ENVIRONMENTAL (IN)JUSTICE: Why it matters that the diversity report card for environmental organizations doesn’t track gender (The 19th* News)
FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: EU countries agree gas price cap after weeks of talks (Reuters, Wall Street Journal $, Politico Pro $, Reuters, explainer), Europe's carbon-trading market is set to get even bigger (Wall Street Journal $), Can the show go on? Britain's theatres fear the dark (Reuters), EU countries vote to weaken law on methane emissions (Reuters), Qatar scandal gives Europe a big gas headache (Politico Pro $), UK companies tested by fallout from Ukraine war (Wall Street Journal $)
CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: UN chief to convene 'no-nonsense' climate summit in 2023 (Reuters), Climate goal of 1.5° C is ‘gasping for breath’, says UN head (The Guardian), UK's Rwanda asylum plan criticised for ignoring climate threats (Context)
- COP15: COP15 adopts biodiversity plan to protect 30% of land and water by 2030 (Bloomberg $, Axios, The Verge, New York Times $, Wall Street Journal $, Democracy Now, Reuters, E&E News), COP15 nature deal hailed as 'major step' for indigenous rights (Context), Billions needed to deliver COP15 nature deal but funds to biodiversity miniscule (Reuters), "30-by-30": Key takeaways from the COP15 biodiversity summit (Reuters Factbox, WBUR), Deal to restore nature can help climate and people - if done right (Context), Objection by DRC sours ‘paradigm-changing’ COP15 biodiversity deal (The Guardian, Climate Home)
EXTREME COLD: Blockbuster storm, bitter arctic outbreak to blast US ahead of Christmas (Washington Post $), Incoming arctic blast set to disrupt holiday travel nationwide (Gizmodo), Extreme winter spells trouble for food insecure (Axios), The weather nightmare before Christmas (Yale Climate Connections)
GOP vs. ESG: Republicans roll out resolution to scrap Biden ESG rule (E&E $), BlackRock plans no big changes to ESG stance despite backlash (Reuters), ESG funds set for first annual outflows in a decade after bruising year (Reuters)
2022: Heatflation, overshoot, soup throwers: Grist’s picks for words of the year (Grist), The year in energy news (New York Times $)
INFLATION REDUCTION ACT: France and Germany eye 'aggressive response' to US Inflation Reduction Act (Reuters)
AGENCIES: As climate change makes wildfires worse, FEMA faced with calls to change (Reuters)
EPA: EPA advisers urge overhaul of EJ accounting in air rules (E&E $), EPA upholds risk assessment for widely used carcinogen (E&E $), Watchdog: Biden EPA enforcement less aggressive than Trump (E&E $)
DOE: DOE, Calif. offer big boost to 'green' hydrogen projects (E&E $), How DOE watchdog's Rick Perry investigation evaporated (E&E $), Midwest power line being considered for DOE loan guarantee (E&E $)
DOI: ‘Proceed with caution’: Key takeaways from California’s first offshore wind energy auction (Utility Dive), BLM to consider lithium mine near endangered plant (E&E $)
TREASURY: US delays key step for EV subsidy program after foreign pushback (Wall Street Journal $)
WHITE HOUSE: Divided Congress may drive Biden to the power of the pen (The Hill), 'It is the obvious thing.' The White House tries a new tack to combat homelessness (NPR), US scores $4 billion windfall on oil-reserve sales (Wall Street Journal $)
THE HILL: Omnibus could indicate future of US climate aid (E&E $), Greens press for executive action after Manchin bill falls (E&E News), How Democratic dissension sunk landmark EJ bill (E&E News), Democratic bill calls for zero-emission new cars by 2035 (E&E $), Things to watch in the omnibus spending bill (E&E News)
- INSURRECTION INVESTIGATION: A very American coup attempt: Jan 6 panel lays bare Trump’s bid for power (The Guardian), Jan. 6 committee votes to refer Trump to DOJ on multiple criminal charges (CNN), Jan. 6 committee directs DOJ to further evidence beyond their reach and names names (MSNBC), Here are the laws Trump allegedly broke — according to the jan. 6 committee (Bloomberg $, NPR, CNN, Vox, New York Times $), Jan. 6 committee launches ethics complaint against McCarthy, other GOP lawmakers (The Hill, San Francisco Chronicle), Proud Boys leader planned capitol attack week in advance, Jan. 6 committee alleges (Vice), Report names Jeffrey Clark as part of Trump ‘conspiracy’ (E&E News)
SENATE: ‘Tesla is not Musk’s private plaything’: Sen. Elizabeth Warren asks Tesla chair to address CEO’s conflict with Twitter (MarketWatch, CNN, New York Times $, Boston Globe $, CNBC, Bloomberg $, Reuters, The Hill)
POLITICS: Could putting a value on nature transform US policymaking? (Context)
ELECTIONS: Climate law champion, centrist vie for open Va. House seat (E&E $)
CITIES AND STATES: This newly elected firebrand wants to bring renewables to Louisiana (Canary Media), Why Republicans are coughing up billions of dollars to save Florida’s insurance market (Grist)
- NEW YORK: New York passes sweeping plan to reduce emissions and ‘lead the way on solving climate change’ (Politico), Five things to watch for in New York’s final climate plan (Politico Pro $)
EMISSIONS: US energy emissions set to rise, despite drop in coal (E&E $)
IMPACTS: Scientists: Atmospheric carbon might turn lakes more acidic (AP), As climate clock ticks, aviator races to photograph glaciers (AP)
HEAT: Migrant labourers suffer exploitation in India’s sugar fields (Climate Home)
WATER: Scant progress on Colorado River cuts as crisis deepens (E&E News)
DEFORESTATION: Bank floats $10 bln Brazilian bond plan to halt Amazon deforestation (Reuters)
RENEWABLES: Abandoned Cold War ice core points to lush Greenland future (E&E News), Avangrid asks regulators to dismiss 1.2-GW Commonwealth offshore wind contracts, says it plans to rebid project (Utility Dive), Nonprofit helps a Detroit neighborhood learn about solar (Yale Climate Connections)
OIL & GAS: Fracking waste gets a second look to ease looming West Texas water shortage (Inside Climate News)
HYDROGEN: 5 questions answered about ‘clean’ hydrogen (E&E News)
UTILITIES: Clean energy quest pits Google against utilities (New York Times $)
GRID: This little-known bottleneck is blocking clean energy for millions (Washington Post $), Climate solutions for Great Lakes power grid include better planning, transmission (Energy News Network), US risks power outages as coal, gas plants retire — NERC (E&E $), Utilities sound alarm over distribution transformer shortage as procurement times surpass 1 year and costs triple (Utility Dive)
EVs: How convenient are electric vehicle chargers? We set out on a road trip to find out. (NBC)
FINANCE: Investors ramp up pressure on Big Oil firms to set 2030 climate targets (Reuters)
WILDLIFE: Scientists freeze Great Barrier Reef coral in world-first trial (Reuters), To protect lobstermen, spending bill may speed whales’ extinction, activists say (Washington Post $)
INTERNATIONAL: How India’s appetite for cheap Russian oil could hamper its climate ambitions (Energy Monitor), In Vietnam, a forest grown from the ashes of war falls to a resort project (Mongabay), Zimbabwe proposes incentives for $1 bln solar projects (Reuters)
GODSPEED, LITTLE BUDDY: ‘My power’s really low’: NASA's Insight Mars rover prepares to sign off from the Red Planet (The Guardian)
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Rightwing Disinfo Outlets Love Dog Whistle Attacking Free Market Capitalism As Communist 'Thuggery'
The well-funded Republican campaign to attack big businesses for considering oil spills, sweatshops, and swindlers bad for profits has kept rolling lately, with Texas Republicans doing their best Joseph McCarthy impressions to try and find the communists on Wall Street. Unsurprisingly, they have ended up shooting themselves, and their own constituents' retirements, in the foot.
But as we look back at this year and forward to the next, we can’t help but worry about where the anti-ESG campaign is going. (For those just tuning in, ESG refers to the Environmental, Social and Governance considerations that businesses use to weigh risk and make investments.)
Case in point is a NYPost column by Betsy McCaughey. It's mostly the standard fare, but two things stood out among the otherwise routine anti-ESG script.
"Wall Street asset managers," McCaughey wrote, "are putting capital in companies with woke policies and choking off capital from companies that don’t kowtow to their ESG agenda." Now to us, that sounds like a weird way of saying that the free market is allocating capital how it sees fit in order to avoid the risks of businesses that are prone to environmental disaster, social justice-driven boycotts, or bad governance. But McCaughey's next line declares that companies considering financial risk and public opinion "Sounds like the Chinese Communist Party, not America."
As proof, McCaughey, former Lieutenant Governor of New York, rests her case on the fact that Blackrock's ESG operations employ people who worked for Obama and donated to Sens. Warren and Sanders. That's it.
Apparently Democratic supporters having jobs is "like the Chinese Communist Party," whereas, by contrast, Republicans like McCaughey are free to implicitly demand that companies like Blackrock fire anyone who's ever donated to a Democratic campaign unless they want to continue getting harassed by GOP officials.
But McCaughey's out-of-left-field invocation of China, and "the Chinese Communist Party" specifically, isn't the only non-sequitur of a dog whistle in the piece- though it is one. In the same way Chris Rufo made "CRT" toxic, "CCP" is a recurring trigger-word for conservatives, especially in the Covid-19 era when they falsely blame China for intentionally spreading coronavirus.
So after ringing that pavlovian 'CCP' bell while attacking Blackrock for employing Democrats, McCaughey writes that "ESG is thuggery, using financial clout to accomplish what Americans would never approve at the ballot box."
And boy did the headline editors across the disinfo media landscape take note!
While the NYPost edited McCaughey's "thuggery" for its headline about "the thuggish 'ESG' woke agenda," the syndicated headline from creators.com ratcheted up the racism. Just like how McCaughey shoe-horned the "Communist China'' angle into her piece, headline editors at RealClear and TownHall both went with "ESG Funds Use Financial Strong-arming and Thuggery CCP Style." The Daily Caller, mirroring other rightwing disinfo outlets, instead went with the headline "The Left's ESG Scam Is A Mirror Image of CCP-Style Thuggery."
Media recognition of the use of "thug" as coded language goes back to at least 2014, when TV outlets used the word 625 times in discussions about (Stanford University graduate and) star NFL cornerback Richard Sherman, in response to an (emotional) interview he gave directly after he helped send his team to the Super Bowl. Sherman, who (if it isn't already obvious from context clues) is Black, said 'thug' is "the accepted way of calling somebody the N-word nowadays."
Seven years later, in response to criticism of a local sports announcer calling a Black basketball player who was ejected for breaking an opponent's nose a "thug," Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote, "You can complain" that the word's meaning "evolved without your consent from a race-neutral equivalent to 'ruffian' into a potentially toxic term," but "you can't now say you haven't been put on notice" (emphasis added).
No one's saying that any use of the phrase "thug" is always meant as a more respectable version of the racist slur. But given the increasing overlap of the fossil-fueled campaign against ESG standards and algorithmically-amplified hate-mongering on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., its use in multiple outlets should serve as a warning of what's to come in 2023.
Smearing Wall Street's financial due diligence concerning environmental, social, and governance issues as 'communist thuggery' may not make a whole lot of sense for those who see ESG as a small step capital has made to protect itself from the climate crisis. But to those who have been trained by the repeated use of the word "thug" to accompany footage of Black protestors, for whom "communist" was the ultimate insult growing up during the Cold War, and who have been led to believe Covid is a CCP bioweapon, the reaction is so instinctual they probably don't even recognize it.
These headlines merely provide further proof of what we've known for years: Republicans use racism as a tool to build support for otherwise unpopular policies, turning complex issues into three-letter dog whistles. |
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