West Oakland Example Of How Urban Planners Disenfranchised People Of Color: In keeping with mid-20th century segregationist federal guidance, West Oakland, California officials in the 1940s deliberately put the most polluting industries and biggest highways in Black neighborhoods - saddling them with cancer, asthma, and other health impacts. In white neighborhoods, diesel-powered trucks were banned from operating, as planners chose to divide Black communities with highways instead. “The intentional planning of these uses … was historically racist,” Oakland Planning Commission member Jonathan Fearn told the Washington Post. “The planning profession has to reconcile that because they have been complicit in this whole issue, not only in Oakland, but in cities all across the country.” The California Air Resources Board has taken steps to lessen the pollution burden faced by these communities through encouraging electric trucks powered by renewable energy, and electric equipment at busy ports, but health officials say the substantial buildup of pollution will continue to take a toll for decades. “All my kids have allergies and asthma, myself too,” Margaret Gordon told the Post, while showing them the layer of dark gray pollution blanketing her West Oakland home. “It ain’t dust. It’s diesel particulates." And at her age, it's hard to keep clean. “I’m not getting on too many ladders at 75 years old. I know better than that.” Nonetheless, her age isn't keeping her from cleaning up everyone's air. As the co-founder of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, Gordon's work since 2003 has created a block-by-block pollution monitoring for California officials enforcing a 2017 law aimed at exactly this issue. “I ain’t got but 15 more years myself," Gordon told the Post. “If they can’t do it in 15 more years, I don’t know what to tell them.” (Washington Post $)

Oceans Hottest On Record Since Atari5200's Debut, Worrying Scientists: The University of Maine's Climate Reanalysis found that daily sea surface temperatures are hotter than any time since at least 1982, and an upcoming El Niño weather pattern could contribute to even higher ocean temperatures and more climate impacts ahead. "2023 is off to an alarming start, even before El Niño conditions fully develop later this year," Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Brown University told Axios. Ocean temperatures have a profound impact on extreme weather events around the world, worrying scientists about the coming impacts of the climate crisis. “This is an extreme event at a global scale” in areas that don’t fit with merely an El Niño, Princeton University climate scientist Gabe Vecchi told the AP. “That is a huge, huge signal.” (CNN, NBC News, Axios)

Fire At Shell Plant Sends 9 To Hospital In Houston: A fire that had been previously extinguished reignited at a Shell petrochemical plant over the weekend, sending nine contractors to the hospital, who have since been released with minor injuries. The cause of the fire will be the “subject of a future investigation,” according to Shell Deer Park Chemicals, after the blaze shot flames from facility smokestacks and blew billows of smoke for around 4 hours. The fire was so large that it was visible from space, according to Houston meteorologists. Oil and gas fires are common in the Houston area, as just last March, an explosion at a facility owned by INEOS Phenol left one injured and a fire in 2019 triggered air quality warnings in the area. (KHOU11, BBC, AP, Reuters, Fox News)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: This tribe was barred from cultural burning for decades — then a fire hit their community (LA Times $), Asian Americans left out of climate movement (Axios)

~& SEXISM:  In coastal Bangladesh, climate change devastates women’s reproductive health (NBC)

UKRAINE: Situation around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is ‘potentially dangerous,’ watchdog warns (CNBC)

CLIMATE LITIGATION: Nature lawyers up (New York Times $)

AGENCIES: Your dishwasher may waste too much water under new Biden efficiency plans (Bloomberg $)

SEALAB 2023: NOAA eyes new public-private underwater lab (Axios)

WHITE HOUSE: ‘No other way to do it’: Biden about to go big on power plants (Politico)

CORONATION: Charles is not your climate king (Gizmodo)

CITIES AND STATES: New York heats up nation-wide debate on gas stove bans (The Hill), California readies for treasure hunt as floods wash up ‘Gold Rush 2.0’  (The Hill), Utah's state education board narrowly voted to keep climate change as a part of its science curriculum (Insider)

IMPACTS: El Niño ripple effects may extend to hurricane season (Axios), This glacier was a tourist destination. Now it offers a warning. (Washington Post $), DR Congo floods death toll surpasses 200 (Al Jazeera), Climate change is bad for everyone. But this is where it's expected to be worst in the US. (USA Today)

BATTERIES: Idle oil wells' next act? Becoming batteries for renewable energy (Bloomberg $), Backup power: a growing need, if you can afford it (New York Times $)

HEAT PUMPS: Airbnb will help some hosts pay for new heat pumps (Canary Media)

GRID: The US electrician shortage has a simple fix: Recruit more women (Canary Media)

METHANE: U.S. pipeline regulator takes aim at methane leaks (Reuters)

MINERALS: Why the fight for ‘critical minerals’ is heating up (Bloomberg $)

EVs: Chart: EVs could make up more than a third of global car sales by 2030 (Canary Media), California’s Lithium Valley could power electric vehicle industry (60 Minutes)

AI: AI pioneer says its threat to world may be 'more urgent' than climate change (Reuters)

FINANCE: Warren Buffett set for 59th Berkshire Hathaway shareholder marathon as big questions loom (Reuters), Berkshire shareholders reject climate, diversity proposals (Reuters)

ACTIVISM: Climate activists dye iconic Italian fountain water black (CNN)

INTERNATIONAL: Germany, Kenya boost partnership on climate and green energy (Bloomberg $), Iraq asks for international aid to save its rivers from drought (Bloomberg $), Underground tangle of German wires drags $1 trillion green push (Bloomberg $), Brazil’s Amazon megaprojects threaten Lula’s green ambitions (AP), Five of Africa’s top 30 deadliest weather disasters have occurred since 2022 (Yale Climate Connections), Vietnam records highest ever temperature of 44.1C (The Guardian)

• It's time to combine the fights for climate change and reproductive justice (The Hill, Skye Wheeler and Kelly Davis op-ed)

• How community solar can revolutionize clean energy access in California (Time of San Diego, Alexis Sutterman and Chris Ward op-ed)

• Bangladesh’s water crisis and the problem of a ‘green’ solution (Al Jazeera, Sonia Ahmad and Neema Kudva op-ed)

• Central banks raising interest rates makes it harder to fight the climate crisis (The Guardian, Thomas Ferguson and Servaas Storm)

• Your homeowners’ insurance bill is the canary in the climate coal mine (New York Times, Benjamin Keys $)

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

Daily Caller Resumes Trump-Era Role As GOP Press Release Distributor

We give The Daily Caller a lot of grief for its many years of climate disinformation, its favorable coverage of donors, like the Kochs, and the fact that it’s allegedly a charity scam, but there's also the fact that the outlet is basically a press release distributor for the Republican party. 

In some ways, that's a return to the Trump era, when The Daily Caller was defending used Trump mattress weirdo Scott Pruitt and his polluter-driven EPA moves to censor science, while also attacking one of President Obama's EPA administrators for using an unofficial email- while defending Pruitt as he was using four, so many that even his own aids didn't recognize them all. 

But what caught our eye lately was a string of Daily Caller stories with "EXCLUSIVE" headlines on stories about Republican virtue signaling with moves that will go nowhere and are meant solely to generate headlines from compliant "news" outlets like the Caller. 

The first piece was premised on a Republican in the US House of Representatives introducing a bill to "eliminate the Federal Insurance Office," which the Caller spiced up with the following headline: "EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans Move To Eliminate Regulatory Office Pushing ‘Green New Deal’ Climate Policy."

The Federal Insurance Office (FIO) was set up during the Obama administration, and Republicans want it gone because last year they announced that the FIO would start to assess how climate risks might impact insurance plans. 

Since the Democratic party controls the Senate and White House, this bill is going nowhere. It has zero actual legislative potential. But because a House member sent a PDF of the show bill to The Daily Caller, all of a sudden it's an important EXCLUSIVE, as though the introduction of a bill with zero potential to become law has any news value beyond the propaganda purposes for which it was written. 

The next day, the same thing happened. House Republicans introduced a bill that will never become a law, and Daily Caller Congressional Correspondent Michael Ginsberg ran an "EXCLUSIVE" about the bill that would "cut off funding for schools that ban carbon energy advertising." 

Students at the University of Washington exercised their free speech rights and protested fossil fuel companies at a jobs fair, and Republicans rushed into action with a bill that will never go any further than the Daily Caller's EXCLUSIVE. 

Apparently, these days Republicans have nothing better to do than insert Big Government into school job fairs and insist that their financial backers in the fossil fuel industry be invited to recruit students into an industry that is destroying their present and promises to profit as much as possible off of destroying their future. 

But it's not just elected Republicans that the Caller uncritically echoes! Remember, they also lavish fawning coverage on anyone who donates to them, which makes us wonder if they're getting some funding from the group behind the third "EXCLUSIVE: Watchdog Group Sues EPA For Records Of Frank Biden’s Potential Communication With The Agency." 

While most real news outlets might wait to report on the outcome of an investigation, for The Daily Caller, just the question is enough, so long as the implication is bad for the Democratic party. Did President Biden's brother Frank act unethically? There's no evidence, but the "Functional Government Initiative" has questions, and that's good enough for the Daily Caller! 

The Caller's covered FGI announcements of lawsuits and record requests another seven times over the past year- though never any "news" about the results of those investigations, because that would require actual wrongdoing, and not just disinformation-generating accusations. 

But since this is far from the first time The Daily Caller has abused the word "Exclusive" to try and gin up clicks, we're just glad that at least now they're using it correctly! (If almost exclusively to hype nothing burgers.) 

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