FIRST LOOK:

A new report from the Center for Media and Democracy reveals ALEC is pushing model bills to bar financial companies that end investments in oil, gas, and coal companies from contracting with state governments or managing state funds.

2021 Wildfires Broke CO2 Emissions Record: Wildfires, supercharged by climate change, produced a record amount of planet-warming CO2 in 2021, European scientists reported Monday. Fires in the U.S., Siberia, and Turkey together emitted 1.76 billion tons of CO2, the EU's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said. Climate change, caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, supercharges wildfires by making droughts more frequent and severe and increasing temperatures, both of which dry out the vegetation fires consume. In California, 2021 saw the second-most acres burned on record (2020 was the only worse year) as infernos, including the largest single fire in recorded history, burned an area larger than the entire state of Connecticut. "It just shows you the new world that we're in," Cal Fire battalion chief Jon Heggie told E&E. "Of the 20 of the largest fires in California history ... seven have happened in the last two years." (CO2: Reuters, CNBC, Sky News; California: E&E $; Climate Signals background: Drought, Wildfires, 2021 Western wildfire season)

Oil And Gas Industry Raking In Record Profits: While the oil and gas industry was spending millions of dollars lobbying against clean energy investments in the Build Back Better Act, and American motorists faced the highest gasoline prices in seven years, 24 major oil and gas companies raked in $174 billion in profits, the Guardian reports. Exxon pulled down $6.75 billion profit in Q3 alone while BP netted $3.3 billion. “Americans looking for someone to blame for the pain they experience at the pump need look no further than the wealthy oil and gas company executives who choose to line their own pockets rather than lower gas prices with the billions of dollars in profit big oil rakes in month after month,” Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, told the Guardian. The oil and gas industry has worked for decades to deceive the public on climate science and is responsible for killing 8.7 million people every year. (The Guardian)

Utilities To To Build Fast-Charging Network Across Highway System: More than 50 utilities said Monday they would collaborate to build a fast charging network for EVs across the U.S. along the interstate highway system. The new National Electric Highway Coalition did not set a numerical goal, but pledged to fill gaps in EV charging infrastructure and is expected to work in conjunction with federal EV infrastructure investments passed. The Edison Electric Institute, the utilities lobbying group of which all the utilities are a member, estimates the number of fast-charging stations in the U.S. will need to increase tenfold by the end of the decade. EVs made up one-fifth of light-duty passenger vehicle sales this past summer. The interstate highway system built racism into the country’s roadway infrastructure, harming the health and wealth of Black communities and communities of color. John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, told E&E News the charging network is just part of what is needed. "Addressing issues such as grid resiliency, energy demands for charging, and equitable rollout of charging infrastructure will be an integral part of a successful future for EVs in America,” he said. (E&E News)

TRANSITION DONE WRONG: A fraught and rocky energy transition pathway (Axios), spiking gas prices are a preview of an energy transition gone wrong (Grist)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: How the world could pay for unstoppable climate damage (E&E $), EU objects to union-made electric vehicle tax credits in BBB (Politico Pro $), White House announces diplomatic boycott of Beijing Olympics (Politico)

BIDEN DRILLING ON PUBLIC LANDS: Biden is approving more oil and gas drilling permits on public lands than Trump, analysis finds (Washington Post $)(InsideClimate News)

STRANDED ASSETS: Enbridge says aggressive climate policies shortening life of its pipelines (Star-Tribune $)

SEEMS FINE: Gambling ‘America’s Amazon’ (CNN)

FIRST AND WORST: As eco-anxieties mount, Africa's young people urge action on climate (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

GOOD NEWS: 11 climate justice wins that got US through 2021 (Atmos)

AGENCIES: Justice Department opens civil rights investigation into Mount Vernon, NY police department (The Root)

DOE: Biden administration proposes lightbulb efficiency rule, reversing Trump (The Hill, Politico Pro $)

DOI: Biden administration moves to scrap Cadiz water pipeline right-of-way permit, cleared by Trump (LA Times $, E&E News), Haaland hits the road to talk infrastructure, drought (E&E $)

HOUSE: House climate committee sets hearing on energy prices (E&E $), panel takes up brownfield redevelopment with EJ in mind (E&E $)

WHITE HOUSE: Touting his spending bill, Biden shifts focus to drug prices (New York Times $)

BUILD BACK BETTER ACT: Senate revs up work on $2 trillion spending proposal, aiming to complete vote on Biden-backed bill before Christmas (Washington Post $, E&E News), e-bike sales could get big push from Build Back Better Act (Bloomberg $)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: GOP senators prepare gantlet for Biden’s Fed picks after Powell (Bloomberg $)

TRIBES: Biden tribal policy would shake up energy law on public lands (E&E News)

CITIES AND STATES: New York climate plan focuses on electrification (Politico Pro $), Boston’s new Mayor promised free public transit. Can she make it happen? (Grist), Why New York is unearthing a brook it buried a century ago (New York Times $)

CALIFORNIA: California OKs 'bridge' measures to bolster grid against potential extreme circumstances in 2022, 2023 (Utility Dive), crude reality: [California] consumes half the oil from the Amazon rainforest (NBC)

TEXAS: Texas cities weren’t ready for a massive winter storm in February. Has that changed? (Texas Tribune), Texas lowers electricity price cap to $5,000/MWh ahead of winter season (Utility Dive)

FERC: Midwest pipeline gets FERC nod as Supreme Court weighs case (E&E $)

IMPACTS: Bearing witness to Svalbard’s fragile splendor (New York Times $), all coral reefs in western Indian Ocean ‘at high risk of collapse in next 50 years’ (The Guardian), ski resorts are delaying their openings due to warm weather (Today Show), study sheds light on Antarctic Ocean climate riddle (E&E News)

HEAT: New study outlines high costs of extreme heat in Phoenix (AP)

FLOODING: ‘River is getting close’ (Washington Post $), ‘just total chaos’: floods bring death and devastation to dairies (New York Times $), storm brings serious flash flooding to Hawaii along with mountain snow (Washington Post $)

RENEWABLES: SEC probes Tesla over whistleblower claims on solar panel defects (Reuters, FT $), Tesla down 20% from record high following report of SEC probe (Bloomberg $), China starts round 2 of massive desert renewable energy build (Bloomberg $), lawsuit: renewable giant [Iberdrola/Avangrid] engaged in ‘brazen racketeering’ (E&E $), offshore wind grid woes may be worse than previously thought (E&E News), the race to secure clean energy materials (Axios), on the banks of the furious Congo River, a 5-star emporium of ambition (New York Times $)

BATTERIES: What’s better than a big battery? How about a big battery you can move around (Canary Media), 1,000s take to streets in Serbia to oppose government deal for Rio Tinto lithium mine (Democracy Now)

STORAGE: Energy storage is booming — and flexing its political muscle (Canary Media), Danish startup gets billionaire backing to store energy in salt (Bloomberg $)

EFFICIENCY: In charts: global progress on energy efficiency (FT $), water groups pioneer ‘waste not, want not’ energy schemes (FT $)

LNG: Freeport LNG CEO expects 'heavy' LNG demand for decades (Bloomberg $)

OIL & GAS: Demand for oil, gas to remain robust for years, energy leaders say (Wall Street Journal $), earthquake worries force well closures in Texas oil patch (E&E $), Exxon Mobil aims for net-zero emissions from its operations in the Permian Basin by 2030. (New York Times $, Politico Pro $, FT $), Halliburton says the world is entering a period of oil scarcity (Reuters), South African activists, community members protest Shell Oil exploration on pristine coastline (Democracy Now)

DOESN'T SOUND LIKE A MOB BOSS AT ALL: Saudi Aramco warns of ‘social unrest’ if fossil fuels ditched too quickly (FT $)

PIPELINES: Sunoco ordered to dredge lake, pay $4M over [August 2020] pipeline spill (AP), Virginia board rejects gas project, cites environmental justice (E&E $)

HYDROGEN: Elon Musk has strong views on hydrogen. Not everyone agrees (CNBC), Hydrogen airplane enters race for carbon-free travel (E&E $)

UTILITIES: A month after 'malicious' cyberattack, a small Colorado utility still doesn't have all systems back online (Utility Dive)

GRID: Extreme weather, project delays may challenge NY power grid in 2021-2030- operator (Reuters), improving outcomes for everyone: enthusiasm builds for broader Western electricity market (Utility Dive), New England grid operator braces for tight fuel supplies this winter (Politico Pro $)

EVs: General Motors to manufacture electric car battery cells in US (Yale Climate Connections), Europe’s shift to EVs could ax 500,000 car jobs, suppliers warn (Politico Pro $), EV maker Lucid gets SEC subpoena on $24 billion blank-check deal (Reuters), prototype of electric moped with 90-second charge time set to hit the streets in 2022 (Canary Media), Toyota to build $1.29 billion EV battery plant in North Carolina, create 1,750 jobs (CNBC, New York Times $)

AVIATION: ‘Sustainable aviation fuel’ is here, but still has miles to go (Grist)

BUSINESS: Companies race to earn forest credits as incentive to offset global carbon footprint (NBC)

BASED ON A TRUE STORY: "Don't Look Up" draws from climate scientists' experience (Axios), Oscar winners assemble for climate warning comedy 'Don't Look Up' (Reuters)

FINANCE: ‘Green banks’ target the funding gap for New York energy start-ups (FT $), ESG duds have nowhere to hide, world’s biggest stock owner says (Bloomberg $), investors push for faster ways to save energy (FT $)

SMART PEOPLE: Nobel Prizes awarded in pandemic-curtailed local ceremonies (AP)

PHILANTHROPY: Bezos fund awards $443M for environmental justice, climate (E&E News, Politico Pro $, Bloomberg $, The Verge)

INFRASTRUCTURE: US spending on airport expansion flies under the radar for climate activists (Climate Home)

WILDLIFE: Meet the new climate refugee in town: coyotes (Bloomberg $), sharks ‘amassing’ on the East Coast is totally normal, uprising not imminent (Gizmodo)

INTERNATIONAL: British power prices hamper steel sector efforts to cut emissions -report (Reuters)

CAN CONFIRM: Total solar eclipse dazzles skies in Antarctica. The photos are spectacular. (Washington Post $)

• Fred Hiatt was an editor of surpassing integrity, intelligence and compassion (Washington Post, Editorial Board $)
• As climate disasters grow, reducing vulnerability is key (Thomson Reuters Foundation, Debarati Guha-Sapir & Ilan Kelman op-ed)
• Cheering Shell’s Cambo exit may be premature (FT, Editorial Board $)
• The cost of cutting carbon is sure to shock investors (Bloomberg, Gary Shilling op-ed $)
• Manchin’s climate catchphrase is complete nonsense (Bloomberg, Liam Denning column $)
• Solution to wasted energy lies in improved distribution (FT, Nick Butler op-ed $)
• 36 years later, the climate changes at this national park stunned me (New York Times, Jon Waterman essay $)

Now With Magic Crystals! Unwise Use Of ‘Wise Use’: Meet The New Climate Denial, Same As The Old

“It’s not okay anymore to be an outright climate denialist. No one’s going to listen to you.” 

That’s what Rutgers University professor of media studies Melissa Aronczyk recently told the Washington Post’s Maxine Joselow, for a story about a new study on public relations companies and their work for the energy and environmental industries. Co-author Robert Brulle told Joselow that “the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Koch brothers” are “not really news anymore.” What is news, per Brulle’s paper, is the extensive work being done by the oil and gas industry “to greenwash their reputation and shift public opinion.” 

Part of that is the industries’ adaptation to the changed climate conversation, and they’re not just pushing more “climate obstruction” instead of denial. The PR firms, Aronzyk said, “are changing the context in which climate communications take place. It’s even more insidious.” 

First off, this is in no way a suggestion that the old school denial crew has turned over a new leaf. For example, Climate Depot just posted videos of a William Happer lecture and interviews, in which the founder of the CO2 Coalition says climate change is “not a problem at all and CO2 is not a problem at all.” Ironically, the second interview appears to be filmed near a fireplace, which is reflected in the window behind Happer making it appear as though the world is literally on fire as he assures viewers warming’s no big deal. 

What’s the new style look like though? And how’s it different?

Let’s take a look at a piece by Trump advisor Kevin Hassett, headlined “Death by 1,000 Climate Faucis” in the Leading Conservative Magazine™, the National Review. On the smart side, he noted that he’s personally in favor of a carbon tax (the policy an Exxon exec admitted they only support because it’ll never happen) and he dutifully wears a mask and got vaccinated. But the point of his column is that he fears “the Left has found in the totalitarian Fauci state the playbook that takes this entire COVID farce to the next level.” 

Hassett blends both the nuanced and savvy obstructionism targeting sophisticated suburban voters they need for swing states by making clear he’s not some sort of anti-vaxx nutcase, while also delivering exactly the sort of base denial his now anti-vaxx nutcase base loves. 

Over at TownHall, Gabriella Hoffman offers a similar approach, contending that it’s “Radical environmentalism” that “poses grave threat to true conservation efforts.” Instead of merely embracing a platform of polluter profits over people to attack Biden over the Keystone pipeline, leasing on federal lands, and expanding National Monuments, Hoffman instead paradoxically asserts those environmental moves were actually bad for the environment. “True conservation,” Hoffman concludes, “calls for wise use, not no use, of natural resources” as that’s “the sustainable path forward.” 

While it’s nice that Hoffman claims to support sustainability, readers with any sense of history might remember that when the GOP pretended to support environmental aims as cover for unleashing industrial pollution across America back in the 1980s, they called it the “Wise Use” movement. Does Hoffman, who seems like a relatively youthful voice in the sclerotic climate denial world, not know the history of the phrase, particularly its ignominious end with the resignation of Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt after he made a racist/sexist/ableist/anti-semetic “joke”? 

Or are fossil fuel fanatics now trying to un-cancel something that was championed by someone who was too racist even by 1980s' standards, all in the name of a new less-extremist and more palatable conservative climate communication style? 

More importantly, does it matter? 

Suggesting that No, nothing matters, is our final piece of the day, James Pinkerton’s Breitbart column charging that “Biden’s Green New Deal = China First. Pinkerton manages to weave together both the new and old, clever and kooky strands of denial, citing Alex Epstein and professor Michael Lind. Writing on the website of the left-criticizing, right-infantilizing, nuclear-boosting Breakthrough Institute, that Pinkerton errantly attributes to The Tablet instead of Breakthrough, Lind gives a very long and lofty-minded-sounding argument that really progressives are just using climate as a pretense for lefty policy wishlist fulfillment. Pinkerton then goes on to cite the Breakthrough correctly, citing Nobel nephew Ted Nordhaus to (basically) claim being rich makes you immune to extreme weather, and then cites Bjorn Lomborg himself saying about the same thing. 

But after invoking these examples of the new climate solutions denial to build some credibility, Pinkerton pivots back to the Breitbart base, claiming “the entire solar system is getting warmer, most notably, the planet Venus.” (links original)

The citation for that patently wrong point that goes deep into the debunked cosmic ray theory is from the “Resonance Science Foundation,” an organization founded by Nassim Haramein. Haramein is a quantum physicist who also runs Advanced Resonance Kinetics, which sells “Technology for wellbeing,” namely ARK quartz crystals in a twenty-piece “precision-engineered” “titanium saddle” that’s manufactured using “electromagnetic treatment or modulation by the Harmonic Flux Resonator (HFR),” a technology Haramein invented “to generate a non-linear resonant relationship between the vacuum structure and plasma dynamics.” 

These ARK crystals apparently “structure” water, and “the more highly structured and coherent water is, the more energy and information it contains… Highly structured water is easily absorbed by the cell, enabling more efficient and effective cellular signaling and transportation of nutrients and waste.” We tried to check their science, but we had to give them our email to get the report so… no thanks. 

But, if this sounds to you like the sort of person we should be trusting with the planet’s climate, and wish to purchase an ARK crystal to structure your water, you’re in luck as the “ARK Coherence Bundle,” consisting of an ARK Crystal + Classic pendant, and ARK Crystal water bottle is on sale for a special low price of $1,250! 

And if that seems like a good deal, then congrats, you're gullible enough to buy both new, and old climate denial!

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 ($)