Ho Humm, No Plastics Treaty, Big Tech Energy LLC, and more!

Hey climate heroes! Welcome to The Climate Roundup, where we round up the change, er the news about climate and the environment. As part of the Gen E community, we thank you for making climate action part of everyday life. (Reading this newsletter counts!)

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In Pop Culture:

🪏 Welp, the values-based backtracking epidemic has now spread to high profile chefs and restaurants. Daniel Humm, chef and owner of 3-Michelin star and former best restaurant in the world, Eleven Madison Park (EMP) in NYC, announced this week that after 4 years of a vegan-only menu, he’s bringing back the meats, along with other animal products. When Humm first announced that his highly influential restaurant was going vegan back in 2021, it was profound. He specifically called out the “climate emergency” and the world’s unsustainable food systems as the reasons “We couldn’t go back to doing what we did before [the pandemic].” Well, we haven’t solved the climate crisis, animal agriculture, deforestation, or food waste. So hmmm, Humm, what could have changed? Declines in reservations, sales, and attracting talent, it seems. But nobody ever said it’s easy being green. Fighting against the status quo can be downright deflating. What’s extra irksome about this decision, is that this isn’t Daniel’s only legacy or source of income. He’s written books, built and sold a hotel, and has a lifestyle brand. Last year, he opened Clemente Bar, right above EMP, also vegan with a very cool vibe (I’ve been). So why can’t EMP be the beacon of hope and innovation for the future of food? Why not be the leader de cuisine for lab-grown animal products? Because more than anything, we need influential leaders in this movement across every single facet and pillar of society. Without that, nothing will change. This year has seen the fall of leadership with abandoned or deprioritized climate and ‘sustainability’ pledges on Wall Street, across Silicon Valley, in the auto industry, in consumer packaged goods, and now in fine dining. I’m not vegan, though a growing part of me aspires to be, and I found both comfort and inspiration in knowing that one of the most sought-after, decorated restaurants on Earth was committed to it, for our planet. Eleven Madison Park has been tops on my list of restaurants I’ve wanted to visit ever since their climate-driven mission update. Maybe I’m partially to blame. I should’ve gone and supported them by now. But after this reversal in climate leadership, I can confidently say that my restaurant bucket-list just got one item shorter, without shelling out the $400 meal ticket.

Philanthropy At Work:

👨‍💻 If you believe the EPA should uphold its mission to protect human health and the environment, then please take a minute to submit a public comment telling them NOT to rescind their main tool to restrict planet-warming and polluting greenhouse gas emissions from industry, aka the endangerment finding. This is VERY important, so make your voice heard. The Climate Reality Project created a form that makes it super easy and fast. It truly takes one minute.

News You Need To Know:

🍼 Last week, nations met in Geneva for what was supposed to be the final time before producing a legally-binding UN Plastic Pollution Treaty, meant to limit global plastic production and the toxic chemicals it creates. Instead, nothing was accomplished, and there are currently no next steps. Well not nothing, because yet again, the strong influence of fossil fuel interests dictated the outcome, since plastic is derived from oil and gas. I’m talking about petrostates like Saudi Arabia, the US, and Russia, and chemical and plastic industry lobbyists. The UN operates by way of unanimous consensus among all parties, which is an absurd way to operate with so much at stake. The large majority of countries – over 100 of them – want to address the plastic pollution crisis in a meaningful, intelligent way. That way is to put global limits on the amount of plastic that can be produced, thereby reducing it at its source. Countries also want to restrict the use of at least a quarter of the 16,000 chemicals used in plastic production – the ones known to be detrimental to human health. But the handful of petrostates refuse to limit production or to abandon toxic chemical use, and instead push their agenda of plastic collection and recycling, since those activities wouldn’t hinder their businesses. But we know those methods don’t work, as evidenced by the visible mountains and rivers of plastic across the globe, and the well documented stat that less than 10% of plastic is actually recycled. There is simply too much plastic in existence. And by 2040, global production is projected to increase 70%, and plastic pollution leaked into the environment will grow 50%, according to the OECD. All this garbage lingers in the environment forever as microplastics, and trashes up our beautiful places. If that’s not bad enough, one might think the latest warnings from scientists about how harmful plastic is to human health might help swing the vote. Microplastics and their toxic chemicals have been linked to reproductive issues, disrupting the nervous system, and even cancer, yet we are only just beginning to understand plastic’s impacts on the human body, much less the impact of microplastics found in babies at birth. But just like with climate change, even these alarming health consequences don’t ever trump the unbreakable religion of Profit. Our current systems allow for the rotten few to literally spoil our planet and stall any plans the rest of us make to help her. The plastic treaty talks will resume at some point. In the meantime, we have to keep fighting, we have to be louder, and whatever we do, we cannot allow this abuse to our planet and our health to continue. On the note to keep trying, Grist has a story about how artwork has been a mainstay at these UN conferences, where artists create installations meant to touch people in more emotional ways to get them to do the right thing.

🛻 Ford is staying the course with its electric vehicle business, and investing in what it calls a big bet to make more affordable EVs, starting with a $30,000 truck. The world, most notably China, is full steam ahead on electric vehicles, so if American brands want to stay relevant, despite the political obstacles on home soil, they have to innovate and they have to offer competitively-priced EV models. Last week, Ford announced their new “Universal EV Platform”, which is a more efficient, Tesla-inspired way to build EVs with fewer, larger components and a cheaper, faster-charging battery. They’re investing $5B in this effort, supporting an assembly and a battery plant in Kentucky and Michigan, respectively. This marks a new chapter for Ford, which CEO Jim Farley called their “Model T moment”. I can’t imagine they’d throw that term around lightly. LFG!

🔋 A rare potential win for the EV revolution occurred last week, as the Trump administration appears to be backing down from freezing $5B in funding for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, passed during Biden’s reign via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The program aims to build high-speed EV charging stations along highways across the country, like how it is with gas stations. Several states and nonprofits sued when Trump froze the funds earlier this year. In June, a judge ordered nearly $1B of dedicated funds be released, and now the Transportation Department has issued new guidelines and is allowing states to reapply for funding. The Transportation Secretary said that if they have to support this, they’re going to do it ‘efficiently’. So they’ve gone and supposedly cut red tape for permitting, etc. Let’s hope it actually does speed up the process of getting these babies up and running.

👀 I don’t pretend to know the intricacies of America’s electricity market when it comes to the down and dirty stuff of transmission lines, utility regulators, and the politics of it all. For that, I recommend the newsletter and podcast Volts by David Roberts. But since these are things that literally keep our country running, there’s a lot of power in understanding this web of connectivity, puns intended. Big Tech knows this, and has been quietly inserting itself into our country’s archaic power-delivery landscape, where most of the action happens in the nitty gritty spaces of local politics and public utility commission meetings, aka where most people aren’t looking. These companies have even created energy subsidiaries (Google Energy LLC, Amazon Energy LLC, Microsoft Energy LLC) for this new business arm, which earns them revenue as they sell electricity they don’t use back to utility companies. The New York Times has a great article that dives into how the largest tech companies are becoming some of the largest energy consumers and providers, influencing the dynamics of how Americans get their electricity, including the cost of it (spoiler: costs will go up, as households and small businesses help foot the bill for data centers and their required grid upgrades). The tech industry’s massive focus on AI to drive business growth is in turn increasing our country’s once stable demand for energy. AI requires enormous amounts of energy (and fresh water and land) to power huge data centers for reasons largely unnecessary, at a time when we are dealing with the existential issue of climate change, for one. Big Tech decided climate can wait (it can’t), because AI is to Big Tech as fossil fuels are to Big Energy– the short-term (but profitable!) detriment to our long-term planet-defining problems. My point is that it will behoove us to pay attention to the details in how our energy markets are being redefined. Perhaps some of us will be called to start attending local public utility commission meetings or submitting public comments to help make it difficult for data centers to exist. Read the Times article if you can – it also provides a case study for how regulators in Columbus, Ohio managed to rule against the tech industry’s attempts to financially burden its constituents, for now.

🏞️ With Yosemite as your backdrop, explore how fragile and vulnerable our National Park System is when it’s subject to ongoing budget cuts and a dwindling staff to care for it, detailed nicely in this article. And speaking of Yosemite, the Netflix show “Untamed” is a pretty good watch if you like nature-based murder mysteries. The scenery of the park is striking, and even experiencing it through a screen, and even if it’s not actually filmed in Yosemite, it reminds me how lucky we are to have protected that wild land for the sake of the wildlife living there.