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Climate

What Makes Hurricane Beryl So Unusual

On storm forecasts, Biden polling, and data centers in space

What Makes Hurricane Beryl So Unusual
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Intense storms in Europe killed at least seven people over the weekend • Nine inches of rain fell in 24 hours in Delhi, causing deadly flooding just days after blistering high temperatures • California will have “record-challenging heat” for the 4th of July.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Potentially catastrophic Hurricane Beryl heads for small Caribbean islands

The first hurricane of the season, Hurricane Beryl, has started lashing the southeastern islands of the Caribbean today as a category 3 storm. Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadine Islands, Grenada, and Tobago – islands that don’t normally endure storms of this magnitude – are all under hurricane warnings and bracing for catastrophic damage. The storm is forecast to push toward Jamaica before weakening slightly mid-week and then heading toward Mexico. The system strengthened from a tropical depression to a hurricane in less than 48 hours, which is unusually fast. It was at one point registering as a category 4 storm (and could do so again), the earliest ever recorded in the Atlantic, marking an ominous start to what is expected to be a very intense hurricane season. “Incredible doesn't cut it,” wrote meteorologist Jim Cantore. “This truly is something else of a hurricane.”

X/NHC_Atlantic

Meanwhile, another tropical storm, named Chris, formed in the Gulf of Mexico. Chris is the third named storm of the Atlantic season, and is also way ahead of schedule: “On average, the 3rd Atlantic named storm forms on August 3rd,” said Philip Klotzbach, a meteorologist with Colorado State University.

2. SCOTUS strikes down Chevron, curtailing agencies’ authority

In case you (somehow) missed it: On Friday, the Supreme Court struck down a 40-year-old precedent that deferred to agencies’ interpretations of their own mandates where the statutory guidance was incomplete or ambiguous, otherwise known as Chevron deference. The ruling could kneecap federal agencies in their ability to regulate everything from air and water quality to cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. “The impact will be enormous,” Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, toldBloomberg. “By paralyzing federal agencies and inviting lawsuits against the rules these agencies implement, this decision will profoundly undermine bedrock laws like the Clean Air Act that are meant to protect public health.”

3. Climate group calls for Biden to step aside

After a pretty dismal performance at last week’s debate, President Biden has been trying to reassure donors and voters that he remains the best person to run on the Democratic ticket in the 2024 presidential election. According toThe New York Times, his campaign has a call scheduled for today with its national finance committee to “calm nerves and take temperatures.” At least one prominent climate group, Climate Defiance, is urging Biden to step aside for the sake of the climate, E&E Newsreported. “Defeating Trump and Trumpism is existentially important for our climate and our democracy,” the group’s founder and executive director, Michael Greenberg, said Friday. “President Biden is not up for the job.” Biden’s family is reportedly urging him to stay in the race. All eyes will be on any post-debate polls that come out this week. One new CBS News/YouGov poll shows sentiment is growing among Democratic voters for Biden to step aside.

4. Walmart Canada gets Nikola’s hydrogen semi truck

Walmart Canada has become the first major retailer in North America to get a hydrogen fuel cell-powered semi truck. The truck, a Nikola HFCEV Class 8, has a range of nearly 500 miles and will avoid about 100 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually when compared to a traditional semi truck. Reutersreported that major retailers including Walmart and Pepsi had been eyeing Tesla’s electric semi trucks, but became frustrated by delays and have started turning to Tesla’s rivals in the quest to curb emissions across their fleets.

Nikola Motor

5. Data centers in space? EU-funded study says it’s possible.

Data centers are becoming a climate problem. As demand for artificial intelligence grows, these centers are using up huge amounts of energy and putting emissions targets at risk. But what if we put the data centers in space? That’s the suggestion that emerged from a study from a European space company and funded by the EU. The research concluded that not only would putting data centers in space be more sustainable, it could be lucrative, producing a large return on investment. The data centers would be solar powered and would not need to be cooled by water. But the study also found that, in order for these data centers to have a real emissions impact, they’d need to be launched using a yet-to-be-developed “eco-launcher” that produces less carbon dioxide. The EU’s goal is to have this launcher up and running by 2035 and start putting data center “building blocks” into space in 2036.

THE KICKER

Last Wednesday marked the first time in 469 days that global sea surface temperatures did not set a new daily record.

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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