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♫ It’s getting hot in here, so close up all your domes ♫
Home runs ain’t the half of it.
Last week, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society issued a widely cited report that found global warming is “juicing” baseballs. The result is an extra 50 or so home runs per year in the major leagues. “It’s basic physics,” The Associated Press explained. “When air heats up, molecules move faster and away from each other, making the air less dense. Baseballs launched off a bat go farther through thinner air because there’s less resistance to slow the ball.”
Baseball fans have long been aware that hot weather makes for more home runs, so it follows that increasing temperatures will have an impact on the game in the years ahead. But MLB has more to worry about than the game becoming boring again because of too many dingers. Here are a few more ways climate change could irrevocably alter the future of America’s favorite past time:
We’ve already covered how the ball will behave differently off the bat. But what about out of the hand?
Heat and high humidity mean less air density, which in turn causes “fastballs to be faster, curveballs to curve less, and spin rates of pitches to be higher,” wrote Lawrence Rocks for SABR’s “Future of Baseball” issue in 2021. Of course, “these factors will cause pitchers to change their usage percentages on their pitch selection.”
As lowland parks grow hotter, we can expect them to behave more like the famously thin-aired Coors Field in Denver — particularly Atlanta, Kansas City, and Houston, which have among the lowest air densities of the Major League stadiums. Heat and humidity will cause baseballs to move more quickly out of the hand while the reduction in the Magnus force will cause them to break more poorly. And if fastballs get faster and curveballs break less, you can naturally expect to see more heaters in the game — and potentially more strikeouts as a result.
At the time of first pitch in Seattle, the Air Quality Index was 220. During the nine innings that followed, it would peak at 240 — more than twice the satisfactory level and “unhealthy for all groups.”
The year was 2020, and wildfires up and down the West Coast were making the empty stadiums even more apocalyptic. Shortly after smoke turned the Bay Area a dystopian orange, MLB decided to move home games from Seattle to San Francisco’s Oracle Park — because the air quality in the Pacific Northwest at that point was too unsafe for athletes.
\u201cA look outside the San Francisco Giants' stadium today.\u201d— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) 1599694410
It won’t be the last time baseball games are moved or even postponed due to air quality from fires. In 2022, perhaps against better judgment, the Mariners played the ALDS against the Astros when the AQI was 158. Though the unwritten rule is to postpone games when the AQI tops 200, players are beginning to push back, saying — rightfully — that prolonged exposure to inhaling smoke is dangerous. “It’s not like if you’re below 200, everything is fine, and if you’re above 200, everybody is severely affected,” a public health official pointed out to The Athletic. “There’s a whole continuum.”
If the Oakland Athletics move to Las Vegas, they’re all but certain to become the ninth Major League baseball team with at least the ability — if not the necessity — to play indoors.
In addition to the fully enclosed Tropicana Dome in Tampa Bay, seven stadiums currently have retractable roofs. And it is in the warmest, sunniest markets where those roofs most often remain closed: “Miami … played under an open roof just five times in the past two seasons — combined,” Fox Weather reports. The Rangers, meanwhile, replaced their only-26-year-old ballpark in 2019 because it had gotten literally too hot to play in Texas without air conditioning.
It’s not uncommon for the remaining open-air ballparks to top 95 degrees in the summer — a miserable experience for players and fans alike. Without covering more ballparks, injuries could climb and attendance could drop. “People might just say forget about it. I’m not going to a baseball game. It’s 105 degrees,” Brad Humphreys, professor of economics at West Virginia University, told Capital News Service.
Triple-A baseball introduced electronic strike zones this season, fueling speculation that the controversial robo-ump system could be coming to the Major Leagues next. But there is one big reason in favor of electronic strike zones that doesn’t often get mentioned in the debate: climate change.
A recent study found that “umpires call pitches less accurately in uncomfortable temperatures, with performance at its worst in extreme heat conditions,” Monmouth University writes. Incorrect calls were made at a rate of about 1% worse when temperatures topped 95 degrees. And while that might seem insignificant, “it is non-trivial for this high-revenue, high-stakes industry,” the study’s author, Monmouth associate professor of economics Eric Fesselmeyer, said. “Moreover, high temperatures cause an even greater decrease in accuracy on close-call pitches along the edges of the strike zone.”
Aggression and violence rise with the temperatures. In one study, violent crimes went up by as much as 5.7% on days with a maximum daily temperature above 85 degrees, and as much as 10% on days above about 88.
As dugouts and diamonds get hotter, tempers will too. But there is another reason to believe there will be more bench-clearing brawls beyond heat-induced short-fuses. According to a study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 1991, “a positive and significant relationship was found between temperature and the number of hit batters per game, even when potentially confounding variables having nothing to do with aggression were partialed out.”
Similarly, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business found in 2011 that “pitchers whose teammates get hit by a pitch are more likely to retaliate and plunk an opposing batter when the temperature reaches 90 degrees than when it is cooler.” Curiously, if no one has been hit in a game, the study found “high temperatures have little effect on a pitcher’s behavior.” As one of the researchers put it, “heat affects a specific form of aggression. It increases retribution.”
Hurricane Ian — the category 4 hurricane that slammed southwest Florida last September — was the state’s costliest storm, inflicting $109 billion in damage including “totally” destroying 900 structures in Fort Meyers Beach alone. Among the damages: CenturyLink Sports Complex, the spring training facility of the Minnesota Twins; Fenway South, the Boston Red Sox’s facility; and Charlotte Sports Park, the Tampa Bay Rays’ spring training home, which sustained damage so extensive that the team had to find another stadium to practice in during the 2023 spring training season.
The lasting damage of the storm extends beyond the physical: “Hurricane Ian’s impact on Lee County likely played a role in depressing the crowds at Red Sox and Twins games this year,” Fort Myers News-Press reports.
There are no murmurs of moving the Grapefruit League’s spring training facilities — yet. But already the rising sea levels and storms of Florida are ruling out new stadium locations, including at least one potential regular-season home for the Rays. “Sites that once appeared to be great places to build a ballpark are now expected to be underwater,” the team president said. With climate already costing teams money and fans, as well as being a deciding factor in new builds, the Grapefruit League could prudently decide to uproot for higher grounds.
Homebuyers are taking into account the future climate conditions of potential properties, and if MLB is wise, it will do the same when considering team expansion.
From a climate standpoint, it already seems egregious to move a team to a desert city that is running out of drinkable water in the summer, though the Oakland A’s potential relocation to Las Vegas is still very much on the table. But when MLB looks at locations to expand to — Portland, Mexico City, North Carolina, Nashville, Montreal, and Vancouver have also been floated — the climate calculus becomes ever more important.
In 60 years, Portland will have a climate similar to Sacramento, complete with the threat of wildfire smoke. Mexico City is getting hotter, drier, and sinking. Charlotte and Raleigh will eventually “resemble the Florida panhandle, specifically Tallahassee, which is 12.6 °F warmer and 10.6% to 14.4% wetter than winter in Charlotte and Raleigh. Nashville is not too far, with Mobile, Alabama serving as its closest projection,” Fangraphs writes in an assessment of the future of ballparks in the climate crisis.
Unsurprisingly, with an eye for the future, it is the northernmost cities that look like the best options to withstand climate change impacts: “Vancouver and Montreal could look toward current day T-Mobile Park and Citizens Bank Park as examples of how to keep fans comfortable during games.”
Over the course of 12 months between 2019 and 2020, 10% of MLB teams switched from real grass to turf. “The three stadiums that replaced their grass share a lot in common,” wrote The Wall Street Journal at the time: “They play in cities with extreme weather and have retractable roofs.”
In Arizona, for example, real grass required sunlight — and thus an open roof — until between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., which meant that players often worked out before games in temperatures of 110 degrees or more. By the time fans arrived, the building would still be sweltering, air conditioning not having yet kicked in. But by switching to turf, “the roof can remain closed all summer.”
Switching to turf also eliminates the demands of watering: Conservatively, about 62,500 gallons of water a week are required to maintain an average field, an amount 89 homes would use in the same amount of time. Though that water is likely negligible in the grand scheme of things, it’s important for teams to take “social responsibility” by “walking the walk,” Diamondbacks president and CEO Derrick Hall told The Associated Press.
Turf remains controversial — it can affect the bounce of balls and result in higher rates of injuries. Recent advances in turf technology, though, are making it more appealing for teams and the planet.
Anyone who’s ever watched nine innings of live baseball knows the kind of mess fans leave behind: peanut shell piles; beer cups; burger trays; plastic ice cream bowls shaped like hats; abandoned bobbleheads. Overall, baseball audiences create more than 1,000 tons of waste every season, according to the Green Sports Alliance.
A growing number of stadiums are now aspiring to contribute less to landfills, including by using compostable serving items and reducing food waste. But one place waste is still frequently overlooked is in promotional giveaways.
Every year, MLB gives away around four million bobbleheads in addition to other tchotchkes like branded visors, T-shirts, sunglasses, and bags. While some of these end up as treasured pieces of home collections, the vast majority are junk destined for landfills.
Though teams show no sign of forgoing giveaways anytime soon, the more environmentally conscious parks may begin to consider new ways of reducing their waste — including by curbing handouts of cheaply made petroleum products and environmentally taxing garments that no one actually needs.
Every year, athletes end up on the Injured List for reasons ranging from benign to ridiculous. Now there is a new reason to be pulled from a game: heat illness. During one 2018 game at Wrigley Field with a heat index of 107, four players ultimately left the field for temperature-related causes, including three who had to be treated with IV fluids. During another game in 2021, a 28-year-old pitcher vomited on the mound in New York City. Diagnosis? Heat exhaustion.
Normal sports injuries also spike as it gets warmer. “We always had what seemed to be a lot more soft-tissue leg injuries than some of the other clubs. Hamstrings, calf injuries, from guys running the bases,” a former Rangers trainer told The Atlantic in 2016, prior to the construction of the team’s new air-conditioned stadium. “Our staff attributed that to the excessive heat and the fatigue.”
The prevalence of naturally occurring injuries could go up too because as players get dehydrated, their brain, thought capacity, and reflexes “are affected and the player is not able to react immediately on the field,” a 2021 study by the International Journal of Physical Education found. “The player will be injured due to a fall or collision with another player or being hit by a ball.”
Tragically, rising temperatures also are known to contribute to an increased number of deaths, a pattern already observable in high school football. Baseball fans and minor league athletes have already died due to heat-related causes — an awful pattern that isn’t likely to abate.
In 2017, the mercury during the first game of the World Series in Los Angeles hit 103 degrees after 5 p.m.; the same year, the Oakland A’s Triple-A affiliate played in 111-degree heat in Las Vegas. On average, the temperature across the 27 Major League Baseball cities has risen over two degrees since 1970. And “the difference in home run rates between a 90-degree day and a 40-degree day is roughly equivalent to the difference between hitting in Citizens Bank Park” — which is small — “versus Citi Field,” which is comparatively huge, ESPN reports.
In our hotter, damper future, baseball will be a markedly different game than it was 50 years ago — or even now. Heat will affect players’ reflexes and focus. Balls will move differently through thinner, warmer air. Fielding could change ever so slightly as turf becomes more common, and pitchers might switch up their pitches as electronic strike zones come into use and curveballs become less effective.
All good statistical comparisons need context, and that is especially true in the ever-changing sport of baseball. But in the next century of the sport, it is all but certain that the literal environment of the games — from the weather to the air density to the AQI — will be a necessary asterisk beside unusual home runs and IL designations. One day, announcers may even reminisce about “open air” stadiums from their climate-controlled booths during downtime on broadcasts. Perhaps we’ll even have a name for the days of comparatively thicker air: the “cool-ball era.”
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On heat pumps, a coal mine approval, and the UN Ocean Summit.
Current conditions: Tropical Storm Barbara is strengthening off the Pacific coast of Mexico and could become the first hurricane of the season • Smoke from wildfires in Canada’s Manitoba province brought orange skies to the United Kingdom • Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is recovering after heavy rains brought flash flooding over the weekend.
Facing the threat of legal challenges from the Trump administration, California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District, a regional agency that regulates pollution, voted on Friday to reject proposed rules to reduce sales of gas-fired furnaces and water heaters. The rules would have required manufacturers to gradually increase the proportion of zero-emissions appliances like heat pumps that they sell to 90% by 2036, and put surcharges on gas equipment. The standard took two years to draft and bring to a vote but was fiercely attacked by the gas lobby, which labeled it a “gas ban.”
The Department of the Interior approved the expansion of the Bull Mountains coal mine in Montana on Friday, cutting short its environmental review process and allowing the mine to operate for nine more years. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum cited Trump’s energy emergency declaration, saying that it “is allowing us to act decisively, cut bureaucratic delays and secure America’s future through energy independence and strategic exports.” The mine exports its coal to Japan and South Korea. My colleague Jael Holzman has covered the administration’s efforts to speed mining approvals, including for projects that may not be economically viable.
Trump signs executive orders related to nuclear in May.in McNamee/Getty Images
In an interview published Sunday, Dan Sumner, the CEO of Westinghouse, told the Financial Times that the company is talking to the Trump administration about building 10 new AP1000 nuclear reactors. The news follows an executive order Trump issued in May setting a goal of starting construction on 10 such large, conventional reactors in the next five years. The last AP1000 built in the U.S., at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, took 15 years to complete. As my colleagues Matthew Zeitlin and Katie Brigham explained in a recent piece, however, between the complex licensing process and an underdeveloped workforce and supply chain, it will be tough to speed things up.
The third United Nations ocean conference kicks off today in Nice, in the South of France, and the U.S. is not in attendance. Delegates, scientists, and environmental advocates from around the world are gathering to advance global cooperation to protect the ocean from global warming, plastic pollution, and overfishing. During a pre-conference event on Sunday, French prime minister Emmanual Macron called for global moratorium on deep-sea mining, and said 30 countries were ready to commit to it. “I want us to reach an agreement for the entire planet,” he said. “It’s completely crazy to go and exploit, to go and drill in a place we don’t know. It’s frenzied madness.”
A raft of provisions for Trump’s budget bill put out by the Senate Commerce Committee last week included a rollback of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards. The proposal would eviscerate “one of the federal government’s longest-running programs to manage gasoline prices and air pollution,” writes Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer, by setting all fines levied on noncompliant automakers under the program to zero dollars. But Ann Carlson, a UCLA law professor who led the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 2022 to 2023, told Robinson that she doubted the change would make it through the Senate’s strict rules that enable it to pass the budget with a simple majority.
Senators Bill Cassidy, Shelley Moore Capito, and Susan Collins are among the more than four dozen members of Congress who have stayed at a Lake Como villa owned by the Rockefeller Foundation to talk climate change and energy policy — on the nonprofit Aspen Institute’s dime, reports NOTUS.
Here’s what will happen if the company you signed with goes under.
The version of Trump’s budget bill that passed the House late last month would be devastating to the rooftop solar industry. Not only would it end a tax credit for homeowners who invest in rooftop solar, it would also end subsidies for companies that lease these systems to families.
If the bill were to become law, the tax credits for new installations would terminate abruptly at the end of this year, giving companies no time to adjust to the new market reality. Rooftop solar as it exists today will cease to make financial sense in many places, and the customer base could run dry. Building owners with existing leases or power purchase agreements for rooftop solar may be wondering what will happen if the company they signed with goes under.
The first thing to understand is that many of these companies, like Sunrun and Trinity Solar, bundle their leases and PPAs and sell them to banks or other financial institutions. That upfront cash helps them expand and invest in new installations without taking on more debt. But even though they no longer own the lease, the solar company typically retains the responsibility to maintain the system and ensure it is working properly.
The biggest risk if the solar company ceases to exist is that maintenance will fall through the cracks, Roger Horowitz, the director of Go Solar Programs at the nonprofit Solar United Neighbors, told me. There may no longer be anyone monitoring your installation. Unless you’re actively keeping an eye on it, such as through a phone app, you might not notice if an inverter goes down. And then if something like that does happen, or if a bad storm causes damage, the leaseholders, aka the bank, may be unresponsive.
The good news is that as long as the system is installed correctly, rooftop solar doesn’t typically require much maintenance. “In general, the whole thing with solar is that there aren’t any moving parts,” Horowitz said.
I reached out to several solar companies to ask whether they were still signing new contracts and how their lease terms addressed the possibility of the company going out of business. Sunrun, the biggest installer in the country, did not respond.
I did get on the phone with Ed Merrick, the corporate vice president at Trinity Solar, which is the largest privately held residential solar company in the U.S. Merrick said that ever since interest rates went up, making loans less attractive, the majority of Trinity’s business has been in solar leases and PPAs. For now, the company is still moving forward with business as usual, enrolling customers in new contracts.
When I asked whether Trinity could still offer financially attractive leases and PPAs if the tax credit went away, the line went silent for a few seconds. “Doubtful,” Merrick eventually responded. “It would be very hard.” That’s especially true in states like Pennsylvania and Maryland that have low electricity rates. “Those states probably won’t have any viability for any kind of solar system for homeowners unless they just really want to be green, which is a very small subset, and those people have probably already got it,” said Merrick. But even in states with higher electricity costs like Massachusetts and Connecticut, he said it would be questionable whether they could make an attractive offer to homeowners.
Merrick agreed that the primary risk to existing customers is maintenance. “We have a huge service department,” he said. “If something were to happen to us and we can’t continue, then obviously our service department would fall in, too. I don’t think that’s gonna happen with us, but I do see a material impact to our business over the next couple of years if this bill goes through as is.”
He noted that if Trinity’s not around, the third party financial institutions who own the leases have a legal obligation to service the systems, so homeowners should still be okay, although there will likely be more hiccups in the process.
I also spoke with Tom Neyhart, the founder of PosiGen Solar, which exclusively offers solar leases and retains ownership over them. After the Inflation Reduction Act passed, the company thought it would have continuity on the tax credits through 2032, he said. The solar tax credits had been around for nearly two decades, but the IRA also made solar leases more attractive by offering a higher subsidy for projects that used domestically manufactured materials and were built in low-income neighborhoods or in so-called “energy communities” — places that have long depended on fossil fuel industries to support the local economy. Posigen raised $150 million in equity and borrowed a bunch of money to expand its footprint, Neyhart told me. It also engaged with its suppliers, asking them to move their manufacturing to the U.S.
“We went from only having basically two factories that built anything we used on the roof in the U.S. now to 20 factories that we buy from,” he said, and began listing all of the factories that arrived in the last three years — SolarEdge built projects in Texas, Florida, and Utah. Silfab, a Canadian company, is expanding in South Carolina, and moved its headquarters there. “It’s huge, it’s tens of thousands of jobs.”
Neyhart told me that PosiGen’s customers should not be worried about maintenance. “We guarantee it performs, and if it doesn’t perform, then you’re going to get a credit against your bill,” he said. “Whoever owns the lease knows that if they don’t service the account, then they’re going to lose the revenue from it.”
But Neyhart is hopeful that Congress will reverse course. He said he’s spent more time in Washington, D.C., over the last few months, lobbying for the tax credits, than he has at home in Louisiana. “I think that they realize that, if nothing else, we need a transition time,” he said. When Louisiana ended its state solar tax credit several years ago, it phased the program out over three and a half years. That gave PosiGen enough time to adjust its business model and continue to operate there. Neyhart said the company could find a way to work without the federal tax credits with a similar transition period.
“Every time I talk to a senator, especially Republican senators, they talk about business surety and ‘people have to understand what the rules of the game are.’” he said. “You just can’t pull the rug out. Senators, please don’t pull the rug out on us.”
Merrick had a similar message. “We do understand the need to eliminate subsidies on solar,” he said. “What we’d like to see is a phase down, not a cliff.”
The Senate’s reconciliation bill essentially repeals the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, abolishing fines for automakers that sell too many gas guzzlers.
A new provision in the Senate reconciliation bill would neuter the country’s fuel efficiency standards for automakers, gutting one of the federal government’s longest-running programs to manage gasoline prices and air pollution.
The new provision — which was released on Thursday by the Senate Commerce Committee — would essentially strip the government of its ability to enforce the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, or CAFE standards.
The CAFE rules are the government’s main program to improve the fuel economy of new cars and light-duty trucks sold in the United States. Over the past 20 years, the rules have helped push the fuel efficiency of new vehicles to record highs even as consumers have adopted crossovers and SUVs en masse.
But the Republican reconciliation bill would essentially end the program as a practical concern for automakers. It would set all fines issued under the program to zero, stripping the government of its ability to punish automakers that sell too many polluting vehicles.
“It would essentially eviscerate the standard without actually doing so directly,” Ann Carlson, a UCLA law professor who led the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 2022 to 2023, told me.
“It says that, ‘We have standards here, but we don’t care if you comply or not. If you don’t comply, we’re not going to hold you responsible,’” she said.
Representatives for the Senate Commerce Committee did not respond to an immediate request for comment. A talking points memo released by the committee on Thursday said that the new bill would “[bring] down automobile prices modestly by eliminating CAFE penalties on automakers that design cars to conform to the wishes of D.C. bureaucrats rather than consumers.”
Since 1975, Congress has required the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (pronounced NIT-suh) to set annual fuel efficiency standards for new cars and light trucks sold in the United States. The rules generally require new vehicles sold nationwide to get a little more fuel efficient, on average, every year.
The rules have remained in effect — with varying levels of stringency — for 50 years, although they have generally encouraged automakers to get more efficient since Congress strengthened the law on a bipartisan basis in 2007.
In model-year 2023, the most recent period for which data is available, new cars and light trucks achieved a real-world fuel economy of 27.1 miles per gallon, an all-time high. The vehicle fleet was set to hit another record high in 2024, according to last year’s report.
Opponents of the fuel economy rules argue that the regulations increase the sticker price of new cars and trucks and push automakers to build less profitable vehicles. The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that published Project 2025, has called the rules a “backdoor EV mandate.”
The rules’ supporters say that the standards are necessary because consumers don’t take fuel costs — or the environmental or public health costs of air pollution — into account when buying a vehicle. They say the rules keep gasoline prices low for all Americans by encouraging fuel efficiency across the board.
The strict Biden-era rules were projected to save consumers $23 billion in gasoline costs, according to an agency analysis. The American Lung Association said that the rules would prevent more than 2 million pediatric asthma attacks and save hundreds of infant lives by 2050.
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has targeted the fuel economy rules as part of a wide-ranging effort to roll back Biden-era energy policy. On January 28, as his first official act, Duffy ordered NHTSA to retroactively weaken the rules for all cars and light trucks sold after model-year 2022.
On Friday, Duffy separately issued a legal opinion that would restrict NHTSA’s ability to include electric vehicles in its real-world estimates of the country’s fuel economy rules. The opinion sets up the next round of CAFE rules to be considerably weaker than existing law.
But the new Republican reconciliation bill, if adopted, would render those rules moot.
Under current law, automakers must pay a fine when the average fuel economy of the vehicles they sell exceeds the fuel economy standard set for that year. Automakers can avoid paying that penalty by buying “credits” from other car companies that have done better than the rules require.
The fine’s size is set by a formula written into the law. That calculation includes the number of cars sold above the fuel-economy threshold, how much those cars exceeded it, and a $5 multiplier. The GOP tax bill rewrites the law to set the multiplier to zero dollars.
In essence, no matter how much an automaker exceeds the fuel economy rules, the GOP reconciliation bill will now multiply their fine by zero.
The original CAFE law contains a second formula allowing the government to set even higher penalties if doing so would achieve “substantial energy conservation.” The new reconciliation bill sets the multiplier in this formula, too, to zero dollars.
The CAFE law’s penalties can be significant. The automaker Stellantis, which owns Fiat and Chrysler, recently paid more than $426 million in penalties for cars sold from model year 2018 to 2020. Last year, General Motors paid a $38 million fine for light trucks sold in model year 2020.
The CAFE provision in the GOP mega-bill seems designed to skirt past the Byrd rule, a Senate rule that policies in reconciliation bills must affect revenue, spending, or generally have more than a “merely incidental” effect on the federal budget.
But Carlson, the former NHTSA acting administrator, doubted whether the provision should really survive a Byrd bath.
Zeroing out the fines is “not really about revenue,” she said, but about compliance with the law. “This is a way to try to couch repeal of CAFE in revenue terms instead of doing it outright.”