FIRST LOOK:

This summer has already seen unprecedented climate impacts on our power system — and it’s only July. Understanding the intersection of climate, extreme weather, and the power grid is increasingly important for policymakers, journalists, advocates and others. Read the new Climate Nexus backgrounder here.

Push To Fund BIPOC-Led Groups Gains Momentum: A campaign to increase philanthropic funding of environmental groups led by people of color is gaining momentum, but the vast majority of major donors still decline to make hard commitments, the AP reports. Donors of Color Network, the group leading the campaign, is pushing major funders to commit to releasing funding data and direct 30% of their climate funding to those groups. So far, four of the top 40 have signed the pledge, with others only pledging transparency. “Engaging those communities in decision-making (and) in the solutions for climate is essential,” Miya Yoshitani, the executive director of the Oakland-based Asian Pacific Environmental Network and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, told the AP. It’s important, she said, for communities “to see themselves as part of the solution to this incredible and enormous problem.” In 2016 and 2017, just 1.3% of climate funding in the Midwest and Gulf regions went to environmental justice groups. (AP)

No Christmas In July: A new front has opened in the War On Christmas: extreme heat and drought fueled by climate change. The record-shattering heatwave that baked the Pacific Northwest last month took a potentially devastating toll on Christmas tree farms in the region. “The second day of the heat, it was 116. I came in the driveway that night and seen the trees were basically cooking. Burnt down to nothing,” Jacob Hemphill, a tree farmer in Oregon City told Reuters. He estimates he lost over  $100,000 worth of trees. The heat, combined with the brutal drought, has caused unprecedented damage to myriad crops in the region. (Reuters, Vice News; Climate Signals background: June 2021 PNW heatwave, Drought)

Climate Scientists' Heatwave Warning 20 Years Ago Was Tragically Prescient: The mass casualty heatwave that broiled the Pacific Northwest and western Canada last month is precisely the kind of catastrophe predicted by climate scientists two decades ago, Yale Climate Connections reports. In 2001, the IPCC's Third Assessment warned the greatest increases in heat stress were expected in "mid- to high-latitude (temperate) cities, especially in populations with non-adapted architecture and limited air conditioning,” the scientists wrote at the time. “A number of U.S. cities would experience, on average, several hundred extra deaths each summer.” This year’s June heatwave killed nearly 800 people in the usually-temperate region where few live in homes with air conditioning. That heatwave would have been "virtually impossible" without human-caused climate change. (Yale Climate Connections; The Guardian; Climate Signals background: June 2021 PNW heatwave)

INSURANCE: Insurers are falling short in tackling climate risk, warns top policy adviser (FT $), smaller but more frequent catastrophes loom over insurance sector (Wall Street Journal $)

CLEAN ENERGY: Wind energy CEOs warn G20 leaders over climate targets (FT $),  Biden clean energy plan key to restoring industry job losses, says U.S. official (Reuters), covid-19 has dimmed the clean power market (Bloomberg $)

BIG OIL: Big Oil’s sales spree to cut emissions may leave fossil fuel assets in weaker hands (FT $), the world’s biggest governments are still propping up fossil fuels (Bloomberg $, Wall Street Journal $)

ENVIRONMENTAL (IN)JUSTICE: The next test for environmental justice policy? Defining ‘disadvantaged communities.’ (Grist)

IPCC: 5 things to know about the IPCC and its next climate report (E&E $)

CLIMATE LITIGATION: Lawsuits target Exxon's social media 'green washing' (E&E $)

DENIAL: Facebook’s disinformation problem is harder than it looks (Columbia Journalism Review)

FLOODING: From China to Germany, floods expose climate vulnerability (Reuters), climate crisis turns world’s subways into flood zones (New York Times $)

• CHINA: Death toll rises as passengers recount horror of China subway floods (CNN)
• INDIA: At least 67 dead in India as rains trigger floods, landslides (Reuters)
• GERMANY: More than 150 people still missing in German floods unlikely to be found, officials fear (CNN), once its strength, water now threatens Germany (Reuters)

SOME CEOs PROBABLY GOT REALLY RICH, THOUGH: New reports make case that natural gas production boom was a bust for Appalachia, urge economic transition (Charleston Gazette-Mail)

DUDE, WHERE'S MY WATER?: People are stealing water in California at record rates for illegal weed farms (Gizmodo), thieves in California are stealing scarce water amid extreme drought, ‘devastating’ some communities (CNN)

SURFACES: Rethinking our roofs, parking lots, and sidewalks could save money and lives (Popular Science), the high price of losing the war against urban heat (Bloomberg $)

LEADERSHIP: As climate disasters wreck our planet, women leaders are key to solving the crisis (Democracy Now)

AGENCIES: Federal analysis of climate projects 'similar to redlining' (E&E $), NOAA sets up council to help respond to climate change (E&E $)

DOE: Existing spending on climate change falls short - U.S. energy official (Reuters), what's next for the Energy Department's loan programs office (Axios), how Tesla shows Obama’s green loan program was a success (Grist)

DOI: Haaland says oil report coming 'very, very soon' (E&E $), Interior secretary talks drought, wildfires on Western visit (AP), NPS faces growing pressure to ban single-use plastics (E&E $)

THE HILL: Democrats unify behind climate corps, vague on details (Wall Street Journal $), House passes PFAS Action Act (New Mexico Political Report), fossil fuels may qualify for 'clean bus' money in Senate deal (E&E $)

INFRASTRUCTURE BILL(S): Republicans nix U.S. infrastructure debate, which could resume next week (Reuters), Senators bullish about finalizing infrastructure deal (E&E $)

POLITICS: The Left is the only reason we’re talking about climate change at all (New Republic), the West is burning. COVID is surging. US politics are stagnant. (New York Times $), US Chamber outlines wish list for clean energy standard (E&E $, Axios)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Biden pick to lead public lands bureau [Tracy Stone Manning] poised for full Senate vote (Reuters, E&E $, E&E $, AP, The Hill, New York Times $), Haaland declares 'full faith' in BLM nominee (E&E $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Where's the money? Climate activists ask G20 as talks drift (Reuters), G20 set for weak climate pledges in one more setback (Bloomberg $), G20 agrees statement on environment, struggles over climate progress (Reuters)

NORD STREAM 2: Congress, Europeans trash pipeline deal (Axios), Biden stokes outrage with deal on Russia gas pipeline (E&E $)

CITIES AND STATES: Climate action must happen 'for our people, not to them,' cities say (Thomson Reuters Foundation), billions more needed to address climate infrastructure needs of US cities: report (Utility Dive), Jackson [Mississippi] reviews water system staff to comply with EPA order (AP), New Jersey draws fire over clean energy plans (E&E $), concerns of pollution in Florida waters grow over return of big cruise ships (NBC)

FERC: Glick fleshes out details on FERC-state transmission plans (E&E $)

IMPACTS: Climate change could be worse than our worst-case analysis: Texas A&M’s Dessler (CNBC), heat, floods, fires: jet stream is key link in climate disasters (Bloomberg $), key articles addressing range of changes in ‘New Arctic’ (Yale Climate Connections), whether or not the Great Barrier Reef is listed as ‘in danger’ won’t alter the fact it is at risk from climate change (The Guardian)

HEAT: Coast-to-coast heat dome to deliver sweltering weather next week (Washington Post $, Axios), extreme heat is killing American workers (Vox), after recent ‘heat dome,’ Washington issues warning not to eat raw shellfish (New York Times $), in America’s least air-conditioned cities, brutal heat changes some people’s minds (Washington Post $), it's so hot in Dubai that the government is artificially creating rainstorms (CBS)

DROUGHT: As drought slams California and Oregon, Klamath farmers grow fish to quell a water war (LA Times $)

WILDFIRES: Lack of affordable housing makes wildfire recovery more difficult (Yale Climate Connections), Dangerous air from Western wildfires continues to spread (Today Show), wildfires in U.S., Siberia are unusually intense, setting emissions records (Axios), wildfires have erupted across the globe, scorching places that rarely burned before (CNN), [Bootleg Fire]: crews make progress on huge Oregon blaze (AP), massive California wildfire crosses into Nevada (Axios)

RENEWABLES: Clean energy producers are eyeing old coal plants—for the wiring (Bloomberg $), China to add 55-65 GW of solar power capacity in 2021 - industry body (Reuters), the strange case of the climate scientists fighting a wind farm (Gizmodo)

BATTERIES: Startup claims breakthrough in long-duration batteries (Wall Street Journal $)

STORAGE: Clean energy group to take over storage association (E&E $), China aims to install over 30 GW of new energy storage by 2025 (Reuters)

PLASTICS: A Rust Belt city debates a growing plastic future (E&E $)

COAL (COUNTRY): Commerce to offer $300M in coal community grants (E&E $)

HYDROGEN: Avangrid touts green hydrogen proposals under DOE initiative, raises 2021 earnings outlook (Utility Dive)

(ALLEGED) UTILITY CORRUPTION: FirstEnergy to pay $230 million to resolve charges in Ohio bribery scandal (Wall Street Journal $)

EVs: Mercedes plans to go all-electric by the end of the decade (CNBC, AP, The Hill)

BUSINESS: Companies should put climate cash towards saving forests - paper (Reuters)

TRASH: How U.S. trash can 'change the world' (E&E $), The garbage industry has outperformed the market since 2015. Here’s why (CNBC)

CARBON PRICING: Lawmakers, officials grapple with carbon border fee (E&E $)

TOTAL INVESTMENT: The cost of net-zero? $173 trillion (E&E $)

INTERNATIONAL: Land grabbers: the growing assault on Brazil’s Indigenous areas (Yale Environment 360), Australia’s reliance on gas exports questioned as Japan winds down fossil fuel power (The Guardian), Merkel: Germany has not done enough to hit Paris climate targets (The Guardian)

• Hey, world, are you noticing? Floods! Fires! Could it be time to do something about climate change?  (Washington Post, Editorial Board $)
• The clean energy economy has a diversity problem. Let’s change that as we build back (Canary Media, Paula Glover op-ed)
• Wildfires, floods and extreme heat: It is time to heed warnings from climate scientists (The Hill, Michael Mann op-ed)
• Climate change is driving extreme floods, wildfires and heat. Will the world meet the moment? (LA Times, Editorial Board $)
• The heat is on cities — and it’s not going away (Boston Globe, Editorial Board $)
• We are fiddling while the world burns, floods and chokes. (Washington Post, Eugene Robinson column $)
• Climate change is forcing us indoors — and childhood will never be the same. (Washington Post, Elliot Haspel op-ed $)
• After Covid, the climate crisis will be the next thing the right says we ‘just have to live with’ (The Guardian, Aditya Chakrabortty op-ed)
• Germany is in shock. Its politicians are on autopilot. (New York Times, Anna Sauerbrey op-ed $)
• The new paradigm: Un-natural disasters in a changing climate (The Hill, Donald Wuebbles op-ed)
• How to green the steel industry? Start with steel buyers (Canary Media, Jenny Chu op-ed)
• Where is Biden’s climate change ‘revolution’? (New York Times, Spencer Bokat-Lindell op-ed $)
• Water is essential. The companies trying to turn a buck on it are not. (Esquire, Charles Pierce commentary)
• Why are Frito-Lays workers working ‘suicide shifts’ on the job? (The Guardian, Indigo Olivier op-ed)
• Why Biden's Interior Department isn't shutting down oil and gas (The Hill, Joel Clement op-ed)
• Sweltering heat across the West shows summer life as we know it is changing (NBC, Kristina Dahl op-ed)
• Invalidated, underpaid and expected to overperform, Black women are starting to say ‘no’ (Blavity, Lisa Butler op-ed)
• A car-sharing program that’s plugged into equity and the environment (Boston Globe, Miles Howard op-ed $)
• Scale and speed to confront runaway climate change (The Hill, Vinod Thomas op-ed)
• Tucker Carlson should keep Black Capitol police officer’s name out of his lying mouth (Black Wall Street Times, Deon Osborne op-ed)

Gizmodo Finds Ad Company Selling Itself As the Answer To Online Toxicity Sells Ads on Toxic, Denial-Filled Websites

One of the ways that people have found to hold hateful publishers of disinformation accountable is to hit their wallets through ad boycotts. Breitbart, for example, lost all its major advertisers after Sleeping Giants organized a campaign to pressure mainstream companies to boycott the website that laundered white supremacy into the news. 

As a result, companies within the advertising industry have started to offer a way for companies to avoid their ads appearing next to racist, misogynistic, transphobic, climate-denying content found across the rightwing fever swamps. One such company is OpenWeb, which has gotten $73 million from venture capitalists and landed major deals based on its claim to be the solution to “toxicity online.” 

But as Shoshana Wodinsky recently revealed in Gizmodo, OpenWeb steers ads to some of the most toxic websites online, like the (formerly?) Koch-funded Daily Caller, and Ben Shapiro’s fracking-funded Daily Wire. 

To their credit, Wodinsky notes that OpenWeb’s list of partner websites is, unlike most in the industry, relatively easy to parse. And indeed, we found many more disinformation outlets. The twin conservative political outlets, the Washington Times and Washington Examiner, are on the list, as is the Koch-funded RealClear Media. And if all these American Pravdas weren’t bad enough, the OpenWeb also places ads in the actual literal Russian state media network that has now become synonymous with propaganda, Pravda. 

It turns out, OpenWeb’s product is a computer-moderated comments section appended to stories, which is then packed with additional ads, and the anti-toxicity approach is mostly just an advertising gimmick. 

Not that anyone should be too surprised that an advertising product is less than, well, advertised. Beyond OpenWeb, Wodinsky reports on a study from last year that attempted to break down how every dollar of advertising is spent. Only half actually goes to the website that serves you the ad, and a third of it goes to the ad-tech companies that do the behind-the-scenes connecting of advertisers and publishers. The rest, however, researchers couldn’t account for. Wodinsky writes: “the last 15 cents wound up in what the researchers called an ‘unknown delta’: a Bermuda triangle at the center of the web where these billions of dollars just… vanished.” 

Where does it go? No one really knows. “Talking heads in the ad industry all have their own takes on where that money ends up,” Wodinsky writes, “with some alluding to what everyone’s already known for decades: the ad industry is full of lying liars who lie.”

There’s more, but the take-away is that companies desperate to avoid the public embarrassment of having their ads run next to conspiratorial hate speech found at Breitbart are signing up (and paying for) for a product that instead puts their ads next to the conspiratorial hate speech coming from Ben Shapiro. 

One of the founding figures of Sleeping Giants, Nandini Jammi, told Wodinsky that “this is the worst game of hot potato. Advertisers don’t feel comfortable making value judgements” about which outlets are acceptable, “so they pass those decisions onto their tech partners.” Unfortunately, “the problem is that their tech partners don’t feel comfortable making value judgements either.” 

Just like consumers need to beware of greenwashed products, digital advertisers should be wary of claims from supposedly ethical advertisers. 

And everyone else should just install ad blocking software so you don’t have to worry about it.

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