Memo to Joe: Fight a Climate Election

Make it a hot summer for Trump too

Biden in an electric Corvette at the 2022 Detroit auto show

It seems entirely possible that the upcoming presidential election will be decided mostly on feelings, or what we now call vibes. In a poll released this week, for instance, almost exactly half of voters said American unemployment was at a fifty-year high, which is odd since it’s actually near a fifty-year low.

Given data like that, I imagine it’s hard for Biden’s team to figure out how to make the case for a second term. So far they’ve focused on abortion rights and on protecting democracy, both of which are not just right but savvy: they focus on places where Trump has weaknesses that most people recognize. (Most people—somehow a fifth of voters blame Biden for the repeal of Roe). If it were up to me, I’d open a third of these fronts: climate change.

There’s three reasons for that.

One, it’s popular. Something—some combination of fire, flood, and movement-building—has persuaded Americans that climate change is real, and that the government should take action to slow it down. Across surveys the polling is clear. And voters perceive Democrats as much better on climate: indeed, some new polling indicates it may have played a crucial role in the last election.

Two, it gets way more popular when you explain it. A new survey of young voters from Data for Progress showed that “approval for Biden’s handling of climate change and the environment improves by 17 percentage points among young voters after respondents hear more about his climate action. Approval of Biden’s handling of climate change and the environment reaches 69% among 18- to 34-year-old voters after respondents read a series of questions about his climate achievements.” Biden put enormous political capital into winning passage of the IRA; he might as well get political gain from all of that.

And three, people hate Trump’s positions on the issue. The highest profile climate action he took in term one was withdrawing America from the Paris accords, and less than a third of voters approved.  And this time around he’s doing everything he can to cement his reputation as the corrupt candidate of fossil fuel. Yesterday, amidst the ruins of the city’s greatest windstorm, he held a fundraising lunch with leading frackers in downtown Houston. As Emily Atkin reminds us in a typically piquant column, the hydrocarbon cartel is already supporting Trump over Biden by a 40-1 margin. He wants more, of course, which is why he held his billion-dollar extortion dinner in DC earlier this month. And what do you know—when they were told about his efforts to shake down fossil fuel executives, two-thirds of likely voters didn’t like it. The oil companies, as a new report from Oil Change International makes clear, continue to lie about climate change, and their efforts to “combat” it. At some visceral level, Americans know that (though it would be good to remind them with a DOJ investigation of those lies, as Jamie Raskin and Sheldon Whitehouse recommended yesterday.)

So I think it’s a strong triple threat to say: Trump will take away your rights. He will take away your democracy. And he will take away the planet you’ve known.

And I think it’s especially strong because the next few months seem likely to underline the threat with some of the hottest weather anyone has ever seen. Memories of Dobbs and of January 6th may be slowly fading, but right now in America people are sweating. The first big heat dome of the season has settled over the southland, with Key West and Miami setting almost unbelievable records for muggy weather—the heat index down there topped 115 degrees last week. (That political savant Ron DeSantis chose the occasion to outlaw talking about climate within the state’s government). A new study out today shows that heat waves have tripled since the 1960s in this country, and that deaths from those hot spells are up 800%. Even more ominously, the water offshore in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico is preposterously hot, which is why forecasters are predicting a record hurricane season. (Bring back memories of Trump trying to divert storms with his Sharpie.)

So here’s what Biden can legitimately say:

He has done more than any other president—by far—to support the buildout of clean energy.

And he has, with his pause on LNG export permits in January, done more than any other president to cramp Big Oil’s style.

That second point is a low bar (presidents always prefer carrots over sticks)—but it’s a real one. In fact, as the Times reported this week, it’s the thing that collapsed an “uneasy truce” between the fossil fuel industry and the White House.

To the industry, Mr. Biden’s pause on new gas export permits “was a wake-up call,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, which supports the fossil fuel industry. “He could be potentially icing billions of dollars in long-term L.N.G. contracts. That’s real. That’s tangible.”

If I were running the campaign, I’d have Biden out there in the heat, out there in the wreckage after the hurricanes, out there when it floods and burns. And my message would be relentless and simple: “to get out of this cycle of destruction, we need clean energy. I’ve supported it. My opponent has opposed it, and on laughable grounds—that windmills cause cancer, for instance. So let’s go forward, not backward.”

Voters want candidates in touch with reality, even if they don’t always have a firm grasp of reality themselves. But everyone can tell the temperature, and over the five months to the election it’s going to be hot.

In other energy and climate news:

+Unless it gets hit by a massive tornado, a wind turbine can expect to stand for thirty years. New data shows it takes less than two years of spinning to pay back the energy cost of building the thing.

That’s according to a new peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand – which also shows within six months a turbine can generate all the energy consumed across its life-cycle.

The research uses data from the Harapaki onshore wind farm in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand – however the authors of the paper explain that their findings would be replicated across most, if not all, wind farms internationally.

“The wind turbine technology employed in New Zealand is consistent with that used internationally,” explains lead author Isabella Pimentel Pincelli from the Sustainable Energy Systems research group, Wellington Faculty of Engineering, at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.

On a similar note, a fascinating new study proves we get more useful energy out of renewable sources than fossil fuels.

The basic idea behind the new work is that while it's energetically cheap to extract fossil fuels, the stuff that comes out of the ground isn't ready to be put to use. There are energetic costs to making it into a useful form and transporting it to where it's needed, and then there is lost energy when it's being put to use. That's especially notable for uses like internal combustion engines, where significantly less than half of the energy available in gasoline actually gets converted into motion.

So, the researchers propose an alternate form of the energy return on investment (EROI)—something they call useful-stage EROI. This measures how much energy is needed to put a unit of energy to work in a way that society values—heating a home, moving a car, lighting a room, and so on.

Renewable energy, in this analysis, is focused on things like wind and solar, which deliver electrons to the grid (things like renewable production of methane are pretty minor at this point). Those can be used for things like heating, rail and road transit, and other uses performed by fossil fuels. Many of these uses are extremely efficient—things like heat pumps and electric motors are much better at turning energy into utility than their fossil fuel equivalents.

+I seem to be recommending podcasts lately—here’s another, from Jerome Foster II, who is one of the finest young climate activists in the nation, and Elijah Mackenzie-Jackson, a painter, writer, and UN youth champion for refugees.

Meanwhile, if you want a t-shirt with the excellent slogan “Climate is the Economy, Stupid,” here’s where to get it. But you’ll have to explain to young people what it means, delving back into ancient history as far as the Clinton administration.

+There’s no point dwelling on it, but co2 in the atmosphere went up by a record amount last year. No point because it doesn’t change what we have to do—get off fossil fuel—but it does point out that the time frame for that task grows ever tighter. Following in his father’s footsteps, Ralph Keeling keeps the basic record of the atmosphere:

The previous record annual rise in CO₂ took place in 2016, amid another El Niño event, which temporarily causes a spike in global temperatures. A more standard annual increase of around 2-3ppm will likely return following the end of this latest El Niño, but this is little cause for comfort, according to Keeling.

“The rate of rise will almost certainly come down, but it is still rising and in order to stabilize the climate, you need CO₂ level to be falling,” he said. “Clearly, that isn’t happening. Human activity has caused CO₂ to rocket upwards. It makes me sad more than anything. It’s sad what we are doing.”

+Who gets hit hardest by climate disasters? Poor people, people of color—and old people. As Elizabeth Hewitt reports:

About 2.4 million adults were displaced by disaster over the last year, about one-fifth of whom were over 65, according to a recent census survey. Though most displaced people are eventually able to return to their homes, even temporary shocks like these pose particular challenges for older people, many of whom live on fixed incomes and have health and mobility needs that make managing home repairs or finding new places to live difficult.

Experts warn that as baby boomers age and the planet warms, more vulnerable people will struggle to find safe housing.

“Climate change is not abating and we’re not getting any younger,” said Danielle Arigoni, a managing director at National Housing Trust and author of Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation. “There are going to be more older adults, there could be more climate-fueled disasters. Climate change impacts are going to reach more parts of the country.”

+Congrats to Oakland, first city in the country to have a completely electric school bus fleet.

“Oakland becoming the first in the nation to have a 100% electric school bus fleet is a huge win for the Oakland community and the nation as a whole,” said Kim Raney, executive director of transportation at Oakland Unified School District. “The families of Oakland are disproportionately disadvantaged and affected by high rates of asthma and exposure to air pollution from diesel fuels.”

But it gets better—the buses are all “vehicle to grid,” which means that when they’re parked they serve as a massive battery.

Oh, and while we’re talking schools, the Green School Alliance and the Fish and Wildlife Service are sponsoring an environmental leadership program for teens; it will take place at the National Conservation Training Center, and I imagine I’ll be writing about the kids who attend in a few years. For older people, check out this project called The Week for a new take on climate conversations.

+And congrats to the US, which saw its five-millionth solar installation this month. That’s taken five decades; the hope is we’ll get to ten million before this decade is out. Just for the record, it’s not just the U.S.—a new study finds that renewables produced 30% of the world’s electricity last year, and predicts we’ve reached a ‘pivot point’ where emissions from fossil fuels for power generation will start to fall.

+The redoubtable Wen Stephenson has a very fine piece from his trip to the Himalayas, detailing the existential threat to high-mountain communities from climate change.

 The floods that sweep down these river gorges do not just carry water, they consist of a thick, heavy flow of cement-like silt, mud, and rock that levels everything in its path and raises the riverbed by many feet. Think of it not as sea-level rise but riverbed rise, putting homes, schools, stupas and temples, infrastructure, and fields in greater peril with each new flood, which comes more often as global warming alters the South Asian monsoon.

Rinzin Namgyal Gurung, the Kagbeni rural municipality chair, laid out the extent of the flood damage for me in an email: eight buildings completely destroyed, including a hotel, a government ward office, a health centre, and a police station, and 19 that suffered partial damage, including the monastery and the secondary school. 

In all, 27 buildings designated as residential or hotels were destroyed or damaged, plus nine ‘crucial public structures’ (water supply and treatment, irrigation canals, sewers, electricity stations, bridges, and river retaining walls) ‘were also severely affected’.

This is a town of just 600 people. Gurung also listed the full extent of recovery funding and assistance the town received from Nepal’s national government: “Ministry of Home Affairs, 10 heavy tents and 15 blankets.” Assistance received so far from international NGOs: none.

A more hopeful take, from the southern end of the subcontinent, can be found at Sam Matey’s superb substack. He spent some time amidst one of India’s largest solar farms, and his reporting is vivid and optimistic:

Touring the great solar park, I thought of the economic and ecological logistics behind it. As of 2017, when the solar farm construction had begun, the Karnataka state government had declared the Pavagada region drought-stricken 54 times in the last 60 years. The Pavagada landscape was on its last legs as a food producer, but has become a world-leading superstar as an energy producer. Across India, aridifying farming regions are being pulled back from the brink of socioeconomic disaster by the arrival of new solar projects. I hoped that this model could successfully be replicated in other parts of the world where small-scale agriculture was succumbing to climate shifts: Mexico, Iraq, and Kenya came to mind.

+If you know some soul considering supporting a third party in this fall’s election, hand them Walter Shapiro’s lament for doing so in the 1968 campaign.

+John Oliver turns his hawklike gaze on the corn industry in America, reminding us that it’s mostly a gasoline industry.

“But maybe the most ridiculous way that we use corn is ethanol,” said Oliver. In an attempt to decrease US dependency on foreign oil, Congress passed the Energy Tax Act of 1978, which encouraged the use ethanol. Production further increased with a 2005 energy bill setting renewable fuel standards that mandated some renewable fuel had to be blended into the domestic gasoline supply. “Essentially, every gallon of domestic gasoline now legally has to have at least a little bit of ethanol in it, in the same way that every pop album currently has to have at least a little bit of Jack Antonoff in it,” said Oliver. “It’s just the law now.”

That’s despite plenty of downsides to ethanol – namely that its promise of lowering greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t hold up. When factoring in the fertilizer and land use changes needed to grow the corn to produce it, corn ethanol produced under the renewable fuel standard has a carbon footprint at least 24% higher than regular gasoline. It has also pushed productions into areas of the country, such as Texas and western Kansas, without the groundwater reserves to support the crop.

+Fascinating new numbers show how fast the renewable revolution is churning: all of a sudden, almost all big solar projects are coming with big onsite batteries too.

Over 98% of the solar capacity proposed in the California Independent System Operator footprint is hybrid, Adam Wilson, senior energy research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said in a Thursday webinar. In the non-ISO portions of the West, the figure is around 87%. In most instances the solar projects are paired with storage, though there is also some co-located wind, he said. 

+A Washington Post team reports that rising sea levels are threatening septic systems across the South

Along those coastlines, swelling seas are driving water tables higher and creating worries in places where septic systems abound, but where officials often lack reliable data about their location or how many might already be compromised.

“These are ticking time bombs under the ground that, when they fail, will pollute,” said Andrew Wunderley, executive director of the nonprofit Charleston Waterkeeper, which monitors water quality in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.

+Recycling in action! A played-out California oil field is being refitted to store hot water produced by solar energy—a big underground battery of sorts.

Ample sunlight and tens of thousands of abandoned oil wells and experienced oilfield workers have made Kern County the focus of a new battery-storage technology. The plan is to retrofit depleted oil wells to store concentrated solar energy in super-heated groundwater for long periods of time, then use that heat to drive turbines when energy demand rises. If it works as planned, the project — which is being run by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and a private investment group and has been dubbed GeoTES, for geological thermal energy storage — has the potential to overcome some of the renewable energy transition’s greatest hurdles.