FIRST LOOK:

Be sure to read the Denier Roundup on how — for some reason — President Biden isn't being attacked like President Obama and women of color calling for climate action.

Biden Highlights Climate Action And JOBS! In First Joint Session Speech: President Biden touted his administration's efforts to grow the American economy and create jobs by addressing the climate crisis in his first address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night. “For too long, we have failed to use the most important word when it comes to meeting the climate crisis,” Biden said. “Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. For me, when I think about climate change, I think jobs.” Biden touted opportunities for engineers and construction workers to increase home and building efficiency, for union electricians to install EV charging stations, and for farmers to pull carbon from the atmosphere. Biden also emphasized opportunities for the manufacturing sector. "There is simply no reason why the blades for wind turbines can’t be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing," he said. "No reason. None." Biden touted his convening of a climate summit last week to spur global efforts to fight climate change. He also said hurricanes were one of "the root[s] of the problem" pushing Central Americans to flee their home countries, but did not link the worsening hurricanes to climate change. (Speech Transcript: New York Times $, Washington Post $; Coverage: AP, New York Times $, Washington Post $, Wall Street Journal $, E&E $, E&E $, E&E $)

Senate Votes To Reinstate Methane Rules With CRA: The Senate voted to reinstate Obama-era regulations and safeguards designed to limit methane pollution. Three Republicans joined Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in voting to repeal the Trump administration's loosening of leak detection and methane capture requirements via the Congressional Review Act. Methane, an extremely-potent heat trapping gas, is the primary ingredient of so-called natural gas. Atmospheric methane levels surged last year, amidst pandemic-related shutdowns. (New York Times $, AP, CNN, E&E $, CNBC, NPR, Washington Post $, The Hill, Wall Street Journal $, Rolling Stone, FT $, InsideClimate News, LA Times $, S&P Global, Bloomberg $, Reuters, Washington Examiner)

People Of Color Breathe More Polluted Air, New Research Confirms: People of color in the U.S. are disproportionately exposed to particulate pollution and have been left behind by overall pollution reductions compared to white Americans, a new study published by researchers from five universities shows. The findings hold true across state lines and income levels and show how decades-old decisions to build highways and industrial facilities continue to harm Black, Latino, and Asian Americans. “If you go to communities of color across this country and ask them, ‘What’s the source of the environmental problems?’ they can point you to every one: the highway, the chemical plants, the refineries, the legacy pollution left over from decades ago, in the houses, in the air, in the water, in the playgrounds,” Robert Bullard, an eminent environmental justice scholar at Texas Southern University who was not involved in the study, told the New York Times. “Empirical research is now catching up with the reality: that America is segregated and so is pollution.” (Washington Post $, New York Times $)

READ THE WHOLE THING: Hardship binds flood survivors: 'All we have is each other' (E&E News)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: 175 groups demand banks not support Louisiana plastics plant (E&E $), Flint residents affected by water crisis may be getting exposed to harmful radiation (Detroit Free Press), police killings of Black Americans amount to crimes against humanity, international inquiry finds (The Guardian, Black Wall Street Times)

MARIO GONZALEZ: 'Police killed my brother': California police release footage showing officers kneeling on [Mario Gonzalez] for 5 minutes before he died (USA Today, NPR, Washington Post $, New York Times $, CBS, Vice), death of [Mario Gonzalez] who was pinned facedown by police draws comparisons to that of George Floyd (NBC, Al Jazeera), lawyer says police didn't need to arrest man who died after being pinned to ground (NPR)

AHMAUD ARBERY: Three men charged with federal hate crimes in fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery (Washington Post $, CNN, BBC, NPR, NBC, New York Times $, USA Today), Ahmaud Arbery family lawyers respond to hate crime charges (Newsweek)

IMPACTS' IMPACTS: Almost 30 million will need aid in Sahel this year as crisis worsens, UN warns (The Guardian), poor communities will likely need to be compensated as a result of climate change policies, study says (ABC), migration to flee rising seas could affect 1.3 mln Bangladeshis by 2050 (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

TRANSIT: Bike-share programs are shifting gears and prioritizing equity (Grist)

FINANCE: Financial climate risks are 'lurking out of view' — survey (E&E $), financial firms should disclose emissions from activities they fund, group says (Reuters), Citigroup declined 11 coal transactions last year (Axios)

WHAT'S IN AN NDC?: US, UK, EU: Comparing the new 2030 climate targets (Energy Monitor)

AGENCIES: FEMA seeks help to purge inequality in disaster aid (E&E $)

EPA: EPA to send investigators to probe ‘distressing’ incidents at the limetree refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands (InsideClimate News), EPA narrows exemption panned as PFAS loophole (E&E $), Regan talks up Biden's climate goal (E&E $)

THE HILL: Dems make case for government-backed green bank (E&E $), water bill becomes 'test case' for Hill negotiations (E&E $)

HOUSE: Tribal officials outline infrastructure gap ‘big as the Grand Canyon’ (Navajo-Hopi Observer)

SENATE: Administration defends lease moratorium in Senate hearing (E&E $), Manchin rips big banks for net-zero carbon goals (The Hill), national labs, amendments derail Schumer innovation bill (E&E $), Republicans dig in against repealing fossil fuel breaks (E&E $)

WHITE HOUSE: After the summit: Biden’s to-do list (New York Times $), Biden disrupts detractors with war on warming, not on coal (E&E $), Biden looks to get past 'the easy stuff' (E&E $), White House announces new EPA, DOE picks (E&E $), White House begins push for more transmission lines (Axios), Biden has elevated the job of science adviser. Is that what science needs? (New York Times $), Biden official: 2020-2030 is the 'decisive decade' for climate change action (Axios)

AMERICAN JOBS PLAN: Biden to rally for infrastructure plan, new $1T package (E&E $), Biden's $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan meets power system needs, but leaves room for political dealing (Utility Dive)

POLITICS: Republicans’ climate credibility hit by make-believe ‘war on burgers’ claim (The Guardian)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: America is making climate promises again. Should anyone care? (Vox)

SCOTUS: Supreme Court feud set to shake up eminent domain, gas (E&E $)

CITIES AND STATES: South Carolina regulators deny Dominion’s rate plan for future rooftop solar customers (Charleston Post and Courier $, The State), [API] gave more than $1 million to anti-HB6 dark money campaign (Cleveland Plain-Dealer), Colorado governor says he would veto climate change bill (AP), Florida lawmakers revive push to spare coast from drilling (E&E $), ‘fossil fuel sanctuary state’ bill stalls in Louisiana House (AP), Nevada lawmakers weigh fire-fighting coordination, liability (AP)

TRIBES: Forgotten: can Biden tackle tribes' water woes? (E&E $), tribes without clean water demand an end to decades of US government neglect (The Guardian)

TEXAS: ERCOT names interim CEO after blackout crisis (E&E $)

FERC: Glick: FERC to usher in transmission reforms this summer (E&E $)

IMPACTS: ‘Life support’ measures could buy Great Barrier Reef another two decades, study finds (The Guardian)

GLACIERS: 'Alarming': world's glaciers are melting faster than ever because of global warming, study says (USA Today, Reuters, AP, The Guardian, Bloomberg $), what we lose when we lose our glaciers (The Guardian)

METHANE: Methane from abandoned coal mines could be key to fight climate change — if only it made more money (Energy News Network), study charts path to cut methane emissions 50% in a decade (E&E $)

RENEWABLES: A major new facility in Oregon could help transform the prospects of wave energy (CNBC), Biden’s new moonshot: an offshore wind industry to rival Europe’s (Grist), slowdown in clean energy patents threatens CO2 goals — report (E&E $), the Exxon of green power: a Spanish company and its boss set sky-high goals (New York Times $), the U.S. will need a lot of land for a zero-carbon economy (Bloomberg $)

"RENEWABLES": OPAL, NextEra Energy unit to build renewable gas facility in Minnesota (Reuters), Tesla’s latest solar stumble: big price increases (New York Times $)

OIL & GAS: The intensifying battle for Exxon's future (Axios)

PIPELINES: Frustrated Canada presses White House to keep Great Lakes oil pipeline open (Reuters, AP), nearly 50% of spring hearing respondents oppose new Line 5 (AP)

HYDROGEN: Shipping looks to hydrogen as it seeks to ditch bunker fuel (InsideClimate News), UK setting its sights too low for hydrogen heating in homes (Bloomberg $)

UTILITIES: Duke Energy plans to triple U.S. renewable power output by 2030 (Reuters)

GONE FISSION: Controversial nuke plant near NYC shuts down (AP)

WATER: Facing drought, southern California has more water than ever (Bloomberg $), regulatory roadblocks stop dam from slaking California thirst (E&E $)

GRID: PJM floats renewable power exemption to MOPR (Politico Pro $)

EVs: Tesla reports strong earnings, but traders are unimpressed (Axios)

AGRICULTURE: Leaders promise action on tax credits, carbon markets bill (E&E $), ‘we need a Tesla for the cow’: the wild, dubious plan to feed cows seaweed (Earther), beefing over beef is a distraction the climate movement can’t afford (The Verge), farmers struggle to break into booming carbon-credit market (Reuters)

THE FUTURE DENIERS WANT: Brewer sells 'awful' beer to show climate effects (E&E $)

IN MEMORIAM: Deborah Swackhamer, science adviser fired by Trump EPA, dies (E&E $)

TRASH: COVID-19 vaccine rollout keeps waste workers busy, environmentalists worried (Reuters)

INTERNATIONAL: India’s deepening water crisis at the heart of farm protests (AP), renewables inspire Chile’s dream of exporting green energy (FT $), Saudi crown prince says the kingdom’s in talks to sell 1% of Aramco to a ‘leading global energy’ firm (CNBC), Polish govt, unions initial plan to phase out coal by 2049 (AP), top court: Germany must set clear post-2030 climate goals (AP)

• Chicken Little learns that Joe Biden wants to take away your hamburgers (Washington Post, Alexandra Petri column $)
• Yes, climate activists want to reduce your beef consumption (Washington Post, Henry Olsen column $)
• Fair tax systems are vital for strong climate action (The Hill, Ian Gary and David Waskow op-ed)
• Right-wing elites are worse than their followers (Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin column $)
• Have you been doing environmentalism wrong? (Grist, Jenny Price interview)
• Escalating climate risks will outpace climate services without federal action (The Hill, Kathy Jacobs and Richard Moss op-ed)
• The American right is becoming completely untethered from reality (Washington Post, Max Boot column $)
• Water created California and the West. Will drought finish them off? (LA Times, Michael Hiltzik column $)
• How to implement a 'just' energy transition? Make it local (The Hill, Nathaniel Smith op-ed)
• What really happens to the plastic you throw out (CNN, Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Alan Lowenthal op-ed)
• Misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples of Alaska needs to stop (Indian Country Today, Siqiñiq Maupin op-ed)
• Fracking jobs will disappear. Pennsylvania has to manage the decline. (Philadelphia Inquirer, The Inquirer Editorial Board)
• The wind and solar boom is here (New York Times, Farhad Manjoo column $)

Climate Deniers And Rightwing Media Audiences So Primed For Racism And Misogyny They Can’t Slime Biden, Baffling Politico

Yesterday Politico’s Melanie Zanona and Burgess Everett published a story about how Republicans “are hoping to puncture Biden’s popularity without getting down in the mud.” It seems the party that was all too eager to attack Biden’s (Black) presidential predecessor, and regularly heaps abuse on the (female) counterpart leading the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and can’t shut up about (Latina) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Senator (((Bernie Sanders))), for some reason has nothing but collegial respect for President (white man) Biden. 

Politico, a brand supposedly built on a working knowledge of the ins and outs of politics, appears to be unaware of racism, sexism, or antisemitism, and instead guessingly attributes it to Republicans thinking Biden’s policies are “unpopular enough on their own” (oh, like Obamacare?) or because some of them have “a personal relationship with the president.” This, despite the fact that they have similar working relationships with longtime House and Senate figures Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders, who Politico uses in the story as counterpoints without any indication that it’s quite obviously Biden’s identity as a white Christian man that has left the GOP’s finely tuned racist messaging machine flailing for an attack that works. 

At this point conservative media doesn’t even necessarily have to bother adding its own racism to its coverage, because it knows its audience is already so well-primed for it that it’s unnecessary. Three posts yesterday show how it works. 

First let’s look at “Nazis built our brand” Breitbart, which chose to highlight comments Rep. Pramila Jayapal made over the weekend about President Biden’s infrastructure bill. But there isn’t the invective one might expect in the story appearing in the famously racist website, as it’s mostly just a retelling of her speech about “transitioning to a clean, green economy.” It’s got a barb from a Republican about how Biden’s plan is not about infrastructure, but then closes with a quote where Rep. Jayapal explains all the ways in which it’s totally about infrastructure. If you just stumbled on the link and didn’t know about Breitbart, you’d think it was a pretty fair story. 

It was the same play over at ClimateDepot, where champion of this tactic Marc Morano splashed Rhiana Gunn-Wright’s smiling headshot on the home page and twice on the repost of an interview she gave with Atmos, headlined “there’s no Green New Deal without police abolition.” Gunn-Wright explains that “police brutality is an environmental justice issue,” because “environmental justice is not just about air pollution” (which a new study shows hurts communities of color worse, regardless of economics) but also “what makes up your physical environment, including policing, public safety, education, clean water. All of that is part of a person’s physical environment.” As an element of the physical environment of people’s world, racist policing is environmental racism. 

In addition to that, and a “willingness to recognize that the system we have doesn’t work,” another reason police abolition needs to be part of an overarching climate agenda is the fact that “those first anti-protest bills came out of lobbying from fossil fuel companies that wanted to prohibit protests around fossil fuel infrastructure” so cops are often, quite literally, paid by the industry to spy on, arrest, imprison or assault the climate activists like you, dear reader, who they treat “like an enemy on the battlefield,” according to international Human Rights groups. Gunn-Wright says it’s a matter of “thinking about the ways that police are employed to protect capital and maintain certain people in certain places.” So it’s “very connected to the climate crisis, especially as you think about resources becoming more scarce.” (Just ask the Pinkertons…)

All very true, very smart stuff that stands in stark contrast to the rest of the unhinged denial at Climate Depot, but left entirely uncontested in the post itself.  

Finally, Fox News had a similarly styled story yesterday about Shalanda Baker, President Biden’s nominee for the Department of Energy’s Office of Minority Economic Impact, and what it considers her scandalous behavior: supporting the Green New Deal and writing a book calling for an energy transition. Fox News summarizes and quotes extensively from her book, for example describing her writing about “how existing ‘corporate and financial interests’ behind fossil fuels have more recently looked to ‘jockey for space to maintain influence in the renewable energy economy.’ She claimed that without radical change, minority communities will continue to face injustice.” 

Fox News’s Ronn Blitzer, who “reported” this story — that someone nominated for a position in the Energy Department’s Office of Minority Economic Impact wrote a book about the economic impact of energy on minority communities — made no attempt at rebutting or refuting or even offering contrasting opinions to suggest Baker was in any way incorrect in her analysis.

He didn’t have to. 

Because just like the Breitbart story, and just like at Climate Depot, all Fox News had to do was include a headshot of the subject of the story, in each case a woman of color, and its audience knew exactly how to feel: triggered. 

Yet to the otherwise often quite sharp reporters at Politico, apparently it’s a real mystery why Republicans can’t seem to smear President Biden.

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