FIRST LOOK: 

Cooperate Jackson is distributing water TODAY at 1128 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. 

Record, Grid, Health-Threatening Heat Coming For California: As a massive heatwave spreads across California and the Western U.S., officials are warning of both rolling blackouts and increased wildfire activity. Temperatures as much as 20°F above normal are expected to remain through the weekend and the California electrical grid operator (CAISO) to reduce their electricity consumption to ease strain on the grid as air conditioning drives up demand. CAISO also said customers should "avoid charging electric vehicles" during periods of high strain on the grid. Gov. Newsom also declared a state of emergency, which will allow the use of backup diesel generators and pauses requirements that ships plug into ports' electricity. While the measures will help keep the lights on, they will also increase air pollution, the danger of which is compounded by extreme heat. Wildfires on Wednesday already forced evacuations across the state and officials worry and expect the heat will fuel increased fire activity. Not only does the heat dry out vegetation, it also increases the strain on firefighters doing physically demanding work while carrying heavy gear. House GOP Whip Steve Scalise criticized CAISO's statement about EV charging, which comes a week after CARB declared all new cars sold in California by 2035 must be EVs. (Heat & Grid: LA Times $, Washington Post $, Sacramento Bee $, AP, CNN, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Bloomberg $, Reuters, New York Times $, Yahoo; State of Emergency: AP; Health risks: The Guardian; Fires: AP, Sacramento Bee $, KCRA Sacramento; EV charging: USA Today, ABC-10, Washington Examiner, Fox News; Climate Signals background: Extreme heat and heatwaves, Wildfires)

Pakistan, Whiplashed By Extreme Weather, Confronts Flood-Fueled Disease: Jacobabad, Pakistan, is on the frontline of the extreme weather whiplash made more likely as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Where temperatures soared above 122°F (50°C) in May, extremely heavy monsoon rains have set off flooding — exacerbated by water released from glaciers melting in the extreme heat — that has killed more than 1,100 people, including 380 children, so far this year. "A manifestation of climate change is the more frequent and more intense occurrence of extreme weather events, and this is exactly what we have witnessed in Jacobabad as well as elsewhere globally during the past few months," Athar Hussain, head of the Centre for Climate Research and Development at COMSATS University in Islamabad, told Reuters. The widespread flooding has also raised alarms about the spread of waterborne disease, as well as other ailments like skin infections that can become far more serious if left untreated — an issue of particular concern as millions of people remain effectively stranded and cut off from medical care. (Whiplash: Reuters, HuffPost; Disease & Health Threats: AP, The Guardian, NPR, NBC; Death toll: Reuters; Climate Signals background: Extreme precipitation increase, Extreme heat and heatwaves) [More coverage below — Ed.]

Heat, Insufficient Cooling Disrupt Learning Nationwide: Extreme heat across the country is disrupting education as high temperatures force schools without sufficient ventilation or air conditioning to cancel classes or send students home early. School systems including those in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Baltimore, and San Diego were all forced to cancel or shorten school this week. “It was over 100 degrees by 10 a.m.,” Sharee Himmons, a special-education assistant at Fitler Elementary in Philadelphia, told the Inquirer. “It’s unhealthy to be sitting in there like that — we were all sweaty, lightheaded, tired, cranky.” People of color are disproportionately harmed by extreme heat due to racist policy decisions, from redlining to present-day de facto segregation. In particular, rising temperatures and underinvestment in communities of color disproportionately harm Black and Hispanic students' educational outcomes. (Nationwide: The Hill; Philadelphia: Philadelphia Inquirer; Ohio: Energy News Network, WKYC; Baltimore: CNN; San Diego: KGTV; Climate Signals background: Extreme heat and heatwaves)

Peltola Will Be First Alaska Native In Congress: Mary Peltola (Yup’ik) will be the first Alaska Native to represent the state in Congress. Peltola, a Democrat, beat Sarah Palin, a former small-town mayor, in a special election to fill Alaska's open House seat, state election officials announced Wednesday. Peltola's victory is set to more-than-double the land mass represented by Democrats in Congress. Native Alaskans are on the frontline of climate change and the damage done by the fossil fuel energy in the state both in terms of lost hunting grounds and by increasing wildfire threats. (Indian Country Today, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Public Media, The 19th* News, Axios, NPR, ABC, Washington Post $, Politico, CNN, New York Times $, BBC, AP)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: Committee gets cold feet over request to remove KKK plaque from West Point building (The Root, New York Times $)

JACKSON WATER CRISIS: Jackson, Miss., shows how extreme weather can trigger a clean-water crisis (Washington Post $), More than 150,000 people in Jackson, Mississippi, are once again trying to survive without reliable clean water (Buzzfeed), Jackson’s water crisis was triggered by floods and compounded by racism (Grist), Here’s what we know about Jackson, Mississippi’s water plant crisis (NewsOne), 'We can’t go it alone': Jackson, Miss., Mayor Lumumba on water catastrophe in majority-Black city (Democracy Now), Jackson, Mississippi, is without running water for 'unknown period of time' (HuffPost), Blame game rages as water system crashes in Miss. capital (E&E News, Politico), Cooperation Jackson's Kali Akuno: climate crisis impact worse in Black cities facing disinvestment (Democracy Now)

PAKISTAN FLOODING: The ‘climate dystopia’ displacing millions of Pakistanis (Grist), Pakistan not to blame for climate crisis-fuelled flooding, says PM Shehbaz Sharif (The Guardian), A third of Pakistan is under water in catastrophic floods (NPR, photos), Devastating Pakistan floods likely have climate change ties (Axios)

• AID & PLANNING: Pakistanis protect homes against devastating floods; aid arrives (Reuters), Will Pakistan floods spur better climate disaster planning? (Thomson Reuters Foundation), A Third of Pakistan Is Currently Underwater From Flooding—Here’s How You Can Help (Vogue)
• FACT CHECK: Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper did not publish headline blaming floods on those who don’t read the Quran (Reuters, Fact Check)

FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: Russia halts Nord Stream gas pipeline, ratcheting up pressure on Europe (Wall Street Journal $), Russia’s energy blackmail runs out of gas — for now (Politico Pro $), Europe braces for Russia gas disruption this week—and years of higher energy prices ahead (Wall Street Journal $), Gazprom prepares to cut off supplies to Engie as payment row escalates (Reuters), Portugal could hold an answer for a Europe captive to Russian gas (New York Times $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Global body urges EU to make company life simpler by aligning climate reporting (Reuters), Electric cars rekindle trans-Atlantic trade war (Politico Pro $), G20 host Indonesia urges cooperation to tackle global climate issues (Reuters), Spats with China and Russia stall G-20 climate talks (Politico Pro $), US must dispel Pelosi's 'negative influence' before climate talks -China (Reuters)

DENIAL & DISINFO: Many developed countries view online misinformation as ‘major threat’ (New York Times $)

GOP vs. ESG: Some GOP states push back against ESG investing trend (Wall Street Journal $)

PARENTING: When — and how — should you talk to your kids about climate change? (Canary Media)

MEDIA: After weeks of silence, Gannett revealed that it laid off 400 employees and cut 400 open positions (Poynter)

INFLATION REDUCTION ACT: Republicans voted 'no' on the climate bill. Their states will get billions of dollars from it anyway (CNN)

DOI: Audit uncovers staffing, morale woes at key USGS water lab (E&E News)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: Republicans claim control over federal mine safety agency (E&E $)

WHITE HOUSE: Is Biden’s goal to build charging stations for electric cars leaving low-income areas behind? (The Guardian), Senior White House climate official exits (E&E $)

CITIES AND STATES: Hawaii to close its only coal power plant in a step toward renewable energy (The Guardian), Your local park has a hidden talent: helping fight climate change (NPR)

• CALIFORNIA: California legislators passed the most ambitious climate package ever. here’s what it does (San Francisco Chronicle), California nears vote on proposal to keep Diablo Canyon nuclear plant online as deadlines loom (Utility Dive), Oil setbacks bill squeaks through California Assembly after fiery debate (Politico Pro $), These contentious bills are awaiting Newsom's signature, or veto (New York Times $), Help paying water bills may be on way for low-income Californians (CAL Matters)

IMPACTS: A climate scientist on the planet’s simultaneous disasters, from Pakistan’s horror floods to Europe’s record drought (The Conversation), Lakes are disappearing in the Arctic as the region warms nearly four times faster as the rest of the planet (CBS), Growth of seaweed consuming some beaches (ABC), This summer's weather-impacted travel chaos will become the norm as climate worsens (WBUR), Where we'll end up living as the planet burns (TIME), 110 trillion tons of ice projected to melt in Greenland — and it's too late to do a thing about it (WBUR)

FLOODING: The US has been hit by dramatic flooding, and it could get worse (Wall Street Journal $)

HEAT: Rising temperatures tied to reduced well-being: analysis (The Hill), These 5 charts show just how much the US relies on air conditioning (TIME)

DROUGHT: Silver lining: Northeast drought benefits some businesses (AP)

WILDFIRES: Fire threatening over 7,000 structures in southwest Oregon (AP)

HURRICANES: Calm before storms? Oddly quiet Atlantic despite forecasts (AP), August hasn't been this devoid of tropical storms since 1997. Is hurricane season over? (USA Today)

WATER: US has cut water supplies for 7 states during climate-induced drought (Truthout)

DEFORESTATION: Crimes against the Amazon reverberate across Brazil, analysis shows (Mongabay), Lula pushes Brazil-Indonesia-Congo COP forest alliance if elected (Reuters)

NOT ICE CREAM, UNFORTUNATELY: UN weather agency predicts rare ‘triple-dip’ La Nina in 2022 (AP, Reuters, The Verge)

RENEWABLES: Botswana awards Norway's Scatec first large-scale solar plant contract (Reuters), Breaching dams ‘must be an option’ to save salmon, Washington Democrats say (New York Times $), First Solar to invest $1.2 billion in US plants, spurred by climate law (Wall Street Journal $, Canary Media), Massachusetts neighborhood to get networked geothermal system (Yale Climate Connections), The sun will keep shining on Chinese solar (Wall Street Journal $), Your rooftop solar questions, answered (WBUR)

FOSSILS: Global fossil fuel subsidies almost doubled in 2021, analysis finds (The Guardian)

BUILDINGS: Slow adoption of smart thermostats in the US misses big potential energy savings: S&P (Utility Dive)

OIL & GAS: This decade's oil boom is moving offshore - way offshore (Reuters)

PLASTICS: His family fished for generations. Now he’s hauling plastic out of the sea. (Washington Post $)

COAL: Reuse can divert coal ash from landfills, but challenges remain (Energy News Network)

GRID: ‘What is true for alcohol and milk’ must be true for transmission, 5th Circuit says in NextEra decision (Utility Dive), 5th Circuit rules Texas transmission law unconstitutional (E&E $), ISO New England floats ‘energy reserve’ to ensure grid reliability, access to LNG at Everett terminal (Utility Dive), Maine Supreme Court opens pathway for Avangrid’s $1B New England transmission project (Utility Dive), Voters killed a project to get New England off fossil fuels. A court may have just saved it. (HuffPost)

EVs: Car companies are making a deadly mistake with electric vehicles (Slate), The electric vehicle boom could bring lithium mines back to North Carolina (Grist), Ford seeking permitting changes to push EVs forward (Politico Pro $), Making EVs without China’s supply chain is hard, but not impossible – 3 supply chain experts outline a strategy (The Conversation), The shift to electric vehicles is about to overwhelm meager US mining operations (The Verge), Toyota to put additional billions of dollars into EV batteries (Wall Street Journal $)

CRYPTO: What you need to know about the Ethereum Merge and the climate (Protocol)

BOOKS: ‘We’re going to pay in a big way’: A shocking new book on the climate crisis (The Guardian)

THEY'RE (NOT) JUST LIKE US: Why you should care about celebrities' climate hypocrisy (TIME)

WILDLIFE: Mystery solved: Chinese elephant trek exposes conservation failures (Climate Home), Scientists use beavers to create drought and fire-resistant landscapes (CBS), Zimbabwe moves 2,500 wild animals due to climate change (AP)

INTERNATIONAL: How will next UK prime minister tackle cost of living and environment crises? (The Guardian), Barbecue-bashing 'eco-feminist' French politician Sandrine Rousseau riles carnivores by labeling meat macho (AFP)

• Get ready for a global clean energy surge, thanks to the US inflation reduction act (Energy Monitor, Brian O'Callaghan op-ed)
• Discrimination left rural towns in San Joaquin Valley with bad water. Help is on the way (Fresno Bee, Laurel Firestone and Joaquin Esquivel op-ed)
• How states and utilities can capitalize on the biggest clean energy legislation in US history (Utility Dive, Dan Esposito and Kimani Jeffrey op-ed)
• Gov. Jay Inslee is taking a well-earned climate victory lap (New York Times, David Wallace-Wells column $)
• Inflation Reduction Act doesn’t meet Biden’s climate goals: How to close the gaps on transportation (The Hill, Margo Oge op-ed)
• ‘The biggest thing to happen in international climate diplomacy in decades’ (The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer analysis)
• The dilemma of developing countries in the age of climate change (Environmental Health News, Ruth Greenspan Bell op-ed)
• Break up the ESG investing giants (Wall Street Journal, Dan Morenoff op-ed $)

Tucker Carlson Says Cavemen Used Fossil Fuels (Also Blames Biden and the Green New  Deal For Putin's War and Fossil Fuel War-Profiteering) 

We could probably do a column-a-day on Tucker Carlson's nightly racism show on Fox, but that'd get pretty boring pretty quickly. We try not to bother with his show, which, yes, goes out to Fox viewers but then disappears into the ether- unless, of course, FoxNews dot com decides to pick it up and publish it. In those cases, it's often worth seeing what it is they want to impress upon their readers, what the talking points are — who to hate and who to love. 

This week, the things to hate are the Green New Deal, Ukraine and the Fed, and the people Carlson wants his audience to love are, of course, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. 

"The Green New Deal means poverty" is the headline of the Fox dot com piece capturing Carlson's 16+ minute diatribe of a TV monologue. Now, your first question may be: What Green New Deal? 

And yes, you'd be right to wonder, because the Green New Deal's massive suite of policies that put power in the hands of people instead of polluters hasn't exactly passed. But the Inflation Reduction Act, and all its included faith in green capitalism and fossil fuel handouts, has been renamed by climate deniers as the Green New Deal, because that's the name they've been drilling into their audiences' skulls on a regular basis as the big green boogeyman. 

But even that isn't really the subject of Carlson's rant, though it gets the headline. Most of what Carlson talks about is the energy price spikes in Europe, which Tucker blames on their efforts to go green, comparing prices of electricity across Europe and specifically in France, which is mostly nuclear not renewable powered anyway, so if anything an indication of how the prices aren't directly tied to the type of fuel, undercutting Carlson's point. (Not that it matters.)

Carlson said that "Green energy cannot replace fossil fuels" and "anyone with eighth-grade math skills could have figured out in about 10 minutes that we cannot replace fossil fuels with renewables or green energy" because they "remain what they have always been: the key to civilization" which "has been true since Homo Erectus started the first cooking fire in a cave nearly a million years ago." 

Except anyone with an eighth-grade science education or wikipedia access might know that fossil fuels are the fossil remains of dead plants and animals cooked by the Earth's heat and pressure over (tens of) millions of years to cook into fuels that gave rise to industrialization, unless Tucker's sitting on some secret evidence that cavemen were drilling oil wells. 

He jumps straight from that self-reinforcing stupidity, that fossil fuels need to always be around because they supposedly always have been around, to telling viewers that "the Green New Deal means what it always meant. It means poverty and the people pushing the Green New Deal must have known that all along." 

Apparently people saying 'Hey, maybe we shouldn't get our energy from petrodictators and build renewables instead' are responsible for countries instead doubling down on buying from petrodictators. 

But said authoritarians aren't the real enemy, and Carlson bristles at the idea that any American should sacrifice anything for Ukraine's defense. "We have to shovel billions to Ukrainian oligarchs who clearly hate the United States because it's the right thing to do. We need to hurt Russia because it's our moral duty. So, did these sanctions actually hurt Russia? They caused food and energy shortages throughout the West. No, they didn't hurt Russia. Russia today has more than enough energy, more energy that it can use or sell." 

Good to see Carlson rising to the defense of Russia, erstwhile communist foe turned Trump-era ally to the right. 

Don't worry though, Tucker has the answers. "We could fix this problem. The solution to this catastrophe is very straightforward: End the war in Ukraine. Reestablish energy flows into Europe and save the global economy, including ours." 

And how does he propose Joe Biden and "other reckless Western leaders" do that? He doesn't say, but he does say what they are doing is "the opposite," of that, "spending billions more from their dying economies to Ukrainian oligarchs and for no good reason." 

After reeling off the money spent by various European countries, and the US, on the war effort, Carlson asks "How is all that spending working out? Are we winning the war in Ukraine? Have we bankrupted Vladimir Putin like Joe Biden claimed we would?" 

Well by most objective measures, Putin hasn't succeeded in his quick, get-in-and-take-it strategy for seizing control of Kyiv. But still, Carlson defends him: "Take a look at this chart comparing the Russian ruble against the euro. Russia is doing well. Europe is not doing well at all. Now, Joe Biden is calling for an unconditional surrender from Vladimir Putin. Here's the weird thing. By any actual reality-based measure, Vladimir Putin is not losing the war in Ukraine. He is winning the war in Ukraine and Joe Biden looks at that as we won't stop until you proffer an unconditional surrender." 

Though he lacks the fortitude to come out and say it, the message is clear: Tucker Carlson wants Ukraine to surrender to Putin's criminal advances, giving the madman whatever he wants. Otherwise, your fossil fuel infrastructure is going to keep raising the price of your electricity bill. Cavemen needed fossil fuels, and so do you!  

And somehow, that's the fault of the Green New Deal, the world's most powerful policy to never have been actually adopted. 

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