Mountain View
Heatmap News
ExxonMobil Is Getting into Lithium
ExxonMobil on Monday announced plans to produce lithium in an area of southern Arkansas known for its vast deposits of the mineral, a key material in the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries. The company aims to begin producing battery-grade lithium in 2027 in a 120,000-acre area known as the Smackover formation, “using conventional oil and gas drilling methods” from depleted oil wells. The ore would then be processed nearby, and sold as, imaginatively, Mobil Lithium. An oil company’s desire to, in its words, “supply the manufacturing needs of well over a million EVs per year” by 2030 might seem...
Don’t Believe the Story About ‘Slowing’ EV Sales
If you’ve read about electric vehicles in the news lately, you know the vibes are bad. Over the past few weeks, the media has fixated on the idea that consumer demand for EVs is “slowing,” “chilling,” or “losing its charge.” But are sales even slowing? Has federal policy failed to spark the EV transition? Is there any cause for panic? The data shows none of that is true.The best (and only) quantitative evidence presented for the dominant media narrative is data from Cox Automotive, as presented in a recent Wall Street Journal article, showing that dealers are taking more...
The Irreverent Punks Trying to Flip the Energy System on Its Head
The hottest ticket in Brooklyn last week wasn’t for an indie rock show or a buzzy new restaurant. It was for the most niche, nerdiest clean energy conference of the year — the sold-out DERVOS 2023.The conference name — a satirical play on Davos, a stuffy, World Economic Forum event attended by governmental and business elites — tells you much of what you need to know about this irreverent subculture of the climate movement. A teaser video for DERVOS described it as a “rad clean energy summit … where youths get DER-pilled and the hot takes haven’t been approved...
Canoo Has Made Another Sick Truck That You Can’t Buy
The electric vehicle startup Canoo Technologies has announced another extremely cool-looking pickup that you probably won’t be able to buy. On Friday, Canoo unveiled the “American Bulldog,” a gray, weatherized, all-electric pickup truck that the company says is inspired by a vehicle initially made for the U.S. Army. Here’s the hype video: The American Bulldog www.youtube.com ...
We’ve Been Counting Bats in All the Wrong Places
American bats have been having a rough time lately. In 2006, a deadly disease called White-nose Syndrome appeared on the East Coast, dusting the faces of bats there with a white fungus that sapped their fat reserves while they hibernated over the winter, starving them before spring arrived. The widespread use of pesticides made things worse, as did the wind turbines springing up around the country: Bats seem to be worse at dodging them than the hawks and eagles that tend to grab the attention of conservationists, and nearly a million of them are killed by turbines each year....
Joe Manchin Was America’s De Facto Climate King
What can you say about Joe Manchin, perhaps the most important — and most complicated — American climate policy maker of the past decade? Let’s start here: Soon, he won’t be a senator any more. On Thursday, Manchin announced that he will not pursue re-election in West Virginia in 2024. “I’ve made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate,” he said in a video message. Instead, he said, he will be “traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest...
The Age of Inescapable Wildfire
When Manjula Martin was growing up in Northern California in the 1980s, wildfires weren’t something she thought about much. She knew about disaster — the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, which killed 63 people and injured thousands, hit when she was a teenager — but fire, she thought, was just something that happened up in the mountains in the summer. Things are different now. In 2017, Martin left the high prices of San Francisco for the redwoods of Sonoma County. The night of their housewarming party, a firestorm swept through Santa Rosa and Sonoma and Napa counties....
Nikki Haley Called Ron DeSantis the ‘E’ Word
Tonight, at approximately seven feet above sea level, the five leading Republican presidential candidates not named Trump assembled in a performing arts center in Miami to once again go through the motions of pretending this is a normal election cycle. If you happened to be doing something else with your finite mortal hours on Wednesday evening, though, you didn’t miss much. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy made every effort to maintain his status as the group’s enfant terrible with obnoxious barbs that didn’t even spare the moderators; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina managed to use a Bible verse to talk about...
The Sporty EV Pickup of My Dreams Is Coming — But Not to America
My wife drove one of the last great little trucks. The 2000 Toyota Tacoma had no extended cab and no frills, just a bench seat and a short bed to shuttle her stuff back and forth from L.A. to Berkeley. To no one’s surprise, it still runs. We just moved a loveseat in it this weekend.That kind of two-door utilitarian pickup, which was commonplace in the heyday of the Chevy S-10 and Ford Ranger, is critically endangered in the era of supersized F-150s and Ram 1500s. And the new EVs in the truck space are predictably big. Toyota, though,...
Maine’s Historic Public Power Push Goes Down in Flames
An unprecedented “public power takeover” campaign in Maine failed on Tuesday, according to a projection by The New York Times.The Maine ballot had asked voters if they wanted to create the Pine Tree Power Company, a nonprofit electric utility governed by a publicly-elected board, which would purchase and acquire all of the investor-owned transmission and distribution utilities in Maine. When the Times made its call, voters had rejected the initiative 71% to 29%, with over a third of precincts reporting.The ballot question was the culmination of a multi-year campaign by a group called Our Power, which initially brought the...
Canada Wants U.S. Offshore Wind Too
The Northeast has a mismatch between its climate ambitions — some of the most aggressive decarbonization targets in the country — and its resources for renewable energy. While the Pacific Northwest has rivers and gorges, the Southwest and Southeast have lots of sun, and the Great Plains has lots of wind, the major renewable resource in the Northeast lies on the Atlantic Ocean, where plans for billions of dollars in offshore wind investment are being delayed or even outright canceled as high costs take its toll on the industry.But what the Northeast does have is a long border with...
A Clean Energy Scandal Brings Down Portugal’s Prime Minister
As investment in renewable energy rises globally, so too does the potential for massive corruption. This proved true on Tuesday, when Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa resigned amid an explosive investigation into his administration’s handling of lithium mining and hydrogen projects. “The dignity of the functions of prime minister is not compatible with any suspicion about his integrity, his good conduct, and even less with the suspicion of the practice of any criminal act,” Costa said in a tearful televised announcement on Tuesday. While Costa assured viewers that he would be cooperating with authorities in their investigation, he maintained...
Prince William Announces the Earthshot Prize Winners
The Earthshot Prize, an annual award by Prince William’s Royal Foundation, was given to five climate-focused startups on Tuesday. The winners — each of which will receive $1.2 million and “tailored support” from the prize’s “global alliance of partners” — were Acción Andina, a Peruvian initiative to protect Andean forests; GRST, a Hong Kong builder and recycler of lithium-ion batteries; S4S Technologies, an Indian project to combat food waste and reduce rural poverty; WildAid, a global nonprofit dedicated to improving ocean health; and Boomitra, a multinational company working to create a soil carbon marketplace. “I choose to believe that...
What Would You Spend to Save San Francisco’s Ferry Building?
When San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Farmers Market is in full Saturday swing, one way to dodge the determined foodies and casual browsers is to retreat to the plaza just 30 steps south of the Ferry Building. It sits atop three tiers of dark-veined granite, accessible by two flights of nine stairs or a ramp that ascends along the water to a trio of ferry gates that, like the plaza, were completed in 2021.The chosen height hints at what someday might be the norm — the elevation where San Francisco’s constructed shoreline will need to be to serve as a...
Michigan Is About to Have the Best Climate Policies of Any Battleground State
Michigan looks likely to pass an aggressive package of climate laws this week, as the state’s Democrats are set to capitalize on their first governing trifecta in nearly four decades. The climate laws would require that 100% of Michigan’s electricity come from carbon-free sources by 2040, putting the state on par with the fastest state-level decarbonization deadlines nationwide. New York, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Oregon also aim to achieve zero-carbon electricity by 2040. The bills would also open a new Just Transition Office within the Michigan Department of Labor and strengthen the state’s energy-efficiency and utility laws. While other states have passed...
Gaza Has Never Had Enough Water
Home to two million people, the Gaza Strip sits squeezed between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea on a bit of land just twice the size of Washington, D.C. Gaza is the smaller part of Palestine’s two territories; you could walk the length of its southern border with Egypt in under three hours. But land is not the only thing that’s long been in short supply in Gaza. As the war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that rules the region, has made clear, Gaza is also increasingly bereft of water. Over the course of the tragic war,...
The NYC Marathon Was Unseasonably Warm Again. That Spells Trouble.
The buzzy topic of conversation among New York City Marathon race volunteers in the predawn hours of Sunday morning wasn’t if a course record was going to be broken or Peres Jepchirchir’s pre-race withdrawal, but how we decided what we were going to wear. This year, I was...
Republicans Propose One of the Year’s Most Interesting Climate Bills
One of the year’s most interesting climate policies was just proposed … by a Republican. Two, actually.On Thursday, Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham released a bill that would establish a “foreign pollution fee,” a new type of tariff that would raise the cost of products imported from countries with substantially higher emissions than the United States. If that sounds suspiciously like a carbon price, you’re not wrong: Both policies aim to make dirtier products more expensive. But unlike a carbon price, the foreign pollution fee would apply only to imported products, not to anything made within the United...
‘Planet Earth III’ Is a Poignant Reminder of What We’re Fighting For
David Attenborough is not mad, he’s just disappointed. At 97 years old, the narrator of the Planet Earth series returns to guide us through the nature docuseries’ third installment, which becomes available for U.S. audiences this weekend. Maybe I’d just forgotten how harrowing stories of animal survival can be in the seven years since the release of Planet Earth II, but other reviewers seem to agree: Planet Earth III has an especially melancholic edge. You can hear it in Attenborough’s narration: “Since Darwin’s time, [Earth] has changed beyond recognition, transformed by a powerful force,” he says in the show’s intro....
The Oil Market Is Chilling Out About Hezbollah
The global energy market breathed a sigh of relief after Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, gave a widely anticipated speech that indicated the group would not escalate its current skirmishes with the Israeli military into a full-on conflict. Hezbollah maintains a large force on Lebanon’s border with Israel.Ever since Hamas’s attack on southern Israel and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza, a lurking question has been whether other regional powers — specifically Iran, which supports Hamas as well as Hezbollah — would get involved.“Nasrallah sent a pretty strong signal — Hezbollah won’t enter the...
Heatmap News
1K+
Posts
11M+
Views
Heatmap is a new media company focused on the biggest story of our time: climate change. We’re your guide to the transformation reshaping our planet, our economy, our politics, and our culture.
It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency:
Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation.