Climate Point: Rules keep changing
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. From Palm Springs, I'm Janet Wilson. Lots of big climate policy news this week, even as the real world impacts of our changing climate continue to show up.
The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday approved the nation's first major electric transmission update in over a decade, aiming to meet growing demand for clean energy with better planned and renovated power lines across regions, amid an explosion of electric vehicles, data centers and artificial intelligence.
Approved in a 2-1 vote, the new rule is also the first time FERC has squarely addressed the need for long-term transmission planning, writes Reuters' Valerie Volcovici. That plays a key role in the Biden administration's goal of decarbonizing the economy by 2050 and making the electric grid more resilient to climate-fueled extreme weather events that have pushed the country's aging infrastructure to its limits.
"This rule cannot come fast enough," said FERC Chairman Willie Phillips. "There is an urgent need to act to ensure the reliability and the affordability of our grid."
Electrifying. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden came down hard on China, imposing huge new tariffs on electric vehicles, chips and other goods from there, as Paste BN's Joey Garrison reports, escalating a trade war between the world's two largest economies. The Biden administration has accused China of flooding the global markets with goods at artificially low prices, giving Chinese competitors an unfair advantage against their U.S. counterparts.
"Bottom line: I want fair competition with China, not conflict," Biden said at a White House Rose Garden ceremony before signing a memorandum ordering the tariff hikes.
The moves, which come amid rising tensions, are designed to protect American clean energy jobs and industries that the administration has lavished with major investments to try to catch up with the Asian powerhouse. Other goods from China that will face higher tariffs include solar cells, batteries, battery materials, cranes used at ports, and certain medical supplies, as well as steel and aluminum. Very few Chinese EV's are sold in the U.S., but some analysts warn prices of other consumer products could rise.
Smoke gets in your eyes. Acrid Canadian and New England wildfires triggered air quality alerts from Rhode Island to Quebec this week, with New York, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, parts of Wisconsin and Iowa also impacted, and experts say there won't be much improvement in coming months.
"I do expect more air quality issues," said Paul Pastelok, a senior meteorologist and U.S. long-range forecaster at AccuWeather.
According to Pastelok, the fires could keep burning until September or October. Thinner snowpack and increased drought - both symptoms of increasing climate change - are likely culprits of the Canadian blazes.
Deluged. Meanwhile, the death toll from weekend flash floods and mud slides in Indonesia's Sumatra region is rising, and Brazil's southernmost state may suffer severe flooding for weeks to come, experts warn, compounding the struggles of half a million people forced to abandon their inundated homes. Parts of Rio Grande do Sul state have seen more than 25 inches of rain so far this month. More frequent and severe floods are also tied to global warming, as hotter air traps more moisture, then releases it below.
Going up. Here in the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says high-tide, sunny day or nuisance flooding − which is flooding that's not associated with storm surge kicked up by a storm − is happening twice as often as it did in 2000. (And if you insist on building in a flood-prone zone, New Jersey wants you to do it on higher ground.)
Erasing climate change? In other policy news, Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed legislation to erase climate change references from state law before hurricane season. The governor said that combined, the bills "will keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state."
Clean it up. In Maryland, Gov. Wes Moore and legislators have gone a different route, bolstering Maryland's environmental priorities in a bevy of executive orders and bills signed into law which cover clean water, agriculture, industrial sludge and more.
Check mate. Want to know how heavily your bank - or another country - is investing in fossil fuel giants? The latest annual data-driven report spearheaded by Rainforest Action Now lays out in graphic form the top 60 investors, with JP Morgan Chase firmly in top place, investing $430.9 billion in 8 years in Exxon, Chevron, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. and others.
Read on for more, including why you might want to skip those shiny balloons at graduation parties this year. Some of the stories below may require a subscription. Sign up and get access to all eNewspapers in the Paste BN Network. If someone forwarded you this email and you'd like to receive Climate Point in your inbox for free once a week, sign up here