Biden Floats $5 Billion Fossil Fuel Buildout For Puerto Rico: Methane gas power generation failures are responsible for a disproportionate share of weather-related outages, Bloomberg reports. Nevertheless, E&E reports, the Biden administration is planning to pour $5 billion into temporary fossil fuel power plants and other infrastructure repairs in Puerto Rico. The island territory's notoriously unreliable grid has seen numerous widespread blackouts in recent years — often with the only exceptions being where community-based solar installations kept lights on and refrigerators running. “There’s really no justification for this additional fossil fuel generation. We have so much of it already,” Ruth Santiago, a Puerto Rico-based activist and member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, told E&E News. “This is a scam.” Distributed solar installations are proliferating around the island, with more than 3,000 new systems added monthly and increasing numbers of solar customers are adding battery backup systems to increase their resilience to the prolonged outages. (Gas unreliability: Bloomberg $; Puerto Rico fossils: E&E News; Puerto Rico batteries: Canary Media)

Heat Continues, Smoke Returns: As toxic wildfire smoke returns to the Midwest, and the brutal heatwave smothering Texas and the southern U.S. broils on, two new reports highlight the human costs of climate change and ableism. In addition to the inherent dangers of hyperthermia and dehydration itself, extreme heat can exacerbate or set off a host of medical conditions including cardiovascular, kidney, and respiratory diseases. A new report from the Center for American Progress finds extreme heat, made worse and more frequent by climate change, will be responsible for nearly 235,000 emergency room visits and 56,000 hospital admissions, all adding up to about $1 billion in health care costs each summer. The dangers of extreme heat are disproportionately borne by people with disabilities, a Human Rights Watch report on extreme heat in Europe warned. The extreme heat is also pushing electrical grids to their breaking point, which can leave vulnerable people without cooling during hot days. (Heatwave: New York Times $, Reuters, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal $; Wildfire smoke: AP, The Hill, Axios, AP, New York Times $; Health care costs: Grist; Disabilities: Reuters; Grid impacts: AP, Houston Chronicle; Climate Signals background: Extreme heat and heatwaves, Wildfires)

Total Sued In French Court Over EACOP: A coalition of French and Ugandan activists are suing TotalEnegies, alleging the French oil major violated food and land rights. The lawsuit, filed in French court on Tuesday, alleges Total violated a French "duty of vigilance" law and seeks damages for those harmed by the company's Tilenga oil development and the $3.5 billion East African Crude Oil Pipeline. Total is the largest shareholder in the nearly 900-mile heated crude oil pipeline activists have criticized as yet another example of energy colonialism — the extraction of African resources by overseas actors with little benefit for local communities. Among the allegations in the lawsuit is Total's relocation of families dislocated by the pipeline into "small, inappropriate replacement housing that is not suitable to the family sizes of affected households,” Dickens Kamugisha, head of the Uganda-based Africa Institute for Energy Governance, told the AP. Just Stop Oil protesters also demonstrated outside Total's London headquarters on Tuesday. (Lawsuit: AP, Reuters; London protest: The Independent, AFP)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: America's family secret (Reuters), More than 100 US politicians have ancestral ties to slavery, new report reveals (The Root)

CLIMATE LITIGATION: How a small island nation is taking climate change to the world’s highest court (Grist, Ralph Regenvanu interview)

• MONTANA CLIMATE TRIAL: What to know about the groundbreaking climate change lawsuit in Montana (Mother Jones)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: ‘We could lose our status as a state’: what happens to a people when their land disappears (The Guardian), Public banks agree to check investments against countries’ climate plans (Climate Home), How countries can get richer without wrecking the planet (New York Times $)

VIOLENT DENIAL: A meteorologist got threats for his climate coverage. His new job is about solutions (NPR)

GOP vs. ESG: Republican attacks on ESG aren't stopping companies in red states from going green (NPR)

INSURANCE: Climate change is fueling an insurance crisis. There's no easy fix. (Washington Post $), Insurers pull back as US climate catastrophes intensify (The Hill)

SCOTUS: Greens prevail in Supreme Court elections case (E&E News)

EPA: EPA retreats on Louisiana investigations that alleged Blacks lived amid higher cancer risk (AP, Washington Post $)

DOE: DOE highlights Georgia’s clean energy economy ahead of Granholm visit (Utility Dive), DOE to upgrade lab, pursue low-carbon jet fuel (E&E $), DOE: U.S. energy sector jobs surge in 2022 (Politico Pro $)

DOI: As the sea rises, will a prized national seashore wash away? (Yale Environment 360), BOEM to propose changes to offshore rig decommissioning rules (Politico Pro $), US push to lower wildfire risk across the West stumbles in places (AP)

DOT: Federal agency awards $1.7B for cleaner transit buses, bus facilities (Utility Dive)

TREASURY: Treasury urges insurers, states to act on climate risks (Politico Pro $, E&E $)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: Fort Liberty installs floating solar panels (Yale Climate Connections)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden prepares economic pitch with energy focus (E&E News), Biden’s new permitting fixer Eric Beightel (Politico Pro, interview $)

POLITICS: Georgia governor attacks Biden’s electric vehicle policy at federally-backed battery material maker (AP)

ELECTIONS: Trump stokes electric car fears in Michigan (E&E News, Politico)

TRIBES: More Indigenous and local communities are getting land back (Grist)

CITIES AND STATES: Maine governor vetoes offshore wind bill over labor requirement (AP), Mass. AG offers offshore wind ambition reality check (E&E $), Minnesota enacts nation’s broadest ban of 'forever chemicals' (Environmental Health News), N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper criticizes bill to block new building energy efficiency rules (Energy News Network), New Mexico PRC cuts number of open meetings, adds closed sessions (Utility Dive), Western governors highlight ‘common commitment’ to advancing regional climate solutions (The Hill), How might congestion pricing actually work in New York? (New York Times $), California budget deal scraps Newsom bid to speed Delta tunnel but includes changes to environmental law (Politico Pro $)

IMPACTS: The weird reasons behind the Atlantic ocean’s crazy heat (Heatmap $)

HEAT: Spain: Heat strokes and dehydration deaths soared in summer of 2022, the hottest year on record (AP)

• NEWS YOU CAN USE: You don’t have to run your air conditioner 24 hours a day. Here’s what to do. (Washington Post $)

WILDFIRES: Air quality alerts are no joke. How wildfire smoke affects the body (Axios), Smoke from Canada's wildfires darkens Europe's skies (NPR), More than 1,000 people told to evacuate as brushfire threatens homes in Scottsdale, Arizona (AP), Rainfall likely won’t be enough to extinguish Quebec wildfires causing US smoke, officials say (AP)

VECTOR BORNE DISEASE: US sees first cases of local malaria transmission in two decades (New York Times $, NPR)

WATER: We pump so much groundwater, we've shifted the world's tilt and contributed to sea level rise (Gizmodo)

DEFORESTATION: Deforestation jumped 10% last year despite global pledges (Axios), Rainforest loss worsened despite global pledge: research (The Hill), Tropical forest loss sped up in 2022, despite global pledge to halt deforestation (Grist)

REQUIEM FOR A NATION: Facing extinction, Tuvalu considers the digital clone of a country (The Guardian)

RENEWABLES: India's Amara wins solar power project in Bangladesh (Reuters), Investment in energy transition too focused on few technologies - IRENA (Reuters), Small solar power firms eclipsed in India's renewable energy race (Context)

UTILITIES: Solar developers ask regulators to suspend Dominion interconnection rules (Virginia Mercury)

BATTERIES: Industrial heat startup Rondo to open world’s largest battery factory (Canary Media)

BUILDINGS: Report charts path to phasing out fossil fuels in homes (E&E $), Steam made by heat pumps can help clean up industry and manufacturing (Canary Media), US will need to triple building retrofit rate to meet decarbonization targets: report (Utility Dive)

STORAGE: Sage Geosystems raising up to $20M to store energy underground (Axios)

LNG: LNG exporters Texas, Louisiana had nearly half US natgas demand growth in last decade -EIA (Reuters)

METHANE: $77B needed to slash oil and gas methane emissions — report (E&E $)

OIL & GAS: Russia set to overtake Saudi Arabia in battle for China’s oil market (Wall Street Journal $), Shell’s petrochemical plant in Pennsylvania hasn’t spurred economic growth: Report (Environmental Health News), Norway approves 19 oil and gas projects, saying the resulting investments are worth over $19 billion (AP)

ORPHANED WELLS: Abandoned oil and gas wells are leaking planet-warming methane. Workers are struggling to keep up (WBUR)

PLASTICS: How plastics are poisoning us (The New Yorker $)

COAL: S.Africa's Exxaro expects lower coal sales as demand cools (Reuters)

NUKES: All systems go for Fukushima radioactive wastewater release, plant operator says (Gizmodo)

EVs: EV sales jump as industry faces charging obstacles (E&E $), Latinos back EVs but majority are not interested in buying them (Axios), Lordstown Motors, once considered an Ohio town’s savior, files for bankruptcy (Wall Street Journal $), Tesla charging technology put on fast track to become US standard (Reuters, Wall Street Journal $), Tesla’s EV charging technology to be standardized by SAE (Politico Pro $), The best part of an EV is when you’re not driving (Heatmap $), Threatened by shortages, electric car makers race for supplies of lithium for batteries (AP)

PFAS: 'Profit over the public’s health’: study details efforts by makers of forever chemicals to hide their harms (Inside Climate News)

ACTIVISM: Climate Emergency Fund adds noteworthy scientist to its ranks (Axios)

BOOKS: ‘Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters’ explores the legacy of the Black musician who made ‘Hound Dog’ a hit (The 19th* News)

MOVIES: My Extinction review – cheerfully dishevelled film-maker gets stuck into climate crisis (The Guardian, review)

FOOD: No more flame-grilled burgers? How gas bans may change food. (E&E News), No, climate activists are not coming for NYC pizza (Heated)

FINANCE: Global accounting group outlines plan for more climate disclosure (E&E $)

WILDLIFE: Overfishing, not climate change, is pushing some sharks to brink of extinction (Boston Globe $), Sick sea lions washing ashore in California due to algae bloom (Reuters)

INTERNATIONAL: Australia put a lid on rising energy prices. Some warn it was a mistake. (Wall Street Journal $), Brazil aims to pass offshore wind, green hydrogen laws by year-end, energy minister says (Reuters), Canada launches first-ever climate adaptation strategy (Reuters), Environmental policy and action on the ground in the Amazon (Mongabay), Israel reignites debate on how much natural gas to sell abroad (Reuters), World Bank approves Indonesia loan, funding for clean energy and health (Reuters)

• Black America can’t wait for Biden administration to deliver environmental justice (NewsOne, Tamara Toles O’Laughlin op-ed)
• The IRA is our best shot at tackling climate change—but only if we don't squander it (TIME, Jennifer Pahlka op-ed)
• Why most Americans no longer consider themselves environmentalists (The Hill, Steven Cohen op-ed)

The Debunkings Will Continue Until Big Tech Improves, Because Yes, Humans Cause Climate Change

On Monday, Kate Petersen published a great fact check at USA Today, debunking the inaccurate science and shoddy math that Aussie denier Alan Jones used to assert that climate policy would be “national economic suicide” for Australia.

In a May Instagram video, Jones stated, "How much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere? It's 0.04%. And of that 0.04%, human beings around the world create 3%. And of that 3%, Australia creates 1.3%. So, for the 1.3% of the 3% of the 0.04%, we then decide to have a national economic suicide." As it turns out, this claim is completely misleading because the total amount of CO2 is more important than the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere. Not only that, but Jones is also completely wrong about the numbers: "Humans have contributed about 33% of that [carbon dioxide in the air], not 3%, since 1850," Peterson explained. Jones has his figure wrong by 30%, but we're not holding our breath that he self-corrects.

Asserting that a policy will be too costly is a staple of anti-regulatory propaganda, and it’s the sort of thing that industry advocates have leveled against everything from climate action to seat belts to (as Oreskes and Conway mention in The Big Myth) child labor laws a century ago. Given this long history, you would think it would be easy enough for Big Tech platforms to guard against these crusty old lies! 

Instead, tech companies defer to journalists and fact checkers, which is good, but then pile an infinite amount of work on them instead of reducing the amount of harmful disinformation posted in the first place. Alan Jones is hardly an unknown figure and his role in the disinformation ecosystem as a driver of viral climate denial is well-documented, so a platform that actually cared about accuracy and quality of information could easily throttle his climate content in order to protect users from harmful false content. 

The Monday USA Today fact check was not even the first time Jones has been corrected on this very point! Back in 2012, he got in trouble with the Australian Communications and Media Authority for claiming humans are only responsible for "0.001 per cent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," and when asked to provide evidence of the claim, Jones's employer at the time "conceded that it was a claim researched by Mr Jones himself and they weren't able to adduce any evidence supporting that claim." 

Jones has been saying basically the same thing for a decade (though admittedly moving from a totally made-up figure to one that's wrong by a mere order of magnitude), but Facebook and Instagram aren't going to proactively do anything to protect their users. Instead, they'll hide behind fact checkers, and make them constantly do the same thing over and over again. 

As Petersen's USA Today fact check notes, "The claim was also debunked by AFP" in May by Roland Lloyd Parry, who also debunked similar claims this April. After doing so last year as well. ClimateFeedback has also debunked various forms of this falsehood, meaning that Facebook/Instagram-recognized fact checkers have addressed versions of this false claim at least six times. 

Each debunk requires multiple hours of work for the fact checker to examine claims, follow up with those making them, read existing literature to get context, talk to experts to get quotes, get another fact checker to fact check the fact check, and so on. 

On the other hand, Jones and fellow clout-chasing disinfluencers who spread these false claims on social media clearly spend zero time on being accurate. And instead of creating a policy that would make fact checkers' jobs easier by reducing the amount of false content that can get algorithmically boosted to virality, Meta has instead just shifted the burden of moderating Facebook and Instagram onto the journalists whose industry has been gutted by social media. 

All the while, liars get to go viral, leaving fact checkers to chase down the truth.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up to receive Hot News every morning!

Send updates or feedback to nkauffman@climatenexus.org
Submit events and other items for consideration for a First Look using this form
Some articles require logins or subscriptions ($)