FIRST LOOK:

Frontline climate communities respond to impacts of Hurricane Ida TODAY at 11:30am ET/8:30am PT. Speakers represent the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy, United Houma National, Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans, and more. Registration info and details are here.

Solar Could Provide Nearly Half Of All U.S. Electricity By 2050. Solar energy can rise from 3% of U.S. power generation today to 40% by 2035, and ultimately 50% by 2050, a new report from the Energy Department and National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows. Falling costs have boosted solar growth over the past decade, so reaching that 40% threshold would require less than $562 billion in federal investment along with supportive policy. For solar to comprise 50% of U.S. power, solar capacity would need to reach 1,600 gigawatts, more than the total electric consumption from residential and commercial buildings today. The report “illuminates the fact that solar, our cheapest and fastest-growing source of clean energy, could produce enough electricity to power all of the homes in the U.S. by 2035 and employ as many as 1.5 million people in the process," Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. Transitioning the U.S. economy to clean energy would bring an estimated economic benefit of $1.7 trillion, driven by reducing the health costs of air pollution. (Reuters, CNN, Wall Street Journal $, The Hill, CNBC, Houston Chronicle, New York Times $, Washington Post $)

World’s Biggest Direct Air Capture Plant Opens: A new facility designed to pull carbon out of the atmosphere has begun operating in Iceland. Built and operated by Swiss startup Climeworks, the “Orca” Direct Air Capture plant is the largest of its kind —  increasing global capacity for the technology by more than 40%— and works by sucking carbon out of the air and storing it deep underground. Direct Air Capture is a type of carbon removal that removes legacy emissions from the atmosphere. The IPCC has reported that gigatons of carbon removal will be needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement (in tandem with aggressive mitigation measures). Direct Air Capture can be powered by renewable energy sources to help reduce the energy intensity of Direct Air Capture: Orca is powered by geothermal energy, running on emissions-free electricity and heat. (Washington Post $, Quartz, Gizmodo, Thomson Reuters Foundation, FT $, E&E News $)

Oil & Gas Better Stay Put. Nearly 60% of the planet’s remaining oil and gas, and 90% of its coal reserves must remain in the ground by 2050 for the world to have a shot at limiting global warming to 2.7°F (1.5°C), new research published in Nature revealed. To meet the goals of the Paris agreement, researchers estimated oil and gas extraction must decline 3% each year until 2050 while every region of the world must reduce and eliminate coal extraction. The researchers acknowledge their findings are "bleak," with no guarantee that the world will stay under 1.5 degrees of warming. “We use a carbon budget in our modelling that's compatible with only a 50% probability of meeting the 1.5C target," co-author Dan Welsby told Grist. "And if we want a higher chance of staying below 1.5C, then we have to, of course, keep more carbon in the ground, more fossil fuels in the ground, and therefore there has to be higher rates of decline of production from today." (AP, CNN, Grist, Washington Post $, ABC AU, Axios, Guardian, The Conversation)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: Black people are about to be swept aside for a South Carolina freeway — again (Washington Post $)

IDA: Ida left behind a water crisis in the Gulf (Grist), U.S. Coast Guard investigating nearly 350 reported oil spills after Hurricane Ida (CBS), why Ida's remnants were so deadly for the Northeast (CNN), nursing home residents evacuated during Ida held in former pest control warehouse (NBC News)

DOE: Energy Secretary: the costs of inaction on climate change are so expensive (MSNBC)

EPA: EPA to propose first-ever 'forever chemical' discharge limits (The Hill)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: China-U.S. climate cooperation inseparable from wider trade issues - official (Reuters), UK climate summit chief says had constructive discussions with China (Reuters)

CITIES AND STATES: Iowa experiment tests potential to pair solar with carbon sequestration (Energy News Network)

CALIFORNIA: California recall vote could weaken the state’s aggressive climate policies (New York Times $), Larry Elder’s claimed California needs more logging to stop wildfires (Gizmodo)

EVERYTHING: 'It's connected to you': shared causes fuel surge in disasters (Thomson Reuters Foundation), the U.S is not ready for climate reality. (New York Times $), the United States isn’t ready for the new phase of climate change (Foreign Affairs), as the planet has warmed, weather disasters have grown fivefold, analysis shows (Yale Environment 360)

IMPACTS: Study reveals dramatic impact of climate change in the Sierra Nevada (Phys.org)

WILDFIRES:Caldor Fire half-contained with fire weather watch on horizon (San Francisco Chronicle), California weather brings new wildfire worries (AP), some of the firefighters battling the Caldor Fire are Mexican nationals on work visas (NPR), wildfire burn scars can intensify and even trigger thunderstorms, leading to catastrophic flooding – here’s how (The Conversation), wildfire took these families’ homes. Here’s why they stay. (New York Times $)

HURRICANES: Fast-moving Mindy loses strength but will drench parts of Southeast (New York Times $)

MUDSLIDES: First the snow vanished, then the mudslides began: Mt. Shasta’s summer of pain (LA Times $)

BATTERIES: Tesla plans energy trading team as company expands battery projects (Reuters)

BEZOS: Jeff Bezos’ Earth Fund pledges $150 million to climate justice groups (The Verge)

EVS: Biden wants an aggressive transition to electric vehicles. A surprising ally is pumping the brakes (CNN), Hochul signs law requiring zero-emission passenger vehicles by 2035 (The Hill), time shift: how to make EV charging as clean as possible (Canary Media)

HEAT PUMPS: Heat pumps could be the money-saving, job-creating climate solution we need (Gizmodo)

HYDROPOWER: Global hydropower industry launches ESG standard to attract investors (Reuters)

HYDROGEN: Hydrogen may help wean telecoms off emissions-intensive power for remote infrastructure (Reuters)

INVESTORS: JPMorgan names new head of ESG for investor relations (Reuters), nature-curious investors await bankable conservation deals (Thomson Reuters Foundation), new CERES report explores physical risks of climate change within the banking sector (Yahoo), two UK energy suppliers collapse amid record surge in prices (The Guardian)

LNG: ‘Carbon neutral’ LNG demand soars in Asia despite criticism (Bloomberg $)

SOLAR: Inside the Ohio factory that could make or break Biden’s big solar energy push (Washington Post $)  

JARGON: Enough with the climate jargon: scientists aim for clearer messages on global warming (NPR)

FUSION: Fusion gets closer with successful test of new kind of magnet at MIT start-up backed by Bill Gates (CNBC), U.S. university, energy firm hail test of energy fusion project (Reuters)

ORPHANED WELLS: Number of unfinished wells falls to lowest level in 4 years (Houston Chronicle)

SHIPS: Shipping powerhouse invests in Californian fuel start-up backed by Warren Buffett (CNBC)

A/C: Air conditioning is adding to the climate crisis. But it doesn’t need to (Boston Globe $) 

AGRICULTURE: Shocking study finds 20 meat and dairy farms produce more greenhouse gas than Germany, Britain or France (The Hill)

BEZOS: Bezos pledges $203.7 million more in grants for Earth Fund (Press-Enterprise)

BOTCHED: Audit office blames UK government for botched £1.5bn green homes scheme (The Guardian)

CORAL REEFS: Researchers complete first-ever detailed map of global coral (PBS NewsHour)

PROTESTS: The reason right-wing states are cracking down on Indigenous climate protesters (Gizmodo)

SPACS: Renewable storage firm energy vault reaches $1.6 billion spac deal to go public (Wall Street Journal $)

CRITTERS: Komodo dragons are now endangered and ‘moving toward extinction’ (New York Times $) 

INTERNATIONAL: Crisis in madagascar linked to climate change and COVID-19 (Forbes), grappling with soaring power costs, Spain to auction green capacity in October (Reuters), Japan's Mitsubishi partners with Shell Canada in clean energy push (Reuters), Madagascar faces one of the world's first climate change famines (Thomson Reuters Foundation), 85% of Irish adults worried about global warming implications (Irish Examiner), Europe is key staging ground for climate lawyers dogging Big Oil (Bloomberg $)

• Biden gets real on climate change (CNN, Stephen Collinson op-ed)

• A carbon tax is key to addressing the climate crisis — and carbon dividends could get Congress to support one (Boston Globe, James Hansen and Jonathan Marshall op-ed $)

• Biden must appoint a climate justice champion to address fracked gas (The Hill, Ramon Cruz and Ruth Santiago op-ed)

• An old Trump-GOP scam is back. And it’s being weaponized against Biden. (Washington Post, Greg Sargent column $)

• Congress is finally getting serious about climate change (The Hill, Mark Reynolds op-ed)

• Has Congress forgotten the urgent importance of the climate crisis? (The Hill, William Ripple op-ed)

• California’s farms face a reckoning (New York Times, Peter Coy op-ed $)

• The instabilities of climate change have arrived (Washington Post, Philip Bump column $)

• We need Biden's economic plan to rebuild the middle class (The Hill, Paul Bledsoe op-ed)

• Climate devastation is upon us. Congress must act. (NY Daily News, Paul Bledsoe op-ed)

• Doctors join the climate lobby (Wall Street Journal editorial board $

• Realizing the human right to water (Maven's Notebook, Uriel Saldivar interview)

WSJ Outdoes Brietbart In Politicizing Doctors After Medical Journals Call For Climate Action

The Wall Street Journal is a legacy media institution, one of the most-subscribed-to newspapers in the world, catering to the wealthy investors of its namesake. Breitbart is a blog that spent years laundering Nazi propaganda into mainstream Republicanism. Though some might be inclined to suggest there’s a categorical difference between the two outlets, on climate, they are essentially the same. In fact, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board is worse. 

For example, this week over 200 medical journals, including the pinnacles of peer-reviewed public health science of Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine and the British Medical Journal, signed a joint editorial calling for “urgent action to keep average global temperature increases below 1.5°C, halt the destruction of nature, and protect health.” 

Citing extensive research connecting the warming from fossil fuels with tangible health impacts, like how “heat-related mortality among people aged over 65 has increased by more than 50%” over the past 20 years, the editorial is clear that what governments are doing so far is inadequate, and essentially writes a prescription for climate action at COP26. 

But as we know all too well these days, for some people doctors are just another Big Liberal Special Interest Group who are out to convince you of crazy notions like getting an FDA-approved vaccine for COVID-19 is safer than horse dewormer. 

So while Breitbart’s story about the medical journals calling for climate action focuses on its “Orwellian” insistence on equity issues like rich countries paying to clean up their pollution, and quotes from a perfectly honest and accurate story the Wall Street Journal’s Robert Lee Hotz wrote about the editorial, over on the opinion page, the WSJ ramped up the rhetoric with an editorial of its own: Doctors Join the Climate Lobby. 

Now, obviously, we wouldn’t expect the editorial board to be persuaded by 200+ medical science experts warning about the health impacts of climate change, because that would suggest they’re rational actors who engage with The Discourse in good faith. 

But we also honestly wouldn’t expect them — in the midst of a pandemic in which their own audience is killing itself (and everyone's children) with COVID-19 instead of doing what every legitimate doctor and public health expert agrees is the smart, decent, and safe thing to do (wear a mask and get vaccinated — to further politicize doctors by portraying them as the enemy of conservatives. 

That’s exactly what they did though, further debasing their once-credible publication by pretending like they’re better informed than the collective wisdom of hundreds of medical journals, and even daring to suggest that since “we don’t live in a world of infinite resources” there are better things to spend money on “for instance, vaccinations.” 

Hey, WSJ, not sure if you noticed, but vaccines in the US are free, and yet your ideological compatrates and no doubt some of your readers are running to the tractor store to pay top dollar for horse paste and then creating recipes to make it taste good like some kind of barnyard edition of Chopped, specifically because of conservative media’s politicization of medical professionals. 

The 200+ medical science journals “are less authorities,” the editorial concludes in a spectacular display of projection, “than partisan advocates.”

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