BAKED ALASKA: Kodiak, Alaska, hits 67°F as climate emergency fuels extreme December weather (Democracy Now, Washington Post $, New York Times $, Axios, CNN, Reuters)
SOUTH AMERICAN FLOODING: Heavy rains, flooding in Bolivia kill at least 12 this month (AP), deadly flooding in Brazil kills at least 20 and displaces thousands, leaving Covid-19 vaccines submerged (CNN, New York Times $, Democracy Now, NPR, Reuters, Axios)
SOUTHEAST ASIA: ‘Help us’: after Typhoon Rai, miles of destruction and the smell of death (New York Times $), floods hit seven states in Malaysia, thousands more evacuated (Reuters), Malaysia seeks U.N. climate adaptation funds amid deadly floods (Reuters)
CALIFORNIA SNOW: Record December snow in West brings major drought relief, hope for 2022 (Washington Post $), the nearly 17 feet of snow in California's Sierra Nevada is crushing records. It's still not enough (CNN, NPR, AP, NPR, Reuters), major snowstorm, high winds shut 111-mile stretch of California highway in Sierra Nevada (HuffPost)
COLORADO FIRE: How to give and get help (Boulder Daily Camera), how climate change primed Colorado for a rare December wildfire (CNBC), fires outside of Denver were the most destructive in Colorado history (NPR), climate change-fueled blaze destroys 1,000 homes in Colorado in rare winter wildfire (Democracy Now), climate scientists grapple with wildfire disaster in their backyard (Axios), photos: wildfires engulf 1,000 homes in suburban Denver (NPR)
(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: Will Indigenous people get apology from US? (Indian Country Today), Canada to pay billions to Indigenous groups for tainted drinking water (New York Times $), in San Francisco’s most polluted neighborhood, the polluters operate without proper permits, reports say (InsideClimate News)
CLIMATE LITIGATION: European human rights court takes up Norway arctic drilling case (Bloomberg $), activists are using the 'climate necessity defense' in court — and winning (Truthout), four climate lawsuits to watch in 2022 (Reuters)
YEAR IN REVIEW: 'Baked from the inside out': 2021 proved climate change is here and it is deadly (Buzzfeed), 2021 was the year clean energy finally faced its mining problem (The Verge), 2021 was the year that energy strategies collided (Houston Chronicle), 2021’s climate was one of contrasts, contradictions and extremes (High Country News), extreme weather, climate anxiety and presidential pivot mark top 2021's climate stories (WBUR), hotter or colder: what changed the climate in 2021? (Politico Pro $), excessively wet year in eastern US shows fingerprints of climate change (Washington Post $), nine must-read climate change stories of 2021 from around the world (Climate Home), The year in climate photos (InsideClimate News), this year's record-breaking climate disasters usher in a horrific new normal (HuffPost), Climate change is our greatest existential threat (MSNBC)
MEDIA: Tracking climate change in 193 countries (New York Times $)
DEMOCRACY & VOTING RIGHTS: ‘Slow-motion insurrection’: how GOP seizes election power (AP), Schumer says Senate will vote by Jan. 17 on changing rules if GOP continues to block voting rights legislation (Washington Post $, NPR, Black Wall Street Times, Bloomberg $, Politico Pro $, CNN, New York Times $, Wall Street Journal $, Reuters)
EURO GAS & NUKES (AND GERMANY): Europe spars over green label for gas and nuclear plants (Bloomberg $, New York Times $, Wall Street Journal $), EU denies trying to 'bury' green investment plan with Dec. 31 release (Reuters), Germany calls nuclear power ‘dangerous,’ rejects EU plan (AP, FT $, Politico EU), Germany powering down three nuclear plants in shift to renewables (The Hill, AP), Germany wants its Russian pipeline. German allies aren’t sure it’s a good idea. (New York Times $), Germany wants to avoid escalation in EU dispute over green finance rules (Reuters), Germany will likely miss 2022 climate targets, official says (The Hill)
DENIAL & DISINFORMATION: What does it take to combat disinformation? (NPR), Fact-checking the state of endangered animals, extinctions (PolitiFact), Twitter permanently suspends Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account over COVID-19 misinformation (Washington Post $, AP, NBC, Reuters, Black Wall Street Times, New York Times $, CNN), Facebook suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene's account over COVID misinformation (NPR, Wall Street Journal $, Politico), Marjorie Taylor Greene points finger at Black women after twitter permanently suspends her (NewsOne)
ACTIVISM: How Xiye Bastida became a leader in the climate fight (Vogue), ‘turn the valve off’: climate activists push for an abrupt end to the fossil fuel era (CNBC)
AGENCIES: A stabilizing force: outgoing weather service director [Louis Uccellini] reflects on tenure (Washington Post $), Trump appointee [Jelena McWilliams] resigns after fight with Democratic bank regulators (New York Times $, Wall Street Journal $, Reuters)
EPA: Lawsuit aims to compel EPA action on incinerator emissions (E&E $)
DOE: Why do people in lower-income neighborhoods pay more for LED lightbulbs? (Canary Media), Biden energy loan revamp starts with $1 billion for hydrogen (Bloomberg $, Reuters), DOE unveils $1B loan for hydrogen plant. But is it ‘clean’? (E&E News)
DOI: New public lands chief is on the frontline of Biden's climate agenda (WBUR)
LAWSUITS: Conservation group moves to sue Biden administration alleging failure to protect polar bears (The Hill), courts may overhaul energy law in 2022. Here’s how (E&E News),
BUILD BACK BETTER ACT: What’s ahead for ‘Build Back Better’: 4 scenarios (E&E News), Democrats search for path forward on Biden’s economic agenda (Bloomberg $), Manchin told White House he would support version of tax on billionaires (Washington Post $, The Hill), Manchin returns to Build Back Better negotiations with demands (Axios)
THE HILL: Democrats seek to shape climate and disaster relief in early farm bill talks (Politico Pro $), energy, environment issues to watch in every spending bill (E&E News)
- HOUSE: Bobby Rush to relinquish 30-year hold on House seat (Politico Pro $), Rep. Jayapal asks Biden to continue focus on 'Build Back Better,' urges executive action (Reuters)
- SENATE: Senate Dems beef up clean energy reconciliation tax plan (E&E $), Warren urges crackdown on wall street over climate change (Bloomberg $)(Washington Examiner), Maryland senator [Ben Cardin] sees possible comeback for Build Back Better (Politico Pro $)
WHITE HOUSE: For Biden, it’s a time for choosing—priorities, that is (Wall Street Journal $), after turbulent stint in White House, Betsy Weatherhead returning to climate risk firm (Washington Post $), five climate moves by the Biden administration you may have missed (InsideClimate News), Joe Biden's 2021 climate report card (Gizmodo)
CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: US effort to combat forced labor targets corporate China ties (New York Times $), China solar industry pushes back against US Xinjiang scrutiny (Bloomberg $), beyond Glasgow, Kerry pushes to close emissions gaps (Washington Post $), What can world leaders do to make COP26 deforestation pledge a success? (Thomson Reuters Foundation)
INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT AND JOBS ACT: The bipartisan infrastructure bill could be a carbon bomb (Gizmodo)
POLITICS: Four environmental fights to watch in 2022 (The Hill), left and center-left both claim Stacey Abrams. Who’s right? (New York Times $)
NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Biden eyes Raskin as top Fed banking regulator (Wall Street Journal $), Energy, Interior, EPA nominees in limbo as Senate returns (E&E $), FDIC’s GOP chair to resign after partisan brawl (Politico)
CITIES AND STATES: What New York's ban on gas-powered heat could mean for the future of clean energy (NPR), an African American community in FlorIda blocked two proposed solar farms. Then the FlorIda legislature stepped in. (InsideClimate News), energy storage system to be built at former site of notorious New York City power plant (Yale Climate Connections), Massachusetts towns build first cloud-based microgrids to protect energy future (WBUR), New York [state] releases proposal to transition off fossil fuels (Politico Pro $), the top 6 ambitious state climate laws passed in 2021 (Canary Media)
- TEXAS: Texas puts final estimate of winter storm death toll at 246 (Texas Tribune), despite reforms, the Texas electricity grid is still vulnerable to cold (New York Times $), ERCOT: power generators 'ready' if another freeze sweeps Texas (Houston Chronicle)
- CALIFORNIA: Price hike marks new era for California cap and trade (E&E News)
IMPACTS: Navajo Nation faces drought, fires, flooding (Indian Country Today), on the edge and nowhere to go (Indian Country Today), blame bad weather for your bigger bills (Wall Street Journal $), British Columbia is looking at how it can adapt to prepare for more climate disasters (NPR), Climate change´s droughts, floods put rice output at risk (Prensa Latina), extreme weather could get even worse in 2022 (Axios), the end of winter: a search for vanishing snow and ice around the Northern Hemisphere (CNN)
NEW YEARS STORM: Major storm is bringing severe weather, flooding and snow to ring in 2022 (Washington Post $), Kentucky storm brings flooding, lost power, possible tornado (AP), region’s biggest snowstorm in three years ends, leaving more than 500k customers without power (Washington Post $)
HEAT: High temperatures in France due to climate change (Prensa Latina)
FLOODING: Run, rebuild, repeat as floods eat away at India's indigenous land (Thomson Reuters Foundation), it keeps on raining too much too fast (The Atlantic), the rising threat to businesses in 2022? Water. (CBS)
DROUGHT: Montana comes off 4th driest year on record amid drought (AP)
WILDFIRES: Long road to recovery for Kansas ranchers after wildfires (AP), Wildfires are hurting California program to fight climate change (Wall Street Journal $)
WATER: Tribes push for a bigger role in managing the shrinking Colorado river's water (NPR)
DEFORESTATION: These women are fighting for their Indigenous land and the survival of the Amazon (CNN), jump in deforestation of world's most biodiverse savanna alarms Brazilian scientists (Reuters), this tree has stood here for 500 years. Will it be sold for $17,500? (Washington Post $), what is a tree worth? (Washington Post $)
RENEWABLES: As miners chase clean-energy minerals, tribes fear a repeat of the past (New York Times $), Big Oil’s painful pivot to offshore wind (Energy Monitor), Lawsuit seeks to block 2 geothermal power plants in Nevada (AP), ocean energy needs a lift to go mainstream (Wall Street Journal $)
SOLAR: Coming soon to this coal county: solar, in a big way (New York Times $), solar poised to double footprint in Texas, grow worldwide, report finds (Houston Chronicle), as US moves toward solar energy, this roofing company hopes ‘solar shingles’ will get homeowners to buy in (Washington Post $), solar boosters pool money and know-how to put panels on neighbors’ homes (Energy News Network), solar power projects see the light on former Appalachian coal land (Thomson Reuters Foundation), solar recycling is broken, but there’s a plan to fix it (The Verge), solar to start new year with some long shadows (Wall Street Journal $), Midwest farmers are split on whether to use farmland for big solar plans (NPR), new DC solar farm is response to Pope Francis’s call to care for Earth (Yale Climate Connections), Tesla asks employees to fight policy proposal that would make rooftop solar more expensive in California (CNBC), Will GAF Energy beat Tesla on integrated solar roofs? (Canary Media), As U.S. moves toward solar energy, this roofing company hopes ‘solar shingles’ will get homeowners to buy in (Washington Post $)
BATTERIES: Hundreds block roads in Serbia against lithium mining plans (AP)
BUILDINGS: A dream of a fossil fuel-free neighborhood meets the constraints of the building industry (InsideClimate News)
METHANE: Powerful methane cloud seen by satellite came from Georgia pipe (Bloomberg $), Researchers see a new path to curbing methane in rice (Bloomberg $)
OIL & GAS: ‘We’re being wrapped in poison’: a century of oil and gas development has devastated the Ponca City region of northern Oklahoma (InsideClimate News), radioactive contamination is creeping into drinking water around the US (Ensia), after the wars in Iraq, ‘everything living is dying’ (InsideClimate News), multiple people injured in fire at oil refinery in Texas (New York Times $), Natural-gas prices rise on colder weather forecasts (Wall Street Journal $), the world is addicted to natural gas. Fossil fuel companies are lobbying hard to keep it that way (CNN), this year has to be the beginning of the end for big oil (Gizmodo), US oil producers plan to boost output despite rising costs (Axios), Shale drillers face record cost pressures as banks shun sector (Bloomberg $), U.S. LNG exports top rivals for first time on shale revolution (Bloomberg $), Firms race to liquefy more natural gas as global demand soars (Marketplace)
PLASTICS: How bad are plastics, really? (The Atlantic)
MOUNTAIN VALLEY PIPELINE: West Virginia grants key permit for controversial pipeline (AP), Mountain Valley Pipeline faces another legal battle (The Roanoke Times), challenge filed to WVa permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline (AP)
COAL: Chart: US coal power generation rose in 2021, bucking a 6-year trend (Canary Media), Indonesia miners seek solution as coal export ban rattles sector (Reuters)
HYDROGEN: A bad year for hydrogen stocks was a good year for hydrogen companies (Wall Street Journal $), first hydrogen truck races in legendary off-road rally (E&E News), hydrogen plans gather steam at utilities in final months of 2021 (S&P Global)
UTILITIES: US utility commissioners: Who they are and how they impact regulation (S&P Global)
GRID: An energy transition needs lots of power lines. This 1970s Minnesota farmers’ uprising tried to block one. What can it teach us? (InsideClimate News), Biden aims to cut approval times for new power lines (Wall Street Journal $), Puerto Rico’s shattered power grid could become a ‘big experiment’ for Biden (Politico), Plunging natural gas supply shows Texas still not ready for cold (Bloomberg $)
EVs: As US pushes a shift toward electric cars, where should the chargers go? (Washington Post $), $1,200 to $132: what’s behind EV battery prices (E&E $), 2022 is promising to be big year for electric vehicles (NPR), Can a tiny territory in the South Pacific power Tesla’s ambitions? (New York Times $), the carmakers wary of going ‘all in’ on batteries (FT $), GM heralded this plant as a model for its electric car future. Then its batteries started exploding. (Washington Post $), Tesla delivered almost 1 million EVs in 2021, a historic milestone (Canary Media, Axios), Tesla recalls 475,000 EVs over safety concerns (E&E $), the Sun Belt is making a big play for the hot electric vehicle market (NPR), the top electric vehicles in world during record sales month (Clean Technica)
EBIKES: Ready for the e-bike evolution? (FT $)
AVIATION: Mass flight cancellations amid major winter storm (NBC)
AGRICULTURE: Virtual fences may help cows have less of an impact on climate change (NPR)
ART: Maya Lin's art illustrates urgency of the climate crisis (Wall Street Journal $)
SHIPPING: Sailing into 2022 with wind-powered cargo ships (Canary Media)
CARBON CAPTURE: Plans to capture CO2 from coal plants wasted federal dollars, watchdog says (The Verge)
FINANCE: Exxon in danger of being next Blockbuster, Kodak, CalSTRS CIO says (Bloomberg $), 3 climate finance issues to watch in 2022 (E&E $), ESG shares underperform oil and gas in 2021 (FT $), how Blackrock made ESG the hottest ticket on Wall Street (Bloomberg $)
BITCOIN: Dear Celebrities: You Can’t Sell NFTs and Say You’re Helping the Planet! (Slate)
GRETA: Greta Thunberg: 'strange' that Biden would be considered a leader in climate (Axios)
IN MEMORIAM: Honoring the Legacy of E. O. Wilson and Tom Lovejoy (The New Yorker $)
- Thomas Lovejoy, wide-ranging ecologist and Amazon rescuer, dies at 80 (New York Times $, AP, Washington Post $, HuffPost) E.O. Wilson, naturalist dubbed a modern-day Darwin, dies at 92 (Reuters, Wall Street Journal $, Washington Post $, E&E $, Harvard Crimson, New York Times $)
- Harry Reid, former Senate majority leader and Democratic kingmaker, dies at 82 (Nevada Independent, NPR, Las Vegas Sun, Las Vegas Review Journal, News 3 Las Vegas, Reno Gazette-Journal, Washington Post $, New York Times $, CNN, Wall Street Journal $, Politico, Axios, Roll Call, Reuters, USA Today, Al Jazeera, CBS, NBC, LA Times $, ABC, TIME, The Guardian, AP, Vox, Politico, Jon Ralston commentary), ‘incredible legacy’: Harry Reid’s energy, environment work (E&E News)
- As South Africa mourns Desmond Tutu, so do LGBTQ groups, Palestinians and climate activists (CNN) Prayers, petitions and boycotts: Desmond Tutu's climate activism (Thomson Reuters Foundation, New York Times $, The Guardian, NBC, Politico, TIME, Wall Street Journal $, LA Times $, Washington Post $, CBS, Reuters, ABC, Al Jazeera, BBC, The New Yorker $), a plain pine coffin and eco-friendly cremation are the last acts of Desmond Tutu (NPR)
- World-renowned Kenyan conservationist Richard Leakey dies at 77 (CNN, Bloomberg $, AP, BBC, New York Times $)
- Betty White, the Golden Girl with a heart of gold (BBC, NY Daily News, CNN)
MILITARIES: Militaries are among the world’s biggest emitters. This general wants them to go green. (Washington Post $)
INTERNATIONAL: Bangladesh takes baby steps towards climate-friendly just transition (Thomson Reuters Foundation), data centers are pushing Ireland’s electric grid to the brink (Gizmodo), France urges green habits with new car ads, bans on plastic (AP)
- CHILE: Chile writes its constitution, confronting climate change head on (New York Times $), Chile's election 'powerful example' for world, Biden tells president-elect Boric (Reuters)
- CHINA: China cuts crude oil import quota and favors mega-refiners (Bloomberg $), China talks up 'green' Olympics but prepares to fight smog (Reuters), China’s risen plans $7 billion solar factory run on clean energy (Bloomberg $)
