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AM Briefing: Chevy's New Electric SUV
Current conditions: More than 125 highways are closed in China due to a record-setting winter storm • Tropical Cyclone Jasper downed trees in parts of Queensland in Australia • The Geminids meteor shower will peak tonight. THE TOP FIVE1. Trump promises to revoke U.S. pledge to Green Climate Fund if re-elected Former President Donald Trump told a crowd at an Iowa campaign event yesterday that he would cancel “all climate reparation payments” immediately should he be re-elected next year. A campaign aide clarified that Trump was talking specifically about America’s pledge to the Green Climate Fund, which helps developing countries...
The Stealth Hero of the COP28 Deal Is Technology
Now it is over. Early on Wednesday morning, negotiators in Dubai reached an agreement at the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global meeting otherwise known as COP28. Their final text for the Global Stocktake — a kind of report card on humanity’s progress on its Paris Agreement goals — is contradictory and half-hearted. Instead of blunt language instructing countries to “phase out fossil fuels,” it instead provides a range of options that could let countries achieve “deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” One of these possibilities is the...
The Tesla Recall Is a Win for Tesla
More than 2 million Tesla vehicles are set to receive over-the-air updates to address failures in the Autopilot system, the carmaker’s much-hyped and oft-abused driver-assistance program. But the recall report published by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration shows regulators are willing to keep risky technology on the road as long as the driver gets nagged enough. What’s at issue with the recall is less Autopilot’s ability to brake and accelerate and more its Autosteer functionality, which allows the car to follow curves and make turns. According to NHTSA, “the prominence and scope of the feature’s controls may not be...
Biden’s One Tax Credit to Rule Them All
This year may forever be remembered as the start of the American clean energy manufacturing boom. Since the beginning of 2023, companies have announced more than 150 separate investments in new and expanded factories to manufacture solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and other clean energy technologies in the U.S., for a total pledged outlay of nearly $60 billion, according to tracking by the nonpartisan group E2. And these factories won’t just be assembling the final products. Entire supply chains have arrived on shore. This is all, of course, due to the Inflation Reduction Act, the historic climate legislation President Biden signed...
The COP28 Deal Is Literally Meaningless — But Not Useless
As North America slept, delegates from around the world concluded the global climate conference in Dubai, when the chair — local oilman Sultan al-Jaber — quick-gaveled through an agreement that included a sentence calling for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”That may not seem like much — it is, after all, the single most obvious thing one could possibly say about climate change, akin to “in an effort to reduce my headache, I am transitioning away from hitting myself in the forehead with a hammer.” And by itself it will...
California Is Headed for Another Wet Winter
The 2020s got off to a parched, smoky start in the West. But after three years of unrelenting drought, 2023 brought the region some relief. Thanks to a very snowy winter followed by a very rainy spring, the worst of the Western drought receded rapidly in the early months of this year, data from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows. The extent bottomed out in the early summer, when only one-sixth of the West was experiencing any level of drought at all. It’s crept upward since then to about 45% of the region, but still — that’s the lowest drought level...
5 Quick Things to Know About the COP28 Agreement
After two weeks of intense negotiations and apparent stalemate in Dubai, all 198 delegates swiftly approved a breakthrough climate agreement this morning at COP28. The deal — a culmination of a two-year process known as the global stocktake — isn’t perfect, and it was met with a mix of praise and disappointment. United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell said that while the deal doesn’t “turn the page” on fossil fuels, it marks “the beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. Here are five things worth knowing about the agreement: 1. It doesn’t call for a fossil fuel phase-out The...
AM Briefing: A COP Breakthrough
Current conditions: Spain recorded its highest-ever December temperature • Flooding forced some London drivers to abandon their cars • It will be cold but clear tonight in New York City for Taylor Swift's blowout birthday bash. THE TOP FIVE1. Breakthrough COP28 deal calls for transition away from fossil fuels A deal has been reached at the COP28 climate summit that marks “the beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era, says United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell. After two weeks of intense negotiations and several rejected drafts, an agreement was swiftly finalized today that calls on countries to accelerate the...
How the COP28 Negotiations Actually Work
This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, has been broadly defined by two facts. The first is that the conference is headed by the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned oil company. The second is that this is the year of the first global stocktake, a document that should, in theory, set the world on a path to achieve the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement of 2015. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that combination has not produced tremendous results. The latest draft of the stocktake dropped language calling for a fossil fuel phase-out. The condemnation was swift: “We will...
EV Buyers Still Love Tesla, Whatever Elon Musk Does
In the weeks leading up to Elon Musk’s latest round of controversies, 27% percent of Americans who reported wanting to buy an EV in the future said that the billionaire’s behavior made them less likely to pick a Tesla, down from 36% who said the same in February. On the other hand, 35% of prospective EV buyers said that Musk had made them more likely to purchase a Tesla — a reversal of the results from the last time Heatmap took Americans’ temperature on the controversial CEO, when more people were put off by Musk’s behavior than swayed by...
AM Briefing: Overtime at COP28
Current conditions: It’s getting windy in Queensland as Tropical Cyclone Jasper approaches land. America’s chances of a white Christmas are looking increasingly slim. It’s cold but sunny in Washington, D.C., today, where Ukrainian President Zelensky will meet with President Biden. THE TOP FIVE1. COP28 runs into overtime Negotiators at the COP28 climate summit remain divided over the text that will appear in the final deal to emerge from the conference, and in particular whether the text will call on countries to phase out fossil fuels. The conference was scheduled to end this morning but is running into overtime. Yesterday an updated...
COP Can’t Go On Like This
It didn’t attract a lot of attention, but for a few months, it looked like the United Nations climate process might break down. There, process is substance: One of the most important acts every year is the selection of the next country to run the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP. This distinction normally rotates among the UN’s five regional country groups; next year, a country in the “Eastern Europe” group is due to host. All the members of a group must unanimously agree on which country will get to...
Dubai Is a Crappy Place to Have a Climate Protest
Political protests are a staple of COP summits. Thousands of climate activists descend on the event each year to call for stronger global commitments to building renewables and quitting fossil fuels.But at COP28, United Arab Emirates laws restricting speech and banning most forms of public protest have constrained where and how people can speak out. Demonstrations are only permitted in areas managed by the UN, known as the “blue zone,” and have to be approved before they can take place.“We have to say how loud we’re going to be, what’s going to be written on the banners. We’re not...
It’s Not Just You — High Interest Rates Are Hurting the Planet, Too
New clean energy projects have a lot going for them. For one, building them has gotten extremely cheap. At the same time, because the wind blowing and the sun shining are unlimited free resources, operating costs for a clean energy power plant are also pretty low. That’s the beauty of a clean energy economy — it reduces our exposure to the price swings, recessions, political instability, and surging inflation that come with fossil fuels.The problem is that the cure for surging inflation — hiking up interest rates — is having a big, bad impact on clean energy. Elevated interest...
A Fossil Fuel ‘Phase-Out’ Is Officially Out
One of the most exciting and contentious questions looming over the COP28 climate summit in Dubai this year has been whether countries will agree to an historic phase out of fossil fuels to stave off the worst effects of climate change. With one day left on the official conference agenda, we may have our answer: No. A new draft of the global stocktake text dropped Monday and it contains no mention of a fossil fuel phase out or phase down. Instead, the relevant section of the text now calls for “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a...
AM Briefing: Hope and Panic at COP28
Current conditions: At least six were killed in tornadoes that ripped through Tennessee over the weekend • Severe Tropical Cyclone Jasper is intensifying off of Australia’s Queensland coast • Dubai’s air quality is “moderate” today.THE TOP FIVE1. Saudi Arabia opposes any mention of fossil fuels in COP28 dealIt’s crunch time at COP28. The United Nations climate summit is officially scheduled to end tomorrow morning, but is likely to run over, as much work remains even after a weekend of intense talks and pleas for compromise. There is still no consensus on the language in the global stocktake on the...
You Can Own a Backyard Direct Air Capture Plant for $750,000
The future of climate-friendly air travel might lie in a 20-foot shipping container that was dropped off on the campus of the University of Sheffield in England in late September. Inside the box is a system developed by Mission Zero Technologies, a London-based company, that extracts carbon dioxide molecules directly from the ambient air. University researchers purchased the tech for about $762,000 for a pioneering project to turn the captured carbon into e-kerosene, a fuel that’s chemically identical to what’s used in airplanes but is made without oil or gas. On Monday, Mission Zero announced that this mini “direct...
Formula 1’s Bizarre Push for E-Fuels Suddenly Makes Sense
When four-time Formula 1 world champion Sebastian Vettel retired last year, he said the sport’s contribution to climate change played a part in his decision. At the time, his concern was mostly around F1’s contribution to carbon emissions — all that globetrotting required a lot of fuel, not to mention the emissions from the cars themselves. What Vettel couldn’t have known, however, is the extent to which the sport was actively pushing against efforts to enact climate laws more broadly. A new report from SourceMaterial, an investigative journalism outlet, details how, in the wake of a lucrative sponsorship deal...
Americans Remain Extremely Concerned About Climate Change, Heatmap Poll Finds
Americans remain immensely concerned about climate change, with 70% calling it a serious problem and over one in three saying they are extremely concerned about the issue, Heatmap’s second Climate Poll has found, echoing results from its first survey last winter. Conducted in mid-November by Benenson Strategy Group, the second poll explored both how Americans’ perceptions of climate change have shifted since Heatmap’s inaugural survey in February and also expanded to touch on questions about individuals’ personal experiences with climate change, their concerns about the future, their knowledge about climate issues and their attitudes on solutions, and how the...
Americans Know About Solar. They Don’t Know the Paris Agreement.
The biggest debates during the annual United Nations climate conference, underway this week in Dubai, always center around language. The Paris Agreement, the 2015 treaty significant for uniting almost every country in the world in supporting a common strategy to address climate change, was almost scuttled by an argument over whether nations “should” cut emissions or “shall” do it. This year, delegates are at odds over whether the world should “phase down” or “phase out” fossil fuels, and whether to allow for “abated” fossil fuels, a euphemism for the use of carbon capture technologies that prevent emissions from entering the...
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