FIRST LOOK:

A new Climate XChange report details the social, economic, and public health benefits of targeted green investments in public infrastructure and community programs in Massachusetts. 

BlackRock To Support Activist Shareholder's Nominees To Exxon Board: BlackRock will vote for three candidates for Exxon Mobil's board of directors who were nominated by an activist hedge fund, Reuters reports. All the candidates are opposed by Exxon leadership. BlackRock is the world's largest fund manager, and its decision to support the three board nominees illustrates shareholder dissatisfaction with Exxon's failure to keep pace with other oil majors' steps to address climate change. With a 6.7% stake, BlackRock is Exxon's second-largest investor. The candidates were nominated by Engine No. 1, a relatively tiny hedge fund (holding just 0.02% of Exxon's market cap) that has punched far above its weight in its criticism of the once practically omnipotent oil giant. BlackRock's support for three of Engine No. 1's four nominees, experts said, could influence the votes of Vanguard (Exxon’s largest shareholder with an 8.3% stake) and State Street (third largest with a 5.7% stake), though those firms have been less willing to back dissident investors in the past. Preliminary results will likely be announced Wednesday morning after the meeting begins at 10:30 a.m. EDT. (BlackRock vote: Reuters; Boardroom election showdown: New York Times $, Houston Chronicle, Wall Street Journal $; Engine No. 1: Politico; Commentary: Reuters, Richard Beales analysis)

Studies, Again, Find Disproportionate Climate, Pollution Harms: A pair of studies released this week show heat exposure and pollution are disproportionately harming people of color and low-income communities. In all but six of the largest 175 U.S. cities, people of color experienced more exposures to heat than white residents, a study published in Nature Communications found. Those researchers found heat island effects increased temperature in white neighborhoods by 2.6°F (1.47°C), less than half the 5.6°F (3.12°C) heat exposure increase experienced by Black communities. “We thought [the heat exposure disparity] would be explained by income,” T.C. Chakraborty, the study’s co-author and a PhD candidate at Yale University, told the Washington Post. “But it was not.” However, the second study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which focused on income and employment disparities, found the lower a ZIP code's median income, the higher chances were its residents would be hospitalized for unscheduled respiratory issues resulting from heat and ozone spikes. (Both: Washington Post $; Nature: AP; The Verge; Climate Signals background: Extreme heat and heat waves)

Plans For Floating Wind Turbines Off California Coast Take Crucial Step Forward: The Biden administration and California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a plan on Tuesday to develop wind farms off the California coast. Long opposed by the Defense Department over navigation concerns and stymied by logistical barriers presented by the Pacific's deep coastal waters, the two areas chosen for development would feature floating wind turbines. Combined, the two areas could support 4.6 gigawatts of electricity generation and power 1.6 million homes. The DOD supported the announcement because “the world faces a grave and growing climate crisis," Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said. (Washington Post $, New York Times $, E&E $, Reuters, Bloomberg $)

GEORGE FLOYD: 1 year later, what’s really changed since George Floyd’s murder? (NewsOne), one year after George Floyd's death, no major federal policing reform has passed Congress (Essence), inside George Floyd family’s meeting with President Biden and Congress (The Grio, AP), George Floyd's family announces $500K fund to ‘give breath’ to Minneapolis community (The Grio)

ENVIRONMENTAL (IN)JUSTICE: Climate changemakers fighting for environmental justice: "this is what transformation is about" (CBS), Palestine is suffering an ecological apartheid (Earther)

CLIMATE LITIGATION: Dutch court to rule on case targeting Shell's climate strategy (Reuters)

DENIAL: A critical review of Steven Koonin’s ‘Unsettled’ (Yale Climate Connections)

BUYING THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS: How so-called libertarian Charles Koch drove a national wave of anti-protest laws (Salon)

ACTIVISM: Amazon workers demand company quit polluting near communities of color (The Verge)

AGENCIES: DOJ enviro prosecutions still falling under Biden — study (E&E $), FEMA making $1 billion available for extreme weather events (CBS), USDA pledges money to measure climate benefits of conservation (Politico Pro $)

EPA: For the second time in four years, the Ninth Circuit has ordered the EPA to set new lead paint and dust standards (InsideClimate News)

DOE: Lisa Jackson, Granholm talk clean electricity standard (E&E $)

DOI: Biden releases plan for oil drilling near national monument (E&E $)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: DHS to issue first cybersecurity regulations for pipelines after Colonial hack (Washington Post $)

PUBLIC LANDS: Tribes launch Bears Ears ad campaign (E&E $)

THE HILL: Hispanic Caucus pushes White House on climate investments (E&E $)

HOUSE: Why is the House taking so long to undo Trump methane rule? (E&E $), vote set on coal mine cleanup, orphaned well bills (E&E $)

SENATE: Manchin sounds skeptical note on sweeping EV plans (Politico Pro $), [Sen. Ben Cardin] prepares tax credit legislation for existing nuclear plants (Reuters), Republicans want more changes to innovation package (E&E $), Senate GOP looks to tie Biden's hands on Nord Stream 2 (E&E $), Wyden eyes Obama-era clean energy break in tax push (E&E $)

WHITE HOUSE: Meet Biden's trailblazing climate science adviser [Jane Lubchenco] (E&E $)

AMERICAN JOBS PLAN: Infrastructure talks hit a wall as Senate GOP and White House exchange blame (Washington Post $), Republicans float a $1T infrastructure counter they say Biden can love, but revenues still a problem (Politico Pro $, New York Times $, Reuters), 'time to move on': Infrastructure talks near collapse (Politico)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Committees to vote on Biden Interior, EPA nominees (E&E $), Kristen Clarke to become first Black woman to head DOJ Civil Rights Division (The Grio, New York Times $, NBC, CNN, USA Today, LA Times $, Roll Call, HuffPost, Reuters)

CITIES AND STATES: New Mexico rules to curb oil industry emissions take effect (AP), states warn banks — drop coal, and we drop you (Axios), electric grid sale presents rare opportunity for Rhode Island, clean energy advocates say (Energy News Network), California mulls 11.5 GW procurement package to bolster grid after Diablo Canyon, natural gas plants retire (Utility Dive), fixing Texas' unreliable power grid won't be cheap or easy. Can we trust politicians to get it done? (Houston Chronicle)

FERC: FERC complaint highlights 'structural problem' for renewables (E&E $), FERC grants embattled pipeline developer's bid for more time (E&E $)

LOBBYING: Green finance hires political stars to protect $30 trillion boom (Bloomberg $)

IMPACTS: Public called on to photograph ‘king tides,’ flooding in NJ (AP), the 'sea snot' invasion has arrived (Earther), melting Greenland glaciers may be leaking mercury (E&E $), ninety-five percent of bull kelp forests have vanished from 200-mile stretch of California coast (Yale Climate Connections)

CYCLONE YAAS: Cyclone Yaas churning toward India at hurricane strength, landfall predicted Wednesday (Washington Post $), at least two people killed as cyclone bears down on India's east coast (Reuters)

IMPACTS' IMPACTS: [Louisiana] launches $30M buyout plan in flood-prone Lake Charles (E&E $)

EMISSIONS: Net-zero emissions: winning strategy or destined for failure? (Yale Environment 360)

TRANSITIONS: Oil majors look to fill businesses’ growing appetite for green power (Wall Street Journal $), prepare for disorderly shift to low-carbon era, firms and investors told (The Guardian)

RENEWABLES: The power struggle over tomorrow's solar workers (E&E $), geothermal is gaining traction as a clean heating solution (Energy Monitor), Struxure gets $500M to grow ‘distributed energy-as-a-service’ to gigawatt scale (Canary Media), GridX raises $12M to bring utility rates into the distributed energy age (Canary Media)

OIL & GAS: Can the ‘right to a healthy environment’ stop Exxon’s expansion in Guyana? (Grist, E&E $), greens drop lawsuit after Biden revives Gulf safety rules (E&E $), IEA's urgent fossil fuel warning earns mixed reception from producers (Reuters)

PLASTICS: Plastic debris on remote islands raises temperatures by 2.5C and threatens turtle populations (The Guardian)

HYDROGEN: Sinopec to launch first green hydrogen project in 2022 (Reuters)

UTILITIES: NRG push for sweeping retail market changes in Northeast meets Texas-sized obstacles (Utility Dive)

WATER: The central California town that keeps sinking (New York Times $)

GRID: New England to eliminate minimum offer price rule (Politico Pro $)

EVs: GM now says it will support union at new battery factories (AP), Biden looks abroad for electric vehicle metals, in blow to U.S. miners (Reuters), how driverless cars could lead to more pollution (Earther)

FOREVER CHEMICALS: PFAS found in widely used home garden fertilizers (E&E $)

FINANCE: U.S. insurers rank lowest when it comes to climate, biodiversity (Bloomberg $)

CARBON PRICING: Global carbon pricing schemes raised $53 billion in 2020 - World Bank (Reuters)

CARBON CAPTURE: How prizes, feds may drive carbon capture (E&E $), rare climate bipartisanship emerges on carbon storage, air capture (Axios)

INTERNATIONAL: After a deadly landslide in climate-hit Uganda, survivors sue for action (Thomson Reuters Foundation), EU leaders tussle over emissions target in climate change talks (Reuters), Seven in 10 Australians want government to take more action on climate, survey finds (The Guardian), Shell wins $2.5 billion Australian power contract with battery storage (Reuters), trials to suck carbon dioxide from the air to start across the UK (Grist), UK declines to rule out new oil exploration despite climate report (Reuters), British banks finance 805m tonnes of CO2 production a year (The Guardian)

• Big oil companies are driven by profit – they won’t turn green by themselves (The Guardian, Brett Christophers op-ed)
• FERC Chair Rich Glick (Politico Pro, interview $)
• White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond on anniversary of George Floyd’s death and plans to bring justice to his name (Ebony, interview)
• Don’t let the anniversary of Geroge Floyd’s murder be an excuse to ignore history (The Grio, Jason Johnson op-ed)
• Florida Republicans are trampling on the wishes of locals in a rush to consolidate power (Washington Post, Lizette Alvarez column $)
• Lack of water efficiency funding undercuts fight against drought (The Hill, Mary Ann Dickenson and Ron Burke op-ed)
• George Floyd is dead because America is a racist country (The Root, Michael Harriot op-ed)

Facebook’s Covid Fact Check is A Big Tobacco Trick, Writes Man At Big Tobacco-Funded Think Tank’s Website

As we mentioned yesterday, denier Steve Koonin’s response to Facebook using a ClimateFeedback fact-check to justify putting a “misleading” label on a glowing review of his book was to double-down on the denial, and claim it’s really Facebook that’s “spreading disinformation under the guise of ‘fact checking.’”

This “I'm rubber you're glue”-esque response is a common one among the frequently fact-checked, as we happened to see the same sentiment in a Judith Curry tweet: “Facebook fact-checkers spread their own misinformation,” linking to a piece in the City-Journal (more on this "outlet" later) with essentially that headline. 

In that piece, John Teirney complains Facebook “promptly slapped a label” on one of his articles fearmongering about masks depriving young people of enough oxygen to their brains, calling it “Partly False Information. Checked by independent fact-checkers.” Those fact checkers are ScienceFeedback (the general science version of ClimateFeedback, which fact-checked Koonin) and Teirney was very displeased that they critiqued the limitations of the study on which he based his writing. Limitations like, for example, that the study relied on a list of self-reported symptoms parents thought their children had while wearing masks, with no actual link found or suggested. Some parents reporting that their kids had a headache while wearing a mask doesn’t mean masks are (more) dangerous (than a lethal virus). 

Apparently, Teirney complains, that’s “the same tactic used by the tobacco industry last century” to downplay the link between smoking and cancer. Which, to an extent, is true. The tobacco industry hired pseudo-experts to pick apart major studies linking their product with health problems to ramp up the doubt and uncertainty. 

It’s absolutely wild for such a comparison to be made — and not just for the obvious reason that there’s a world of difference between Big Tobacco’s hired guns and ScienceFeedback’s independent scientists who volunteer their time, unpaid. 

As the bottom of Teirney’s column, a disclaimer explains, “City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank.” It also encourages people to make a “fully tax-deductible” donation to the 501(c)(3) nonprofit. 

Now, it's unclear how many readers like Curry are chipping in, but we know one industry who has historically funneled millions of dollars to the Manhattan Institute: Big Tobacco! 

Yes, like most free-market think tanks, the Manhattan Institute has a rich history of Big Tobacco funding, having spent decades working against government regulations to protect the public from its cancerous products. Back in 1997 they were central to RJ Reynolds' campaign to “put risk in perspective.” Rolling Stone revealed their Clinton-era work with Philip Morris in 2009, and as of 2015 they were still accepting donations from Philip Morris’s parent company Altria. 

So if Teirney wants to talk about how the tobacco industry spread disinformation, he doesn’t need to project those issues onto those calling out his denial. 

He just needs to look at his own publisher.

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