Black People In Alabama Suffered From Sewage For Decades: Residents of Lowndes county in Alabama, which is nearly 75 percent Black, were repeatedly and consistently denied access to clean sanitation systems, according to an environmental justice agreement announced by the Biden administration. The lack of sanitation in the community caused a litany of sewage-related health risks for decades, and went unabated by Alabama officials despite activist and community pleas to fix the situation. The environmental justice agreement from the Biden administration was entered after an 18 month federal investigation that found Alabama officials engaged in a “consistent pattern” of inaction and neglect around the health risks from the raw sewage that saturated the soil near Black residents. The officials, the agreement found, “failed to take meaningful action to remedy these conditions.” “In this community literally, kids can’t go play outside. … You can’t step outside without seeing and smelling what is happening, in a way that affluent, white communities do not face,” Melanie Fontes Rainer, director of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, told the Washington Post. The sewage backups and soil contamination were exacerbated by climate change, as the area became more prone to flooding and extreme weather events. (NBC News, AP, AI.com, Washington Post $)

Utah Considers Removing Climate From Schools: The Utah State Board of Education wants to avoid language they feel may be politically charged and are considering whether the term “climate change” is too politically charged to be taught to students. “Would there be anything wrong with using ‘changing climate’ instead of climate change?” Education board member Randy Boothe said. “Because everybody sees that there is a change in climate and that’s really what these meteorologists are wanting to talk about.” Board colleague Representative Natalie Cline added, “we’re not interacting with the weather, we’re just reacting to it. It’s happening to us, and we’re responding, and that’s different than interacting with weather as if what we do can change the weather.” The new standards will be discussed Thursday. (ABC4 Utah)

Senate Republicans Announce Permitting Plan For Energy And Infrastructure Projects: New proposals from Sens. Moore Capito and Barrasso would shorten the time it takes to approve and permit an infrastructure or mining project, and would speed up domestic oil and gas projects that are waiting for pipelines or electric reliability. The Republican sponsors of the legislation indicated they want to work with Democrats on permitting, though Democrats are supporting a narrower version of the permitting bill that would allow the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve transmission lines deemed to be in the national interest. Lawmakers are hoping to reach a permitting deal over the summer. (The Hill, Axios, Bloomberg Law)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) INJUSTICE: Tribe signs pact with California to work together on efforts to save endangered salmon (LA Times $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: John Kerry reveals China climate talks invitation despite GOP scrutiny (New York Post)

DOE: Jigar Shah is using his $400 billion checkbook to rapidly scale up clean tech (TIME)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden judicial nominee helped free-market group that opposed administration on climate change (Politico), Climate groups, young voters angry over Biden's support for fossil fuel industry: 'He sold us out' (Fox News)

THE HILL: Republicans lay out permitting reform vision, but signal openness to negotiation  (The Hill), US Senate repeals solar panel tariff suspension, Biden expected to veto (Reuters), Markey introduces bipartisan bill to improve climate-related mental health services (The Hill)

SCOTUS: How the Supreme Court could undermine the climate fight (Grist)

CITIES AND STATES: Minneapolis trash incinerator loses renewable energy designation, but deadline for closure remains evasive (Energy News Network), Portsmouth, N.H., is putting together its own climate action plan (Boston Globe $), How urban farmers are changing their practices as warmer winters and erratic storms threaten their crops (Boston Globe $), After a four-year campaign, New York says yes to publicly owned renewables (Grist), Utah's suicide pact with the fossil fuel industry (Mother Jones)

IMPACTS: Melting glaciers in Alps threaten biodiversity of invertebrates, says study (The Guardian), Climate change could impact the Philly region’s water supply. New storage options may help (WHYY), Climate change is pushing the Sonoran Desert toward a weedier, barren future (Desert Sun), How climate change will reshape where Americans live (FiveThirtyEight)

INSLEE: Even as he prepares to leave office, Jay Inslee is pushing for climate action (Washington Post $)

RAIL: Senators hopeful they can keep rail safety bill on track after East Palestine (The Hill)

OIL & GAS: The gas industry is losing its most valuable customer: Blue states (Vox), Exxon’s Canadian unit faces federal probe over oil-sands leak (Bloomberg $), The (relatively) cheap opportunity to cut oil and gas emissions (Axios), Shell beats expectations with $9.6 billion in first-quarter profit, boosted by fuel trading (CNBC), Oil prices under pressure on economic fears and gusher of Russian supply (Wall Street Journal $)

COAL: Mourning, and celebration: a funeral for a coal-fired power plant (Inside Climate News), The coal-reliant countries that are most ambitious in their commitment to net zero (Energy Monitor)

SOLAR: Solar panel orders point to clean energy boom from US climate law (Bloomberg $), Sunrun, Sunpower slump after marketing expenses led to losses (Bloomberg $)

TRANSMISSION: Talking TransWest and grid transmission policy on the Weather Channel 

EVs: Family of car buffs starts business to accelerate transition to electric vehicles (Denver Post), How a Chinese EV maker is looking to become the "Netflix of the car industry" (CBS), Americans insist on 300 miles of EV range. They’re right (Bloomberg $), The tricky politics of the electric vehicle revolution (Axios), EVs are clearing the air in California, but only for rich neighborhoods (Gizmodo), A California bill could help make EVs a blackout solution (Grist), Auto giants are setting their sights on a new growth market for EVs: India (CNBC), Designer EVs are getting in the way of the climate movement (Jalopnik)

ACTIVISM: Topless Italian climate protesters block Rome traffic (Reuters), Fire and concrete: will France’s model of radical climate protest catch on? (The Guardian)

AVIATION: United Airlines will use lower-carbon fuels in San Francisco, London (Reuters), There needs to be a climate tax for frequent fliers (TIME)

GEOENGINEERING: Should we reflect sunlight to cool the planet? (Vox)

H2: Go big or start small: Picking the right scale for green hydrogen (Canary Media)

FINAL FRONTIER: Billionaire Richard Branson defends space travel, argues it can benefit planet (CNBC)

SAGE GROUSE: Bi-state sage grouse considered for threatened status, again (AP)

FINANCE: Warren Buffett has been betting big on oil. It’s time to find out why. (Wall Street Journal $)

OCEANS: Why we need to reimagine our oceans (TIME)

BOOKS: The terrors of climate change are front and center in ‘blue skies’ (Washington Post $)

SHIPPING: Shipping lobby group advises caution on climate targets (AP)

INTERNATIONAL: Japan, Kenya hold talks on greater renewable-energy investment (Bloomberg $), Climate shocks could push 3 million Brazilians into extreme poverty, says World Bank (Reuters)

• A WTO climate peace clause would help protectionists, not the environment  (The Hill, Marc L. Busch)

   

• Latin America’s new lithium bounty unearths an old problem (Bloomberg, Eduardo Porter $)

   

• The IRS’s coming 45V tax credit rules can build a domestic clean hydrogen industry — but only if done right. (Utility Dive, Dan Esposito),

   

• We desperately need a new power grid. here’s how to make it happen. (New York Times, The Editorial Board $)

   

• A paper that says science should be impartial was rejected by major journals. you can’t make this up. (New York Times, Pamela Paul $)

   

• Why California must invest in climate resilient schools (Mercury News, Mary Ann Dewan)

• WV economy looking up, thanks to inflation reduction (Charleston Gazette-Mail, Dan Taylor)

Cato Serves Up Anti-EV Propaganda Next To Their Tobacco Disinfo

Everyone knows smoking causes cancer and that the tobacco industry lied about it for decades. When it finally got caught and was held accountable, some of the people and organizations the industry funded to protect its profits from regulations turned to the fossil fuel industry and continued plying their trade. 

Some twenty-odd years later, ExxonMobil and other oil companies are fighting for their proverbial lives in court to defend against accusations that they acted just like Big Tobacco in funding a decades-long disinformation campaign. 

While they're trying all sorts of legal stalling strategies, the reality is that it's not hard to prove that the tactics Big Tobacco got busted for are also being used by defenders of Big Oil. 

Case in point? A newsletter that the Cato Institute sent out Tuesday. It featured three pieces of content. 

The first was a Cato blog touting a study that they claim shows "efforts to reduce teen vaping deprive adult tobacco smokers of a proven harm-reduction strategy." Got that? Keeping kids from consuming addictive and dangerous substances is bad, because then adults can't buy those addictive and dangerous substances that are slightly less deadly than the products they're replacing. 

In climate lingo, it's like Cato is arguing that we should reduce fossil fuel emissions by investing in "clean" coal or "natural" (methane) gas. 

And sure enough, their second post was an EV hit piece that calls policies encouraging a shift away from fossil-fueled transportation “unrealistic.” That’s interesting, because it means denier dogma is now arguing that companies should be left alone to solve climate change through innovation, but any government requirement that companies innovate apparently renders it impossible for them to do so. Funny how that works! 

But even that is giving the argument too much credit. Anyone who, in the year 2023, is still arguing against regulations on behalf of the tobacco industry immediately exposes themselves as obvious disinformation-spouting liars! 

And the third piece highlighted only confirms Cato's got nothing but disinformation to offer: it’s a podcast in which a Cato pundit explains why she thinks "liberty is the secret sauce of growing prosperity." 

The liberty to sell people products that give them cancer and destroy the climate, that is.

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