FIRST LOOK: 

Deadly Storms Keep Pummeling California: The sixth atmospheric river, of an expected nine, slammed California with even more destruction, and the worst is yet to come. The strongest storm yet — of the barrage responsible for the deaths of at least 14 people, including a 5-year-old swept away by floodwaters in Paso Robles on Monday — also forced the evacuation of the entire community of Montecito. The heavy rain has set off widespread flooding that, in addition to the obvious dangers, can also carry industrial and toxic waste. More than 40,000 people have been forced to evacuate their homes in Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz Counties alone. Gusts of up to 72 mph at Sacramento International Airport ripped up trees and at one point knocked out power to nearly 350,000 customers in the county. More than 223,000 customers were without power early Tuesday morning state-wide.  President Biden issued an emergency declaration for more than a dozen counties and more rain is expected with as much as a foot of rain forecast through Wednesday in the already-saturated foothills around Sacramento. (Storms generally: Axios, LA Times $, Washington Post $, Sacramento Bee $, LA Times $, Sacramento Bee $, NPR; Deaths: Washington Post $, San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times $; Toxic floodwater: San Francisco Examiner; Evacuations: AP, LA Times $, LA Times $; Power outages: San Francisco Chronicle, Gizmodo; Sacramento wind: Sacramento Bee $; Emergency Declaration: Sacramento Bee $; Photos: San Francisco Chronicle)

CPSC Could Ban Gas Stoves Over Health Dangers: The Consumer Product Safety Commission plans to take action — up to and including banning methane gas-burning stoves — to protect the public from the "hidden hazard" they pose, agency commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told Bloomberg. Gas stoves release air pollution including nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and PM2.5 into families' homes at levels that would be illegal if they were outdoors. Recent research revealed gas stoves are responsible for 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the U.S. Members of Congress called on the CPSC late last year to address the health hazards of gas stoves and Trumka's comments to Bloomberg are consistent with remarks he made in mid-December and reflect CPSC minutes from earlier in the fall directing CPSC staff to investigate the hazards posed by gas stoves. Even when turned off, gas stoves can leak significant amounts of heat-trapping methane as well as numerous other toxic and carcinogenic pollutants including “BTEX” chemicals (​​benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene). Despite this, and the fact that many homes' cooking hoods merely recirculate air within the home, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers echoed messaging employed by the fossil fuel industry and sought to blame home cooks for the air pollution released by their stoves, telling Bloomberg, "We may need some behavior change, we may need [people] to turn on their hoods when cooking.” Induction cooktops are gaining in popularity both for their safety and culinary quality. “There is this misconception that if you want to do fine-dining kind of cooking it has to be done on gas,” Trumka said. “It’s a carefully manicured myth.” (Bloomberg $, Scary Mommy, Gizmodo, Tech Crunch, CNN, Mother Jones, Yahoo, OilPrice, Motley Fool, New York Post, Washington Examiner, Fox Business)

US Climate Pollution Rose In 2022: U.S. climate pollution increased 1.3% in 2022 over 2021, according to a report issued this morning by the Rhodium Group. The last eight years have been the hottest on record as the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels continue to heat the planet. Despite climate pollution increases in both of the last two years, U.S. climate pollution is still lower than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, climate scientists warned global climate pollution must fall by 7.6% per year until 2030 to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial levels. While U.S. climate pollution rose overall, emissions from the electrical grid fell as renewable energy generation rose 12%. The report also shows the U.S. economy is becoming less carbon-intensive with an estimated GDP growth of 1.9%. Despite actions taken to cut climate pollution, the U.S. — by far the world's largest historical emitter of climate pollution — must act even faster to meet its goal of reducing greenhouse gas pollution by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, and by 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030. (Boston Globe $, New York Times $, Washington Post $, Reuters, Canary Media, Bloomberg $, Grist, FT $; Last 8 years: New York Times $)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: Duke U professor: Damar Hamlin is proof football violence hurts Black men more (The Root), Redlining's ripple effects go beyond humans (NPR)

FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: Russia-EU energy war means a ‘tough year’ for the Kremlin’s budget (Politico Pro $), Sliding natural-gas prices deal surprise reprieve to Europe (Wall Street Journal $), Prompted by Russian aggression, the EU and NATO vow new cooperation. (New York Times $)

• US GAS PRICES: New England grapples with sky-high electricity rates as Ukraine war squeezes gas supply (The Hill), Why natural gas prices — and bills — are soaring in Southern California (LA Times $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Donors offer over $9B for Pakistan after devastating floods (AP, Climate Home), France ready to back Pakistan in talks with creditors, says Macron (Reuters), How sending climate aid abroad helps the US (E&E News)

GAS STOVES: Are Gas Stoves the New Cigarettes? (Curbed), I measured the pollution from my gas stove. It was bad. (Distilled.Earth)

OZONE: Earth’s ozone layer is recovering as damaging chemicals phased out (Bloomberg $, Washington Post $, AP, Gizmodo, Axios, Wall Street Journal $)

INFLATION REDUCTION ACT: As infrastructure money lands, the job dividends begin (New York Times $)

AGENCIES: White House guidance on GHG analysis will ease renewable energy permitting, trade groups say (Utility Dive)

EPA: EPA blueprint: Soot proposal would affect Calif. the most (E&E News), EPA inks deal to clean up Keystone spill (E&E News, AP), EPA opts not to declare Permian non attainment area (Houston Chronicle), EPA’s proposed air pollution standards for soot could save thousands of lives (Grist)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: SEC signals April release of final climate disclosure rule (E&E $)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden talks climate and energy with world leaders (E&E $), Biden, López Obrador, Trudeau meet in Mexico City for summit (AP, Politico), Podesta’s early meetings: CEOs, an heiress and Obama alumni (E&E News), White House asks court to throw out Antiquities Act lawsuit (E&E $)

HOUSE: House Republican fires opening salvo on energy permitting (E&E News), US House adopts rules sought by hardliners to control McCarthy (Reuters, New York Times $, Washington Post $, Politico, The Hill, CNN), House adopts new rules Democrats decry as a ‘ransom note to America’ (The Guardian), 5 House staffers to watch on energy, environment (E&E $), After speaker showdown, House enters uncharted territory (E&E News), Republican chaos threatens congressional to-do list (E&E News), Unpacking the House GOP's new rules: A handy guide to the changes (Politico)

CCC: Proposed Civilian Climate Corps gets boost from new alliance (E&E $)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: White House renominates prominent judicial picks (E&E $)

CITIES AND STATES: Mass. unveils plans to roll back gas in new buildings (E&E News), New York City wants more EVs but needs to find space for chargers (Wall Street Journal $), R.I. must accelerate transportation emission cuts to hit 2030 target, advocates say (Energy News Network), Washington state just started capping carbon emissions. Here’s how it works. (Grist), Will California’s new oil and gas laws protect people from toxic pollution? (Environmental Health News), With stroke of his pen, Gov. Mike DeWine defines natural gas as green energy (Cleveland Plain-Dealer), 11 executions of humans scheduled in Oklahoma for 2023 (Black Wall Street Times)

FERC: White House climate guidance may shift FERC on gas (E&E $)

IMPACTS: Hurricanes and floods bring $120 billion in insurance losses in 2022 (Reuters, Bloomberg $), Drought, floods, wildfires: Climate change upends archaeology (Axios),  ‘Mudscape’ envelops an Australian outback town after severe flood (Wall Street Journal $), Australian official: Climate change making historic flooding 'less natural' (Axios), Groundwater in suburban Boston at risk because of warming (E&E $), How did a La Niña winter become so rainy? (New York Times $), Low salt marsh habitats release more carbon in response to warming, a new study finds (Inside Climate News), Relentless rain, record heat: Study finds climate crisis worsened extreme weather (The Guardian)

HEAT: How a surprise April heat wave came back to bite the West (E&E $)

HURRICANES: Puerto Rico group helps protect abuse survivors during and after disasters (Yale Climate Connections)

DROUGHT: Here’s where California reservoirs stand after atmospheric river storms this week (San Francisco Chronicle), Waiting for rain in Somalia (NPR), Global food prices in 2022 hit record high amid drought, war (AP), Human-driven climate change contributed to Western drought: Study (Politico Pro $)

RENEWABLES: Wind power: Cleaner air, but EJ challenges (E&E $), Silicon Ranch raises $600M for its holistic take on solar development (Canary Media), Solar startup Enpal nears $2.4 billion valuation in TPG-led investment (Wall Street Journal $), Texas project will use wind to make fuel out of water (Inside Climate News), US clean power capacity additions lag in 2022 (Energy Monitor)

OIL & GAS: Could 2023 be a turning point for US offshore oil? (E&E News), Using up America’s oil reserve was easy. Refilling it won’t be. (Wall Street Journal $)

PLASTICS: French food giant Danone sued over plastic use under landmark law (New York Times $)

PIPELINES: Colonial restarts New York harbor-bound fuel pipe after leak (Bloomberg $)

COAL: Activists try to block access to doomed German village (AP)

NUKES: Bill Gates considers W.Va. to expand nuclear energy efforts (AP)

UTILITIES: AEP Ohio seeks approval for electric security plan with $2.2B in reliability spending (Utility Dive), Avangrid-PNM merger could get 2nd review by New Mexico’s restructured Public Regulation Commission (Utility Dive), Major PUC decision about Texas' power market won't be the end of debate (Houston Chronicle), Power plants fined $39M for coming up short on Christmas Eve (AP)

EVs: How carmakers are crafting the EV-charging experience (E&E News)

AGRICULTURE: English farmers turning to cultivating nuts as climate heats (The Guardian)

BOOKS: A new novel confronts the scale and gravity of climate change (New York Times $)

BUSINESSES: CES 2023: Companies tout environmental tech innovations (AP)

CARBON REMOVAL: Swiss pioneer of CO2 removal plans US expansion (E&E $)

WILDLIFE: 30×30 is conservation’s flashy new goal. Now countries need to figure out what it actually means. (Grist), Researchers see progress in monarch butterfly conservation (E&E $)

INTERNATIONAL: Canada's Trudeau urges Alberta to contribute to carbon-capture incentives (Reuters), Net zero possible in 2040s, says outgoing UK climate business expert (The Guardian), Swiss right-wing party to call referendum in bid to block climate change law (Reuters)

• Solving the other half of the climate equation: Removing carbon (Utility Dive, Emma Gibbs, Mark Patel, and Giulia Siccardo op-ed)
• What Tesla and the Victorian Era can teach today’s tech bros (San Francisco Chronicle, Iwan Rhys Morus op-ed)
• How to endure the winters of a life sentence (Atmos, Jeffrey Shockley essay)
• England’s new ban on single-use plastics sounds good – but it is a surrender to big business (The Guardian, John Vidal column)
• Make highways ‘infrastructure’ again (Wall Street Journal, Editorial Board $)

Gas Stoves Give Kids Asthma Just Like Second Hand Smoke, so the Gas Industry Decided to Use Big Tobacco's 'Sound Science' Defense 

When the tobacco industry had to fend off scientific evidence that even second-hand smoke causes health problems for those living in a smoker’s house, lawyer Steve Milloy helped Big Tobacco set up The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). The premise was simple: cast doubt on any science showing their product causes a problem, on the basis that it's not "sound science." 

In the decades since, TASSC became Milloy's JunkScience website, and he shifted to defending Big Oil and coal instead of tobacco. But "sound science" has remained a useful industry catchphrase that is often rolled out to cast doubt on the perfectly sound science justifying regulations on dangerous products. 

For example, in response to a recent study showing that gas stoves cause just as much asthma in children as second-hand smoke, the methane gas industry used the same "sound science" defense that the tobacco industry used in the 90s when denying the science showing second-hand smoke causes health impacts like asthma. 

One of the study’s co-authors told Maxine Joselow at the Washington Post that having a gas stove is like "having car exhaust in a home," and the study itself concludes that the 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the US that is attributable to gas stove use "is similar to the childhood asthma burden attributed to secondhand smoke exposure." 

In response to the study, the American Gas Association's president and Chief Executive Karen Harbert unsurprisingly failed to apologize or promise that the industry would do whatever it can to clean up its products to address this problem. As Joselow reported, "the burden of asthma falls disproportionately on children of color and those in lower-income neighborhoods. Black and Hispanic children are twice as likely as White children to be hospitalized for asthma, while poor households are more likely to have smaller kitchens that lack proper ventilation."

Instead, Harbert told Joselow that the study was "clearly driven by simple advocacy-based modeling and hypotheticals," contrasting it with the "deep and sophisticated analysis we should see in sound science." 

There it is! 

The fossil fuel industry has faced numerous comparisons to Big Tobacco, seeing as both industries have waged decades-long disinformation campaigns, so you might think that gas executives would go out of their way to avoid using the exact same arguments and catchphrases as the tobacco industry.

However, Harbert went on to complain that the study "did not adequately consider other factors that are known to contribute to asthma," which is yet another tactic straight out of the tobacco playbook- why didn't the study incorporate basically everything else in the known universe?

It is also a totally baseless charge because, as Joselow reported, the basis for this study actually DID control for "other factors that can cause asthma, including exposure to tobacco smoke, pets, mold and water damage." It is hard to think of anything that would make it more obvious that the industry demand for "sound science" has nothing at all to do with the quality of the science itself. 

At some point, you'd think the fossil fuel industry would try something that the tobacco industry hasn’t already gotten busted for, but we're still waiting…

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