FIRST LOOK:

Grist and Carbon180 will hold a discussion on carbon removal and environmental justice: an equitable path to net-negative. This discussion takes a hard look at how to deploy carbon removal that centers the needs of communities and prioritizes equity, and justice. TODAY at 4 pm ET.

Manchin Cashes In On Coal As West Virginians Struggle To Pay Their Bills: West Virginia senator Joe Manchin's objection to a key climate provision of Democrat's infrastructure legislation would benefit many of his most important constituents. West Virginians, on the other hand, are suffering under the strain of skyrocketing costs of coal- and gas-powered electricity. Coal mining, oil and gas, and gas pipeline companies gave more to Manchin during the current election cycle — Manchis is not up for reelection until 2024 — than any other member of congress, the Guardian reports. Oil and gas companies (their employees and PACs) from outside West Virginia have poured more than 10 times more into Manchin's campaign coffers this cycle than all in-state contributors combined, according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail. Manchin has also pulled down $4.35 million in personal income since 2012 from stock he owns in Enersystems, the coal brokerage he founded in 1988. Manchin's son controls the company, and its stock comprises a majority of Manchin's personal assets. Coal accounts for 89% of West Virginia's electricity generation, more than four times higher than the national average. For Felisha Chase, of Charleston, the cost of coal-power is steep. With power bills twice the cost of her mortgage payment, she's still paying off last winter's electricity bill. (Manchin fossil fuel contributors and income: Charleston Gazette-Mail, The Guardian; West Virginia costs: CNN)

Ida Basement Deaths Disproportionately Hit Asian Community: Nearly all of the 11 New Yorkers who drowned in their basement apartments when the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit the city were of Asian descent, NBC reports. The deaths have rocked the victims' communities and reflect the confluence of factors, including climate change and the lack of affordable housing, that often force low-income Asian immigrants to live in unsafe housing. (NBC)

Puerto Rico Suffers Without Reliable Power: Puerto Rico still lacks reliable electricity despite promises to improve its electrical grid after it was destroyed by Hurricane Maria four years ago, the New York Times reports. Authorities' failure to modernize the grid has left many Puerto Ricans — who pay federal taxes but are barred from voting in federal elections and are unrepresented in Congress — to seek out their own solar panels and battery storage to protect themselves from continued grid volatility. (New York Times $)

Study Of Studies Finds 99.9% Scientific Consensus On Human-Caused Climate Change As Impacts Ravage The Globe: The scientific community's level of certainty on humans' causation of climate change is now on par with its agreement on evolution and plate tectonics. A review of scientific literature, published in Environmental Research Letters, found just 28 papers linked to climate scepticism in its trawl of more than 88,000. The findings support the IPCC's declaration in August that the science of human influence on the heating atmosphere is "unequivocal," and refute the concerted disinformation campaign by fossil fuel interests seeking to sow doubt and uncertainty about their products' causation of the crisis — the impacts of which are visible around the world. A UN report released Tuesday warned all of Africa's glaciers could vanish in the next two decades. Africa is responsible for just 4% of greenhouse gas pollution, but the continent and its people are exceptionally vulnerable to the ravages of the climate crisis. Climate change accelerates glacier melt, intensifies droughts, and worsens extreme precipitation events like those that cause flash flooding. Meanwhile, on Tuesday: the governor of California expanded a drought emergency to cover the entire state; Indian officials said flooding caused by torrential rain has killed at least 22 people in Uttarakhand state; and a separate UN report said climate change exacerbated the worst flooding to hit South Sudan in almost 60 years. (Scientific consensus: The Guardian; African glaciers: AP, New York Times $, Reuters, The Hill, Axios, CNN, USA Today, The Independent; Newsom declares drought emergency across California (CAL Matters, LA Times $, San Francisco Chronicle, Axios, CNN, USA Today; India: AP; South Sudan: Reuters; Climate Signals background: Glacier and ice sheet melt; Drought; Extreme precipitation increase)

ENVIRONMENTAL (IN)JUSTICE: ‘Mobility Justice’: How cities are rethinking public transportation after COVID (Grist), affordable housing will help California alleviate carbon, homelessness (NBC), diesel trucks are causing environmental injustice across US cities (Environmental Health News), long concerned about air pollution, Baltimore experienced elevated levels on 43 days in 2020 (InsideClimate News), the fossil fuel industry is killing Pennsylvania twice over (Gizmodo), Carolina tribe fighting Big Poultry joined activists pushing administration to act on climate and justice (InsideClimate News video)

POLICE STATE: Police increasingly cite climate disasters when seeking military gear, documents show (HuffPost)

COP26: China says: we want COP26 to be a success (Reuters), Glasgow bin workers to strike during COP26 climate summit (The Guardian), your cheat sheet to the UN climate conference in Glasgow (Wall Street Journal $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: If the US spends big on climate, the rest of the world might follow (TIME), to strike a climate deal, poor nations say they need trillions from rich ones (Wall Street Journal $), Africa calls for climate finance tracker after donors fall short (Reuters), 'brown recovery' wipes out hopes that pandemic stimulus would drive climate spending (Politico), with Biden's climate plan in jeopardy, can America lead on climate change? (NPR)

UK: UK sets out sweeping plan to bring economy to net zero (Bloomberg $, Climate Home), key elements of Britain's net zero strategy (Reuters, Factbox), Britain strikes green investment partnership with Bill Gates (Reuters), UK plans annual zero-emission vehicle sales mandate from 2024 (Politico Pro $), mortgages tied to ‘green’ home improvements considered by UK (The Guardian),  how British universities are advancing the energy transition (Energy Monitor), UK takes 'major step' to curb corporate greenwashing (E&E $), UK, joining trend, sees nuclear as key to cut carbon emissions (Wall Street Journal $), UK courts green investment to fuel carbon-cutting plans (AP), UK’s net zero plan falls short on ambition and funding, say critics (The Guardian)

DENIAL: Science Museum chooses fossil fuel company as new climate show sponsor (The Guardian)

FYI: Climate change is not a cover-up for humans intentionally controlling the weather (Reuters, fact check)

MEDIA: James and Kathryn Murdoch's next media investment (Axios)

THIS IS FINE: Texas natural gas industry showing limited progress in winter storm prep, experts say (Houston Chronicle)

AGENCIES: Weaker climate bill could undermine Biden regulatory push (E&E News)

DOE: US Energy Dept announces $105 mln for small businesses to pursue clean energy deployment (Reuters), California, 14 other states urge DOE to strengthen efficiency programs, rescind Trump-era rules (Utility Dive)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: Rachel Levine, openly transgender health official, sworn in as four-star admiral in Public Health Service (Washington Post $), what's at stake as Biden decides whether to stick with Jerome Powell as Fed chief (NPR)

THE HILL: Democrats say PFAS bills still needed despite EPA plan (E&E $)

HOUSE: Senior House Democrat [Steny Hoyer] favors giving Treasury secretary power on debt limit (Reuters), Hoyer: Democrats 'committed' to Oct. 31 timeline for Biden's agenda (The Hill)

SENATE: The Manchin and Bernie show consumes Democrats (Politico Pro $), inside the Senate’s new fiscal 2022 spending bills (E&E News)

• JOE MANCHIN: Manchin, Tester voice opposition to carbon tax (The Hill, Reuters), Manchin climate stance threatens to shatter infrastructure bargain (The Hill), Manchin obstructs climate progress as his family is hit by “unbelievable” storms (Truthout), The US was on the verge of passing real climate policy. Then Manchin happened. (Grist)

WHITE HOUSE: New rules, laws and markets needed to meet Biden's CO2 goals (E&E $)

INFRASTRUCTURE BILL(S): With clock ticking, Biden meets with progressives and moderates to secure his agenda (NPR, MSNBC), Democratic divide over spending priorities tests Biden's deal-making skills (Reuters, The Hill), Democrats search for plan B as climate program falters (E&E News, The Hill), Dems scramble for climate Plan C as Manchin dashes their dreams (Politico), Democrats battle over climate change plans in $3.5 trillion bill (Reuters)

POLITICS: Biden's carbon emissions-cutting pledge faces tough climb (Axios)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Senate appears poised to advance first Native American to lead National Park Service (The Hill), Rahm Emanuel’s ambassador hearing set for anniversary of Laquan McDonald's murder he allegedly covered up (NewsOne, Chicago Tribune, HuffPost), Laquan McDonald shooting looms over Emanuel in confirmation battle (WGN, Chicago Sun-Times), Cruz puts hold on Biden’s pick for Middle East lead at State (Politico)

• PHILLIPS: What Willie Phillips’ past says about how he would change FERC (E&E News), Biden FERC Nominee pledges ‘balance’ on clean energy policy (Bloomberg Law), Biden's FERC nominee outlines measured stance on gas, power issues (S&P Global)

CITIES AND STATES: Car-centric Austin is building transit. Will anyone ride it? (Reuters), in Virginia, momentum grows for grassroots group mobilized against now-canceled gas plant (Energy News Network)

IMPACTS: Alien world under Austria's doomed glaciers tells tale of their collapse (Reuters)

DROUGHT: La Niña is here and could worsen the West's drought this winter (Gizmodo), White House kicks off drought response effort (E&E $)

WILDFIRES: Wildfire evacuation fears in Colorado Springs halt housing development (Wall Street Journal $)

NET ZERO: What is 'net zero' and why does it matter? (Thomson Reuters Foundation, explainer)

FOOD AND BOOZE: For sustainable wine and food in Colorado, this valley is surprisingly at the cutting edge (Denver Post), French beekeepers expect worst harvest in decades due to climate change (Reuters)

ELECTRIFICATION: From homes to cars, it’s now time to electrify everything (Yale Environment 360)

WATER: Satellites reveal the secrets of water-guzzling farms in California (NPR)

RENEWABLES: Who owns the wind, anyway? The case for ‘socializing’ wind power (Grist), 'giving life to dying land': solar water pumps quench thirsty Kenyan farms (Thomson Reuters Foundation), 

STEEL: 750,000-panel solar farm will power Colorado steel mill, first of its kind (Washington Examiner)

BATTERIES: US companies race to mine lithium while protecting environment (NBC)

BUILDINGS: [UK] minister hints at gas boilers ban but says market should drive change (The Guardian), what are heat pumps and why is the UK government pushing them? (The Guardian)

LNG: China signs huge LNG deals with U.S. supplier Venture Global (Reuters)

OIL & GAS: No oil in Texas? No problem, report says (E&E $), oil remains near multi-year highs as energy crunch continues (Reuters), when will oil prices peak? Traders and analysts are rethinking their forecasts. (New York Times $), as state law requires steep emissions cuts, utilities face an urgent quandary: to build or not to build new gas pipelines? (Boston Globe $)

SOCAL OIL SPILL: Democrats accuse oil company of delaying spill report (E&E $)

COAL: Dammit, coal’s back (Gizmodo)

HYDROGEN: Company announces first-of-a-kind $3B renewable hydrogen project (E&E News), the biggest green hydrogen hub in the US could be coming soon to Mississippi (Canary Media)

GRID: Boosting transmission between East, West grids will lower costs: NREL (Utility Dive)

EVs: Toyota and Stellantis to build US battery plants (FT $), autonomous or electric? Knight-Swift, PGT Trucking choose both (Utility Dive)

HELLO FELLOW YOUTHS: BLACKPINK’s Rosé & Billie Eilish encourage young people to reverse climate change (Teen Vogue), Scouts can now earn patches for learning about solar energy (Yale Climate Connections)

AGRICULTURE: Lack of support for emissions reduction target will ‘punish farmers’, NFF tells Nationals (The Guardian), to save the corn belt, plant trees (Mother Jones), virtual fences may help cows have less of an impact on climate change (NPR)

THEATER: Broadway's 'Thoughts Of A Colored Man'; fighting climate change at national parks (NPR)

CARBON REMOVAL: Rio Tinto invests in mining carbon dioxide from the air (E&E News), two north of England sites selected for multibillion-pound carbon capture plan (The Guardian)

SHIPPING: Amazon and others commit to using zero-carbon shipping fuels by 2040 (Reuters), green investing looks to clean up the maritime industry (Wall Street Journal $)

FINANCE: Investors face myriad green investing rules (Reuters), Boards facing regulatory scrutiny intensify ESG focus as SEC preps climate risk disclosure rules (Utility Dive), green is good' says UK's Johnson, wooing Wall Street dollars (Reuters)

PHILANTHROPY: Big foundations vow climate-friendly investments (Axios)

INTERNATIONAL: China flooding exposed risks in Beijing’s plan to launch digital currency (Wall Street Journal $), China’s power crisis has solar and wind companies seeing green (Wall Street Journal $), India aluminium producers draw costly power from grid, hurting utilities low on coal (Reuters), Mexico agrees to expand climate goals by 2022, foreign minister says (Reuters), world top LNG exporter Qatar forms ministry of environment and climate change (Reuters)

• Does the UN climate summit matter? 5 reasons why it does (The Hill, Andreas Karelas op-ed)
• How I switched from a career in coal to working in renewables (The Guardian, Paul Clarke op-ed)
• Joe Manchin is wrecking the Senate climate change bill (MSNBC, Hayes Brown column)
• Joe Manchin thinks West Virginia, and America, are doing just fine (Washington Post, Paul Waldman column $)
• UK and EU must not abet the theft of indigenous territory in Brazil (Climate Home, Megan Darby op-ed)
• Clean water in California is overdue (CAL Matters, Sean Bothwell op-ed)
• To fight the climate crisis, banks must stop financing factory farming (The Guardian, Kari Hamerschlag and Christopher D Cook op-ed)
• America needs a climate plan compromise (The Hill, Paul Bledsoe and Ben Ritz op-ed)
• Fixing our supply chains is necessary for the clean energy transition (Utility Dive, Sally Talberg op-ed)
• The cowardice of Senate Republicans blocking a qualified Muslim’s confirmation (Washington Post, Editorial Board $)
• Now is the time to act on water affordability (Planet Detroit, Monica Lewis-Patrick and Peter Hammer op-ed)

New Report Shows How Deniers Seize On A Warning Against ‘Climate Lockdown’ to Exploit Public Fears and Oppose Climate Action 

Back in April of 2020, climate deniers like Marc Morano were exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic, and more specifically the efforts to protect public health, as a rallying cry against climate action. Then, in the fall of 2020, an economist warned that we’d need to take climate action now to avoid a future in which a “climate lockdown” is the only option to protect the public from the ravages of the climate crisis, and again we saw deniers like Morano spin that around as a supposed embrace of the idea. 

Deniers, particularly Morano, have continued to hammer on this point, occasionally getting picked up on Fox News thanks to Tucker Carlson, and a new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) examines the life of this lie.

The ISD report provides a timeline of how professional disinformers, particularly Morano, have exploited people’s fears about COVID-19 to push their climate denial, and seeded the idea among the wider rightwing disinformation ecosystem. “As populations recover from the trauma of the pandemic,” the report says, “there is greater fear and grievance to capitalise upon, and a broader constituency who could be turned against climate action.” 

UK’s Channel 4 briefly interviewed Morano about this at Heartland’s denial conference last weekend, and when pressed to name a single example of someone calling for a climate lockdowns, a flustered and increasingly irate Morano instead cited someone saying the pandemic recovery would be an opportunity to “reset” capitalism. Which, to be clear, is not someone calling for a climate lockdown. 

But obviously reality has little relevance for deniers, and the lockdown fear mongering continues. 

From Morano and the Fox News set, the ISD report notes that it’s also being picked up by the far-right, “the QAnon community or outlets such as Red Ice, an online media entity run by Swedish neo-Nazi Henrik Palmgren, who has been pushing a version of the climate lockdown narrative since February." 

It’s not just Nazis, though, as the Daily Caller (which does have a sordid history of hiring a bunch of white supremacists over the years...purely coincidentally, we're sure) published a story based solely on quotes from professional climate deniers just last month, followed by Bjorn Lomborg in the Wall Street Journal. 

Importantly, as coverage by Lottie Limb at Euronews.green notes, the upcoming COP26 could potentially be derailed by disinformation, as is denier tradition. That’s why ISD and others are calling on social media companies to clean up disinformation on their platforms. 

And as the report makes clear by showing how it’s a limited cast of characters who spread these lies, the easiest way to do that would be to ban those who spread disinformation for a living. 

Taking the social media megaphones away from those who are yelling “no fire” in a burning theater and doing false advertising on the industry’s behalf would be a quick and easy way for Facebook et al. to clean up their platforms and protect users from disinformation. 

It’s not a lockdown that Morano should be scared of, but instead a social media lock-out.

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