Current conditions: Ruins of the sunken village of Kallio have emerged from a dried up lake in drought-stricken Greece • AccuWeather reduced its 2024 forecast for the number of named Atlantic storms • It will be hot, humid, and rainy in Beijing today where U.S. climate envoy John Podesta will meet for climate talks with his Chinese counterpart.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Harris campaign reportedly hires a ‘climate engagement director’
Climate activists are pushing Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to be more vocal about climate change on the campaign trail. E&E News reported that Michael Greenberg, founder of Climate Defiance, had a virtual meeting yesterday with a senior Harris advisor. “We want her to oppose fossil-fuel subsidies,” Greenberg told E&E. “We need to rapidly phase out fossil-fuel infrastructure, fossil-fuel use, fossil-fuel exports.” Harris has so far been relatively quiet about the climate crisis, but that might change with the rumored hiring of Camila Thorndike as campaign “climate engagement director.” Thorndike comes from Rewiring America where she was senior director of public engagement, and she also worked on the Inflation Reduction Act as a legislative assistant to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
2. Phoenix hits 100 degrees for 100 days straight
Phoenix, Arizona, recorded its 100th straight day of temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. The hot streak started in late May and is expected to go on for another two weeks. Temperatures this week are forecast to hit 113 by Thursday. At least 150 heat deaths have been recorded this year in the county that encompasses Phoenix, and 440 additional deaths are under investigation, The Washington Postreported. States up and down the West Coast are facing an intense heat wave, with some 26 million under heat warnings. In Oregon, where temperatures usually start to dip this time of year, temperature records could shatter as the mercury reaches 105 degrees in Portland.
Weather.gov
3. Competition from data centers causes trouble for Wyoming DAC project
In case you missed it: Project Bison, a large direct air capture facility proposed for Wyoming, has been put on pause because the company behind it can’t compete with data centers for renewable energy to power its operations. “We’ve seen growing competition for clean power amongst industries that are emerging much faster than anybody would have ever predicted,” CarbonCapture Inc.’s CEO Adrian Corless said in a statement posted on the company’s website. As a result, CarbonCapture is looking for a new home for Project Bison. The company was aiming to reach 5 million metric tons of carbon removal annually by 2030. Last year it was awarded $12.5 million from the Department of Energy to develop the Wyoming Regional DAC Hub. It is looking into whether the DOE will allow it to transfer its application to a new state.
Relatedly, Morgan Stanley released research yesterday that found the data center boom is expected to produce 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions through 2030. Altogether, the pollution produced to power data centers will amount to about 40% of annual U.S. emissions. “This creates a large market for decarbonization solutions,” the report said.
4. Report: Drought in Sicily and Sardinia fueled by climate change
New analysis from the World Weather Attribution found human-caused climate change made the devastating droughts taking place across Sicily and Sardinia twice as likely. Both of the Italian islands are under a state of emergency after a year of low rainfall and persistent heat triggered some of the worst droughts on record. Due to water shortages, the region’s farmers have been forced to sell or slaughter their livestock, and harvests of wheat and olive crops are expected to fall by half. While the region is used to hot and dry conditions, the WWA said this drought is worsened by evapotranspiration, or the evaporation of water from soil and plants. “Sardinia and Sicily are becoming increasingly arid with climate change,” said Mariam Zachariah, a climate and environment researcher at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute. “Searing, long lasting heat is hitting the islands more frequently, evaporating water from soils, plants, and reservoirs.” WWA has linked other recent extreme weather events to climate change, including Typhoon Gaemi, Mexico’s May-June heat wave, and Brazil’s historic floods.
5. Study finds U.S. beef industry could cut emissions by 30% with mitigation practices
New research published in the journal Nature Food investigates how America’s beef producers can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The study produced some interesting insights. For example:
- The U.S. beef industry accounts for about 3.3% of the nation’s total emissions.
- 64% of emissions from the sector are produced during the grazing stage.
- About 30% of the industry’s emissions could be mitigated with the implementation of new practices such as adding trees to grazed lands, managing when and where animals graze to improve plant health, cover cropping, and using methane-reducing feed additives.
THE KICKER
The U.S. now has 192,611 public DC Fast and Level 2 EV charging ports, up from about 95,000 in 2021.
