Will The Dodgers 86 The 76, GOP Likes The Clean Green, Neck Fans, and More!

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In Pop Culture:

⚾️ If you’ve ever watched an LA Dodgers game played at Dodger Stadium, you may recall the orange and blue 76 logo representing both the gas station that once stood on the ballpark’s property and a long term sponsorship deal between the Dodgers and the oil and gas company, Phillips 66. Well, much like my pondering as to whether the Edmonton Oilers should drop their oil industry ties, there’s a growing consortium of climate-aware fans, activists, and celebrities pressuring Dodgers’ owner, Mark Walter, to end the dirty sponsorship. I think all of us here know why, but as a Dodgers fan simply put it, “Don’t pledge your allegiance to the corporations that are causing harm”.

Getting Down To Climate Business:

😏 18 House Republicans wrote a letter to Republican House Speaker, Mike Johnson, urging to keep the clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Trump has vowed to repeal the IRA if he wins the White House. But the majority of cleantech investment spurred by the IRA has gone to red states, and some GOP leaders, including some governors and congress people, are beginning to speak up, because they’d like to keep the new jobs and economic development growing in their states.

⏧ The unsexy side of the clean energy transition is our outdated power grid. The Biden admin just announced $2.2B in grants to projects around the country that will modernize and expand grid infrastructure. An additional $10B is expected to be invested from the private sector and local governments. This is the second round of grid grants, thanks to the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

🛫 United Airlines will start using lower carbon fuel made from cooking oil and animal fat waste for some flights leaving from Chicago O’Hare. JetBlue is doing the same from JFK. In both cases, the better-fuel only makes up a single digit share of each airline’s total fuel used at just those airports, but baby steps are still steps.

💦 A California-based startup is harvesting water from the air using just sunlight (no electricity required) to address the issue of water scarcity – a growing concern as climate change dries up water sources around the world. Atmospheric water harvesting turns water vapor in the air into liquid water. It’s an exciting field of research since it can be done anywhere, anytime, and has potential to provide a stable, clean source of water at the household or community level.

🦭 Researchers in Australia found a new way to explore never-before-seen parts of the ocean floor in endangered areas – by (safely) strapping cameras onto sea lions! It’s a lot cheaper than building robots to do it, plus they now have footage of hunting behavior and mother sea lions teaching their pups. Check out the footage here.

🥑 You might want to hold the avocado, especially if it’s imported from Mexico, as 93% of imported avocados are. As detailed in this investigative reporting piece, the Mexican avocado trade is now rife with illegal orchards draining water supply, deforestation, and extortion from cartels. U.S. companies are under scrutiny for ignoring what’s happening in their supply chains.

Are Neck Fans The New Crocs?

Neck fans are exactly what they claim to be – a fan slung around your neck. They are one example in the new industry of heat gadgets, intended to cool us down as our planet heats up. This is the consumer product side of climate capitalism for adaptation, not mitigation. This article in The Atlantic explores the neck fan’s destined ubiquity and its potential for making us feel cooler. Cooler, that is, in temperature, certainly not cooler in fashion. Though it’s important to note that scientifically, it does not actually cool down your body temperature, for this gadget is in fact a low tech plastic mind trick. But get used to new, weird gadgets cropping up. New world, new problems.