FIRST LOOK: 

The American Public Health Association will host a webinar on incorporating principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in climate adaptation planning on Wednesday, February 22 at 2:00 pm EST.

House Republicans Attack Each Other, State Republicans Attack ESG: Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) failed, again, and again to secure election as Speaker of the House of Representatives on Tuesday as 20 members, including 18 election deniers, refused to support his candidacy. McCarthy also ran for Speaker in 2015 and his failure to secure victory after the first ballot is the first such failure in a century. The "unsteadiness … circular firing squad [and] dysfunction" (as Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) described it to Politico) of the House Republican caucus augurs ill for stable governance. House Republicans have vowed to attack the consideration of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors in investing in the new Congress and whatever may happen at the federal level, state GOP officials are forging ahead. Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball threatened to divest state funds from 11 major financial firms including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and BlackRock if they did sufficiently invest in fossil fuel companies. (Speaker election: Washington Post $; Future chaos: Washington Post $, Politico, E&E News, New York Times $; Election deniers: Washington Post $; ESG attacks: Inside Climate News; Kentucky: Reuters, Politico Pro $, The Hill)

Climate Crisis, Misogyny Inextricable: Extreme weather driven by climate change exacerbates underlying misogyny and increases domestic violence, the Washington Post reports. “Heat waves, floods, climate-induced disasters increase sexual harassment, mental and physical abuse, femicide, reduce economic and educational opportunity and increase the risk of trafficking due to forced migration," Terry McGovern, department head of Population and Family Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told the Post. The connections between misogyny, the climate crisis, and authoritarian movements — described as petro-masculinity. The combined harms are heightened for women of color and trans women and extraction of fossil fuels is especially intertwined with violence by men in the oil and gas industry against Native women and girls. (Washington Post $)

'Truly… Brutal' Bomb Cyclone Poses Serious Calif. Flood Dangers: A 'bomb cyclone' is set to bring more heavy rain to California. The "truly … brutal system … that needs to be taken seriously,” per the National Weather Service, could dump as much as four inches of rain on San Francisco and up to eight inches of rain at higher elevations. The storm poses especially hazardous flood dangers because it so closely follows last week's atmospheric river. “Everything is now completely saturated,” UCLA climate scientists Daniel Swain said during a YouTube briefing. Climate change, mainly caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, increases the likelihood of extreme atmospheric river events. “The dominant thing that’s happening is just that, in a warmer atmosphere, there’s exponentially more potential for it to hold water vapor,” said Daniel L. Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “And that exerts a really profound influence on things.” Gusts as high as 70 mph are also expected. “To put it simply, this will likely be one of the most impactful systems on a widespread scale that this meteorologist has seen in a long while,” a National Weather Service Bay Area forecaster wrote in a Jan. 2 area forecast discussion. (Washington Post $, San Francisco Chronicle, Axios, San Francisco Chronicle; Climate effects: New York Times $; Climate Signals background: Extreme precipitation increase)

HOLIDAY FREEZE: FERC and NERC probing winter storm outages (Politico Pro $), Gas prices jumped in Houston after freeze knocked out refineries (Houston Chronicle), Duke Energy: Plant, purchase failures contributed to outages (AP)

GAS EXPLOSIONS: Suspected gas blast levels 2 homes, hurts 5 in Philadelphia (AP), Explosion, fire at natural gas cryogenic plant rattles Smith Township (Observer-Reporter), Residents evacuated just before gas explosion flattened Susquehanna Twp. home with a ‘sonic boom’ (PennLive, FOX43), Experts raise health concerns for Philly explosion aftermath (CBS)

FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: Ukraine to speed up moves to clean, green energy after Russian attacks - PM (Reuters), German facility, built at breakneck speed, accepts gas shipment from US (Wall Street Journal $), Natural gas prices in Europe fall to pre-invasion levels (New York Times $, Bloomberg $, Wall Street Journal $), Russia's oil flows slump to 2022-low as sanctions squeeze Moscow (Bloomberg $), Europe’s New Year’s energy price slump (Politico Pro $)

CLIMATE LITIGATION: Environmental cases to watch in 2023 (Reuters)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: John Kerry: Rch countries must respond to developing world anger over climate (The Guardian)

2023: The year ahead in energy (Gizmodo)

AGENCIES: Why 2023 is a cliff for climate rules (E&E News)

EPA: Can EPA’s Clean Water Act rule survive the courts? (E&E News), EPA clampdown on soot pollution imminent (E&E News)

DOE: DOE eyes big CO2 cut with grid transformers rule (E&E $)

DOI: Biden's Alaska oil sale was a bust and harbinger of decline (E&E $)

TREASURY: Treasury omits leased EVs from made-in-America mandate (E&E News)

WHITE HOUSE: White House adds 2 hires to climate shop (E&E $), White House begins review of key air pollution reg (E&E $)

FERC: White House taps Phillips as interim FERC chair (Politico Pro $, E&E $, Bloomberg Law), 'Reasonable person': Manchin hails Biden's FERC chair pick (E&E $)

• (ALLEGED) UTILITY CORRUPTION: FirstEnergy agrees to pay $3.9M for failing to tell FERC about energy bill bribery payments (Utility Dive, Politico Pro $)

THE HILL: 7 new lawmakers to watch on energy, the environment (E&E $), Senate Dem agenda: Oversight, permitting, foreign affairs (E&E News)

POLITICS: 3 trends to watch in US climate policy in 2023 (Washington Post $)

ELECTIONS: Political campaigns to watch in 2023 (E&E $)

CITIES AND STATES: New York’s plan to expand storage capacity to 6 GW by 2030 includes centralized procurement method (Utility Dive), You can now compost dead people in New York (Gizmodo)

IMPACTS: Europe sees 'unprecedented' winter heat wave as 2023 begins (HuffPost, Democracy Now), Older adults can be particularly vulnerable during weather disasters (Yale Climate Connections), Trends driving humanitarian crises in 2023 (and what to do about them) (The New Humanitarian)

WILDFIRES: Companies threatened by wildfire often fail to disclose risks (E&E $)

HURRICANES: Hurricane-damaged roofs in Puerto Rico remain a problem. One group is offering a fix. (NPR)

DROUGHT: California snowpack off to great start amid severe drought (AP)

WATER: Can dam removal save the Snake River? (High Country News), Series of small dams pose big cumulative risk to Amazon’s fish and people (Mongabay)

RENEWABLES: California’s latest climate solution could save water while creating renewable energy (KTLA), Cleveland pilot project provides rooftop solar for low-income residents (Energy News Network), UK sets new record for wind power generation (The Guardian), Wind and solar could outpace coal and nuclear power in the US this year (Truthout)

STORAGE: What’s next for grid storage after a booming but chaotic year? (Canary Media)

OIL & GAS: Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni talks plans for oil sector expansion (Bloomberg $), Volatility appears to be the one thing oil markets can bank on (Houston Chronicle)

HYDROGEN: Houston effort to host HyVelocity hydrogen hub gets US push (Houston Chronicle)

NUKES: Nuclear power saw multiple gains in 2022, but economic and other questions remain (Utility Dive)

UTILITIES: Why are energy prices so high? Some experts blame deregulation. (New York Times $)

GRID: Bomb cyclone sparks fierce debate over grid readiness (E&E News), Federal cybersecurity focus grows as distributed resources expand grid risks (Utility Dive), Two men arrested for attacks on Washington state power grid (Bloomberg $)

EVs: 80% of new cars sold in Norway are now electric vehicles (CBS), EV startup rivian missed 2022 production target (Wall Street Journal $), Tesla is fined for exaggerating driving range in cold weather (Washington Examiner), The real-world effect of Elon Musk's online drama (Axios)

AGRICULTURE: Farming destroyed Brazil’s rain forests. It could also save them (TIME)

BOOKS: Why are Saudi farmers pumping Arizona groundwater? (High Country News, Natalie Koch interview)

FINANCE: What’s ahead for climate finance in 2023 (E&E News), World Bank seeks more funds to address climate change, other crises -document (Reuters)

GRETA: Greta Thunberg's rise from youth activist to global climate leader (Context explainer)

ACT LOCALLY: Donating clothes isn’t always planet-friendly: How to do it right (Washington Post $)

WILDLIFE: In the Great Plains, bison may help lessen the impact of climate change (WBUR)

INTERNATIONAL: Australia could swing from three years of La Niña to hot and dry El Niño in 2023 (The Guardian)

• This year was the beginning of a green transition (New York Times, Leah Stokes op-ed $)
• Here’s where Africa can find the food revamp cash it needs (Context, Ousmane Badiane op-ed)
• Being ready for anything is top priority for 2023 (Reuters, Peter Thal Larsen op-ed)
• It’s time to adapt (Atmos, Riley Black essay)
• Damar hamlin collapse rehashes racial bias debate in nfl (Black Wall Street Times, Tanesha Peeples op-ed)
• 4 reasons to give up defending fossil fuels (The Hill, William Becker op-ed)

GOP Attacks Free Market Climate Policies as Greenwashers Fake Support for Free Market Climate Policies 

Is the purpose of climate policy to reduce the carbon emissions warming the climate and causing billions of dollars in damages? Or is it to bolster the electoral prospects of the GOP? 

If you answered the former, congratulations, you’re not a rube. If you answered the latter, you must be a Republican. With snowball-throwing climate denier Senator Jim “The Greatest Hoax” Inhofe leaving Congress, one may be tempted to cook up some stories suggesting the GOP is evolving past climate denial and is ready to live in the real world. But one should resist. 

We’ve been insistent that the Republicans’ supposed efforts to be better on climate are really just greenwashing. Now, a new op-ed essentially admits it. 

Young Republican Grayson Massey published an op-ed in the Washington Examiner on January 1 in which he devoted four paragraphs to laying out how voters, especially young ones, “will continue to tip elections in favor of Democrats” unless the GOP appears to address issues they care about, like climate change. 

In an effort to explain the (supposedly) new conservative climate policy, Massey claims “only market-based solutions, by harnessing the entrepreneurial powers of capitalism, can accelerate clean energy innovation and deploy new technologies at the scale and speed necessary.”

Republicans are hardly on the cusp of a climate conversion, as plenty of professionals are still clinging to denial. To finish off 2022, both Fox and The Daily Wire covered a report by multiple climate denier groups questioning the scientific validity of the Associated Press’s climate reporting. Meanwhile, the Daily Caller published an op-ed asking a bunch of questions answered by the IPCC as though they were “rhetorical checkmate” and not evidence that the author is in denial. 

And not only is the GOP far from supporting market-based climate policies, but they’re actively fighting those that already exist! 

There’s no climate approach that is more pro-capitalism and market-based than applying Environmental, Social, and Governance principles to investing. But these days, thanks to the coordinated anti-ESG campaign, there’s nothing more reviled on the right than ESG standards. 

As Republicans prepare to take over the House of Representatives, they’re targeting ESG, with Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr calling it “discriminating against fossil energy” and “a cancer in our capital markets” and Nebraska State Treasurer John Murante telling Breitbart that ESG policies are “a real attack on farmers and ranchers in Nebraska.” 

They’re also preparing to oppose even rudimentary measures like having businesses disclose their emissions. Companies are merely being asked to report how much they emit and what risks they may face from climate change disasters and to plan for how to align with the Paris Agreement, but the fossil fuel industry is assailing these basic standards as “novel and costly” in a comment on proposed federal regulations. 

And what is the Republicans’ best defense against asking companies to disclose how much they pollute or how much they may have to pay when wildfires burn down factories? Well, the corporate version of Inhofe’s ‘climate hoax’ rhetoric is complaining that it’d be too expensive to even calculate emissions and calling on the government to actively deny the reality that climate impacts are expensive and caused by carbon pollution. 

So, while Republican operatives on a years-long mission to make the party look moderate for young and suburban voters are busy telling anyone who will listen that the GOP is no longer denying climate change and supports free-market climate solutions, we see other Republicans actively attacking free-market climate solutions and deploying denial as a defense against even the most basic disclosure and transparency measures.

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