FIRST LOOK

The Business Council for Sustainable Energy and the Environmental and Energy Study Institute will host a live webinar discussing the ninth edition of the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, looking back on how COVID-19 business conditions impacted U.S. energy markets as well as trends including deployment, technology innovation, policy, emissions, and jobs on Friday at 2:00 pm ET. RSVP here.

Assaults On The Rise At Line 3 Pipeline Man Camp: A northern Minnesota shelter has reported an increase in sexual violence complaints in the community near the construction site for Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, according to documents obtained by the Minnesota Reformer through a public records request. The controversial proposed pipeline expansion would carry tar sands from Alberta, Canada, into Wisconsin. The Violence Intervention Project in Thief River Falls requested reimbursement from a public safety fund – set up by Enbridge to prevent human trafficking and violence as a condition of its construction permit – in order to pay for hotel rooms for two women who were allegedly assaulted by pipeline workers. The nonprofit reported an increase in calls for service from women complaining of being harassed or assaulted by pipeline workers. Although Enbridge denied the project would lead to an increase in violence, last month, two men working on Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline were arrested in a sting and charged with solicitation, one of a minor. So-called “man camps” that spring up around pipeline construction and near other extraction sites have been connected to increased sexual violence, especially against Indigenous women and girls, who often receive fewer social services and whose cases frequently go ignored by law enforcement. (Minnesota Reformer)

Climate Kids Shift Legal Gears: A group of youth climate activists who sued the U.S. government in 2015 are changing tactics in their fight to force the feds to address climate change. Twenty one young plaintiffs on Juliana vs. United States, who now range in age from 13 to 24, on Tuesday filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Oregon, asking to be allowed to amend the aims of their case. The original case argued the Constitution provides the right to live in a sustainable climate, and demanded courts order the government to create and execute a climate recovery plan. Following a “reluctant” rejection for a full hearing by 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last year, in part on the basis that federal judges lack the power to order the complex policy solutions they sought, the activists are narrowing their goals. Instead, they will ask the court to rule the U.S. energy system violates their constitutional rights to due process and equal protection under the law, and to order the U.S. government to establish a plan to transition off of fossil fuels. (The Oregonian, Politico Pro $)

Texas Mess Dumped 3.3 Million Pounds of Extra Pollution: Millions of pounds of extra pollution was released into the air during the freezeouts in Texas last month, according to an independent analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund, Air Alliance Houston, and Environment Texas. Some 200 oil refineries, petrochemical plants, and other facilities released at least 3.5 million pounds of extra pollution in the period between February 11th and February 22nd, with nearly 20% of the pollution occurring in the Houston area. By comparison, plants along the Gulf Coast emitted 1 million pounds of excess pollution after 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. The analysis found many of the plants are repeat offenders, also reporting emissions exceeding state limits following Harvey. Black and Latino households were most likely to be directly affected by the elevated emissions – as they were by other impacts from the storm and days of power outages that left millions without heat, light, and, in some cases, running water – because they are more likely than the nation as a whole to live near these facilities. Moreover, much of this data relies on facilities’ self-reported figures: The Texas Commission on Environmental Equality said power failures and other problems knocked 39 of its air quality monitors offline during the storm. “The health and safety of every Texan matters,” said Bakeyah Nelson, executive director of Air Alliance Houston. “Yet corporations repeatedly engage in behaviors that put the most vulnerable communities in harm’s way, and the state rarely holds them accountable, choosing to protect profits over people.” (Texas Observer, KPRC 2)

Corrections: Yesterday’s newsletter misidentified the location of the Gambit Energy Storage project; it is in Angleton, Texas. And the wet-bulb temperature study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience, not Nature.

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: A single chemical plant in Louisville emits a super-pollutant that does more climate damage than every car in the city (InsideClimate News), Canadian government misses target to end water insecurity for First Nations communities (Circle of Blue)

… AND SEXISM: In Central America, women and girls bear the brunt of storm disaster fallout (The New Humanitarian), oil companies want you to think they’re feminist. It’s BS. (Grist)

DOING BETTER: Companies increasingly appreciate diversity of experience (Energy Monitor)

CORONAVIRUS: U.S. power use to rise in 2021 as governments ease lockdowns: EIA (Reuters)

AGENCIES: Interior department begins review of oil, gas leasing program (Bloomberg $, Politico Pro $, AP), Energy Secretary Granholm says U.S. needs to produce more EV minerals (Reuters)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: Biden administration backs pipeline in Supreme Court land dispute (The Hill), federal courts help Biden quickly dismantle Trump’s climate and environmental legacy (InsideClimate News)

SOCIAL COST OF EMISSIONS: Here’s what you need to know about ‘the social cost of greenhouse gases’—a key climate metric (CNBC), red states go to war against math (Earther)

THE HILL: Democrats introduce bill to price methane emissions (Politico Pro $, Reuters)

POLITICS: How the GOP is using Biden's energy agenda to retake power (E&E $), Republicans' new favorite study trashes Biden's climate plans – but who's behind it? (The Guardian)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Deb Haaland’s nomination continues ‘despite Republican obstruction’ (Indian Country Today, HuffPost, The Hill), Senate revs its confirmation engine to fill Biden's Cabinet (Politico), what do Michael Regan's big changes in N.C. mean for EPA? (E&E $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: US urged to cut 50% of emissions by 2030 to spur other countries to action (The Guardian), this must be the 'decade of action' on climate change, John Kerry says (Reuters), Biden to meet virtually with leaders of Japan, India, Australia (Reuters)

CHINA: U.S. and EU search for a China climate doctrine that works (Politico Pro $, Wall Street Journal $), U.S. and China engage, tentatively, on climate change (Wall Street Journal $)

LOBBYING: Clean power group, lobby firm announce hires (E&E $)

(NOT JUST) TEXAS MESS: Just Energy seeks bankruptcy protection after Texas loss (Houston Chronicle)

CALIFORNIA: Kern County OKs plan for thousands of new oil and gas wells over environmental objections (LA Times $)

VIRGINIA: To fight flooding, this city plans to renovate—and retreat (Bloomberg $), with wind on the horizon, Virginia trade school accelerates training for homegrown workforce (Energy News Network)

CITIES AND STATES: In Carbon County, the future is wind (Politico), Massachusetts looks to cut emissions from its aging and iconic housing type (Energy News Network),  Florida Republicans are ready to stop rising seas — just not climate change (Grist), clean fuel proposal gets green light from New Mexico panel (AP), AOC and NYC House colleagues pan Astoria peaker plant plan (Queens Daily Eagle), Washington state Legislature considers clean-fuels standard as part of climate change ‘grand bargain’ (Seattle Times), Wyoming lawmakers sprint to save coal (Casper Star-Tribune)

IMPACTS: Taiwan’s chip industry under threat as drought turns critical (FT $), sea level rise is increasing fastest in populous coastal areas, study says (CNN), on Lake Baikal, Russia’s hockey greats play ‘last game’ for threatened environment (Washington Post $), how more Americans are becoming ‘refugees' because of climate change (NBC Bay Area)

WILDFIRES: Wildfires will keep getting worse — even in “best case” climate scenarios (Truthout)

BUILDINGS: Legislators advance bill to halt local clean energy efforts (Miami Herald, S&P Global) 

STORAGE: NextEra bets on new power generator that runs without combustion (Bloomberg $)

OIL & GAS: Chevron vows to slow carbon emissions, raise oil output with modest spending (Reuters, Bloomberg $, Axios), these little devices on oil fields make a lot of emissions. New regulations could change that (Colorado Public Radio)

ORPHANED WELLS: The $21 billion reason to clean up abandoned oil wells (Earther)

HYDROGEN: Gates-backed startup joins race to make green hydrogen cheaper (Bloomberg $)

UTILITIES: Duke energy discloses some climate lobby data after investor pressure (Bloomberg $)

EVs: Post Office can't afford to replace entire aging gas-powered fleet with EVs (NPR), America’s battery-powered car hopes ride on lithium. One producer paves the way. (Wall Street Journal $)

BEZOS: Bezos plans to spend $10 billion by 2030 on climate change (AP, Vox)

BITCOIN: Why Bill Gates is worried about Bitcoin (New York Times $), Bitcoin’s climate problem (New York Times $)

BOOKS: Naomi Klein: 'We shouldn’t be surprised that kids are radicalised' (The Guardian)

BUSINESS: Worn out: the fashion industry's big oil problem (Earther)

VIRTUAL REALITY CHECK: No, Mark Zuckerberg, virtual reality goggles won't solve the climate crisis (Earther)

CARBON REMOVAL: Shopify becomes carbon removal startup's first customer (Axios)

CARBON PRICING: Is the ‘legacy’ carbon credit market a climate plus or just hype? (Yale Environment 360)

CARS: Judge approves $1.5B Daimler settlement in diesel emissions probe (The Hill)

DIVESTMENT: Rutgers to drop fossil fuel investments in battle against climate change (NJ.com)

FINANCE: EU to make fund managers back up sustainability claims (Wall Street Journal $), ditch lending rules that favour polluters, think tank tells ECB (Reuters), global securities watchdog targets greenwashing in ESG plan (Bloomberg $), most investors still fail to back climate resolutions (Bloomberg $)

HEALTH: Healthy planet, healthy people. How slowing climate change saves lives (TIME)

WILDLIFE: One key to healthy oceans? Sharks (NPR), climate change could drive Komodo dragons to extinction (Yale Climate Connections), climate change lays waste to butterflies across American west (Smithsonian Magazine)

INTERNATIONAL: Abu Dhabi eyes new partnerships for carbon capture and emissions cutting as oil price climbs (CNBC), century-old Australia coal plant makes way for giant battery (Bloomberg $), Denmark could reach climate target with carbon tax, adviser says (Bloomberg $), Japan urged to ditch nuclear power by prime minister’s key ally (Bloomberg $), the Nord Stream 2 dilemma: Why a trans-Atlantic dispute is likely to go from very bad to even worse (CNBC), Spain puts European recovery funds into electric car push (Greentech Media)

• It's unavoidable: we must ban fossil fuels to save our planet. Here's how we do it (The Guardian, Roland Geyer)
• For the People Act is needed to stop new GOP voter suppression bills (Teen Vogue, Jameelah Nasheed)
• China is falling short on its climate pledge (FT, Editorial Board $)
• Humanity is a cuckoo in the planetary nest (FT, Martin Wolf $)
• Amazon and the breaking of Baltimore (New York Times, Alec MacGillis $)
• Insurers can’t kick the climate change can down the road anymore (Insurance Business America, Alicja Grzadkowska)

Denial Is Dangerous. Fact-Checking and “Climate Censorship” Isn’t. (Unless That’s Your Job)

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published the editorial version of “we’re all just trying to find the guy who did this” by columnist Gerald Seib. Seib’s lukewarm, concern-trolling column cowardly both sides-ed the current environment of partisan acrimony, instead blaming a mix of political consultants, digital advertisers, and cable news hosts who “profit one way or the other from stoking anger.” By failing to distinguish the relative harms of his bipartisan examples of the outrage, Seib equated the twice-Impeached President Trump’s repeated incitements of deadly violence with Senator Bernie Sander’s admittedly outraged campaign rhetoric regarding economic inequality regarded as equivalent. 

If Seib is, well, outraged, about the “perpetual-motion outrage machine,” well, then maybe he should quit, because he works for one of the most perpetual outrage machines around. For example, just days prior, the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board was ginning up outrage over the fact Facebook dared to point out the Journal’s recent editorial – chock full of COVID denial about herd immunity – was “missing context,” according to an independent fact checker. The Journal attempted to litigate the fact check, with oh-so-very fact-based and totally not at all even a little outraged lines like one claiming it was the “progressive health clerisy” that opposed the (fake) expert projections they cited.  

Moving in unison, as usual, the Wall Street Journal’s British and Australian counterparts in industrial denial-peddling are unifying behind the party line against fact checking. The supposed brain trust of conservative ideology that pretends to believe in personal responsibility is quickly coalescing around opposition to the idea that anyone be held personally responsible for lying. 

That seems to be the thrust, anyway, of a recent Spiked online op-ed by Liam Deacon, the former head of press for the Brexit Party. As might be expected from a piece bylined by the  former mouthpiece for a pop-up political party premised on a disastrous, xenophobic, and ill-informed right-wing disinformation campaign, Mr. Deacon is very worried by British tabloid Daily Express’s decision to pull a story premised on a xenophobic and ill-informed right-wing disinformation campaign.

As DeSmogUK reported late last month, the Daily Express retracted an article based on comments made by Naomi Seibt, the young German woman that Heartland recruited (briefly) to groom as their own denier version of Greta Thunberg. Sure enough, the Daily Express article quoted Seibt criticizing Greta, so even though Seibt and Heartland may have formally ended their relationship, it seems she’s still serving their aims all the same! (Just with funding to the tune of nearly $1,500 a month thanks to her 140 Patreon subscribers… Meanwhile, Heartland’s Texas blackout denial has over 200,000 views on Youtube, so maybe they never really needed her in the first place!) 

Anyway, Mr. Dacon is apparently very upset at the free press for deciding to uphold its own standards, merely because it was prompted to do so by an activist group that pointed out to a clean energy company that its ads were appearing on the Daily Express’s denial story. How terrible that audiences will now be deprived of a second-generation German anti-Semite’s objection to a Swede’s opinion of a British documentary! However will journalism survive!? 

Not that climate denial ever makes for decent journalism anyway. For example, in Australia, longtime denier Alan Jones, outraged by the “genuine fear of debate” about climate change, aired a lengthy rant featuring a long-winded parade of old deniers and their old quotes. Whatever would we do if we weren’t allowed to hear a half dozen old men deny the scientific consensus on climate change? The horror! 

The fact that these complaints about censorship appear in widely-read, relatively mainstream media outlets doesn’t dampen the volume or lighten the tenor of their manufactured outrage, with Jones dubbing Australia’s net-zero moves to be “rubbish and what I have called for years an economic suicide note.” 

Not that we should expect them to stay calm about it. After all, as Seib really nailed it, describing  his employers at the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere: Their purpose is to “profit one way or the other from stoking anger.”

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up to receive Hot News every morning!

Send updates or feedback to nkauffman@climatenexus.org
Submit events and other items for consideration for a First Look using this form
Some articles require logins or subscriptions ($)