Glyphosate Wins, Heat Pumps On The Rise, Ocean Monitoring Is Saved, & More

Welcome to The Climate Roundup newsletter. Your weekly edit of the climate and environmental stories shaping our planet and our culture and how the two are deeply connected. We live in a global ecosystem shaped by human decisions. Let’s make good ones.

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Philanthropy At Work:

🧑‍💻 Climate Central released an analysis about how climate change has increased dangerous humid heat globally since 1970. One tidbit: the number of these dangerous days has doubled.

🧘‍♀️ Stand.earth has led a multi-year campaign challenging Lululemon to clean up its supply chain energy sources. This month, Lulu announced it is starting a renewable energy fund to get its China-based factories using 100% clean electricity by 2030.

🚫 I hope the world ignored Amazon’s recent Prime Day Scheme. But if you do subscribe to Prime, consider signing on for the Prime Members for a Cleaner Amazon initiative, started by Stand.earth and partners. They are using the power of loyal Amazon customers to demand that Amazon uses some of its $80 billion in profits last year “to electrify its delivery fleet, power its data centers with truly clean energy, and treat its workers with dignity”. They met with Amazon last month to discuss these demands, but the more signatures, the stronger the leverage.

Environmental News:

🥵 Europe is experiencing its worst heat wave ever recorded, which World Weather Attribution, a science organization, says would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change.

👍 Some good news: remember a few weeks ago when the Trump administration announced they were canceling and removing our country’s ocean monitoring network of devices under the sea that provide important scientific data to several communities? It was reversed and they will reinstall the devices they already removed (cool, $$). Turns out fierce and swift opposition can sometimes work with this administration, and in this case, it led to the Senate passing a measure to block this.

💸 Michael Bloomberg announced a fresh $590 million that he’s donating to climate and environmental initiatives. The money will go towards accelerating the adoption of renewable energy, ocean conservation by creating new marine protected areas and restoring coral reefs, and to clean up polluted air in cities. Amazing.

🧑‍⚖️ The Supreme Court ruled that people can no longer sue Bayer at the state-level for their health deterioration and cancer caused by the chemical glyphosate in the weedkiller product Roundup. They say that because the EPA currently does not require Bayer to label their product as cancer-causing, Bayer is not at fault for failing to warn consumers about the risks. Unbelievable. While this is a grotesque example of our government and corporations choosing profit over public health, this decision may be the final straw for the right-wing MAHA movement who said this decision is “worse than treason” and that this “now becomes the midterm issue” after vowing to make sure everyone knows about it. So there’s that.

💰 The federal government proposed a settlement of $480 million for the ongoing dumping of PFAS chemicals into rivers in New Jersey, North Carolina, and West Virginia by Chemours, a company spun out from an even larger polluting company, Dupont. NC attorney general and environmental groups say it’s not nearly enough. Also, while Chemours agreed to the settlement, they claim that PFAS are not harmful to human health, despite much evidence they are linked to serious illnesses like cancers and birth defects. The Trump administration has rolled back Biden-era regulation on PFAS, yet are using this case to suggest they are holding polluters accountable. All evidence to the contrary, especially since they do not outright ban PFAS, as they should.

☢️ The Trump administration is spending$17.5 billion to build 10 nuclear power plants, mainly for data centers, that could be built by 2035. Meanwhile, Trump continues to pay more companies to abandon their offshore wind farms (up to 8 now), whose energy would be used to power homes, businesses, and community needs. They are using taxpayer money and requiring the energy companies to instead invest in US dirty energy projects in states other than the ones where the clean energy was supposed to go. The legality of these wind lease buybacks are currently under investigation by Democrats in Congress, 7 affected east coast states are suing the administration, and California has given notice it will sue if the deal impacting the project off their shores isn’t reversed.

🫁 Grist put together a great interactive, comprehensive look at the latest science and studies indicating how climate change and global warming impact our health across our respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological, and reproductive systems. It makes the urgent climate crisis deeply personal when you understand its effects on your own body’s ability to function properly. Maybe more people would wake up about it if they knew the very real threats to their health and the health of the people they love.

🆒 Heat pumps are emissions-free, highly efficient two-way heating and cooling systems, and their adoption has been growing steadily over the past decade plus. They are on pace to soon outsell traditional air conditioning units in the US, which is good for our climate, since AC uses extremely harmful chemicals that exponentially increase our planet’s overheating. Go heat pumps go!

👺 I guess the Trump-Musk breakup was more of a conscious uncoupling, because our federal government just did Elon an unjustified solid. They killed a citizen lawsuit against Musk’s gas-powered xAI factory in Mississippi, where locals are the victims of its air pollution. Musk does not have the permits to run the 57(!) gas turbines, permits that are required under the Clean Air Act, so he is doing so illegally. No matter under pro-pollution Trump, who used his favorite catch-all excuse to skirt the law: national security. The memo issued says “the federal government should have unchallenged authority to stop environmental lawsuits brought by private groups or individuals.” No, that’s not really how things should work. Law experts say this move will be challenging to uphold in court.

Animal Kingdoms

📚 When you hear about a wildfire, do you ever think about all the death and suffering of the wildlife and trees that lost their lives, families, homes, and food sources? I do, and so does the author of a new book called “The Hidden Nations of Animals” that aims to bring to light the wild civilizations of animals that exist all around the world. Just because humans haven’t descended on a place, doesn’t mean it’s uninhabited, the author reminds us. There are worlds within worlds of intelligence that we humans simply cannot even begin to understand. Best to remain curious and respectful of our non-human peers. I’ll be adding this to my summer reading list.

✍️ Bonus content: I wrote an essay about the infuriating trend by Democrats to stop saying the phrase “climate change” and to avoid talking about it at all. It includes deep detail about the situation and the latest studies and polls on the enduring reality that in fact, the majority of people, including Americans, do want to see climate action, and do want pollution regulated. I argue that Dems should strongly leverage these popular issues and do their job of linking climate action to other top voter priorities.