The Trump administration's plans to directly intervene in power markets to prop up economically struggling coal-fired and nuclear power plants have been "shelved" for now, Politico reported last night.
Why it matters: The story underscores the challenge of finding legally and politically viable policy levers to directly keep these plants afloat, even as the White House pushes ahead with efforts to aid the coal sector by scaling back Obama-era pollution rules.
As midterm elections get closer, the partisan divide over climate change is becoming increasingly clearer.
Driving the news: 72% of registered voters backing Democrats in the upcoming elections view climate change as a "very big" problem, compared to just 11% of GOP supporters, new Pew Research Center polling shows.
Thomas Brostrøm, CEO of North American operations for Ørsted, the Danish wind giant, is in Washington to speak at an offshore wind conference this week. I caught up with him ahead of the event.
Why it matters: Last week, Brostrøm’s company bought the U.S. companybehind America’s only operating offshore wind farm, Deepwater Wind. Ørsted represents a growing number of European energy companies seeking to lead in the U.S. offshore wind market. Excerpts from Monday's interview follow.
Beer prices around the world could double as climate change-related droughts and heat waves cut into production of barley, one of the key ingredients in beer and a particularly heat-sensitive crop, according to a new study in Nature Plants.
The big picture: One of the paper's authors, Steve Davis of the University of California, Irvine, told AP that, as a beer drinker, the study was "born of love and fear" and meant to provide a more concrete basis for the warnings of climate change. A UN report last week warned of dire consequences without "unprecedented" global action to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
NASA data released Monday showed that 2018 is likely to become Earth’s fourth-warmest year on record.
September 2018 was the planet's fifth-warmest September on record, and the world is poised to record its fourth-warmest year, according to new data NASA released Monday.
Why this matters: According to Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, 2018 is also likely to be the fourth year in a row with an average temperature of 1ºC, or 1.8ºF, above the 19th century average. A recent climate report from the UN warned of severe consequences if global warming is not limited to 1.5ºC, or 2.7ºF, above average, compared to preindustrial levels.
Crude oil prices are up Monday after the weekend's escalating rhetoric between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia over the disappearance — and apparent killing — of Jamal Khashoggi.
Between the lines: Traders don't appear convinced at this point that the rupture will cause major upheaval in oil flows. Prices for the benchmark Brent crude are higher but they're not soaring.
Two parallel efforts to tax carbon emissions are taking great strides to avoid the t-word.
Why it matters: Because words matter! And this one — tax — matters more than most. It’s at the intersection of our fossil-fuel dependence, the climate-change repercussions of that, and what (if anything) is done about it.
