Collected headlines from around the web, every weekday.
A fee on methane pollution is likely back in. That’s what Senate Democrats said Tuesday, announcing that they believed they had reached a pathway to passing the now $2 trillion reconciliation bill that has been stonewalled by West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, The Hill reports. The senators said the bill’s new focus is investing in clean energy rather than punishing polluters.
The Hill
The White House is privately telling lawmakers the climate portion of President Biden’s roughly $2 trillion social spending plan is “mostly settled” and will likely cost more than $500 billion, Axios reports. The $500 billion price tag is a huge number and, if it holds, would likely be the single biggest component of the sweeping package. The previous $3.5 trillion package contained $600 billion for climate efforts.
Axios
Comments made by West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin Tuesday morning suggest that investments in electric vehicle charging stations may be the next policy he plans to stonewall in the Democrats’ reconciliation bill, E&E News reports. Manchin said he does not agree that the federal government’s role should be supporting private-sector EV infrastructure development.
E&E News
Studies have long pointed to air pollution in the United States disproportionately harming poor and minority communities. But a pair of recent studies that examined tailpipe pollution in major urban hubs suggest policymakers could craft more effective regulations to reduce air pollution disparities by targeting emissions from diesel vehicles, like freight trucks and buses.
Inside Climate News
The latest plans by the nations of the world to tackle climate change over the next decade fall far short of what’s needed to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday. The report said the plans would produce just one-seventh of the additional emissions cuts needed this decade to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The New York Times
Top executives from ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Shell will face a reckoning on Capitol Hill Thursday, as they’re grilled on evidence that their companies knew for years that their products were driving climate change but chose to downplay or deny it, Axios reports. The House committee hearing will be the first time these executives come together to give sworn testimony regarding their role in global warming.
Axios
Another key climate provision in the Democrat’s multi-trillion budget package is facing the chopping block due to opposition from West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, Reuters reports. Democrats wanted to impose a fee on U.S. oil and gas producers for their emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent at warming the planet than carbon dioxide. But the proposal will now likely be cut.
Reuters
As the United States prepares to head to a major international climate conference this week, a new poll found that the majority of Americans see addressing the warming climate as a top priority, an increase from just a few years ago, the Associated Press reports. A new AP-NORC/EPIC poll shows that 55 percent of Americans want Congress to pass a bill to transition the country away from fossil fuels.
Associated Press
In the six years since Pope Francis published his landmark teaching document on the environment, or “care for our common home,” the leader of the global Catholic Church has only strengthened his call for action to curb climate change. But Catholic bishops in the U.S. have remained mostly silent on the matter, a new study says, partially because of their political alignment.
Inside Climate News
A pledged $100 billion a year to help poor countries address climate change could become available next year, more than a decade after the commitment was made, diplomats from Canada and Germany announced Monday. The funding was supposed to be on the table last year after the United States led efforts to garner support from wealthy nations and enshrined the promise in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The New York Times
The car-rental giant Hertz is making an audacious bet on electric vehicles, purchasing 100,000 battery-powered vehicles from Tesla, NPR reports. The news of the sale lifted Tesla shares, and the world’s most valuable automakers briefly hit an unprecedented $1 trillion market cap. The gamble could play a major role in getting many Americans behind an electric vehicle for the first time.
NPR
After months of debate and delay, the Australian government on Tuesday promised to reach “net zero” emissions by 2050, unveiling a plan built on hope and investment in low-emissions technologies, the New York Times reports. But Australia remains resistant to wean itself from coal and gas, and the country’s new plan doesn’t include tougher emissions reduction targets for the next decade.
The New York Times
After losing the centerpiece of his climate agenda, President Biden now intends to push a new plan that will still meet U.S. ambitions to sharply cut greenhouse gases, the New York Times reports. The new plan consists of generous tax incentives for clean energy, tough regulations to restrict pollution coming from power plants and automobiles along with a slew of clean energy laws enacted by states.
The New York Times
The world is “way off track” for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, the World Meteorological Organization warned in a new report, as greenhouse gas concentrations hit a new record high in 2020. Global carbon dioxide levels surged to 413.2 parts per million last year, setting the world on course to blow far past the 2015 Paris Agreement’s target, the agency said.
Reuters
“An across-the-board failure of the Biden administration.” Facing daily blackouts, Puerto Ricans are again calling on local and federal leaders to transition the U.S. territory to clean energy, four years after Hurricane Maria all but decimated the island’s electrical grid. As a record amount of federal aid begins to flow to the island, energy experts are asking why it’s mostly paying for new natural gas infrastructure.
Inside Climate News
California has a reputation as a leader on climate and environmental policy, so it’s no surprise the state doesn’t advertise how its $111 billion oil and gas industry stores its wastewater. Lax oversight has allowed oil and gas developers to dump billions of barrels of toxic wastewater into unlined pits, new research revealed, endangering the San Joaquin Valley’s dwindling groundwater supplies.
Inside Climate News
A “bomb cyclone” and an “atmospheric river” brought more than half a foot of rain to California’s Bay Area on Sunday, The Hill reports, prompting warnings of high winds, flash floods and mudslides, as well as heavy snow in the Sierra Nevadas. At least 66,000 people in the Bay Area were without power on Sunday and over 3,000 people were working on restoration efforts.
The Hill
In what appears to be a recurring pattern for the industry, new research shows that France-based TotalEnergies knew its products were linked to global warming but it worked to downplay those risks for decades. The research, published by three historians in the peer-reviewed Global Environmental Change journal, outlines alleged efforts by Total to cast doubt on climate science in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
Inside Climate News
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