FIRST LOOK(s):

Loss & Damage Negotiations Held Up By US: Rich countries' inability to agree on a funding mechanism to compensate developing nations for the damages caused by the impacts of climate change is emerging as the flash point at negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh. Significant progress on loss and damage, including setting up a pathway to providing a dedicated fund for vulnerable nations, is widely viewed as a litmus test for the success or failure at COP27. Rich countries, like the U.S., have long-obstructed compensation methods for poor countries for climate-caused losses. Now, their insistence on establishing processes and procedures to the exclusion of providing an exclusive loss and damage fund is being met with increasingly angry protests in- and outside the official negotiating rooms. "The potential to stall talks and land a devastating blow for us as small island developing states," lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and Antigua and Barbuda Health and Environment minister Molwyn Joseph said in a statement. “We have come too far to fail on loss and damage finance. Three-quarters of humanity is relying on a favourable outcome at COP27." (CNN, Reuters, AP, Context, AFP via Barron's; Protests: CNN)

Nearly All Of US Hit By Extreme Weather Disaster In Last Decade: More than 93% of people in the U.S. live in a county hit by a severe weather disaster in the last decade, according to the new Atlas of Disaster report from Rebuild by Design. Between 2011 and 2021, some counties have endured as many 12 federally-declared disasters. California, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Tennessee had the most disasters (at least 20 each) and five different states (Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, North Dakota, and Vermont) received the most federal aid per person. “When disasters hit .... funding doesn’t get to the places of greatest need,” Robert Bullard, an environmental and climate justice professor at Texas Southern University, told the AP. “Disaster funding is oftentimes skewed toward communities that are more affluent and have the most resources.” Additionally, disaster recovery efforts often rely on vulnerable, often undocumented, migrant labor. Not every severe weather disaster covered in the report can be attributed to climate change, but climate change is increasing the frequency and/or the severity of many of the most deadly and costly disasters.  (AP, New York Times $, Grist)

Worldwide Joint Editorial Calls For Fossil Windfall Taxes: Dozens of media entities across the world co-published a joint editorial Tuesday calling for a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies to combat the climate crisis. UN Secretary General António Guterres said countries should enact such taxes on oil and gas firms, with revenues going to countries already experiencing the worst damages from climate change-fueled disasters. "We realise that climate change cannot be fought alone," said Ozayr Patel of South Africa's Mail and Guardian. "It is time to hold polluters accountable and we hope this is the first step to achieving that.” In the U.S., the Miami Herald, The Nation, Rolling Stone, and others published the editorial. (The Guardian)

COP27 IN PICTURES: Cycle power and gender rights: days eight and nine at COP27 (The Guardian)

USA: Facing questions about climate aid, Democrats blame the GOP (E&E News), US climate envoy Kerry wants development banks overhaul plan by April (Reuters)

AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES: Vanessa Nakate condemns fossil fuel lobbying at UN climate talks as global warming devastates Africa (Democracy Now), Africa deserves right to use natural gas reserves - AfDB chief (Reuters)

OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY: ‘Oil and gas trade show’ promotes carbon capture at COP27 (Climate Home), Is COP27 becoming a ‘fossil fuel trade show’? Oil and gas industry presence looms over UN climate talks (Grid), It’s not just Coca-Cola: corporations have co-opted the UN climate talks (Grist)

EGYPT: Hossam Bahgat on the 'full-scale human rights crisis' in Egypt as country hosts COP27 (Democracy Now), Imprisoned Egyptian activist calls off hunger strike (AP), The fight to save Alaa Abd El-Fattah (MSNBC)

EGYPT ET AL. GAS DEAL: ‘Complete contradiction’: Egypt burns dirtier fuel to sell more gas to Europe (Climate Home)

1.5C LIMIT: A clash at climate talks: should nations keep the 1.5-degree goal? (New York Times $)

DEFORESTATION: At COP27, the US said it will lead efforts to halt deforestation. But at home, the Biden administration is considering massive old growth logging projects (Inside Climate News), Fed up, developing countries form alliance to charge more for rainforest conservation (TIME), At climate summit, Brazil’s Lula says deforestation to stop (AP)(NPR)

CHINA: Biden’s thaw with China could shape the climate talks (E&E News), China complains over support for Taiwan at COP27 climate summit (Reuters), Rich nations stick to coal phase-out as China builds new plants (Reuters), US, China climate envoys meet at COP27 summit in Egypt (AP)

EUROPE: EU tells COP27 it will increase climate ambition (Reuters)

INDIA: India’s energy conundrum: committed to renewables but still expanding coal (The Guardian)

AUSTRALIA: Australia criticized for resisting COP27 push to end international fossil fuel subsidies (The Guardian)

RUSSIA: BBC climate editor removed after questioning Russian delegation on Ukraine at COP27 (The Guardian), Protesters disrupt Russian event at COP27 climate conference (Reuters), Russia: Some nations may blame geopolitics for climate backsliding (Reuters)

BRAZIL: Lula's COP27 visit seen as restoring Brazil's climate credibility (Reuters)

ISLAND NATIONS: As rich nations haggle over climate solutions, storm-ravaged Caribbean is taking matters into its own hands (CNN), New climate early warning system aims to plug weather blind spots around the world (Wall Street Journal $)

DISINFORMATION: Campaigners rally COP27 to fight climate disinformation (AFP), Climate disinformation campaigns threaten COP27 progress, a new report concludes (Inside Climate News), IPG, Omnicom, Sky and Patagonia call on COP27 to tackle climate disinformation (The Drum)

ADVERTISING AND SPONSORS: As global emissions keep rising, advertisers grapple with the industry’s role at UN climate talks (AdWeek), COP27 sponsor [Coca-Cola] named worst polluter 5 years running (E&E $)

PROTESTS: Climate scientists join nonviolent protests at private US airports (Democracy Now)

SORT OF: Turkey raises greenhouse gas emission reduction target for 2030 (Reuters)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: ‘It’s heartbreaking’: Water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, put dialysis patients in danger (Yale Climate Connections), Child care disruptions are crushing parents – Black families could feel it the most (The Root), The environmental consequences of Gov. Ducey’s rogue ‘border wall’ (High Country News)

• JACKSON WATER CRISIS: EPA leader listens to water concerns in Mississippi capital (AP, E&E $)

EAST AFRICA: CBS News goes inside Somali hospitals where climate change-induced hunger is killing children (CBS), Donors must act now to save East Africa from famine, IRC says (Reuters)

8 BILLION PEOPLE: Climate justice gets harder as world population passes 8 billion (Reuters), You’re one in eight billion. (Washington Post $), Earth welcomes its 8 billionth baby. Is that good or bad news... or a bit of both? (NPR)

G20: G20 watchdog says bank climate stress tests may understate exposures (Reuters)

FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: Russian oil exports hold up despite impending EU ban (Wall Street Journal $)

DENIAL & DISINFO: Brands and marketers take a stand on climate disinformation (campaign), Belief in climate misinformation 'more likely' by consuming Fox News and Daily Mail (Media Leader, The Independent), Billionaire-funded “anti-science” campaigns are causing unnecessary deaths (Truthout), Climate myths thrive in Australia: survey (AAP via Shepparton News), Only half of Britons believe humans are causing climate crisis - despite overwhelming scientific evidence (The Independent)

FOSSILIZED WINTER HOME HEATING: Heating New England’s homes will be expensive this winter (Wall Street Journal $)

GOP vs. ESG: Wells Fargo rejects lawmakers request to cut ties with anti-ESG group (Politico Pro $)

HOMETOWN POLLUTION: Al Gore’s new tool can zoom in on the biggest polluters in your town (Gizmodo)

AGENCIES: Meet the Biden official overseeing $7.5B for EVs (E&E News), US nuclear plants expect government decision on credits by year-end (Reuters)

EPA: EPA doubles down on boosting recycling (E&E $), EPA reports on billions spent under infrastructure law (E&E $)

DOE: Biden administration approves $250M for energy efficiency upgrades in homes, businesses (The Hill, E&E $), DOE offers nearly $350M for pilot projects advancing long-duration energy storage (Utility Dive, E&E $, Canary Media), US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds, but tough reliability and land use questions lie ahead (Utility Dive)

DOI: Biden admin advances New York offshore wind project (E&E $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Biden-Xi talks mark shift in US-China ties toward managing fierce competition (Wall Street Journal $), Wealthy nations ink $20B deal to move Indonesia off coal (E&E News, Axios, The Hill, Wall Street Journal $)

THE HILL: GOP leadership elections proceed amid conservative backlash (E&E News), GOP seeks to force probe of climate, infrastructure bill (E&E $), Lawmakers back to deal-making on permitting, spending (E&E News), McCarthy clinches speaker vote; McConnell faces challenge (E&E $)

HOUSE: 4 things on energy policy to watch for under Republican House control (Politico Pro $), House approves bipartisan disaster-resilience bill (E&E $), Maryland legislators introduce plan to designate Chesapeake Bay a national recreation area (The Hill, E&E $)

SENATE: Spotlight returns to Manchin as reelection run looms (E&E $)

ELECTIONS: Sen. Warnock's campaign sues to undo Georgia’s absurd Saturday voting ban ahead of runoff (The Root), 6 wins for Black women in midterm elections that might’ve gone under the radar (The Grio), Support for abortion measures was greater than support for Democratic candidates in some states (The 19th* News)

• 2024: Trump, who as president fomented an insurrection, says he is running again (Washington Post $), Donald Trump, who tried to overturn Biden's legitimate election, launches 2024 bid (NPR), Donald Trump, twice impeached and under FBI investigation, launches 2024 White House bid (CNBC), Trump seeks White House again amid GOP losses, legal probes (AP), Trump announces 2024 run, repeating lies and exaggerating record (New York Times $), How media outlets covered Trump’s misinformation-laced 2024 announcement (CNN), Trump storms back onto the energy scene (E&E News), Mooney to seek Manchin’s Senate seat (E&E News, AP)

CITIES AND STATES: Montpelier leaders hope home energy reports will educate and inspire buyers (Energy News Network), New York considers cap-and-invest program to slash emissions (Politico Pro $), As climate change progresses, trees in cities struggle (AP)

• WEIRD, BECAUSE PUERTO RICO IS IN THE US…: US to supply Puerto Rico with emergency power generation (AP)

FERC: FERC's Christie floats more scrutiny over utility spending on small transmission projects (Politico Pro $)

IMPACTS: October 2022: Earth’s 4th-warmest October on record (Yale Climate Connections)

WILDFIRES: New toolkit of health guidance helps patients and care providers on the front lines of climate change prepare for wildfires (Inside Climate News)

WATER: California tries to harness megastorm floods to ease crippling droughts (Reuters)

(DE)FORESTATION: To fight climate change, Canada turns to Indigenous people to save its forests (New York Times $)

WORLD CUP: Extreme heat pushed workers to the limits in Qatar’s World Cup building boom (Context), Qatar to count emissions from World Cup shuttle flights (AP)

RENEWABLES: De Adjuntas para el mundo: nace el símbolo de la insurrección energética (La Pera del Sur), ‘Everything has changed, nothing has changed’: What’s stopping green energy (The Guardian), Can agriculture and solar farms coexist? It depends (Canary Media), How EDP Renewables is unlocking solar-plus-storage in rural America (Canary Media), Inflation’s next victim: US offshore wind projects (E&E News), The US’s struggle to wean itself from Chinese solar power (Wall Street Journal $), Virginia solar developers say stormwater rules could wash away their margins (Energy News Network)

OIL & GAS: After years of construction, Shell ethane cracker starts up (AP), Greens call for end to drilling in imminent offshore oil plan (E&E $), Shell launches new chemicals facility in the Northeast in push to get closer to market (Houston Chronicle)

PLASTICS: Does the film around detergent pods really biodegrade? A debate is raging. (Washington Post $), Microplastics pervade even top-quality streams in Pennsylvania, study finds (Inside Climate News)

COAL: One year on, is coal being consigned to history? (Energy Monitor)

UTILITIES: Gas utilities look to hydrogen, renewables integration while facing ‘existential threat’ of decarbonization (Utility Dive)

GRID: State regulators urge PJM to adopt ‘circuit breaker’ to prevent extreme prices in emergencies (Utility Dive)

EVs: Auto makers shift to lower-cost batteries for electric vehicles (Wall Street Journal $), Consumer Reports survey: Hybrids are most reliable vehicles (AP)

AVIATION: Small airplanes are finally switching to unleaded fuel (Axios)

BIG GREEN: Sierra Club picks first Black executive director in its history (E&E $)

FOOD: From science fiction to reality, 'no kill' meat may be coming soon (NPR)

FINANCE: Carlyle launches European clean energy developer: 'We would rather build' (Reuters)

WILDLIFE: ‘A beautiful milestone’: Coral grown in Great Barrier Reef nursery spawns for first time (The Guardian), The aspiring ‘coral factory’ restoring reefs wrecked by climate change (Washington Post $), One man’s lonely quest to save the world’s corals draws a following (Washington Post $)

INTERNATIONAL: Australia’s ‘carbon capital’ charts a course away from fossil fuels and a boom-bust cycle (The Guardian), In Colombia, drilling pays the bills. The country’s leaders want to quit oil. (New York Times $)

• …GOVERNING'S HARDER: In Brazil, Lula beat Bolsonaro. Now comes the hard part. (New York Times $)

• ‘In Delhi I can see the climate catastrophe unfolding before my eyes’ (The Guardian, Rahul Raina essay)
• The Guardian view on COP27: This is no time for apathy or complacency (The Guardian, editorial)
• It should not be controversial to say a population of 8 billion will have a grave impact on the climate (The Guardian, John Vidal column)
• Climate backsliding fears and a rallying call: what happened on day eight at COP27 (The Guardian, explainer)
• Emerging US battery supply chain should be wary of China’s information ops (The Hill, Fabian Villalobos op-ed)
• Nationalism is the ideology of our age. No wonder the world is in crisis (The Guardian, Gordon Brown op-ed)
• My suffragette grandmothers are now seen as heroes. Today’s climate protesters will be too (The Guardian, Helen Pankhurst op-ed)
• Climate adaptation and women’s reproductive rights are connected (Context, Kathleen Mogelgaard op-ed)
• Environmentalist on how to handle overpopulation: Focus on human rights (HuffPost, Paul Ehrlich interview)
• Nobody cares about Biden’s energy policy. Great! (New York Times, Paul Krugman column $)
• Net zero is a climate Wild West – but there’s a new law in town (Context, Richard Black op-ed)
• The Inflation Reduction Act leaves low-income homeowners out of the clean energy transition. Or does it? (Utility Dive, Shelly Robbins op-ed)
• Throwing soup at art shifted people's views of climate protests—but maybe not in the right way (TIME, Michael Mann op-ed)

Last Year's 'Private Jet' Disinfo Returns for COP27, as Attacks on Activists and Scientists Swamp Other Types of Denial

In yesterday's sixth edition of COP, Look, Listen, [which will be available as soon as our overworked friends in Sharm el-Sheikh can get it online, if it isn't already by the time you read this, — Ed.] we saw the return of the viral disinfo from COP26 regarding private jet hypocrisy, even more heinous harassment of climate activists, and confirmation from a machine learning program that classifies disinfo that climate attacks are by far the most prevalent type of disinformation on social media. 

While the start of COP27 did have a small spike in posts about private jets by users attempting to recycle last year's viral disinfo meme that portrayed an old photo of private jets that took people to the Super Bowl, it wasn't until the Daily Mail ran a piece on it that we saw activity on par with last year. 

"Ironically," the bulletin reads, "the Daily Mail story that sparked the disinfo trend cites, but does not link to, both an AFP debunk of the ‘400 private jets’ claim and CAAD's own report on how hypocrisy and elitism are key opposition narratives." Oh! Maybe it's a debunking? Nope!

"The Mail story then reiterates the claim, with alleged corroboration that 300-400 private jets landed for COP27 from 'a talk-show host close to the Egyptian leadership' and an unnamed source 'close to the Egyptian aviation authorities.' They do note that other media cited much lower numbers, based on public services that track private jet flight paths. So on the one hand you have publicly available information, and on the other you have a talk show host and supposed government source who apparently won't go on the record about how many plans landed… 

Unfortunately, attacking the rich for flying in private jets is actually one of the more wholesome and approaching legitimate lines of pushback from deniers around COP27. Because in addition to the disgusting sexual assault-charged posts about Greta Thunberg discussed Monday, there are "Social media posts with substantial traction [that] contain abusive language towards activists, and sometimes implicit endorsement of or calls for violence. For instance, a meme joking about activists being flattened by a steamroller has achieved strong engagement in conservative Facebook groups in the UK and Australia." 

Oh charming, just "joking" about running over protestors! Hilarious and definitely not at all a deliberate reference to that time a white supremacist lethally ran over protestors and inspired Republicans to try to legalize running over protestors.

Seriously though, the steamroller posts are "clearly a joke," but that doesn't make it a laughing matter; humor is a common tool in online communities, often providing an “innocent” entry point for more extremist or conspiracist rabbit holes. The leaked style guide for the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website was explicit about hate speech and humor, saying: “The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not” before adding that “this is obviously a ploy.”

And they're not all joking, either. On Telegram, far-right activist and anti-Islam extremist Tommy Robinson wrote: “There will be a day when someone snaps and starts throwing punches and kicks at these just stop oil lot.” He also shared a video that seemingly shows a passerby attacking a climate activist with an approving message. 

But beyond the likes of one of the UK's most risible racists, more centrist voices are getting in on the attacks, with Michael Shellenberger saying "Climate fanatics are weaponizing mental illness," while Roger Pielke Jr. tweeted that “faux apocalypticism” makes climate activists “develop mental health issues.” His post was shared by professional denier accounts like Bjorn Lomborg, Net Zero Watch, and CLINTEL.

With even Pielke Jr. and Shellenberger going on the offense (or just being offensive), it should come as no surprise that, as COP Look Listen explains, "accusations of ‘alarmism’ levied at activists, scientists and decision-makers, as well as conspiracies alleging a ‘climate hoax,’ have become the most popular lines of attack on social media. This is despite the prevalence of (and continued investment in) greenwashing content and efforts to soften more ‘toxic’ climate denial." 

CAAD worked with the CARDS project to have its peer-reviewed machine learning model classify the social media posts being monitored. They found that content attacking "alarmists" and denying the science as a hoax was twice as prevalent as posts undermining solutions or making softer claims about climate change not being all that bad, or not human-caused. 

Which is why the COP LOOK LISTEN bulletin concludes that because "the conspiratorial approach to outright climate denial is flourishing on social media," then "Big Tech must act on harassment at scale and at pace, rather than merely moderating for specific claims or relying on fact-checkers to protect users." 

Just imagine if, instead of waiting for content to go viral to then justify a fact check which then takes a week to publish which only then triggers some sort of limitation on the post, Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies simply stopped algorithmically amplifying people like Robinson and Shellenberger, who exploit their platforms to build brands based on hate and hippy-punching? 

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