FIRST LOOK: 

Congratulations to the winners of the 2nd annual Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards, honoring journalists producing the strongest coverage of the onrushing climate emergency and its abundant solutions. 

• Justin Worland, senior correspondent for TIME, was named Climate Journalist of the Year. 
• Other winners of the 2022 CCNow Journalism Awards include journalists at the Guardian, Agence-France Presse, Al Jazeera English, PBS NewsHour, Globo, and HBO Max, as well as The Third Pole, Grist, the Post and Courier, the Los Angeles Times, and WGBH-PRX. 

'Rocking' Renewables Bailing Out Texas Grid: Wind and solar energy are keeping the Texas electrical on-line amid record electricity demand caused by the early-season heatwave, CNN reports. "Texas is, by rhetoric, anti-renewables. But frankly, renewables are bailing us out," Michael Webber, an energy expert and professor at UT-Austin, told CNN. "They're rocking. That really spares us a lot of heartache and a lot of money." Wind and solar generated 27 GW of power during record-breaking peak demand on Sunday, accounting for about 40% of power generated in the grid. In addition to keeping the lights on, renewables have helped Texas electricity prices in check while fossil fuel prices have skyrocketed and oil and gas companies have reaped record profits. "Because the price of wind and sunlight hasn't doubled in the past year like other resources, they are acting as a hedge against high fuel prices," UT-Austin energy researcher Joshua Rhodes told CNN. (Texas Renewables: CNN; Texas heat: NBC, CNBC; Climate Signals background: Extreme heat and heatwaves)

Gender At Forefront Of Climate Impacts, Organizing: Women and femme-identifying people around the world are on the frontlines of climate change, often hurt first and worst by its impacts, and in the battle to curb and adapt to it. A review of peer-reviewed research published Monday in The Lancet Planetary Health found gender-based violence is a recurring phenomena during and after disasters fueled by climate change, including assault, intimate partner violence, and trafficking. The extraction and transportation of fossil fuels is also closely linked to increases in gender-based violence, especially targeted at indigenous women and trans people, who are also disproportionately harmed by the impacts of climate change. Extreme heat, just one climate impact, is especially dangerous for pregnant people, as is the case in Jacobabad, Pakistan, which hit 122°F last month. Legacy, mostly-white, environmental groups, and the traditional "environmental movement" overall, have neglected environmental concerns of communities of color. Women of color, however, are fighting for environmental justice while concurrently pushing to make the movement look more like the people hurt worst by pollution and climate change. “The issue with the environmental movement for so many years has been a lack of diversity and a lack of shared lenses around environmental racism,” Deseree Fontenot, who grew up with asthma in Los Angelean sprawl, told Women's Health. “We don’t see ourselves in that movement, but we do see ourselves in the places which we’ve had to make home over and over again, places that are deeply affected by processes like extraction, or the forceful removal of natural resources from their rightful place at a scale, pace, and intensity that ecosystems cannot recover from or regenerate.” (Disasters: Business Insider; Heat: Reuters; Fighting back: Women's Health)

Blown Up LNG Terminal To Be Shut Down Much Longer: The Freeport LNG export facility will be fully out of commission until September and will not be fully up and running until late this year, the company said yesterday following an explosion at its Quintana Island liquefaction facility last week. The company had initially said the plant would be shut down for three weeks and the announcement sent shockwaves through an already-volatile methane-based gas market. Gas futures fell dramatically in response to the news, reflecting how high gas prices in the U.S., a major driver of inflation while firms reap record profits, have been driven by the increased export of LNG. (European gas prices spiked in response to the news.) It also significantly affects the Biden administration's efforts to export more liquified methane-based gas to Europe. The facility accounted for about one-fifth of U.S. exports. (Reuters, CNBC, Bloomberg $, The Hill, OilPrice, Politico Pro $, Wall Street Journal $; European implications: New York Times $, E&E News, FT $)

JUNETEENTH: Everything you need to know about Juneteenth (NewsOne), A Juneteenth reading guide to share with the family (NewsOne), Boycott Juneteenth 2022: backed by popular demands (NewsOne), Juneteenth reading list: 10 books to learn more about Black independence day (NewsOne)

FOSSIL FUELED WAR:Natural gas could start to melt united front against Russia (Wall Street Journal $), US Treasury extends Russia sanctions waiver for energy payments to Dec. 5 (S&P Global), Europe imports record LNG volumes (OilPrice), Spain defends gas price cap as power costs keep rising (Reuters), Kremlin critic Navalny moved, supporters don’t know where (AP)

EAST AFRICA: Hunger in Somalia (New York Times $), World Food Programme suspends some food aid in South Sudan as funds dry up (Reuters)

OIL, WATER, ETC.: 'This is insane.’ West Texas oil city could be without water 48 hours after main break (Ft Worth Star-Telegram)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Africa must forgo gas exploration to avert climate disaster, warn experts (The Guardian), India takes tough stand at climate talks as Delhi endures brutal heatwave (The Guardian), Saudi Arabia’s senior negotiator Ayman Shasly steps back from climate talks (Climate Home)

• EU GAS/NUKES: EU lawmaker panels object to 'green' label for gas, nuclear investments (Reuters), Key EU parliament groups reject green label for gas, nuclear (Bloomberg $), MEPs object to including gas, nuclear in green investment (AP)
• UN: ‘Delusional’: UN chief slams new fossil fuel funding and warns of climate chaos (CNBC), UN chief says the dash for new fossil fuels is 'delusional' (Reuters), UN chief: Governments’ inaction on climate is ‘dangerous’ (AP)

COLORADO RIVER: Drought-hit Colorado River water supplies near "moment of reckoning" (Axios), Major water cutbacks loom as shrinking Colorado River nears ‘moment of reckoning’ (LA Times $), Biologists try to save ancient fish as Colorado River fades (AP), Sophie's choice:' Water officials warn huge cuts needed to shore up Lake Mead; IID pushes Salton Sea's needs (Desert Sun)

DOM PHILLIPS AND BRUNO PEREIRA: Vanished Amazon expert Pereira sought mission outside Brazil's weakened watchdog (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

FYI: Meme comparing Swedish weather forecasts is misleading and does not prove climate change is a hoax (Reuters, Fact Check)

A LOT GOING ON RIGHT NOW: Extreme weather is tormenting every US region, and it’s far from over (Washington Post $), Across the US, a day of extreme weather prompts heat warnings, severe flooding and power outages for hundreds of thousands (CNN), Extreme weather slams the US, from flooding to fires (Axios), 33 large wildfires rage across 5 US states (Axios), Arizona wildfires: intense conditions send smoke plumes billowing into sky (The Guardian, AP, AP), Western wildfires force evacuations in Arizona, California (AP), The latest on extreme weather in the US (CNN)

• SEEMS REASONABLE: Report: Fires, heat waves cause ‘climate anxiety’ in youth (AP)

DOE: With new standard for furnaces, Biden aims to reduce emissions from natural gas (Houston Chronicle, Utility Dive)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: US Army commissions largest Southeast floating solar array (Offshore Energy)

WHITE HOUSE: Amid Biden’s visit, push continues to get additional help for fire victims (New Mexico Political Report), Biden warns Big Oil over gas output (Axios)

• HISTORY: The 1977 White House climate memo that should have changed the world (The Guardian)
• SOLAR: White House meets with solar firms in bid to boost manufacturing (Bloomberg $), Solar manufacturers left cold by White House meeting (Politico Pro $)

• SAUDI TRIP: Biden to travel to Middle East in July, White House says (Politico Pro $), Biden trip to Saudi Arabia is set, but energy help is not (New York Times $), Biden’s Saudi ‘pariah’ strategy crumbles with world craving oil (Bloomberg $)

THE HILL: Marjorie Taylor Greene argues global warming is 'actually healthy for US' (HuffPost), Wyden to unveil bill taxing oil company 'excess' profits (Politico Pro $), US senator seeks answers from HSBC over banker’s suspension (FT $)

ELECTIONS: Inside green groups' strategies for the midterms (Washington Post $)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Energy panel advances 3 nominees for Interior, DOE (Politico Pro $)

CITIES AND STATES: In Southern Illinois, people see a land of possibility with just transition from coal (Energy News Network), Gas bans, renewables and crypto: N.Y.'s clean energy struggle (E&E $)

• GOP vs. ESG: West Virginia threatens to bar big banks, Blackrock over perceived fossil fuel boycotts (Reuters)
• CALIFORNIA: Board of supervisors adopts LA River master plan, but community advocates withdraw support (LAist), Environmental groups pull support from L.A. River Master Plan at the 11th hour (LA Times $)

FERC: DC Circ. says FERC properly claimed LNG facility authority (Law360 $)

IMPACTS: 6 dead in China as rain triggers landslides, house collapse (AP), Jupiter Intel inks climate risk deal with Boston Consulting Group (Axios), Pollen and heat: a looming challenge for global agriculture (Yale Environment 360)

PLANT SEQUOIAS: The world’s largest trees are struggling to survive climate change (Washington Post $)

CURRENCIES: Barclays says climate disaster will collapse major currencies (Bloomberg $)

Euro most resilient to climate change, yuan most exposed - Barclays (Reuters)

YELLOWSTONE FLOODING: Intense flooding destroys roads and washes away a bridge in yellowstone national park (Gizmodo, AP), Outside a closed Yellowstone, a town is cut off by massive flooding  (Washington Post $), Yellowstone floods: Photos, video show massive damage (Axios)

HEAT: Everything you need to know about heat: from the heat index to a heat dome to an excessive heat warning (USA Today), Heat wave spreads across Europe as summer highs come early (Bloomberg $), 

WILDFIRES: Yosemite undergoes forest thinning due to wildfire risk; environmentalists want it stopped (LA Times $)

HURRICANES: Tropical Storm Blas forms off Mexico’s Pacific coast (AP)

WATER: Solving water insecurity could be key to global hunger crisis: study (The Hill)

STORM CHASING: Chasing a tornado: Front row for an atmospheric masterpiece (Part 1) (Yale Climate Connections)

AIR POLLUTION: Particulate pollution is reducing global life expectancy by more than two years: analysis (The Hill)

RENEWABLES: Biden administration, offshore wind backers confront supply chain gaps (Politico Pro $), Four smart ideas for keeping wind turbine blades out of landfills (Canary Media), New startup aims to recycle 95% of high-value content from solar panels (Canary Media)

BATTERIES: Toyota enters energy storage market, launching residential battery product in Japan (Utility Dive), US and partners enter pact to secure critical minerals like lithium (Reuters)

BUILDINGS: Heat pumps are ready for prime time and ripe for innovation (Protocol)

LNG: Rising sea levels threaten [Louisiana]'s surging LNG industry (Greater Baton Rouge Business Report), Future trends not all rosy for LNG sellers and developers (Alaska Journal of Commerce)

METHANE: Satellite spots huge burst of methane from Russian coal mine (AP), Company tests high-altitude airship over New Mexico desert (AP)

OIL & GAS: US oil lobby pushes Biden to roll back fossil fuel curbs (Reuters), Energy billionaire Harold Hamm launches bid to take Continental Resources private (FT $, OilPrice), Energy company execs say fossil fuels still important in energy transition (Reuters), OPEC oil output fell in May, adding to pressure on cartel (Wall Street Journal $)

PLASTICS: Nearly half of Amazon shareholders agree: time to cut back on plastic packaging (Grist)

COAL: Glencore gets rich on coal, but questions persist over exit plan (Bloomberg $), Poland to subsidize coal for households as shortages hit (Reuters), Western Australia to become coal-free by 2030 with Muja power station to be shut down (The Guardian)

HYDROGEN: Total, Adani team up for multi-billion Indian hydrogen plans (Bloomberg $, Reuters), BP bets big on giant ‘green hydrogen’ project in Australia (Wall Street Journal $)

UTILITIES: NYC utility bills will jump 12% this summer, Con Ed warns (Bloomberg $), NextEra Energy plans to cut all carbon emissions by 2045, partly via FPL adding 140 GW of solar, storage (Utility Dive), Florida Power & Light Co.’s parent company to eliminate carbon emissions by 2045 (Politico Pro $), Power company NextEra plans to cut carbon emissions to close to nothing by 2045 (Wall Street Journal $), 'Real zero' is the new climate buzzphrase. This utility just committed to making it a reality. (Protocol)

EVs: EVs could take off even faster than expected (Protocol)

AVIATION: ‘Aggressive’ policies needed to curb airline emissions and meet Paris goals: report (The Hill)

AGRICULTURE: EU needs to reduce cattle numbers to hit methane targets, study says (Bloomberg $), Feeding cows seaweed reduces their methane emissions, but California farms are a long way from scaling up the practice (Inside Climate News), Sweet as a nut: Hondurans fight drought and poverty with cashews (The Guardian)

CARBON PRICING: What are carbon offsets and how many really work? (Bloomberg $), Why measuring the 'scope' of carbon emissions is tricky (Bloomberg $)

FINANCE: ESG’s legal showdown: ‘There’s nothing to suggest DWS is a one off’ (FT $)

WILDLIFE: How heat damages the DNA of endangered purple-crowned fairy wrens (The Guardian), Hundreds of little blue penguins are washing up dead in New Zealand amid an ocean heatwave (Gizmodo)

INTERNATIONAL: Canada and Denmark end their Arctic whisky war (New York Times $), Company helps incentivize tropical forest protection in Ecuador (Yale Climate Connections), Power shortages could hit eastern Australia as energy market operator scrambles to avoid outages (The Guardian)

UK: [Électricité de France] will keep UK coal-fired power station online over winter, business minister says (Reuters), UK buys option to take 20% stake in Sizewell C nuclear power plant (The Guardian), Declassified files reveal British interest in Falkland Islands oil (The Guardian), UK companies start to track renewables 24/7 to curb greenwashing (Bloomberg $)

• Summit of Americas proves the growing irrelevance of such gatherings (FT, Gideon Long op-ed $)
• Painful Colorado River cuts are coming, whether basin states agree or not (Arizona Republic, Joanna Allhands op-ed)
• The hate groups behind the think tanks (Yes Magazine, Reece Jones op-ed)
• Surging oil prices show business cycle slowdown is inevitable (Reuters, John Kemp column)
• Finding and losing Juneteenth (NewsOne, Leslie Mac op-ed)
• Barbados PM: Climate change requires a new financial architecture for us all (FT, Mia Mottley column $)
• Soft China LNG demand outweighs Freeport outage concerns (Reuters, Clyde Russell column)
• How climate change and environmental justice are inextricably linked (Washington Post, Rhiana Gunn-Wright interview $)

Biden Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy Talked About Disinfo, So Disinfo Agents Prove Her Point

Between former US President Barack Obama praising Pinterest and Twitter's moves to limit climate disinformation, and a former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tweeting about the recent "Deny, Deceive, Delay" report's findings on Rupert Murdoch's Sky News as a "central source" of climate denial, it seems formerly elected climate-conscious leaders are noticing that they can't just message around disinfo with "jobs!" mantras that poll well but say nothing.

Most notably, Obama's EPA administrator and President Biden's climate adviser Gina McCarthy invoked the D word (disinfo) in a June 9th Axios event. It was billed as "a conversation on battling misinformation," and also featured Dr. Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable to talk about vaccine messaging and 3M's chief science advocate Dr. Jayshree Seth discussed the company's recent findings about Americans not trusting social media. 

The event on misinformation was sponsored by 3M, which is notable because just last year 3M agreed to pay $98 million dollars to settle a lawsuit over their toxic PFAS chemicals that they knew for decades were toxic but kept selling. Which means that even companies who use the disinformation playbook to protect their dangerous products from public scrutiny see (the Discourse about) combatting disinformation as a lucrative field to exploit and co-opt, and media companies looking to make an easy buck will no doubt unquestioningly oblige their generosity advertising expenditures. 

Gina McCarthy called out the industrial disinformation being cataloged on social media by reports like "Deny, Deceive, Delay," saying, "frankly, the tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation. That’s what the fossil fuel companies pay for … that’s what they do.”

And as if to prove her point, some of the specific individuals the fossil fuel industry has funded to spread disinformation sprang into action. 

The first, and funniest response was from the CO2 Coalition, which posted on Facebook about how "The Biden administration's climate czarina Gina McCarthy is advocating further censorship of any and all criticism…" approximately 21 minutes after they posted about banning a user from their Facebook page because of their criticisms. 

The more formal response, though, was even more deeply ironic and telling. That came a day later, when Newsmax and the Washington Examiner published nearly identical pieces that clearly drew from the same press release that sought to make it falsely appear as though not-only Heartland Institute-affiliated disinformation mongers were outraged. 

At Newsmax, it was "Free Speech Advocates Slam Biden's 'Climate Fuhrer' for Wanting to Censor Critics," while the Washington Examiner chose to dodge the descriptor and used the passive-voiced "Climate ‘fuhrer’ ripped for urging censorship of Biden critics."

Both began with near-identical paragraphs of context that "Biden's climate czar" has "drawn {the ire of}{an angry response from} free speech {environmental} advocates." Both then point out that McCarthy was Obama's "environmental director," an awkward and inaccurate way of saying "EPA administrator" and that she called for social media platforms to remove climate disinformation. 

Then the two roads diverge, but only in that the Examiner jumps to a quote from Steve Milloy before going back to quote McCarthy's exact comments, whereas Newsmax carries Gina's quote before Milloy's. Both make the point that social media companies have made some moves on disinfo, then mention "record-high gas prices" as though they're directly related.

After that, both pieces simply copy and paste quotes from the press release. And what those quotes say aren't important, but who's saying them is, because they're not "free speech advocates," they're people paid by the fossil fuel industry to spread disinformation, precisely as McCarthy pointed out. 

Steve Milloy, he who cried "führer(?)", was a leader of the tobacco industry's disinformation efforts, before losing and shifting to fossil fuels, for whom he continued his war for air pollution. 

James Taylor is the president of the Heartland Institute, while a third quote on the release came from Frank Lasée, who Taylor replaced for the job leading the organization which not only spreads climate disinformation, but also is still defending smoking with disinformation! 

So if you think that the tobacco industry's hired hands should be able to tell social media users that smoking is cool and not at all bad for you, then yes, perhaps these "free speech advocates" would be persuasive. But given that the public is thoroughly disabused of any notion of smoking being safe, perhaps the fossil fuel industry could find someone not stained by tobacco to deny disinfo's dangers? 

Then again, while the Wall Street Journal didn't quote any smokey experts, they did deliver the exact same message in an editorial, so perhaps the industry's already found its mouthpiece!

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