FIRST LOOK: 

A new report from seven environmental groups examines ten strategies to bolster climate resilience and mitigate the impact of climate change in the Colorado River Basin, which is currently grappling with a historic megadrought.

Western Wildfires Cause Dangerous Air Pollution On East Coast: What happens in the West definitely is not staying there as smoke from wildfires fueled by climate change blankets the Eastern U.S. with dangerous air pollution. New York City's air quality was the worst in the world on Tuesday, posing a danger to everyone, not just groups considered more vulnerable than the general population. Even thinned by its 2,500 mile journey across the continent, smoke was so thick George Pope, a professor of earth and environmental studies at Montclair State University, couldn't see Manhattan from his New Jersey office. “You can pretty much always see the skyline, at least a silhouette, if it’s a hazy day," he told The Guardian. "This is, like, this is unprecedented.” Nearly 80 large wildfires have burned more than 1.3 million acres across 13 states so far this year. (Air quality: The Guardian, AP, Axios, Today Show, The Hill; Fires: Wall Street Journal $, USA Today, The Hill; Health risks: AP explainer; Photos: Buzzfeed; Climate Signals background: 2021 Western wildfire season)

'Hot FERC Summer' Aims To Raise Profile Of Underappreciated Body: Democrats in Congress, led by Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, are working to draw attention to the importance of a vacancy on what Casten has described as the "single most impactful agency in the government, as far as dealing with the climate crisis." The jurisdiction of FERC — the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — over energy markets, pipelines, and LNG terminals, among a plethora of other issues, make the replacement of outgoing commissioner, and former chair, Neil Chatterjee crucial to the realization of many of President Biden's climate and environmental justice goals. Casten launched the campaign in a floor speech earlier this week. "To paraphrase Miss Stallion ... now that FERC has put in all that work, it's time for them to be the MVP," he said. "Now some might say that FERC isn't, dare I say, 'hot enough' to warrant that attention. But for those of us who are serious about fighting the climate crisis, they sure should be." (Utility Dive, Grist)

'We Don’t Have Water!' — Drought Exacerbates Unrest In Iran: A prolonged drought and high temperatures, both linked to climate change, are fueling tensions and unrest in Iran. Water shortages, obviously dangerous in their own right, have exacerbated an electricity system already strained by summer heat approaching 122°F by forcing the shutdown of hydroelectric dams, leading to rolling blackouts. Videos on social media showed large crowds chanting "I am thirsty!" Protests in oil-rich Khuzestan province on the Iraqi border have elicited a rare apology from outgoing president Hassan Rouhani and resulted in multiple deaths. Social media videos show riot police breaking up demonstrations with batons and tear gas and witnesses say security forces fired on protesters. “We kept shouting, ‘We want water, just water, we don’t have water,’” Mohammad a 29-year-old street vendor, told The New York Times in a phone interview from Khuzestan’s provincial capital. “They answered us with violence and bullets.” (New York Times $, Washington Post $, Al Jazeera; Climate Signals background: Drought, Extreme heat and heatwaves)

APPROPRIATE USE OF SPACE TRAVEL: Measuring Houston’s environmental injustice from space (Environmental Health News)

PUBLIC OPINION: New polling shows support for Biden clean energy goals (Axios), study: Americans want more renewables - just not close to their homes (Houston Chronicle), US climate spending could help rural communities embrace green shift (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

MEDIA: Jeff Bezos got as much morning show coverage in a day as climate change got all last year (Gizmodo), do leaked climate reports help or hurt public understanding of global warming? (InsideClimate News)

DENIAL: The key to breaking through climate denial (CNN)

ACTIVISM: National coalition of community groups fights for flooding solutions (Yale Climate Connections)

CALIFORNIA INSURANCE: Judge Rules California Can Expand Insurance For Wildfire Areas (CBS Sacramento, AP, Sacramento Bee $, Insurance Journal)

EPA: ‘Burden falls on exposed people’ as EPA weighs PFAS rules (E&E $), EPA's Regan goes to Italy for environment ministers' meeting (E&E $)

DOE: DOE launches push for energy-efficient building codes (Politico Pro $), Granholm announces new building energy codes (The Hill)

DOI: Haaland visit to Alaska will focus on Izembek dispute (E&E $)

HOUSE: Democrats want rich space tourists to help fund earthly fixes (E&E $), House passes sweeping PFAS legislation (Politico Pro $, Detroit Free Press), GOP congressman starts conservative climate caucus to take on global threat (NBC), House Democrats demand infrastructure bill replace all lead pipes (Politico Pro $)

SENATE: Senate Dems eye resilience, disaster mitigation spending (E&E $)

WHITE HOUSE: White House lays out environmental justice plans (Axios)

INFRASTRUCTURE BILL(S): Republicans block an infrastructure bill in the Senate, after pleading for more time for bipartisan talks. (New York Times $), Republicans scramble to secure infrastructure support ahead of failed vote (Politico Pro $), GOP blocks infrastructure debate in Senate, raising doubts about a deal (New York Times $), 65 former governors, mayors back bipartisan infrastructure deal (The Hill), Sanders: ‘substantial’ EV rebates included in reconciliation package (Politico Pro $)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Daines rails against BLM nominee ahead of committee vote (E&E $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: US, Germany reach agreement on Russian gas pipeline, ending dispute between allies (Washington Post $), Ukraine hits back at pressure from Biden administration over gas pipeline (Politico Pro $), G20 environment ministers meet in Italy amid floods, fires (AP)

CITIES AND STATES: Covid brought Florida cleaner waterways, now cruise ships are returning (MSNBC), Montgomery County Council [in Maryland] introduces plans to increase building energy standards (Washington Post $)

IMPACTS: Catastrophic floods could hit Europe far more often, study finds (The Guardian), fire, flood and heat disasters are an indictment of decades of poor planning (Washington Post $), flooding in Germany demonstrates need to prepare for climate change, scientists say (Wall Street Journal $), extreme weather is ‘new normal’ thanks to decades of climate inaction (MSNBC), sea snot choking Turkey's waters could be a warning to the world (CBS), 

REQUIEM: Top US scientist on melting glaciers: ‘I’ve gone from being an ecologist to a coroner’ (The Guardian)

FLOODING, ZHENGZHOU: ‘The water came so fast’: floods leave scores displaced in China (New York Times $, Wall Street Journal $, Gizmodo), eight inches in one hour: how a deadly downpour flooded Zhengzhou, China (Washington Post $)

FLOODING, GERMANY: Germany floods: 155 still missing as hopes of further rescues fade (The Guardian)

HEAT: Heat waves are dangerous. Isolation and inequality make them deadly. (Washington Post $), the Olympics are approaching a danger zone of extreme heat (The Verge)

DROUGHT: Meet the water witches of California (New York Times $), rain during monsoon season is becoming less reliable, less effective (NPR), the Western drought is worse than you think. Here's why (E&E $), water sector white-knuckled as infrastructure debate drags (E&E $)

WILDFIRES: Historic drought and climate change fueling dangerous wildfires (NBC), scientists race to better understand climate-fueled fires (E&E $), what is fueling Russia’s ‘unprecedented’ fires? (AP explainer)

TAMARACK FIRE: California wildfire crossing into Nevada, link to global warming detailed by Nevada governor (MSNBC)

EMISSIONS: US electricity CO2 has steepest drop in 24 years (E&E $)

RENEWABLES: Are wind turbines a danger to wildlife? Ask the dogs. (The Atlantic), Australia has huge potential to develop offshore windfarms near existing substations, report says (The Guardian), floods wreck towns, but Europe's wind power goals tangled in red tape (Reuters)

BATTERIES: Austin housing project offers Tesla large-scale test bed to address challenges with energy products (Utility Dive), judge hears fight over lithium mine on Nevada-Oregon line (AP)

STORAGE: Latin America’s energy storage leader is getting creative (Canary Media)

OIL & GAS: The oil and gas industry produces radioactive waste. Lots of it (Rolling Stone), 'Unacceptable.' Radioactive oil waste needs more rules — report (E&E $)

PLASTICS, ET AL.: Maine will make companies pay for recycling. Here’s how it works. (New York Times $)

PIPELINES: Pennsylvania [Mariner East 2] pipeline work halted because of sinkholes (E&E $)

COAL: Coal's global staying power (Axios), rich nations 'must consign coal power to history'-UK COP26 president (Reuters), would Upper Midwest carbon capture pipelines offer a lifeline to coal plants? (Energy News Network)

UTILITIES: As Pepco outlines plan to meet DC climate goals, consumer advocates say equity must be a focus (Utility Dive), after a slew of disastrous wildfires, PG&E will bury 10,000 miles of California power lines (Washington Post $, Wall Street Journal $, New York Times $, Reuters, CNN)

EVs: One of the biggest myths about EVs is busted in new study (The Verge),

Mercedes-Benz will shift its focus to electric vehicles by 2025. (New York Times $),

clean energy research group: global gas car phase-out needed by 2035 to meet climate goals (Politico Pro $)

BIG COMPENSATING FOR SOMETHING ENERGY: Jeff Bezos eyes space as a new ‘sacrifice zone’ (The Verge), Jeff Bezos vows to fight climate change, but space tourism could do more harm, critics say. (New York Times $), what more space flights would actually mean for emissions (Axios)

SENSING A TREND… : Men cause more climate emissions than women, study finds (The Guardian, NPR)

CARBON CAPTURE: Climate activists pan carbon capture plans (Environmental Health News), Russia's Sakhalin island set for carbon capture deal with Japanese firm (Reuters)

FINANCE: Mercuria bulks up energy transition team with BP, Shell hires -sources (Reuters)

INTERNATIONAL: Floods fuel climate debate in Germany’s election campaign (AP), German candidates fail to find footing in flood response (New York Times $), Japan boosts renewable energy target for 2030 energy mix (Reuters, Wall Street Journal $)

• This ‘infrastructure’ fix is simple: Pipe clean water to Native Americans (Washington Post, Bidtah Becker and Anne Castle op-ed $)
• Congress can put rural communities back to work with smart infrastructure investments (The Hill, Dan Lashof and Devashree Saha op-ed)
• Are we being kept safe from ‘forever chemicals’ injected into fracking sites? (The Guardian, David Bond op-ed)
• Imagination, transformed (Atmos, Favianna Rodriguez interview)
• Electrification: using more to emit less (Energy Monitor, Jan Rosenow op-ed)
• Restoring our lives to normality after Covid is not the solution, it’s the problem (The Guardian, Jeff Sparrow op-ed)
• Carbon tax, beloved policy to fix climate change, is dead at 47 (The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer commentary)
• The all-hands-on-deck urgency of COVID must be applied to the climate crisis (The Hill, Stuart P.M. Mackintosh op-ed)
• America in 2090: the impact of extreme heat, in maps (New York Times, Susan Joy Hassol, Kristie Ebi, and Yaryna Serkez op-ed $)
• Struggling global covid-19 response dims hopes for climate change action (Washington Post, Adam Taylor analysis $)
• My dad’s prepping for the end times. Climate change makes me think I should, too. (Washington Post, Karleigh Frisbie Brogan op-ed $)
• I miss the old Yosemite (New York Times, Susannah Meadows essay $)

Report Documents International Reach Of Organized Denial’s Fake 'Free-Market Environmentalism'

A policy briefing from the Brown University Climate and Development Lab published yesterday looks at “the Mises network and climate policy,” and illuminates how the economic excuses for climate inaction are sown internationally by this organized international denial network disguised as economic policy think tanks. The Ludwig von Mises Institutes and the related Property and Freedom Society is “a network of ultra-libertarian groups active around the world” in opposing climate action. The report found, among other things, that they ramped up climate opposition in 2019, concurrent with the rise of the Green New Deal as a rival to more traditional and limited climate proposals. 

The GND’s embrace of a big government approach to climate clearly spooked the network. A defining feature of the Ludwig von Mises school of economic thought is the idea that government intervention in any sort of social issue is, by definition, bad and coercive, whereas anything the market does as a “free exchange of individuals” is by definition preferable. This framework provides “cover for pseudo-scientific attacks on climate sciences,” and is the basis of their policy stances of “radical anti-government interventionism,” expressed specifically through “strong opposition to climate sciences” and climate solutions. 

But it also provides “an alternative approach held to be superior to tackle environmental and climate-related problems, namely market democracy (free consumer choice) and related `free-market environmentalism’ — ideally turning all living environments into goods sold in markets.” 

The Mises approach consistently posits a “dystopian vision of economic planning in the name of climate change as the ultimate threat to humanity… a form of ‘eco-dictatorship’ imposed upon individuals.” This contrasts with their “libertarian utopia of vastly extended property rights as the basis for market-democratic solutions to all ecological and social problems — “free-market environmentalism,” or the unrestricted right to emit and pollute as long as it is part of a “free market exchange.” 

So when young conservatives start talking about climate action in terms of free-market environmentalism, there’s a good chance they’re just regurgitating the excuses for inaction designed by their predecessors decades ago, perhaps unaware that the supposed solutions they tout were never meant to work in the first place. 

And we know they’re never meant to work because the Mises network is rife with industry ties that make it clear this has less to do with economic principles than it does with coming up with excuses to protect profits. Overall, the Brown University report tallied “a total of about 220 individual staff and board members across 18 institutes in 2021.” Among them it referenced findings that “ties exist to a broad range of business groups ranging from gold, trade and investment firms in Germany, tobacco companies in the U.S., business schools, consulting and service firms in Spain, and metal employer associations and financial groups in Sweden.”

The US Ludwig von Mises Institute, for example, features multiple personnel who have worked on behalf of the tobacco industry: Thomas DiLorenzo, Mark Thornton and Robert Higgs were all members of the Cash for Comments Economists Network that paid economists to defend the tobacco industry. 

But the Mises network is quite active globally, with nodes in at least 25 countries established since it received a major $11 million dollar grant in 2000, mostly in (Eastern) Europe but with Brazil’s 35 staff and board rivaling the main US headquarters, signifying a major investment across Latin America. 

Perhaps just as concerning is their investment into social media to expand their reach, particularly targeting the youths. The report cites a Forbes post (from a member of the Koch’s similar Atlas network of international political-economists, so take with a heavy pinch of salt) ranking the social media impact of free-market think tanks that shows the Mises Institute punching well above its weight on YouTube with the most views of any of the groups, and maintains a sizable followings on Twitter and Facebook. 

So while it doesn’t necessarily have the name-brand recognition of other far-right social media enterprises, like PragerU or Ben Shapiro, their international coordination and real-world dissemination of materials makes them a key figure of organized denial, which relies on their free-market fanaticism to dress up its climate denial. 

As the Brown report concludes, the Mises Network has long been “promoting political thinking optimised to produce inadequate solutions in the climate policy planning arena.”

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 ($)