Climate Point: A blueprint for fixing California's water laws, and EVs star at Super Bowl
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. From Palm Springs, California, I'm Janet Wilson.
On Saturday, it was a record-smashing 90 degrees at Los Angeles International Airport — in February. By Super Bowl kickoff on Sunday, the temperatures had dropped to a toasty 84 degrees. In Beijing, actual snowfall delighted — and disrupted — the Winter Olympics. All of it feels like old news. Onto the next disaster. None of it is normal, yet it's the "new normal."
That new abnormal is the focus of a pensive essay in The New York Times' Arts and Leisure section by Amanda Hess headlined, "Apocalypse When? Global Warming’s Endless Scroll."
Some of her essay captures my mood, and maybe yours. "Ours is a banal sort of apocalypse. Even as it is described as frightfully close, it is held at a cynical distance. That is not to say that the rhetoric signals a lack of concern about climate change. But global warming represents the collapse of such complex systems at such an extreme scale that it overrides our emotional capacity."
A writer from an earlier era captures my ethos more simply. At the end of his 1953 work "The Unnamable," Samuel Beckett famously said, "I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
It's as good a maxim as any for covering climate change. Year after year, disastrous emissions pile higher in our thin, blue atmosphere. Week after week, the grim news arrives about the results of that unending human folly. To chronicle it sometimes feels overwhelming, sometimes pointless. And yet how can we not?
And each week, there is an increasing drumroll of innovations, policies, funding and other efforts to maybe turn the tide.
By 1983, in his story "Worstward Ho," Beckett was slightly more optimistic: "No matter, " he wrote. "Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
On that note, here's the latest.
Must-read stories
Trapped. The Intercept's Aileen Brown analyzed prison and weather risk data for her "Climate and Punishment" series, and found by century's end, thousands of U.S. detention facilities will see sustained dangerous temperatures — sometimes more than 50 days a year — and many prisons have no air conditioning.
Elsewhere, Brown details Dixie County, Florida, prisoners trapped in ankle-deep water contaminated with feces. According to her analysis, 621 facilities across the U.S. have major to extreme flood risk. Dark, smoky cells without power or water during wildfires are another reality. Texas, Florida and California inmates face the highest risks.
Outward bound. As COVID rages, one in five Americans has found relief by getting outdoors closer to home. Instead of trips to national parks, the most popular activities are gardening, hiking, birdwatching, running and fishing at local parks. But even as fresh air activity has soared, its diversity has not, writes Kyle Bagenstose for USA Today. Most of the outdoor enthusiasts are white, and for some other racial groups, the ability to get outdoors remained low or even declined during the pandemic. Possible reasons? Not as many outdoor spaces in lower-income communities, and greater fear of being outdoors.
All about water
A foot higher. By 2050, when it hits 90 degrees, you might not be able to find a beach. Seas lapping against the U.S. will be 10 to 12 inches higher, per new research covered by USA Today's Doyle Rice.
“Make no mistake: Sea-level rise is upon us,” said report co-author Nicole LeBoeuf, director of NOAA’s National Ocean Service, on Tuesday.
Wetter and wilder. A warming planet also means hurricanes this century could spin farther north in the Atlantic than they used to, potentially affecting such cities as New York and Boston, Rice writes.
And ever drier. The intense dry spell in the American West is the worst "megadrought" here in 1,200 years, a new study says. Megadroughts once plagued western North America. Now, thanks in part to global warming, an especially fierce one is back. The study, published Monday, said more than 40% of the drought can be blamed on human-caused climate change.
Blue blueprint. Legal experts have a blueprint for fixing California’s water laws to adapt to worsening climate change, and better protect poorer communities and ecosystems. It would include first-ever real-time water use monitoring during droughts. Getting the proposals passed is a heavy lift, but as one author told the L.A. Times' Ian James, the old ways no longer work. In fact, he quoted Beckett too.
It's a zoo
Deadly. Midwest bird flu outbreak grows, with 26,000 turkeys killed as preventive measure. Indianapolis Star.
Viral. Highly contagious rabbit fever detected in Tennessee, vaccines advised. Knoxville News Sentinel.
Still smiling, still hoping. Only 10 vaquita were found in a recent survey, but researchers are pushing to save the tiny, smiling porpoises. The Guardian.
Hot energy takes
Stormy. Frustrated Oklahoma customers on the hook for billions of dollars their utilities spent during a February 2021 winter storm are finally getting answers to a nagging question — who exactly charged utilities billions of dollars that Oklahomans have to pay back?
State regulators on Thursday released data typically kept private that identifies 65 companies splitting a $3 billion pot. The top earner was the Southwest Power Pool, which sold $510 million worth of power and transmission. Jack Money and Dale Denwalt report for The Oklahoman.
Cool it. Low-income households spend three times more income on energy bills, largely due to aging heating and cooling equipment that also releases lots of greenhouse gases. In America's largest city, more than 80% of low-income housing relies on old boilers fueled by gas or oil. The New York City Housing Authority is now doing a pilot program to replace old oil and gas boilers with low-emission heat pumps. If it works, they'll expand it. ABC News reports.
Charge it. The Biden administration announced $5 billion in funding for 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations along the Interstate Highway System. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explains to Grist's Shannon Osaka.
And another thing
Super charged. The Super Bowl is the most-watched TV event in the U.S. This year nearly 100 million people tuned in. And in 2022, there were the most climate-related advertisements of any Super Bowl ever, most of them focused on electric vehicles, as well as an ad for electric charging technology, Kyla Mandel reports for TIME.
Super Bowl ads are like “parts of a time capsule of where we are in society,” says Rick Suter, editor for USA Today’s Ad Meter, which has been tracking and rating the big game's ads for 34 years. This year, he says, is the “defining point” for car companies creating an in-your-face buzz around EVs.
That's all for this week. Stay charged up, and for more climate, energy and environment news, follow me @janetwilson66. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here.