FIRST LOOK:

Leaders from more than 70 large U.S. businesses will convene tomorrow to call on the Biden administration and Congress to support a strong infrastructure package that mitigates the climate crisis and advances environmental justice. More info here.

Colonial Pipeline Shutdown Shows Vulnerability Of Old Infrastructure: The ransomware attack that shut down the Colonial Pipeline threatens fuel shortages from Alabama to Washington DC, illustrating the vulnerability of aging U.S. energy infrastructure, experts say. Pipeline operators say they will begin slowly restarting the pipeline today. So-called "legacy assets" like the 40-year-old Colonial Pipeline crisscross the country with post-hoc digital technology “that’s been bolted on top,” Lev Simonovich, a vice president at Siemens Energy specializing in security, told the Washington Post. As witnessed in Texas and the Great Plains during the February freeze, unexpected shutdowns of pipelines and refineries can have catastrophic results. Experts stressed that modernizing the U.S. energy system was critical to protect against cyberattack vulnerabilities. (Washington Post $, Bloomberg $, NBC, Wall Street Journal $, Utility Dive, The Hill, E&E $, Earther)

Cal. Gov. Expands Drought Declaration 41 Counties, Expects Drought Area To Grow: California governor Gavin Newsom expanded an emergency drought declaration from two to 41 of the state's 58 counties on Monday. About 40 million people, around 30% of the state's population, now live under a drought emergency that Newsom said is likely to expand. “The hots are getting a lot hotter in this state, the dries are getting a lot drier,” Newsom said. “We have a conveyance system, a water system, that was designed for a world that no longer exists.” (AP, Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times $, CAL Matters, Mercury News, Deadline, Axios, Reuters, The Hill; Climate Signals background: Drought, Wildfires)

Navajo Nation Methane Pollution Rate Double National Average: Methane pollution from oil and gas extraction operations on Navajo Nation lands harms the health of local residents and robs the tribe of critical income, writes Hannah Grover for the New Mexico Political Report. An EDF report released late last month found the industry releases 1.5 million cubic feet of so-called 'natural' gas,' comprised mostly of methane, into the atmosphere in Navajo Nation each year. That methane gas pollution amounts to 5.2% of the gas extracted, a loss rate double the national average, and costs the tribe $1.2 million in lost royalties and taxes. The harmful methane pollution can have a major impact on Navajo Nation residents. Carol Davis, the director of the environmental advocacy group Diné CARE said just a visit left her with nausea, headaches and a panic attack. “It’s just amazing,” she added, “that people have lived there for so long in an area where they’re exposed to that kind of pollution.” According to EDF, about a third of those losses could be addressed through regular detection and maintenance. (New Mexico Political Report)

Vineyard Wind Approval Expected: The Interior Department is set to approve the first major offshore wind farm in federal waters as soon as today. The 84 turbines making up the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts is slated to power approximately 400,000 homes on the East Coast by late next year. “It’s a big deal on its face. It’s the first of its kind,” Frank Callahan, president of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council, told the New York Times. “I think it’s an important message that these jobs will be good union jobs with good wages and benefits.” (New York Times $, Bloomberg $, Commonwealth Magazine)

TAKE OUR MONEY: Survive the future is a sneaky-simple game that makes our climate choices real (Earther), futuristic computer game hopes to be tonic for climate change anxiety (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

IMPACTS' IMPACTS: Why people are fleeing Honduras for the US: 'All that's left here is misery' (NPR)

DENIAL & DISINFORMATION:  Utility-backed natural gas booklets spark backlash at [Massachusetts] school (AP), [Arizona utility] regulator shares discredited conspiracy theories about COVID (AP), Wall Street Journal article repeats multiple incorrect and misleading claims made in Steven Koonin’s new book ’Unsettled’ (Climate Feedback)

TRIBAL WATER: Judge nixes reduced Klamath River flows for sucker fish (E&E $)

WORDS, MEANING, ETC.: Tar sands executive named as Canadian ‘climate champion’ ahead of COP26 (Climate Home), 'responsibly sourced' gas grows despite greenwashing claims (E&E $)

GLOBAL LEADERSHIP: The U.S. owes a massive climate debt. One way to pay it: let in climate migrants (Fast Company and Nexus Media News)

TEXAS FREEZE FALLOUT: Xcel, CenterPoint make millions while customers get stuck with bills after February storm (Star Tribune $)

ALL ABOUT THE BIRDS BENJAMINS: [The Massachusetts Audubon Society] promised to preserve wildlife. Then it made millions claiming it could cut down trees. (ProPublica)

COLONIAL PIPELINE: What you need to know about the Colonial Pipeline hack (Politico Pro $, Axios), cyberattack-induced shutdown of major us pipeline renews calls for clean energy (Common Dreams), Colonial Pipeline aims to be "substantially" back online by end of week (Axios, The Hill, Politico, CNBC), the cybersecurity ‘pandemic’ that led to the Colonial Pipeline disaster (The Verge), here’s the hacking group responsible for the Colonial Pipeline shutdown (CNBC)

EPA: EPA gets 100 nominees for 7 spots on key air panel (Politico Pro $), Meet [Joe Goffman] the man tasked with carrying out Biden's air agenda (E&E $), Regan's water rule plans leave greens on edge (Politico Pro $)

DOI: Interior plans to expand grants for urban parks (E&E $), report: Interior whistleblower flagged data-handling flaws (E&E $)

THE HILL: Dueling innovation bills head to committee markups (E&E $), GOP weighs going bigger on infrastructure (Politico Pro $), John Kerry to make Hill debut as Biden climate envoy (E&E $), panels take up offshore leasing pause, anti-drilling bills (E&E $), committees hold cyber hearings in wake of pipeline attack (E&E $), pipeline hack adds urgency to infrastructure talks (E&E $)

HOUSE: Lawmakers tackle environmental justice, Dakota Access (E&E $), [House Ag] panel to probe farm conservation's role in climate change (E&E $), Committee sets vote on climate risk disclosure bill (E&E $)

SENATE: West Virginia’s Capito emerges as central figure as Democrats, Republicans seek infrastructure deal (Washington Post $), Kyrsten Sinema doesn’t feel the need to explain herself (The 19th* News)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden's climate bet rests on a clean electricity standard (E&E $)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: Officials set governmentwide scientific integrity summit (E&E $), Overseas investment agency adds first climate chief (Politico Pro $)

POLITICS: BP says it will stick with [API] after climate shift (Reuters)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Committee sets hearing on Interior, EPA picks (E&E $), Biden's EPA water pick to keep some holdings in energy, beverage companies (Politico Pro $), panel to vote on Agriculture deputy pick [Jewel Bronaugh] (E&E $), Tommy Beaudreau on glide path to [deputy Interior secretary] confirmation (E&E $), vote set on DOJ environment nominee [Todd Kim] (E&E $)

PERSONNEL: The newest federal climate officials (Axios), DOE fills out roster of political appointees (E&E $), US development bank hires first-ever climate officers (E&E $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: How oil and gas extraction undermines the climate policies of rich nations (Energy Monitor)

CITIES AND STATES: How ‘sustainable’ is California’s groundwater sustainability act? (High Country News), Detroit showed what ‘build back better’ can look like (Bloomberg $)

FERC: FERC Chair Glick, Clements call for mandatory cybersecurity standards for pipelines (Politico Pro $)

IMPACTS: Cicadas like to be on time. But are they getting confused by climate change? (Grist), heavier downpours strain septic systems in some rural areas (Yale Climate Connections), Nashville is booming. So is its flood risk (E&E $), tea-growing areas to be badly hit if global heating intensifies (The Guardian), untold victims of rising temperatures: Multiple sclerosis patients (Grist), water wells are at risk of going dry in the US and worldwide (The Conversation), as climate change thaws mountain tops, risks of rockfalls surge (Washington Post $)

WILDFIRES: Wildfire continues to push toward Crown King near Prescott (AP)

HURRICANES: The earliest East Pacific tropical storm on record, Andres, formed Sunday (Washington Post $)

HOUSING: Climate change increases renters’ risks (Yale Climate Connections), there’s federal money available to house the homeless. No one’s taking it. (Grist)

AGRICULTURE: Air pollution from farms leads to 17,900 U.S. deaths per year, study finds (Washington Post $), in California’s farm country, climate change is likely to trigger more pesticide use, fouling waterways (InsideClimate News)

RENEWABLES: Wind groups fall back from giddy heights (FT $)

BATTERIES: America's electric cars need lithium so badly it may wipe out this species (CNN), experts call for mandatory recycling of products containing rare metals (The Guardian)

OIL & GAS: Shell’s CEO thinks we’re dumb (Earther), Chevron gadfly Donziger faces criminal charges in N.Y. trial (Bloomberg $)

ORPHANED WELLS: Thousands of abandoned Ohio oil and gas wells may be hidden. Drones could help find them. (Energy News Network)

COAL: Financial services giant to stop backing thermal coal (E&E $)

HYDROGEN: Volvo and Daimler bet on hydrogen truck boom this decade (FT $)

UTILITIES: Activist investor Elliott has stake in Duke Energy - source (Reuters), DTE, Consumers Energy urge Michigan to not allow dual participation for storage projects (Utility Dive), Duke CEO says utilities understand ‘we are a target’ for hackers (Bloomberg $), targeted industrial control systems add cautionary flag to cyber defense strategies (Utility Dive), Xcel Energy issues broad performance metrics report, setting markers for future progress (Utility Dive)

EVs: Cobalt angst will turn carmakers into mine owners (Reuters), electric 3-wheeled car factory, jobs coming to Mesa, Arizona (AP), electric bus maker rolls out plan for U.S. factory (E&E $), GM is right about the federal EV tax credit (Jalopnik)

EVs?: Investors chide Toyota's Toyoda for questioning combustion car ban (Reuters)

'90s KIDS KNOW: Ford’s first electric pickup truck will be called the F-150 Lightning (The Verge, CNBC, Tech Crunch, Ars Technica)

BUSINESS: Business schools wake up and smell the (ESG) coffee (FT $)

FINANCE: Green investors seek to 'change the DNA of the corporation' (E&E $), hedge fund star guiding $1.3 trillion in Norway talks talent (Bloomberg $)

INTERNATIONAL: Beijing’s rising pollution risks smoggy 2022 Winter Olympics (Bloomberg $), environment lawyer fined £5k for contempt in Heathrow case (The Guardian), EU parliament committee rubber-stamps climate change law (Reuters), G7 should invest $10 trillion to stoke climate-friendly recovery - PM Johnson told (Reuters), Mexican judge rules against president’s gasoline law (AP)

• A conversation with White House adviser and environmental justice advocate Catherine Coleman Flowers (Yale Climate Connections, interview)
• On a move: 36 years later, MOVE member Mike Africa Jr. reflects on the bombing of the environmental justice group’s headquarters (Atmos, interview)
• Fighting silent killers (NJ.com, Dr. Sandra Steingraber interview)
• Approving funding to cap abandoned oil and gas wells would aid the environment and protect jobs (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Editorial Board $)
• Biden should embrace a carbon tax (Washington Post, Hank Paulson and Erskine Bowles op-ed $)
• Nepal is being overwhelmed by Covid. We need help (The Guardian, KP Sharma Oli op-ed)
• Colonial hack can’t be just another wake-up call (Bloomberg, Timothy O'Brien column $)
• Net zero goals demand zero tolerance (Reuters, George Hay op-ed)
• Climate accountability is a solution—why isn’t it treated like one? (Drilled, Amy Westervelt commentary)
• Jackson water crisis demands significant infrastructure investment (Clarion Ledger, Aaron Banks op-ed)

Dinesh D’Souza Sticks Up For All The Climate-Denying “Peasants” Immigrating to US By Imagining A Convo With VP Kamala Harris 

A week ago, Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech on immigration, and mentioned climate change and extreme weather as some of the forces destabilizing the regions and pushing many people to flee North. The administration’s focus is (among other things) on “addressing both the acute factors and the root causes of migration,” the Washington Times coverage quotes Harris saying one such issue is “the lack of climate adaptation and climate resilience” in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where climate change, by intensifying hurricanes for example, is compounding problems like “drought and extreme food insecurity.” 

Conservative media, having stoked hatred for a certain type of immigrants (who don’t come from, you know, Sweden or Norway, hint hint) were not particularly happy to learn their pet scapegoat is connected to the climate issue. 

It had mostly blown over, but then yesterday morning, after having had nearly a week to put something together, Dinseh D’Souza hit us with a “satirical sketch,” in which he imagines what it would be like if VP Harris explained climate change to a peasant.  

And that’s not our criticizing paraphrasing of this impressively cringey little video. While some might be embarrassed to admit that they had a week to put together a counter-argument and all they could come up with is imagining a conversation, D’Souza doesn’t even do that well. 

Because Harris’s laughing (supposedly, but not actually, in response to a question about the border) has become another misleading meme on the right, essentially it’s just him doing an obnoxious impersonation of the Vice President as a ditz. But simple misogyny with a hint of racism is not enough for Dinesh’s audience, so he balances that feeble performance with a stereotypical impersonation of the “peasant” (his word!) farmer he’s imagined, half-heartedly affecting an accent so hackneyed you can sense his own discomfort at the bit, wherein the imagined “peasant” has no idea about climate change or what “food insecurity” is, revealing more about Dinesh’s perceptions of Central American people than anything else. 

D’Souza, a conspiracy-minded conservative “intellectual” whose father was a Johnson & Johnson executive, is himself an immigrant from India. He came to the US as a high school foreign exchange student, and went on to graduate from Darthmouth, where his extra-cirriculars included using the student publication to out gay students. He grew up to work at some Koch groups before he became President of a small Christian school in 2010, before resigning in 2012 as the result of an alleged adultery scandal. 2012 was a big year for d’Souza, because it’s also when he made some illegal political donations, something he pled guilty to in 2014, and for which Trump pardoned him in 2018. (And that’s just a recap of the intro section to his Wikipedia page!) 

So one would think that as a pardoned felon and naturalized citizen to the US, D’Souza would be a little more sympathetic to people seeking a fresh start here. But that’s not really D’Souza’s brand. 

Instead, he somehow uses the fact that human suffering, oppression and poverty has been around “for millennia,” to argue that droughts and hurricanes wiping out crops year after year aren’t leaving people without food access. 

He tries to use India as a retort to the idea that poverty is driven by capitalism or other structural issues he only alludes to, by saying that there have been slums there for thousands of years. Since we’re imagining things, instead of watching his "sketch" you can just pretend he said "well there are poor people in India too, so clearly climate isn't hurting the ignorant peasants in Central America,” since that’s essentially the point he’s making.  

But hand-waving mentions of the deeply ingrained problems of systemic oppression in India does nothing to rebut the reality, which is that climate change is absolutely making things worse, both in Central America, and in India. It seems like D'Souza needs to do some more research and maybe talk to some of the “peasants” he uses as rhetorical props, so they can give him a few notes on his little “satirical sketch.” 

For example if he didn’t just imagine and actually talked to someone, they might tell him their actual reasons for moving are climate-related, or that despite his assumption that immigrants wouldn’t know about climate change a majority of people around the world, including Latin America, support climate action. 

Most importantly though, someone should tell him that really it’s weird for anyone in the 21st century to use the word “peasant” unironically.

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 ($)