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St. Croix Refinery Shuts Down 'Indefinitely': The Limetree Bay refinery that rained oil on St. Croix neighborhoods will remain shut down "indefinitely," its private equity owners said Monday. The EPA shut down the refinery in May for 60 days after it spewed oil onto nearby predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods twice since reopening in February. The noxious pollution sent residents to emergency rooms and locals worry their drinking water is now laced with the oil that fell from the sky. The Virgin Islands Good Food Coalition is conducting a survey of the refinery's health and environmental impacts along with two Bennington College professors (one of whom is a former EPA official who monitored the plant). VIGFC Executive Director Sommer Sibilly-Brown said she worried for those who will lose their jobs, as well as those harmed by the pollution. “We are a community of black and brown people who have been historically burdened by the effects of the refinery and left with the aging facility, undocumented health impacts, and no remediation to environmental impacts caused by refining,” she told the Washington Post. (Washington Post $, E&E $, AP, Reuters, CNN, S&P Global, The Hill, Virgin Islands Daily News)

Boston's Redlined Past Visible In Concrete Today: The racist legacy of redlining and other inequities, exacerbated by continued greenspace disparities, are disproportionately heating — and thus harming — low-income Boston neighborhoods, the Boston Globe reports. Previously redlined neighborhoods, those neighborhoods marked as "hazardous" for loans due to the number of people of color living in them, are now hotter and have fewer trees than neighborhoods marked as "best" or "desirable." Formerly redlined neighborhoods are 6.7°F hotter than previously "best" or "desirable" neighborhoods" with substantially less parkland and fewer trees. As climate change, caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, drives up temperatures, Boston is expected to see 40 days per year above 90 degrees by the end of the decade — nearly triple the number it saw in 1990. “It’s profoundly disappointing what the city left,” Richard Parritz, a Jamaica Plain resident who chairs the design committee of the local nonprofit Three Squares. “This is a health and equity issue. It’s not right.” (Boston Globe $; Recent New England heatwaves: Boston Globe $; Climate Signals background: Extreme heat and heatwaves)

Wildfires, Heat, Rugged Terrain Strain Firefighters: Wildfires, fueled by heat and drought, are straining firefighters in Arizona and California as conditions augur worse fires to come in Oregon. At least 15 fires actively burning more than 400,000 acres across Arizona have stretched fire crews already hampered by extreme heat. Though cooler weather is expected later in the week, it could also bring lightning that could spark new blazes. Flagstaff was enveloped in smoke, Monday, and the Coconino and Kaibab national forests will close Wednesday, a first for the Coconino forest since 2006. In California, more than 500 firefighters are struggling to contain the remote Willow Fire in the rugged coastal mountains south of Big Sur. Finally, in Southern Oregon, multiple fires had burned over 10,000 acres as of Monday evening with the fast-moving Cutoff Fire forcing evacuations. Fire conditions could become dramatically worse in the area with the potential for a 'heat dome' developing over the region later in the week. (Arizona: AP; National Forest closures: Arizona Family, ABC15; California: AP, The Guardian, KCRA Sacramento, Mercury News; Bay Area smoke San Francisco Chronicle; Oregon fires: Salem Statesman Journal; Climate Signals background: Wildfires)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: Republicans, spurred by an unlikely figure, see political promise in targeting critical race theory (Washington Post $)

DENIAL: 9 quotes from Republican politicians next to their state's damning heat graphs (Earther)

GAS STOVES: How the fossil fuel industry convinced Americans to love gas stoves (Mother Jones)

FREEDOM: Republicans care more about the climate if you speak their language (Grist)

SEC: Climate on agenda as Biden prepares to meet with top financial regulators (Reuters, Politico Pro $), SEC wants more climate disclosures. businesses are preparing for a fight (Wall Street Journal $)

THE HILL: What to watch as spending season opens on Capitol Hill (E&E $)

HOUSE: Porter, Khanna grill JPMorgan on fossil fuel financing, lobbying (Politico Pro $)

SENATE: Sen. Markey on infrastructure bill: 'No climate, no deal' (MSNBC), US solar manufacturers would get tax credit in Ossoff bill (Bloomberg $), Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal nears its big reveal (Politico Pro $), Sen. Hickenlooper discusses bipartisan group's infrastructure proposal ahead of make-or-break week (MSNBC)

JOE MANCHIN: Manchin floats his energy infrastructure must-haves (Politico Pro $), Joe Manchin, at the apex of his power, finds few allies in his quest for bipartisanship (Washington Post $)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden weighs ban on China’s solar material over forced labor (Politico)

INFRASTRUCTURE BILL(S): Bipartisan $973B infrastructure proposal alarms EV advocates with annual surcharge on vehicles (Utility Dive), Biden eager to continue infrastructure talks with lawmakers - Psaki (Reuters), Psaki: time to move toward reconciliation (Politico Pro $)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Biden taps key [DOI] energy nominee amid heat over another (E&E $), Biden's Bureau of Reclamation pick has Hill, Interior chops (E&E $), Obama BLM director: Biden needs a new nominee (E&E $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: How Pope Francis and Vatican activists helped rein in Big Oil on climate change (Religion News Service), UN climate talks hit a wall over tensions about finance (FT $)

CITIES AND STATES: Ohio bill to reform electric rates aims to preserve coal plant subsidies under attack in wake of corruption probe (Energy News Network), New York City has ambitious climate goals. The next mayor will determine whether the city follows through (InsideClimate News), Illinois and North Carolina are hashing out the future of clean energy, and it's getting dramatic (Canary Media), the White House wants to fight climate change and help people. Cleveland led the way (NPR)

FERC: 'Big step' on transmission? High hopes for FERC task force (E&E $)

IMPACTS: A front-row seat on the spectacle of ice (New York Times $), Yemen's famed beekeepers feel the sting of climate change (Thomson Reuters Foundation), an earthquake in Japan speaks to a sea wall in San Francisco (New York Times $), Australia fights UN downgrade of Great Barrier Reef health (AP, New York Times $, Washington Post $)

DROUGHT: California hydropower plant may have to shut down as record heatwave drains key reservoir (Earther), a Bundy-linked group is rallying farmers in drought-stricken Oregon. Things are getting weird. (Mother Jones), Syrian drought puts Assad's 'year of wheat' in peril (Reuters)

CLAUDETTE: Tropical Storm Claudette reclaims tropical storm status while over North Carolina (Yale Climate Connections), Claudette regains tropical storm strength as it departs North Carolina Outer Banks (Washington Post $), Tropical Storm Claudette brings heavy rain and flooding to Hampton Roads, strong gusts to eastern NC (WAVY)

TIMELY: Task force aims to save Outer Banks highway from flooding (AP)

THEY WERE SLEEPING WELL BEFORE?: Here's the nightmare that keeps glaciologists awake at night (E&E $)

MANAGED RETREAT: ‘Managed retreat’ from climate disasters can reinvent cities so they’re better for everyone – and avoid more flooding, heat and fires (The Conversation), sea wall permit for 'managed retreat' home sparks controversy (E&E $), why scientists are urging US to look at managed retreat (Atmos)

RENEWABLES: Why floating turbines will unlock offshore wind energy’s full potential (Energy Monitor), bird law complicates Biden's offshore wind push (E&E $), Ikea and Rockefeller foundations pledge $1B to seed distributed clean energy in developing nations (Canary Media, Reuters, Axios), can America’s solar power industry compete with China’s? One firm tries. (Wall Street Journal $), behind Shell's strategy to get into green energy. (New York Times $)

'SPACE IS HARD': Astronauts install solar panel on 2nd try (E&E $, The Hill)

EFFICIENCY: PSA: if you enrolled in an energy saver program, your smart thermostat may adjust itself (The Verge, Earther)

OIL & GAS: Citgo to pay $19.7M for Louisiana spill environmental damage (AP), empty oil tanks at key storage hub show speedy demand rebound (Bloomberg $), ruling in child slavery case could help Big Oil abroad (E&E $), the natural-gas glut has evaporated, driving prices higher (Wall Street Journal $), US oil's cautious return from COVID-19 (Axios)

MINERALS: US plans to spend big on critical minerals; choosing where isn’t easy (Wall Street Journal $)

NUCLEAR SHENANIGANS: NRC launches special probe at Vogtle Unit 3 (Politico Pro $)

COAL: 3 more coal plants to shut down in largest U.S. market (E&E $)

UTILITIES: South Carolina regulators reject Duke's long-term power plant construction plans, call for changes (Utility Dive)

GRID: Federal plan for regional cooperation on transmission infrastructure could boost clean energy (Canary Media)

EVs: Porsche to make high-performance battery cells in germany (Bloomberg $), your electric vehicle could become a mini power plant (Grist)

ALLLLL ABOARD: Biden wants to bring Amtrak to a Northeast commuter corridor. Will riders support it? (NBC), Amtrak’s regional rail expansion faces hurdle from freight trains (Wall Street Journal $)

CLIMATE COMMUNICATORS: The search for the Dr. Fauci of climate change (Grist)

ARCHITECTURE: An architect with an eye on the environment (New York Times $) 

BUSINESS: Volvo Car partners with Northvolt to develop and produce batteries (Reuters)

TRAFFIC: How poorly timed traffic lights can make climate change worse (Yale Climate Connections)

FINANCE: 7 cleantech segments beyond wind and solar that are luring investors (Canary Media)

BITCOIN: Hydro-rich Chinese city said to clamp down on crypto mining (Bloomberg $)

TRASH: Amazon labels millions of unsold products for destruction, new investigation finds (The Verge)

INTERNATIONAL: Albania holds 1st wind power tender to diversify energy base (AP), business-savvy Bangladesh fabric factories take on a greener hue (Thomson Reuters Foundation), EU farming policy failing to fight climate change, auditors say (Reuters)

• Heatwaves don't lie: telling the truth about climate change (The Hill, Andreas Karelas op-ed)
• If we want to fight the climate crisis, we must embrace nuclear power (The Guardian, Bhaskar Sunkara op-ed)
• Regan Patterson on transportation justice (Environmental Health News, interview)
• A dangerous distraction: increasing climate risk with solar geoengineering (The Hill, Joel Clement op-ed)
• The federal government needs to step in and avert a homeowner's insurance crisis (The Hill, Justin Cooper op-ed)
• What if American democracy fails the climate crisis? (New York Times, Saul Griffith, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Sheila Jasanoff, and Kim Stanley Robinson interviews $)
• A bipartisan infrastructure bill proves our democracy can still work (Washington Post, Sen. Chris Coons op-ed $)

Conservative Dan Hannan Attacks Clean Job Creation, Accidentally Argues For Universal Basic Income: 

Sometimes, in their desperation to “own the libs,” conservatives accidentally make a point. The latest accidental leftist is Dan Hannan, a Washington Examiner contributor and UK Conservative Party politician who was “a founder of Vote Leave” Brexit campaign. He writes about cancel culture, defends the Anglo-Saxon white supremacy caucus, warns of the dangers of diversity training, and wrote a whole column pondering why Irish Americans might be a bit wary of England without once addressing The Troubles and instead claiming that the 19th-century Catholic Irish diaspora was just mad because the government of Great Britain was giving Ireland too much government assistance during the (forced) famine.

His latest column is “the green jobs fallacy,” and much to our surprise given his body of work, it’s not entirely wrong!

In his zeal to attack the Biden administration, Hannan goes after the idea that the government should be “creating” 10 million clean jobs. Why? Because “governments cannot 'create' jobs — at least, not without destroying other jobs. The state could, if it wanted, pay people to dig holes and fill them in again.” (And in fact, this is exactly what supporting the nuclear power industry means in practice.) 

“But,” the wise Hannan continues, “to cover their wages, it would need to take the money from other people” and some of that money would “have been more productive” if those taxed funds had been spent elsewhere. For those with a passing familiarity with Economics 101 coursework, Hannan cites Frederic Bastiat’s “broken windows” example that gives this fallacy its name. You could smash a shopkeeper’s broken window, and they’d have to pay to get it replaced, which would give the window company money they could spend on something else, etc. 

Hannan then says, even putting that aside, “jobs are not a benefit. They are a cost.” 

After decades of the GOP yelling about jobs in response to any basic question about the climate, a policy that addresses those (faux) concerns is apparently bad, per Hannan, because it’s actually better if fewer people are employed by the energy industry because they could then be doing other things instead. 

Therefore, despite jobs being a top reason for opposition to climate action, climate action that creates jobs is actually bad because those people could have other jobs doing other things. 

If you followed that, congratulations! Your brain is now officially a pretzel. 

Seems it’s just the natural order of things, as Hannan writes that “when agriculture was being mechanized, our ancestors fretted that there would be mass unemployment.” Instead, “farmhands would find better-paid jobs in factories.” Then when “we moved from manufacturing to services, precisely the same fears were voiced,” but having been “released from the factories, people began to offer services that had never previously been imagined -- as personal trainers, aromatherapists, and a million other things.” Which is, despite the right’s constant mockery of things like aromatherapists and any college-degree-requiring one of those “million other things,” somewhat true. 

This is where Hannan basically ends his piece, saying that we should “stop pretending” that the efforts to create jobs through “taxation or regulation is a gain.”

But the logical conclusion here isn’t that we should let the fossil fuel industry continue to use the few workers it hasn’t yet laid off as human shields to oppose climate policy. Because Hannan has a point, “the story of human progress is the story of making more things with less labor,” and the sorts of things that used to take ten employees ten days to do can easily be completed in ten minutes by one worker with a computer and a robot or 3-D printer. 

As the energy transition ramps up and clean energy companies replace the oil majors, lots of blue collar workers are going to be left high and dry by their (former) employers. 

That’s not a reason not to protect the climate from the industry’s pollution though. That’s just a reason to create a Universal Basic Income, so any and all displaced workers can take up whatever jobs or hobbies they might like, “as personal trainers, aromatherapists, and a million other things.” 

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