FIRST LOOK: 

A new analysis from RMI assesses the Inflation Reduction Act's building electrification investments, including measures that will lower energy bills, make homes healthier, and significantly reduce climate pollution. Check it out here.

Economic Damage Of Carbon Pollution 3.6x Greater Than Current Gov. Estimates — Study: The costs of carbon pollution borne by society is far higher than the amount the government uses when calculating the costs and benefits of new regulations, a study in Nature finds. Each ton of CO2 pollution, according to the study, imposes $185 of damage — that's more than triple the amount currently used by the federal government. “The bottom line is that our results show that when you fully update the social cost of carbon methodology to the state of the science, it suggests that the existing estimates that are in use by the federal government are vastly underestimating the harm,” Kevin Rennert, a co-author of the paper and research fellow at Resources for the Future, told the Washington Post. Making policy based on a social cost of carbon 3.6 times greater than the current $51 estimate means the economic benefits of actions and policies to slash carbon pollution increase substantially. “It suggests there are many more actions we can take to curb carbon emissions that are going to be on the table that were not on the table before,” Stanford economist Marshall Burke, told the AP. (Washington Post $, AP, The Hill, Politico Pro $, Grist, Reuters, Barron's/AFP, Quartz)

Indiana Coalition Demands More Equitable EV Plan: A coalition of Indiana Black civil rights groups, and business, religious, and nonprofit leaders are calling on the federal government to reject the state's proposed EV charging network. That plan, they argue, is fatally flawed because both it, and the process by which it was created, failed to account for historical inequities and in doing so, perpetuated them. “The highways tore through the historically Black neighborhoods destroying homes and businesses, uprooting families and community, poisoning the air that we breathe," Elder Lionel Rush, president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance in Indianapolis, told Indiana Public Broadcasting. “If we don't get in now, we're going to be behind — and we'll never catch up." The working group that created the plan was entirely white, and failed to conduct outreach to communities of color, Denise Abdul-Rahman, head of the state NAACP's Environmental Climate Justice Program, told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “We are calling on our comrade and fellow Hoosier [former South Bend Mayor and current U.S. Transportation] Secretary Pete Buttigieg to come to Indiana, embark on a ‘Justice for EV Infrastructure’ tour and reject the Indiana plan until ethnic and racial justice commitments are met, as outlined by our alliance,” Abdul-Rahman said. (Indiana Public Broadcasting, Indiana Capital Chronicle, Energy Live News, Inside Indiana Business $)

Western Heat, Fires Strain Grid, Firefighters: At least 46 wildfires are burning across eight Western states as a massive "heat dome" drives record-breaking heat in the region — all of which is pushing the electrical grid and firefighters to, or past, the breaking point. Climate change, mainly caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme heat and supercharging wildfires. North of Los Angeles, the Route Fire exploded Wednesday in triple-digit heat, burning over 5,200 acres in just over 30 hours. In addition to burning at least two structures, and one dog, several firefighters were hospitalized with heat-related injuries. As extreme drought and heat supercharge wildfires, the intense, near-year-round fire seasons are taking a growing toll on firefighters. The extreme, and worsening, stress of the job, compounded by the dearth of support is increasing mental illness, addiction, and suicide among wildland firefighters. One current smokejumper, among the most elite of wildland firefighters, told the Wall Street Journal, some of their colleagues wear the names of colleagues who have died by suicide on their helmets. “There’s a crystal clear awareness that this is urgent,” Jeff Rupert, director of the DOI Office of Wildland Fire, told the Wall Street Journal. "Unfortunately, that recognition comes from terrible losses and negative outcomes,” Patricia O’Brien, a clinical psychologist and a former elite firefighter, told the Wall Street Journal. (Western Fires: Axios; California grid/heat/fires: LA Times $, AP; Route Fire: (Washington Post $, CNN, LA Times photos; Dog: KTLA; Firefighters: Wall Street Journal $, NBC; Climate Signals background: Extreme heat and heatwaves, Wildfires, Western megadrought) [Additional coverage below — Ed.]

ENVIRONMENTAL (IN)JUSTICE: The tragedy of North Birmingham (ProPublica), Prison air conditioning is coming too slowly for those who need it most (Grist)

• JACKSON WASTER CRISIS: The confluence of race, class and climate in Jackson, Mississippi’s water crisis (Democracy Now), Jackson Water Crisis is Latest Sign of Environmental Injustice (MSNBC), Biden calls Jackson mayor after approving emergency declaration for water crisis (Axios), Jackson water crisis forces residents to find alternatives (AP), Mississippi water crisis: ‘Huge mountain to climb’ (Politico), Why don’t Jackson, Miss., residents have water?  (The Hill), Tucker Carlson snarks that Jackson water crisis will let mayor fully radicalize city (HuffPost)

CALIFORNIA: California’s climate makes it especially vulnerable to global warming (New York Times $), Imagine Fresno County’s summer heat with no cooling centers. Some live that every day (Fresno Bee)

• HEAT: Record-setting, long-duration heat wave is roasting western US (Washington Post $, Axios, The Hill), Extreme heat begins pummeling California as crews battle wildfires. (New York Times $), As dangerous heat wave scorches California, death valley could hit a whopping 127 degrees (USA Today, Democracy Now), 
• FIRES: California wildfires prompt evacuations amid heat wave (AP, AP), Explosive new wildfires amid scorching heat in most of California (NBC, The Guardian)
• GRID: Another heat dome is roasting the west, threatening California’s grid (Gizmodo, The Verge, The Hill), Amid heat wave, California asks electric vehicle owners to limit charging (New York Times $)

PAKISTAN FLOODING: Aid pours into Pakistan; deaths from floods cross 1,200 mark (AP), Officials and volunteers struggle to respond to catastrophic flooding in Pakistan (NPR), Urgent aid appeal launched as satellite images show a third of Pakistan underwater (The Guardian), Who warns flooding in Pakistan risks lives of 3 million children (Democracy Now)

FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: America could face its own gas crisis, or worsen Europe’s (Wall Street Journal $), Earthquakes for Ukraine: Dutch gas drilling tests what countries will accept (Washington Post $), Ukraine decries TotalEnergies’ Russia dividend as ‘blood money’ (Wall Street Journal $), Germany announces new LNG facility, calling it a green move from Russian energy (New York Times $), Energy price inflation: how the UK and EU could fight it (The Guardian, explainer), EU mulls energy price cap for certain generators - document (Reuters, Wall Street Journal $), Stress test shows Germany should extend lifespan of 2 nuclear plants - paper (Reuters)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Is the Paris agreement working? (Inside Climate News), Some G20 nations 'backsliding' on climate targets, says UK envoy (Reuters)

INFLATION REDUCTION ACT: 650,000 efficient houses and 7.2 million free heat pumps: How the Inflation Reduction Act will impact US homes (Fast Company)

AGENCIES: Biden sets 4.6% pay raise for federal employees (E&E $)

DOE: Biden administration threatens 'emergency measures' to ensure fuel supplies as hurricane season peaks (Houston Chronicle)

DOI: Court sends 2 Gulf [of Mexico] oil leases back to the Department of the Interior (Grist), USGS water lab staff voice 'strong doubts' about test results (E&E $)

HOUSE: Three House Democrats call for tighter carbon offset standards (The Hill), Who is Mary Peltola? Dem beats Palin in historic Alaska race (E&E News)

TRIBES: Despite misunderstandings, scientists and Indigenous peoples in the arctic have collaborated on research into mercury pollution (Inside Climate News)

CITIES AND STATES: Texas study finds ‘massive amount’ of toxic wastewater with few options for reuse (Inside Climate News), Connecticut public schools must now teach about climate change (Yale Climate Connections), California gas-powered car ban could fuel GOP legal battle (The Hill), DRIED UP: Texas cities in fear of running out of water (The Hill), Va. eyes exit from carbon trading program in 2023 (E&E $)

• CALIFORNIA: California just banned gas-powered cars. here’s everything you need to know (Inside Climate News), Why California wants to give residents $1,000 not to have a car (Washington Post $), California approves a wave of aggressive new climate measures (New York Times $)California lawmakers extend life of [Diablo Canyon] nuclear plant, approve slate of climate bills (Reuters, Protocol, The Guardian, Utility Dive, Axios, Gizmodo, AP, Wall Street Journal $, The Hill, Politico Pro $)

IMPACTS: Living amid flood in Indonesia, unable to leave (AP, photos), 'Compulsory profession.' How can climate change place additional obligations on Egyptian women? (Middle East Beat), Five reasons extreme weather is bigger in Texas (The Hill), The summer's biggest climate disasters, seen from space (Gizmodo)

• SCHOOLS: School’s out: as temperatures rise, some students sent home because of lack of AC (Grist), Schools frustrated with FEMA application process after historic flooding damages facilities (NBC), Too hot for school? Climate change turning classrooms into a public health issue (Good Morning America)

HEAT: England has had joint hottest summer on record, Met Office says (The Guardian), Ocean heat reached all-time high in 2021, report finds (Axios)

DROUGHT: Droughts are hitting cattle ranchers hard – and that could make beef more expensive (NPR)

HURRICANES: August saw no named storms for only the third time (E&E News), Did forecasts of an extra-busy hurricane season turn out dead wrong? (Washington Post $), Super typhoon Hinnamnor creeps closer to Korea and Japan (Washington Post $), 

DANIELLE: The Atlantic finally wakes up: Danielle forms far to the north (Yale Climate Connections, AP, Broward Sun-Sentinel, AccuWeather, NBC, New York Times $)

WATER: The Colorado River’s alfalfa problem (High Country News), How Californians feel about ripping out their lawns (New York Times $)

(DE)FORESTATION: Number of Brazil Amazon fires hits five-year high in August (AP), ‘Magic in her hands.’ The woman bringing India’s forests back to life (New York Times $)

RENEWABLES: With electricity prices surging, North Texans wonder: Could installing solar be the solution? (Fort Worth Report), A solar firm plans to build off-grid neighborhoods in California (New York Times $), Hornsea 2: North Sea wind farm claims title of world's largest (BBC), How installing solar canopies over canals can help California fight drought (The Hill), Maine farmer pairs solar panels with wild blueberries. Will it bear fruit? (Energy News Network), Sweet return: German farmer gets both solar power and apples (AP), US solar shipments jumped 32% to a record 28.8 million peak kW last year: EIA (Utility Dive), To fight climate change, environmentalists may have to give up a core belief (Washington Post $)

BATTERIES: America is getting battery plants—what about mines? (Wall Street Journal $), Crab and lobster shells could be used to make renewable batteries (The Guardian), Groundbreaking advances emerging vehicle battery production (AP)

OIL & GAS: Gasoline prices extend declines into labor day weekend (Wall Street Journal $), Forecasts for triple-digit heat lift natural-gas prices (Wall Street Journal $)

COAL: Coal advocates warn NERC is underestimating plant retirements by about 68 GW, threatening reliability (Utility Dive), Hawaii quits coal in bid to fight climate change (AP), Power reliability threatened as half of US coal fleet could retire by 2030, trade group says (Politico Pro $)

NUKES: Nuclear power’s rebound causes rift among environmentalists (Wall Street Journal $)

GRID: Western utilities to share capacity under proposed resource adequacy program (Utility Dive)

EVs: NYC may ban e-bikes in public housing following a spate of fires (Canary Media)

CRYPTO: Ethereum tries to not fry the planet (Protocol)

TRAINS: ‘Train bragging’: Swedish service joins glorious resurgence of sleeper travel (The Guardian)

AGRICULTURE: Night-time heat is killing crops. Scientists are rushing to find resilient plants (The Guardian)

HERE'S HOPING: Global turbulence may herald 'giant leap' to a greener era, says top scientist (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

CARBON CAPTURE: Carbon capture is not a solution to net zero emissions plans, report says (The Guardian)

FINANCE: Blackstone, Carlyle take different sides on oil-and-gas investment (Wall Street Journal $)

INTERNATIONAL: Johnson takes swipe at Truss plans for fracking and North Sea drilling (The Guardian)

• Big leaks, little regulation (Texas Observer, Sheila Serna op-ed)
• Who will protect communities of color from climate disaster? (The Hill, Roishetta Ozane, John Beard, and Brian Frosh op-ed)
• Polling shows that US voters favor climate bills – yet assume fellow Americans don’t (The Guardian, Adrienne Matei op-ed)
• Congress has at last responded to the climate crisis — now the action moves to the states (The Hill, Alli Gold Roberts op-ed)
• The US is exporting natural gas and importing high prices (Barron's, Clark Williams-Derry op-ed)
• Australia's timing problem with moving from coal to renewables (Reuters, Clyde Russell op-ed)
• The Guardian view on a fuel poverty emergency: inaction will not do (The Guardian, Editorial Board)
• Pakistan floods must be a wake up call on climate action (Climate Home, Fahad Saeed op-ed)
• How the IRA can supercharge local climate action and strengthen communities (The Hill, Lori Bird op-ed)
• Eating meat isn’t a crime against the planet – if it’s done right (The Guardian, Thomasina Miers op-ed)
• Liz Truss puts hard-right ideology above lives – and is backing oil and gas to prove it (The Guardian, Owen Jones op-ed)

If Climate Lawsuits Are A Distraction, Why Does The Fossil Fuel Industry Have So Many People Writing About Them? 

"If the situation was hopeless, their propaganda would be unnecessary." 

Though it's now most often used by anti-vaxxers and other even more objectionable online types, today we can't help but think of the phrase as used in pre-alt-right-co-opt-ion context.

Why? Because the industry's unofficial public relations teams have been churning out op-eds denouncing legal actions to hold polluters and the fossil fuel industry accountable. They published three pieces on Tuesday, August 30th, alone. One even responds directly to the likely impetus for the push, this great PBS Frontline piece on the 20 lawsuits. 

Others are in response to local litigation moves, like the Washington Examiner op-ed "a slow boat to Maui," by Michael Krauss. The byline identifies him as "a professor emeritus at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University." What The Examiner doesn't say is that George Mason is known for its Mercatus Center's Koch funding, or that Chevron-defending Krauss once bragged on his CV about bringing in "the two largest donations ever made to GMUSL." (But that was likely before Billion dollar donor Barre Seid paid $20 mil to rename it in Scalia's honor.) It also doesn't mention that Krauss is a regular at the Federalist Society, run by Leo Leonard, recipient of Seid's billion-dollar "donation."  

In response to lawsuits demanding companies pay for the damages their products have caused in Maui County, Krauss tells readers to "imagine Maui without petroleum products," warning that "tourism would dry up, with airplanes and cruise ships unable to visit the island and rental cars unable to circulate." Of course, that may not be such a bad thing for locals, who after Covid-19's resurgence of tourists, are increasingly "fed up" with the colonial tourism driving crime, cost of living, and "the prostitution of Hawaiian culture" that's been a constant feature since the independent nation of Hawai'i was overthrown then annexed by the US so Dole could use it as a pineapple plantation. 

Krauss then warns that "if successful," Maui's lawsuit "would utterly destroy tort law" because people could sue companies selling carcinogenic products, and "anyone who ever suffered any harm from traffic congestion could sue" car companies. Which again, sounds like a good thing. 

Krauss concludes that "Virtually very [sic] contemplated harm could be transformed into a public nuisance lawsuit if a meritless suit like this one were to succeed." 

To sum up, Krauss is scared that if Maui's suit is successful, Hawaii might not be crushed by tourists and people harmed could sue the colonial businesses that profited off of harming them. And that's supposed to be bad! 

Only slightly more coherent was a piece in the Canadian Financial Post, by Michel Kelly-Gagnon, who claims that if we don't make drill for in Canada and the US, then we're actually just helping "such genteel and human-rights-respecting countries as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia," echoing the ol' Canadian "ethical oil" propaganda. He also quotes Big Oil's point man Phil Goldberg, a clear tell that this isn't just an unbiased opinion. 

And sure enough, per his byline, Kelly-Gagnon is "CEO of the Montreal Economic Institute and a senior fellow at the Atlas Network." We checked, and according to a critic of the MEI in a past FP piece, it sounded to us like a group named in the same style as US fronts for corporate interests using money to influence politics because it's “part of the same problem they have with money in the U.S. political process: corporate interests who can outspend critics have too much influence in our political process.” 

And of course, the Atlas Network is a Koch et al funded international donor. So a guy whose donors are (or are about to be) getting sued is opposed to those lawsuits. No wonder he didn't have much of an argument!  

Probably the most-on-message piece is the RealClearEnergy oped published Tuesday, in which former Democratic representative from Virginia, Rick Boucher, says that climate lawsuits are "a diversion and a distraction." In a July op-ed for the Richmond Standard, Boucher wrote that "litigation is a distraction and diversion," before saying that it "creates false hope that lawsuits can solve the challenge of climate change," which we've literally never seen anyone claim. He then wrote that it "lets legislators off the hook, diminishing the pressure for them to act." 

Obviously, he had to change that last part for the RealClear op-ed, because in the time between his claim that litigation is somehow getting in the way of legislation, Democratic politicians passed the Inflation Reduction Act and allocated record funding to climate action! 

"It's far better to lean on innovation, not on litigation," Boucher wrote instead, continuing that suing the very companies "investing billions of dollars to develop the needed innovations" is bad, but fake solutions like "carbon capture and sequestration, greater engine and fuel efficiency, and the wise use of natural gas" are what we actually need. 

Boucher's byline, by the way, notes that in addition to being a formerly elected Democratic representative, "he provides policy counsel to information technology and energy companies." Ah! And looking at his OpenSecrets page, it turns out Electric Utilities were his top career donor, as he raised twice as much from them as his next top industry, lawyers. And the top individual contributor? Virginia's dirty fossil-fueled and, until lawsuits shut it down, pipeline-loving utility Dominion Energy. 

In other words, these aren't op-eds of Boucher's unbiased opinion, they're advertisements from an industry consultant who racked up over a million bucks from energy interests as a public servant, before going into the consulting business. 

Time and again, we see that the fossil fuel industry is responding to litigation to hold it accountable for false advertising and misleading the public about its damages by … putting up op-eds-as-ads to mislead the public about the lawsuits about the harms it profits by causing. 

But its defenders shouldn't continue calling for legislation under the assumption that Congress will never do anything, as Exxon's ex-lobbyist admitted was their strategy- after all, Boucher's cry for legislative solutions may not go unheeded! 

Just not the way he thinks, as Rep. Katie Porter has unveiled a bill to remove tax credits for Big oil's climate disinformation campaigns!

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