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SKI, LG Agree On EV IP: Two major South Korean battery manufacturers reached a $1.8 billion settlement Sunday that will allow the construction of a massive Georgia factory that will build EV batteries for more than 300,000 Ford and VW vehicles per year. The International Trade Commission ruled earlier this year SK Innovation stole trade secrets from LG Chem and banned the importation of batteries made by SKI for 10 years. The 11th-hour settlement saved the Biden administration from being forced to decide whether to overturn the ITC ruling — that deadline was also Sunday — which would have presented a hurdle to the administration's efforts to expand transportation electrification as part of its efforts to fight climate change. (Washington Post $, Politico Pro $, NPR, AP, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bloomberg $, HuffPost, E&E $)

BIden Administration Allows DAPL To Operate Without Proper Authorization: The Army Corps of Engineers will allow the Dakota Access pipeline to continue operating while the Corps conducts an environmental review of the project, continuing the posture of the Trump administration. The Biden administration's decision to allow the pipeline to continue operating without granting a permanent easement surprised U.S. District Judge James Boasberg and outraged lawyers representing the Standing Rock Sioux. “The company gets to keep the benefits of operating the pipeline that was never properly authorized while the community has to bear the risks and the consequences,” Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman said during the hearing. The government attorney representing the Army Corps insisted the Corps could choose to take enforcement action "at any time." (AP, Politico Pro $, E&E $, E&E $)

Seroja Devastates Western Australian Town: Tropical Cyclone Seroja slammed into the Western Australian town of Kalbarri Sunday as a Category 3 storm before grinding a more-than 600-mile path across the country's Southwest. About 70% of the buildings in Kalbarri were damaged and tens of thousands are without power by winds gusting over 100 miles per hour. Climate change, caused by humans' extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, is making cyclonic storms more extreme by increasing air and ocean temperatures, which effectively supercharges the storms. "You just thought, this is it. I would have thought that when we opened the door, that there would be nothing around us except that roof," Kalbarri resident Debbie Major told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "We are a small town. Half of it has been flattened." Seroja devastated regions of Indonesia and Timor-Leste last week, where it triggered deadly flash floods and landslides. (BBC, Washington Post $, AU News, ABC AU, The Guardian (Video); Climate Signals background: Cyclonic storms)

IN MEMORIAM: LaDonna Tamakawastewin Allard, leader of Standing Rock’s fight against the Dakota Access pipeline, passes on (Native News Online)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: Black, Latinx families bear the energy burden in Milwaukee, study finds (Energy News Network), can a wildlife refuge help a community’s fight for environmental justice? (High Country News), ‘we just want to breathe’: Little Village protest marks anniversary of botched coal plant demolition (WGN), Black Army lieutenant sues Virginia cops who pulled guns on him, pepper-sprayed and struck him in the legs after stop in new SUV (The Root, NewsOne, Blavity, NPR), day 10 of Chauvin trial debates how large of a role George Floyd's pre-existing conditions played in his death (The Root, Blavity, New York Times $), Cascadia’s communities of color speak out against climate injustice (Grist), house hunters are fleeing climate change, causing a new kind of gentrification (Grist), racism, inequities move to the center of the climate debate (Environmental Health News)

VOTER SUPPRESSION: Proposed Texas law based on ‘big lie’ advances out of committee (NewsOne)

DENIAL: Big Oil fed state educators stats used to push back on Biden’s climate goals (Earther), big tech CEOs face lawmakers in House hearing on social media’s role in extremism, misinformation (Washington Post $)

IMPACTS' IMPACTS: Guatemalan farmer weighs leaving family behind to go to US as climate change, poverty forces migrants from homes (CBS)

AGENCIES: Buttigieg on exaggerated infrastructure jobs estimate: 'I should have been more precise' (The Hill), Granholm: American Jobs Plan will prioritize communities struggling with loss of coal, oil and gas jobs (Utility Dive)

EPA: Biden admin's methane emission curbs to exceed Obama's: EPA chief (Reuters), EPA moves to dump Trump's cost-benefit rule (E&E $) 

DOI: Interior bolsters offshore wind by revoking Trump-era legal opinion (The Hill), Haaland return sets up Biden decision on Utah national monuments shrunk by Trump (The Hill, E&E $, InsideClimate News)

THE HILL: 'Moment of trial balloons': Democrats debate what to cut from Biden bill (Politico Pro $), Biden's infrastructure plan heads for the Senate shredder (Politico), Dem bill would provide $8B to clean orphaned wells (E&E $), oil execs decline Bernie Sanders' invitation to testify (E&E $)

WHITE HOUSE: Energy policy researcher says Biden's jobs plan tackles climate change (NPR), Kerry says US will adopt 'aggressive' CO2 cuts (E&E $)

BUDGET: Biden's budget outline calls for new money across government for climate (Politico Pro $, E&E $, Washington Post $, New York Times $, Wall Street Journal $, Reuters, E&E $), Biden budget's $14 billion hike for climate includes big boosts for EPA, science (Reuters, E&E $, The Hill, Axios, E&E $, Grist), Biden budget proposes $1.4 billion for environmental justice (The Hill, E&E $), Biden administration proposes record $6.9 billion budget for NOAA (Washington Post $), the White House wants to spend $100 million to monitor the air we breathe (The Verge), Biden plan would pump billions into home retrofits (E&E $), Biden plan breathes life into conservation corps bills (E&E $, E&E $)

AMERICAN JOBS PLAN: 65% of voters support corporate tax hikes to pay for Biden's infrastructure plan, new poll finds (Business Insider), White House races clock to beat GOP attacks (The Hill)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Report: John Kerry plans to visit China ahead of Biden's climate summit (Axios), US envoy Kerry discusses climate challenges in Bangladesh (AP)

CITIES AND STATES: After years of protests, state officials revoke permit for controversial biomass plant in Springfield (Boston Globe $), homeowners, group seek action on Alabama Power’s solar fee (AP), House of Delegates passes climate change response bill (Maryland Matters), Rhode Island governor signs climate change bill into law (AP)

CALIFORNIA: California could require Uber and Lyft to go electric by 2030 (Earther, E&E $), a California county, despite the state’s climate goals, further embraces fossil fuels (Washington Post $), how a shocking environmental disaster was uncovered off the California coast after 70 years (CBS)

TEXAS: Faulting ERCOT, insurer says it shouldn't have to cover storm damages (Houston Chronicle), wind generates most power in Texas ERCOT grid in March (Reuters)

IMPACTS: In the West, signs in the snow warn that a 20-year drought will persist and intensify (InsideClimate News), [ND Gov.] Burgum declares statewide disaster as dry conditions worsen (AP), drought and dry soils again will diminish Colorado’s spring runoff (The Aspen Times), February winter storms most expensive on record — NOAA (E&E $), repeat flooding turned residents against a S.C. county (E&E $), as rainstorms grow more severe and frequent, communities fail to prepare for risks (Washington Post $)

WILDFIRES: Drought-plagued California and western US may see another devastating fire season (Washington Post $), Arizona wildfire destroys 12 homes; 200 people evacuated (AP)

HURRICANES: NOAA expects more storms in an "average" hurricane season (Axios, Earther, Politico Pro $, NPR)

ANTARCTICA: Climate threatens a third of Antarctic ice shelf — study (E&E $, The Conversation), first-ever observations from under Antarctica’s ‘doomsday glacier’ are bad news (Earther)

ZOOMING OUT: Climate spending is a story of the century (Axios)

RENEWABLES: How an offshore wind boom in the US could boost ocean research (The Verge)

COAL: 21 miners trapped after Xinjiang coal mine accident - China Daily (Reuters)

HYDROGEN: Dutch earmark $400 mln for green hydrogen development (Reuters)

WATER: Meet Arizona's water one-percenters (The Guardian)

NUKES: Indian Point is shutting down. That means more fossil fuel. (New York Times $)

TREES: Are huge tree planting projects more hype than solution? (Yale Environment 360)

AVIATION: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights (Reuters)

CARBON PRICING: Biden wants a carbon price 'at some point' — Kerry (E&E $), Kerry comments encourage Hill carbon price talks (E&E $), experts lay out their case against carbon pricing (Yale Climate Connections)

FINANCE: Biden poised to sign executive order on climate finance (E&E $)

GRETA: Greta Thunberg says she will not attend COP26 climate summit (The Guardian)

WILDLIFE: Earth's most beloved creatures headed toward extinction under current emissions, study shows (CBS)

INTERNATIONAL: IMF, World Bank urged to aid middle-income country debt distress, climate transitions (Reuters), out of Trump’s shadow, World Bank president embraces climate fight (New York Times $), thousands rally in Serbia to protect the environment (AP)

• The pipeline that President Biden needs to stop (CNN, Ilhan Omar and Tara Houska)
• These environmental reporters told you so (Environmental Health News, Peter Dykstra column)
• Radhika Fox, acting head of EPA’s water office (Politico Pro, interview $)
• The truth behind companies' 'net zero' climate commitments (The Hill, Alice Hill and Jennifer Nash op-ed)
• Texas should boost clean energy innovation, not discourage investors (Houston Chronicle, Chris Tomlinson column)
• Plenty of low-hanging fruit: How FERC can catalyze transmission infrastructure (Utility Dive, Devin Hartman and Beth Garza op-ed)
• The best explanation of Biden’s thinking I’ve heard (New York Times, Ezra Klein Show, Brian Deese interview $)
• Global CO2 emissions far off net-zero trajectory: Kemp (Reuters, John Kemp column)
• Time for a global coalition to reduce methane emissions (Energy Monitor, Justin Gerdes analysis)
• We need a US climate law (The Hill, Kelly Sims Gallagher op-ed)
• Food system emissions need attention at Biden's climate summit (The Hill, Philippe Benoit and Kevin Karl op-ed)

Fighting Disinformation In the Funny Pages: New Comic Illustrates How Delay Is The New Denial

Last week, there was a minor kerfuffle in the climate denier-adjacent world, when anti-pronouns crusader and climate denier Jordan Peterson tweeted, “Do I really live in a universe where Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a Captain America comic featuring a parody of my ideas as part of the philosophy of the arch villain Red Skull?” 

And the answer is yes. Coates, the influential thinker and writer, did indeed make some pretty obvious allusions to Peterson’s “12 Rules” self-help guide (which attempts to teach good little boys how to be Big Strong [Fascist] Men) in his run of writing Captain America for Marvel that started back in 2018, making the replies to Peterson’s “are we the baddies?” near-epiphany pretty entertaining.  

In one of the many pearl-clutching stories published in rightwing anti-getting-offended “news” outlets, the Daily Caller concludes by noting that Peterson “rose to prominence due to his positions against political correctness and referring to white privilege as a ‘Marxist lie’.” So maybe Peterson, who has warned about “the problem of too much empathy” shouldn’t be so surprised at being used as the source material for a modern Nazi.

But as it turns out, there’s another comic out that’s also aimed at the denier dufuses of the world like Peterson, though this one’s definitely more explicitly so. Illustrator Céline Keller has created a great comic book version of a study on the “discourses of climate delay.” As you may remember from its release last year, the study looks at the rhetoric opposing climate action, breaking it down into four main categories and additional subsections. Where outright denial (think James Inhofe with his snowball) is relatively obvious, the rhetorical tactics of delay are more sophisticated. For example, agreeing that action is necessary but suggesting someone else act first, or that just a few little tech tweaks will solve the problem. Then there’s an (over-)emphasis on the downsides of policies, and the outright surrender of doomism. 

Keller takes that interesting but admittedly dry information and — much like how Coates very deliberately went from penning “the case for reparations” and many other influential essays in The Atlantic to a more mass-audience-friendly medium of Marvel comics — translates the dense text into something that’s an absolute treat to read. 

With pop-art illustrations of oil CEOs and professional disinformers and their quotes, Keller worked with the scientists behind the study to show readers how language that sounds well-intentioned is used to delay climate action. 

Starting with the CEO of Shell pulling a Ted Cruz and blaming his daughters as an example of how individualism is weaponized to oppose collective action, the comic moves through ten examples of this sophisticated new denial with a decidedly global focus, featuring global leaders and CEOs that are polluting the discourse on what to do about pollution. 

Doesn’t look like Jordan Peterson makes an appearance though, which is good news for whoever’s writing this in a few years when he belatedly discovers this comic.

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