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    How Trump and Harris Talked About Climate Change During the Debate

    At the tail end of the hottest summer in recorded history, as wildfires tear through California and a hurricane heads toward Louisiana, both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump failed to say how they would fight climate change during their debate Tuesday night.It was the final question posed during the 90 minute exchange, about an issue that moderator Linsey Davis of ABC News noted was “important for a number of Americans, in particular younger voters.”The outcome of this presidential election could be critical to determining whether the United States, the world’s biggest historic source of the greenhouse gasses that are dangerously warming the planet, cuts its pollution enough to keep global warming within relatively safe limits. Scientists say the window for action is rapidly closing.Ms. Harris acknowledged the problem, noting “the former president has said that climate change is a hoax and what we know is that it is very real.”“We know that we can actually deal with this issue,” she said, but did not offer any specifics about how she would. Instead, Ms. Harris made a largely economic argument, noting that federal subsidies for clean energy, which includes wind and solar power, have created new jobs and spurred manufacturing.And, in an unusual turn, Ms. Harris boasted that under the Biden administration, gas production has reached record highs. It’s a point that until very recently the administration had been reluctant to emphasize. The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of climate change and at the United Nations climate talks last year, the United States joined nearly 200 other countries in a pledge to transition away from coal, oil and gas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Crew of Oil Tanker Hit by Missiles in Red Sea Is Rescued

    The crew of a Greek-flagged oil tanker that came under gun and missile attack in the Red Sea has been rescued after they were forced to evacuate the vessel into a lifeboat, a European Union naval mission said on Thursday. The attack appears to have been the most serious in weeks against commercial shipping off the coast of Yemen.The Yemen-based Houthi militia, which has staged a series of attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea in what it says is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, has not claimed responsibility.A Houthi fighter on the beach in December, with the Galaxy Leader cargo ship, seized by the Houthis in November, in the background.Yahya Arhab/EPA, via ShutterstockThe tanker, the Sounion, was sailing about 90 miles west of the Yemeni port of Hudaydah early on Wednesday when two small boats approached it, said a statement on social media from Britain’s maritime trade agency, which is based in Dubai.“The first craft had three to five persons onboard while the second had approximately 10,” the statement said. “The two small craft hailed the merchant vessel, leading to a brief exchange of small-arms fire.”The small craft retreated and the ship was then hit by three “unidentified projectiles,” starting a fire and causing the ship to lose engine power, it said. It was not clear on Thursday whether the fire had been extinguished.The crew were rescued by a ship from an E.U. military mission, Operation Aspides, that has been mounted in response to attacks by the Houthi militia, according to a statement the mission posted on social media Thursday.The statement included a photograph showing an enclosed lifeboat, typical in the oil industry, bobbing in the water and a second photo of crew members aboard a rescue speedboat.After coming under attack, the ship’s captain called for help. The E.U. military destroyed what it described as an “unmanned surface vessel” that had posed an imminent danger to the Sounion. The crew was being transported to Djibouti, the statement said.The stricken vessel, which was carrying 150,000 metric tons of crude oil, was still floating and had become a “navigational and environmental hazard,” according to the E.U. statement. A statement from Delta Tankers, the ship’s operator, said it would be moved to a safer place for repairs. It was not clear whether any oil was leaking.The Houthi militia, which is backed by Iran, began firing late last year on ships entering the Red Sea en route to the Suez Canal, which is a vital artery for vessels moving between Asia, Europe and the eastern United States.The United States and Britain have launched strikes against the Houthis in response, but analysts have said they have done little to damage the militia’s military infrastructure. The attacks have continued, forcing ships to find alternative routes and disrupting global trade. Oil prices on Thursday were little changed, trading near their lowest levels of the year.Over the course of dozens of attacks, at least two vessels have sunk and at least three crew members have been killed.Jason Karaian More

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    Greenpeace Tries a Novel Tactic in Lawsuit Over Dakota Access Pipeline

    The environmental group, which is being sued by the pipeline company in North Dakota, threatened to use new European rules to try to limit potential damages.The NewsGreenpeace recently unveiled a new strategy for fighting a costly lawsuit by an energy company that the group contends is designed to silence critics of the oil industry.The suit, first filed in federal court in 2017, alleged that Greenpeace had incited the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017, and it sought $300 million in damages.Greenpeace disputes the claims. It says the lawsuit is designed to essentially force the environmental group to go out of business with an expensive legal fight.Its new tactic, led by Greenpeace International in Amsterdam, would use the European legal system to try to minimize the financial consequences of a potential loss in United States courts. In a letter to the company last month, lawyers for the group cited a new European Union directive aimed at curbing SLAPP suits, or Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation. Those are defined as meritless suits that seek to shut down civil society groups.The letter called on the company suing it, Dallas-based Energy Transfer, to drop its suit against Greenpeace International, and to pay damages for its legal costs, or risk a countersuit under the new European rules.The BackgroundAfter the Dakota Access Pipeline was approved in 2016, it became the target of high-profile protests by Native American tribes and environmental groups. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe argued that the pipeline encroached on reservation land and endangered the water supply. Thousands of its supporters joined a nearly eight-month protest encampment near the reservation, and tribal leaders mounted their own legal challenge to the project.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    An Artist Faces Climate Disaster With Hard Data and Ancient Wisdom

    Research meets poetry in Imani Jacqueline Brown’s exploration of oil extraction and its consequences for her native New Orleans — and for the planet.Every Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the members of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang emerge onto the streets of the Tremé neighborhood in a dawn ritual that dates back more than 200 years. Clad in black-and-white skeleton suits and ornamented papier-mâché masks, they wake the city to the sound of drums and bells summoning the ancestors.Their ritual carries deep significance, even lessons for the whole planet, said the artist and activist Imani Jacqueline Brown, who filmed the procession this year. “They’re breaching the divide between the world of the spirits and the world of the living,” she said. “They are singing to us that we’ve got to live today because tomorrow we might die.”Brown, 36, grew up in New Orleans; she now lives in London, a member of the research and visual investigations group Forensic Architecture. An exhibition at Storefront for Art and Architecture in Manhattan through Aug. 31 combines her research chops with the poetry and spirituality that she sees in the grass-roots culture in her hometown.Les Cenelles, a contemporary string ensemble from New Orleans, performed at the opening of Brown’s show, in late June.via Imani Jacqueline Brown, Storefront for Art and Architecture; Hatnim LeeThe show, titled “Gulf,” is written with a strike-through and pronounced “Strike Gulf.” Its central focus is the impact of the oil and gas industry on South Louisiana. But the more sources Brown mines — including core samples of deep-sea drilling by geologists in the Gulf of Mexico and archives of oil boycott campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, along with her own footage from New Orleans — the broader the scope of her project becomes. It reaches back into geological time while linking to the climate emergency today.The resulting works bring some welcome lyricism to the field of “research art.” The exhibition includes a video installation in which the Skull and Bone Gang procession, bathed in bluish light, is overlaid on footage she made at the city’s aquarium, where sharks and rays float around a model of an offshore rig in a display about the Gulf of Mexico that is sponsored by oil corporations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘I Was a Childless Cat Lady’: Women Respond to JD Vance

    More from our inbox:Clearing Homeless EncampmentsFood and Gas PricesThe Roger Maris FireThe selection of Senator JD Vance of Ohio as former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate was supposed to appeal to women, voters of color and blue-collar voters, but a stream of years-old comments has threatened to undermine that.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Past Comments Fluster Vance as Democrats Go on Offense” (front page, July 29):JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said in 2021, “We’re effectively run, in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”I would say this to Mr. Vance:I was a childless cat lady: three cats, no kids.I thought fertility was a given. There was no medical reason I couldn’t have children. Yet it did not happen. Three cats. A great career. No kids.I was, in effect at 38, a “childless cat lady.”I pursued fertility treatments. Treatments that many Republicans want to ban.I had painful tests, surgeries, running to the lab — five vials of blood drawn every day at 6 a.m. — then rushing to work for a minimum 12-hour day.Childless cat lady lawyer. Meow.I had one fabulous child at 38 with I.V.F. She was a triplet, but I lost my daughter’s siblings.I was pregnant three other times. I lost two other babies at four months. I needed a D and C: same procedure as an abortion. If I didn’t have the surgery, I would have died.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    El cambio climático no es prioritario en la Convención Nacional Republicana

    La plataforma del partido no hace ninguna mención del cambio climático, en cambio, fomenta una mayor producción de petróleo, gas y carbón, que aumentan las temperaturas globales.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Este verano, Estados Unidos está experimentando niveles históricos de un calor intenso a causa del cambio climático. Las altas temperaturas han provocado decenas de muertes en el oeste del país, mientras millones de personas sudan debido a los avisos de calor extremo y casi tres cuartas partes de los estadounidenses dicen que el gobierno debe priorizar el calentamiento global.Sin embargo, aunque en el horario estelar del lunes por la noche la energía fue el tema con el que el Partido Republicano inauguró su convención nacional en Milwaukee, el partido no tiene ningún plan para abordar el cambio climático.A pesar de que algunos republicanos ya no niegan el abrumador consenso científico según el cual el planeta se está calentando a causa de la actividad humana, los líderes del partido no lo consideran como un problema que se deba enfrentar.“No sé si hay una estrategia republicana para enfrentar el cambio climático a nivel de organización”, comentó Thomas J. Pyle, presidente de la American Energy Alliance, un grupo de investigación conservador enfocado en la energía. “No creo que el presidente Trump considere imperativo reducir los gases de efecto invernadero por medio del gobierno”.Cuando el expresidente Donald Trump menciona el cambio climático, lo hace en tono de burla.“¿Se imaginan? Este tipo dice que el calentamiento global es la mayor amenaza para nuestro país”, dijo Trump, para referirse al presidente Joe Biden en un mitin en Chesapeake, Virginia, el mes pasado que fue el junio más caluroso que se haya registrado en todo el mundo. “El calentamiento global está bien. De hecho, he oído que hoy va a hacer mucho calor. Está bien”.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Judge Orders Biden Administration to Resume Permits for Gas Exports

    President Biden had paused new natural gas export terminals to assess their effects on the climate, economy and national security. A federal judge disagreed.A federal judge on Monday ordered the Biden administration to resume issuing permits for new liquefied natural gas export facilities after the government had paused that process in January to analyze how those exports affect climate change, the economy and national security.The decision, from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, comes in response to a lawsuit from 16 Republican state attorneys general, who argued that the pause amounted to a ban that harmed their states’ economies. Many of those states, including Louisiana, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming, produce significant amounts of natural gas.The judge, James D. Cain Jr., who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, wrote in his decision that the states had demonstrated that they had lost jobs, royalties and taxes that would have flowed had permits for gas exports continued.Texas, for example, projected that it would lose $259.8 million in tax revenues associated with natural gas production over five years as a result of the pause of permitting.Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has said that she expects that the analysis of L.N.G. exports, which is being conducted by her agency, would be completed late this year.But Judge Cain agreed with the attorneys general that the states were being harmed.“The Court finds that the lost or delayed revenues tied to natural gas production is a concrete and imminent injury that supports standing,” Judge Cain wrote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Exxon Suit Over Activist Investor’s Climate Proposal Is Dismissed

    A federal judge ruled that the case was moot after the investor, Arjuna Capital, withdrew the proposal with a promise not to try again.A federal judge in Texas on Monday dismissed a lawsuit that Exxon Mobil had filed against an activist investor, Arjuna Capital, over a shareholder proposal that called for cuts in the oil giant’s greenhouse gas emissions.Judge Mark T. Pittman of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that because Arjuna had withdrawn its proposal and had vowed not to submit similar proposals, Exxon’s claim was moot.“The trend of shareholder activism in this country isn’t going anywhere,” Judge Pittman wrote, but he added that “the court cannot advise Exxon of its rights without a live case or controversy to trigger jurisdiction.”Exxon sued Arjuna and another investor, Follow This, in January to stop their nonbinding resolution from going to a vote of shareholders. A month earlier, Arjuna had filed a proposal for the resolution, which called on Exxon to accelerate its plans to reduce its carbon emissions “and to summarize new plans, targets and timetables,” according to Exxon’s complaint. Follow This then joined in support, the complaint said.In its complaint, Exxon said the proposal “does not seek to improve ExxonMobil’s economic performance or create shareholder value.”“Defendants’ overarching objective is to force Exxon Mobil to change the nature of its ordinary business or to go out of business entirely,” the company said.Judge Pittman dismissed Follow This, which is based in the Netherlands, from the lawsuit in May but allowed the case against Arjuna to continue.Arjuna withdrew the proposal and moved for a dismissal of the lawsuit, which the judge denied “because the proposal’s withdrawal didn’t foreclose the same conduct moving forward.” Arjuna then promised not to put forth similar proposals and said its pledge “forecloses even the remotest chance of another proposal” related to Exxon’s carbon emissions.Judge Pittman’s ruling followed a hearing held on Monday to determine whether Arjuna’s promise made Exxon’s complaint moot.Alain Delaquérière More