Cyclone Mocha Lands In Myanmar, Bringing Destruction: At least 3 people are dead and thousands more have been forced to seek shelter as Category 5 Cyclone Mocha made landfall Sunday afternoon, bringing sustained winds of 175 miles per hour and gusts as high as 200 mph. The UN has expressed concern for the already vulnerable refugee populations living in the low-lying areas in the storm’s path, as tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees are being kept behind barbed wire fences and security checkpoints, in camps 2 meters below sea level, near Sittwe, which was directly hit by the storm. The severity of the storm matches 2019's Cyclone Fani as the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the North Indian Ocean. Climate change has been linked to both the occurrence and frequency of rapidly intensifying storms in ocean basins, which may be due to warming ocean and air temperatures. (AP, NBC News, BBC, Reuters, CNN, Yale Climate Connections, Axios, Washington Post $; Climate Signals; Cyclones)

US Island Women Helping Reestablish Local Food Systems To Improve Climate Resilience: Across US island territories, women are collaborating to improve their community resilience to climate and other future impacts by growing local food systems- but they're being denied opportunities available to other Americans, like the National Farm to School Network. Growing a local food system can help US island territories address the vulnerabilities caused by their current reliance on food imports. The US Virgin Islands, for example, imports as much as 99 percent of its food from the US and other countries, and other US island territories have similar high food import rates. Climate driven impacts like hurricanes and extreme heat impact shipping and supply chain routes, delaying food supplies, and the health problems from eating the imported highly processed foods have exacerbated the need for US island communities to reestablish the fruits and vegetables that were traditionally grown. The Agriculture Department has microgrants for US territory food production, and the women activists are seeking to raise the profile of the US island territories in the Farm Bill negotiations on Capitol Hill. “What I want people to understand is we’re not asking for exceptions because we’re territories; we’re asking for inclusion in what should be afforded to every producer who’s producing in this nation,” Sommer Sibilly-Brown, a teacher in the US Virgin Islands tells the 19th. "If we are the United States, why not here?” (The 19th)

Deniers Ramp Up Twitter Hate Aimed At Climate Scientists: Since Twitter was taken over by Elon Musk, climate scientists have faced a huge rise in abuse from climate deniers. “There’s been a massive change,” Mark Maslin, professor at University College London told The Guardian. “I get so much abuse and rude comments now.” The constant barrage of hate filled Tweets filled with false information has become mentally draining for those who are targeted by the denier community. “I got to the point where it was definitely affecting my mental health,” Dough McNeall at Exeter University added, “...there can be a real personal cost interacting over a long time with people who are abusing you.” A survey of nearly 500 international climate scientists found that the more prominent the scientist, the more likely it is they would face abuse and online harassment as a result of their climate work. (The Guardian)

EPA: 4 winners and 1 loser in the EPA’s historic move to limit power plant pollution (Vox), A transportation 'revolution'? How the infrastructure law is fueling freeways (PoliticoPRO $)

~CCS: Biden counting on two little-used technologies to fight climate change (The Hill), New EPA power plant rules emphasize carbon capture—what does that mean? (Gizmodo), Is carbon capture viable? In a new rule, the EPA is asking power plants to prove it. (Grist), Carbon capture is hard. This plant shows why. (Wall Street Journal $)

THE HILL: What does climate change have to do with the debt ceiling crisis? (Grist)

GOP vs ESG: Texas wins six-figure settlement over anti-ESG law (PoliticoPRO$)

KERRY: Kerry challenges oil industry to prove its promised tech rescue for climate-wrecking emissions (AP), Why John Kerry is confident Biden’s climate policies can survive a Republican president (CNN)

CITIES AND STATES: In less than a decade, the state’s electric grid must dramatically transform. It won’t be easy. (Boston Globe $), Texas’ water infrastructure is broken, jeopardizing quality and supply for a growing state (Grist), State proposes $67 million to clean toxic parkways near former Exide battery plant (LA Times $) 

~CALIFORNIA: Income-based electric bills: the newest utility fight in California (Grist)

IMPACTS: Singapore’s temperature soars to 37°C, highest in four decades (Bloomberg $), Record temperatures, heatstroke cases engulf southeast Asia (Bloomberg $), April 2023: Earth’s 4th-warmest April on record (Yale Climate Connections), Scientists race to study Hawaii's vanishing permafrost (PoliticoPRO $)

HEAT: Unusually early heat wave in Pacific Northwest tests records (AP), 12 million people are under a heat advisory in the Pacific Northwest (New York Times $)

EL NIÑO: El Niño is coming in strong, NOAA says (Gizmodo)

JOBS: Your stories: cool, fascinating and fun climate jobs (New York Times $)

OIL & GAS: Major natural gas investor sees signs prices are bottoming (CNBC)

RENEWABLES: Recycling ‘end-of-life’ solar panels, wind turbines, is about to be climate tech’s big waste business (CNBC)

WIND: Wind energy powered the U.K. more than gas this year for the first time ever (CBS)

SOLAR: Rooftop solar panels could power a third of US manufacturing, study finds (Gizmodo), Some US solar makers criticize Biden’s tax credits as too lax on China (New York Times $)

UTILITIES: How PJM, America’s biggest grid operator, got its reliability report wrong (Utility Dive), US at risk of tight electric supplies this summer (Reuters), Blackouts loom for most of US in extreme summer-heat scenario (Bloomberg $)

EVs: What two-thirds of car dealerships are missing in the US (The Verge), This company could be crucial to Biden’s EV charger agenda (TIME), Flush with federal money, strings attached, a deep south factory votes to unionize (New York Times $), Post-Covid, post-bankruptcy Hertz is all-in on electric, with big implications for the EV, auto and rideshare market (CNBC), EV startups are proving Warren Buffett right (Wall Street Journal $), DOE offers $363M loan to EV-wiring company (PoliticoPRO $)

TESLA:Tesla breaks ground on lithium refinery in Texas — a first for a US automaker (Grist)

ACTIVISM: Jane Fonda, 85, says she plans to continue climate protests: 'It’s all hands on deck right now' (Fox News) 

PUT THE 'DRY' IN LAUNDRY: Why should you air dry your laundry? Let’s count the ways. (Washington Post $)

FINANCE: EU lawmaker looks to cap windfall profits in power price crisis (Bloomberg $), Biden pledged to stop funding fossil fuels overseas. It's not stopping one agency (NPR)

INTERNATIONAL: How climate change is impacting the Hudson Bay Lowlands — Canada’s largest wetland (The Conversation)

• Google said it would stop selling ads on climate disinformation. It hasn’t (SF Chronicle, Erika Seiber)

• Follow Mom’s example: Confront climate change head-on (Orlando Sentinel, Thais Lopez Vogel op-ed) 

• Climate action could benefit from a little more humility (Energy Monitor, Philippa Nuttall)

• Will Texas blow up its energy miracle to bolster fossil fuels? (New York Times, Michael E. Webber $)

• When one almond gulps 3.2 gallons of water (New York Times, Nicholas Kristof $)

• Where’s the beef? Here’s why the fake meat fad sizzled out. (Washington Post editorial $)

• Climate change disinformation - again (Independent Record, John Hoffland op-ed)

• Don Archibald: Can solar power actually make a difference? (Boulder Daily Camera, Don Archibald op-ed)

House Hears Anti-Semitism And White Supremacy While Senate Seeks Serious Speakers On Climate Costs

The grade school understanding of Congress is that the Senate was meant to be the erudite center of sophisticated deliberations undertaken by wise policymakers somewhat insulated from the whims of public fancy by their six-year terms. Meanwhile, the House is for the riff-raff, the two-year terms held by up-and-comers making a name for themselves in a flashier, more populist fashion. 

And sure enough, the Hill was true to form last week, when a pair of simultaneous hearings in the House and Senate showed just how serious, and how silly, Congress can be. 

In the Senate, the Democratically-controlled Budget Committee's hearing on the National Costs of Climate Change featured former Republican Senate Leader Bill Frist and former right-wing Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The Republicans invited former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, whose oafish performance was more fit for the House shenanigans. 

There, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee hearing on ESG was a bit of a mess, to put it lightly. Testimony ranged from Alabama Attorney General (AG) Steven Marshall's oh-so-subtly antisemitic testimony alleging that an "unelected cabal of global elites are using ESG, a woke economic strategy, to hijack our capitalist system" to Wisconsin Republican Glenn Grothman's white supremacist, "great-replacement" adjacent conspiracies about the "certain disfavored groups in our society" that are supposedly being discriminated against in hiring and promotion practices: "people with a European background."

Why such obviously ridiculous shenanigans? Because the finance industry is weighing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks (like a company being super racist and getting sued, or super sexist and getting sued, or super polluting and getting sued). But that makes the racist, sexist, polluting backers of the Republican Party upset, and because that's who they truly represent, the GOP is embracing this highly unpopular attempt to stifle businesses and shackle their beloved invisible hand of the free market. 

"For those trying to understand their crusade," Kate Aronoff explained, "the hearing showed that it’s best to think of ESG as a canvas onto which the right projects its own plans and anxieties." For example, Republicans invited two AGs who tried to overturn the 2020 election to now claim that ESG is actually an assault on democracy. 

"In other words," Aronoff wrote, "someone who’s spent the last several years attempting to overturn the results of a democratic election took to the Capitol on Tuesday to accuse an ill-defined set of actors of trying to sidestep democracy by asking companies if climate-fueled droughts, floods, and fires (for instance) might have some impact on their operations."

What's fueling this unhinged and unpopular rhetoric? Fossil fuels. And what's enabling it? An eager right-wing press. Malcolm Turnbull was direct about it, too, in his testimony in the Senate. "From my point of view as PM the biggest obstacle to climate action was always political and from within the right wing of my own Party supported by right wing media." 

While the US and Australia are certainly different, "a common denominator is Rupert Murdoch," according to Turnbull, because "his media outlets have been consistent opponents of action to address global warming and represent by far the loudest voice denying the reality of climate change and resisting measures to decarbonise." 

And in the same way the Koch network replaced Republican Bob Inglis with Trey Gowdy when Inglis dared be serious about climate change, it was "Rupert Murdoch and his media platforms," who "drove a leadership challenge" to Turnbull that resulted in his ousting and replacement with denier Scott Morrison. But then Morrison suffered a "devastating loss" in 2022 because he and the Liberal Party were "reluctant to take effective action to address global warming." 

Former Prime Minister Turnbull stated that he had often said that climate change was "a problem that called for economics and engineering," but "was too often the subject of ideology and idiocy."

And at that very moment, over in the House, they were proving him right.

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