Twisters, Climate-y Kamala, Outing Climate Villians, 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:

Twisters The Movie: How terrifying are tornadoes?! Adding to the terror is the fact that we still don’t fully understand how they form. But it sure is fun to watch the pretend kind on the big screen! Similar to the original 1996 film, Twister, Twisters is delightfully simple, and is everything you want in an easy, (intensely) breezy summer action movie. In an interview, director Lee Isaac Chung said this about making the film: “Anytime Hollywood is doing anything with climate change, I think we have to stay positive and let people have fun,” he says. “As a production, we want to inspire people to embrace the natural world. That can go quite a long ways toward influencing people to make good choices in their relationship with nature, to study what’s happening on this Earth and to figure out how can we become better caretakers of the planet.” He also noted that they consciously minimized waste on set. I like your vibe, LIC.

🌪 And if you want to know more about the real-life storm chaser who influenced one of the main characters in the film, this is a fun read.

Getting down to climate business:

🥵 Earth’s hottest day ever recorded was last Monday. The hottest day record before that was last Sunday.

🗳 It’s looking like Kamala Harris will be the democratic candidate in the upcoming presidential election. That’s good for climate, as she’ll continue carrying the electric torch and push forward all the climate legislation put in motion during the Biden administration. She has an impressive pro-environment record as AG in CA, she’s tough on oil, and she was repping the U.S. at last year’s UN climate summit, so she’s already seasoned in climate leadership on the global stage.

👀 This year’s UN climate summit, COP29, is being held in Azerbaijan. Like the Olympics, host countries want to look good and hold a successful summit (everyone’s chasing the infamous Paris Agreement). To this end, Azerbaijan just announced a new fund that would raise money from fossil fuel companies and nations to help less developed countries deal with the impacts of climate change, caused by said companies and countries. Getting companies to pay in would be a first. Ok, Azerbaijan, we see you.

🦹‍♂️ This is fun: there’s an organization doing due diligence to identify the Climate Villians of our day. Remember, business activity is driven by individual people making decisions. There is always a choice. So yes, we can absolutely blame them for their climate atrocities.

🦞If you’re keen to learn more about which foods contain toxic forever chemicals, or PFAS, (spoiler alert: it’s all of them) and how you can minimize your intake (avoidance is not possible), then read this. Warning: it’s a depressing read, but maybe good to know how to avoid the most compromised foods?

✈️ United Airlines is partnering with NOAA to test turning commercial flights into emissions tracking instruments in order to better understand how greenhouse gases behave in different levels of the atmosphere. They’ll be analyzing all sources of pollution, including the hard-to-abate emissions from airplanes themselves. On that last data point, it’s kinda like United is acting as the emissions informant among the airline cartel. I wonder what kind of protections NOAA offered them to wear this wire…or maybe I just watch too much Law & Order.

Olympic Green

The Olympics are here, and in addition to watching inspiring athletic performances and stories of elite focus and dedication, we also get to watch segments about this being the ‘greenest’ Olympics yet. Go Paris! I’ll be watching for that anyway, because Paris is leading the way in developing a new blueprint for how an Olympics can be done. This essay does a good job of highlighting Paris’s efforts and what more needs to be done to lessen the environmental impact of the Olympics in general. I really love how Paris and Mayor Hidalgo have put environmental decisions front and center, drawing important attention to trying to do things the better way. Enjoy the Games!