FIRST LOOK: 

Join the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for a conversation about how to respond to the rising seas already threatening people, infrastructure and property on US coastlines. Thursday, April 21, from 3-4pm ET

Death Toll Climbs Above 300 In Wake Of South African Storm: At least 306 people have been confirmed dead after extreme rainfall set off devastating floods that swept away hillsides, bridges, and roads and destroyed homes in and around the port city of Durban, South Africa. AFP reports the storm is the deadliest in the nation's history. "My neighbours, they tried to assist me," Meli Sokela, whose home collapsed in the flood, told Reuters. "After two hours I survived but unfortunately my child did not survive." Parts of the KwaZulu-Natal province were inundated with more than 18 inches of rain in 48 hours, nearly half Durban's annual average rainfall. “This disaster is part of climate change," South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said. "We no longer can postpone what we need to do … to deal with climate change. It is here, and our disaster management capability needs to be at a higher level.” (AFP, AP, Reuters, BBC, CBS, Al Jazeera, CNN, New York Times $, Reuters; Port operations: Bloomberg $; Climate Signals background: Extreme precipitation increase)

Megi Destroys Whole Communities In Central Philippines: At least 123 people are confirmed dead in the central Philippines' Leyte Province three days after Tropical Storm Megi pummeled the country with heavy rains. A landslide buried an entire community killing at least 86. In the coastal municipality of Abuyog, at least 31 people were confirmed dead after landslides and flooding wiped out almost 80% of the city and another 20% was swamped by storm surge. "It was one huge wave," Mayor Lemuel Gin Traya said. About 400 people were killed in December when Super Typhoon Rai pummeled the same region. (New York Times $, AFP, CNN; Climate Signals background: Cyclonic storms, Extreme precipitation increase)

Global Climate Pledges, If Fulfilled, Will Limit Warming to 2°C – Study: World nations' collective climate pledges — if fully realized — would limit global warming to under 2°C (3.6°F) above preindustrial levels, one of two goals set in the 2015 Paris agreement, a study published Wednesday in Nature finds. Global temperatures are already 1.1°C (2°F) above preindustrial levels. The findings are cause for some optimism, but with significant caveats. The study only assessed countries' pledges as stated and did not assess whether nations were taking the necessary policy steps to achieve them, nor did it look at whether they were likely to do so. Even if the world's nations were to hold warming to 2°C, that level of warming would still cause catastrophic destruction and disruption in the form of stronger storms, rising sea-levels, deadly heatwaves, increased smog and infectious disease, and animal and plant extinctions. (AP, BBC, Bloomberg $, The Guardian, Mongabay, The Independent, Wired)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: A power plant’s expansion plan galls environmentalists — and sows dread in a Black enclave next door (NBC), battle over carbon capture as tool to fight climate change (AP)

FOSSIL FUELED WAR: Biden and Ukraine: from climate champion to oil price panic (FT $)

EAST AFRICAN DROUGHT: 350,000 Somali children at risk of death from climate-change-linked drought (Yahoo), alarm bells but little action as Horn of Africa faces unprecedented drought (The New Humanitarian)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: U.N.: Debt means poor countries can't afford climate action (E&E $), Brazil accused of backsliding in updated climate pledge to UN (Climate Home), IMF board approves new trust to help members deal with climate change, pandemics (Reuters)

IF ONLY THERE WERE SOMETHING THEY COULD DO: Global executives suspect their own companies of 'greenwashing' (Axios)

LIFE IMITATING ART IMITATING LIFE: UK interview gives 'Don't Look Up' vibes (MSNBC)

SOUNDS PLAUSIBLE: US warns newly discovered malware could sabotage energy plants (Washington Post $)

BIG GREENS: Sierra Club suspends Colo. leadership over ‘harmful’ culture (E&E News)

EPA: EPA seeks more smog controls in Houston, Dallas after they fail to meet standards (Texas Tribune)

DOI: Retired Utah director, ousted Alaska director return to BLM (E&E News)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden's shift from climate to oil rattles greens (Politico), White House report highlights voting barriers for Native American voters (Arizona Mirror), Biden’s ethanol move boosts producers, worries meat companies (Wall Street Journal $)

SENATE: Manchin suggests rebranding could bring back canceled Keystone XL pipeline (Washington Examiner)

ELECTIONS: DNC sets off free-for-all to remake presidential calendar (Politico)

TRIBES: In search of funding, tribal communities are turning to corporate investment to embrace solar power (TIME)

CITIES AND STATES: NYC’s big clean-energy project poses a major climate test for the country (HuffPost), state climate bill would let 10 communities ban natural gas hookups. Business groups say that’s a bad idea. (Boston Globe $), gender equity, family planning missing from US city climate plans: report (The Hill), on homelessness, Eric Adams has made sadism New York’s official policy (Jacobin), Georgia leaders split on calls for energy action (WABE)

• CALIFORNIA: California plan aims to triple sale of electric cars by 2026 (AP, CAL Matters, The Hill, CNBC, New York Times $, Politico Pro $), California plans to say 35% of new car sales must be EVs by 2025. Is the market ready? (LA Times $

FERC: FERC rejects challenges to gas climate reviews (E&E $)

IMPACTS: Aboard MOSAiC: Hardy fish, powerful waves, shrinking ice floes (Yale Climate Connections)

DROUGHT: As California gets its final winter rains, drought is setting up a water battle (PBS NewsHour), Chile moves to restrict water after more than a decade of drought (Gizmodo), Wildfire risk heightens this spring in western half of US from drought (Washington Post $)

WILDFIRES: Wind whips destructive wildfires in New Mexico, Colorado (AP), neighbors take the fight against fire threats to the next level (Wall Street Journal $)

HURRICANES: Ocean warming doubles odds for extreme atlantic hurricane seasons (Inside Climate News, The Guardian), Colorado State University Forecasts Above Normal Atlantic Hurricane Season (CBS Miami), 'hurricanes don't care about your timeline': Experts urge preparation for storm season (Florida Today)

• 2020 HURRICANE SEASON: See, this is what happens when you let the oceans heat up (Gizmodo, E&E News, Axios, The Hill, UPI)

EXTREME WEATHER: 'Uprooted, overturned, stripped:' two tornadoes in Texas hospitalize 12 (Gizmodo), Texas twister injures 23; McBride Fire engulfs 150 structures (Yale Climate Connections)

CORAL: How a town tethered to coral learned to save its reef — and itself (Grist)

MYTHBUSTING: From plastic use to carbon offsetting, the truth about four common climate myths (HuffPost)

RENEWABLES: The race to roll out ‘super-sized’ wind turbines is on (CNBC), solar power is the latest industry hit by China’s pandemic curbs (Bloomberg $), surging renewable power prices in Europe are still a bargain (Bloomberg $), the climate risk for hydropower (Energy Monitor), this startup fights climate change by growing algae in the desert (Fast Company), environmental laws can be an obstacle in building green energy infrastructure (NPR), global renewable power prices soar on heavy demand, chaotic supply chain (Reuters), renewable resources make up most US planned capacity additions (S&P Global), 

• OFFSHORE WIND: Will North Carolina go big on offshore wind? (E&E News), massive wind farm with floating turbines proposed for Washington coast (Washington Examiner), France installing first wind farm at sea a decade after approval (Bloomberg $), 
• TRANSMISSION: Are highway rights of way an answer to power siting dilemma? (E&E News)

STORAGE: This startup’s energy storage tech is ​‘essentially a giant toaster’ (Canary Media)

LNG: Excelerate Energy soars in first big US market debut since Ukraine invasion (Reuters), LNG projects may get funding boost from US export bank plan (Bloomberg $)

OIL & GAS: Arizona regulators deny SRP gas plant expansion, citing community impacts and insufficient supporting evidence (Utility Dive), net-zero holdouts that stick out like a ‘sore thumb’ (Bloomberg $), natural gas-fired generation peaked in 2020 amid growing renewable energy production: IEEFA (Utility Dive), [Rystad Energy]: Permian Basin drilling permits jump, signaling US surge of oil on the way (Politico Pro $)

PLASTICS: A mid hopes and fears, a plastics boom in Appalachia is on hold (Yale Environment 360)

COAL (COUNTRY): Coal country digs in as US Supreme Court weighs EPA climate power (ABC), China’s banks are the last big players in coal company financing (Bloomberg $), researchers say they've linked silica dust directly to severe Black lung disease (NPR), Germany to demolish village for coal, despite phaseout plans (E&E News)

NUKES: South Korea signals nuclear fuel U-turn as global energy crisis looms (FT $)

HYDROGEN: CT plans a green hydrogen path, but it has potholes (CT Mirror)

EVs: Japanese car giant Honda targets EV expansion, earmarks billions for R&D (CNBC), Canada's accelerated timetable for EVs brings spotlight on key bill (Reuters), the death of the gas station (Vox), how Michigan could plug into an electric vehicle boom (Yale Climate Connections)

• FOR EXTREMELY SECURE MANLY MEN: Will electric pickup trucks get rural America to switch from gas to electric? (NPR)

MINERALS: This mining executive is fighting her own industry to protect the environment (TIME)

ACTIVISM: Scientists stage worldwide climate change protests after IPCC report (Smithsonian Magazine)

• DIRECT ACTION: XR scientists glue hands to business department in London climate protest (The Guardian), protesters objecting to fossil fuel drilling shut down I-395 in DC (Washington Post $)

BOOKS: New book on climate change in National Parks pleads for action to save our best idea (Arizona Republic)

BUSINESS: How Google plans to use 100% carbon-free energy in its data centers by 2030 (CNBC), Intel to focus on chemicals to meet net-zero goal (Wall Street Journal $)

PUN INTENDED?: Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt on the world’s biggest problem: ‘If we don’t address climate change, we really will be toast’ (CNBC)

CARBON REMOVAL: We’ve never seen a carbon-removal plan like this before (The Atlantic)

FINANCE: BlackRock’s Fink predicts renewable ‘investment boom’ as Ukraine war accelerates energy transition (FT $), BlackRock sees opportunity for three new renewable energy funds (Reuters)

UNELECTED MONARCHY: Prince William is the surprise guest on Cate Blanchett's new podcast about climate change (People)

WILDLIFE: A record number of Yellowstone wolves have been killed. Conservationists are worried (NPR)

INTERNATIONAL: Australia's eastern states face blackout risk from 2025 (Reuters), early closure of Australia’s largest coal-fired plant could create electricity shortages without grid upgrades (The Guardian)

(COLLECTIVE) GRIEF: The final pandemic betrayal (The Atlantic)

• Congress must keep pushing for bold federal climate legislation | Opinion (Newsweek, Lance Bass and Mary Creasman op-ed)
• The Clean Water Act: Promises half kept at half-century anniversary (The Hill, Eric Schaeffer op-ed)
• Is Netflix transforming how Hollywood approaches climate change? (Forbes, Marshall Shepherd column)
• Time for an energy independence moonshot (The Hill, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Thomas Dietz, and Paul Stern op-ed)
• America needs to lead in methane mitigation (The Hill, Quill Robinson op-ed)
• How a student tries to be sustainable: biking, activism and food (Washington Post, Sophia Kianni Essay $)

For Every Bird Killed By A Wind Turbine, Millions Are Killed By Fossil Fuels, Powerlines and Buildings. Also, Fossil Fuels Kill People. 

It’s 2009. Robert Bryce is doing his fossil-fueled job attacking wind turbines for occasionally killing birds. He fails to mention the oil industry kills millions more.

It’s 2012. Robert Bryce is doing his fossil-fueled job attacking wind turbines for occasionally killing birds. He fails to mention the oil industry kills millions more.  

It’s 2013. Robert Bryce is doing his fossil-fueled job attacking wind turbines for occasionally killing birds. He fails to mention the oil industry kills millions more.  

It’s 2015. Robert Bryce is doing his fossil-fueled job attacking wind turbines for occasionally killing birds. He fails to mention the oil industry kills millions more.  

It’s 2016. Robert Bryce is doing his fossil-fueled job attacking wind turbines for occasionally killing birds. He fails to mention the oil industry kills millions more.  

It’s 2022. Robert Bryce is doing his fossil-fueled job attacking wind turbines for occasionally killing birds. He fails to mention the oil industry kills millions more.  

Why the apparent break between 2016 and 2022? Because that’s when Trump was in power, and tried to roll back protections for birds, to allow the fossil fuel industry to kill more of them. 

While Bryce always complains about a handful of eagle deaths from wind turbines, and not, say oil spill eagle kills, coverage at the time noted that “industry sources kill an estimated 450 million to 1.1 billion birds annually, out of an overall 7.2 billion birds in North America, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and recent studies.” 

Going over to the Fish and Wildlife Service page on “threats to birds,” we find that while collisions with wind turbines may kill an average of 234,012 birds a year, which is bad, there’s also an average of 750,000 that die in oil pits. Why isn’t Bryce writing regularly about the threat to birds three times greater than wind turbines? And is being replaced by wind turbines, making them the bird-friendly option even before weighing in that climate change threatens two-thirds of all bird species in the US with extinction. 

And that’s just the start! Every year nearly 599 million birds die flying into buildings, 214 million get hit by cars, 72 million get poisoned, 25 million hitting power lines, and 2.4 billion get eaten by cats. (Which admittedly sounds high, but averages out to 30-50 birds killed by each of the 50-70 million feral cats in the US, which seems pretty reasonable.) 

Beyond the birds, fossil fuel pollution killed over 8 million people in 2018 alone. 

And between 2003 and 2014, when Bryce was busy fearmongering about wind turbines and eagles, 1,333 oil industry workers died. According to a feature in the Denver Post, in 2014, “there was about one death per every 12 rigs'' in Colorado. “On average, that is one death every three months.” And Colorado was only the seventh-deadliest state for oil industry workers. 

Not that Bryce cares. 

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