursday night at the conclusion of the Republican National Convention, he used the word “energy” fewer times than he said “beautiful,” “invasion,” or his own name. When Trump did reference energy, it was almost exclusively to distinguish himself from the incumbent’s policies. “They’ve spent trillions of dollars on things having to do with the Green New Scam,” he said in an apparent reference to the Inflation Reduction...
Vineyard Wind Has Some Explaining to Do
Current conditions: A raging wildfire disrupted traffic at Turkey’s Izmir airport • The North Central Plains are on alert for severe thunderstorms • It’s about 70 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where President Biden is self-isolating with COVID. THE TOP FIVE 1. Climate groups ‘split’ on Biden’s 2024 decision With reports swirling that President Biden is likely to announce his departure from the 2024 presidential race this weekend, Reuters says that climate groups are “split” on the issue. The outlet contacted eight environmental groups for their take on whether Biden should step aside. Two (the Sunrise Movement and Climate...
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