CLIMATE AND PUNISHMENT

Incarcerated People Subjected To Worst Of Climate Change: Climate change, on top of a long list of societal inequities, disproportionately harms incarcerated people in the U.S., a multi-part Intercept investigation reveals. California, Texas, and Florida have the highest incarcerated populations and also face some of the most frequent and extreme impacts of climate change. Justin Phillips, who has a kidney condition that makes him especially vulnerable to heat, was forced to live in an unair-conditioned segregation cell in a Texas state prison where he regularly endured dangerous heat indices as high as 127°F. Last year in California, a state notorious for its use of incarcerated (slave) labor to fight wildfires, the Dixie Fire cut power to a state prison in Susanville, leaving the people incarcerated there padlocked in dark, smoky cells and scared of what would happen if the flames reached the prison. With no way to quickly unlock the padlocks (the cells are usually locked and unlocked electronically), “The COs would laugh at us and tell us, ‘You effers are going to stay in your cell,'" an incarcerated person, granted anonymity out of fear of reprisals from the guards, told The Intercept. As Tropical Storm Elsa dumped rain on a Florida state prison last summer, incarcerated people were trapped in their cells for hours as water filled with human waste, snakes, and bugs rose to knee depth before they were evacuated. The flooding there, and at myriad other carceral facilities across the U.S. — built in the wake of mandatory minimum sentencing laws in the 1980s and '90s — was predictable based on flood risk data. (Series overview: The Intercept; Texas heat: The Intercept; California fires: The Intercept; Florida flooding: The Intercept; Climate Signals background: Extreme heat and heatwaves, Wildfires, Flooding, Hurricanes)

Koalas Now Endangered, Threatened By Climate Change: Australia's iconic koalas are now endangered in two states and the Australian Capital Territory due to a combination of factors linked to climate change, the Australian government announced Friday. Koala populations fell by nearly a third in just the three years from 2018 to 2021. Thousands of koalas were killed by the 2019-2020 bushfires, while drought and extreme heat have also contributed to population decline. Climate change, mainly caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, is making both droughts and heatwaves more frequent; it also doubled the likelihood of extreme heat and increased the risk of the severe fire weather that supercharged the bushfires by at least 30%. Chlamydia and deforestation are also contributing threats to Koala populations. (AP, Gizmodo, The Guardian, NPR, Axios, New York Times $, Salon, People; Climate Signals background: Extreme heat and heatwaves, Wildfires, Drought)

Judge Tosses Biden's Interim Social Cost Of Carbon, Methane, NO2: A federal judge barred the Biden administration from using its interim revised social costs of greenhouse gas pollution in crafting regulatory policy on Friday. The ruling by Trump-appointee James Cain in a federal court in Louisiana sided with Republican attorneys general in ruling that using the administration's interim cost calculations for CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide could reduce states' royalties. “The social cost of carbon guides the stringency of climate policy,” Michael Greenstone, a professor at the University of Chicago, told the AP. “Setting it to near-zero Trump administration levels effectively removes all the teeth from climate regulations.” The ruling was also criticized by administrative law experts. (Ruling: AP, E&E News, CNN, The Guardian, Mother Jones, Reuters, Politico Pro $; Regulatory experts: E&E $; SCC explainer: The Conversation)

ENVIRONMENTAL (IN)JUSTICE: Here comes the social cost of carbon. Will it address EJ? (E&E News)

HOUSING (IN)JUSTICE: Unhoused Texans weather another winter storm with little aid (Texas Tribune)

IPCC: UN to finalize science report on how warming hits home hard (AP)

THE BIG GAME: Hottest Super Bowl on record is forecast - you can thank climate change (The Independent, Washington Post $, LA Times $, AP), Super bowl will see heat wave as wildfires dot Sos Angeles (Gizmodo, Axios)

• ADS: Why electric vehicles are so hot in the 2022 Super Bowl ads (Vox)

COP27: What next after COP26? Gas crisis shadows the road from Glasgow to Sharm el-Sheikh (FT $)

ENERGY GEOPOLITICS: How the Ukraine conflict looms as a turning point in Russia’s uneasy energy relationship with the European union (Inside Climate News), US supplies give China muscle to become major force in global LNG trade (Reuters), Germany tries to loosen its ties to Russian gas pipelines (New York Times $)

CLIMATE (IMPACTS) LITIGATION: Youths suing Montana over climate change will have their day in court (Montana Public Radio), Burlingame sued over Bayshore flooding (San Mateo Daily Journal), Dutch lawyer to get German prize for landmark climate cases (AP)

FOSSIL VOLATILITY: Oil jumps amid escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine (CNBC), High energy prices send Europe’s businesses, homes reeling (AP)

OLYMPICS: Climate change challenges Winter Olympics (Bloomberg $)

ACTIVISM: How voices from Hawai’i are reframing the climate conversation (Inside Climate News)

FACT CHECK: EV transition does not require every gas station in the US to go electric (USA Today), Facts give lie to claim record oil money is being poured into green projects (The Guardian)

AGENCIES: Climate change pension reform input sought by Labor Department (Bloomberg Law)

• USPS: Sticking with gas-guzzlers over EVs could delay postal upgrade (Bloomberg $)
• SEC: Sen. Warren presses SEC over climate-related business disclosures (Axios), US SEC chief Gensler says he is working to firm up mandatory climate risk proposal (Reuters)

EPA: EPA pushes school ventilation upgrades as mask mandates fall (E&E News), EPA's Trump-era FOIA rule set for a revamp (E&E $)

DOE: US energy department advances $6 bln nuclear plant program (Reuters, E&E $), US Energy Dept to provide about $3 bln to boost production of advanced batteries (Reuters)

DOI: Interior faces politics of gray wolf protections (E&E News), Whistleblower case ensnares senior BLM official (E&E News), Wild horses are removed from government land as drought shrinks food supply (Wall Street Journal $), Agency: Sonoran desert tortoise doesn’t need US protection (AP)

THE HILL: Inflation news throws more cold water on ‘Build Back Better’ (E&E News)

HOUSE: Clean Future Act heads to House floor (New Mexico Political Report), Dems urge updated Army Corps guidelines to elevate EJ, climate (E&E $), Why an agriculture climate bill is stalled in the House (E&E $)

SENATE: Republican senator [Pat Toomey] targets Biden's Fed nominee Raskin (Reuters), Manchin wants 'good things on climate.' What does that mean? (Washington Post $), Senate lawmakers pitch their states for DOE hydrogen hub (E&E $), US senators express bipartisan support for hydrogen as states vie to become hydrogen 'hubs' (Utility Dive)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden’s Infrastructure Bill Includes an Unprecedented $1.1 Billion for Everglades Revitalization (WMFE), On voting rights, Biden’s power to act on his own is limited (AP)

POLITICS: Biden’s climate agenda stalls, and progressives fume (Politico), What happened to Biden's climate agenda? (Politico Pro $), 'Politics as usual' will never be a solution to the current climate threat (Truthout), Europeans more likely to vote green after extreme weather events (The Guardian)

ELECTIONS: ‘Decimation’ of competitive seats could unleash climate primaries (E&E News), Memory of deadly freeze looms large in Texas oil-regulator election (Bloomberg $), Texas primaries test Green New Deal champions (E&E News)

TRIBES: Muscogee (Creek) Nation, conservationists seeking to establish first national park and preserve in Georgia (Washington Post $)

CITIES AND STATES: Gonzales [Louisiana] wants residents' input in making a plan for climate change (The Advocate), New England carbon emissions spike as power plants turn to dirtier fuel (Reuters), A million more trees for New York City: leaders want a greener canopy (New York Times $), Advocates: don’t raid efficiency funds to pay for R.I. climate council (Energy News Network), Heat-weary Washington could pay to cool group homes (E&E $), Maryland Department of Environment is failing to protect the Chesapeake Bay, critics say (Washington Post $), New Hampshire PUC restores energy efficiency funding, but advocates say uncertainty remains (Utility Dive)

CALIFORNIA: California approves plan for more renewable power, batteries (Reuters, E&E $), California biologists and farmers join forces to help struggling salmon populations (The Hill), California claims right to save beach if tide hits homes (E&E $), California might make many US companies disclose their CO2 (E&E $)

• HOW TO WRITE A LEDE: Climate crisis and systemic inequities drive push to reform California water laws (LA Times $)

IMPACTS: Earth could surpass its ability to recover from warming (E&E $), Future of world’s most exclusive horse race on thin ice due to global heating (The Guardian), How beetles and warm weather are driving up lumber prices: 'I'm listening to my trees being killed' (CNN), How climate change is forcing cities to rebuild stormwater systems (NPR), Soak up the February sun? Not without climate change guilt in California (Politico Pro $)

GREAT LAKES: Climate change brings thinner, more unstable ice to the Great Lakes (Grist), Four ways Great Lakes winters are changing as scientists search for clues (Michigan Radio)

HEAT: The world’s poorest bear the burden of heat — and it’s getting worse (Grist, Yale Environment 360), What happened to Oregon's winter? Record warmth projected as dry spell continues (Salem Statesman Journal)

DROUGHT: Ghost village emerges in Spain as drought empties reservoir (Reuters), Dry winter drains reservoirs, ruins crops in Spain, Portugal (AP)

WILDFIRES: Denver area’s December flames are gone, the impacts endure (Yale Climate Connections), Firefighters clean up after a wildfire that threatened California's Laguna Beach (NPR)

HURRICANES: Hurricanes can cause ocean acidity to spike near the seafloor (Yale Climate Connections)

WATER: Why the cost of water in San Diego has blown past L.A., according to a new report (San Diego Union-Tribune)

DEFORESTATION: Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest hits record January high (Reuters)

CA$HING IN: How to invest in one of the hottest commodities of the next three decades: water (CNBC)

OCEANS: World leaders at France summit mull ways to protect oceans (AP), Macron announces plans to protect Antarctic at 'One Ocean' summit (Reuters)

RENEWABLES: China to focus on Gobi desert for new solar, wind power bases (Reuters), Debt-stricken Tunisian farmers ‘ignored’ as government rolls out solar megaproject (Climate Home), Engineers are building bridges with recycled wind turbine blades (The Verge), Israel's Apollo Power says Amazon to try out its solar energy sidewalk (Reuters), TotalEnergies to buy SunPower’s commercial business for $250 million (Houston Chronicle), Work starts on wind farm off New England’s southern coast (AP), Wind farm off Norfolk [UK] coast gets second green light after court battle (The Guardian)

BUILDINGS: Architects call for mass insulation of England’s interwar suburbs (The Guardian)

STORAGE: Fluence touts strong storage market despite supply chain constraints (Utility Dive)

LNG: Asian LNG prices stable but rises expected on colder weather (Reuters)

OIL & GAS: Thailand tackles 2nd offshore oil spill in 3 weeks (AP), Biggest energy firms in UAE boost spending on surging demand (Bloomberg $), Boost gas production to avoid European-style energy crisis, industry tells Biden (Washington Examiner)

EVERYTHING IS GREAT: These 23-year-old Texans made $4 million last year mining Bitcoin off flare gas from oil drilling (CNBC)

PLASTICS: Chile says adios to single-use plastic with new law (Reuters), European group raises funding to $4.6 billion to prevent plastics in seas (Reuters)

PIPELINES: Enbridge to submit mainline toll plan to regulators in 2022 (Bloomberg $)

ARE YOU SLEEPING TOO WELL?: US nuclear power plants contain dangerous counterfeit parts, report finds (The Verge, E&E News)

COAL: Experts sceptical of Shine Energy’s proposed ‘flexible’ coal power station (The Guardian), Why Utah mining officials have shut down the Coal Hollow Mine near Alton (Casper Star-Tribune)

HYDROGEN: India's Reliance plans to turn syngas into blue hydrogen (Reuters), Will hydrogen trucks power the supply chains of the future? (Energy Monitor)

UTILITIES: ConEd to New Yorkers: don't blame us for soaring power bills (Bloomberg $), Dominion to sell natural gas utility to Ullico for $690 million (Bloomberg $), TVA launches nuclear program as it shakes up electricity mix (E&E $)

• DUKE: Duke Energy plans to exit all coal, double renewables (E&E News, Argus Media), Duke energy says it will eliminate coal for power generation by 2035 (WFAE, Indiana Environmental Reporter, PV Tech, S&P Global, RTO Insider), Duke energy boosts renewable spending after [North Carolina] state law on carbon cuts (Bloomberg $)

GRID: PJM stakeholders advance interconnection reform plan to speed process, clear clean energy backlog (Utility Dive)

EVs: Biden’s 500,000 EV charging stations get a $5 billion start (Grist), How artificial intelligence could help fuel the electric vehicle revolution (Axios), Most Americans want a gas car, despite EV surge — report (E&E $), Tesla loses its approval from the left (Axios)

AVIATION: Sustainable aviation fuel costs more but consumers will be willing to pay, IATA chief says (CNBC)

AGRICULTURE: In clampdown on US methane emissions, belching cattle get a pass (Wall Street Journal $), Manure leaks into creek from new ‘green’ facility (Columbus Dispatch)

BUSINESS: How one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters got a factory to zero emissions (Wall Street Journal $)

CARBON PRICING: EU green shift needs carbon price predictability, Liese says (Bloomberg $)

CARBON STORAGE: Underground carbon-dioxide storage idea is cracked. And that’s actually good. (Washington Post $)

WILDLIFE: Polar bear inbreeding and bird 'divorces': Weird ways climate change is affecting animal species (ABC), How birds are adapting to climate crisis (CNN), How gray wolves divided America (Vox)

INTERNATIONAL: Australia is spending billions on the Great Barrier Reef. Will it do any good? (The Guardian), India hopes to replace diesel with green energy in its farms by 2024 (Reuters, Bloomberg $), How the UK can cut carbon emissions and reduce household energy bills (The Guardian), Saudi Arabia transfers $80bn in shares to wealth fund for green projects (The Guardian), Tory group fighting net zero ‘a small minority’, say parliamentarians (The Guardian)

• FRANCE: France announces plans to build up to 14 nuclear reactors (CNN), France defends its ‘big nuclear adventure,’ says it is influenced by geopolitics (CNBC)

• On climate, Youngkin is no business leader (Washington Post, Mike Tidwell op-ed $)
• Clean energy can help solve New England’s natural gas woes (Energy News Network, Adam Gallaher op-ed)
• Republicans take cheap shots at Fed nominees (The Hill, Al Hunt op-ed)
• Invest in infrastructure: People need access to public transit (The Hill, Ana María Ferreira op-ed)
• Fighting banks, surfing sofas and booming (E&E News, Bill McKibben interview)
• Australia's pledges to protect great barrier reef are too little, too late (Newsweek, Cat Woods op-ed)
• Here’s how to demolish the most common excuses for climate crisis apathy (The Guardian, Elizabeth Cripps op-ed)
• Will rising seas drown the California dream? (Bloomberg, Francis Wilkinson op-ed $)
• Congress must find common ground on climate (The Hill, Jessie Buendia and Quill Robinson op-ed)
• The green bucket list (Environmental Health News, Peter Dykstra column)
• Most mega-corporations’ net-zero pledges are hollow, report finds (Truthout, Sasha Abramsky op-ed)
• Climate change is no longer a probability — it's time to face reality (The Hill, Stuart P.M. Mackintosh op-ed)
• American gas to Europe’s rescue (Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board $)
• Suspend the gas tax, they cried (Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board $)
• Youngkin’s great climate change escape (Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal Editorial Board $)
• Time to move on from carbon capture (The Hill, William S. Becker op-ed)
• Anti-apartheid divestment built a movement of people. That’s what the climate crisis needs (LA Times, Zeb Larson op-ed $)
• We need to talk more about fairness in energy (FT, Helen Thomas column $)

Green TERF, Abortion, and Puppy Play Kink-Shaming: Happy Valentine’s Day From Denierland!

Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of this love-filled holiday, today we’re dealing with some rather amorous topics which, while individually may be just regular gross, offensive or intentionally deceptive, together do paint a pretty (damning) picture of how intimately the patriarchy is still woven into society, and what that means for the climate community. 

Because while sometimes the threat of hate and bigotry is quite obvious (more on that in a moment), it’s also sometimes draped in rhetoric that can sound quite progressive. That’s exactly why Molly Taft warned last week, “the environmental movement isn’t ready for transphobia.”

Taft takes a behind-the-scenes look at great on-the-ground reporting by E&E’s Jael Holzman, who investigated “how an ‘anti-trans’ group split the fight against a lithium mine.” We strongly encourage you to read both pieces, and assuming you have, will just note that the attempts to weave deeply hateful rhetoric about “protecting women” from the supposed threat posed by trans people is a disgusting and long-used form of disinformation that upholds the very tenets of the patriarchy that it pretends to oppose in its woke-washed appeals to environmentalists. 

This isn’t the only part of the human experience – shared to some extent by basically all cultures throughout human history – that those exploiting the patriarchy have weaponized. Reproductive health services like contraception and abortion have been similarly fashioned into a partisan cudgel by those (un)happily upholding patriarchal oppression. 

And given that empowering people and ensuring they have bodily autonomy is part of the climate fight, it’s also part of the anti-climate fight. C-FAM, the SLPC-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group spun out from an anti-abortion group kicked out of the UN for its founder’s anti-semitism, recently devoted its monthly “Definitions” series on UN terms to climate change and abortion. It offers a very textbook, official-report-looking .pdf in response to the UN’s growing recognition that family planning services and sexual and reproductive health go hand-in-hand with climate justice. 

While C-FAM does call out the underlying eugenical white supremacy beneath some fringe claims about the need to stop overpopulation, its arguments are, as you may expect from a fanatical and oppressive rightwing lobby, not exactly accurate. 

It’s not worth delving into their take for a few reasons, mainly because it fails to deal with the fact that climate change isn't caused by individuals, but is a crisis primarily driven by the consumption of fossil fuels. It’s not that there are too many people, but that the globally wealthy generate too many emissions that in turn disproportionately impact those with the fewest resources and who have been most marginalized by the global forces of patriarchal colonialism. 

When infiltrating environmentalism, patriarchal bigotry appears as a parochial attempt to protect women. When responding directly to it, it’s dressed up in staid fonts and jargon-y reports. But what about its raw form? Pure and untainted by any sense of shame or decency? 

For that, we turn to our favorite Twitter-banned conspiracy theorist, Tony Heller. At Gab, he posted that “Biden has appointed” someone “to protect the country from nuclear waste” who “brags that he likes to have sex with animals and that he wears stilettos when he goes to Congress.” 

If you can’t guess, the part about wearing high heels to Congress is true, while their supposed dalliances with animals is a deliberate misrepresentation by Heller. 

The attack originated from Breitbart-spin-off the National Pulse, which ran a hit piece on Sam Brinton, Biden’s new Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy for the Department of Energy. But even this Steve Bannon-endorsed disinformation shop was slightly more honest about the situation than Heller, in that its headline only describes Brinton as, among other things, someone who “discusses sex with animals.” 

Curious as to why its allegations would differ from Heller’s, and at our home office, we clicked through to the source material for the claim and found a relatively SFW 2016 MetroWeekly profile of a specific kink community called puppy play — in which Brinton specifically disavows the stereotypes Heller based his attack on and explains their participation in the community and its and “play” is explicitly non-sexual. 

While the kink-shaming is ample, the National Pulse and Heller don’t seem to actually consider if Brinton’s qualified for the job working on nuclear waste, beyond their (excellent) drag stage name “Sister Ray Dee O’Active.” Heller does screenshot Brinton’s profile from the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network that mentions their “dual Master’s degree in engineering systems and nuclear science and engineering from MIT” and that they “founded Core Solutions Consulting, which provides technical expertise on topics ranging from nuclear waste management to advanced nuclear reactor innovation and nuclear non-proliferation policy to advanced nuclear companies, non-partisan think tanks, and top tier universities.” 

And perhaps most ironic? Brinton’s hardly a climate radical, embracing advanced nuclear power as a climate solution and having done stints at decidedly, and even radically, centrist think tanks: Breakthrough Institute, Third Way, and the Bipartisan Policy Center. 

Why, it’s almost as if there’s no reason for anyone to be mad about Brinton’s appointment, and they’re merely recycling old anti-LGBTQ hysteria for a new generation that’s even less concerned with parochial and patriarchal systems of oppression that have sapped life of all manner of pleasures for any number of people for the sake of maintaining political power. 

So make a denier mad today, and go do something kinky!

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