FIRST LOOK: 

Be sure to read the Denier Roundup below for an excellent summary of the nexus between climate deniers and fossil fuel interests, their money, the anti-choice movement, and the federal judiciary.

Conservative Justices' Willingness To Kneecap Established Precedent Threatens Major Climate And Environment Policies: The draft Supreme Court opinion striking down decades of established precedent protecting the right to privacy and right to obtain an abortion could have substantial implications for environmental law and climate policy. At issue is not necessarily any specific legal doctrine present in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but rather whether any established legal precedent is safe. “Precedent is no obstacle to the Trump justices, despite what they said in the confirmation hearings,” Vermont Law School Pat Parenteau told E&E News. The draft opinion — which heavily cites 17th century writings from English jurist Sir Matthew Hale's Pleas of the Crown, in which Hale argued a husband can never be guilty of marital rape because a wife "cannot retract" her "matrimonial consent" — could shed light on the Court's willingness to undermine established federal authority in West Virginia v. EPA when it releases that decision later this year. The Court's ruling upholding EPA's determination it had authority to regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act (often called the "endangerment finding") in Massachusetts v. EPA and findings in support of broad standing to bring climate cases, also in that case, could also be on the chopping block. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the court gets rid of all climate litigation by saying there’s no standing,” Robert Percival, director of the environmental law program at UMD, told E&E News. “That’s something this energized conservative wing could do in the future.” (E&E News, Washington Post $; Alito's inspiration: Jezebel)

Feds To Hold Water In Lake Powell To Preserve Hydroelectric Generation: The list of dramatic, unprecedented steps necessitated by the megadrought parching the western U.S. is growing. In addition to the discovery of the first — though likely not the last — human remains, revealed as water levels fall to historic lows, the federal government is taking drastic measures to prevent the loss of electricity generation at the Glen Canyon Dam below Lake Powell. The reservoir is also being inundated by unprecedented amounts of sediment. The Bureau of Reclamation will hold back 480,000 acre-feet of water and will release an additional half-a-million acre-feet from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, up the Colorado River in Wyoming, to bolster water levels. The extraordinary action “reflects the truly unprecedented challenges facing the Colorado River Basin and will provide operational certainty for the next year,” said Tanya Trujillo, the federal Interior Department’s assistant secretary for water and science, in a statement announcing the measures. Climate change, mainly caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, makes droughts worse and more frequent. (Lake Powell: (New York Times $, AP, LA Times $, KNAU, E&E News, CNN, Reuters, The Hill, CNBC, Deseret News; Sediment: Casper Star-Tribune; Human remains: 8NewsNow, New York Times $, Gizmodo, Washington Post $; Climate Signals background: Western US megadrought)

NM Wildfires Continue To Burn, Gov. Requests Federal Assistance: New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham officially requested a presidential disaster declaration on Tuesday to assist in fighting and recovering from the drought-fueled wildfires incinerating large swaths of the state. At least a dozen large, uncontained fires are burning across five states, incinerating a quarter-million acres so far. One fire has already burned about 170 homes and is threatening the historic town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, filling the air with soot as it incinerates mountainsides of ponderosa pine trees and meadows. Climate change increases the frequency and severity of droughts, and thus the size, frequency, and intensity of wildfires. “My grandson has actually, um, been a little bit scared, nervous … The smoke was really bad yesterday,” Martina Gonzales, a Las Vegas resident told the AP. Despite his fear, the AP reports 4 year-old Lukas still yelled "airplane!" every time one flew by to dump water on the fire. (AP, Reuters, AP, Democracy Now; Climate Signals background: Wildfires, Western US megadrought)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: Black farmers lost $326 billion worth of land in 20th century, study finds (The Grio, Reuters)

SOUTH ASIA: An extraordinary heat wave exposes the limits of protecting people (New York Times $, E&E News), Climate scientists say South Asia's heat wave (120F!) is a sign of what's to come (NPR), Extreme heat kills at least 25 in India's Maharashtra state (Reuters), South Asia’s scorching heat wave comes as climate action stalls (Washington Post $)

• GRID: India falls 7.6% short of coal supply targets to utilities in April (Reuters), India to add 30,000 MW offshore wind power capacity - minister (Reuters)

TEXAS HEAT/GRID: Potential record-breaking heat could push Texas power grid to the brink this weekend (Houston Chronicle)

FOSSIL FUELED WAR: What the Kremlin’s rubles-for-gas threat is about (Politico EU), 21 utility workers have died in Ukraine war, gas CEO says (E&E News), EU to unveil plan to replace two-thirds of Russian gas this year (Reuters), Europe scrambles for energy before cutting itself off from Russia (Wall Street Journal $), Former policy chiefs warn EU over hunt for non-Russian fossil fuels (Reuters)

• BIG OIL: Oil giants hit with multibillion-dollar charges for leaving Russia (Washington Post $), BP writes off $25.5 billion on its Russia pullout, but oil and gas profits soar. (New York Times $, Wall Street Journal $, CNBC), BP needs to replace lost Russian assets (Wall Street Journal $)

SCOTUS: More states join Supreme Court fight against climate metric (E&E $)

EPA: EPA recommends against reissuing permit for PolyMet mine (AP)

WHITE HOUSE: An oil train is set to destroy pristine Utah mountains. Why won’t Biden stop it? (Mother Jones)

SENATE: Manchin's bipartisan energy meeting yields a lot of ideas — and a lot of skepticism (Washington Post $), GOP floats NEPA reform, carbon border fee in Manchin talks (E&E News), Senate committee deadlocks on DOE nominee, lands bills (E&E News), Senate Energy panel deadlocks on DOE electricity office nominee (Politico Pro $)

ELECTIONS: Pruitt’s pitch: Energy independence, fixing the Senate (E&E News)

CITIES AND STATES: Miami designates ‘heat season’ to warn about rising temperatures (Bloomberg $), Encore: Tempe creates emergency response center to be a climate disaster refuge (NPR), In Wisconsin, small towns want more regulations for big farms (Grist), Colonial Jamestown, assailed by climate change, is facing disaster (Washington Post $), As California burns, environmentalists find new tactic to halt development (Reuters)

FERC: FERC rejects MISO proposal to let utilities profit from upgrades for merchant HVDC lines (Utility Dive)

AGRICULTURE: Indigenous farmers bring back crops adapted to hot, dry conditions (Yale Climate Connections)

DROUGHT: Big bucks: Drought-hit Zimbabweans cut poverty, poaching with larger goats (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

WILDFIRES: Texas’ wildfire risks, amplified by climate change, are second only to California’s (Inside Climate News)

HURRICANES: The 2022 hurricane names (New York Times $), Seven safety tips to prepare for hurricane season (Washington Post $)

RENEWABLES: Norsk Hydro plans IPO of Rein renewables unit this year (Reuters), Solar industry ‘frozen’ as Biden administration investigates China (New York Times $), Tariff case darkens prospects for US solar (Wall Street Journal $), Vestas warns war in Ukraine will add to wind industry slowdown (FT $)

BATTERIES: 'Big Battery' fuels revenue jump at French renewables group Neoen (Reuters)

BUILDINGS: Building codes: The new natural gas battlefront? (E&E News)

MINERALS: Mining lithium and other metals needed for clean energy proves to be a hard sell politically (Houston Chronicle)

LNG: US LNG deals surge with 30% of planned export capacity sold (Bloomberg $)

METHANE: The Fossil Fuel Industry Marketed Natural Gas as a Cleaner Alternative. But They Weren’t Monitoring for Methane Leaks, Former Exxon Mobil Engineer Says. (PBS NewsHour)

OIL & GAS: Demand for US natural gas has never been higher. So why is production slowing? (Fortune), How the oil and gas industry is trying to hold US public schools hostage (The Guardian), Are Gas Stoves Bad for Your Health? (Lifehacker)

PLASTICS: Which plastics are the least recyclable? (Gizmodo)

COAL: South African coal miners turn to trucks as rail service deteriorates (Reuters)

NUKES: With emissions soaring, Democratic governors sour on plans to shut down nuclear power (HuffPost)

UTILITIES: Detroit energy activists push to hold utilities accountable during power outages (Energy News Network), Energy activists push for legislation to hold utilities accountable during power outages (Planet Detroit)

GRID: The fight for a national clean energy transmission system emerges on three fronts (Utility Dive)

EVs:  Georgia sets $1.5B in aid for electric vehicle maker Rivian (AP, Electrek, Reuters), Coal giant, EV fueler ink deal to boost US charging network (E&E News), Report: Electric vehicle subsidies going to the wrong drivers (Axios)

CRYPTO: Crypto leaders say power plants are the problem, not bitcoin (Protocol)

CARBON REMOVAL: Companies can soon start paying the Bahamas to store carbon in the ocean (Grist), How the federal government can ensure carbon dioxide removal succeeds (Protocol), Shaping direct air capture hubs (Axios), Vacuuming carbon from the air could help stop climate change. Not everyone agrees (NPR)

FINANCE: Bank of England to focus on financial resilience to climate change, says policymaker (Reuters), Rocky ride ahead for Norway's $1.2 trillion wealth fund (Reuters), Berkshire's Buffett bristles at investor influence on climate (E&E $)

WILDLIFE: Why you should give a dam about beavers! (NPR)

INTERNATIONAL: Government to consider impact of UK energy efficiency plan on poor households (The Guardian), In the wake of coup, gold mining boom is ravaging Myanmar (Yale Environment 360)

• Congress needs to stop starving EPA (The Hill, David Coursen op-ed)
• How the UK can cut power bills and go green (Reuters, Hugo Dixon op-ed)
• Tony Fadell thinks capitalism can solve the climate crisis. It just needs a few tweaks. (Protocol, interview)
• SCOTUS leaked abortion opinion is rooted in a time women had no rights (The Hill, Kimberly Wehle op-ed)
• We can't just vote our way out of this (The Root, Murjani Rawls op-ed)
• Methane is a big climate problem that bitcoin can help solve (Bloomberg, Trung Phan op-ed $)

Dark Money Disinfo Machine Bought Itself SCOTUS, Now Reaping The Benefits At The Public’s Expense

The news that the Supreme Court is poised to strike down the right to bodily autonomy is the result of decades of dark money meddling in politics (and centuries of misogyny.) It is the culmination of a well-funded strategy to flood the legal system with partisan ideologues to create, normalize, spread, and rule on arguments with a legal pretense but political purpose and/or profit motive.

The Koch network actively and successfully solicited buy-in (literally) from (fellow) anti-abortion zealots to build a judicial lobby network and deliberately blur the line between corporate interests and legal justice. The Federalist Society, for example, is funded by Koch, Searle, Scaife, and Mercer, the usual suspects of conservative political propaganda, and was integral in building this Supreme Court majority that represents a minority of Americans. 

In fact, there are more justices signed to this opinion denying the right to one’s body that have been credibly accused of sexual assault (two) than there are justices nominated by first-term popular vote-winnning presidents (one). (That justice also happens to be one of the accused harassers, and whose wife is a conservative consultant who rabidly texted election-stealing Q-Anon conspiracies to Mark Meadows on Jan 6, 2021, and who just so happens to take clients with cases before her “best friend” and husband.) 

But letting the minority of men atop the capitalist patriarchy override the public will of the rest of the country is not an unexpected quirk. It’s the express purpose of a 70-year old conservative political project, as Nancy MacLean’s ‘Democracy in Chains’ made painfully clear. 

While researching school segregation in Virginia, MacLean unearthed the evidence that James Buchanan’s Nobel-winning “public choice” economic theory, the basis of modern Koch-loved free-market libertarianism, was in fact support largely as a tool to fight desegregation, framing it as an issue of parents having the right to choose how their children are educated. It has since grown as a useful tool for tobacco propaganda (“freedom to smoke”), healthcare disinformation and all manner of shady economic exploitation (“freedom to choose”... expensive insurance, sub-prime mortgages, or usurious pay-day loans), and of course — still — "school choice" that undermines the desegregated public education system at the heart of their organizing.

“Buchanan’s career mission,” MacLean explained in an interview in 2018, “became shackling the majority to prevent them from achieving the kinds of changes that require government spending and government action that citizen action had pushed government to take over the whole course of the twentieth century. (Things like Social Security, Medicare, fair labor standards, antidiscrimination policies, and clean air and water protections.)” 

But Charles Koch, she continued, knew that “libertarians are less than four percent of the population. And if you’re going to try to shape policy, then you need to get a majority. So what they have done very shrewdly and effectively is reach out to other partners. Among those partners is the Religious Right, and to get the Religious Right, you have to push an agenda that will bring them in. And have people in charge who understand what that requires—like Tim Phillips, the head of Americans for Prosperity, who used to work with Ralph Reed to rally white evangelicals, in particular, for the right. Those anti-abortion bills, and the gay-bashing marriage amendments, and the push for so-called ‘religious liberty,’ did that: got the GOP base to the polls using fear and prejudice to move the economic liberty agenda.” 

The Koch network recruited racist religious wacko-s because they provide the emotional fodder to cover for polluter-profiting-policies that voters would otherwise never naturally support. The fight for climate justice is the same fight for abortion and reproductive justice for a number of reasons, not least of which is that the opposition is united in destroying the majority’s ability to legislate on both issues. 

Ultimately, what did MacLean see as the aim of the movement? 

“They want to change the U.S. Constitution,” she explained, “so they can put locks and bolts on what popular majorities can do in our politics. They want to transform our society radically — transform it into a society that most of us would not recognize and I don’t think many of us would want to live in.” 

Four years later, the Democratic party holds the House, Senate, and White House, but is limited by a Supreme Court majority appointed by popular-vote-losing presidents, and one of the first indications of this session’s important rulings is that they’re overturning the right to control one of the most basic aspects of one’s body.  

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