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      Biden Will Get $80 Million Ad Boost From Climate Group

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      Climate Power says the lack of awareness and understanding of the president’s record on environmental issues is hurting him in the polls.Climate Power, a liberal advocacy group, plans to spend $80 million on advertising to lift President Biden’s standing on environmental issues and inform voters about the impact of legislation he signed last year.Polls show few voters are aware of the president’s record on climate issues, and there is a broad dissatisfaction with his stewardship of the issue, a dynamic that mirrors voters’ discontent with his handling of the economy and other concerns.This new effort also adds to the constellation of outside groups working to solve one of the Democratic Party’s most vexing problems: how to make a president widely seen by his own party as too old to seek re-election just popular enough to win a likely rematch with former President Donald J. Trump.Climate Power’s solution is to feed voters a steady stream of television and digital advertising highlighting Mr. Biden’s legislative accomplishments to protect the environment and contrasting them Mr. Trump, who mocked climate science, rolled back regulations aimed at cutting emissions and has promised to be a booster for the oil, gas and coal industries. “There is a huge swath of people who just don’t know anything. There’s also a segment of people that want him to do more. There’s also a swath that thinks he’s gone too far,” Lori Lodes, the executive director of Climate Power, said in an interview last week. “We need to make sure that the Biden coalition, the folks who got him into office in 2020, sees that he’s delivered on his promises. And he has.”As with so much of Mr. Biden’s agenda, his climate policies tend to poll well on their own but do worse when associated with the president. A Washington Post poll from July found that 70 percent of Americans, including 51 percent of Republicans, would like the next president be someone who favors government action to address climate change. And Climate Power’s own research showed that 67 percent of voters believe climate to be a “kitchen table issue.”Yet even though Democratic majorities in Congress last year passed, and Mr. Biden signed, the Inflation Reduction Act — legislation that invests $370 billion in spending and tax credits in zero-emission forms of energy to fight climate change — there is little evidence that he has earned the political benefits from voters who share his climate goals.Last month, The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago found Mr. Biden’s approval on handling climate change was 42 percent, similar to his overall approval rating of 40 percent, and better than the 33 percent who approved of his handling of the economy.That poll found Mr. Biden’s climate approval ratings had dropped from 52 percent in September 2021, before he signed his landmark climate legislation, and 49 percent in September of 2022, weeks after her signed it.The 30-second advertisements Climate Power has run this year, which were paid for with help from Future Forward, the independent expenditure organization blessed by the Biden campaign, have focused on efforts to lower household energy costs and create jobs in factories manufacturing renewable energy products. The ads trumpet gains “thanks to Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.”The planned $80 million will come from so-called dark money, the donors of which are not required to be disclosed under federal law, Ms. Lodes said. An affiliated Climate Power super PAC, which can also accept unlimited contributions but is required to report its donors to the Federal Election Commission, is expected to advertise on Mr. Biden’s behalf next year.The Climate Power campaign also has the praise of Mr. Biden’s top aides at the White House.“President Biden has delivered on the most ambitious agenda to fight climate change, including signing into law the largest climate investment ever,” said Jen O’Malley Dillon, the White House deputy chief of staff. “Climate Power is a critical partner to continue demonstrating to the American people that the president is building a clean energy economy that benefits all Americans.”Part of the challenge in selling Mr. Biden’s strides on climate is that young voters, who polls suggest care the most about the issue, tend to be the most skeptical of his record on it. There has been significant anger over Mr. Biden’s approval of Willow, an $8 billion oil drilling project on pristine federal land in Alaska, and a pipeline that would carry natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia that has been opposed by environmentalists.Ms. Lodes dismissed left-wing anger over Mr. Biden’s climate record and said that Climate Power would seek to appeal to a broader group of voters critical to his 2024 coalition.“There are activists and then there are voters,” she said. “Climate activists are going to push and push. And you know what? The Biden campaign, the Biden administration need to be pushed to do more and to go further. But at the end of the day, the reality is that he has done more than any other president in American history on climate.”Lisa Friedman More

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      Biden administration to award $7bn in grants to create US ‘hydrogen hubs’

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      The Department of Energy has selected seven projects for a $7bn program to launch the development and production of hydrogen fuel, the White House announced on Friday.The Biden administration says the program will constitute a major boost to the country’s nascent clean hydrogen industry, helping it achieve its climate goals. But many climate advocates are skeptical that it will actually help reduce emissions.Unlike coal, oil, and gas, when burned, hydrogen does not produce greenhouse gas emissions. It can be produced using carbon-free energy, but roughly 96% of it is currently derived from planet-heating fossil fuels – something the Biden administration hopes to change.“With this historic investment, the Biden-Harris administration is laying the foundation for a new, American-led industry that will propel the global clean energy transition,” said Jennifer Granholm, secretary of energy, in a statement.The money will be awarded to proposed hydrogen projects on the Gulf Coast, the mid-Atlantic, Appalachia, the midwest, the upper midwest, the Pacific north-west and California. Dozens of regions competed for funds from the $7b pot, set aside in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. On Friday, Joe Biden will travel to Philadelphia to promote the mid-Atlantic hub.The Department of Energy says it expects the funding to help cut 25m metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, the equivalent of removing 5.5m gasoline-powered vehicles from the road each year.But some experts say the new initiative could amount to little more than greenwashing. Though researchers agree that truly clean hydrogen, produced without fossil fuels, can fulfill certain crucial roles in hard-to-decarbonize sectors, including in the production of synthetic fertilizers and steel, studies have found it to be much less efficient for home heating and transportation than technologies such as heat pumps and electric vehicles.“Direct electrification and batteries offer so much more, and much more quickly,” Robert Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, told the Guardian this year.Despite this, fossil fuel companies have spent years promotinghydrogen production as a catch-all climate solution. Some have used the hope of clean hydrogen to justify building more pipelines, claiming that they can be used to transport the climate-friendly fuel in the future.Climate advocates also note that hydrogen production, even when powered by renewable energy, can be highly water intensive. And since hydrogen is also a highly flammable and corrosive element, it can create risk for workers.Oil companies often say fossil fuels can power hydrogen production, so long any emissions produced are trapped with carbon capture and kept out of the atmosphere.But carbon capture technology is not currently available at commercial scale, and a 2021 paper co-authored by Haworth found that using methane gas paired with carbon capture to produce so-called “blue” hydrogen for home heating, could produce more climate-warming pollution burning gas, coal or diesel oil.“At face value – and according to the Biden playbook – the hydrogen hub grants aim to help transition the United States to clean energy,” said Marion Gee, co-executive director at the Climate Justice Alliance, a national coalition of grassroots environmental justice groups. “In reality, they amount to another corporate scam, one that preserves and extends the life of the extractive economy and prevents the frontline communities most impacted by climate disaster from having input.”Julie McNamara, deputy policy director of the science and climate advocacy organization Union of Concerned Scientists, said the administration should impose stricter regulations on the hydrogen hubs to boost community input and ensure only completely fossil-free projects receive funding.“Concerningly, today’s H2Hubs announcement advances multiple projects premised on fossil fuel-based hydrogen production and risky hydrogen end uses,” she said. “Billions of taxpayer dollars are at risk of perpetuating fossil fuel industry injustices and harms while subsidizing fossil fuel greenwashing.” More

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      Biden is right to praise the auto strike. His climate agenda depends on it | Kate Aronoff

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      Joe Biden had to choose a side in the United Auto Workers’ contract fight with the “big three” American automakers, and he did. This week, he became the first US president to walk a picket line while in office when he joined strikers in Belleville, Michigan, offering enthusiastic support for their demands. Biden should be thanking the UAW for handing him a golden opportunity: to prove that the green jobs his administration is creating will be good, union jobs, too, and that climate policy will bear dividends for the working class.Republicans cosplaying solidarity have tried to exploit the strike to score cheap political points. As Republican presidential hopefuls debated this week, Donald Trump told a rally at a non-union plant in Michigan that the strike wouldn’t “make a damn bit of difference” because the car industry was “being assassinated” by “EV mandates”. (Whether there were any union members or even autoworkers in the room isn’t clear.) Ohio senator JD Vance has similarly blamed autoworkers’ plight on “the premature transition to electric vehicles” and “Biden’s war on American cars”.These are cynical, false talking points from politicians who couldn’t care less about autoworkers – but they aren’t going away. (Although similar lines are old hat in the US, they’re finding new purchase in places like 10 Downing Street: Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, has recently taken a “U-turn” on climate goals, citing “unacceptable costs” for “hard-working British people”.) Optimistically, the UAW strike could be a chance to dismantle the rightwing myth that reducing emissions hurts working people – not by pointing to the jobs that will trickle down from the bosses of the energy transition, but by standing with the unions fighting to make those jobs better.Being willing to go on offense against automakers’ bad behavior is a great start and a big shift. The Biden administration has routinely praised car manufacturers as climate heroes poised to decarbonize the country and create millions of middle-class jobs along the way, turning the industry into a sort of mascot for its climate agenda. “You changed the whole story, Mary,” Biden told General Motors’ chief executive, Mary Barra, a frequent White House guest, in 2021. “You electrified the entire automobile industry. I’m serious.”White House climate policy will be good for Barra and her colleagues at the top. The business-side tax credits and government-backed loans furnished by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are already helping the big three retool factories to produce EVs and their component parts. The IRA’s consumer-side subsidies for American-made electric cars – worth up to $7,500 – will boost demand.Yet no one should confuse companies taking advantage of tax breaks with a commitment to the climate fight. The big three lag well behind their competition in the US and abroad; federal incentives are helping them play catch-up. They’ve lobbied to undermine fuel efficiency and clean car standards, including through front groups like the Automotive Alliance. Like oil and gas companies, GM and Ford knew for decades that their products fueled climate change, and proceeded to double down on gas-guzzling models and political attacks on laws and regulations that might hem in their emissions. They still bankroll the campaigns of Republicans dead-set on stopping climate policy.Neither is it a given that EV subsidies benefiting companies will benefit workers there, too. Automakers are already using electrification as an excuse to supercharge attempts to ship jobs to less union-friendly states, and split workers off from their master agreement with the big three.Biden’s decision to join the strike would be remarkable on its own. Beyond the obvious symbolism, his presence there lends tangible material support to workers’ demands, handing the union leverage over companies that might otherwise reasonably assume he’d have their backs.It could also usher in a broader shift in the way he and other Democrats talk about climate policy. Impressive as the IRA is, its most direct benefits accrue largely to companies and consumers with enough cash on hand to afford up-front payments for big-ticket items like solar panels and heat pumps. Like Bidenomics more generally, its goal isn’t to reduce emissions so much as to build out domestic supply chains for clean energy goods, making US companies less reliant on and more competitive against Chinese firms in sectors that will be increasingly important over the coming decades.Targeting climate policy at corporations and affluent consumers doesn’t make a great counterargument to Republicans eager to frame it all as elitist virtue signaling, and win elections accordingly. What the Republican party can be reliably expected to do, though, is side with the bosses. That’s where even self-professed “car guy” Joe Biden might be able to set himself apart – by being willing to offend the automakers so that the rewards of America’s green industrial policy aren’t hoarded at the top.Standing alongside Biden in Belleville this week, the UAW president, Shawn Fain, offered as good a framing for that approach as any. “This industry is of our making,” he said. “When we withhold our labor, we can unmake it. And as we’re going to continue to show: when we win this fight with the big three, we’re going to remake it.”
      Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back More

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      in US Politics

      Revealed: Trump administration forced Joshua Tree to stay open during last US shutdown

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      By the time superintendent David Smith decided to close Joshua Tree national park on 7 January 2019, the list of problems was already long. Tire tracks wove through the wilderness mapping a path of destruction where rare plants had been crushed and trees toppled. Charred remains of illegal campfires dotted the desert, and historic cultural artifacts had been plundered. Trash piles were growing, vault toilets were overflowing and park security workers were being pushed to their limits.It was week three in what would become the longest shutdown of the US government, and the famed California park was feeling the consequences of operating without key staff, services and resources.To protect the park and its workers, it would have to close, Smith thought.But the Trump administration, which demanded national parks remain accessible throughout the shutdown, wasn’t willing to change course. In a controversial move, David Bernhardt, who had only recently been appointed acting secretary of the interior, called Smith and ordered him to keep the gates open.By the end of the 35-day shutdown, irreversible damage had been inflicted on Joshua Tree’s ecosystems, its wild, remote landscapes thrust into the political turmoil unfolding thousands of miles away.Bernhardt’s decision and its aftermath are chronicled in hundreds of pages of emails between park officials, which the Guardian obtained through a records request. The correspondence sheds light on the pressure national parks faced during the shutdown, as well as how political considerations influenced decisions about their maintenance and protection.Another possible government shutdown looms, raising fresh questions about whether the National Park Service (NPS), the federal agency that oversees the parks, will follow the precedent set by the previous administration.“The situation right now is deeply concerning on many levels, including the potential threat to resources and visitors,” said John Garder, the senior director of budget and appropriations at the National Parks Conservation Association, a non-profit that advocates for park preservation. “It is difficult for the parks service to do their jobs when Congress doesn’t give them the resources they need.”‘Parks are struggling’There have long been tensions over the interpretation of the NPS mission, with an uneasy balance of conservation and recreation. As politicians switch priorities, priorities in the parks can switch with them, and at the end of 2018 the NPS found itself in the crosshairs.On 21 December that year, Mick Mulvaney, who headed the office of management and budget for the Trump administration, announced the shutdown in a memorandum to agency leaders across the country, advising them that all talking points should reflect that the “national parks will remain as accessible as possible”. Communications staff for NPS’s Pacific west regional office followed up with instructions: “Keep the message positive, avoid saying limited access.”Regional NPS leaders meanwhile told superintendents in close-of-day emails they were aware of the potential for damage to delicate ecosystems and park infrastructure if parks stayed open without the necessary resources, and possible danger to largely unsupervised visitors. The timing of the shutdown, which left employees furloughed or working without pay during the busy holiday season, only added to the challenges, Sarah Creachbaum, the acting deputy regional director, wrote in an email on 23 December.“If the shutdown does persist for more than a few days it will be increasingly important to keep an eye out for signs and symptoms of stress among your teams,” she said. “Uncertainty and stress are legitimate health and safety issues that can affect everyone.”There would be weeks to go.As the shutdown progressed, and the situation at some national parks turned increasingly dire, the NPS leaders told park superintendents they would support decisions to shut parks down, especially in situations where staff and visitors could not be kept safe.“We’ve heard from many parks across the region that they are struggling more and more with trash accumulation, human waste, traffic congestion, fatigued employees etc,” wrote Stephanie Burkhart, the associate regional director of the Pacific west region on 28 December. “As the shutdown continues, these challenges will get harder. So please continue to evaluate your capacity and resources, rotate staff to provide rest and implement area closures as needed.”Two days later, Smith, the Joshua Tree superintendent, reached out to Creachbaum, Burkhart and communications staff to say he had decided to close campgrounds and a day-use area at the park after the start of the new year. The holidays were peak visiting times for the California site. With just nine working staff members, a disaster seemed imminent, he warned. Already, he reported, two search-and-rescue operations had been needed the week before, both requiring helicopters because the park hadn’t been able to adequately respond.Staff had told him that visitors were resisting direction, telling law enforcement rangers they could do whatever they wanted during the shutdown. Staff members were increasingly concerned about their own safety, especially as incidents of intoxication and physical assaults in the park began to rise.The interior department intervenesStaff who worked at Joshua Tree national park at the time said the experience was among the most difficult in their careers. “What I witnessed at the park was chaos and destruction,” said one park employee who, like others quoted in this story, asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution for speaking out.From the start of the shutdown, the majority of the park staff had been opposed to keeping Joshua Tree open, they said, describing long days of work and feeling despondent as some visitors abused their unfettered access.Another employee said decision-makers seemed out of touch with the reality on the ground: “In the lower rungs nothing made sense to us – you are just executing these orders that make no sense for the park, no sense for the visitor, and no sense for the employees.”National parks are required to be ready for events like a shutdown with a contingency plan. But the controversial directions from the Trump administration forced the agency and the parks to make in-the-moment adjustments.Four days before Smith informed NPS leaders of his intention to fully close Joshua Tree, the Pacific west regional NPS team were maintaining in staff emails that they would support park closures for heath and hygiene reasons, to protect visitor safety or due to staff fatigue. “As we come to the end of our second week of the closure, and with no end in sight, it is clear that keeping all park areas accessible is not feasible,” Creachbaum wrote to superintendents on 3 January. “Now is the time to determine if the NPS contingency plan triggers for closures apply to your circumstances.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut on 5 January, Bernhardt intervened, issuing a memorandum to the deputy director of the NPS instructing him to modify the contingency plan so parks would rely on Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act funds to stay open. FLREA funds, which come from park fees, are designated by law to be used to improve the parks, including hacking away at a large maintenance backlog, estimated at roughly $12bn across all parks at the time.Bernhardt ordered that they be used for maintaining operations “until such funds have reached zero balance”.The Government Accountability Office would later deem Bernhardt’s move to be a violation of the law. In a scathing report issued in 2019, the GAO concluded that Bernhardt’s decree had undermined congressional power of the purse and sidestepped laws outlining shutdown procedures. The interior department maintains Bernhardt’s decision was legal, and in 2020 the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) laid out a legal argument supporting Bernhardt and his decision.“The decision to utilize FLREA funds in 2019 was entirely lawful,” Cole Rojewski, a lawyer speaking on behalf of Bernhardt, said, pointing to the OMB analysis. He added that if the action had been initiated from the beginning of the shutdown, the destruction of the park and dangers posed to both staff and visitors could have been avoided “while also allowing for continued public access and ensuring dedicated employees were paid throughout the duration of the shutdown”.Raúl Grijalva, a congressman from Arizona, disagreed. As chair of the committee on natural resources in 2019, he wrote to Bernhardt admonishing him for the decision to use FLREA funds and questioned whether he had complied with the law outlining their use. Casting the former secretary’s act as a way to help “obfuscate the real costs of the shutdown”, Grijalva said the Department of the Interior’s actions “sidestepped Congress and used these park funds for political purposes”.A call from the Trump administrationBy 6 January, superintendents across the system were rushing to carve out new plans to bring back furloughed staff using FLREA funds. Smith, meanwhile, still tried to quickly close Joshua Tree. On 7 January he requested a temporary closure from regional park leaders, highlighting the “considerable damage to park resources”. Creachbaum, the deputy regional director, responded: “I am so sorry about the damage to your park. It’s heartbreaking. We support the closure.” It would be her last email serving in the leadership role, and she stepped down soon after. A press release was drafted from Joshua Tree national park announcing a plan to close.But the very next day, Smith wrote to Creachbaum’s successor, Katariina Tuovinen, alerting her that he’d been contacted by the director of the NPS, who had advised him Bernhardt would call him later that day. “The Secretary will be calling to order that the park stays open and that we use FLREA funds to do it,” Smith wrote in an email on 8 January.Communications officials at the national office scrambled to reframe the eyebrow-raising shift, issuing a new press release that cast the decision more favorably. “National Park Service officials have been able to avert a temporary closure of Joshua Tree National Park,” the release read, highlighting how revenue generated by recreation fees would be used to support the reopened campgrounds and entrance stations.At the time, the NPS didn’t return calls and emails from the Guardian requesting comment on how this decision had been made. (The emails show they did connect with some reporters, asking the Los Angeles Times to make revisions to their reporting.)A cautionary tale – or a precedent?Amid a growing likelihood the US government is headed for another shutdown on 1 October, it’s unclear how the NPS is planning to respond.In August, agencies across the federal government were expected to submit contingency plans. But the NPS has yet to confirm whether a new plan has been drafted and whether national parks will again be expected to remain accessible during the funding stalemate.Repeated requests for information and comment went unanswered from both the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service.The park service operating budget is also under threat from budget cuts. As record numbers of visitors continue to flood in, the depletion of funds for maintenance and improvement could lead to more disastrous results, Garder argued. The maintenance backlog has only ballooned in recent years, growing from $11.6bn during the last shutdown to more than $22bn in 2022.Jonathan Jarvis, a retired NPS director who served under the Obama administration and oversaw a 2013 shutdown, agrees. “When I was director, there was no question – you shut ’em down,” he said.Jarvis, who spent four decades in the park service, said he hopes for a future where public lands aren’t put at risk by shifts in political whim, and advocates for the agency to be removed from the Department of the Interior.Ultimately, he said, the future of US national parks will be linked to funding. “The good news is that in the US the parks are highly supported by the American people,” he said. “But they expect them to be taken care of.” More

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      Trump falsely claims wind turbines lead to whale deaths by making them ‘batty’

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      Donald Trump has launched a lengthy and largely baseless attack on wind turbines for causing large numbers of whales to die, claiming that “windmills” are making the cetaceans “crazy” and “a little batty”.Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, used a rally in South Carolina to assert that while there was only a small chance of killing a whale by hitting it with a boat, “their windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before. No one does anything about that.”“They are washing up ashore,” said Trump, the twice-impeached former US president and reality TV host who is facing multiple criminal indictments. “You wouldn’t see that once a year – now they are coming up on a weekly basis. The windmills are driving them crazy. They are driving the whales, I think, a little batty.”Trump has a history of making false or exaggerated claims about renewable energy, previously asserting that the noise from wind turbines can cause cancer, and that the structures “kill all the birds”. In that case, experts say there is no proven link to ill health from wind turbines, and that there are far greater causes of avian deaths, such as cats or fossil fuel infrastructure. There is also little to support Trump’s foray into whale science.“He displays an astonishing lack of knowledge of whales and whale strandings,” said Andrew Read, a whale researcher and commissioner of the Marine Mammal Commission, of Trump. “There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that wind turbines, or surveying for wind turbines, is causing any whale deaths at all.”The US has been slow, compared with other countries, to develop offshore wind farms but several projects are now under way off the east coast, enthusiastically backed by Joe Biden as a way to boost clean energy supply and combat the climate crisis.Critics of this push, including some environmentalists, have warned that whales are being imperiled by work to install these new offshore turbines, but scientists have largely dismissed these claims. “At this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could cause mortality of whales,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has noted.Read said that there are some “broad concerns” about the overall industrialization of the oceans, but that the main threats to whales come from their being hit by boats and becoming entangled in fishing gear, and from warming oceans due to the climate change.“The population of humpback whales, in particular, is recovering from being hunted and they are coming closer to the coast to feed on prey, which means they are being hit as they come into shipping lanes, or being caught up in nets,” said Read.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spate of dead whales that washed up along New York and New Jersey’s coasts earlier this year has fueled opposition to wind turbines, however, with Republicans in New Jersey attempting to halt construction of turbines.This opposition has been embraced not only as another culture war battle but also as a way to help businesses keen to stymie clean energy, with several rightwing groups funded by fossil fuel interests linked to seemingly organic community protests against wind farms.“It’s particularly sad to see well-meaning people who care about whales being persuaded that wind turbines are a risk to them,” said Read. “They are being manipulated by fossil fuel interests who see wind energy as a threat to those interests.” More

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      Biden uses executive power to create New Deal-style American Climate Corps

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      President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program.In an announcement on Wednesday, the White House said the program would employ about 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires.Biden had previously been thwarted by Congress on creating a climate corps. The climate corps had been proposed in early versions of the sweeping climate law approved last year but was jettisoned amid strong opposition from Republicans and concerns about cost.Democrats and environmental advocacy groups never gave up on the plan and pushed Biden in recent weeks to issue an executive order authorizing what the White House now calls the American Climate Corps. The program is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, created in the 1930s by the Democratic president Franklin D Roosevelt as part of the New Deal.“This summer, our country saw heat waves, wildfires and floods that destroyed communities, uprooted families and claimed hundreds of lives,” the Sunrise Movement and other organizations wrote on Monday in a letter to Biden’s White House.“While previous executive orders and legislation under your administration demonstrate tremendous progress toward meeting our Paris climate goals and your campaign promises, this summer has made clear that we must be as ambitious as possible in tackling the great crisis of our time,” the groups wrote.More than 50 Democratic lawmakers, including the Massachusetts senator Ed Markey and the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also encouraged Biden to create a climate corps, saying in a separate letter on Monday that “the climate crisis demands a whole-of-government response at an unprecedented scale”.The lawmakers cited deadly heatwaves in the south-west and across the nation, as well as dangerous floods in New England and devastating wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui, among recent examples of climate-related disasters.A federal climate corps would “prepare a whole generation of workers for good-paying union jobs in the clean economy” while helping to “fight climate change, build community resilience and support environmental justice”, the lawmakers wrote.The White House declined to say how much the program will cost or how it will be paid for, but Democrats proposed $10bn for the climate corps in the climate bill before the provision was removed.Republicans have largely dismissed the climate corps as a do-gooder proposal that would waste money and could even take jobs away from other workers displaced by the Covid-19 pandemic.“We don’t need another FDR program, and the idea that this is going to help land management is a false idea as well,” the Arkansas representative Bruce Westerman, chairman of the House natural resources committee, said in 2021.Congressman Joe Neguse, a Colorado Democrat who has co-sponsored a climate corps bill, said it was important to train the next generation of federal land managers, park rangers and other stewards of our natural resources. Neguse and other Democrats have said the program should pay “a living wage” while offering healthcare coverage and support for childcare, housing, transportation and education.A key distinction between the original Civilian Conservation Corps and the new climate contingent is that, unlike the in 1930s, the US economy is not in an economic depression. The US unemployment rate was 3.8% in August, low by historical measures.The new corps is also likely to be far more diverse than the largely white and male force created 90 years ago.The White House climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, said the administration would work with at least six federal agencies to create the climate corps and would pair with at least 10 states. California, Colorado, Maine, Michigan and Washington have already begun similar programs, while five more are launching their own climate corps, Zaidi said: Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina and Utah.The initiative will provide job training and service opportunities to work on a wide range of projects that tackle the climate crisis, including restoring coastal wetlands to protect communities from storm surges and flooding; deploying clean energy projects such as wind and solar power; managing forests to improve health and prevent catastrophic wildfires; and implementing energy efficient solutions to cut energy bills for consumers, the White House said. More

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      Climate activists block Federal Reserve bank, calling for end to fossil fuel funding

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      One day after the largest climate march since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of climate activists blockaded the Federal Reserve Bank in New York to call for an end to funding for coal, oil and gas, with police making scores of arrests.“Fossil fuel companies … wouldn’t be able to operate without money, and that money is coming primarily from Wall Street,” Alicé Nascimento, environmental campaigns director at New York Communities for Change, said hours before she was arrested.The action came as world leaders began arriving in New York for the United National general assembly (UNGA) gathering and followed Sunday’s 75,000-person March to End Fossil Fuels, which focused on pushing Biden to urgently phase out fossil fuels. Monday’s civil disobedience had a different but compatible goal, said Renata Pumarol, an organizer with the campaign group Climate Defenders.“Today we want to make sure people know banks, big banks, are responsible for climate change, too,” she said. “And while marches are important, we think civil disobedience is, too, because it shows we’re willing to do whatever it takes to end fossil fuels, including putting ourselves on the line.”Monday’s action was organized by a coalition of local organizations including New York Communities for Change and Extinction Rebellion NYC, alongside national groups such as Climate Organizing Hub and 350.org. Demonstrators first gathered in New York’s Zuccotti Park, in the financial district in lower Manhattan, which is partially owned by fossil fuel investor Goldman Sachs.The small concrete urban space was the base for the original Occupy Wall Street protests 12 years ago.On Monday, demonstrators then marched in the rain to the nearby New York Federal Reserve building, the largest of the network of 12 federal banks dotted around the country that make up the central bank of the United States.Protesters blockaded multiple entrances into the bank while singing, beating drums and holding up signs. Over 100 people were arrested, according to the New York City Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, with organizers estimating that roughly 150 arrests were made.“If you arrest one of us, one hundred more will come,” activists chanted.The protesters called attention to both public and private fossil fuel financing. Globally, government subsidies for coal, oil and gas reached a record high of $13m per minute in 2022 last year – equivalent to 7% of global GDP and almost double what the world spends on education – according to the International Monetary Fund.Last year, the US also ranked 16th among the G20 countries on a scorecard by the independent economic research group Green Central Banking, which the researchers say indicates US financial regulators are falling behind their international peers on climate risk mitigation.Meanwhile, since the signing of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, major private banks have provided some $3.2tn to the fossil fuel industry to expand operations, far outstripping the amount that global north governments have collectively spent on international climate finance, an analysis from ActionAid, the Washington DC-based non-profit, found this month. Another recent analysis from the Sierra Club environmental group found that major global banks have announced climate pledges but nonetheless financed coal energy across the US.Monday’s action came after a slew of global protests last week, some of which targeted financial institutions. In New York, dozens rallied outside of the headquarters for asset manager BlackRock and Citibank on Wednesday and Thursday respectively, to call attention to both firms’ investments in fossil fuels. And on Friday, protesters targeted the Museum of Modern Art over its relationship to fossil fuel investor KKR.Another protest is planned for Tuesday at New York City’s Bank of America offices, with additional actions throughout the week as the United Nations hosts its Climate Ambition Summit as part of the UNGA. More

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      in US Politics

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells climate marchers to be ‘too big and too radical to ignore’ – live

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      From 1h agoThe crowd cried out in cheers for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who thanked them for showing up and highlighting the urgency of the climate crisis.“This issue is the issue, one of the most important issues of our time,” she said, adding: “We must be too big and too radical to ignore.”Climate action requires a democratic restructuring of the economy, she said.“What we’re not gonna do is go from oil barons to solar barons,” she told the crowd.The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit global network comprising 3.5 million climate activists, was one of the many organizations present at the march in New York City today.
      We are mobilizing around the summit to leverage national and international pressure to demand leaders change course.
      This is a critical moment for mass mobilization on fossil fuels that could ignite bigger and bolder climate action.
      Here is a tweet by Oil Change International of the various climate change marches that were staged around the world this week, including today’s rally in New York City.
      This is a big, beautiful climate movement & we’re calling on world leaders to #EndFossilFuels NOW. No more talk, we need action!
      Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, announced that she is working on a musical about the climate crisis.She and three cast members previewed a song from the show called Panic. “We want you to panic / We want you to act / You stole our future / And we want it, we want it back.”“Don’t let the cynics win. The cynics want us to think that this isn’t worth it. The cynics want us to believe that we can’t win. The cynics want us to believe that organizing doesn’t matter, that our political system doesn’t matter, that our economy doesn’t matter,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd of cheering protestors.“We’re here to say that we organize out of hope, we organize out of commitment, we organize out of love, we organize out of the beauty of our future. We will not give up! We will not let go! We will not allow cynicism to to prevail! We will not allow our vision of a collaborative economy, of dignity for working people, of honoring the Black, brown, Indigenous, white working class! We will not give up and that is what we are here to do today!” she added.“The United States continues to be approving record number of fossil fuel leases and we must send a message, right here today – that has got to end!”Earlier this month, AOC spoke to the Guardian and said that “there’s a very real danger here,” in reference to the presidential 2024 elections and the climate crisis.The crowd cried out in cheers for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who thanked them for showing up and highlighting the urgency of the climate crisis.“This issue is the issue, one of the most important issues of our time,” she said, adding: “We must be too big and too radical to ignore.”Climate action requires a democratic restructuring of the economy, she said.“What we’re not gonna do is go from oil barons to solar barons,” she told the crowd.Here are more images coming through the newswires from the march:World leaders have ‘forgotten’ responsibility to Mother EarthVeteran Indigenous organizer Tom Goldtooth, who is executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, attended the march. “I’m here at the request of spiritual authorities within our Indigenous network,” he said.“They said that this United Nations secretary general’s summit on climate ambition has no spiritual soul to it – that the world leaders have forgotten what the responsibility is to understand the sacredness of Mother Earth.”He decried world leaders’ focus on technological solutions like geoengineering, as well as carbon offset markets, which studies show often do not result in lowered emissions.“We’re here to renew not only our relationship but humanity’s relationship to building sustainable communities based upon regenerative economy, living economy, not a fossil fuel economy,” he said.“The fight for the planet is not a personal issue, it’s a collective issue,” said Grant Miner, a graduate student representing the labor contingent with the Student Workers of Columbia University. “The economy that we have now is structured around killing the planet for profit.”“We’re asking Biden to divest fossil fuels,” said Sincere Cheong, who marched alongside thousands of other people. “The world is being destroyed and if we don’t cut back right now we won’t be able to limit the global warming to 1.5 degrees.”Tens of thousands of people in New York City have kicked off a week of demonstrations seeking to end the use of coal, oil and natural gas blamed for climate change.“This is an incredible moment,” said Jean Su of Center for Biological Diversity, who helped organize the mobilization.
      Tens of thousands of people are marching in the streets of New York because they want climate action, and they understand Biden’s expansion of fossil fuels is squandering our last chance to avoid climate catastrophe.
      Su said the action was the largest climate protest in the US since the start of the pandemic, with organizers estimating around 75,000 protestors taking to the streets in New York City.She added:
      This also shows the tremendous grit and fight of the people, especially youth and communities living at the frontlines of fossil fuel violence, to fight back and demand change for the future they have every right to lead.
      In addition to celebrities and lawmakers, kids from across the country as well as elderly people showed up at the protests, waving climate signs and chanting alongside event organizers.New York’s Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who previously championed the Green New Deal alongside Senator Bernie Sanders, is also expected to address the crowd later this afternoon.Sunday’s demonstration comes ahead of the the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit, which the UN secretary general, António Guterres, says will focus on on bold new climate pledges.In its citations for its climate journalists of the year, Covering Climate Now said:
      Manka Behl of the Times of India was praised by judges for reports “from the frontlines of the crisis in one of the world’s most climate-important countries” and for her interviews with leaders.

      Damian Carrington of the Guardian was credited for science-based reporting that “explains that politics and corporate power, not a lack of green technologies, are what block climate progress”, and cited for leading a reporting team on investigating “carbon bombs” and super-emitting methane leaks.

      Amy Westervelt was described as a prolific, multiplatform reporter for Critical Frequency whose work exposes how fossil fuel companies continue to mislead the public and policymakers alike.
      “Every news outlet on earth can learn from the engaged, hard-hitting journalism that Manka, Damian and Amy bring to the climate story,” said Mark Hertsgaard, the executive director of Covering Climate Now. “It’s reporting like this that arms the public with the power that knowledge gives.”The awards also recognized six Special Honors winners for “rigorous investigative reports, eye-opening exposes of climate injustice, and much-needed analyses of climate solutions”:Covering Climate Now, the global journalism collaboration, is announcing its media awards this week at a time when audiences need to know how and why “the planet is on fire” and what can be done, judges said.CCN’s three climate journalists of the year for 2023 are Damian Carrington of the Guardian, Manka Behl of the Times of India and Amy Westervelt, the founder of the Critical Frequency podcast network.Naomi Klein, the international bestselling author, won in the commentary category, while Ishan Kukreti of the Indian non-profit Scroll.in won for long-form writing.Covering Climate Now is a global collaboration involving some 600 news outlets with a reach of more than 2 billion people, and its media awards program was launched three years ago to spread standards of excellence in climate journalism.This year’s winners were selected from a list of finalists from more than 1,100 entries from 29 countries, and chosen by more than 100 journalists.Children showed up in droves for the march to end fossil fuels.“We’re here today because our planet deserves a future,” Ida, 12, said.Gus, a six-year-old, travelled from Boston for the march with his mother, Laura. “We’re here to end fossil fuels … so we can stop climate change,” he said.Aviva, a seven-year-old Brooklynite who attended the march with her mom and sister, spoke into the megaphone. “Hey hey, ho,” she shouted, as the crowd responded: “Fossil fuels have got to go!”As the climate rally in New York City continues, climate activists in Germany sprayed orange paint on to Berlin’s popular Brandenburg Gate on Sunday in attempts to call on the German government to stop using fossil fuels.“The protest makes it clear: it is time for a political change,” the climate activist group the Last Generation said in a statement, the Associated Press reports.“Away from fossil fuels – towards fairness,” it added.The Associated Press reports that police have blocked the area around the historic gate and confirmed that they have detained 14 activists that are affiliated with the Last Generation.Mentions of gas stoves are emerging as a theme among the many signs protesters are holding up at the march to end fossil fuels.This April, New York became the first US state to ban gas stoves in new residential building construction as research emerged about its dangers for human health.At the march, the Rev Lennox Yearwood, head of the Hip Hop Caucus, likened today’s climate movement to the US fight for racial justice.“We’re at our lunch counter moment for the 21st century,” he said.A native of Louisiana, he said he was excited to see demonstrators support environmental justice activists’ fight to end petrochemical buildout in the south-west US.“We need to end fossil fuels in all forms,” he said.Protesters chanted: “We are unstoppable, another world is possible.”Others sang Leonard Cohen’s Anthem: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”Here is video by the Guardian’s visual reporter Aliya Uteuova on the fossil fuels march in New York City this afternoon.The activists will be marching to the United Nations ahead of the UN Climate Ambition Summit that is set to take place in a few days.Veteran environmental activist Bill McKibben travelled to New York City to attend the march.“I think it’s a real restart moment after the pandemic for the big in-the-streets climate movement,” he said. “It’s good to see people get back out there.”The crowd, he said, reflected the diversity of New York City.“I’m glad to see there’s a lot of old people like me here,” said McKibben, who founded Third Act, an activist group aimed at elders. “We’ll be marching in the back because we’re slow!”Climate scientist Peter Kalmus at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab also spoke at the press conference, saying that he has two kids in high school and that he’s “terrified for their future”.“I’m terrified for my future right now,” he added.“We are so clearly in a fucking climate emergency. Why won’t Biden declare it?” he said. More