Unlikely Animal Friends, Solar + Battery Breakthrough, Bad EPA, 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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Pop Culture:

🎵 This week we have a music theme for our culture section. If you’re looking for something to watch tonight, catch CNN Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir’s interview with singer Billie Eilish on her dedication to cleaning up and greening up the music industry. It’s on CNN at 8pm ET. Next, the Steve Miller Band (still touring!) canceled all tour dates for their upcoming North America tour, citing the risk of extreme and dangerous weather events, made worse by climate change. It’s obviously unfortunate, but it’s also making a statement. Go, Boomers. Lastly, here’s a story about how Nature is done allowing people to sample her sounds for free. A new trend growing in the music industry is to credit Nature as a collaborator on albums when her sounds are used in music. Some labels are also donating a portion of revenue to conservation projects. Love!

Philanthropy At Work:

♲ The Ocean Conservancy just released a new report, rating all 50 states on their plastic pollution reduction efforts. Naturally, California ranks 1, with Mississippi ranking last partially because they have a law that limits the government’s ability to regulate single-use plastic. Overall, the finding is that no state is doing a good job at significantly reducing plastic pollution, and the US is the largest plastic polluter globally. This report will be a useful tool to help measure what we know, and also recommends how states can do better – but it requires state laws to regulate this unchecked industry consisting of chemical and fossil fuel companies, plus consumer goods manufacturers, who all must be forced to take responsibility for the crisis they’ve created.

News You Need To Know:

🐈 A cute story about an ocelot and an opossum strolling around the Amazon together is a big hit this week. Caught together on a wildlife tracking camera, this odd couple is usually of the predator-prey persuasion, so seeing this pair casually walking together is intriguing. And it’s not just once, but four times this combo of species was recorded on camera over a four year period. I’m not convinced that the ocelot won’t decide it’s hungry in another mile, but hey, it’s a cute story to see unlikely friends frolicking around in nature. Perhaps the underlying reason driving the popularity of this story is: can’t we all just get along?

☀️ In a new report, think tank Ember, proves how solar plus battery storage can now achieve always-on clean energy all day, all night, all year with attractive economics. Solar has been the cheapest form of energy for the past few years, but the recent advances and cost efficiencies in batteries now enable solar to provide power long after the sun sets. In the past year alone battery prices have fallen 40%, and this trend will continue. In the sunniest cities, like Las Vegas, Ember finds that solar plus battery storage can provide 97% of constant energy generation, cheaper than new coal and nuclear.

😤 The EPA is eliminating its Office of Research and Development, described as “the heart and brain of the E.P.A.”. It was the scientific research arm of the agency that operated independently from the administrator’s office, providing unbiased research that analyzed the health impacts from polluting industries like chemicals and fossil fuels, and polluting events like wildfires. Their work directly influenced policy and regulations. The Trump administration’s dismantling of the EPA and pivot to pollution-enabling agency is an assault on human health, no matter where your politics lie.

😡 Speaking of assault, the blows keep coming to American clean energy. Whatever chance wind and solar projects had left to get built just got more difficult, because now each proposed wind and solar project must be personally reviewed across 68 touchpoints by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. I’m sure he’ll make a point to make time for that. The agency’s reasoning is “ending preferential treatment for unreliable, subsidy-dependent wind and solar energy.” Just wow. You wanna talk about preferential treatment and subsidy-dependent energy? According to the IMF, the US subsidizes the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $646 billion each year, which includes both explicit (direct) and implicit (the license to pollute for free and its subsequent environmental and health damages) subsidies. In Trump’s newly passed bill, fossil fuel industry royalty fees for extraction on federal land decreased, while wild and solar fees increased. And we already know that the clean energy credits will disappear soon. So what’s that now about preferential treatment, and oh yeah that alleged ‘energy crisis’ that is only quenched by that dark, dirty fuel? Deep breath, three more years folks.

🏃‍♂️ But wait, there might be some hope in California. Clean energy groups are looking for a lifeline in the climate-friendly state by asking Gov. Newsom to expedite the process for solar and wind projects to break ground asap and secure the last of the clean energy credits, which Trump killed in his bill. An executive order signed last week aims to further shrink the already tight timelines to qualify by messing with how the Treasury Department defines ‘starting construction’ (projects need to break ground within about a year to qualify for the credits).

🥵 I’ve noticed more reporting on heat-related deaths this year, which I hope is a tactic that proves successful in waking more people up to the future we are looking at as both emissions and temperatures continue to rise. Though, the jury is out. According to this deflating report, some people in the EU are beginning to normalize extreme heat, and even when interviewed during a heat wave, they do not feel concerned enough about climate change to support emissions reduction policy. God, we have so much educating to do. Here are some of the latest death tolls, caused by extreme heat: 1,180 deaths in Spain in the past two months, 2,300 people died in a 10 day heatwave across the EU (Madrid is counted in this separate analysis, so could be some overlap with the Spain report) with 88% being 65+ years old, and 11 people died in Maryland from heat this summer.