Climate Point: Scott Pruitt is out
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. Let's start with some practical advice: Have you ever thought about putting solar panels on your roof? If that's something you're interested in, the Arizona Republic's Ryan Randazzo has 10 questions to help you decide if solar makes sense for you.
Oh yeah, also Scott Pruitt resigned. We'll get to that.
My name is Sammy Roth. Here are some things you might want to know:
MUST-READ STORIES:
Hot week on a heating planet: It's 114 degrees in Palm Springs, California, as I write this, but at least we'll have the small mercy of an 87-degree low tonight. I truly pity the 50,000 residents of Quriyat, Oman, who just endured an overnight low of nearly 109 degrees, per Paste BN's Doyle Rice. It's the highest overnight low ever recorded. And it's far from an isolated incident of extreme heat. All-time heat records have been set all over the world this week, as the Washington Post's Jason Samenow reports.
Happy Fourth, but forget about fireworks: Paste BN's Doyle Rice reports that the American West is once again on fire, with dozens of blazes forcing thousands of people to flee. But as with most everything on a warming planet, there's nothing "normal" about wildfire season anymore. Climate-fueled drought conditions have created such severe wildfire risks this year that some western towns were forced to cancel their July 4 fireworks shows, which is not great for local economies, as Jessica Kutz reports for High Country News. In a fascinating development, some western towns have replaced fireworks with drone shows, as Paste BN's Elizabeth Weise and Ryan Suppe report.
ALL ABOUT CLEAN CARS:
SUVs are killing more and more pedestrians: It's well known that SUVs cause more environmental damage than sedans, because they're less fuel efficient, burn more gas and thus spew more pollution into the air we breathe and our planet's climate. It turns out the growing popularity of SUVs is also at least partly responsible for the growing number of pedestrian deaths in the United States, as Eric D. Lawrence, Nathan Bomey and Kristi Tanner report in a remarkable investigation for the Detroit Free Press and Paste BN. In other words, SUVs aren't just making it harder for America to meet its international climate commitments, they're also causing more pedestrians to die.
Tesla finally managed to hit its production goal: Elon Musk has reportedly been sleeping under a desk at the Tesla factory in Northern California — when he's not getting into Twitter spats with his critics — and the strategy seems to be working. Paste BN's Nathan Bomey reports Tesla finally hit its long-awaited production target, building 5,000 Model 3 sedans in a single week. But it's yet to be seen whether Tesla can sustain (and then dramatically ramp up) that kind of production over the long term, which is what needs to happen for Tesla to become a car company for the masses.
POLITICAL CLIMATE:
Justice Kennedy's retirement is huge news for the environment: You probably heard about the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the longtime swing vote on the Supreme Court. Here's what you may not have heard: With a hardcore conservative in Kennedy's place, the Supreme Court may be far more likely to support the Trump administration's rollbacks of Obama-era environmental regulations, and to overturn future efforts to reduce climate emissions and other pollution, as Brad Plumer reports for the New York Times. Kennedy was the swing vote in the landmark 2007 decision that said the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate climate pollution.
The press won't have Scott Pruitt to kick around anymore: OK, you waited this long, let's talk about Scott Pruitt. After a scandal-plagued year and a half leading the EPA — scandal-plagued because the New York Times and the Washington Post uncovered repeated ethical transgressions — Pruitt has resigned, per Paste BN's Ledyard King and David Jackson. In his resignation letter, Pruitt praised President Trump, writing, "I believe you are serving as President today because of God's providence. I believe that same providence brought me into your service." At the end of the day, I guess the never-ending drumbeat of stories on Pruitt's misuse of taxpayer resources was too much for Trump. For good measure, the Washington Post sneaked in one more scoop at the last minute, reporting that Pruitt routinely asked his aides to put his hotel bills on their personal credit cards, at one point failing to reimburse a staffer for a $600 expense.
AND ANOTHER THING:
In some ways, I think it's unfortunate that the focus on Scott Pruitt's ethical issues took attention away from his aggressive efforts to undo environmental rules while at the Environmental Protection Agency, in areas ranging from air and water pollution to climate change and toxic chemicals. Some of Pruitt's rollbacks may eventually get overturned by the courts, even with another conservative justice on the Supreme Court. But others might have impacts that last decades.
Those environmental rollbacks were the focus of Kristin Mink, a schoolteacher who confronted Pruitt while he ate lunch this week in Washington. You can watch the video here. While holding her young son, Mink told Pruitt, "We deserve to have somebody at the EPA who actually does protect our environment, somebody who believes in climate change and takes it seriously for the benefit of all of us, including our children."
Pruitt didn't say a word.
That's all for this week. For more climate, energy and environment news, follow me on Twitter @Sammy_Roth. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox here.