FIRST LOOK: 

The Climate Adaptation Forum will host an event on the negative impacts of climate change on the U.S. housing market, potential opportunities, and the need for affordable, climate-resilient housing. September 30, at 9:00 am ET. 

Big Win In Advocates Fight Against 'Cancer Alley' Formosa Plant: A Louisiana court threw out key air quality permits for the massive, proposed Formosa Plastics facility in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," in another major victory for the community activists who have fought for years against the plant. The ruling comes just days after the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality rejected a permit for a separate petrochemical plant in the area. The Formosa plant would have pumped 13.6 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution — about the equivalent of three-and-a-half coal plants — into the atmosphere each year. “Stopping Formosa Plastics has been a fight for our lives, and today David has toppled Goliath,” said Sharon Lavigne, who founded the group Rise St. James in 2018 to fight plans for the plant. “The judge’s decision sends a message to polluters like Formosa that communities of color have a right to clean air, and we must not be sacrifice zones.” LDEQ failed to properly review the full impact of the proposed facility, District Judge Trudy White ruled. “The blood, sweat and tears of [the advocates'] Ancestors is tied to the land,” she wrote, referring to the land once worked by enslaved people on plantations, emphasizing the agency “must take special care to consider the impact of climate-driven disasters fueled by greenhouse gases on environmental justice communities and their ability to recover” (emphasis original, page 31). (AP, Washington Post $, NOLA.com, WWNO, The Grio, E&E $, Environmental Health News, Reuters, New York Times $, NOLA.com)

Pakistan Flooding Made Worse By Warming: The rainfall that drove catastrophic flooding in Pakistan this summer — killing more than 1,500 people, impacting 33 million people, and submerging about one-third of the country — was made worse by climate change, according to an analysis from World Weather Attribution. Numerous factors impact the degree of devastation caused by flooding — which WWA said was also likely exacerbated by increased glacier melt caused by the extreme heat this summer — but the extreme rainfall was "worse because of climate change," Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London, told the AP. “And especially in this highly vulnerable region, small changes matter a lot.” The analysis concluded global temperatures 1.2°C (2.2°F) hotter than preindustrial averages made the 60-day rain totals across the region 50% more intense and 5-day maximum rainfall in the hardest-hit Sindh and Balochistan provinces 75% more intense, but cautioned that there are large uncertainties in naming an exact percentage due to the high variability of rainfall in the region. The overall finding of climate change increased rain is consistent with IPCC projections of more intense rain in the area, and historical records and past studies which show extreme rain events increasing in recent decades. The scientists also found that such extreme rainfall is now approximately a 1-in-100 year event, but will become more frequent as global temperatures continue to rise. (AP, The Guardian, Washington Post $, Bloomberg $, Democracy Now, FT $, Reuters, Axios, BBC, Economist $, CNN, Al Jazeera, New York Times $, Inside Climate News, NBC, Deutsche Welle, Inside Climate News; Climate Signals background: Extreme precipitation increase)

Biden Announced 2035 Floating OSW Goal: The Biden administration committed Thursday to build enough floating offshore wind capacity by 2035 to power 5 million homes. The 15GW by 2035 target is in addition to the administration's goal of installing 30GW of traditional offshore wind by 2030. Floating offshore wind is still an emerging technology, producing 0.2% of global offshore wind power, and the administration's efforts will include supporting research and development across multiple federal agencies to bring down costs, and pilot projects in California and Oregon. The Energy Department hopes to reduce the cost-per-MW of floating offshore wind by 70% by 2035. Deep water areas off the West Coast and in the Gulf of Maine offer significant wind energy potential that cannot be harnessed by traditional offshore wind turbines secured to the ocean floor. (AP, E&E $, Reuters, Politico Pro $, The Hill, The Verge, KVIA, Oregon Capital Chronicle, CNN, The Oregonian)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: As utilities seek to relocate coal ash, will Black communities bear the burden? (Energy News Network), Gulf Coast residents fear they live in 'sacrifice zone' for booming natural gas industry (Houston Chronicle), Migrants on Martha's Vineyard flight say they were told they were going to Boston (NPR), DeSantis flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard may have violated federal law, experts say (Rolling Stone, Washington Post $, News4JAX, Vice), ‘Racist tactics’: DeSantis sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard echoes ‘segregationists,’ senator says (NewsOne, Black Wall Street Times)

• JACKSON WATER CRISIS: Jackson's boil water advisory lifted after clean water restored (Axios, AP), Jackson's water crisis is a climate justice wake-up call (TIME)

EAST AFRICA: Historic famine looms as drought grips east Africa (Grist)

FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: Curbing power prices will cost Poland over [$6.35 billion] (Reuters), European energy crisis should be no surprise - Zurich Insurance chairman (Reuters), European governments defy market volatility with green bond bonanza (Reuters), European union signals a move away from wood energy (New York Times $),Households a wild card as Europe moves to end Russian gas dependence (Wall Street Journal $), Serbia readies 3 bln euros for energy imports in winter (Reuters), Russian oil giant Rosneft earns $7 billion after crude-price surge (Wall Street Journal $), War put Ukraine’s biggest nuclear plant at risk. Will it threaten atomic energy’s revival? (HuffPost), Europe gas poised for third weekly loss amid push to ease crisis (Bloomberg $)

COP27: Campaigners call for climate crisis global day of action during COP27 (The Guardian)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: [US] should focus on climate change for Pacific islands- leaders (Reuters)

DENIAL: Internal documents cast doubt on Big Oil climate promises (The Hill, E&E $)

GOP vs. ESG: Republicans plan legal assault on climate disclosure rules for public companies (The Guardian)

MEDIA: A new website aims to penetrate the fog of pollution permitting in Houston (Inside Climate News), CNN did not publish headline suggesting climate change is seasonal (Reuters Fact Check)

PIPELINES: Feds blame Enbridge for fatal Ky. gas pipeline explosion (E&E $), Judge rules Hubbard County can't blockade protest camp near Enbridge Line 3 pipeline (Star Tribune $, AP, Law360 $)

VANESSA: UNICEF names climate activist Vanessa Nakate goodwill ambassador (Reuters), Nakate: Leaders are missing the human face of climate change (AP)

PUBLIC OPINION: Adults around the world think climate change impacts will be severe: poll (The Hill)

DEMOCRACY & RULE OF LAW: Georgia 2020 election inquiry may lead to prison sentences, prosecutor says (Washington Post $, The Root), NY attorney general may sue Trump after rejecting settlement offer (New York Times $, NY Daily News, The Root)

INFLATION REDUCTION ACT: How oil companies could thrive under the climate law (E&E News)

• SIDE DEALS:  House Dem leaders scramble permitting reform effort (E&E News)

AGENCIES: Ozone layer hits a "significant milestone" as concentrations of harmful chemicals drop 50%, NOAA says (CBS), USDA to fund push to store carbon in New England forests (AP)

EPA: Biden's EPA enforcement nominee to join agency (E&E $), Trump White House bowed to EPA pressure on 'secret science' rule (E&E $)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: SEC chair spars with senators over climate rules (The Hill)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden administration awards $900M to 35 states for EV charging network as automakers ramp up battery plans (Utility Dive, Gizmodo, E&E $), Biden officials tout moves to buy greener materials (E&E $), Can Biden take credit for an ‘electric vehicle manufacturing boom’? (Washington Post $), Gulf oil sale revival forces Biden to compromise on climate (E&E $), Klain presses progressives on permitting reforms (Axios)

HOUSE: Congress examines claims oil companies harassing climate activists (Houston Chronicle), With Peltola on board, Dems revive fisheries law overhaul (E&E $), Cori Bush to Amazon: “Shut up and work” is not a climate disaster plan (Mother Jones), Committee blocks GOP maneuver on immigration, public lands (E&E $), House Democrats: Big Oil failing to take climate pledges 'seriously' (Politico Pro $)

ELECTIONS: Midterm elections could shrink climate liability battlefield (E&E News)

TRIBES: State of unease: Colorado basin tribes without water rights (AP)

CITIES AND STATES: Revealed: rightwing US lobbyists help craft slew of anti-protest fossil fuel bills (The Guardian), City and state officials continue searching for the cause of last week’s e. coli contamination of Baltimore’s water (Inside Climate News), Dems: Oil funded underground bid to beat Colo. referendum (E&E $), NY Public Service Commision initiates act to decarbonise buildings (Reuters)

• CALIFORNIA: Californians saved the grid again. They should be paid more for it (Canary Media), Newsom opposes EV ballot measure to tax millionaires (E&E News), California removes incentive to use natural gas in new buildings (Bloomberg $)

• LOUISIANA: Louisiana officials approve flood funds stalled over abortion (E&E News)

FERC: D.C. Circuit leans toward FERC in NEPA dispute (E&E News), FERC's murky leadership future could derail U.S. climate goals (Politico Pro $)

TRANSITION: What does ​‘just transition’ really mean? (Canary Media)

IMPACTS: The future is being rewritten by historic green investment—and growing climate devastation (TIME), Earth just experienced one of its warmest summers on record (Washington Post $), Latin America and Caribbean face growing climate change risks -Moody's (Reuters), Mapped: America's extreme summer weather of 2022 (Axios, The Hill), Scientists now can monitor thinning sea ice year-round (E&E $), See the wreckage left by California's landslides (Gizmodo), Sudan’s summer flooding continues, raising death toll to 134 (AP), Thousands still without stable housing in eastern Kentucky, and FEMA aid is slow to materialize (Gizmodo), Floods in Italy kill at least 10; rescues from roofs, trees (AP, New York Times $)

DROUGHT: Drought takes a toll on farmers and ranchers across the country (Modern Farmer)

WILDFIRES: California wildfire ‘looking a whole heck of a lot better’ (AP), Swelling Mosquito Fire now California's largest wildfire this year (Axios)

HURRICANES: Tropical Storm Fiona a heavy rain threat to Leeward Islands and beyond (Yale Climate Connections), Tropical Storm Fiona forms, soon to lash Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico (Washington Post $)

WATER: As the Colorado River shrinks, water managers see promise in recycling sewage (KUNC), Cambodian mega dam’s resurrection on the Mekong ‘the beginning of the end’ (Mongabay), Lake Powell pipeline still in play even as reservoir shrinks (E&E $), Nevada looks to conservation as the Colorado River dwindles (AP), The mad rush for groundwater in the Central Valley (KQED)

RENEWABLES: Solar developer Prospect14 launches joint venture aiming for a 10 GW solar project pipeline by 2025 (Utility Dive)

• SCHOOLHOUSE SOLAR: Facing budget shortfalls, these schools are turning to the sun (New York Times $), Nearly 1 in 10 US schools now using solar power (The Hill)

BATTERIES: Lithium: Storing more clean power with less pollution (Yale Climate Connections)

STORAGE: Energy storage tech going mainstream as Goldman Sachs, partner acquire majority stake in EPC Power (Utility Dive)

OIL & GAS: BP reaches $2.75M deal over Indiana refinery pollution (AP), [Persian] Gulf states, rich from oil, spread influence with financial lifelines (Wall Street Journal $), US on track to use record amount of natural gas for electricity in 2022, according to EIA (Houston Chronicle), U.S. natgas drops 9% on rail deal, bigger than expected storage build (Reuters)

• SHELL GAMES: Shell picks gas veteran Sawan as CEO to lead transition (Reuters, AP, Wall Street Journal $, Axios), Could Wael Sawan usher in a renewable revolution at Shell? (The Guardian), For Shell’s priorities, follow the money (Wall Street Journal $)

ORPHANED WELLS: Congress wants to fix Texas's abandoned oil wells. But the problem is much larger. (Houston Chronicle)

PLASTICS: The titans of plastic (Environmental Health News)

COAL COUNTRY: At old coal mines, the American chestnut tries for a comeback (New York Times $)

HYDROGEN: Yara to build renewable hydrogen plant in Western Australia (Reuters)

UTILITIES: Texas co-op Brazos advances Chapter 11 settlement of winter storm bill (Wall Street Journal $), Your utility bill is going to hurt, but the market might benefit (Wall Street Journal $)

EVs: An EV with 600 miles of range is tantalizingly close (Inside Climate News), GM plans $491M Indiana plant upgrade to help support EVs (AP), Uber CEO says that it will phase out gas-powered cars by 2030 (CBS, CBS)

CRYPTO: Ethereum just completed The Merge — here’s how much energy it’s saving (The Verge), Ethereum’s eco-friendly ‘merge’ wins plaudits from EU, US lawmakers (Politico Pro $)

AVIATION: Air Canada to buy 30 electric planes from Heart Aerospace (Reuters)

BOOKS & STORYTELLING: ‘We had to leave home for a better future’: Kate Beaton on the brutal, drug-filled reality of life in an oil camp (The Guardian interview), Rewilding mythology (Atmos)

GAME NIGHT: Almost half a million people have played this climate change card game (Yale Climate Connections)

BUSINESSES: What’s the easiest way for a company to improve on sustainability? (Protocol), McDonald’s strikes 15-year solar energy deal with EDF Renewables North America (Utility Dive), Luis Vuitton reduces thermostat and light use in shops to save energy (The Guardian, Reuters), Samsung sets goal to attain 100% clean energy by 2050 (AP, Reuters), Tech workers have the power to strengthen their companies’ climate plans (Protocol)

• PATAGONIA: The founder of Patagonia is giving the company away so that all the profits go toward fighting climate change (Buzzfeed, HuffPost, AP, The Guardian, WBUR, NPR), Why Patagonia’s billionaire founder just gave away his company (TIME), Yvon Chouinard – the ‘existential dirtbag’ who founded and gifted Patagonia (The Guardian), 5 things to know about Patagonia’s unusual history of activism (Washington Post $)

PREPPING: Americans learn skills to survive the climate crisis – in a wilderness course (The Guardian)

FINANCE: Large companies' assets at growing risk of climate impact - S&P Global (Reuters)

WILDLIFE: Flight of the condors (Washington Post $), New atlas of bird migration shows extraordinary journeys (AP)

INTERNATIONAL: Australian PM supports Charles’s continuing climate advocacy (AP), Indonesia unveils new regulation to boost renewable energy use (Reuters), Liz Truss to lift fracking ban ‘despite little progress on earthquake risk’ (The Guardian), Southeast Asia needs $210 bln annual investment on renewables -IRENA (Reuters), Traffic, water shortages, now floods: The slow death of India's tech hub? (Reuters), Vietnam vowed climate action. Then it jailed 4 activists. (E&E $)

• Pakistan’s next superflood is coming. The cavalry isn’t. (Foreign Policy, Fatima Bhojani commentary)
• FEMA must revamp flood insurance program (Bloomberg Law, Joel Scata op-ed)
• How Wright’s Law can right the climate (Project Syndicate, Anand Gopal op-ed)
• The US is on the cusp of a clean energy revolution — we can’t leave anyone behind (The Hill, Devashree Saha and Dan Lashof op-ed)
• 2022’s supercharged summer of climate extremes: How global warming and La Niña fueled disasters on top of disasters (The Conversation, Kevin Trenberth op-ed)
• Margaret Atwood doesn't think we're doomed (TIME, interview)
• Taking the utility monopoly door down to put more solar up (Utility Dive, John Farrell op-ed)
• A nationwide abortion ban would hurt Black women the most (The Grio, Donna Brazile column)
• Oil prices and financial markets brace for recession (Reuters, John Kemp column)
• The West’s water crisis is worse than you think (The Hill, Jonathan Overpeck op-ed)
• Jackson’s water crisis is a harbinger of things to come (The Real News, Kali Akuno interview)
• DeSantis’ migrant stunt is kidnapping by another name (Daily Beast, David Bier op-ed)
• Subsidies only feed inflation (Wall Street Journal, Tomas Philipson op-ed $)
• Nuclear power still doesn’t make much sense (New York Times, Farhad Manjoo op-ed $)
• Can Europe save its industrial metals production sector? (Reuters, Andy Home column)
• China is writing the story of the climate future (New York Times, David Wallance Wells $)
• The SEC can’t transform itself into a climate-change enforcer (Wall Street Journal, Bernard Sharfman and James Copland op-ed $)
• Biden freezes oil and gas leases (Wall Street Journal, Editorial Board $)

YouTube Still Failing Miserably At Demonetizing Climate Disinformation

A few weeks ago, we pointed out that Google, despite having 10 months to figure out how to enforce their half-assed policy of just demonetizing climate disinfo, and not removing it altogether, is failing to take ads off of climate denial videos on YouTube.

They did then demonetize a couple of the videos, and since then we've kept an eye out for more examples. Turns out there's plenty! 

Here's Larry Elder with a video claiming electric vehicles are bad for the environment, which is false, unless of course you're talking about them relative to improving public transit, cycling, and pedestrian transportation options, which he's not. 

A Sky News video that's 3 years old, and has over 2 million views, is claiming global cooling is coming. It's not, but they're earning money off of ads on the video anyway! Same goes for a more recent clip, where Roy Spencer complains about Google demonetizing his blog — but not this video about it, or this other one about supposed censorship of a newsletter that linked to Spencer's disinfo-spreading blog.  

Marc Morano's been pushing his climate lockdown conspiracies, spreading disinfo on monetized videos at NewsMax and elsewhere, as is Alex Epstein.  

Tucker Carlson's rant about cavemen relying on fossil fuels is monetized, because apparently "climate disinfo" doesn't include being wrong about when fossil fuels were developed by an order of thousands of years. 

Michael Shellenberger's anti-renewable TED Talk is nearing 5 million monetized views, something we noticed because he tweeted about it, and followed up with a piece of his in phrenology-loving Quillette. Shellenberger also stars in a monetized video by John Stossel, blaming environmentalists for the complicated situation in Sri Lanka in a video almost certainly produced with Koch bucks, given Stossel's prized spot as a top Koch Institute contractor. 

British Infowarrior Paul Joseph Watson is making money off a video blaming environmentalists for the end of pubs, while Bjorn Lomborg and Jordan Peterson are making money for Ralph Schoellhammer's channel. 

And then perhaps this one should only be half-demonetized, but the debate between Steve Koonin and Andy Dessler is monetized, despite Reason's ample Koch et al. funding. 

Perhaps most amusingly, a video attacking Australian scientists who dared suggest the country's anti-disinfo actions should actually, you know, address disinfo, is monetized. 

With over a dozen examples of monetized disinformation, the question is: does YouTube demonetize anything on its own, or is it just waiting for other people to moderate the platform? 

Maybe we need to start a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the corporate giant to hire someone to do this full time. The company only made $16 billion in the second quarter of 2022. 

Apparently that's not enough to afford to actually enforce their lackluster disinfo policy!

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