The Supreme Court Kicks Off with a Big Climate Case

Current conditions: A summer-like heat wave is driving up temperatures in Los Angeles past 100 degrees Fahrenheit • Hurricane Nolo is transitioning into Typhoon Nolo as it shifts into the western Pacific with winds of up to130 miles per hour • Hurricane Rachel is moving toward Mexico, stirring danger swells in Baja California.

THE TOP FIVE

1. The Supreme Court kicks off with a big climate case

The United States Supreme Court is starting its new nine-month term today hearing arguments in a major case from Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy attempting to thwart a lawsuit by the city of Boulder, Colorado, seeking damages for the effects of climate change. SCOTUSblog called the litigation “one of biggest cases” of the next year, and “certainly one of the most significant business cases.” The conclusion of the case could scuttle dozens of similar lawsuits pending across the country. My colleague Emily Pontecorvo wrote earlier this year that the case has been winding up through the courts since 2018.

Meanwhile, 21 states and four cities united to sue the Trump administration last week over the Environmental Protection Agency’s repeal of all limits on greenhouse gas pollution from power plants. “This administration’s insistence on giving the nation’s biggest polluters a free pass will set our country back decades in the fight against climate change,” Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, told The New York Times. “Dismantling these protections is a betrayal of American families.”

2. Right-wing Bolsonaro pulls ahead in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election

Lula vs. Bolsonaro. Mauro PIMENTEL and Sergio LIMA / AFP via Getty Images

In 2019, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the once and future president of Brazil, emerged from prison and two years later, won back the nation’s top job from right-wing hardliner Jair Bolsonaro. Now Bolsonaro is in prison, and his son, Flávio Bolsonaro, is vying against the Brazilian leader commonly known as Lula for the country’s presidency. The candidates led the first round of voting, which finished Sunday, and will advance to the next round of voting on October 25, according to a tally on Folha de S.Paulo, the nation’s leading newspaper.

Under Lula’s reign, Brazil conserved an area of rainforest roughly the size of the state of New Jersey, all while ramping up oil production. Bolsonaro the younger threatens a return to his father’s policies of ramping up development in the Amazon and other wildernesses. “This is really bad for the Amazon — its Indigenous land defenders, its ecology. We’re getting close to the whole rainforest tipping into a savannah equilibrium; brutal for climate,” Daniel Aldana Cohen, an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has studied Brazilian climate politics, wrote on X. “These are years of incredibly high-stakes struggle between life & fascism.”

3. Oil prices surge after Houthis attack Saudi refineries

The price of Brent crude shot up to nearly $103 per barrel Sunday after Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed to have attacked an Aramco refinery in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. In a statement posted Saturday on X, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the Iran-backed militants had launched “ballistic missiles and drones” at two facilities owned by the Saudi state oil company. Later on Saturday, Al Jazeera reported that the Saudi-led coalition supporting Yemen’s internationally recognized government had called the Houthi claims “misleading,” instead noting that the Houthis had suffered 97 “precise targeting operations” over the weekend.

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4. Energy Departments prepares another $4 billion loan to upgrade three nuclear plants

The Department of Energy is expected to announce a roughly $4 billion loan package to utility Vistra Corp. later today during Secretary of Energy Chris Wright’s visit to the Perry nuclear complex northeast of Cleveland that will fund upgrades to three of its nuclear stations. That’s according to reports in Bloomberg and Reuters. The package will fund upgrades at Vistra’s plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

It’s the latest attempt by the Energy Department to prop up the nuclear industry. In June, the Trump administration made what my colleague Robinson Meyer called its “big nuclear play,” providing nearly $20 billion in loans to joint ventures between the nation’s flagship reactor developer Westinghouse and utilities seeking to build the next AP1000s. South Korea, meanwhile, agreed last week to help build six AP1000s and two of the country’s own APR1400s, which Westinghouse has previously accused the state-owned Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power of ripping off from the leading American design.

5. FedEx places a record-setting order for all-electric box trucks

International shipping giant FedEx has placed a record-setting order for 2,000 all-electric box trucks from the American startup Harbinger Motors, in a deal that — while reportedly worth more than $300 million — could save the company nearly three times as much in diesel costs, according to Electrek. As my colleague Matthew Zeitlin wrote recently, now is the worst time for diesel prices to surge.

When Rob caught up with Harbinger’s co-founder on our Shift Key podcast last year, the entrepreneur was largely discussing how tariffs had shifted the company’s manufacturing policy. But the Trump administration policy now making the bigger difference may be the effects of the war on diesel prices.

THE KICKER

America’s favorite instant coffeemaker may be ready to put an end to its pod pollution. Keurig Dr. Pepper has launched AltaRounds, a new way of brewing coffee that the company says will slash waste by creating one-cup portions made from compressed coffee wrapped in a coating derived from seaweed instead of plastic, Bloomberg reported. AltaRounds can be disposed of like coffee grounds and can be composed at home. But using them will require buying a new kind of machine.