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Move Over Marvel: Superhero Marisol Rios de la Luz will take on climate change, political corruption, and the myriad social injustices stemming from the two in the upcoming installment of the La Borinqueña graphic novel series, Earther reports. The Nuyorican heroine and her team, the Nitainos, will tackle the rippling impacts of climate change on the islands, covering issues such as domestic violence, cultural preservation, and equitable access to energy. With the star power of Rosario Dawson, the newest volume will be released in collaboration with NRDC and its La Borinqueña Grants Program, in partnership with local organizations to expand solar energy and prepare the islands for future storms. “Although the character is fictional, I see myself in her,” Dawson said in a statement provided to Earther. “I’m Afro-Latina with Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage, and I believe like La Borinqueña that Puerto Rico can be a model for a transition to renewable cleaner energy.” (Earther, Hurricane Maria)

Florida Panhandle Residents Breathing Mold 3 Years After Hurricane Michael: More than three years after Hurricane Michael slammed the Florida Panhandle, residents in historically Black and low-income neighborhoods are still living in tarp-covered, mold-infested homes, Inside Climate News reports. Layers of systemic racism and housing injustice are amplifying the impacts of climate change in numerous ways. While money has been appropriated, byzantine application processes favor whiter communities with more access to resources. Many people also lack official documentation proving they own the home they inherited from their family, and a dearth of affordable housing means they are forced to remain in unsafe and unhealthy homes. “I had to tarp my roof about seven times because the wind would come and tear up the tarp,” Patricia Roundtree of Panama City told ICN. “And this brings in water and more mold inside my house, and, basically, I can only live in about two-thirds of my house.” (Inside Climate News; Climate Signals background: Hurricane Michael)

Oil Pipelines Violations Documented In New Reports: Two new reports show significant failures in the approval and construction of two oil pipelines in what is now the upper Midwest. An NDN Collective report released Tuesday details violations of tribal treaties, engineering and construction defects of the pipeline itself, and "co-conspiring between the Army Corps of Engineers and the owners of" the Dakota Access Pipeline. Federal courts have ruled the DAPL Environmental Impact Statement was fatally flawed but are allowing the pipeline to continue pumping oil while a new EIS, due in September, is prepared. The NDN Collective report followed a disclosure from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources stating damage to public groundwater resources caused by the construction of Enbridge's Line 3 tar sands pipeline was greater than previously known. The multiple aquifer breaches caused nearly 300 million gallons of water to flood to the surface, including a 200 million gallon rupture near the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Reservation. The tribe said the flood of groundwater onto reservation land could impact wild rice waters and violate its strict water quality standards. "I'm shocked at the volume and I'm shocked that we didn't know exactly what was going on," Frank Bibeau, a lawyer for the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, told the Star Tribune. "It's very, very sad to think, 'How many times do you have to keep telling the same story?'" (DAPL: Indian Country Today; Line 3: Star Tribune $)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: In almost every state, over half of all women of color earn less than a living wage (The 19th* News)

TFW YOU'RE MAKING A PROFIT AND STILL SHUT OFF PEOPLE'S 💡: Detroit’s heavy burden: High electric rates, tens of thousands of shut-offs and a looming price hike (Outlier Media and ProPublica)

EVERY COUNTRY: Every country is flunking WHO air quality standard: report (Bloomberg $, The Hill, CNN)

FOSSIL FUELED WAR: Ukraine crisis forces world to confront its oil and gas addiction (Thomson Reuters Foundation), How Europe got hooked on Russian gas despite Reagan’s warnings (New York Times $), West curbs Russia’s access to weather data that some fear could aid attack planning in Ukraine (Reuters), Will war make Europe’s switch to clean energy even harder? (New York Times $, Reuters)

• EU: Climate goals take second place as EU states cut petrol prices (Reuters), ECB says climate efforts haven’t been derailed by war in Ukraine (Bloomberg $), ECB to start work in 2022 to add climate risk to capital buffers (Bloomberg $), EU leaders to agree to jointly buy gas, LNG this year (Reuters, AP), EU to require countries to fill gas storage 90% before winter (Reuters), Europe divided over new oil and coal sanctions (OilPrice), Europe faces systemic diesel supply crunch (OilPrice), Europe moves closer to enforcing ESG rules on foreign firms (Bloomberg $), European gas advances as Norwegian troll field curbs capacity (Bloomberg $), European Union unlikely to impose an oil embargo on Russia, sources say (CNBC), Spain mulls price cap for gas plants to bring down power bills (Reuters), Belgium takes up baton to seek gas price cap (Reuters)
• US: Putin forces Biden to rethink his Saudi stance (Bloomberg $), Activists protest tanker as Russian oil imports flow into US ahead of ban (The Guardian), ‘Evolving intelligence’ puts US energy industry on high alert (E&E News), New York sends diesel to fuel-starved Europe in rare reversal (Bloomberg $)
• THEY'RE TOTALLY GOING TO STOP: TotalEnergies says it will stop buying oil from Russia by the end of the year. (New York Times $)
• LITERALLY WHAT COULD GO WRONG?: Ukraine warns of forest fires near Chernobyl nuclear site (The Hill, Washington Post $)

CORONAVIRUS: How COVID-19 is reversing energy access in the Global South (Energy Monitor)

DENIAL DOLLARS: More than 500 academics call on universities to stop accepting research funding from fossil fuel industry (The Hill), The Dirty Dozen: The biggest nonprofit funders of climate denial (EXPOSED)

FOSSIL VOLATILITY: Gas prices shoot up at fastest rate on record (Wall Street Journal $)

THE KIDS ARE FOCUSED ON SOLUTIONS: ‘Ok Doomer’ and the climate advocates who say it’s not too late (New York Times $), Follow the global youth protests this week (New York Times $)

FIRES AND TORNADOS IN THE SOUTH: Wildfires spread destruction in Texas towns (Gizmodo, AP), Severe weather outbreak underway in South after deadly tornadoes tear through Texas (Washington Post $), New Orleans tornado leaves one dead, thousands without power (CNN, The Hill, CBS, Washington Post $, AP)

SCOTUS: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson pushes back at GOP critics, defends record (Black Wall Street Times, The Root), 5 takeaways from day one of the Jackson hearings (E&E News), Jackson addresses sentencing, dark money controversies (E&E News), ‘Because of Judge Jackson, I can’: over 100 Black law students converge on D.C. for confirmation hearing (NewsOne), Pride, joy, inspiration, validation: What Black women see in Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination (The 19th* News), Republicans attacking Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s service as a public defender challenge constitutional protections (NewsOne)

EPA: EPA panel backs tighter soot standards (E&E News), EPA eyes new rule for gas-fired power plants (E&E $)

DOE: Biden administration expects 'significant increase' in US oil, gas supply by end of 2022: Granholm (S&P Global)

DOI: Environmental groups sue Interior Department for oil lease report draft (Politico Pro $)

SEC: SEC allows Dominion shareholders to vote on stranded assets (E&E News)

• CLIMATE RISK DISCLOSURE: Climate change outpacing SEC climate efforts (Axios), Investors say US SEC climate disclosure rule to clarify 'mixed bag' of data (Reuters), SEC climate proposal adds fuel to congressional fight (E&E $), SEC proposes 'rules of the road' for climate-risk disclosures (Utility Dive), SEC proposes landmark rule requiring companies to tell investors of risks posed by climate change (Inside Climate News), SEC sparks fight over plan to publicize climate pollution (E&E News)

USPS: Top Democrats probe USPS fleet contractor (E&E News)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden wants to spend infrastructure billions on climate and equity initiatives. But it’s not his call. (Politico), Biden visits the CEOs who helped kill ‘Build Back Better’ (E&E News), White House repeats warnings to critical infrastructure sectors about possible Russia cyber retaliation (Utility Dive, Politico Pro $), Jamie Dimon pushes Biden for domestic energy "Marshall Plan" (Axios)

SENATE: Markey pushes bill to create 'renewable energy superhighway' (E&E $), Sources: Manchin ready to engage on reconciliation (E&E $)

ELECTIONS: Who’s the greenest? Fight erupts between Dem incumbents (E&E News), Youth turnout could save, or sink, Democrats in 2022 (CNN)

TRIBES: A Chumash tribe and conservationists fight offshore wind turbines (LA Times $)

CITIES AND STATES: 3 Gulf Coast states get $1.9B in HUD disaster grants (AP, The Advocate), Advocates push [NY gov.] Hochul for cryptocurrency mining moratorium. Here's where the effort stands. (Politico Pro $), [California] unveils long-awaited standard for drinking water contaminant (CAL Matters), How one California transit agency electrified its fleet 18 years ahead of schedule (Canary Media)

FERC: 19 states appeal FERC natural gas policies (E&E $), Glick’s climate focus at FERC puts a target on his back (Politico Pro $)

(UNWELOME) UNELECTED MONARCHY: Jamaicans reject visit from royal family and demand slave reparations (The Root, AP)

IMPACTS: Climate crisis is greatest threat to Australia’s future and security, former defence leaders warn (The Guardian), Egypt erects sand barriers as rising sea swallows the Nile Delta (Thomson Reuters Foundation), Peak cherry blossom season in Washington, DC is early again (Grist), Record heat wave in Antarctica brought exceptional snow, rain and melting (Washington Post $), Temperatures soar at Earth's poles (The Hill)

WATER: Africa's water security perilous - but data reveals surprises (Thomson Reuters Foundation), Despite warnings, a destructive African dam project moves ahead (Yale Environment 360)

KLAMATH RIVER: Course correction (Atmos)

LONDON: London’s housing and climate crises are on a collision course (Bloomberg $, Bloomberg $, Bloomberg $)

RENEWABLES: Can clean energy help curb inflation? (OilPrice), From trash to treasure: Illinois dump becomes community solar farm (Yale Climate Connections), Should dams and reservoirs report greenhouse gas emissions? (E&E $), Solar firm seeking US trade probe says opponents are fearmongering (Bloomberg $), Span raises $90M to make smart panels the gateway to home electrification (Canary Media)

BATTERIES: Koch industries, built on oil, bets big on US batteries (Wall Street Journal $)

DEEP SEA MINING: The world is set to debate seabed mining regulations, but the US will be on the outside looking in (Politico)

BUILDINGS: Making buildings green may take a chunk out of climate change (Bloomberg $)

OIL & GAS: Chevron, waiting it out in Venezuela, tells US now is the time to pump oil (Wall Street Journal $), Rich countries must end oil and gas production by 2034, report says (Washington Post $), Shell U-turn on Cambo oilfield would threaten green targets, say campaigners (The Guardian)

COAL: Coal plant owners seek to shut 3.2 GW in PJM in face of economic, regulatory and market pressures (Utility Dive)

UTILITIES: AEP sets course for rapid increase in renewables after completing company's largest wind farm (Utility Dive), Texas power CEO who ripped gas industry to exit (E&E $)

NUKE( BRO)S: Tech billionaires rally around nuclear as energy crisis looms (Bloomberg $)

EVs: EV sales climb as gas car purchases fall — report (E&E $), Tesla opens its first manufacturing factory in Europe (Axios), The price of nickel spiked this week. But it’s not the 'apocalypse' for electric vehicles just yet. (Protocol), High gasoline prices have consumers thinking electric (Wall Street Journal $)

BITCOIN: There is a greener way to mine crypto but Bitcoiners don’t want it. (Slate)

MUSIC: Residente's new music video offers a brutal take on American imperialism (Gizmodo)

BUSINESS (SCHOOLS): Business schools teaching sustainability want to go green (Bloomberg $)

CARBON REMOVAL: Carbon removal's place in the climate fight (Axios)

CARBON CAPTURE: Oslo commits to carbon capture plan after Fortum's $1.1 billion exit (Reuters)

FINANCE: Indian banks are unprepared to fight climate change, report says (Bloomberg $)

WILDLIFE: Chair of U.N. biodiversity talks expects agreement on key target (Reuters)

INTERNATIONAL: Canada's Trudeau strikes surprise deal to keep power until 2025 (Reuters)

• CHINA: China aims for non-fossil fuels to make up 20% of energy use by 2025 (Reuters), China plans for cheaper, longer lasting energy storage by 2025 (Bloomberg $), China to boost renewable power, balance with oil and gas to 2025 (Reuters), Chinese wind company wins India turbine orders in overseas push (Bloomberg $)
• JAPAN: Japan narrowly avoids Blackouts and warns power squeeze not over (Bloomberg $, Reuters)

• An unequivocal call to climate action for the health sector (The BMJ, Editorial)
• Latinos have an air pollution crisis — we demand cleaner cars (The Hill, Andrea Marpillero-Colomina op-ed)
• The SEC will regulate climate (Bloomberg, Matt Levine column $)
• Ethics of cobalt mining must be taken seriously by traders (FT, Michael Posner and Dorothée Baumann-Pauly op-ed $)
• After Ukraine, FERC needs a wartime footing (Wall Street Journal, William Scherman op-ed $)

• Environmental alarmism has hardly changed since the ’60s (Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley op-ed $)

After Flop Of ‘Putin Funded Climate Advocacy’ Disinfo, Liars Shift To Claiming Putin’s Invasion Killed Climate Advocacy

When President Joe Biden only mentioned climate and clean energy a few times in the State of the Union earlier this month, one odd reaction was that this was an indication that fossil fuel prices had driven climate concern off the agenda. “The climate crisis disappearing act” was Ben Zycher’s take, for his Koch-funded employer AEI, and it was echoed by one of the longest-running professional climate disinfo operations, Myron Ebell’s Cooler Heads newsletter. 

That one-two tap was concerning, but what ended up getting a bit more attention was the GOP’s playing puppet of a Dr. Evil disinfo attack falsely accusing environmental groups of being funded by Putin to oppose pipelines. WashPost’s fact checkers gave it a very serious Four Pinocchios, while Scott Waldman’s coverage called it “the GOP climate conspiracy theory that won't die.”  

But having gotten its initial splash, it seems to have died back down, for the time being. It’s hard, after all, to sustain outrage about something that evaporates as soon as you actually spend even the smallest amount of time looking into it. 

And in that time, the disinfo machine trudged along, making what’s long disproven seem new and fresh enough to ask questions about, until it too is once again debunked, then turning to the next card in the disinfo rolodex to repeat the cycle. 

Which brings us back to the idea that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed aside the possibility that anyone could also still continue to care about climate change. Having entertained the false notion that Putin was funding the environmental movement, conservative disinfo outlets now have decided that no, perhaps the opposite, Putin has struck down the once-mighty Big Green lobby. 

“Biden Is in Climate Denial,” according to Kimberley Strassel’s WSJ column citing polling about methane gas and the Green New Deal to claim that “Mr. Biden’s climate agenda– no matter how much the liberal press wants to differ– has never been popular.” (Fact check: President Biden won with the support of 81 million Americans who voted for his climate agenda, which did not go near as far or fast as the Green New Deal.)  

Over at the Washington Examiner, Stephen Moore took a crack at the narrative as well, with an op-ed headlined “the end of the climate change legend.” The piece by Moore, former advisor to one-term President Trump who now stalks the GOP party like an obsessive ex plotting a come-back while dampening the party’s prospects in the suburbs it needs to win against moderates who take climate change seriously, claims that “we’ve now discovered with certainty that climate change is a political albatross around the neck of the Democratic Party.” 

And because three makes a trend and Steve Milloy’s tweets that “the climate agenda is dead” doesn’t count because he always says that, there’s Viv Forbes’ in the rightwing Spectator. He’s advancing Nigel Farage’s message of “Power not poverty,” and claiming at the outset of the op-ed that “the green fairy-tale is over.” 

But Farage, the far-right UK politician who championed now-not-so-popular Brexit, doesn’t seem to be having any luck building up popular support for his anti-Net-Zero campaign – literally no one is talking about it, according to Politico reporting on ISD analysis. ISD’s Jennie King told Politico that “we assume they will try to retrofit public support and argue this is a defining topic of British public life, until Westminster feels pressured into a response.” 

And it’s not a light lift. Joss Garman of the European Climate Foundation said that we obviously shouldn’t “underestimate Farage, but it feels like a damp squib so far, and timing-wise it’s just terrible for them. He’s going out and making the case that we should use more gas when gas is six times more expensive than the clean energy sources he’s trying to stop, and now he is doing that, having described Putin as the politician he most admires. Voters aren’t stupid, he’s very exposed right now.” 

Indeed, turns out he just had to cancel an event for a campaign because a second(!) venue has canceled on him. 

Let’s just hope Garman’s right that voters aren’t stupid, either! After all, the US also has a briefly successful politician who heaped praise upon Putin and is now pushing for more fossil fuels…

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