Photo editors get lazy in the heat

'Heat wave' no longer equals "beach."

This is not the most consequential newsletter I’ll ever write. In fact, it’s kind of grumpy and peckish. Chalk it up to the weather, which—since we haven’t quite reached the solstice—can only be described as a late-spring heat wave of staggering proportion. Across the U.S., about 150 million people have been dealing with the heat—and journalists, ever better at handling climate impacts, have been providing necessary and robust coverage. NBC, for instance, which is about as mainstream as it gets:

NBC News meteorologist Michelle Grossman warned that extreme heat is not to be taken lightly.

“It is dangerous — extreme heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer, so you need to take it seriously,” she said.

But here’s the picture that accompanied that article. How much trouble could it be? It kind of looks like fun.

The Times has had installment after installment of on-point live updates, and some thoughtful pieces, including a feature on how heat affects the brain. You should read it for the information it contains. (“One investigation found that just a four-degree increase — which participants described as still feeling comfortable — led to a 10 percent average drop in performance across tests of memory, reaction time and executive functioning.”) And you should read it for the hundreds of comments, incisive and often painful

My experience with high temperatures in the PNW heat dome included misery, anger, and desperation. The longer the heat went on the more obsessively focused on it I became. After three days all I could think about was how to cool down in an overheated house. I've never had my survival instincts be so present and insistent as they were after just a few days of heat threatening conditions. If it had lasted much longer I would have been forced to evacuate my uninhabitable house.

But here’s how the Times illustrated the heatwave this morning

Note the bikini-clad young woman in the foreground, dandling one leg lazily while she chats with the bare-chested gent; “brutal heat wave” or “meet cute?”

Over the last few years numerous professions have worked hard to get more serious about the crisis we’re in—even weatherpeople, who have increasingly taken to telling the truth (though not always with happy results). But the men and women who pick images for stories are still stuck back in some 1950s notion of a heatwave, when they were not as hot, came less frequently, and resulted in people going to the beach, not the hospital. Pictures matter: if every story about a war was decorated entirely with pictures of people getting medals, we might have even more wars than we do.

Heat is deadly serious. There are more than a thousand dead in Saudi Arabia today because the temperature reached an all-time high there, right at the height of the Hajj pilgrimage. This year’s heatwave in Phoenix has already claimed 72 lives, up 18% from last year’s carnage;

At least 125 people died and thousands more have suffered heatstroke in Mexico since March, where the temperature hit almost 52C on 13 June – the hottest June day ever recorded in the country. The extreme heat exacerbated severe drought and air pollution in Mexico, stoking power outages, water shortages, thousands of wildfires, and a mass die-off of endangered monkeys and birds. The actual mortality and morbidity toll is still unknown.

When those numbers are finally calculated, by the way, they will be very high. Even back in 2003, when Europe experienced one of the first great 21st century heatwaves, it took months for authorities to add up the “excess mortality”—the number of deaths above what would normally be expected, which is the only way to get at the fact that heat exacerbates almost every health problem humans deal with. (Here’s a harrowing new experiment showing how heat puts human hearts into oxygen debt). But when those European officials finally finished their calculating, they found the number was 70,000. We’re not talking ice cream cones and sprinklers; we’re talking old people holed up in hot apartments afraid to turn on the AC because they’re not sure they can afford the bill. (Or tourists to the birthplaces of western civilization keeling over in the heat.)

As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, there are photographers who have cracked the code, and figured out ways to make the biggest story in the history of the world feel real, immediate, gut-wrenching. We’re all called on to up our game in the face of crisis—writers, engineers, policy-makers. And photo editors—who will definitely have many more chances, (including when what may turn out to be the hottest Olympics ever gets underway in a month). The work you do really matters, for better or for worse. Don’t be lazy, especially when it’s hot.

In other energy and climate news:

+Feeling the need for something hopeful, let me turn to Ayana Johnson, whose new book is now ready for pre-order. It’s called “What If We Get It Right,” and it recounts the work that people are doing around the world to not just lower the heat but to build a better world in the process. In the end, Johnson asks three questions of us

1. What are you good at? What are your areas of expertise? What can you bring to the table? Think about your skills, resources, and networks—you have a lot to offer. 

2. What work needs doing? Are there particular climate and justice solutions you want to focus on? Think about systemic changes and efforts that can be replicated or scaled. There are heaps of options.

3. What brings you joy? Or perhaps a better word is “satisfaction.” What gets you out of bed in the morning? Choose climate actions that energize and enliven you.

I think she’s an entirely credible (and entirely enchanting) voice, mostly because she’s done the work herself. Indeed, she never stops. In recent weeks her pathbreaking Urban Ocean Lab has offered up a series of climate-readiness guidelines for coastal cities, pointing out that .

while planning has been done (to date 34% of U.S. coastal cities currently have climate action plans ), implementation lags significantly, leaving cities unprepared for worsening coastal hazards—a concept sometimes referred to as the “coastal adaptation gap.” Additionally, more than half of U.S. coastal communities rely on data that underestimates current and future sea level rise, often using risk assessments that are inconsistent with the latest climate science.

Knowing that we’re too late to stop all the problems, her team also produced recommendations for planners dealing with people relocating as oceans and temperatures rise, and collated a massive “resource hub” for the 65 million people who live along the nation’s shores. (My favorite section: reflections, authored in collaboration with New York City comptroller Brad Lander, on social cohesion as a vital part of resilience in the wake of 2012’s superstorm Sandy). Urban Ocean Lab’s work is the polar opposite of Ron DeSantis’s comms team, who, days after banning discussion of climate change in state law, greeted record and rampant flooding with a cheerful “welcome to the rainy season.”)

At any rate, what I’m saying is that Ayana Johnson is no Pollyanna. She’s a hard-nosed and extremely competent scientist who has not shied for a minute from facing the hard truths. So if she thinks there remain ways we can use this crisis to build a better world, then rejoice, listen, and act!

+California attorney general Rob Bonta amended his lawsuit against the big five oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute with new examples of their greenwashing and deception, and with demands for “disgorgement” of their profits.

Their repeated claims that certain of their products are “clean,” and their frequent use of “green” and environmentally positive imagery in their marketing materials, are likely to mislead Californians that the oil companies’ fuels are less environmentally harmful than they are. In addition, the fossil fuel companies collectively promote their petroleum and natural gas products through API, which has continued to make misleading public statements and claims about oil and natural gas.

Today’s amended complaint also includes a request to the Court under AB 1366, which allows the Attorney General to seek disgorgement of profits obtained in violation of the Unfair Competition Law and False Advertising Laws. If the court finds that the companies have violated the law and orders disgorgement, this remedy would require the defendants to give up the profits gained through their illegal conduct. The new Victims of Consumer Fraud Restitution Fund, into which disgorged funds would be deposited, would serve as a future source of funding to help provide restitution to victims of consumer fraud in California.

This welcome action makes it all the sadder that the campaigners for divestment of the state’s pension funds had to pull the bill for yet another year, when it became clear that it couldn’t pass without amendments that would have gutted the bill. As majority leader Lena Gonzalez—who has worked hard to get it passed—said,

“We’ve heard it all before. Big Oil wants to maintain the status quo, using their outdated rhetoric to try to make us believe that phasing out fossil fuels is nothing but a faraway fantasy. But thousands of California teachers and workers know the truth is quite the opposite—that fossil fuels are a declining industry and that divesting is a smart financial decision that will help protect their retirement futures and our planet from climate risks, like the devastating fires we are seeing this week. This legislation has been three years in the making and our California teachers and state workers have waited long enough. We need fossil fuel divestment NOW, not later. And today, I reaffirm my commitment to passing this legislation, because we are not giving up.”

Just to reiterate: one arm of the state government is busy suing the oil industry for lying, and trying to force them to disgorge their profits, while another branch—the pension fund—still tries to collect those profits.

+Also from California: Mike DiGirolamo and Rachel Donald keep the heat on the wood pellet industry that cuts down entire forests to set on fire for electricity, and which is now trying to expand its chop-and-burn operation from the southeast of the U.S. to the northern forests of the Golden State.

+Stephen Kwikriza, an able opponent of the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, was abducted and beaten earlier this month. As Yale E360 reports

Kwikiriza was abducted on June 4 in the Ugandan capital of Kampala by what appeared to be plainclothes officers from the Ugandan military. Five days later, he was dumped by the side of the road, 150 miles away in the town of Kyenyoyo. Kwikiriza said that, during his capture, he was stripped down to his underwear, given minimal food, and just a bucket for sanitation. He was severely beaten and knocked unconscious, enduring injuries that required hospital treatment.

“This was an enforced disappearance, a very serious crime under international law,” said Brad Adams, head of Climate Rights International. “Because of a long pattern of impunity in Uganda, a swift, independent, and transparent investigation must be conducted to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.”

Kwikiriza had previously faced threats for his work documenting the impact of drilling at the Kingfisher oil field in eastern Uganda. At the oil field, the Ugandan military provides security for drilling firm China National. Members of the military have allegedly attacked and sexually abused locals, and also seized and destroyed fishing boats.

Meanwhile, in much better pipeline news, Amazon has dropped plans to use a proposed natural gas pipeline expansion in Oregon.

Three months ago at Amazon headquarters in Seattle, a group calling themselves "Troublemakers" blocked the entrances at the start of the workday. They held signs protesting Amazon’s plans to rely on TC Energy’s Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) XPress pipeline expansion to power its data centers in Oregon.

Protesters said they were focused on the perils of climate change, and that relying on more fossil fuels was at odds with Amazon’s own climate pledge to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Now Amazon appears to be granting their request.

+ Everyone knows that ‘carbon capture’ is an expensive scheme to use taxpayer money to let fossil fuel plants keep operating when it would be far cheaper just to use the money for more solar panels. But you aren’t supposed to do what a Canadian petroleum geologist did and actually say it out loud

A major Canadian oil field in the province of Saskatchewan would likely have reached the end of its life eight years ago. But thanks to carbon capture and storage, a technology widely touted by the oil and gas industry and some political leaders as a key solution for climate change, the field could still be producing 1.5 million barrels of oil annually by the year 2100.

+The Atlantic has a fine piece by Vann R. Newkirk II on the unassailable justice of calls for climate reparations by poor and vulnerable nations

But compensation is only part of reparations’ importance. Burkett argues that the very act of acknowledging a debt is key to the process as well, for the sake of both the polluter and the polluted. This acknowledgment makes clear that the global community is interested in the survival of the most imperiled states. Moral leadership by America would also put pressure on China and India, the two rising carbon powers, to acknowledge their own roles in this crisis. In the game of global opinion, at least, no country wants to look like the climate-change villain.

Perhaps the most important component of any kind of reparations is a commitment by the offender to stop offending. Embracing reparations would incentivize wealthy nations to set aggressive emissions targets and meet them. A true reparations program thus wouldn’t be an ancillary charity attached to other solutions, but the overarching climate policy itself.

+New discoveries may mean EVs that can fully charge in ten minutes!

+The White House has sworn in the first members of the new American Climate Corps—they’ll be 9,000 strong by month’s end

The corps is expected to eventually include 20,000 young people working in a variety of paid positions through federal, state and local partnerships. The roles are limited, paid employment terms ranging from two months to over a year, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as money laid out in the Fiscal Year 2024 Budget 

Most of them focus on bolstering local community initiatives from connecting vulnerable communities to renewable energy grids and helping acquire grant funds to removing potential wildfire hazards from forests.

+Great work from some of our most skilled climate and energy journalists. The apparently indefatigable Amy Westervelt is back with a superb project on the way the industry is attempting to greenwash American liquefied natural gas, the biggest single greenhouse bomb on planet earth, and David Roberts catches up with the Vermonter who’s busily building electric airplanes for short-haul flights. (It’s going better than expected!)

Oh, and through month’s end the agile and veteran campaigner and dramaturge Josh Fox has a new show up at La Mama in New York—by all accounts The Edge of Nature is, as the Guardian put it, “profound and startling.” Oh, and the peerless scientist and activist Sandra Steingraber will be there tomorrow night for a post-performance dialogue.

+A fascinating essay from Gabrielle Kuiper on “cognitive dissonance and courage,” which helps explain the fossil fuel industry as abusive and controlling partners:

Oil, gas and coal and their authoritarian regimes sports wash. They sponsor children’s teams, buy the game of golf for legitimacy, pretend to be human.

Coercive controllers periodically do something surprisingly nice—a trip away, some small unexpected freedom, a kitchen renovation, a bunch of flowers—enough pretence of care to keep us holding two contrary views of their character.

The vacillation between the repetitive cycle of abuse and intermittent gifts or temporary respites from rage messes with a victim’s brain. Interactions between dopamine (craving, seeking, wanting), oxytocin (the bonding hormone), endogenous opioids (drugs we produce internally promoting pleasure and pain, as well as withdrawal and dependence) and corticotropin releasing factor (produced in response to stress) become significantly dysregulated, resulting in an emotional attachment to the abuser or abusive organisation, such as in a cult. Research is ongoing into this complex neurochemical hijacking known as ‘traumatic bonding’.

+New research, described in Wired, shows that banks may be waking up to the climate threat to the homes they provide mortgages for. Check this out:

A study published earlier this year found that US mortgage approvals tend to dip following periods of hotter-than-normal weather. For every 1 degree Celsius that temperatures rise above average, approvals fell by nearly 1 percent—and their value by more than 6.5 percent.

Lower consumer demand was only part of the problem, according to the study’s authors. The effect was mostly down to loan officers’ worries about climate change and what it might mean for the assets they were lending against. In other words, climate change was devaluing property before their very eyes.

+Stanford, already under fire because its “School of Sustainability” has been financed by Big Oil, added, um, oil to the flames by hiring a pr firm to help bolster the school’s image—except that the firm also had extensive ties to Big Oil. Speaking for us all,

“I was like, God, really?” Amanda Campos, a Stanford sophomore and member of the Doerr School of Sustainability’s student advisory council, said after learning of the partnership.