IPCC Report Details Dire Need For Adaptation To Escalating Climate Impacts: The impacts of human-caused climate change are arriving earlier than projected, with consequences ranging from damaging to devastating, a blockbuster IPCC report published this morning concludes. “I have seen many scientific reports in my time, but nothing like this,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said in a statement, describing the report as, “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership … The world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home.” The report highlights myriad ways in which climate change exposes existing injustices, hitting historically excluded communities the hardest, in the U.S. and abroad. The world is not prepared for the impacts of climate change, and must take dramatic action over the next decade to adapt to a planet heated by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, while concurrently and immediately slashing climate pollution to stop warming at 1.5°C (2.7°F), a critical threshold beyond which it will become increasingly difficult-to-impossible to adapt to escalating impacts. (Washington Post $, AP, WFLA, Bloomberg $, NPR, Boston Globe $, CNN, Fast Company, The Guardian, NBC, New York Times $, Reuters, The Verge, USA Today, Wired, Yahoo, CNBC, MarketWatch, The Hill, ABC, Quartz, The Conversation, Axios; Global health: NBC; Key takeaways & explainers: AP explainer, Reuters factbox, Bloomberg $, HuffPost, PBS NewsHour, Washington Post $, The Independent; Commentary: Washington Post, postcards from Earth's climate futures $)
Russian Invasion Has Big Oil Reprising 'Drill Baby Drill': Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine was even fully underway, the oil and gas industry was exploiting the humanitarian and geopolitical crisis by calling for increased drilling, and within the next 24 hours the full court press from industry-allied conservatives and Republican officials was in full swing. Despite the fact that Europe's dependence on fossil fuels from Russia is the significant barrier to a more forceful response by the West to Russian aggression, oil lobby API has sought to weaken sanctions against Russia, Reuters reports. It also called for opening more federal lands to drilling and weakening regulatory safeguards, according to the New York times. Oil and gas companies were also among the list of firms (including many lobbyists in the so-called ‘Moscow-to-K-Street pipeline’) scrambling to cut ties with Russia. The oil and gas industry was largely exempt from Western nations' sanctions, but White House press secretary said energy-targeted sanctions are "certainly on the table." Exxon's bank in Russia was among the financial institutions sanctioned by the U.S. BP, the biggest foreign investor in Russia, also dropped its 20% stake in Russian oil giant Rosneft (which accounts for about half of BP's oil and gas reserves and one-third of its extraction), writing down as much as $25 billion. “It’s pretty rich for the oil and gas industry to talk about how reliable fossil fuels are when any big storm that happens, any time a war pops up, their reliability is thrown into question,” Nathaniel Stinnett, head of the Environmental Voter Project, told the New York Times. “Wars aren’t fought over solar energy. You don’t see these huge price spikes in clean energy.” (Drill baby drill: New York Times $, Truthout; Sanctions: Reuters, Wall Street Journal $), more below; Psaki: ABC; Exxon: Bloomberg $; Lobbyists: CNN; BP: Reuters, Washington Post $, Politico Pro $, The Hill, CNBC, New York Times $, BBC, Axios, CNN)
Ketanji Brown Jackson, First Black Woman And Public Defender Nominated To SCOTUS: President Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Friday. If confirmed, Jackson, currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, would be the first Black Woman to serve on the Court as well as the first former public defender to serve on the Court in modern history. Jackson has ruled on multiple environmental cases as a federal judge, including a decision against environmentalists' in 2017 over Deepwater Horizon's drilling permits, and for the environment in a ruling against the Trump administration on air pollution standards. “I obviously did disagree with the analysis and conclusion, but she did give us a fair hearing,” Kristen Monsell, the Center for Biological Diversity attorney who argued the Deepwater Horizon case, told Politico. Jackson would replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, for whom she clerked, and would not substantially change the balance of power in the Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices, five of whom were nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote when first elected to office. Even before Biden nominated Jackson, the dark money-funded Judicial Crisis Network, which played a significant role in installing Trump's nominees to the bench, began preemptively attacking Biden’s eventual nominee as a "liberal activist" and "rubber stamp." The campaign was described by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse as "Putin-type mirroring propaganda, in which you accuse your adversary of exactly what you're doing." (Nomination: The Root, Atlanta Black Star, Jezebel, SCOTUSblog, New York Times $, E&E News, CNN, Washington Post $; Environmental law rulings: Politico, Grist; Upcoming environmental cases: E&E News; Public defender experience: New York Times $, Esquire, New York Magazine $, Roll Call; Dark Money attacks: Insider; Additional coverage below. |
ENVIRONMENTAL (IN)JUSTICE: Women of color are leading climate justice work. They’re also struggling to find funding. (The 19th* News), Why do environmental justice advocates oppose carbon markets? Look at California, they say (Inside Climate News)
WAR IN EUROPE: Geopolitical clouds gather over Europe's climate change plans (Reuters), One way to combat Russia? Move faster on clean energy (LA Times $), Ukraine and the mirage of energy independence (New York Times $), Russia probably won’t cut off Europe’s gas, because it’s ‘essentially an act of war’ (The Atlantic), Hawaii relies on Russian oil — but clean energy could change that (Canary Media), Western powers condemn Russia at environmental summit (Reuters)
- US POLITICS: How the invasion of Ukraine scrambles American energy politics (Washington Post $), Oil-backed Republicans blame Biden’s energy policies for Russian invasion (HuffPost), Climate change gets pushed out of the spotlight (Axios), Congress wants to go further for Ukraine. It may be too late. (Politico Pro $)
- SANCTIONS: Why Biden is going easy on Russia's energy industry (Politico), Energy sanctions ‘certainly on the table,’ but must be done in united way: Psaki (ABC), Biden's challenge: Hitting Putin while limiting energy pain (Axios), Global reliance on Russian energy a hurdle to US pressure campaign on Putin (The Hill), Russia sanctions over Ukraine largely spare energy sector, vital to Europe (Wall Street Journal $), Sanctions and consequences (New York Times $), Why sanctions on Russia aren't targeting oil and gas (TIME), Why the toughest sanctions on Russia are the hardest for Europe to wield (New York Times $), Biden's Russia sanctions: The energy fallout (E&E $), Canada says latest sanctions not intended to hurt world energy markets (Politico Pro $), Russia faces major disruptions to oil, commodities flows without SWIFT (Reuters)
- NUCLEAR ENERGY: Chernobyl could be an environmental catastrophe (again) (Protocol), ‘Grave concern.’ Invasion puts spotlight on Ukraine nuclear reactors (E&E News), Chernobyl is not the only nuclear threat Russia’s invasion has sparked in Ukraine (Inside Climate News)
- EURO RUSSIAN GAS DEPENDENCE: Russian risks stoke fears for European winter gas supplies (Reuters, Business Insider), Will Russia spur or deter Europe’s shift to green energy? (E&E News), Gazprom says Russian gas exports via Ukraine to Europe continue normally (Reuters), How can Europe wean itself off Russian gas? (The Guardian), If the supply of Russian gas to Europe were cut off, could LNG plug the gap? (Economist)
- GERMANY: Nuclear, coal, LNG: 'no taboos' in Germany's energy about-face (Reuters), Putin might have just kick-started Europe’s green energy revolution—too bad Germany doubled down on natural gas (Fortune, Bloomberg $, Reuters), Germany to upgrade 2 ports ‘quickly’ to receive shipped gas (Politico Pro $), Can Germany function without Vladimir Putin’s gas? (The Guardian), Misleading claims about Germany’s energy supply spread online after Nord Stream 2 announcement (Reuters, Fact check)
- ITALY: Italy must reduce reliance on Russian gas, lift domestic production -Draghi (Reuters)
- GLOBAL MARKET VOLATILITY: Oil prices dip after soaring on Russia's invasion of Ukraine (Reuters), The International Energy Agency ponders market intervention over the Ukraine invasion. (New York Times $), The new energy shock: Putin, Ukraine and the global economy (FT $), A Louisiana LNG surge amid Russia-Ukraine fight? Only under these conditions, experts say (The Advocate), EU energy ministers to discuss plans for supply shocks from Ukraine crisis (Reuters), Russia may be a ‘big gas station,’ but it’s also a key supplier for clean energy (HuffPost), Energy firms snap up Russian gas as Europe seeks alternatives (Bloomberg $)
- WEAPONIZING GAS: Russia sends natural-gas tankers to Kaliningrad outpost behind NATO lines (Wall Street Journal $), Ukraine tells power stations to switch to gas to preserve coal, DTEK CEO says (Reuters), Ukraine warns gas transit pipelines could be Russian targets (Reuters)
- US IMPACTS: Putin’s threat of ‘consequences’ heightens worries about Americans’ electricity (Politico Pro $), What does Ukraine invasion mean for energy bills? (AP, explainer)
KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: Here's Ketanji Brown Jackson at a glance (The Root), Black women leaders weigh in on judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's SCOTUS nomination (The Root), Four Black women became classmates, roommates and lifelong sisters. One of them is now a historic nominee for the Supreme Court. (The 19th* News), Black women’s groups, leaders rally around Ketanji Brown Jackson ahead of Supreme Court confirmation (The Grio, The Root), Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic SCOTUS nomination puts a spotlight on the need for court reform (NewsOne), What's next for supreme court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson? A high-profile confirmation process (USA Today)
OFFSHORE WIND: A record-breaking offshore wind lease sale signals a new era for development (Grist, New York Times $, CNBC, HuffPost, E&E $, Bloomberg $, The Hill, Reuters, Wall Street Journal $, FT $, Politico Pro $)
WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA: 15 years of Supreme Court climate fights come to a head Monday (E&E News, CNN), For GOP, Supreme Court case on climate goes way beyond the environment (Bloomberg $), Supreme court will hear biggest climate change case in a decade (New York Times $), Supreme Court case could snarl Biden climate agenda (E&E News, Wall Street Journal $)
RAIN BOMB DOWN UNDER: 'Rain bomb' hits Australia's northeast, killing seven in floods (Reuters, New York Times $, The Independent, The Guardian, photos), 2 feet of rain leaves Australian city underwater (AccuWeather), ‘A very anxious night’: City under siege as south-east flood crisis deepens (Sydney Morning Herald), Floods in south-east Queensland and northern NSW: what has happened and which areas could be hit next? (The Guardian)
METHANE: Why methane is a large and underestimated threat to climate goals (Yale Environment 360)
CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Kristalina Georgieva: the IMF boss tackling Covid, the climate crisis and, now, war (The Guardian)
DENIAL: Thinktank linked to tech giant Canon under pressure to remove ‘dangerous’ climate articles (The Guardian)
FIRST, WORST, LEAST RESPONSIBLE: African countries forced to spend billions on climate adaptation (Bloomberg $, The Guardian), These African heritage sites are under threat from rising seas, but there's still time to save them (CNN)
CLOSE CALLS: Texas just dodged a repeat of 2021 outages, but its power sector has a long way to go, analysts say (Utility Dive)
USPS: US Postal Service flouts Biden's electric vehicle plan (Axios, Grist)
EPA: IG confirms sloppy contractor work on soot monitoring data (E&E $)
DOE: Biden admin releases blueprint for clean energy supply chain (E&E $)
WHITE HOUSE: White House to push back on climate 'delayism' (E&E $, Washington Times), Hear from Black women leading on the economy and environment in the White House (The 19th* News)
HOUSE: Marjorie Taylor Greene just headlined a white supremacist, pro-Putin rally (Black Wall Street Times, NY Mag, USA Today), CPAC welcomes Marjorie Taylor Greene hours after she appears at white nationalist conference (Rolling Stone, New York Post, UPI), Rep. Greene’s speech at white nationalist event draws new calls for reprimand (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Guardian, CNN, Wall Street Journal $), Romney on Greene, Gosar: 'I have morons on my team' (The Hill, CNN, Business Insider, The Guardian), Marjorie Taylor Greene defends speaking at white supremacist event saying she didn’t know what it was (The Independent)
ELECTIONS: Inhofe aide running for Okla. seat: Climate change a 'hoax' (E&E $), Who is Luke Holland? Inhofe wants political novice from his inner circle to succeed him in U.S. Senate (Tulsa World), Jessica Cisneros takes on the last anti-abortion US House Democrat (The 19th* News)
TRIBES: Tribes will get $1.7 billion for water rights settlements as part of federal infrastructure spending (KUNC), How one Native American tribe is battling for control over flaring (Inside Climate News)
CITIES AND STATES: Arizona’s anti-trans bills meet resistance among Republicans (The 19th* News), Got an idea to address the impacts of climate change along the Delaware? You could win money to make it happen (WHYY)
- CALIFORNIA: Is manure the future of fuel? California says yes, but environmentalists say it stinks (Desert Sun), As Californians retrofit homes against wildfires, state demands insurers cut them a break (Sacramento Bee $, AP, LA Times $), Why did California regulators choose a firm with ties to Chevron to study irrigating crops with oil wastewater? (Inside Climate News)
IMPACTS: Climate emergency a ‘national security’ concern, says Red Cross (The Guardian), How climate change could be making weather whiplash worse (Boston Globe $), It might feel cold today, but the trend for winter in the West is warmer (Deseret News), Rash-causing moth spreading due to warming, scientists find (AP)
HEAT: Ranking heat waves like hurricanes is being proposed in California (CNN), Desert dust spurs increase in heat-trapping clouds — NOAA (E&E $)
DROUGHT: California agriculture takes $1.2-billion hit during drought, losing 8,700 farm jobs, researchers find (LA Times $)
WILDFIRES: Drought, fires and beetles — California’s forests are dying. Is it too late to save them? (San Francisco Chronicle), After a devastating wildfire in the ’80s, Boulder rebuilt homes differently. After the Marshall Fire, Louisville and Superior might do the same (Colorado Public Radio)
WATER: Even in water-rich Michigan, no guarantee of enough for all (AP)
REFORESTATION: Should we be growing trees in the desert to combat climate change? (Tech Crunch)
HOLY SEE: Vatican calls for a 'cultural revolution' to fight climate change (Gizmodo), Vatican launches online platform to help catholics fight climate change (Yale Climate Connections)
RENEWABLES: Australian mining billionaire to invest $2.2 bln in renewable energy project (Reuters), Huge Chinese desert projects will power next wave of wind, solar (Bloomberg $)
BATTERIES: Nevada lithium mine advances with state permit approval (E&E News), US bets on faster-charging battery in race to catch energy rivals (Wall Street Journal $)
NUKES: Feds walk back plans for nuclear reactors to run 80 years (E&E News, The Hill)
PLASTICS: Combustion of plastics could be creating a surge in waste-to-energy plants’ climate emissions (Energy News Network)
UTILITIES: AEP to sell unregulated wind and solar assets to sharpen focus on transmission, regulated renewables (Utility Dive), Avangrid CEO on Biden, offshore wind and stalled hydro line (E&E $), New Jersey will need nuclear at least until 2050, may extend ZEC cycle: PSEG CEO (Utility Dive)
GRID: Virtual Peaker’s platform taps home devices to help utilities balance the grid (Canary Media)
BITCOIN: Bitcoin mining is even more polluting since China's crackdown, study finds (Bloomberg $, Gizmodo, BBC, New York Times $, E&E $)
AGRICULTURE: Big Ag's challenge: Slashing supply chain emissions (E&E $)
MEDIA: Ayesha Rascoe selected as the new host of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday (Essence, NPR, New York Times $), CNN facing backlash for airing Alex Jones special (Blavity)
GRETA: Activist Thunberg protests against Ukraine invasion outside Russian embassy in Stockholm (Reuters)
IN MEMORIAM: Trayvon Martin, 10 years later: Teen’s death changes nation (AP, CBS, UPI), Trayvon Martin’s mother: ‘Don’t give up’ fight for justice (AP, Today Show, People, New York Post, NewsOne), How Gayle King put a national spotlight on the killing of Trayvon Martin (LA Times $), Lebron James reflects on his call to social activism 10 years after Trayvon Martin's death (USA Today, ESPN), Mementos preserve Trayvon Martin's legacy, 10 years after his killing (NPR)
ENTERTAINMENT: Emily Wells considers the AIDS crisis and climate change in her 'Regards To The End' (NPR), Extracting data from pictures, paying attention to the ‘twilight zone,’ and making climate change movies with edge (Inside Climate News), Meet Rollie Williams, a climate comedian (yes, that’s a thing) (Canary Media)
WILDLIFE: Yellowstone wolves appear to be adapting to climate change (Newsweek)
INTERNATIONAL: Panama enacts a rights of nature law, guaranteeing the natural world’s ‘right to exist, persist and regenerate’ (Inside Climate News), Lead EU lawmaker proposes tougher targets to save energy (Reuters), Biking paradise Oslo is closest in Europe to no-emission travel (E&E $)
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Supreme Court Hears Moot Climate Case To Dismantle Federal Gov’t Ability To Regulate
Remember when multi-shirting white nationalism peddler turned Presidential strategist Steve Bannon said the Trump administration would bring about the “deconstruction of the administrative state?” Many were skeptical that the administration would be successful at undoing 130 years of governance, and indeed, it may seem like it failed.
That undoing might be underway today, as the Supreme Court hears West Virginia v. EPA, a case The Federalist Society the Supreme Court justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote could use as a vehicle to fulfill Bannon’s promise, and effectively destroy the federal government’s ability to protect the public from any manner of threat, from climate change and more traditional pollution, to bad pharma, financial scams, and food safety inspections.
Because for the past century and half or so, and specifically since the Court decided Chevron v. NRDC in 1984, federal courts recognized a degree of deference in the relationship between Congress passing laws and the executive branch then developing regulations to enforce those statutes. The creation of those regulations requires lots of careful consideration by subject matter experts, like scientists, to set how strict a pollution limit should be, for example, or how low the risk of a side-effect should be for a medication to be approved and sold. Congress more or less sets a goal, and the federal government figures out how to meet it. And when things end up in court, the deference goes to federal agencies, since they’re staffed with the experts who know the issue best.
But now, the Supreme Court has decided to take up a case against Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which never went into effect. The Trump administration tossed the proposed plan, and the Biden administration is content to leave it dead, because we met the emission reduction goals addressed in the proposed plan without it ever going into effect. Why is the Court taking a case about a law that never was and never will be?
Unfortunately, the likely reason is because a majority of the justices intend to use it to achieve a decades-long plan by conservative, industry-funded legal lobbyists, to achieve what Bannon never could: a deconstructing of the administrative state.
The Supreme Court hears argument today, and the justices will decide in the next few months whether, or more likely how extensively, to incapacitate the federal government’s ability to protect the public. A majority of the justices could choose a path where unless Congress explicitly legislates, for example, that CO2 emissions should be below X million (billion) tons per year, or that it is illegal to sell a specific combination of herbal supplements as a medication that claims to cure COVID or Parkinsons or any other ailment or disease, regulatory bodies like the EPA and FDA wouldn’t be able to do much, if anything, about it.
That’s the short version. The long version?
…how much time ya got?
Because there’s lots of reading you’ll need to do to understand the whole ugly story. Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists has an op-ed in Scientific American, if you want a science take. On the law side, Vox has a great explainer on the moot case, Richmond Law Professor Noah Sachs educated us about the possible consequences in the American Prospect, and Pamela King covered how Justice Kavanaugh (who lied to Congress, almost certainly committed sexual assault, and still hasn't explained who paid off his credit card debt) should recuse himself from the case (but obviously won’t), and Jennifer Hijazi covered the amicus brief filed by Democratic lawmakers. Karen Sokol explained it concisely at Slate, and Elie Mystal doesn’t mince words about it at The Nation: Supreme Court vs. the Earth. Meanwhile, Sierra Club, NRDC, and EDF all have blog posts running down the high stakes of the case.
But it’s a piece by Andrew Perez in the Daily Poster that we’ll focus on, because Perez focused on the fact that beyond Bannon, this assault on the government’s ability to protect the public from profiteers, has been fueled for decades by the Koch empire.
The Koch network’s chief political arm, Americans for Prosperity, led campaigns supporting the confirmation of all three of Trump’s Supreme Court justices: Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch. Barrett’s confirmation was a particularly significant win for the fossil fuel industry — she has familial ties to Shell Oil, and refused to recuse herself in a case involving that oil giant.
…
Several more Koch-funded dark money groups have filed similar amicus briefs in the case. That includes the Cato Institute, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Mountain States Legal Foundation.
This is essentially the end game of decades of covert lobbying and legal disinformation, a culmination of hundreds of millions of dollars of PR spending, front group think tank reports, academic-center white papers and good old fashioned dirty politics.
Unfortunately, with the Supreme Court solidly in the hands of polluters, there’s little we can do.
Aside from, of course, stacking the courts with enough uncompromised judges to rule in the public’s best interest, instead of polluters’.
And if you think court-packing sounds radical, just wait until you see the changes that result from the decision this Court makes. |
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