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Fiona 'Completely Vaporizing' Homes in Canada As PR Remains Without Electricity: More than half of Puerto Rican electricity customers, over 700,000, were still without power Monday morning after Hurricane Fiona hit the island over a week ago. Two thousand miles north, the Category 2-strength remnants of Hurricane Fiona pummeled Atlantic Canada over the weekend, killing at least one person in Newfoundland, knocking out electricity for more than 540,000 homes, and generally wreaking "unprecedented" damage across the region. That assessment, from emergency preparedness minister Bill Blair to reporters on Sunday, is backed by the fact that the storm was “the lowest-pressured land-falling storm on record in Canada” according to the Canadian Hurricane Centre. The storm surge set a new record high-tide level in Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, where René Roy, editor in chief of the local Wreckhouse Weekly, described the storm as, "an absolute howitzer … as bad as anyone here has ever seen." The wind, he said, was not uncommon, "we’re used to that. But what we’re not used to is 30-, 40-, 50-foot waves coming up onto the roads, moving houses 60 feet or just completely vaporizing them.” The Canadian military has been mobilized to assist the affected area, which officials said could take months to recover. (Puerto Rican power outages: AP, NBC, Canary Media; Canada damage: AP, Reuters, Washington Post $, NPR, CNN, AP, NBC, New York Times $, Yale Climate Connections, BBC, Bloomberg $, The Guardian; Canadian power outages: Axios, NPR, CNN; Historic Canadian storms: Washington Post $; Photos: CNN; High-latitude intensity: The Guardian; Climate Signals background: Hurricanes)

EPA Prioritizes EJ With New Office: EPA administrator Michael Regan announced the creation of an Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights on Saturday to administer $3 billion in environmental justice funding and, activists hope, embed environmental justice into the agency's organizational framework. “It will now become a part of the institutional fabric of EPA,” longtime EJ advocate Vernice Miller-Travis told the Washington Post. “It’s going to take a hell of a lot to try to unravel that going forward.” Mustafa Santiago Ali, who helped craft EPA's environmental justice efforts in the 1990s, described the institutional changes as "transformational" and the office "helps to make sure that environmental justice will always be dealt with on a high level." The new office expands the EPA's current 55-person EJ team into a team of 200, spread across all 10 EPA region offices and putting it on par with air and water pollution teams. “As a person who attended segregated schools," said Dollie Burwell, whose 1982 protests in Warren County, NC, made her the mother of the Environmental Justice movement, "I expect incremental achievements.” (Washington Post, AP, New York Times $, CNN, Politico Pro $)

US Bitcoin Mining Pollutes As Much As 6 Million Cars: The U.S. bitcoin industry produces as much climate pollution every year as 6 million internal combustion cars and three times more than the country's biggest coal plant, concludes a new report from multiple environmental groups. The global share of energy-intensive bitcoin "mining" in the U.S. has increased by more than an order of magnitude since 2020, jumping from 3.5% to 38% after China banned bitcoin mining in 2021, and the groups called on states to ban new mining operations. "We’re at an inflection point," Jeremy Fisher, a Sierra Club energy analyst and report co-author told Thomson Reuters. "We’re trying to rapidly decarbonize...Bitcoin mining has the potential to undo some of that progress" with its 27.4 million tonnes of emissions in the past year. Although some claim to offset emissions from the mining process, "there’s a lot of greenwashing going on," Fisher warned. (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

Rocky Mountain High-er Wildfires Threaten Western Water Supplies: A vicious cycle of heat and drought is pushing wildfires to higher elevations, threatening the winter snowpack critical for water supplies across the Western U.S. a recent study shows. The research, published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds the snowpack in areas like those burned by major 2020 Colorado wildfires melted nearly a month earlier than in comparable, unburned areas — due in large part to the charred (and darker) vegetation and soot on the snow absorbing more heat from the sun. Across the west's "late snow zone" where snow normally persists until May but is now melting 18-24 days earlier, 70% have experienced an increase in wildfire activity since 1984. Historically slow-melting snowpack is a main water source in the West, and the weeks-early melting at higher altitudes poses “a major threat to a critical water reservoir for the region,” CSU scientist and co-author of the paper Dan McGrath, told the Washington Post. (Washington Post $, High Country News, Courthouse News; Climate signals background: 2020 Western wildfire season, Western U.S. megadrought)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: After cancer-causing chemicals were found in Fifth Ward soil, Houston mayor says cleanup plans are inadequate (Texas Tribune), The climate crisis and the energy transition are exacerbating inequality, putting those least responsible in the worst position (Business Insider)

PAKISTAN: Pakistani leader details flood devastation (AP, Shahbaz Sharif interview), ‘What happened in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan,’ flood-ravaged country warns UN (CNN), Floods left behind an ‘ocean of human suffering,’ says Pakistan PM (Bloomberg $), Pakistan is still reeling from unprecedented floods that caused widespread destruction (NPR)

PUERTO RICO: 5 numbers that show Hurricane Fiona's devastating impact on Puerto Rico (NPR), Fiona blackouts draw renewed scrutiny of Puerto Rico’s electric grid woes (The Hill), In beleaguered Puerto Rico, Fiona revives trauma of Hurricane Maria (Reuters), Hurricane Maria's impact was like "experiencing the end of the world" and Fiona has unleashed "hell." It's only expected to get worse. (CBS), Puerto Rico was still recovering from Maria when Fiona hit. Now, many fear the long road ahead (NPR), Puerto Rico’s vulnerability to hurricanes is magnified by weak government and bureaucratic roadblocks (The Conversation), Satellite images show a dark Puerto Rico after Hurricane Fiona (Gizmodo), The Puerto Rican diaspora leverages lessons from Hurricane Maria to help after Fiona (NPR)

ALASKA: A massive storm destroyed fishing boats in Alaska, leading to fears of food insecurity (NPR), Alaskan tribal communities confront food insecurity after storm (Axios), Biden declares major disaster in Alaska after severe storm (The Hill)

GLOBAL PROTESTS: Students in the streets demand climate change justice (PBS NewsHour), Afraid and anxious, young protesters demand climate action (AP), Global climate change protests demand compensation ahead of COP27 (Reuters), Thousands call for ‘climate reparations and justice’ in global protests (The Guardian)

HURRICANE IAN: Hurricane Ian churns toward Florida, with "rapid strengthening" expected in coming days (CBS), Ian forecast to be major hurricane in Gulf of Mexico and hit florida (Washington Post $, Washington Post $, ABC, NBC, Axios), Hurricane Ian’s uncertain path has all of Florida preparing (CNN), Biden approves emergency declaration for Florida as Ian approaches (The Hill, AP), Ian now a hurricane, set to rapidly intensify before pummeling Florida (AccuWeather)

UNGA & CLIMATE WEEK: Vanuatu makes bold call for global treaty to phase out fossil fuels (The Guardian, Climate Home), UN General Assembly previews climate summit conflicts (Axios), UN official demands fulfillment of net-zero promises (Bloomberg $), A global ‘disconnect’ in full view (New York Times $), 

FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: Germany inks LNG deal as chancellor visits Gulf to secure energy (Reuters), Greece's sole LNG terminal ramps up imports to replace Russian gas (Reuters)

COP27: Why climate-change 'loss and damage' will be a hot topic at COP27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: New UN climate chief takes the fight personally (AP, Simon Stiell interview), Bahamas says rich economies must pay for hurricanes they caused (Bloomberg $), Biden has a big climate win at home. Global success still depends on China. (Washington Post $), Global leaders meet in Pittsburgh for climate talks (NPR), Humanity healed the ozone hole. Can we do the same for climate change? (USA Today), US Senate ratifies treaty to phase down climate-warming HFCs from refrigerators and air conditioners – but what will replace them this time? (The Conversation, Inside Climate News), 

TORRES STRAIT ISLANDERS: Australia should compensate Torres Strait Islanders for climate crisis failure, UN says (The Guardian, ABC AU, Al Jazeera, Reuters, SBS (AUS))

DENIAL, DISINFO & GREENWASHING: Big Oil pledged to fight climate change, but do their actions line up? (PBS NewsHour), How Russian trolls helped keep the women’s March out of lock step (New York Times $)

• WORLD BANK: Climate activists want Biden to fire the head of the world bank. Here's why (NPR, New York Times $), Head of World Bank under pressure after White House condemns his ‘climate denial’ comments (The Guardian, Axios, Reuters, CNN, Reuters), World Bank head says he’s not a climate denier, won’t quit (AP, Bloomberg $), It’s become dangerous to piss off Al Gore (Slate)

CHICAGO GAS EXPLOSION: Natural gas cause of building explosion that killed man, injured 7 others: CFD (WGN, Block Club Chicago, WLS-Chicago)

INFLATION REDUCTION ACT: Inflation Reduction Act’s expanded biofuel incentives raise concerns about fraud (CNBC), Joe Biden’s climate bill has the US battery industry revved up (Bloomberg $)

• SIDE DEALS: Sanders, Warren say Manchin big oil deal would “steamroll” frontline communities (Truthout), Fight over Joe Manchin’s permitting overhaul clouds stopgap funding bill outlook (Wall Street Journal $), 'Heavy lifting' needed to pass US energy-permitting bill, Joe Manchin says (Reuters), Manchin appeals to GOP to seize moment on energy permitting bill (Bloomberg $), Manchin’s permitting-reform bill splits Dems, pro-renewables groups (Canary Media), Schumer looks for way out of the box on Manchin deal (The Hill)

DOE: DOE opens $7B hydrogen hub funding opportunity, issues draft production standard (Utility Dive)

DOT: Pete Buttigieg blasts Texas Republicans on handling of migrants, LGBTQ rights (Texas Tribune), TribFest: Oil terminal protest interrupts Buttigieg’s Q&A (but he doesn’t mind) (Austin Chronicle)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden to tout climate package at Global Citizen Festival (CNN), How the Biden administration's climate goals align with the military (NPR)

THE HILL: New federal anti-SLAPP legislation would protect activists and whistleblowers from abusive lawsuits (Inside Climate News)

SENATE: US Sen. Warnock: Electric car tax credit needs ‘flexibility’ (AP)

CITIES AND STATES: After destruction, Florida Air Force base rebuilds to face effects of climate change (NBC), Maryland gets $144 million in federal funds to rehabilitate aging water infrastructure (Inside Climate News), Massachusetts DOT adds solar panels to stretch of highway noise barrier (Yale Climate Connections), Seattle mayor signs Green New Deal. Here’s what’s in it. (The Hill), Wind project sparks battle in rural Ohio (Wall Street Journal $)

• CALIFORNIA: California's pioneering climate change plans to nix gas heater sales by 2030 (USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, The Hill, Bloomberg $), California bans mandated parking near transit to fight high housing prices, climate change (LA Times $), California’s EV push hinges on more power—and help from drivers (Wall Street Journal $), Dodging Blackouts, California faces new questions on its power supply (New York Times $), New law will remove the word ‘squaw’ from California place names (LA Times $)

FERC: FERC commissioners pursue market, non-market answers to ISO-NE’s ‘dire’ winter reliability risks (Utility Dive), FERC’s Glick has ‘significant concerns’ over proposed incentives for utility cybersecurity investments (Utility Dive)

PUBLIC LANDS: Wildly popular and under attack: The political battle over America’s public lands (HuffPost)

IMPACTS: ‘Fighting for inches’ in the Southeast’s struggle with salt (Yale Climate Connections), America’s summer of heat, floods and climate change (The Conversation), Climate change is turning lakes a different color (The Hill), Kids born right after a natural disaster more likely to have mental health issues, new research shows (Boston Globe $), Narrow Delaware beach highway under threat from climate change (WHYY), Three rivers across the globe are under threat (NBC), Climate change is making rain difficult to predict – we trained an AI to help tropical countries adapt (The Conversation)

HEAT: The corn belt will get hotter. Farmers will have to adapt. (Grist)

WILDFIRES: California’s wildfire activity is running below average this year. But experts warn it’s not over (CNN), In California, a race to save the world’s largest trees from megafires (Inside Climate News), Wildland firefighters struggle to keep up with raging wildfires (NBC)

HURRICANES: Hermine, a post-tropical cyclone, brings heavy rain to Canary Islands (New York Times $), Super Typhoon Noru heads for Philippines after ‘explosive’ surge (New York Times $, Washington Post $), Storm pounds Japan with rain, leaving landslides in its wake (AP), Studying hurricanes at sea to save lives on shore (Yale Climate Connections), Warming climate makes extreme hurricane rains more likely for Puerto Rico (Yale Climate Connections)

WATER: A plan to share the pain of water scarcity divides farmers in this rural Nevada community (Inside Climate News), How a 100-year-old miscalculation drained the Colorado River (Vox)

BOOZE: Climate change forces French vineyards to alter the way they make wine (Wall Street Journal $)

ALL ABOARD!: Amtrak aims for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 (The Hill)

RENEWABLES: Compared to oil and gas, offshore wind is 125 times better for taxpayers (Grist), New York launches solicitation for 2GW of large-scale renewables (PV Tech), Planning rules for new onshore windfarms likely to be eased in UK (The Guardian)

BATTERIES: In Chile's desert lie vast reserves of lithium — key for electric car batteries (NPR)

BUILDINGS: Are heat pumps the key to accelerating the energy transition? (The Hill)

OIL & GAS: How an oil fracking boom to bust startup plans to thrive in the climate change era (CNBC)

HYDROGEN: New York Power Authority burns green hydrogen in retrofitted General Electric turbine, cuts emissions 14% (Utility Dive), The US wants to become a hydrogen production powerhouse (The Verge)

GRID: Volkswagen, Elia sign MoU to explore vehicle integration into power grid (Reuters)

EVs: California needs to charge electric vehicles during day, not night, to save grid, study says (LA Times $), Electric car battery bottlenecks have a way of being worked out (Bloomberg $), EV sales to hit all-time high in 2022, IEA says, but more work needed to put world on net-zero path (CNBC), Toyota engages with critics of its EV push (Wall Street Journal $)

ACTIVISM: Chilling video released by youth climate activists focuses on California wildfires (The Hill)

AVIATION: The airline race for a breakthrough fuel to cut one billion tons of carbon is just starting (CNBC)

BOOKS: Scientist Michael Mann expresses hope during West Coast book tour (Yale Climate Connections)

BUSINESSES: Can a clothing company save the planet? Patagonia wants to find out. (ABC), Salesforce’s carbon market meets companies where they are (Bloomberg $)

CARBON PRICING: Carbon-credit surplus could soon turn to shortage (Wall Street Journal $), Countries try to dodge EU's carbon market fundraising plan (Reuters)

CARBON REMOVAL: The world’s largest carbon removal project yet is headed for Wyoming (The Verge)

CARBON CAPTURE: Exxon’s long-shot embrace of carbon capture in the Houston area just got massive support from congress (Inside Climate News)

FINANCE: Al Gore calls out ‘greenwashing’ risks as funds quit green club (Bloomberg $)

IN MEMORIAM: ’Eco-warrior” and Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman dies (AP), Newton Harrison, a founder of the eco-art movement, dies at 89 (New York Times $)

INTERNATIONAL: EU's green shift depends on mammoth investment in energy grid, document says (Reuters), Fracking could shake the Conservative vote (The Guardian), Keir Starmer unveils green growth plan to counter Liz Truss’s tax cuts (The Guardian), Poland to raise $2.75 billion with energy windfall tax, says minister (Reuters), UK government to relax planning rules for onshore wind (Bloomberg $)

• How the US came to protect the natural world — and exploit it at the same time (LA Times, Adam M. Sowards op-ed $)
• What many progressives misunderstand about fighting climate change (The Atlantic, Alec Stapp op-ed)
• Climate change is nudging us toward the next pandemic (LA Times, Arjun V.K. Sharma op-ed $)
• For the Inflation Reduction Act to work, the US needs permitting reform  (The Hill, Heather Zichal op-ed)
• Climate-smart idea: Don’t cut down older forests (The Hill, Mike Dombeck and Chris Wood op-ed)
• What divergent crude oil and natural gas prices portend for the EU and US (The Hill, Nicholas Sargen op-ed)
• Is the Inflation Reduction Act the end of the wholesale clean attribute market? (Utility Dive, Sarah Ladin and Burçin Ünel op-ed)
• Joe Manchin’s permitting bust (Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal Editorial Board $)
• Progressive mind over matter in California (Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal Editorial Board $)
• New abnormal: 2022 should be a cooler year — but keeps breaking heat records (The Hill, Yangyang Xu, Gabrielle Dreyfus, and Durwood Zaelke op-ed)
• Both parties should support my permitting-reform bill (Wall Street Journal, Sen. Joe Manchin op-ed $)

With No Signs Of The Climate Lockdown and Great Reset In 2022, Morano Finds It In 1930s 

In April of 2020, Marc Morano saw the Covid mitigation measures as a valuable fundraising opportunity, and switched from his usual climate disinformation to arguing that the Covid "lockdown" was a trial-run for more severe climate lockdowns. 

A year and half later, having had plenty of time to maybe find some evidence to support his conspiracy theory, he has failed to do so. When pressed in an interview last fall, Morano was completely incapable of naming even a single example of someone actually calling for climate lockdowns. 

Now, more than 1 million Americans have died from Covid, yet any sembalance of a "lockdown" is long gone, and the President has claimed the pandemic is over, but Morano's still telling whoever will listen (rightwing nuts) that climate lockdowns are coming any day now. 

Having failed to find any evidence of it in the present, and struggling to even get people to imagine a strong public health-based policy response given the country's failure to sufficiently respond to Covid, Morano has instead turned his sights on the past. Specifically, on Stuart Chase, an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 

In his latest "Special Report," Morano points to a smattering of calls to nationalize some industries (to save them from collapse given the fossil fuel price spike as the industry profits mightily from the economic impacts of the Ukraine war) as evidence that the Great Reset's plan "to intentionally collapse the current system with policies to create a crisis, havoc, and shortages" is leading, as designed, to "a huge coordinated push to promote nationalization or government takeover of the impacted industries." 

And as evidence? Well "in the 1930s and 1940s," — and yes, Morano actually does seem to be serious about this — FDR advisor Stuart Chase "loved the idea of managing all aspects of society" and asked (rhetorically) in his 1932 book A New Deal, "Why should the Soviets have all the fun remaking the world?" 

Morano doesn't (can't) actually explain how that's germane to the year 2022, but he does say that "Chase’s lust for Soviet ideology could be updated to 2022 by replacing the “Soviets” for “China” because of "any number of current Chinese social credit style policies emanating from the World Economic Forum, Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau, or from Australia, New Zealand, or U.S. COVID lockdown policies, particularly from blue states and cities"" 

Now, he is right, sort of, in that "any number" could be considered to include the actual number of social credit style policies out there, zero. But zero technically isn't a number, it's the placeholder for one, but for Morano, we'll call it close enough. 

Apparently Chase's desire for the government to do good things for society "now appears to be coming to fruition" because "this is not circa 1990 when we were talking about a shadowy secretive vision of a New World Order. This is 2022 now, and we are seeing a ‘new normal’ being imposed upon the world." 

Morano maintains that the renewable energy transition is an intentional collapse of the energy system, and EVs an intentional collapse of the transportation system, and claims "the ability to eat meat is being banned to compel us to eat 'lab-grown' fake meat and eat insects." 

Now, if any of this were even remotely true, it'd be pretty obvious, and a pretty big deal! But it's not, and there's no real evidence for it, so instead of providing any, Morano's "Special report" just repeats itself multiple times. 

A passage in the header, where Morano puts two full paragraphs instead of a normal sub-headline, appears later in the post in case readers missed it in bold and italics up top. The list of stories over the past 2+ years talking about nationalization appears at the top (after the font changes between the first two paragraphs) and then again in the body of the report. 

A ten-point list from Stuart Chase, his "vision of the world" that Morano wrote "sounded an awful lot like the WEF's Great Reset," ranging from "a strong centralized government" to "control of energy sources" and others, is listed in italics in the middle of Morano's post. 

And in case you missed it there, is also pasted in at the end of the post too, for no discernable reason, where it's described as an excerpt from Morano's Great Reset book, following an image showing, again, that exact same text. 

What does Chase's 1932 desire for government control over critical infrastructure have to do with Covid or climate change? Nothing!

But for Morano's audience, repeating something three times means that surely it must be true!

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