Last week, The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell investigation into ExxonMobil’s internal strategy to downplay the role of fossil fuels in causing climate change. The investigation offers shocking details of how Exxon executives worked behind closed doors to push narratives that would help them drill more oil; funded “science to support [their] business” as the consensus around man-made global warming grew; and adopted ludicrous tactics such as trying to influence the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading scientific body, after the group published a report sounding the alarm.

We’ve known for several years that Exxon has spent the past few decades working to suppress climate science and mislead the public. The Journal’s investigation takes what we already knew about the oil company’s deceit one step further, using newly unveiled documents to show how Exxon continued to perpetuate climate denial well into the 2010s—even as it was making public statements acknowledging climate science and in support of the Paris Agreement. In addition, the period covered by the Journal’s reporting includes the time when the company was under the control of Rex Tillerson, later Trump’s secretary of state.

“The documents reviewed by the Journal, which haven’t been previously reported … show that Tillerson, as well as some of Exxon’s board directors and other top executives, sought to cast doubt on the severity of climate change’s impacts,” reporters Christopher Matthews and Collin Eaton wrote. “Exxon scientists supported research that questioned the findings of mainstream climate science, even after the company said it would stop funding think tanks and others that promoted climate-change denial.” Damning stuff!

For a blockbuster investigation like this, a big media outlet will often pull in reinforcements from its various sections to help promote it or add context. But while the Journal did run a companion podcast on the Exxon investigation, its editorial board and op-ed section stayed completely silent on the bombshell. The editorial board did, however, run a piece last Sunday that fearmongered about the Securities and Exchange Commission working with the “climate lobby” to give “trial lawyers ammunition to attack business” with the agency’s proposed climate disclosure law. That’s not terribly surprising: The Journal’s opinion section, after all, decided to spend the hottest summer in recorded history publishing misleading pieces on climate change and wildfires and railing against efforts to encourage people to bike more. (The editorial board published no pieces on the record-breaking heat the entire country felt this summer—I checked.)

As with the Exxon investigation, the disconnect between The Wall Street Journal’s reporting side and its opinion department isn’t exactly news. The Journal’s opinion section has long been a bastion for some of the most stubbornly immovable—and increasingly absurd—climate denial in news media. It routinely publishes notable players from the climate-denier ranks. Its editorial board has a history of denying basic climate science. It once ran an attack on the science around sea level rise that was so full of scientific errors that a professor of earth science said that if the author was one of his students, he would have failed. Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse even gave a speech on the floor of the Senate in 2018 about just how shitty the paper is on this topic.

The Journal’s former owner, Rupert Murdoch, who stepped down from his position this week, is one of the great platformers of conservative talking points—and climate denial—through the various outlets of his media dynasty; the paper is reportedly his first read of the morning, and its editorial board is widely seen as being able to tip the scales of the mainstream Republican Party on various candidates and issues. But the Journal has also faced blowback from its own reporters over content published in its editorial pages, since the newsroom sent a letter to leadership in 2020 complaining about the lack of fact-checking in its op-ed section. As the world gets hotter and hotter, the gulf between the world of the Journal’s venerable opinion staff—where the science around climate change is hogwash, where a delirious “climate lobby” is trying to usurp capitalism, where we should all just shut up and drill more oil—and the stories its decorated newsroom is actually reporting may only grow.

Ironically, the Journal’s investigation was based on a huge trove of documents that Exxon was forced to turn over to New York’s attorney general for its investigation of the company in 2015; that suit, as well as subsequent climate lawsuits, became a favorite punching bag for the editorial board. Over the weekend, California filed a massive lawsuit against several oil companies, and NPR reported that the state is likely to use the documents uncovered by the Journal in court. The so-called “climate lobby” that’s given “trial lawyers ammunition to attack business” that the editorial board is so so up in arms about may wind up simply being the paper’s own reporters, doing good work in its own newsroom.

Good News, Bad News

Tens of thousands of activists turned out on Sunday in New York to march to demand that the Biden administration end U.S. reliance on fossil fuels.

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will walk back or delay some of the country’s climate policies, he said in a speech Wednesday, claiming the moves will save consumers money.

Stat of the Week

50x

That’s how much more likely climate change made the devastating floods in Libya earlier this month that killed thousands of people, a new study has found.

Elsewhere in the Ecosystem

The Sierra Club has had a rocky road with its approach to racial equity in the wake of the hiring of its first Black leader, The Washington Post reports:

Today, the 131-year-old group is in turmoil over its approach to diversity, equity and environmental justice, according to interviews with 12 current and former staffers, most of whom spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of facing retaliation or otherwise harming their job prospects. The tumult illustrates the challenges top environmental groups face in trying to diversify their staffs, despite their recent efforts to reckon with the conservation movement’s legacy of racism. After coming under scrutiny for not doing enough to promote employees of color and fight pollution that disproportionately hurts minority communities, even organizations that have shifted course find themselves embroiled in fights over how to address past wrongs and ensure equity.

Read Maxine Joselow’s full piece at The Washington Post.

This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by contributing deputy editor Molly Taft. Sign up here.

Last week, the Biden administration held the nation’s first ever offshore wind auction in the Gulf of Mexico. It described the sale in a press release as part of its “once-in-a-generation investment in America’s infrastructure and our clean energy future,” with the potential to power around 1.3 million homes with clean energy. A significant sale could have signaled a shift away from fossil fuels for the oil- and gas-intensive Gulf region, but it was far from a runaway success: Only two companies bid for the leases on offer.  

The sale isn’t the only sign of trouble for the U.S. offshore wind industry—and some major players are flagging problems to come. Following a summer of canceled projects from various companies, Danish offshore wind giant Orsted said in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday that it needed more help from the U.S. government if it was going to move forward with its U.S. projects. “We are still upholding a real option to walk away,” CEO Mads Nipper told the outlet. 

The Biden administration has made kick-starting the U.S. offshore wind industry a core part of its climate agenda, while also hoping to make it a cornerstone of Biden’s plans to invest in manufacturing jobs. It set an ambitious goal of installing enough offshore wind energy to power 10 million homes by the end of the decade. But despite record investments and government incentives, some serious headwinds (pardon the pun) are facing the industry. From the hard financial realities of building capital-intensive infrastructure projects to serious fossil fuel–funded political opposition, there’s a rocky road ahead for offshore wind over the coming years—no matter how much support or incentives the Biden administration throws at it.

When climate people talk about the renewable energy transition, they tend to wax poetic about the continually plummeting costs of wind and solar. That holds true for wind on land but is not the case for its offshore component. Siting and construction for offshore wind turbines is, unsurprisingly, much more expensive than for onshore wind; some estimates place the price tag for a kilowatt-hour of energy produced by offshore wind almost five times as high as that same kilowatt-hour produced onshore. There’s a lot of labor and time involved in installing skyscraper-size turbines miles off the coast. While onshore wind has had a steady foothold in the United States for decades, there are only two offshore wind farms currently operating in the U.S., off the coast of Virginia and Rhode Island. Many of the proposed projects are having to start from scratch in figuring out manufacturing and labor. 

When you add the high price of materials like steel, things get even trickier. Because they don’t face many of the siting regulations that affect onshore turbines, individual offshore turbines can be designed much larger than their onshore counterparts in order to capture more power. These turbines are only projected to grow bigger over the coming decades. That’s great news for the grid but means higher installation costs up front. 

Many of these problems are not unique to the offshore wind industry; with high worldwide prices for raw materials and labor, plus sky-high interest rates in the U.S., it’s not exactly a great time for huge infrastructure projects in general. As Bloomberg’s Liam Denning wrote last month, offshore wind has a lot more in common with the nuclear industry than it does with its onshore counterpart in terms of big, lengthy projects with a lot of upfront costs—and is similarly going to have to rely on the government to get a lot of its farms across the finish line.  

For capital- and time-intensive industries like offshore wind and nuclear, the political support of a presidential administration can make or break projects. In the U.S., the Trump administration’s antagonistic attitude toward renewable energy created several roadblocks and additional lag times for offshore wind, including, ironically, a last-minute environmental review for already-delayed projects in the Atlantic Ocean. All the Biden administration’s encouragement and tax incentives can’t make up for lost time. (Some developers are flagging that certain requirements in the Inflation Reduction Act—including, notably, that turbines be made in the U.S. and sited in specific communities—are making it more difficult to access those incentives.)

And unlike nuclear, which has seen a dramatic surge in support from the center and right wing in recent years, offshore wind is currently the target of a massive misinformation campaign. Since Biden took office and projects around the country have begun to move forward, right-wing groups—many funded by fossil fuel interests—have mobilized grassroots opposition (or created it wholesale) along the Atlantic coast, professing concern for offshore wind’s impact on wildlife. In places like New Jersey, offshore wind developers are facing lawsuits from these astroturf groups that are tangling up the process.

Even if offshore wind companies manage to weather the industry’s financial troubles and handle these lawsuits, this political opposition isn’t something to be ignored. The GOP is learning to more creatively campaign against climate action and figuring out different ways to boost fossil fuels when it’s not in power. As we saw with the Trump administration, much of the American clean energy project is a long game, requiring years of encouragement and incentives; the most enthusiastic, pro–climate action administration in the world can’t play catch-up if we go back to square one every election cycle.

Good News, Bad News

A Memphis-area plant that uses carcinogens to sterilize medical equipment will shut down following years of activism from community members living around it.

An entire town in Louisiana was forced to evacuate last week as part of Louisiana’s “unprecedented” summer of wildfires—August alone saw 441 fires. 

Stat of the Week

25%

That’s how much climate change has increased the risk of wildfires in California, a new study shows.

Elsewhere in the Ecosystem

Climate change came for Burning Man this year—but last year, its organizers helped stop a geothermal energy project in the desert where the festival is held, Grist reports: 

The Burning Man Project, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, also worked with residents of the tiny town of Gerlach, the hamlet closest to the geothermal development, to appeal the [Bureau of Land Management]’s decision. The wells, the organization said, would “threaten the viability” of Burning Man’s various projects in Nevada by potentially jeopardizing local hot springs in the area and disrupting the desert ecosystem. The plaintiffs argued that BLM had approved the project without adequate environmental review and hadn’t sufficiently consulted local communities, including the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, in its permitting process. 

“People travel to Gerlach to experience the solitude of the vast open spaces and undeveloped vistas present in the Black Rock Desert,” the lawsuit said, “as well as to attend numerous events and to pursue a variety of recreation experiences in the undeveloped desert.” …

The claim that the region remains relatively undisturbed, given the 70,000-person party that rolls in every year, rang particularly hollow.

“Some of the hype around Gerlach has been disturbing from a scientific point of view,” James Faulds, Nevada’s State Geologist, told Grist. “The Gerlach area has already been disturbed by man.”

Read Zoya Teirstein’s full piece at Grist.

This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by contributing deputy editor Molly Taft. Sign up here.

On the debate stage in Milwaukee last week, the eight Republican candidates in attendance got a surprising question from the moderators: Do you believe in human-caused climate change? Only Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old former pharmaceutical executive who has seen a surprising spike in polling over the summer, seemed to have a sound bite ready.

“The climate change agenda is a hoax,” he said. “The reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.”

Ramaswamy’s answer didn’t come out of left field. Demonizing climate policy has been central to his campaign from the start. Ramaswamy represents a new, and worrying, evolution of Republican campaigning in an age of increasingly hot summers, boiling oceans, and devastating wildfires: Rather than ignoring climate change or dismissing its science as unsettled, he’s weaponizing it as an issue, turning climate policy into a culture-war villain. Given his recent rise in popularity, it’s past time for those concerned about the future of the planet to start scrutinizing what he’s doing.

The GOP’s response to climate change has been historically shaped by one of its favorite donors: the fossil fuel industry. Before the late 2000s, major party figures like George W. Bush and John McCain professed concern about climate change. The GOP’s commitment to climate denial really took off after 2008, when oil interests began to marshal opposition to a proposed cap-and-trade tax on carbon emissions—the first, and one of the only, major efforts to pass climate legislation in the United States. Accordingly, opposition to climate action from GOP politicians in subsequent years has mimicked the pattern set by decades of fossil fuel denial from these same oil companies: Question the validity and certainty of climate science to delay meaningful action, and distract voters with other tactics and issues.

For the next 15 years, it was this oil-inspired anti-science rhetoric—coupled with accusations that Democrats’ favored climate policies would destroy fossil fuel jobs—that dominated Republicans’ rhetoric about climate change. As a result, climate change was rarely the focus of a Republican candidacy or presidency but a sideshow to be dealt with quietly: something that a Democratic opponent or a TV anchor might bring up that could be hand-waved with a claim that the science was not yet settled. Even Donald Trump, who made various (muddled) statements about climate change being a hoax and pandered heavily to coal miners on the campaign trail, never really made it a major talking point. He left the real work to be done by cronies like EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who used his scant media appearances to consistently (and falsely) cast doubt on climate science.

A few things have changed in recent years that have set the stage for a new kind of GOP candidate like Ramaswamy, who deliberately puts climate at the center of his campaign. Thanks in large part to the Inflation Reduction Act and other Biden administration policies, climate policy is now baked into federal legislation in ways it wasn’t before, giving the GOP much more fodder to push back on. Republicans also have been hard at work fanning the flames of various culture wars in recent years—including anti–environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, investment sentiment, which has rapidly become a top Republican bugaboo. The rise of QAnon-fueled conspiracy theories and candidates have made pinning various issues on a conspiracy of “elites”—as Ramaswamy does with climate—much more acceptable in mainstream political discourse. Last, climate change has simply become much harder to ignore and is shaping up to possibly become a wedge issue with future generations: The only audience question posed at the Republican debate came from a student who noted polling that shows climate change is one of young people’s top concerns.

These conditions are ripe for a candidate like Ramaswamy. Before he decided to run for president, Ramaswamy had created a name for himself as an anti-ESG campaigner, authoring a book railing against the “modern woke-industrial complex.” The evils of diversity, equity, and inclusion, in his rhetoric, are inseparable from climate action. “End the climate cult” has been a consistent talking point from the beginning of his campaign. “The Left’s commandments: Race, Gender, Sexuality, Climate,” Ramaswamy posted on X earlier this month. “We can’t just be against their vision. We must offer our own: God. Nation. Family. Individual.” It’s a nonsense statement—he’s just naming universal concepts, not actual commandments like, say, Thou shalt not destroy our only planet. But if Ramaswamy’s polling numbers are any indication, this kind of nonsense seems to be working.

Good News, Bad News

“Tiny forests”—trees and foliage planted on little lots—are increasing in popularity in the U.S., and can sequester a surprising amount of carbon while being extremely easy to maintain.

Scientists estimate that more than 9,000 emperor penguin chicks died last year in Antarctica thanks to unprecedentedly low levels of sea ice—a worrying number for an endangered species facing consistent habitat loss.

Stat of the Week

91.2°F

That’s the temperature taken in the ocean off the Florida Keys on Monday—an unusually warm reading. Warm oceans helped strengthen Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday.

Elsewhere in the Ecosystem

A book could literally kill you. That’s what mycologists are warning the public about as booksellers like Amazon offer mushroom-foraging books likely written by artificial intelligence, not humans, 404 Media reports:

Amazon has an AI-generated books problem that’s been documented by journalists for months. Many of these books are obviously gibberish designed to make money. But experts say that AI-generated foraging books, specifically, could actually kill people if they eat the wrong mushroom because a guidebook written by an AI prompt said it was safe.…

“There are hundreds of poisonous fungi in North America and several that are deadly,” Sigrid Jakob, president of the New York Mycological Society, told me in an email. “They can look similar to popular edible species. A poor description in a book can mislead someone to eat a poisonous mushroom.”

Read Samantha Cole’s full piece at 404 Media.

This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by contributing deputy editor Molly Taft. Sign up here.

Chris Dorrington has been the director of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality since January 2021. In an age when wildfires are chewing up the West and searing heat is toppling records across the country, a top environmental official like Dorrington should be at least somewhat familiar with major groups working on climate—including the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the world’s leading body on climate science and projections. 

But Dorrington had never heard of the IPCC until a climate lawsuit against his state by a group of young people went to trial in June. The IPCC was such an unfamiliar term to Dorrington, in fact, that he kept messing up the acronym during his testimony. In a later cross-examination, the state asked for IPCC reports to be dismissed as “hearsay.”

Last week, the judge in Held v. Montana handed down a victory for the 16 young plaintiffs, who argued that the state’s continued production of fossil fuels violated their constitutional rights. Advocates say the landmark ruling could have broad ramifications for future climate litigation. But it’s also clear that Montana was woefully unprepared to face climate science on trial.

Part of the reason this case was so unique—and one of the reasons that its outcome is so extraordinary—is that it’s the first climate case brought by young people to go to trial, and one of the rare times that a case concerning climate has actually had its day in court. That’s partially by design, says Karen Sokol, a professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. Polluters, and the states that sympathize with them, have developed a heretofore reliable strategy to stop climate litigation: Get cases thrown out before they even go to trial.

 “The defendants, whether they’re governments, like in this case with Montana, or private actors like fossil fuel companies—they really seem to think that they’re going to be able to get these cases dismissed on procedural grounds,” Sokol said. “There’s an overarching message that climate doesn’t belong in the courts.”

The Montana case followed this pattern. The initial suit was filed in early 2020, and the defense team—representing the state, Governor Greg Gianforte, and several state agencies—filed a number of petitions and motions over the next few years to try and gum up the process. By the time the trial began, the defense had twice attempted, and failed, to get the state Supreme Court involved to stop the trial. 

Given how long Montana had to prepare, its argument in June was pretty pathetic. The state only put three people on the stand, including Dorrington, a paltry showing compared to the 21 witnesses provided by the plaintiffs. A fourth state witness—Dr. Judith Curry, a former professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a frequent critic of climate science—pulled out of the trial at the last minute. 

According to Curry, who published a blog post that she calls her “post-trial statement,” the state changed legal teams at least twice in the past year. Their original witnesses, whom Curry was brought on as part of a team to replace, were “pretty subpar.” During the trial, the state’s lawyers, Curry wrote, showed they were “totally unprepared for direct and cross examination of climate science witnesses.” Curry claims she withdrew her own testimony out of concern for how the defense’s lawyers, not the plaintiffs’, would handle her questioning. 

It’s not unreasonable, Sokol told me, to assume that fossil fuel sympathizers are taking notes about what happened here. In addition to the various kids’ cases, which tend to be filed against governing bodies, there are around two dozen lawsuits brought by cities, states, and counties against multiple private oil companies, which are working their way through various courts. The industry has long shared tactics to fight lawsuits; given the close relationship between some states’ attorneys general and oil and gas interests, it wouldn’t be surprising if those strategies are also making their way into state legal briefs. In the future, Sokol said, defense teams may be better prepared for an actual trial, putting on the stand deniers and skeptics like Curry who are well versed in casting doubt on climate science—and who actually know what the IPCC is.

Still, even if oil companies and their allies are taking careful notes from Montana’s flop, it might not make much difference. 

“What the defendants are realizing, and are going to have to come to terms with, is that climate in the courts is no longer exceptional,” she said. “It’s going to become increasingly ordinary because that’s our reality. Courts deal with facts and reality. It’s going to become harder and harder to stop that from happening.”

And while it’s one thing for a climate skeptic to use rhetorical arguments to undermine science in a podcast interview or an appearance on Fox News, it’s quite another to try those strategies in a court of law, where evidentiary standards are much higher and cross-examination much more aggressive.

“That’s why defendants have been willing to go years and spend an incredible amount of money to keep [these cases] from getting to the merits,” Sokol said. “The information landscape has been in their control. The courtroom is designed to find the truth.”

Good News, Bad News

Ecuadorians voted Monday to stop oil drilling in Yasuní National Park, an incredibly diverse region in the Amazon that’s also home to some of the world’s last uncontacted Indigenous groups.

About 850 people are still missing, nearly two weeks after a wildfire devastated the town of Lahaina in Maui, Hawaii.  

Stat of the Week

That’s how long it’s been since a tropical storm like Hilary has hit California. Factors including warmer than usual waters in the Gulf of Mexico led to this week’s historic storm. 

Elsewhere in the Ecosystem

The tragedy in Hawaii this month was one that people living in Lahaina have been afraid could happen for years, Grist reports: 

[David] jumped in a car with a panicked driver who drove the wrong direction, straight into the flames, where she got stuck in back-to-back traffic along the highway. David clutched the door handle to get out but it was so hot that it burned his fingers. The flames were 60 feet high and five feet away on either side of them. The cars in front of them were on fire. He yelled that they should run but he was the only one in the car who jumped out. Everyone else was frozen. He threw open the door and ran until the flames were far behind.

In the days since, he hasn’t been able to stay still. Every day he cries and keeps moving, sleeping along the road, by the park, at a friend’s and in a shelter. He can’t stop thinking about what he saw and questioning if he could’ve done more.

No one he was with that day survived—not his roommates, none of the other passengers in the car, not even the dog with whom he had been sleeping before waking up to a literal nightmare.

Read Anita Hofschneider’s full piece at Grist.

This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by contributing deputy editor Molly Taft. Sign up here.

American tennis pro Taylor Fritz beat Andy Murray at the D.C. Open in Washington last Friday. But he was not in a celebratory mood after the match, which had been interrupted by climate protesters who unfurled banners, shouted slogans, and threw oversize tennis balls decorated with flames onto the court.  

“It’s ruining everyone’s time,” Fritz told The Guardian. “Everyone wants to watch the tennis. I jokingly said, ‘Honestly, this makes me want to go fly on jets more.’ I think they’re supporting a good cause, but the way they’re doing it.… Who’s going to want to listen when they’re just annoying everybody?” Fritz’s feelings seem to have been pretty representative: Fans booed the protesters and then cheered their ejection from the stadium. 

The theatricality of the protest reminded me of last year’s Vincent van Gogh debacle. In October, climate activists made worldwide headlines for throwing soup and other foods on famous paintings in museums, including van Gogh’s Sunflowers. The demonstrations were, literally and figuratively, splashy, and generated a debate about whether these types of protests are productive. That debate—which threatens to overshadow the problem the protesters are trying to draw attention to—was revived again after the D.C. Open disruption. There’s a sense from many pundits that extreme climate activists are losing out on public support for their cause by being, well, really annoying.

The idea that the climate movement is reacting with too much panic is one that’s baked into a lot of mainstream coverage these days. Center-right thinkers like Matt Yglesias have repeatedly critiqued left-wing climate activists for “losing the plot.” A  Reuters columnist called Greta Thunberg’s critique of the 2021 U.N. climate summit “bad vibes” and “overblown.” (At that summit, fossil fuel interests were ultimately able to hijack the global agreement and leave room for the industry to continue to flourish.) Even climate scientist Michael Mann, who has devoted much of his career to effectively communicating the climate crisis, wrote a lengthy piece for Time on why the art protests were a bad idea and why protesters should “[choose] sensible actions and appropriate targets.” 

There’s little that individual people can do to stem the tide of the climate crisis. Government action, especially in the United States, is inexcusably slow. Meanwhile, we’re living through the hottest summer in Earth’s history. It’s not surprising, then, that climate protesters—the ones who are actually doing things—become the subject of our discussions. Instead of real conversations about the massive systemic changes that are needed to save our planet, we turn over endless debates around how people are expressing their fear and rage. Calm down, columnists like Yglesias seem to say. This is not how change is made.  

I’m actually not sure what would be defined as an appropriate or effective protest to an increasingly urgent global emergency, or what, exactly, would be the magic action that will change more hearts and minds. At this point, people have literally set themselves on fire to draw attention to the climate crisis; high schoolers have staged hunger strikes and gone to the hospital. The powers that be have responded to these actions with, largely, a yawn. Meanwhile, activists who turn to actual tangible tactics to destroy fossil fuel infrastructure—like blowing up pipelines—have been targeted and jailed with draconian sentences. Fossil fuel–friendly states have moved lightning fast to adopt legislation to define these people as terrorists and make sure this never happens again. 

What is the right way to protest climate inaction? I’m not sure the goal should be to engender public sympathy, anyway. If activists only demonstrated in ways that mannerist pundits consider appropriate, they’d be meekly waving signs outside the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Living through a time of continual ecological panic, when we can do little as individuals to change what’s happening, is an extremely mentally weird place to be, and we’re all still learning how to handle ourselves. If I was in that stadium last Friday, I’m sure that I would have been miffed too, wishing the protesters would go away so I could enjoy the match after a long day. But in a big-picture sense, I’m glad people were annoyed. At least they’re feeling something.

Good News, Bad News

Following a breakthrough last December, scientists this week repeated a nuclear fusion reaction that produced more energy than was put into it—a major development for fusion technology.

Florida’s Department of Education has officially approved materials from a right-wing video production company for public schools, meaning that climate denial videos could soon be shown in state classrooms.

Stat of the Week

That’s how much of the world’s population experienced hotter than usual temperatures in July, a new analysis finds.

Elsewhere in the Ecosystem

The EPA approved a boat fuel that is so toxic that every person who is exposed to it over an extended period of time is at risk of developing cancer, ProPublica reports:

Federal law requires the EPA to conduct safety reviews before allowing new chemical products onto the market. If the agency finds that a substance causes unreasonable risk to health or the environment, the EPA is not allowed to approve it without first finding ways to reduce that risk.

But the agency did not do that in this case. Instead, the EPA decided its scientists were overstating the risks and gave Chevron the go-ahead to make the new boat fuel ingredient at its refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Though the substance can poison air and contaminate water, EPA officials mandated no remedies other than requiring workers to wear gloves, records show.

ProPublica | Sharon Lerner

This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by contributing deputy editor Molly Taft. Sign up here.