Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Climate

America’s Shrinking Climate Financing Footprint

On energy transition funds, disappearing butterflies, and Tesla’s stock slump

America’s Shrinking Climate Financing Footprint
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Australians have been told to prepare for the worst ahead of Cyclone Alfred, and 100,000 people are already without power • Argentina’s Buenos Aires province has been hit by deadly flooding • Critical fire conditions will persist across much of west Texas through Saturday.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump administration questions aid programs about their climate ambitions

Many foreign aid programs have reportedly received a questionnaire from the Trump administration that they must complete as part of a review, presumably to help the government decide whether or not the groups should receive any more federal funds. One of the questions on the list, according toThe New York Times, is: “Can you confirm this is not a climate or ‘environmental justice’ project or include such elements?” Another asks if the project will “directly impact efforts to strengthen U.S. supply chains or secure rare earth minerals?” President Trump issued an executive order freezing foreign aid on his first day back in office. The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that aid must be released. The Times notes that “many of the projects under scrutiny have already fired their staff and closed their doors, because they have received no federal funds since the review process ostensibly began. … Within some organizations, there are no staff members left to complete the survey.”

2. U.S. leaves global climate financing program

The United States has withdrawn from a global financing program aimed at helping poorer nations ditch fossil fuels and shift to clean energy. A spokesperson from the Treasury Department said the Just Energy Transition Partnership does not align with President Trump’s vision of American economic and environmental values. The program was launched in 2021 and has 10 donor nations, including many European countries. Its first beneficiaries were Indonesia, Senegal, South Africa, and Vietnam. The U.S. had committed more than $3 billion to Indonesia and Vietnam and nearly $2 billion to South Africa under the initiative. “The U.S. withdrawal is regrettable,” said Rachel Kyte, the U.K.’s climate envoy. “The rest of the world moves on.” In January, the Trump administration canceled $4 billion in pledges to the Green Climate Fund. “We have to plan for a world where the U.S. is not transfusing funds into the green transition,” Kyte added.

3. Study finds ‘catastrophic’ drop in U.S. butterfly populations

Butterfly populations in the U.S. are rapidly declining due to a combination of climate change, habitat loss, and pesticide exposure, according to a “catastrophic and saddening” new study published in the journal Science. “Butterflies are vanishing from the face of the earth,” one of the study’s co-authors told The Washington Post. The research analyzed data from 77,000 butterfly surveys and found that butterfly numbers have fallen by 22% in just 20 years across the entire country. Of the 342 butterfly species that could be analyzed for trends, 107 plummeted by more than 50% and 22 by more than 90%. Just nine species saw their numbers rise. The researchers say these numbers are likely an underestimate.

The findings underscore the crisis facing all the small, underappreciated insects that pollinate flowers and crops, control pests, maintain soil health, and play a vital role in the food chain. According to the World Wildlife Fund, up to 40% of the world’s insect species may disappear by the end of the century. The study’s lead author, ecologist Collin Edwards, said there is some hope. “Butterflies have fast life cycles,” he said. “At least one generation per year, often two or three. And each of those generations lays a ton of eggs. This means that if we make the world a more hospitable place for butterflies, butterfly species have the capacity to respond very quickly and take advantage of all our efforts.”

4. Congress can’t touch California’s clean air waiver, key federal office says

The Government Accountability Office yesterday said that Congress can’t review (or repeal) the Environmental Protection Agency’s waiver that lets California set its own vehicle emissions standards. The decision derails plans being spearheaded by Republicans and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to use the congressional review process to overturn the waiver. California’s aggressive emissions standards, which have been adopted by many other states, would effectively end the sale of fully gas-powered cars by 2035. Republicans are mulling their next move.

5. Tesla’s post-election stock bump has vaporized

Tesla’s stock price has been taking a beating as resentment grows around CEO Elon Musk’s political meddling. The company’s valuation soared from around $800 billion to $1.5 trillion in December, when it became clear Musk would become the president-elect’s right hand man. Since that moment, the company’s value has fallen by more than $600 million, effectively erasing the bump in Tesla’s market cap. Shares fell by 5.6% yesterday alone, and sales are cratering abroad and in key U.S. markets like California.

Yahoo Finance

As Andrew Moseman explains for Heatmap, a big drop in sales could be a double-whammy for Tesla revenue. “Recall that the company’s most reliable revenue stream is not really its sales of electric cars, but rather the carbon credits generated by those EVs under California’s auto emissions regulatory scheme, which it can sell to other automakers who’ve yet to meet their emissions targets,” Moseman says. “Tesla’s tumbling sales in the wake of Musk’s antics could reduce the amount of credits it could sell to others, since the credits are tied to sales of low-emissions vehicles.” There was more bad news for Musk today: A SpaceX Starship rocket exploded during a test flight, sending flaming debris flying across a large area and disrupting air traffic in Florida.

THE KICKER

A new report shows that a year after London expanded its low-emissions zone, air quality in the city has improved, with nitrogen dioxide levels across 2024 down significantly:

bsky/london.gov.uk

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Economy

Tariffs Will Flatten the U.S. Bicycle Industry

Businesses were already bracing for a crash. Then came another 50% tariff on Chinese goods.

An e-bike and money.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

When I wrote Heatmap’s guide to driving less last year, I didn’t anticipate that a good motivation for doing so would be that every car in America was about to get a lot more expensive.

Then again, no one saw the breadth and depth of the Trump administration’s tariffs coming. “We would characterize this slate of tariffs as ‘worse than the worst case scenario,’” one group of veteran securities analysts wrote in a note to investors last week, a sentiment echoed across Wall Street and reflected in four days of stock market turmoil so far.

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Economy

Tariffs Are Making Gas Cheaper — But Not Cheap Enough

Any household savings will barely make a dent in the added costs from Trump’s many tariffs.

A gas station.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Donald Trump’s tariffs — the “fentanyl” levies on Canada, China, and Mexico, the “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly every country (and some uninhabited islands), and the global 10% tariff — will almost certainly cause consumer goods on average to get more expensive. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that in combination, the tariffs Trump has announced so far in his second term will cause prices to rise 2.3%, reducing purchasing power by $3,800 per year per household.

But there’s one very important consumer good that seems due to decline in price.

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Electric Vehicles

There Has Never Been a Better Time for EV Battery Swapping

With cars about to get more expensive, it might be time to start tinkering.

A battery with wheels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

More than a decade ago, when I was a young editor at Popular Mechanics, we got a Nissan Leaf. It was a big deal. The magazine had always kept long-term test cars to give readers a full report of how they drove over weeks and months. A true test of the first true production electric vehicle from a major car company felt like a watershed moment: The future was finally beginning. They even installed a destination charger in the basement of the Hearst Corporation’s Manhattan skyscraper.

That Leaf was a bit of a lump, aesthetically and mechanically. It looked like a potato, got about 100 miles of range, and delivered only 110 horsepower or so via its electric motors. This made the O.G. Leaf a scapegoat for Top Gear-style car enthusiasts eager to slander EVs as low-testosterone automobiles of the meek, forced upon an unwilling population of drivers. Once the rise of Tesla in the 2010s had smashed that paradigm and led lots of people to see electric vehicles as sexy and powerful, the original Leaf faded from the public imagination, a relic of the earliest days of the new EV revolution.

Keep reading...Show less
Green