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Climate

Extreme Floods Are Devastating Europe

On Storm Boris, COP29 developments, and Cybertruck sales

Extreme Floods Are Devastating Europe
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Severe flooding in west and central Africa has displaced nearly one million people • Brazil is choking on wildfire smoke that can be seen from space • Shanghai was struck by Typhoon Bebinca, the strongest storm to hit the city in 75 years.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Parts of Europe washed out by flooding from Storm Boris

Flooding across central and eastern Europe has killed at least 10 people and forced tens of thousands to evacuate. Since late last week, the slow-moving Storm Boris has dumped huge amounts of rain on the region, causing dams to burst and rivers to overflow and inundating communities in Austria, Poland, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Parts of eastern Germany are also on alert. In the Austrian capital of Vienna, the Wien River’s water level rose from about 20 inches to more than seven feet in the course of a day. Meanwhile some mountain regions received more than three feet of snow. In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk today declared a state of natural disaster. According to the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, the floods could be the worst since 2002.

Flooding in ViennaChristian Bruna/Getty Images

The European Environment Agency has warned that flooding is likely to be “one of the most serious effects from climate change in Europe over coming decades.”

2. Tropical cyclone approaches Carolinas

Both U.S. coasts are experiencing wild weather but of very different kinds. The National Hurricane Center issued tropical storm warnings for the Carolinas as “Tropical Cyclone Eight” approaches with 50 mph winds. The system could bring up to 8 inches of rain and flash floods. Meanwhile, on the West Coast, parts of California are expecting snow. The state issued its earliest snow advisory in 20 years for the Sierra Nevada mountain range, where up to 4 inches could fall through Monday afternoon.

3. A quick roundup of COP29 developments

With COP29 now less than two months away, key players are working hard to lay the groundwork for the outcomes they’d like to see from the annual climate summit. Here are some recent developments:

  • Host country Azerbaijan plans to call for a six-fold increase in energy storage capacity by 2030 at the summit in November, according to Bloomberg. The Global Green Energy Storage Pledge will ask more than 190 countries to back the goal, which would see storage capacity reach 1,500 gigawatts, up from 230 GW in 2022.
  • A new report from the UN’s Standing Committee on Finance says $500 billion is needed each year to help poor nations adapt to climate change and transition to renewable energy. Setting a new goal on climate finance – up from $100 billion annually – will be one of the main agenda items in Baku.
  • Large oil-producing countries are reportedly trying to impede any further progress on the global plan to phase out fossil fuels. Negotiators for western countries told the Financial Times that they’re exerting pressure on Azerbaijan to prioritize conversations at COP29 about how to go forward with the phase out, which was agreed at last year’s summit in Dubai. One negotiator told the FT that large emitters may try to use the finance negotiations to “block any meaningful progress on mitigation.”

4. Study: U.S. to see rise in weather-related supply chain disruptions

A recent study finds that the risk of weather-related supply chain disruptions will rise more in the U.S. than in any other country over the next 15 years. This is because the country is starting from a pretty low baseline risk, thanks to the interconnectivity of all the states. “If a heatwave or period of extreme rainfall hits one part of the U.S., it is easily able to import goods and services from other areas,” CarbonBrief explained. But the risk won’t stay that low forever, and indeed the authors note that the U.S. “is subject to the strongest relative increases in consumption risks” through 2040 as weather shocks increase.

5. Tesla’s surging Cybertruck sales are turning heads

Tesla sold 5,175 Cybertrucks in July, according to data from S&P Global Mobility. Sales of all other EV pickups combined during that month reached 5,546. Jesse Jenkins, a Princeton professor and energy systems engineering expert (and co-host of Heatmap’s climate podcast Shift Key) predicted back in December that the Cybertruck would be crushed by EV pickup rivals like the Ford F-150 Lightning and Rivian’s R1. But now…

X/JesseJenkins

THE KICKER

The U.S. Postal Service recently started rolling out its Next Generation Delivery Vehicles — most of which will be electric. The vehicles may not be beautiful, but as Paul Waldman argued for Heatmap, if you want to normalize EVs, “what better way than to have a funky-looking EV rolling down your street every day, delivering mail to your door?”

Oshkosh Defense

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Economy

AM Briefing: Liberation Day

On trade turbulence, special election results, and HHS cuts

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs Loom
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: A rare wildfire alert has been issued for London this week due to strong winds and unseasonably high temperatures • Schools are closed on the Greek islands of Mykonos and Paros after a storm caused intense flooding • Nearly 50 million people in the central U.S. are at risk of tornadoes, hail, and historic levels of rain today as a severe weather system barrels across the country.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump to roll out broad new tariffs

President Trump today will outline sweeping new tariffs on foreign imports during a “Liberation Day” speech in the White House Rose Garden scheduled for 4 p.m. EST. Details on the levies remain scarce. Trump has floated the idea that they will be “reciprocal” against countries that impose fees on U.S. goods, though the predominant rumor is that he could impose an across-the-board 20% tariff. The tariffs will be in addition to those already announced on Chinese goods, steel and aluminum, energy imports from Canada, and a 25% fee on imported vehicles, the latter of which comes into effect Thursday. “The tariffs are expected to disrupt the global trade in clean technologies, from electric cars to the materials used to build wind turbines,” explained Josh Gabbatiss at Carbon Brief. “And as clean technology becomes more expensive to manufacture in the U.S., other nations – particularly China – are likely to step up to fill in any gaps.” The trade turbulence will also disrupt the U.S. natural gas market, with domestic supply expected to tighten, and utility prices to rise. This could “accelerate the uptake of coal instead of gas, and result in a swell in U.S. power emissions that could accelerate climate change,” Reutersreported.

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Podcast

The Least-Noticed Climate Scandal of the Trump Administration

Rob and Jesse catch up on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund with former White House official Kristina Costa.

Lee Zeldin.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Inflation Reduction Act dedicated $27 billion to build a new kind of climate institution in America — a network of national green banks that could lend money to companies, states, schools, churches, and housing developers to build more clean energy and deploy more next-generation energy technology around the country.

It was an innovative and untested program. And the Trump administration is desperately trying to block it. Since February, Trump’s criminal justice appointees — led by Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — have tried to use criminal law to undo the program. After failing to get the FBI and Justice Department to block the flow of funds, Trump officials have successfully gotten the program’s bank partner to freeze relevant money. The new green banks have sued to gain access to the money.

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Adaptation

Funding Cuts Are Killing Small Farmers’ Trust in Climate Policy

That trust was hard won — and it won’t be easily regained.

A barn.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Spring — as even children know — is the season for planting. But across the country, tens of thousands of farmers who bought seeds with the help of Department of Agriculture grants are hesitating over whether or not to put them in the ground. Their contractually owed payments, processed through programs created under the Biden administration, have been put on pause by the Trump administration, leaving the farmers anxious about how to proceed.

Also anxious are staff at the sustainability and conservation-focused nonprofits that provided technical support and enrollment assistance for these grants, many of whom worry that the USDA grant pause could undermine the trust they’ve carefully built with farmers over years of outreach. Though enrollment in the programs was voluntary, the grants were formulated to serve the Biden administration’s Justice40 priority of investing in underserved and minority communities. Those same communities tend to be wary of collaborating with the USDA due to its history of overlooking small and family farms, which make up 90% of the farms in the U.S. and are more likely to be women- or minority-owned, in favor of large operations, as well as its pattern of disproportionately denying loans to Black farmers. The Biden administration had counted on nonprofits to leverage their relationships with farmers in order to bring them onto the projects.

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Green