Governments Failing To Target Global Methane Pollution: New research finds that only about 13 percent of global methane pollution is regulated, despite the super pollutant causing at least a quarter of current global warming. To achieve the goals laid out in the Paris accord, methane pollution should be cut by 40 to 45 percent by 2030, compared to 2020 levels. But the researchers from Queen Mary University of London found methane pollution is increasing faster than at any time since the 1980s. In the US, regulators are failing to regulate methane leakage from landfills, one of the largest sources of climate pollution in the country. The Environmental Integrity Project concluded that landfill-produced methane was responsible for the same amount of climate pollution as nearly 80 coal-fired power plants in 2021. The report notes that "fifty-four percent of the landfills reporting to the EPA's greenhouse gas database are surrounded by communities, within a one-mile radius, that exceed national averages for people of color or residents considered low-income." (Common Dreams, The Conversation, Phys.org, Inside Climate News, TIME $)

Wildfires in Canada Prompt Air Quality Alerts in the US: Smoke from dozens of raging wildfires in western Canada caused states across the northwestern US to issue air quality alerts over the weekend. Montana officials said that nearly the entire state was being impacted by the wildfire smoke on Sunday and enacted an air quality alert for over three dozen Montana counties. In Utah, residents were encouraged to avoid outdoor activities, and the smoke from the Canadian wildfires is expected to travel west to east across the US, impacting the northeast early this week. Research has found that climate change is leading to larger, more intense, and frequent wildfires, impacting air quality for communities around the world. (ABC News, CNN, AP, NPR, Axios, New York Times $; Climate Signals: Wildfires)

Cities Looking To Help People Stick With Bicycles Instead Of Cars: As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold and people stayed at home, cycling surged in countries around the world as people looked to escape isolation in a socially distant way. Case studies suggest Montreal did more than any other North American city to improve safe cycling during the pandemic, while Washington, D.C., was a leader among American cities. London, Paris, and Brussels fared the best in Europe. “A big paradigm shift in thinking is going on,” John Bucher of Rutgers University told the AP. “In transport planning and policy and engineering, we have promoted driving for nearly 100 years. We have made driving fast, we’ve made it convenient.” Bucher and other global urban planning researchers note the outstanding question of whether the uptick in cycling during the pandemic will stick or whether commuters will revert to a car-centric lifestyle. (AP)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: ‘Too Toxic’: refinery fires leave East Texas residents reeling (Washington Post $)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) INJUSTICE: As the Prairies burn, Indigenous communities deserve equal support: Indigenous Climate Action (National Observer)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Behind the scenes, G7 nations wrangle over ambitious climate commitments (New York Times $), G7 disappoints on climate progress without deadlines on gas and coal use (FT $), Government climate rules fail to target nearly 90% of global methane emissions (TIME)

EPA: EPA proposes to expand its regulations on dumps of toxic waste from burning coal (Inside Climate News)

GOP: DeSantis embraces national GOP strategy on energy issues like ESG, gas stoves (The Hill)

WHITE HOUSE: Will Biden’s hard-hat environmentalism bridge the divide on clean energy future? (AP), Biden boosts embattled gas pipeline (Politico), Biden admin boosts Big Oil’s Colorado River scheme (The Lever)

THE HILL: A guardian of federal lands, lambasted by left and right (Inside Climate News)

NASA: New NASA mission will help improve extreme weather forecasts (The Hill)

CITIES AND STATES: Why Montana is emerging as a must-watch climate battleground (Washington Post $), Two states are ramping up clean energy incentives. That was the Inflation Reduction Act’s point (Inside Climate News), In New Mexico, an unlikely wildfire thinning alliance (Reuters), As Everett power plant shutters, some worry LNG terminal will be next to go (Boston Globe $)

~CALIFORNIA: California’s Newsom says state needs infrastructure boom bigger than any in decades (Bloomberg $), California lawmakers block bill making oil companies liable for some health problems (AP), El Niño to bring record-breaking temperatures. What does that mean for California weather? (San Francisco Chronicle), California governor wants to cut red tape for green energy projects (Wall Street Journal $)

IMPACTS: World’s worst air quality: This US city ranked in the top 5 (The Hill), Typhoon Mawar expected to hit Guam by Wednesday (New York Times $), In flood-stricken area of italy, residents fear this won’t be the last of it (New York Times $), Italy’s deadly floods just latest example of climate change’s all-or-nothing weather extremes (AP)

WATER: Water, water everywhere, yet local US planners are lowballing their estimates (Inside Climate News)

GRID: Rural electric co-ops to get nearly $11 billion in federal funds for clean energy grants, loans (Grist)

SOLUTIONS: Can ‘enhanced rock weathering’ help combat climate change? (BBC)

EDUCATION: How climate change could impact children's education (WUSA-9)

OIL & GAS: Fossil fuel firms owe climate reparations of $209bn a year, says study (The Guardian), Fossil fuel companies should pay trillions in ‘climate reparations,’ new study argues (Inside Climate News)

WISEGUYS: The laws that took down mobsters are being turned against Big Oil (Gizmodo)

OSW: Judge rejects NIMBY bid to shut down offshore wind in New England (Gizmodo)

SOLAR: Ukraine found an unlikely tool to resist Russia: solar panels (Washington Post $), A Bill Gates-based photovoltaic technology that may be solar energy’s future (CNBC), The homeowner basics of financing solar power for residential real estate (CNBC)

EVs: Greg Abbott signs law making EV owners pay for their gas-free cars (Gizmodo), What to know about buying a used electric vehicle as more hit the auto sales market (CNBC), As the West surges toward electric cars, here’s where the unwanted gas guzzlers go (CNN)

AVIATION: Plan to expand hangar space for private jets at Hanscom sparks concerns about a surge in climate pollution (Boston Globe $)

FUSION: 5 potential paths to a fusion energy breakthrough (The Hill)

VAPES: Why vapes and e-cigarettes are bad for the planet (The Hill)

YUM: Rice. Half of humanity eats it. And climate change is wrecking it. (New York Times $)

FASHUN: Could climate change impact seasonal fashion? Retailers look to delay sales season (EuroNews)

ZZZ: Why a warming world is costing you precious hours of sleep (Washington Post $)

ACTIVISM: Trevi Fountain water turns black in Rome climate protest (Reuters)

INTERNATIONAL: French minister calls for equal treatment for nuclear in EU laws (Bloomberg $), New Zealand, Bluescope spend $188 million to cut steel emissions (Bloomberg $), Alberta is on fire, but climate change is an election taboo (New York Times $), Europe’s energy market faces 3 key challenges this year, the IEA’s chief says (CNBC)

• Electric vehicles alone can’t solve climate change (Bloomberg, The Editors $)

• Boise's progress on climate must continue (Idaho Press, Ritalin Flores)

• Technology will not restore our pre-climate crisis future (Common Dreams, Stan Cox)

Deniers Failing To Manufacture A Scandal Out Of Biden’s Admin Emails

During the Trump administration, everyday Americans became familiar with the concept of "regulatory capture," as Trump handed government agencies regulating industries over to representatives of the industries. The most glaring example was giving the State Department to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, whereas the EPA and other agencies were run by people whose careers were spent in service of the industries the government should be regulating. 

Now, Republicans are desperate to turn the tables and accuse Biden administration staff of having the same sorts of conflicts of interest as the Trump administration. For example, professional climate disinformation propagandist and Fox News reporter Thomas Catenacci has often written stories based on email requests to or disclosures from the Biden administration, covering them as though they were scandals. 

Catenacci’s latest hit piece is about Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who met with philanthropic interests to talk about "transforming food systems." The story just dresses up snippets of emails to portray banal chatter about meetings as something seemingly sinister.

Fox "News" somehow forgot to actually report on what's wrong with someone in the government meeting with private philanthropic interests working for the public good, which is because there isn't anything wrong with that! In fact, that's exactly what the government should be doing. The irony is that conservatives are usually the ones who argue that the government should do less and just let private charities handle improving the world, and that’s not far from what this is! 

The same level of intellectual consistency and integrity can be found over at RealClearEnergy, where another professional propagandist, Kevin Mooney, published a right-wing hit piece about a recent Senate hearing. Specifically, the article covers Sen. Josh Hawley's accusations that FERC commissioner Allison Clements did something wrong when talking to a group of philanthropic donors and advocacy groups like the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and NRDC. 

Hawley said he was "concerned" because in saying she met with foundations working in the energy space, Clements was supposedly admitting to "a pattern, practice of speaking to donor groups that have financial interests in the industry you are regulating."  

Apparently, Hawley thinks donors are making money in the energy industry? As opposed to giving it away to others?

Or, more realistically, he knows it's a trumped-up charge and is leveling it anyway for purely partisan political purposes. And sure enough, Mooney quoted Chris Horner, a longtime coal-funded attorney representing the fossil-fueled group behind the FOIA lawsuits and a former Big Tobacco lawyer. According to Horner, "it was only a few short years ago that an official’s vastly more incidental interaction with former clients in the previous administration was deemed grounds not only for dismissal, but justified congressional intimidation of his former employer and clients. It’s almost as if there are two standards.”

Mooney explains that Horner described "the example of Bill Wehrum, who served as the EPA’s chief air quality administrator under President Trump. Wehrum was hounded for months by green groups and congressional committees for having addressed a room in which two former clients were in attendance." 

We’ll go ahead and spell out why it's actually still just one standard: Wehrum was a lobbyist for coal and oil companies, whom the Trump administration put in charge of regulating coal and oil companies, and who, with his deputy, another former lobbyist, "may have loosened air pollution rules to help their former clients in the energy sector." 

Clements and Vilsack aren't changing the rules to let their former employers make more money! The Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and NRDC aren't energy companies making money; they are NON-profit organizations! 

Over and over again, Republicans are portraying government officials doing exactly what they should be doing (meeting with constituents about relevant topics to advance the public good) as though it's on par with the exact opposite behavior (catering to polluters they're supposed to regulate)!

And one can be fairly certain it's not because they simply don't know the difference between for-profit and non-profit…

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