"Planning continues for a $30 billion grid expansion across a wide swath of the central United States to help states and utilities accelerate the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy over the next 30 years. But before the region’s grid operator, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), can even approve an initial set of projects, the process is mired in a thorny debate over who will pay for them."
"The Canadian government has invoked a decades-old treaty with the United States in its latest bid to save a pipeline that critics warn could be environmentally catastrophic if it were to fail."
"The White House Council on Environmental Quality has proposed reversing a number of Trump-era changes to the nation’s bedrock environmental permitting law."
"Ever since a pipeline failure caused at least 126,000 gallons of oil to spill into the Pacific Ocean, threatening a fragile coastal ecosystem and forcing some of Southern California’s most popular beaches to close, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been scrutinizing satellite imagery to track the oil’s spread."
"Reuters traveled the bayous of hard-hit Terrebonne, Lafourche, Jefferson and Plaquemines parishes in recent days, speaking with more than 40 residents. All said they felt abandoned by state and federal officials. A few said they had not received any type of support from any level of government."
"The governors of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin are joining forces to build a new network for charging electric vehicles. The bipartisan plan aims to improve the region's economy while also reducing toxic emissions from cars and trucks."
It sometimes feels like journalists lurch from one catastrophe (or hurricane, flood, wildfire, heat wave) to the next. But that can mean missing the bigger story: Disasters, increasingly linked to climate extremes, are often interlocking events, in which one system failure causes the next and the next. The latest Backgrounder explores three case studies, and how news media can focus attention on steps toward resilience.
A growing body of research shows the links between global warming and extreme weather. And that knowledge can help communities prepare, and assign responsibility for damages. Veteran climate journalist Bob Berwyn lays out the science of climate attribution — for heat waves, flooding, wildfires and, ironically, crop-killing freezes — and discusses its implications for future climate change policy.
"The natural gas industry was losing in cities across the US. Then came an obscure partisan tactic called preemption."
"Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is insisting that natural gas be allowed to have a central role in President Biden’s clean energy agenda, which puts him on a collision course with Democratic lawmakers who worry he will have the power to water down what they see as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address climate change."
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