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The 2023 Virginia General Assembly is around the corner. Join Generation180, Climate Cabinet Action, and Ceres on for a virtual town hall event on key issues like transportation electrification. Tuesday, Dec. 13, 7:00 pm EST.

Increasingly Toxic, Twitter 'A Shadow Of Its Former Self' On Climate: Climate denial, spam, and threats against climate scientists have all felt more prominent on Twitter since Elon Musk took over the company, The Guardian reports. After he took control of the company, Musk — the son of a Zambia emerald mine owner who grew up in Apartheid-era South Africa and whose Tesla was delisted from ESG stocks after it was revealed to be run "like a plantation" — shut down Twitter's sustainability department, fired content management teams, and reinstated users banned for, among other things, instigating a violent insurrection to overthrow a presidential election. While content referencing #ClimateScam and similar phrases increased before Musk's takeover, according to an analysis by the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition, it's still significantly less popular than more accurate alternatives like #ClimateCrisis. Despite that, however, the hashtag has been, on and off over the past weeks, the first suggested result when a user searches for 'climate,' despite no obvious spike in the hashtag's use that would justify such prominence. The rise in climate denial on Twitter is consistent with the rise of anti-social issues and users, like the newly-reinstated Jordan Peterson, a virulent misogynist who, now part of the fracking-funded Daily Wire, is branching beyond his original brand of toxic masculinity to include climate denier talking points including on the benefits of excess CO2. “Peterson is a big one because his brand extends beyond the environment but now he’s doubling down on climate,” Jennie King, head of civic action at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told The Guardian. “We’ve seen time and again these accounts that espouse climate denial and delay also spread misinformation on other topics, such as electoral fraud, racial politics or reproductive rights.” The rise of cishet-white man climate deniers is concurrent with a decrease in other voices on Twitter as well. “As someone who followed lots of women scientists, and scientists of color, I’m noticing the absence of these treasured voices,” said Brown University climate scientist Kimm Cobb. “Maybe they’ve left Twitter, or maybe they’ve fallen silent, or maybe the network has deteriorated to the point that I’m just not seeing them being retweeted by mutuals. Twitter is a shadow of its former self when it comes to climate change.” (The Guardian)

Drag Show Brightens NC Town Despite Terrorist Attack On Power Substations: On Sunday, Southern Pines North Carolina had its annual holiday parade, and at 7pm, the Downtown Divas drag show was set to begin its fundraiser for Sandhills Pride, a local LGBTQ+ support network. After some 40 protesters spent the day expressing their bigotry while outnumbered by 200 supporters of human rights, the show didn't begin until 7:40. At the time the show was scheduled to begin, unidentified vandals shot and destroyed two power substations, and 40,000 Moore County residents lost power. While the information blackout following past outages have been weaponized to attack the reliability of renewable energy, initial circumstances appear to suggest a very different type of threat to grid stability: rightwing terrorism. One local hatemonger spearheading protests against the show, Emily Grace Rainey, who resigned from the Army during an investigation to her involvement in the January 6th insurrection, tweeted that she knew why the power was out in Moore county, but then claimed God was responsible for the outage when confronted by law enforcement, who apparently believed her. Regardless, Durham-based drag queen Naomi Dix proved the old adage that the show will go on, and the sold-out crowd lit up the stage with their phones while singing "Halo" by Beyonce and "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey together during the 45-minute performance. "This has never been about drag queens and children," Dix told the audience. "This is about their direct hate of anyone who does not share their beliefs. This is terrorism and nothing less." (Daily Beast, News& Observer, Fayetteville Observer, WRAL, WCNC, CNN, Axios)

LA Bans New Oil Drilling, Requires Phase-Out Of Current Wells: The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously on Friday to ban new oil and methane gas drilling, and phase out existing wells within 20 years. The ordinance is a major victory for communities — disproportionately communities of color essentially forced to live in sacrifice zones — who have long suffered from decades of carcinogenic pollution released by wells in the city's 26 oil and gas fields and more than 5,000 wells. STAND-L.A., the Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling coalition that helped spearhead the new ordinance, celebrated that “Black, Latinx and other communities of color currently living near polluting oil wells and derricks in South L.A. and Wilmington will eventually breathe easier.” It also called on “Our city and this council [to] own up to the anti-Blackness that created policies that allowed oil drilling in neighborhoods in the first place and that fostered an environment where such a horrific example of racism and corruption could occur between council members.” (LA Times $, AP)

SOLIDARITY FOR…OTHER TIMES: Biden signs bill averting rail worker strike despite lack of paid sick days (CNBC, ABC, CBS, Politico, New York Times $, NBC, Axios, USA Today, Wall Street Journal $, BBC), Biden inks rail strike deal, touts water protections (E&E $), Rail unions slam Senate's 'anti-American' rejection of sick days (ABC), Rail workers say deal won’t resolve quality-of-life concerns (AP), Some rail workers say Biden "turned his back on us" in deal to avert rail strike (NPR), The 'pro-union' president risks the support of a key constituency to avert a rail strike (NBC), Walsh helped avoid a rail strike, but now must mend Biden administration relations with angry unions (Boston Globe $), Why ‘union Joe’ chose to make it illegal for rail workers to strike (TIME), Why paid sick leave became a big issue in rail labor talks (Washington Post $)

FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: Europe sets Russian oil at $60 a barrel: What changes now (Bloomberg $, CNBC), G-7 sets Russian oil price cap of $60 a barrel (Wall Street Journal $), European gas jumps as lower temperatures set to increase demand (Bloomberg $), Russia to ban oil sales under price cap, Kremlin says (Politico EU)

CLIMATE LITIGATION: Exxon, Shell ask Supreme Court to address two more climate change lawsuits (Reuters)

DENIAL: The Texas group waging a national crusade against climate action (New York Times $)

GOP vs. ESG: Florida targets BlackRock for its climate and social policies (Washington Post $)

MEDIA: More than 1,000 New York Times union employees plan walkout over wages (Reuters, Axios, NY Mag)

(AN) OK BOOMER: Fonda retakes the hill: ‘Cancer is scary, but the climate crisis is scarier’  (Washington Post $)

GREAT BARRIER REEF PROTECTION: Queensland’s Indigenous women rangers given Earthshot prize for protecting Great Barrier Reef (The Guardian)

INFLATION REDUCTION ACT: Europe is looking for ways to counter the new US climate law (Bloomberg $)

AGENCIES: Citing health and climate concerns, activists urge HUD to remove gas stoves from federally assisted housing (Inside Climate News), [NOAA] scientists outline plan to study carbon removal (E&E $), Justice Department tried to hide report warning that private border wall in Texas could collapse (Texas Tribune)

EPA: EPA closes in on veto of controversial Pebble Mine project (The Hill), EPA green-lights Denver’s $700 million plan to finally remove lead pipes (Gizmodo)

• SOCIAL COSTS: How EPA beat the White House on estimating climate damage (E&E News)

THE FED: U.S. Fed proposes plan for banks to manage climate-linked financial risk (Reuters, Washington Examiner)

WHITE HOUSE/EXECUTIVE BRANCH: Biden could be missing out on his biggest conservation opportunity (HuffPost)

• LOI SUR LA RÉDUCTION DE L'INFLATION: Biden to Macron: 'We can work out' climate law concerns (E&E $), Biden won’t ask Congress to tweak climate law (E&E News), Bitter friends: Inside the summit that aims to heal trans-Atlantic trade rift (Politico Pro $)
• SOLAR TARIFFS: Biden admin moves to extend solar tariffs on Asian producers (E&E News), Chinese solar makers evaded US tariffs, investigation finds (New York Times $), Commerce probe finds Chinese solar manufacturers dodged US tariffs (The Hill), Ruling in Auxin trade case revives tariff threat for US solar (Canary Media), US to expand solar panel tariffs after probe finds Chinese evasion (Reuters), US crackdown on solar-tariff dodgers endangers Biden’s green ambitions (Bloomberg $)

THE HILL: GOP plans climate probes the left might like (Axios), House, Senate approve bipartisan PFAS bills (E&E $), Republicans float gas pipeline permitting overhaul (E&E $), Top Dems weigh adding permitting reform to defense bill (E&E News)

HOUSE: Natural Resources Democrats seek Interior documents on bribery allegation (The Hill), 

SENATE: Manchin eyes scrutiny of DOE's nuclear work, oil reserve (E&E $)

POLITICS: Kris Kobach is back — and climate policy is a top target (E&E News)

GEORGIA ELECTIONS: The (other) messy election in georgia (Gizmodo), The fight over Warnock’s record comes down to an electric car plant in Georgia (New York Times $)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Senate Democrats advance roster of judicial nominees (E&E $), Struggle over EPA air nominee foreshadows future fights (E&E News)

TRIBES: Native American tribes to get $75M for climate relocation (E&E $)

CITIES & STATES & DISENFRANCHISED COLONIAL TERRITORIES: An infusion of cash from Congress could keep the lights on in Puerto Rico (Grist), Meet Jackson's new water operator (E&E $), Texas lawmakers want to hit brakes on electricity market redesign, bring dispatchable generation online sooner (Utility Dive), Will ruling end decade of uncertainty for Wisconsin solar? (E&E News)

• CALIFORNIA: High gas prices prompt California lawmakers to consider penalties on oil profits (LA Times $), You’re going to pay higher gas prices as California decarbonizes. Here’s why (LA Times $)

FERC: DC Circuit sends transmission case back to FERC in win for renewables (Politico Pro $), PacifiCorp interconnection plan for retiring power plants sparks anti-competitive concerns at FERC (Utility Dive)

WORLD CUP: Qatar World Cup spotlights health risks of a hotter planet (Bloomberg $)

IMPACTS: Climate change and hunger are driving a refugee crisis in the African countries bordering Lake Chad (NPR), A new kind of climate refugee is emerging (NPR), Extreme weather caused by climate crisis threatens Puerto Rico’s ability to feed itself (Latino Rebels), Is climate change impacting tree growth in Charlotte? (WCNC), Normally cold months for tornadoes seem to be getting hot (Washington Post $), Pawpaws, America’s latest fruit craze, are being threatened by climate change (Grist), The world’s insurance bill from natural disasters this year: $115 billion (Grist), Who pays the bill for climate change? (New York Times $)

SCIENCE: Mauna Loa eruption threatens a famous climate record (New York Times $)

WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN: ‘Zombie’ viruses are thawing in melting permafrost because of climate change (Washington Post $)

HEAT: Deadly heat waves engulfed the planet this year: Climate change is a national security crisis (Salon)

DROUGHT: Lagoon dries up as drought grips Peru’s southern Andes (AP), In the great plains, there's not much relief in sight from a historic drought (NPR)

WATER: An idea that could help replenish California’s groundwater supplies (Yale Climate Connections), Drought-hit California cities to get little water from state (AP, E&E $, Bloomberg $), Western water leaders talk local solutions amid Colorado River crisis (KUNC)

AIR POLLUTION: World Bank says air pollution costs Bangladesh up to 4.4% of GDP (Bloomberg $)

ELECTRIFICATION: Maryland’s largest county just banned gas appliances in most new buildings—but not without some concessions (Inside Climate News, Utility Dive)

RENEWABLES: Why wind energy isn’t living up to its pollution-preventing potential (The Verge), How offshore wind won over (most of) the Hamptons (E&E News), Indian coal magnate Gautam Adani steps up green investments (AP), Lack of wind pushes Europe’s power prices higher, just as cold sets in (Wall Street Journal $), Parking lots are becoming as important as cars in climate change efforts (CNBC), This new climatetech accelerator is seeking entrepreneurs of color (Canary Media), Tiny wind farms are ready to ease Britain’s energy crunch (Bloomberg $), To get tax credits, clean-energy firms must soon meet labor standards (Canary Media), What kinds of jobs will be created by offshore wind farms? (NPR)

BATTERIES: Coal-fired plant imploded in New Jersey for battery array (AP), GM venture to invest additional $275M at Tennessee plant (AP), Nevada approves $105M in tax incentives for battery plant (AP)

BUILDINGS: A heat pump with DIY installation can decarbonize public housing (Bloomberg $)

EFFICIENCY: Low-income families don’t get a fair share of energy-efficiency funds (Canary Media), Energy efficiency rate accelerates amid high prices - IEA (Reuters)

LNG: Energy-poor Japan could set up a liquefied natural gas reserve (Bloomberg $, Wall Street Journal $), Freeport LNG: Another production restart delay, to year's end (Reuters), Harsh weather may delay Germany’s plans for first LNG terminals (Bloomberg $)

METHANE: America’s staggering food waste problem (Axios)

OIL & GAS: For oil industry fights in Congress, Louisiana now lacks a seat at an important table (NOLA.com), OPEC+ keeps oil curbs despite Russia price cap (Wall Street Journal $, Axios, CNBC)

ORPHANED WELLS: With money on the table, states identify 120,000 leak-prone oil wells (Washington Post $)

PLASTICS: Battle lines drawn in talks on new plastics treaty (Climate Home), Negotiators take first steps toward plastic pollution treaty (AP), New plastics bill emphasizes climate change, justice (E&E News)

PIPELINES: Keystone Pipeline could be sold (Axios)

COAL: Ohio’s largest coal plant to change coal ash handling after US EPA denial (Energy News Network), Cumbria coalmine plan is ‘backward step’, says Alok Sharma (The Guardian)

HYDROGEN: NuScale, Shell, others to develop hydrogen production concept with heat from small modular reactor (Utility Dive), Toyota secures funding to develop hydrogen fuel cell version of its Hilux pickup in the UK (CNBC)

NUKES: Why Silicon Valley is so hot on nuclear energy and what it means for the industry (CNBC)

UTILITIES: SCE mismanaged energy efficiency program, California regulators find, ordering $76M customer rebate (Utility Dive), Utility recommends natural gas plant despite objections (AP)

EVs: Biden's climate bill is a put option on automakers’ big EV bets (Bloomberg $), EU's hybrid, electric car exports rose 69% in 2021 - Eurostat (Reuters), New Mass. EV rebates now available for residents (WBUR), Tennessee roads plan mulls toll lanes, electric car fee hike (AP), VW will join Tesla and BMW in selling China-built EVs in Europe (Bloomberg $)

TREES: A UK tree provides hundreds of pounds of benefits a year, report finds (The Guardian)

DIRECT ACTION: Climate activist who blocked traffic on Sydney Harbour Bridge jailed for at least eight months (The Guardian), UN official ‘alarmed’ by jailing of climate activist who blocked traffic on Sydney Harbour Bridge (The Guardian), Just Stop Oil activists occupy beds in Harrods in protest against fuel poverty (The Guardian)

AGRICULTURE: Vermont’s dairy farms recede, giving way to shrimp, saffron and new ideas (Washington Post $)

BOOKS: In a new book, Annie Proulx shows us how to fall in love with wetlands (Inside Climate News)

CARBON REMOVAL: Carbon removal is coming to fossil fuel country. Can it bring jobs and climate action? (Inside Climate News)

FINANCE: Ex-tabloid reporter who coined ESG label says backlash is good (Bloomberg $), Global central banks brace for ‘greenflation’ and climate change (Bloomberg $)

WILDLIFE: World leaders have 2 weeks to agree on a plan to save nature (Vox), Addressing climate change will not “save the planet” (The Intercept), Australia urged to take leadership role at Cop15 biodiversity summit (The Guardian), Climate-focused development banks neglect nature ahead of COP15 (Context), In Mexico, endangered monarch butterflies inspire hopes of a comeback (Reuters), Nevada toad in geothermal power fight gets endangered status (AP)

INTERNATIONAL: Brazil’s incoming government set to scrap gas pipelines and power plants (Climate Home), The knock-on climate impacts of China's zero-COVID policy (TIME)

• UNELECTED MONARCHY: Decades of climate science haven’t solved the problem. Can the royal family? (Boston Globe $), Earthshot Prize unveils five winners at Boston ceremony (Boston Globe $), Prince William meets President Biden, awards climate prizes (Reuters), Prince William, like his father, prioritizes the environment (AP), Prince William’s Earthshot prize winners include a seaweed-based plastic startup and cleaner cookstoves (TIME)

• Robert Bullard led a ‘huge’ delegation from Texas to COP27 climate talks in Egypt (Inside Climate News, interview)
• In tackling the climate crisis, we need to draw the right lessons from the New Deal (The Hill, James Goodwin op-ed)
• Europe is wrong to blame the US for its energy problems (New York Times, Jason Bordoff op-ed $)
• Southern California smog reduction plan should race to zero emissions (LA Times, Los Angeles Times Editorial Board $)
• How a Biden-baked ‘permitting’ deal undermines his own climate promises (The Hill, Russell Chisholm and Carlos Aguilar op-ed)
• The Guardian view on biodiversity collapse: The crisis humanity can no longer ignore (The Guardian Editorial Board)
• Prince William shares why he's a 'stubborn optimist' about our planet's future (HuffPost, Prince William op-ed)

Cato's New Guide for Policymakers Shows How Conservatives Have No Environmental Policies

After decades of producing climate disinformation, the Koch's Cato Institute shuttered its climate program back in 2019 and sent its climate team Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger off to pasture. Since then, the Koch-controlled think tank has largely left the right's pretense of environmental policy to other front group friends. 

But when we saw they published a new 9th edition of their Handbook for Policymakers, which supposedly provides "an in-depth analysis and concrete recommendations" on 77 different policy areas, we were curious to see what sort of advice this storied conservative think tank had for policymakers when it came to climate and the environment. 

After all, it's been five years since the 8th edition came out in 2017, when things were so full of promise for rightwing policymakers. And since then, the turnover from Trump to Biden and passage of the Inflation Reduction Act's massive climate spending might have one expecting a new approach, particularly given the newly divided government as Republicans take the House. 

Nope! On climate, Cato simply cut the 2017 chapter on climate change that Michaels and Knappenberger produced in a fruitless attempt to influence the Trump administration and then-Republican Congress. They had hoped Congress would "reject any proposed tax on emissions of carbon dioxide," which is an easy ask, to put it lightly. They also suggested changes to the "social cost of carbon," which Trump tried but failed to close the deal on, defund climate science, and submit the Paris Agreement to the Senate as a treaty for ratification (which isn't necessary since it's an agreement under the already-ratified UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which a bipartisan congress approved back in 1992).

Not to worry though, Cato isn't just totally ignoring the environment in its massive guide for policymakers. It does have a section on environmental policy, in which they suggest Congress simply "repeal national air and water quality laws and regulations" and then "set a price on emissions or limits on the quantity of emissions and funnel the proceeds from the sales to those who are exposed to pollutants."

So instead of having regulations to limit pollution, Congress should simply let polluters make people sick, and then pay them for the privilege of choking on fumes. This is not only a ghoulish sacrifice of human health to corporate profits but also an obvious bad-faith distraction, as it seems somewhat unlikely that Republicans are going to put a price on carbon (or any other) pollution! 

Another indication of how serious Cato is about this policy? Save for three paragraphs of updates about the Trump administration's failures to make changes stick, the other sixteen paragraphs are, with the exception of a handful of copy edits, exactly the same as the 2017 policy brief.

This also recommended putting a price on pollution, but was followed by the chapter in which the first thing they say is that Congress shouldn't put a price on pollution! 

And it's not like they even put much effort into that either, as it's basically a combination of tobacco-lawyer-turned-climate-denier Steve Milloy's ploy to use "transparency" as a shield to attack the science showing that soot (from smoking or burning coal) causes health problems. As we (and others) explained, demanding "transparency" of studies that were based on (anonymized) personal health data was a way to disqualify many epidemiological studies because releasing the patients' health data they are based on would violate health privacy laws. 

So while "data access and reproducibility of results are the very essence of the scientific method," Cato's Peter van Doren wrote in one of the few new lines of the 2022 version, "the transparency rule was also a clever attempt to undermine the current basis for EPA regulation of PM by excluding the SCS and ACS studies." 

After laying out all the supposed reasons to be skeptical of the science, parroting Milloy's crusade (which Amy Westervelt recently did a great job of contextualizing) but then exposing it as a farce, van Doren pivots to the suggestion that government set up a system for companies to pay the people they pollute. 

And that job of facilitating fair payments from billion-dollar industries with buildings full of lawyers and accountants to regular everyday people in small communities? It shouldn't be the federal government, but instead "the relevant unit of government to facilitate these bargains is probably at the metropolitan level" because before federal pollution regulations in the '70s forced businesses to switch to tall smokestacks that sent pollution to other places, "environmental quality was a local issue." 

So "as long as smokestack heights are low and transport is minimal," pollution is a local issue. 

Except it's not 1970 anymore, smokestacks are already high, and global warming caused by what's coming out of coal and gas smokestacks is the opposite of a local issue! 

But those are only issues to worry about if you live in the real world, and care about people dying from pollution. Which is why they're not exactly priorities for Cato and its conservative audience. 

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