FIRST LOOK: 

Cooperate Jackson is distributing water TODAY at 939 W Capitol Street. If you are in Jackson and need water, find more information here. If you are not, and are able, please join Climate Nexus staff in supporting their work. 

Climate Change Will Make Migration To US Even More Deadly: About one-third of people who die along the U.S.-Mexican border seeking a better life in the United States perish from exposure to environmental extremes like heat, and climate change will make that journey even more deadly. In a deeply-reported piece, in collaboration with authors of a recent study published in Science, Atmos reports climate change is making the journey from Latin America to the U.S. even more deadly as temperatures rise and the amount of water migrants must carry to survive increases. Over the last quarter-century, officially, at least 7,805 people have died across the Southwest, at least 2,936 have perished in Pima and Maricopa Counties, Arizona, since 2006, and 126 bodies have been found so far this year. The actual number of the deceased is, of course, far higher. According to Adriana Carrillo, founder of migrant rescue group Save Our Souls Search and Rescue, many remains are found beneath trees where migrants sought one last bit of respite from the desert sun. “The longer you spend out in the desert,” Reena Walker, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Idaho and co-author of the study, said, “the more water you’re going to need to simply survive.” Estimates of the number of migrants who perish trying to cross the border are low because human rights groups — which search for (and attempt to rescue) stranded migrants, as well as searching for the bodies of those who have gone missing — are barred from entering the largely privately-owned lands that make up most of the Texas-Mexico border. Some other bodies are never found. What is certain, however, is that absent action to slash climate pollution, temperatures will continue to rise. “I worry about how many more migrant deaths we will have,” Carrillo said. (Atmos)

Jackson, MS Without Potable Water Amid Heat, Flooding: Jackson, Mississippi, has been flooded by heavy rain, but its residents have no potable running water, and not enough water pressure to fight fires or even flush toilets. This is not the first time the state's predominantly Black capital city has lacked safe drinking water after a storm — much of the city was without potable water for a month in early 2021. The white governor, Republican Tate Reeves, has activated the state's National Guard but had not, as of Tuesday, sought federal assistance to provide drinking water. The heat index in Jackson hit 103°F on Tuesday. Climate change, mainly caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels is making extreme precipitation events, and the flooding they cause, worse and more likely. It's also supercharging wildfires. Nearly 900 miles west of Jackson, contamination from the Calf Canyon and Hermits Peak Fires has left Las Vegas, New Mexico with less than 20 days of clean water. (Jackson: Black Wall Street Times, AP, Axios, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, AP, Axios, Democracy Now; Las Vegas: Gizmodo, The Hill; Climate Signals background: Extreme precipitation increase, Flooding, Wildfires)

First Solar To Invest $1.2 Billion In US Manufacturing Thanks To Climate Law: First Solar, a major solar panel manufacturer, will invest up to $1.2 billion expanding three factories and building a fourth in large part because of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act's renewable energy incentives, the company said Tuesday. The company said this would create nearly 1,000 jobs across the four total factories. These investments are consistent with the anticipated expansion of the renewable energy sector in the U.S. A new analysis from Energy Innovation found the law's $370 billion for climate spending should help double the amount of installed wind and solar energy capacity by 2030, which would correspond to as much as 85% of total U.S. energy supply at that point. (First Solar: Reuters, New York Times $, E&E $, CNBC, Bloomberg $, Politico Pro $; Renewable energy growth: The Guardian)

PAKISTAN FLOODING: Cataclysmic floods in Pakistan kill 1,100, including 380 children (Reuters), How melting glaciers fueled Pakistan’s fatal floods (Vox), Pakistan floods leave wrecked lives, half million in camps (AP, Grist, Yale Climate Connections, Democracy Now)

Flooded highways hamper relief efforts in southern Pakistan (Reuters)

• UN: UN chief calls Pakistan floods a ‘climate catastrophe’ (Washington Post $, CNN, BBC, The Guardian, Photos, Axios), UN seeks $160 million in emergency aid for Pakistan floods (AP)
• CLIMATE / POLITICS: The flooding in Pakistan is a climate catastrophe with political roots (Vox), Pakistan not to blame for climate crisis-fuelled flooding, says PM Shehbaz Sharif (The Guardian), Why Pakistan was hit so hard (New York Times $), Pakistan fatal flooding has hallmarks of warming (AP, explainer)

HEAT COMING OUT WEST: Get ready for Southern California’s hottest and longest heat wave of the year (LA Times $, New York Times $), ‘Very dangerous’ heat may reignite fire season in western US (Washington Post $), SoCal’s worst heat wave of the year: What’s the timing, who will be hit hardest? (LA Times $)

CHINA HEAT AND DROUGHT: ‘It’s getting extremely hard’: climate crisis forces China to ration electricity (The Guardian), Rain eases China’s record heatwave but fresh energy crisis looms (The Guardian)

PUBLIC TRANSIT: Germany’s ultra-cheap train ticket saved 1.8 million tons of CO2 (Bloomberg $)

COP27: Africa urged to propose action on climate at conference (AP), South Asian nations facing extreme weather look to COP27 - but will it deliver? (The Independent)

(CLIMATE) DIPLOMACY: Climate envoy John Kerry seeks restart to US emissions talks with China (FT $), Winter is coming for the West’s energy alliance (FT $), G20 environment ministers in Bali spur global climate action (AP)

CLIMATE LITIGATION: US fossil fuel firm sues insurer for refusing to cover climate lawsuit (The Guardian)

DIVINE MANDATES: Bible demands action on climate change, Evangelicals say in new report (Washington Post $)

GOP vs. ESG: BlackRock too green for Texas; rest of Wall Street okay - for now (Reuters)

INFLATION REDUCTION ACT: Reality check: Biden’s renewable energy plan (PolitiFact), Was the climate law a win for environmental justice? It’s complicated (Bloomberg $), Could you get home energy and EV incentives under the climate law? (Canary Media), Inflation Reduction Act could shift EV battery composition: BofA Global (Utility Dive)

AIR POLLUTION: $14 million air pollution fine for Exxon's Baytown refinery stands (Reuters, Politico Pro $)

FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: Europe plan for floating gas terminals raises climate fears (AP), Patchwork LNG cargoes from Asia are helping meet Europe’s energy demand (Bloomberg $), Europe braces for Russia gas disruption this week—and years of higher energy prices ahead (Wall Street Journal $), Gazprom slashes natural gas deliveries to French utility giant (OilPrice), How could Europe cap surging energy prices? (Reuters explainer), EU sets sights on energy market reform as prices soar (Reuters), Exxon takes legal action after Putin blocks final Russian exit (Bloomberg $), Goldman Sachs: UK inflation could break 22% if gas prices remain high (OilPrice), How German companies are staring down Putin’s threat to cut off gas (New York Times $), Europe's alternatives if Russia cuts off gas supply (Reuters Factbox), Russia claims sanctions are preventing gas supply to Europe (OilPrice), The options and challenges for Europe's emergency power plan (Bloomberg $), The UK energy price cap explained (Energy Monitor)

GRID (UN)RELIABILITY IS BIGGER IN TEXAS: Texas gas companies face fines up to $1 million for failing to prepare for extreme weather (Texas Tribune)

AGENCIES: FTC gets senior DOJ antitrust official for six-month detail (Politico Pro $)

EPA: EPA's scramble post-Supreme Court climate ruling (E&E $), EPA tells 15 states they missed air pollution plan deadline (The Hill)

DOE: DOE launches $10.5B grid resiliency, innovation initiative (E&E $, Politico Pro $), The Department of Energy wants feedback on how to recycle lithium-ion batteries (The Verge)

DOI: Appeals court rules two Trump administration Gulf lease sales unlawful (The Hill, E&E News)

SENATE: Senate eyes late September for oversight hearing of FTC’s Khan, DOJ’s Kanter (Politico Pro $)

POLITICS: Democrats' energy permitting gambit 'fractures' alliance with environmentalists (Politico Pro $)

ELECTIONS: Top Latino group, environmental group endorse South Texas Democrat for House (The Hill), Emily’s List expands focus on diverse candidates and voting rights ahead of midterm elections (The 19th* News), Republican midterm candidates are trying to rewrite their history on abortion. Here’s what that means. (The 19th* News), Swing vote: Native youth encouraged to vote at ‘Skate to the Poles’ rally (Navajo Times)

TRIBES: Ranchers, tribes, state officials clash over Shasta River water (CAL Matters), Indigenous farmers reclaim time-honored techniques (High Country News)

CITIES AND STATES: 15 states should be prioritized for EV infrastructure, EV Council report suggests (Utility Dive), Several states will follow California’s lead in banning gas-powered car sales by 2035 (The Hill), Washington and Massachusetts mull bans of new gas-powered cars, following California (Gizmodo)

• CALIFORNIA: Equity is goal, not mandate, in California electric car rule (AP), As forests go up in smoke, so will California’s climate plan (LA Times $), Federal government dives into climate fight, but California still leads (The Hill)

IMPACTS: Damaging storms kill at least four from Texas to Michigan (Washington Post $), England faces longer, drier summers due to climate change -national forecaster (Reuters), Heat, water, fire: How climate change is transforming the Pacific Crest Trail (New York Times $)

• ZOMBIE ICE: 'Doomed' Greenland ice will add nearly a foot to global sea level rise (Democracy Now)

DROUGHT: Historic monuments resurface as severe drought shrinks Spain’s reservoirs (AFP), Is this the death of Lake Powell? (Casper Star-Tribune), Why drought looks different depending on your region (Grist)

WILDFIRES: Art therapy program helps Colorado wildfire victims process their experiences (Yale Climate Connections)

CYCLONIC STORMS: Pacific super typhoon Hinnamnor becomes 2022’s strongest storm (Washington Post $, New York Times $), After a quiet August, hurricane forecasters are monitoring a potential storm (New York Times $)

WATER: Federal cyber mandate looms for local water systems (E&E News)

DEFORESTATION: How deforestation is pushing the Amazon toward a tipping point (Washington Post $)

GEOENGINEERING: Parched UAE turns to science to squeeze more rainfall from clouds (Reuters)

BOOZE: Heatwaves force early Spanish wine harvests, nighttime picking (Reuters)

RENEWABLES: Negative power prices? Blame the US grid for stranding renewable energy (Bloomberg $)

BATTERIES: MIT-led researchers develop low-cost aluminum-based battery, with startup Avanti eyeing commercial production (Utility Dive)

BUILDINGS: Donnel Baird wants BlocPower to be the Amazon of home electrification (Protocol), Donnel Baird raises over $100 million for BlocPower by discovering the right problem to solve (Forbes $), The company trying to 'turn buildings into Teslas' (Protocol), High-tech wooden cities could fight fire, climate change, study says (The Hill), Timber cities ‘could cut 100bn tons of CO2 emissions by 2100’ (The Guardian)

NUKES: Governments are rethinking nuclear power (Gizmodo)

OIL & GAS: Norway's natural gas production could set new record this year (OilPrice)

COAL: Coal India says price hike not imminent despite higher costs (Reuters)

UTILITIES: PECO Energy agrees to $150K civil penalty, energy assistance payments, for improper 2018-19 disconnections (Utility Dive), Avista, Northwest utilities, power trader commit to next phase of SPP Western market initiative (Utility Dive)

GRID: ‘Reliability gaps’ in electricity supply loom without investment in new technologies, report states (The Guardian), Maine Supreme Court revives contentious transmission project (E&E News, Politico Pro $), Open-sourcing the grid emissions data needed for 24/7 clean energy (Canary Media)

AGRICULTURE: US asks farmers: Can you plant 2 crops instead of 1? (AP)

PFAS: Ubiquitous ‘forever chemicals’ increase risk of liver cancer, researchers report (Inside Climate News)

SHIPPING: Bill Gates-led fund backs methanol as green fuel for global shipping (Bloomberg $)

FINANCE: HSBC hires Justin Wu as Asia-Pacific co-head of climate change - memo (Reuters), Investors stick to ESG commitments for a greener future (FT $)

RICH WHITE GUYS: Elon Musk thinks the population will collapse. Demographers say it's not happening (CNN)

WILDLIFE: It is 100 days until COP15 – and the omens are good for a global plan to protect nature (The Guardian)

INTERNATIONAL: Australia needs new power generation to avoid blackouts - market operator (Reuters), Canada invokes treaty with US in push to keep cross-border pipeline open (The Guardian), France to extend help with energy costs for small firms (Bloomberg $), French tax collectors use AI to spot thousands of undeclared pools (New York Times $), Germany to monitor fuel prices closely after tax cut expires (Bloomberg $), Liz Truss ‘will approve more oil drilling if she becomes [UK] PM’ (The Guardian)

• COP27 will be deadlocked if climate adaptation funding promise is broken (Nature, Editorial Board)

Breitbart Dumped Delingpole, Now Getting Into The Sponsored Content Game With Anti-BlackRock and Energy Fearmongering

One of the great disinformation attacks of the early 21st century was the manufactured "climategate" controversy, in which climate scientists' emails were leaked, selectively edited and released to media as though normal scientific banter were malicious corruption. The man who takes credit for coining the name and bringing it out of the blogs and into mainstream media, what he considered his "finest hour," is James Delingpole. 

Far from having built on such a success, a decade and a half later, Delingpole's career is looking about as healthy as "climategate" was the true scandal he claimed it was. Most recently, as of the past week or so, his Twitter account no longer exists. This is probably because of his recurring Covid-19 conspiracies, since Twitter doesn't have any policy for climate disinformation, something James had generally lost interest in anyway. (More on that in a second.) 

Delingpole's account removal is quite a loss, really, depriving Twitter users of such droll wisdom and dry wit as posted when his account was saved in the archive in April, where in response to something about the debate on wind power, Delingpole quote-Tweeted to add "Such wanktardary!" 

What a way with words he has! 

Just because Twitter's taken away that megaphone doesn't mean he's shutting up, as his "rambling conspiracy theories with cranks" podcast is available on a bunch of different channels, but as for serious mainstream-ish media content, his only bylines these days are watching Netflix and writing about it for the Spectator. Not exactly the climate beat! 

You can find all his Putin-defending, "Ukraine is a #FakeNews gaslighting operation," chemtrail and other conspiracies, and justifying entertaining craziness like that the moon landing and school shootings are a hoax at his Substack, which he started in late January, 2022. 

But there's one place that is also no longer carrying his drivel: Breitbart. Yes, the website that farmed out its early edits to literal white supremacists apparently found that Delingpole's racist-defending and lazy lie promulgating was too much even for them, as his most recent posts there are from early January, 2022. 

No telling why, as Delingpole was the Executive Editor of Breitbart London, but now they seem to be going in a different direction, and exiled Delingpole to substack. Instead of having second-hand middlemen "interpreter of interpretations" hacks deliver climate propaganda, they're just letting advertisers post directly and going the sponsored content route (while also promoting a stupid new movie about Hunter Biden).  

The first one we noticed, and to Breitbart's credit they did make it relatively obvious that it's "sponsored content" both from the home page and when you clicked on the content, was a warning from Stansberry Research that "inflation and energy crisis [are] barreling towards each other," foretelling "America's Nightmare Winter" before sending terrified readers to a nightmarishly long diatribe. 

What's Stansberry Research? We did some research and found Stansberry Research has been pulling the ol' fearmonger-then-exploit trick since at least 2014, per Snopes, and its founder Porter Stansberry used anti-gay slurs and racist language, after defrauding investors with a promise of doubling their money if they paid $1,000 for a stock tip on an energy company. 

A hateful con-man? Fits right in at Breitbart! 

Similarly, "Consumers' Research" sponsored a post at Breitbart last week, attacking BlackRock as "the architect of 'woke capitalism.'"

For those who don't recognize the name of one of the oldest industrial front groups in the US, Consumers' Research was founded in 1928, and TrueNorth Research did a great exposé last year. The group "basically died in 2002 — with zero or almost no income for a decade — only to be reborn in 2013 as a vehicle for amicus briefs tied to GOP Attorneys General."

The group has "opposed life-saving airbags in cars, fuel efficiency standards, climate change science, rules against junk mail faxes, and even limits on cancer-causing products," as well as "sided with payday lenders against limits on interest rates" and "with Big Tobacco companies against second-hand smoke regulations."

These days, though, they're a key group pushing the Infowars Investing anti-ESG crusade, attacking Trans youth, and enjoying the support of Barre Seid, he of the $1.6 billion donation to conservative dark money propaganda. 

Delingpole must be pretty pissed to be out of Breitbart, and not collecting any of that cash!

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