STATE RESILIENCE PARTNERSHIP

The American West is experiencing the worst drought in at least 1,200 years and climate change is responsible for 42 percent of its severity: The drought, which began in 2000 and has taken a toll on water supplies and fueled wildfires across the region, had previously been considered the worst in 500 years but a dramatic drying in 2021, when about two-thirds of the American West was in extreme drought, “really pushed it over the top,” A. Park Williams, a climate scientist and author of a new study, told the New York Times. “The drought conditions [are] substantially worse because of climate change, but there is quite a bit of room for [the drought] to get even worse” Park explained to the LA Times. Park and his colleagues examined tree rings at about 1,600 sites across the region, from Montana to California and northern Mexico. The study, which was published in the journal Nature Climate Change, warns that we “need to be even preparing for conditions in the future that are far worse than this.” (AP, NPR, ABC, CNN, Axios, CNBC, The Hill, LA Times $, Wall Street Journal $, Bloomberg $, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times $)

Louisiana officials are investigating the cause of a giant methane cloud: The plume stretched more than 56 miles across Louisiana and was the most severe concentration of methane found by satellites in the U.S. since October. Geoanalytics firm Kayrros SAS estimates an emissions rate of 105 tons of methane per hour was needed to generate the plume, which could have the same short-term climate impact as the annual emissions from more than 1,900 cars. The emissions are suspected to have been generated by gas pipelines in the state, but could have also been caused by nearby active oil and gas wells. Methane and its climate impacts have increasingly drawn the attention of world leaders, including the Biden administration’s plan announced last year for a series of actions aimed at slowing the emissions rate of the potent climate pollutant that is responsible for 10 percent of U.S. climate emissions. (The Hill, Bloomberg $)

Super Bowl LVI had twice as many climate-related advertisements than any previous year’s game, most focusing on electric vehicles: The Super Bowl remains the most watched TV event in the U.S. as nearly 100 million people were estimated to have tuned in this past weekend. Companies spent as much as $7 million on 30-second ad spots, a record number of which told star-studded stories about sustainability and climate. The number of green ads steadily grew since the early 2000s when Toyota debuted its hybrid Prius. Electric cars now make up 8.5 percent of the global new car market, a new record, and as more brands have invested in the space, more advertisements have followed. (Time, The Hill)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: With climate bill stalled, Democrats push EJ agenda (E&E News), Here’s how the Biden administration can prevent needless deaths from pollution (Truthout), Climate change forcing Zimbabwean girls into sex work (Al Jazeera), The White House is taking on environmental racism, but it won’t mention race (New York Times $)

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

CITIES AND STATES:‘This is punitive’: Kansas Senate committee considers poison pill wind energy bills (Energy News Network), People power: Hawaii utility wants to pay households to share clean energy (Canary Media)

CALIFORNIA: California lowers electric sector GHG target, directs procurement of more than 40 GW of clean energy resources (Utility Dive)

IMPACTS: There’s an invisible ecosystem in the air — and climate change is disrupting it (Grist), 

AMAZON: A staggering amount of Amazon rainforest disappeared last month (Gizmodo)

ANTARCTICA: Flourishing plants show warming Antarctica undergoing ‘major change’ (The Guardian)

DROUGHT: Ghost village emerges in Spain as drought empties reservoir (Reuters)

HURRICANES: In Puerto Rico, a new hurricane season threatens the elderly (Reuters)

FLOODING: Cities’ biggest obstacle to flood-proofing isn’t money: it’s 50-year-old rainfall data. (Grist), Madagascar, southern Africa brace for more tropical storms (Bloomberg $)

RENEWABLES: Galp seeks new investment opportunities in Brazil's solar and wind, CEO says (Reuters)

ETHANOL: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds (Reuters)

METHANE: U.S. natgas rises over 6% on colder forecasts, European price spike (Reuters), Public interest in gas stoves, heating systems has inched down over the past year (Morning Consult), The case against methane emissions keeps getting stronger (Bloomberg $)

OIL & GAS: Iraq's $27 bln TotalEnergies deal stuck over contract wrangling (Reuters), ‘A very scary concept’: energy ministers fearful of oil prices surpassing $100 a barrel (CNBC), Permian oil output sets record for second-straight month (Houston Chronicle)

OSW: Offshore wind farms could double as electric charging stations for ships (Canary Media), Construction begins on New York’s first offshore wind farm (The Verge)

PIPELINES: Germany tries to loosen its ties to Russian gas pipelines (New York Times $), Austria resists including Nord Stream 2 in EU package of Russia sanctions (Reuters), Chickahominy Pipeline will ‘press pause’ on project crossing five Central Va. counties (Virginia Mercury)

COAL: Coal mines transformed society. Now, their flooded remains could heat the homes of the future (CNBC), Glencore split proposal shows how tricky it is to clean up coal (FT $)

HYDROGEN: Can Saudi Arabia become the world’s biggest hydrogen producer? (FT $)

NUKES: New nuclear power plants are unlikely to stop the climate crisis (Scientific American)

UTILITIES: Renewables backlog plan for PJM region met with mixed reviews (E&E News), UK's National Grid to get grid stability services from renewables for first time (Reuters)

EVs: Smart charging may be key to saving power grid in world of EVs (Reuters), Booming EV sales challenge critical mineral supply chains (Energy Monitor)

TEXAS: Deliberate inaction: Root causes of Texas power failure yet to be addressed (Houston Chronicle)

ACTIVISM: Climate activists plan direct action against UK oil infrastructure (The Guardian)

COP27: COP27 host says priority to help Africa during energy transition (Bloomberg $)

COURTS: How infrastructure funding could be shaped by the courts (E&E News)

DESPAIR: Climate despair: what is it and how can we inspire collective action instead? (Teen Vogue)

DESALINATION: Simulation shows flooding of $1.4 billion Poseidon desalination plant in Huntington Beach (Orange County Register)

FINANCE: Energy markets are jittery as Russia-Ukraine tensions drag on (New York Times $), SEC boss on climate rule: We're getting there (Axios), Big money turns saving the planet on its head (Bloomberg $), UK university pension fund sets ‘staging post’ emissions goals (FT $), ‘Biggest oil barons’: the US private equity firms funding dirty energy projects (The Guardian)

GASOLINE: Nearly $5 a gallon: Record gas prices in Los Angeles, Orange counties (LA Times $)

LOVE IS LOVE: Finding love in the apocalypse (Atmos)

LGBTQ+: Queer Communities Often Left Out of Disaster Planning, Research Shows (KQED)

MANCHIN: Joe Manchin-connected power plant hasn’t paid rent in a decade (E&E News)

MAINE: Climate change will harm Maine’s coastal infrastructure without revamp, EPA chief says (Bangor Daily News)

MINING: States’ water permitting push sparks mine concerns (E&E News)

NFTs: WWF Decides Not to Sell NFTs Following Backlash Over Climate Impact (EcoWatch)

CRITTERS: Weathering climate change may be easier for birds with big brains (Ars Technica), 

INTERNATIONAL: UK urged not to abandon climate goals amid net zero row (The Guardian), Rare bird, forest protectors clash with India's clean energy vision (Thomson Reuters Foundation), India falsely claims forestry progress in ‘skewed’ report, experts warn (Climate Home), EU threatens Spain over tapping water from protected wetlands (Bloomberg $), Medical leaders call on UK ministers to end new fossil fuel exploration (FT $)

• A year ago Texans froze to death. Our leaders need to improve infrastructure, emergency aid (USA Today, Carolyn Rivera and Betty Gregory)
• My mom died in last year’s Texas winter storm and the gas industry doesn’t seem to care (Houston Chronicle, Holly Ferguson)
• When will Texas emerge from the dark? (New York Times, Michael E. Webber $)
• Global teamwork saved the ozone layer — where's the unity on climate change? (The Hill, Stephen Groff)
• Why our clean energy future should be unionized  (Energy News Network, Jason George)
• Electric vehicles' big Super Bowl win (The Hill, Andreas Karelas)
• Water companies must step up on cybersecurity (The Hill, Robert F. Powelson)
• America takes pole position on oil and gas (Wall Street Journal, Daniel Yergin $)
• Forget December’s snowstorms. California isn’t doing enough to address its hot, dry reality  (LA Times, Jacques Leslie $)
• Has Mass. missed the bus on electric vehicles? (Boston Globe, Jason Mathers $)
• Build Back Better is about opportunity, not sacrifice (Boston Globe, Leah Stokes $)
• Biden’s bill would be a cornerstone for US climate policy (Boston Globe, Mariana Arcaya $)
• Putin could turn off Europe’s gas tap. This is the solution (CNN, Tara Connolly)

Heartland Institute Confused About How Time Works In Attempt To Attack Biden For Fossil Fuel Price Spike

We hope you had a Happy Valentine’s Day, dear readers, and could spend some time yesterday with someone who loves you as much as the Heartland Institute loves prostrating itself for fossil fuels (and tobacco).

Last week, Haris Alic at the Washington Times demonstrated conservative media’s willingness to turn thin press releases with no substance into “news” and covered a “report” by the Heartland Institute that, according to the headline “finds Biden’s climate policies added $1,000 to Americans’ energy bills in 2021.” 

Which is certainly an interesting take, because… what climate policies? There has been this lil’ ol’ global pandemic that caused energy prices and production to crater in 2020, triggering the current rise in prices as the world comes back online and the fossil fuel industry profits mightily when taking its price volatility out on consumers, but that seems to have escaped the attention of the keen thinkers at Heartland. 

Heartland’s so-called report points to price increases for electricity, industrial energy, home heating oil and natural gas, and then blames “Joe Biden’s radical energy and climate policies” for “imposing a massive regressive tax on American households, and especially America’s poorest families,” per a quote from Heartland president James Taylor. 

What policies? Well Alic doesn’t exactly explain, but points to the Keystone XL cancellation, limits on new oil and gas drilling on federal lands, and “new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.” 

And like a dog returning to its vomit, Heartland posted about the Washington Times story on its ClimateRealism blog. It is here we can find a link to the “report” Alic covered but didn’t bother linking readers to so they could read about it for themselves. 

As it turns out the “report” or “study,” as Alic and Heartland call it, is by no measure a piece of scholarship published in a journal, as “study” suggests, or an in-depth examination of an issue otherwise published, as “report” would suggest. Instead, it’s described by Heartland’s own URL as a “one pager”, and is nothing more than a list of energy price increase stats, followed by a list of “notable policies” the “Biden administration has taken that have increased energy costs.” The one-pager says there are “dozens of actions,” but apparently they could only think of eight, and even those would mostly require time travel to have any impact on 2021’s energy prices. 

The list starts with “canceling the Keystone XL pipeline,” which would of course have done nothing to help American energy consumers now, as it would have simply connected Canadian oil to the global export market, and not served US customers specifically. Meaning its oil would be prey to all the same global forces driving up prices now. (And no, they don’t try to crunch the numbers to determine what infinitesimal influence the added supply from KXL, which is still reaching markets through other means of transport, would have had on prices. That’s what a study or report would do!) 

Then, Heartland thinks the Biden administration’s moves “restricting drilling in parts of the Arctic Ocean, Bering Sea, and federal lands,” “placing a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal land” and “rescinding energy production leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge” have somehow led to the massive increase in costs of fossil fuels, despite the fact that the “new” oil and gas leases would take years to develop and start producing and the industry is sitting on thousands of unused acres it could be developing. Plus, Biden clearly has not stopped oil drilling on public lands, and was criticized when he auctioned off energy production leases on federal lands!

Then Heartland references “stringent new regulations on methane emissions” and “classifying residual water from oil and gas drilling as toxic waste,” but the methane rules were only proposed in November of 2021 and we can’t seem to find anything at all about labeling waste water laden with radioactive toxic chemicals as toxic waste. 

Similarly, they list the “plans to close nearly half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska,” and that the administration is reportedly “considering hiking royalties paid to the federal government by fossil-fuel companies.” 

How do proposed rules in the 11th month of the year and plans to not allow for future development and considerations of future royalty payment increases cause an increase in 2021’s energy prices? Heartland can’t explain Biden’s apparent power to warp the space-time continuum, but surely that’s only because that’s when their one-pager ran out. If only they had more space, no doubt they could explain how the price volatility of fossil fuels is somehow Biden’s fault for thinking about doing something about climate change.

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