Human Trafficking Increasing In Eastern India After Climate Disasters: Repeated climate-fueled disasters in the Indian state of West Bengal have left a wake of destitution and vulnerability among the population, leading to an increase in human trafficking, forced sex work, and even organ and blood trafficking, The Guardian reports. The eastern Indian state, on the border with Bangladesh — and especially the Sundarbans landscape of rivers, mud flats, and mangrove forest — is the area hit by disasters most frequently. Those massive storms, including three super cyclones in the last four years, have killed hundreds of people and, along with rising sea levels, leave behind submerged villages and salinated, arid farmland. The disproportionate harms to women and girls resulting from misogyny following climate-fueled disasters are also intertwined with the extractive industries, such as American fracking and pipeline construction, that fuel the crisis. “The traffickers know how these families are vulnerable and they come with hope when the situation is desperate, and people are searching for something better,” Subhasree Raptan, who runs Goranbose Gram Bikash Kendra, a local NGO that helps recover and rehabilitate victims of trafficking. “They may offer a good job or a good marriage opportunity. They may trap the girls over the phone or in some cases social media, calling them or sending them messages or love proposals. They gain the trust – and then they exploit.” (The Guardian)

Bonn Talks Stall As COP28 Conflicts Loom: As tension over the COP28 host and president's promotion of fossil fuels at the November climate summit in the UAE continues to build, negotiators at pre-summit talks in Bonn, Germany, have yet to officially adopt an agenda for the two-week planning meeting scheduled to end Thursday. The fault lines are myriad, but one of the biggest points of conflict is the prominence of climate finance — financial support from wealthy nations to developing countries. The role of fossil fuels, and the fact that COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, is openly promoting the continued use of fossil fuels, calling for “an energy system that is free of unabated fossil fuels” (emphasis added) is also a major point of tension. “It’s just like how tobacco lobbyists need to be kept out of conversations about cancer prevention,” Destination Zero head Catherine Abreu told the New York Times. “Fossil fuel interests actively work to co-opt our imaginations,” Ms. Abreu said. “Governments now can imagine a geo-engineered planet easier than a grow-out of renewables that already exist.” (Bonn: Climate Home; COP28: New York Times $)

Advocates Call For Farmworker Safety Net, Climate Fueled California Fire Increase: California farmworkers — particularly undocumented workers — are especially vulnerable to the climate-fueled disasters that regularly pummel the state, prompting advocates to call for permanent disaster funds to provide a safety net for the workers who feed the nation. Climate change is responsible for a major portion of the approximately fivefold increase in California acres burned between 1971 and 2021, new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds. The scientists used various statistical models to disaggregate the plethora of factors that affect wildfires and determined the acreage incinerated increased 172% more than it would have without climate change. Put another way, "Nearly all of the observed increase in [burned area in California] over the past half-century is attributable to anthropogenic climate change," co-author Don Lucas, of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told USA Today. (Farmworkers: Modern Farmer, Wildfires: USA Today, Bloomberg $, San Francisco Chronicle, E&E $, The Atlantic; Climate Signals background: Wildfires)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: The burning of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street was a defining moment in US history — but its story didn’t end there (The 19th* News)

FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY CRISIS: US warned Ukraine not to attack Nord Stream (Wall Street Journal $)

MONTANA CLIMATE TRIAL: Lawsuit pits young climate change activists against a fossil fuel-friendly state at trial (AP, E&E $, Reuters, Democracy Now), ‘My life and my home’: Young people start to testify at historic US climate trial (The Guardian), ‘I’m a prisoner in my own home,’ asthma sufferer, 15, tells landmark US climate trial (The Guardian), Who is ‘Held’ of Held v. State of Montana? (Missoulian)

CANADIAN WILDFIRES: As wildfire smoke recedes, parents of young children worry about the next time (Inside Climate News), Asthma ER visits during NYC smoke haze were highest in high-poverty, Black and Latino areas (Gothamist), The summer of smoke is just getting started (Gizmodo), Canadian fires signal new frontier in climate change (Wall Street Journal $)

CYCLONE BIPARJOY: Seven die as cyclone barrels towards western India, Pakistan (Reuters, CBS), Thousands evacuated in India and Pakistan as Cyclone Biparjoy approaches (AP)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Is the world making real progress towards net zero emissions? (Context, explainer), ‘Super emitter’: US in talks to reduce methane bursts in Turkmenistan (E&E News), World Bank's new chief Banga to sharpen focus on projects with measurable impact (Reuters)

EACOP: Climate campaigners urge Standard Bank to ditch 'alarming' East African Crude Oil Pipeline (Common Dreams)

GOP vs. ESG: Companies quiet diversity and sustainability talk amid culture war boycotts (Wall Street Journal $)

INFLATION REDUCTION ACT: How Biden’s big investments spurred a factory boom (The Hill)

EPA: Biden appeals biggest WOTUS loss (E&E $), EPA gets deadline extension for final biofuels rule (Politico Pro $)

DOE: DOE announces $192M for battery recycling, says lithium storage market could grow tenfold by 2030 (Utility Dive), DOE docs central to Trump’s indictment (E&E News), Granholm details views on climate law, gas, DOE staffing (E&E News)

DOI: BLM approves NextEra’s 300-MW Sunlight Storage II project in Southern California (Utility Dive)

DOT: Section of heavily traveled I-95 collapses in Philadelphia after tanker truck catches fire (AP), Buttigieg: DOT speeding funds for Philly highway repair (E&E $)

TREASURY: Yellen says IMF, World Bank are important counterweights to China (Bloomberg $), Yellen set to ask Congress to lend more money to developing countries to counter China (CNN), Yellen warns about EU climate rule (Politico Pro $)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: What the first net-zero military base could mean for the Pentagon’s future (Washington Post $)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden admin urges court to uphold first US city gas ban (E&E $), White House blasts GOP tax plan (E&E News)

THE HILL: California Democrats call on EPA to ensure air pollution rule does not prevent controlled burns (The Hill), Dems ask Haaland to 'modernize' BLM through conservation rule (E&E $), Dems flag wildfire control, EPA soot rule disconnect (E&E $), Republicans launch new attack on EPA climate rule (E&E $)

HOUSE: House defense bill chock-full of energy provisions (E&E News), House votes to restrict feds from banning or regulating gas stoves (The Hill), GOP moderates strike back after conservative revolt paralyzes House (The Hill), Ways and Means approves tax bill hitting climate law (E&E News)

POLITICS: Biden's climate policy makes the left sweat 2024 (Axios)

CITIES AND STATES: A new kind of clean energy utility is born in Massachusetts (Heatmap $), A Pennsylvania community wins a reprieve on toxic fracking wastewater (Inside Climate News), Georgia, a GOP-led state, courts clean energy jobs without harping on climate (NPR), The nation’s first state climate czar dreams of a day when her job is unnecessary (The Hill), US cities risk losing out on clean-energy incentives, jobs (Context)

• CALIFORNIA: California could see far lower costs to prepare grid for electrification than prior estimate, state research finds (Utility Dive), California is getting its biggest electric truck charging station yet (Canary Media)
• TEXAS: ERCOT expects grid to pass first test of summer as demand could soar to record highs (Houston Chronicle)

FERC: FERC Chair vows to move forward with environmental justice and transmission initiatives (Politico Pro $), What FERC chair's calendar reveals (E&E $)

IMPACTS: Here’s how much hotter than normal this June has been (New York Times $), Climate extremes raise questions, concerns about faster warming (Axios), Feeling more turbulence during your flights? Blame climate change. (Gizmodo), Why is the summer off to such an extreme start? (Grist), Georgia peaches in short supply this season due to climate change (NBC), North Atlantic temperature anomaly sparks concern among climate scientists (The Independent)

HEAT: Why did National Grid use coal to meet surge in electricity demand? (The Guardian, explainer), High temperatures and low oxygen choke out thousands of fish in the Gulf (Gizmodo, The Hill, Democracy Now, NPR)

WATER: Global water reservoir volumes decline despite construction boom -study (Reuters)

(DE)FORESTATION: As Africa loses forest, its small farmers are bringing back trees (Yale Environment 360)

WORKERS: Wanted: More skills for workers as green jobs grow (Context, explainer)

INSURANCE: How climate change factors into home insurance pricing (NPR), Rising insurance rates price Floridians out of home ownership (NBC)

RENEWABLES: Bill Gates-backed solar company raises $103 million for US wafer factory (Reuters), Renewable transition still lagging in fuel, heating sectors - research (Reuters), Study says renewables must ramp up 5 times faster to avert Thunberg's climate 'cliff' (Reuters)

BATTERIES: The little engine that could ... save the grid? (E&E $)

BUILDINGS: This all-electric neighborhood may be the future of green living (KQED)

LNG: 3 Freeport LNG trains back online amid volatile natural gas prices (OilPrice)

METHANE: Turkmenistan moves towards plugging massive methane leaks (The Guardian)

OIL & GAS: BP refinery suffered cascade of malfunctions before fatal explosion, agency says (Wall Street Journal $), Natural gas climbs for 7th time in 8 sessions (Wall Street Journal $), Natural gas production in the Permian Basin hit a record high in 2022 (OilPrice)

HYDROGEN: Industry-funded comic for kids casts hydrogen fuel as climate hero (DeSmog)

UTILITIES: Duke Energy to sell its 3.4 GW-commercial renewables business to Brookfield for $2.8B (Utility Dive), Oregon jury finds PacifiCorp liable in 2020 wildfires lawsuit (Axios), Xcel Energy cuts funding for resiliency stations at Minneapolis sites serving diverse neighborhoods (Sahan Journal)

BIG BOATS: France seeks to rally support for emissions levy on shipping (FT $), The cruise industry is on a course for climate disaster (TIME)

GRID: US clean energy rollout continues to be hamstrung by grid challenges (Canary Media)

EVs: Tesla doesn’t see higher-volume production for electric semi truck until late 2024 (Wall Street Journal $), Utilities plan for getting EVs out of hurricane country (E&E $), As electric vehicles become more common, experts worry they could pose a safety risk for other drivers (CBS)

• BUT BRIAN'S SUPRA WAS AN AUTOMATIC!: Toyota EV mimics manual transmission with feel of gear shifts, roaring engine (Wall Street Journal $)

CARS: Americans and their cars (New York Times $)

BUSINESSES: Fossil fuel companies’ net-zero pledges ‘largely meaningless’ without better data: analysis (The Hill)

FINANCE: A simple tool to unlock trillions of dollars in clean-energy investments (Bloomberg $)

PERSONAL ACTION: You don’t have to cremate your cat (The Atlantic), You might want to think twice about clothing brands that push rental, resale, and recycling (TIME)

GRETA: Greta Thunberg: Not phasing out fossil fuels is ‘death sentence’ for world’s poor (The Guardian)

INTERNATIONAL: EU mayors list climate action as a top priority in survey (E&E $), ICE aims to help cocoa, coffee firms meet EU deforestation rule (Reuters), Poland delays green energy plan as election nears (Reuters), South Africa woos China to help solve energy crisis (Reuters), UK pension fund fights appeal in landmark fossil fuels lawsuit (Reuters)

• GERMANY: German government coalition agrees to bring disputed heating bill to parliament before summer recess (AP, Reuters), Germany overtakes China as second most attractive country for renewables investment (Reuters), Norway to mandate solar power for new government buildings from 2024 (Reuters), Scientists fight claim EU nature law hurts farmers (Reuters), Long-awaited Vietnam energy plan aims to boost renewables, but fossil fuels still in the mix (AP)

• It’s not the job of children to fix the climate crisis. We must show them grown-ups are leading the way (The Guardian, Cassy Polimeni op-ed)
• Legislature should set standards to ensure offshore wind development benefits Maine (Bangor Daily News, Editorial Board)
• El Niño’s arrival spells out the stark choices on climate (FT, Anjana Ahuja op-ed $)
• Get ready for carbon capture’s second coming (Bloomberg, David Fickling column $)
• Hydrogen hype meets hard realities for Tasmania's global ambitions: Russell (Reuters, Clyde Russell column)
• Activists risk arrest — and smoke inhalation — to fight mountain valley pipeline (Truthout, Denali Sai Nalamalapu op-ed)
• How California can meet climate goals via offshore wind power (Mercury News, Eddie Ahn and Jeff Hunerlach op-ed)
• Why the EPA’s new carbon emissions rules will win in court (The Hill, Ethan Brown op-ed)
• Whisper it, but the boom in plastic production could be about to come to a juddering halt (The Guardian, Geoffrey Lean op-ed)
• Our leaders cannot allow the Earth to become an unbearable hothouse (The Hill, Jim Jones op-ed)
• Brazil’s Indigenous territory bill spells trouble for the Amazon (Context, Robert Muggah and Mac Margolis op-ed)
• Accelerate the US high-capacity transmission build-out with voluntary, strategic co-location (Utility Dive, Robin Allen op-ed)
• Canadian wildfires came from rotten luck, not climate change (Wall Street Journal, Clifford Mass op-ed $)
• No, climate change alone doesn't cause forest fires (Wall Street Journal, Editorial Report $)

The US Has 12 UFOs!? No, Shellenberger's Just Going Where Every Conspiracist Has Gone Before: Aliens

Are humans alone in the universe? Is there intelligent life out among the stars? Have any aliens visited Earth? 

We don’t know the definitive answer to these mysteries, but neither do deniers. They sure have questions, though! Case in point is Michael Shellenberger, who's now incorporating aliens into his schtick, which is about as obvious a signal one can receive that he is no longer even remotely credible on more immediately relevant issues like climate change. New groups like the Jordan Peterson-fronted Alliance for Responsible Citizenship would be wise to reconsider Shellenberger's involvement, lest they cement the (accurate) perception of climate deniers as conspiracy theorists who are as mad as (tinfoil) hatters. 

Even Shellenberger’s audience is skeptical. One tweeter who claims that they "used to trust" Shellenberger asked if there were "signs of this epistemological vulnerability in his other work." 

Short answer? Yes. Long answer? Oh absolutely, and it's hard to miss them! 

Ever since the unceremonious parting-of-ways of Shellenberger and the Breakthrough Institute he co-founded, his career has been on a downward spiral with a decidedly rightward trajectory. Though his new group took the name "Environmental Progress," it was always a propaganda ploy in that it deliberately co-opted a "progressive" label despite a mission of thwarting progressive policies— which has now become painfully transparent. 

Even the people he got to review his anti-environmental book said he got stuff wrong and the guy who basically replaced him at Breakthrough debunked his disinformation, so Shellenberger appears to have sought out new territory to ply his grift of posing as the reasonable 'man in the middle' who's not a conservative but sounds just like one. 

Let’s quickly review Shellenberger’s heinous record. His "California Peace Plan" tried to make "fund the police" happen to address drug and housing issues in California (by lying about progressives). He's glomming on to the transphobic "Wokeism Is A Religion" bandwagon to  dehumanize trans kids and attack progressives. He's posing as a journalist using the Twitter Files and testifying against progressives. And now, to seemingly complete his “ascent” into madness, he's beaming up to UFOs, claiming last week in a headline at his totally real journalism Substack "Public" that the "US Has 12 Or More Alien Spacecraft, Say Military and Intelligence Contractors." 

As fun as that may be, it's unlikely. In fact, debunking these wild UFO (and ghosts and werewolf) claims from "Skinwalker Ranch" is so easy that in addition to normal rebuttals of these abnormal claims, there's even a right-wing, blame-the-libs narrative that's been published in the New York Post. So, it's possible to virtue signal to Republicans, while being skeptical of outlandish UFO claims! But that is not the route Shellenberger chose.

Instead, it's conspiracy-on-conspiracy, as, according to Shellenberger, the government has in its possession alien spacecraft that it's refusing to release, and we only know about it because of a secretive whistleblower who the mainstream media has supposedly ignored (and not because it's not true). 

In fact, weird as it is, this narrative that there's a secret whistleblower fits snugly within the disinformation machine as a tactic to undercut trust in institutions of accountability, whether its ginned-up attacks on disinformation researchers (that Shellenberger uses to generate substack subscribers), or climate researchers, or COVID researchers, or trans people, or teachers who dare to tell students about systemic racism. 

By invoking supposed whistleblowers to make allegations of Big Government wrongdoing, those who do have something to hide can do double-duty by attacking their opposition with fake whistleblowers, thereby making the public that much more skeptical of the next, real whistleblower to come forward with evidence that implicates them, their funders, or political party. 

The truth is out there, for sure. Odds are, though, as less sensationalist voices point out, it's incredibly boring. But that doesn't sell tickets for Shellenberger's big appearance with Russell Brand in London later this month, as his pinned tweet promotes.  

The real problem here is not that a clown is chasing clicks with aliens, but that someone who's reliant on the whims of Twitter's algorithms is finding that peddling tabloid dreck as ridiculous as a dozen UFOs is a viable career fallback after big-dollar backing dries up. 

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