Recent News
The Potential Merger of Two Steel Industry Titans Has Environmentalists Worried
AP Photo / Gene J. Puskar, File
It’s already possible to produce steel in a more climate-friendly way, but neither U.S. Steel nor Nippon Steel seems ready to adapt.
U.S. Steel, once the world’s largest company of any kind, can take substantial credit for the growth of American industrial power in the 20th century. But in recent decades, it’s been shuttering mills and shedding workers. Now, the iconic Pittsburgh-based manufacturer is set to be acquired by a Japanese steelmaker, Nippon Steel — if the federal government allows the deal to proceed.
Earlier this month, reports emerged that the Biden administration is preparing to block the nearly $15 billion merger on the grounds that it presents a threat to America’s national security interests. The United Steelworkers union opposes it, fearing future layoffs and weaker labor protections under new ownership. So do both major candidates for president, who are vying for votes in the Rust Belt. Supporters of the deal, like the Washington Post editorial board and the nonpartisan think tank The Atlantic Council, have cast the politicians’ opposition as election-season pandering, and argued that the national security rationale on which Biden may block it is flimsy. But one area, in which the question of whether the merger goes through could be particularly consequential, has gone largely unremarked upon in the conversation: what it means for the climate.
Some environmentalists say the deal could slow the crucial progress that the steel industry must make in order to decarbonize. Their argument stems from the fact that both U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel have been slow, compared to industry peers, to adopt the most impactful decarbonization technologies, even with federal funding available in the U.S. to do so. 09-13-24
Kamala Harris is Making Climate Action Patriotic. It Just Might Work.
Photo of Kamala Harris speaking into a microphone with American flags in the background
Kyle Mazza / Anadolu via Getty Images
A new study suggests that framing the issue in terms of American values holds promise.
“Freedom” is often a Republican talking point, but Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to reclaim the concept for Democrats as part of her campaign for the presidency. In a speech at the Democratic National Convention last month, she declared that “fundamental freedoms” were at stake in the November election, including “the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.”
A new study suggests Harris might be onto something if she’s trying to convince voters torn between her and former President Donald Trump. Researchers at New York University found that framing climate action as patriotic and as necessary to preserve the American “way of life” can increase support for climate action among people across the political spectrum in the United States.
“It’s encouraging to see politicians adopting this type of language,” said Katherine Mason, a co-author of the study and a psychology researcher at New York University. Based on the study’s results, she said that this rhetoric “may bridge political divides about climate change.”
Some 70 percent of Americans already support the government taking action to address climate change, including most younger Republicans, according to a poll from CBS News earlier this year. Experts have long suggested that appealing to Americans’ sense of patriotism could activate them. 09-12-24
At the Presidential Debate, Fossil Fuels and Energy Politics Took Center Stage
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump sought to court swing state voters in gas-rich Pennsylvania in their first head-to-head match.
A month ago, it seemed unlikely that Vice President Kamala Harris would ever reach a goal she set out to achieve as a presidential hopeful in 2019. But at 9 p.m. on Tuesday night at the National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia — five-odd years after she dropped out of her first presidential race — Harris finally faced off against Donald Trump in what will likely be the only debate between the two candidates before Election Day.
Harris and Trump are diametrically opposed to each other on issues ranging from national security to the economy to foreign policy, but perhaps nowhere are the candidates more at odds than on the matter of climate change: One thinks rising temperatures pose an existential threat, the other thinks climate science is nonsense.
That gulf in views was put on full display in the last minutes of the hour-and-a-half-long debate, when ABC News Live Prime host and debate co-moderator Linsey Davis asked the pair what they would do to fight climate change. Harris, who answered the question first, was quick to point out that Trump has implied on many an occasion that climate change is a hoax propagated by China. “What we know is that it is very real,” she said. “You ask anyone who is living in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who is now being denied home insurance or it’s being jacked up.” In the past couple of years, private insurance companies have begun dropping policies in fire- and -flood-prone states like California and Florida. 09-11-24
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A New ‘green bank’ Could Bring Solar Power and Electric Buses to Appalachia
Ryan C. Hermens
$500 million from the EPA will support small lenders to invest in renewable energy
Gwen Christon runs an IGA grocery store in Isom, a town in eastern Kentucky that struggles with exorbitant utility bills and few grocery options. Climate change is worsening both problems. When the state’s record flood of 2022 devastated her supermarket, the town became a food desert as she scrambled to reopen. She soon turned to a small, local financial institution called the Mountain Association for help. With its support, the store, a steadfast community institution since it opened in 1973, found funding for rooftop solar, and more efficient coolers, heating, and air conditioning. Those improvements saved Christon enough on her power bills to reopen — and hire 10 additional employees.
“They’re reaping the benefits of reduced energy costs, so that they can reinvest back into their businesses and continue to grow their workforce [and] provide lower-cost groceries,” said Robin Gabbard, president of the Mountain Association.
The organization Gabbard leads is a community development financial institution, or CDFI, one in a network of small local lenders across Appalachia and the country that provide small loans to entrepreneurs and homeowners in rural and low-income areas. 09-10-24
US Solar Manufacturing Capacity Has Quadrupled Thanks to Climate Law
(Dustin Chambers for The Washington Post/Getty Images)
The Inflation Reduction Act has sparked a boom in domestic solar panel manufacturing, though the U.S. still depends on China for certain steps of the supply chain.
The U.S. solar manufacturing industry is going through an unprecedented growth spurt.
In the two years since the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was passed, domestic capacity for producing solar modules has nearly quadrupled, according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight report released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie.
Generous incentives in the Biden administration’s landmark climate law have driven solar module manufacturing capacity to more than 31 gigawatts. That’s a stark change from August 2021, one year before the IRA became law, when the country could produce just 8.3 gigawatts. The U.S. installed 32.4 gigawatts of solar in 2023, a figure expected to climb even higher this year, meaning the country’s solar manufacturing capacity is now close to matching its pace of solar deployment.
The massive expansion of home-grown solar manufacturing ensures that the U.S. is no longer dependent on the market’s hyperdominant supplier, China, for its solar modules. “Module” is the industry term for what’s more commonly known as a solar panel.
As for the rest of the solar supply chain, however, the U.S. is still reliant on companies abroad. 09-09-24
How Big Oil’s Big Money Influences Climate Research
Mario Tama / Getty Images
A new study offers the first comprehensive look at the ties between fossil fuel companies and universities.
For more than a decade, students have been begging their universities to stop investing in oil and gas companies. In 2019, protesters stormed the field of a Harvard-Yale football game at halftime, yelling, “Hey hey, ho ho! Fossil fuels have got to go!” Hundreds of schools have now taken steps to divest (including Harvard and, at least in part, Yale), and many campus climate activists are moving onto the next phase: calling on schools to end their ties with fossil fuel money altogether, rejecting grants and other funding.
According to a new study published on Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal WIREs Climate Change, these activists have good reason to suspect that oil money might influence academic research. It’s the first comprehensive look at the extensive ties between Big Oil and universities, uncovering hundreds of instances in which fossil fuel funding may have led to conflict of interests for researchers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. 09-06-24
As ‘Doomsday’ Glacier Melts, Can an Artificial Barrier Save It?
The edge of the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica. Felton Davis via Flickr
Relatively warm ocean currents are weakening the base of Antarctica’s enormous Thwaites Glacier, whose demise could raise sea levels by as much as 7 feet. To separate the ice from those warmer ocean waters, scientists have put forward an audacious plan to erect a massive underwater curtain.
They call it the Doomsday Glacier. A chunk of Antarctic ice as big as Florida and two thirds of a mile thick, the Thwaites Glacier disgorges into the ocean in a remote region of West Antarctica. Glaciologists say it may be on the verge of total collapse, which could swamp huge areas of low-lying coastal land around the world within a few decades. Now, ambitious plans to save it are set to become an early test of whether the world is prepared to enact massive geoengineering efforts to ward off the worst effects of climate change.
Recent monitoring by uncrewed submarines and satellites, along with ice-sheet modeling, suggest that the Thwaites Glacier and its adjacent smaller twin, the Pine Island Glacier, may already be in a death spiral — eaten up by the intensifying speed and warmth of the powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current. If they are past a point of no return, say researchers involved in the studies, then only massive human intervention can save them. 08-26-24
Op-ed: “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you” — Disabling Environments in Cancer Alley and the Ohio River Valley
For communities plagued by energy extraction and petrochemical buildout, struggles of environmental justice often fall on deaf ears.
The low hum of a tour bus engine underpins the constant buzzing of insects. Air conditioning on full blast circulates the bus interior, shielding us from the muggy Louisiana summer.
Sharon Lavigne stands at its center, microphone in hand. She crouches slightly, one hand gripping the headrest of a black leather seat, and peeks out the tinted windows. White petroleum storage tanks stand in stark contrast to the green grass and red bricked homes. A man mows his lawn, his toddler rolling down the sidewalk in a Cozy Coupe.
Ms. Lavigne shares tidbits of the health-related ailments of the residents of St. James Parish, a fragmented conglomerate of homes, elongated fields and petrochemical infrastructure. She points to a house, “he died of a rare cancer last year.” She points to another, “her daughter decided to leave after she became gravely ill.”
Whispers fill the cabin, muffled by disposable masks. I struggle not only to hear, but to truly comprehend the myriad ways in which the predominantly African-American community has been disabled, robbed of its full potential by the petrochemical industry. 09-04-24
GOP-run Districts Get 85% of the Benefit of Climate Law. Some Still Hate It.
Cameron Smith via Flickr
A new tally shows the overwhelming number of jobs and projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act go to conservative states that back Trump.
Ajulo Othow started solar and storage company EnerWealth Solutions seven years ago to get small solar projects on farmland and other places in rural communities in the Southeast where money is tight and the phrase “green economy” is rarely spoken.
In just the last year, Othow said the amount of solar her company has developed went from 2 megawatts of power to 25 — an increase of 1,150 percent because of the Inflation Reduction Act, the massive climate and economic development law enacted in 2022.
“What the Inflation Reduction Act allows us now to do is for everyday people to start to take advantage of this technology,” said Othow, a longtime lawyer in North Carolina’s solar industry and the president of Black Owners of Solar Services.
The IRA is the Biden Administration’s signature climate law. The historic act is the most aggressive climate policy in U.S. history, rolling out billions in tax breaks and other incentives with the goal of cutting economy-wide carbon emissions 40 percent by 2030. 08-31-24
NYC’s Food Delivery Workers Are Sweltering in the Heat — and Demanding More Protection
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
“We risked our health for the delivery companies during COVID, and now we are doing it again.”
New York City, the city that never sleeps, is also an incredibly hard place to take a break — if your job is jetting across town on a bike delivering takeout and groceries. “As things stand, there isn’t a designated place for us to rest while working,” Antonio Solis, an app-based delivery worker from Veracruz, Mexico, who moved to New York City five years ago, said in an interview in Spanish. “A lot of workers live in Queens or the Bronx, and they have to go as far as Manhattan for work.” Rather than ride the 10 or 20 miles home, they look for small pockets of shade in parks and plazas, or shell out for a coffee or sandwich to take advantage of eateries’ indoor seating.
The challenge of finding an acceptable break area in a city full of concrete, skyscrapers, and traffic exists year round for the more than 60,000 delivery workers in New York City. But summer makes the problem even more urgent — and this summer has been particularly brutal. Oppressive heat arrived early in New York City — the first heat wave struck in mid-June, just days before the official start of summer. By mid-July, the city had had two more heat waves (defined by the National Weather Service as streaks of three or more days with temperatures at or above 90 degrees Fahrenheit), and had already seen as many days at or above 90 degrees F in 2024 as it normally does in an entire year. Spending long periods in this kind of punishing heat presents real health and safety risks for outdoor workers. But delivery workers are getting organized — in ways large and small — to keep themselves safe in the heat. 08-30-24
Oakland’s New School Buses Don’t Just Reduce Pollution — They Double as Giant Batteries
Matt Simon
A new fleet of buses can send power back to the grid, stabilizing it instead of straining it.
The wheels on this bus do indeed go round and round. Its wipers swish. And its horn beeps. Hidden in its innards, though, is something special — a motor that doesn’t vroom but pairs with a burgeoning technology that could help the grid proliferate with renewable energy.
These new buses, developed by a company called Zum, ride clean and quiet because they’re fully electric. With them, California’s Oakland Unified School District just became the first major district in the United States to transition to 100 percent electrified buses. The vehicles are now transporting 1,300 students to and from school, replacing diesel-chugging buses that pollute the kids’ lungs and the neighborhoods with particulate matter. Like in other American cities, Oakland’s underserved areas tend to be closer to freeways and industrial activity, so air quality in those areas is already terrible compared to the city’s richer parts.
Pollution from buses and other vehicles contributes to chronic asthma among students, which leads to chronic absenteeism. Since Oakland Unified only provides bus services for its special-need students, the problem of missing school for preventable health issues is particularly acute for them. “We have already seen the data — more kids riding the buses, that means more of our most vulnerable who are not missing school,” said Kyla Johnson-Trammell, superintendent of Oakland Unified School District, during a press conference Tuesday. “That, over time, means they’re having more learning and achievement goes up.” 08-29-24
The Forgotten Fight to Ban Gas-powered Cars in the 1960s
A smog-shrouded view of downtown Los Angeles on October 7, 1968. (Photo courtesy Los Angeles Public Library archive)
Half a century ago, an obscure state senator fought to ban gas-powered cars — and almost won.
Nicholas Petris, born to Greek immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1923, could remember a time when electric trucks were a common sight on the streets of Oakland. In fact, just a couple decades before his birth, both electric and steam-powered vehicles — which were cleaner and more powerful, respectively, than early gas-powered cars — constituted far larger shares of the American car market than combustion vehicles. The electric cars of this era ran on lead-acid batteries, which had to be recharged or swapped out every 50 to 100 miles, while the steam cars relied on water boilers and hand cranks to run. But for a few historical contingencies, either model could have rendered its gas-powered alternatives obsolete.
By the time of Petris’ childhood, however, cars with internal combustion engines had become dominant. Gas guzzlers won out thanks to a combination of factors, including the discovery of vast oil reserves across the American West, improvements in the production and technology of gas-powered cars (including the invention of the electric starter, which eliminated the hand crank), the general population’s limited access to electricity, and the occasional propensity of early steam cars to explode. 08-28-24
Why Mississippi Coal is Powering Georgia’s Data Centers
A coal-fired power plant in Euharlee, Ga., owned by Georgia Power. AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File
With electricity demand spiking, the Southern Company has opted to keep burning fossil fuels.
Last October, Georgia Power approached regulators with what it said was a crisis. Unless they did something soon, they discovered, the growing demand for electricity would outpace production sometime in the winter of 2025. Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp and other state leaders had been courting data centers and new manufacturing plants for some time, and it was all catching up to the aging power grid.
The Georgia Public Service Commission, the elected body tasked with regulating the utility company, had approved Georgia Power’s long-term grid plan, which the company makes every three years, in 2022. Since then, the company said, its projections for the growth of electricity demand through 2030 had increased by a factor of 17.
Georgia Power proposed a mix of resources to meet this rising demand, including buying power from neighboring utilities, adding solar and battery storage, and building three new natural gas turbines that could generate 1,400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than half a million homes, per year. Experts, including some on the service commission’s own staff, have questioned those projections and the power company’s method of making its forecast. They testified that the growth in energy demand would take longer to materialize than the company projected, giving the utility more time to address the problem. The plan for gas-powered turbines also drew sharp criticism from experts and members of the public alike, who said the utility should rely on carbon-free solutions. 08-27-24
US Has its First National Strategy to Reduce Plastic Pollution − Here Are 3 Strong Points and a Key Issue to Watch
Trash litters the banks of Ballona Creek in Culver City, Calif., after a storm. Citizen of the Planet/UIG via Getty Images
Plastic waste is piling up at a daunting pace around the world. The World Bank estimates that every person on the planet generates an average of 1.6 pounds (0.74 kilograms) of plastic waste daily.
To curb this flow, 175 nations are negotiating a binding international treaty on plastic pollution, with a completion target of late 2024. In July 2024, the Biden administration released the first U.S. plan for addressing this problem.
The new U.S. strategy covers five areas: plastic production, product design, waste generation, waste management and plastic capture and removal. It also lists actions that federal agencies and departments are currently pursuing.
I study environmental law, including efforts to reduce plastic pollution. As the world’s largest economy, the U.S. is a critical player in this effort. Based on my research, here are three proposals in the U.S. plan that I believe are important and one omission that I view as a major gap.
Studies have detected tiny plastic fragments, known as microplastics, in settings that include the atmosphere, drinking water sources, wild animals and human food chains. 08-16-24
EPA Determines Formaldehyde Causes Cancer, in Step Toward Regulation
A bronze sign marks an entrance to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters building on Jan. 30, 2024, in Washington, DC.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has determined that breathing in formaldehyde, a chemical that’s used in building materials and hair straighteners, can cause cancer.
In a toxicological review issued this week, the EPA said the substance causes sinus and nasal cancer as well as myeloid leukemia.
While the finding itself does not impose new restrictions on the substance’s use, the determination is expected to inform future regulations.
The agency plans to take the next step in the regulatory process, which is called a final risk evaluation, by the end of the year, a spokesperson said. This still does not actually regulate the substance, but it would represent another step in that direction.
“In light of this assessment, there is no excuse for further delay. EPA needs to promptly finalize the formaldehyde risk evaluation and move on to risk management,” said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a supervising senior attorney at Earthjustice.
If the agency ultimately does decide to restrict or ban formaldehyde, it could do so for the substance’s uses including wood products and adhesives.
Formaldehyde’s use in hair straightening products is covered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has separately proposed to ban the substance’s use in these products. 08-21-24
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Oil Firms and Dark Money Fund Push by Republican States to Block Climate Laws
Photograph: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Association of attorneys general has received millions from Koch Industries, fossil fuel lobby and fund linked to billionaire Leonard Leo
A powerful group that boasts 28 Republican attorneys general, including many who have sided with oil and gas firms to block states seeking compensation for weather disasters caused by climate change, has raked in millions of dollars from fossil fuel giants and a dark money fund tied to Federalist Society co-chair, Leonard Leo.
The Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga) has roped in about $5.8m from oil and gas giants and their allied lobbying groups since Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, campaign finance records show.
Further, Raga has received a whopping $18.8m from the Leo-linked Concord Fund since 2014 when the dark money non-profit first registered with the IRS, according to the liberal-leaning Center for Media and Democracy.
During the first half of 2024, the Concord Fund was the largest donor to Raga, plowing $2m into the group’s coffers. The Concord Fund, formerly called the Judicial Crisis Network, spent millions of dollars supporting Donald Trump’s three conservative supreme court nominees and is led by Leo’s longtime close associate Carrie Severino. 08-21-24
The Long History of Black Collegiate Sororities Mobilizing Voters
Vice President Harris speaks at the Zeta Phi Beta Boule in Indianapolis on July 24.AJ Mast—Washington Post/Getty Images
Vice President Kamala Harris’s almost 40-year membership in Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated (AKA) has been reported on since she first ran for elected office in 2003. Harris’s campaigns for U.S. Senator and President have found support from members of AKA and the other eight Black Greek Letter organizations known collectively as the Divine 9. While a 501(c)(7) status prohibits the Divine 9 from endorsing any candidate, in 2020 members donned their respective organizational colors to support get-out-the-vote efforts.
Now that Harris has secured enough delegates to become the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, these efforts are reemerging. On July 22, the Divine 9 Council of Presidents announced a coordinated campaign to “activate the thousands of chapters and members in our respective organizations to ensure strong voter turnout in the communities we serve” in the 2024 election. Two of Harris’s first stops on the presidential campaign trail included addresses to Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated’s national meeting on July 24 in Indianapolis and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Incorporated’s national meeting in Houston on July 31.
To some, this seemed like an odd choice by Harris, given, as one Fox News correspondent noted, that just a little over 100 days remained until the election at the time. However, the history of Black collegiate sororities reveals that these organizations have long been key sites of political mobilization. In her effort to hold the highest office in the land, Harris is working to tap into the energy, organizational efficiency, and political savvy of these organizations. 08-20-24
How Do You Reduce the Carbon Footprint of a Political Convention? One Donation at a Time.
Paul Sancya / AP Photo
Organizers want the 50,000 attendees to pitch in toward solutions.
Climate change and sustainability are on the agenda for this week’s Democratic National Convention, which started Monday in Chicago, with speakers including Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But climate-minded delegates and voters might be wondering what’s so sustainable about a gathering that pulls in 50,000 people from across the country, most of them by plane.
In other words, convention organizers want to make sure they walk the talk people will hear this week.
There’s a plan for that, including a mix of carbon offset programs that will emphasize local donations, with a focus on waste diversion and recycling that should triple the impact at United Center, where the convention is headquartered.
It will also be the first Democratic convention to collect compost, organizers said.
“For large scale events, oftentimes travel is a big emissions factor — the number one emissions factor, in a lot of cases,” said Marley Finnegan, a local sustainability advisor who is part of the team implementing the green strategies for the convention. 08-02-24
A Remarkable Swarm of Dragonflies
Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) / © Bryan Pfeiffer
What Might We Learn from a Crowded Beach and a Folk Festival in Rhode Island?
IN PERHAPS the most crude and magnificent description of their lives, dragonflies basically do three things: fly around, kill insects, and have crazy sex. (Sometimes they have sex while flying around, but not while killing insects).
Sure, dragonflies do other things. They themselves try not to be killed, for example, and certain species migrate great distances, even across oceans. Sometimes dragonflies swarm, which happened this past Saturday at Misquamicut Beach in Rhode Island, where the dragonflies were neither killing things nor having sex. They were instead flying in numbers and behavior that to the best of my knowledge has never been witnessed here in North America. The dragonflies also unwittingly revealed a few things about human nature.
In watching videos from the beach, those of us who study or celebrate dragonfly distribution and behavior soon recognized that this flight was remarkable for two reasons. First is abundance. Dragonflies are capable of swarming by the hundreds or thousands or more, but the videos reveal a staggering flight at the beach. It is all but impossible to estimate how many dragonflies were in the swarm, but neither my colleagues nor I can recall anything like it — and all of us wish we had been there to see it. (Don’t forget to turn on the audio below.) 08-01-24