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Don’t let the political process intimidate you.
Driving less has a lot of benefits. You’ll be healthier than your vehicle-bound peers, about a third of whom don’t walk for more than 10 minutes a week. You’ll cut carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane emissions. In the process, you’ll probably realize how awful America’s public and active transportation infrastructure is — and may want to do something about it.
The same goes for just about any action you’ll find in Heatmap’s guide to decarbonizing your life. Should it be easier to get a permit to install rooftop solar panels? For sure. Should there be more public chargers to support EV adoption in your community? Without a doubt.
It can be especially overwhelming to think about getting involved in your local political processes when it comes to mobility because the cards are stacked so heavily in drivers’ favor. But it’s far from impossible. Here’s Heatmap’s guide to advocating for better transportation options and infrastructure in your community.
This might be the hardest step of all. To take transportation as an example, most American cities and towns were literally constructed to get drivers from point A to point B as fast as possible — meaning that their design is often actively hostile to anyone who wants to walk, bike, or take mass transit instead. If you put your mind to it, you could probably devise a dozen ways to make your immediate neighborhood friendlier to carless commuters.
Transportation for America’s transit advocate guide has several suggested starting places, including advocating for additional late-night service on a particular bus route, improving access to transit stations or stops (known as first- or last-mile connectivity), and pushing for shuttle services to connect riders with jobs. Petitioning for something like a bike lane, new sidewalk, safer intersections, or a missing crosswalk is another good place to start.
“Focus on one individual project,” Alexa Sledge, the communications director at Transportation Alternatives, a New York City nonprofit promoting non-polluting, safe, and quiet travel, told me. Being clear and focused on what you want — and, importantly, not getting overwhelmed or pulled in multiple directions — will help you achieve your goal. Strong Towns, a nonprofit that supports transportation advocates, calls this step the “humble observation:” identifying where people are struggling in your community and zeroing in on the smallest first possible step to help.
Here’s the excellent news: You aren’t in this fight alone.
Pretty much every major city and metropolitan region in the U.S. has its own transportation advocacy group these days, and you’re potentially just a Google search away from locating yours. (If you can’t find a transportation-specific group, look into local climate or pedestrian organizations, which frequently have overlapping objectives.)
It’s important to link up with others not just because they might already have identified priority projects in your area. Advocating for structural change requires, by definition, allies — and unfortunately, car-centricity is so dominant that transit advocates are often forced to prove the obvious community benefits of things like better bus routes or protected bike lanes.
If you don’t live in an area with an active transit group, nationwide organizations like Transportation for America and Strong Towns can connect with to get the tools, resources, training, and advice you need to start gathering allies.
How do I change a zoning law? Or weigh in on a renewable energy project near me?
Maybe you’re reading this guide because you’re interested in advocating climate-conscious zoning reform or want to weigh in on a wind farm nearby. There is a “profound diversity” of processes to do so from municipality to municipality, and no one-size-fits-all approach. That’s why it’s extra important to get involved with a local advocacy group; veteran organizers in your area can help you navigate the labyrinthine processes of your specific local government.
That said, here are a few things to keep your eyes peeled for:
There is an old urban planning joke about how traffic woes could be fixed by adding just one more lane. (They can’t be). Alas, this is also something of a federal policy; even though the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law set aside $36 billion to “transform our transportation system,” many states used their flexible funds for things like widening roads. Mass and active transit are often only an afterthought when it comes to funding: the Capital Investment Grants Program, one of the most significant federal programs for transit, is on the chopping block every budget-writing session, and programs like the Highway Trust Fund puts as little as 13% toward mass transit.
It’s our elected officials who make these decisions, though — and it’s their job to listen to their constituents. Here’s a handy page for determining the relevant senators and representatives to contact about federal funding for transit and active mobility policies; for local projects, you’ll want to reach out to your city council members, whose names and email addresses or phone numbers you should be able to find on your city website. And if you feel you’re getting brushed off by city staff when you reach out, focus on the smallest possible steps forward and be persistent (you can learn more strategies here).
The truth is, most people don’t go to their city council meetings. “When you really get down to the local level, there often aren’t as many people fighting, so you really can make a big difference,” Sledge said. Speaking up at hearings, town halls, public comment periods, or city council meetings can result in significant change and progress.
But let’s face it: Because most of us don’t have experience in local activism, telling someone to “go to a city council meeting” is much easier said than done. “The thing to remember is that your city council members work for you,” Sledge said. “They are elected members of your government, and you vote for them, and they are paid with taxpayer money. It’s part of their job to listen to you.”
Doug Gordon, the cohost of The War on Cars, a podcast about the fight against car culture, also suggested taking some of the pressure off yourself. “Don’t feel like you have to give the rousing patriotic speech in defense of the neighborhood bike lane,” he told me. “Just go and listen, and maybe if all that’s asked of you is to raise your hand when they ask how many people support this project, and that’s all you do, great.”
You don’t necessarily need to show up at a town council meeting or a representative’s office, either. Sledge suggested taking smaller steps like a phone call or email, or even just talking to people in your immediate community (for example, if you want a crosswalk outside your kid’s school, start by talking to the school board or other parents). When approaching someone like your city counselor, use language like: “This crosswalk is really important to me. How do I get this done?”
1. Depending on the project you’re pursuing, look up when your local transportation authority is inviting public comments ( here’s an example of what that page looks like in New York City). You can also search for when your state is holding public transportation hearings (here’s what Oklahoma’s looks like) and contact the relevant representatives to express your views. Most likely, though, you’ll be looking for your town’s public meeting schedule (here’s an example of San Jose’s) and seeking a special session related to transportation or a regular business meeting. Virtual hearings have also been common since the pandemic.
2. Research beforehand to learn how to comment publicly in your city or town. This may involve signing up on the town’s website or on a sign-in sheet when you arrive at the hearing.
3. In most cases, during the public comment portion of the city council meeting, you can address the council on any public issue (it does not have to be on the agenda). Again, check your city or town’s website to learn the specifics of procedures. Also, be aware of the time limit for your comments; generally, you’ll have about three minutes.
When you’re called on:
During your comment, you will probably see a timer somewhere in the room to help you track how long you have left to speak. The best comments are short and concise. Even if you’re frustrated with the process, be polite; remember that your comment can be seen and cited by anyone, including the media. Speak slowly. Here’s a guide for making an effective public comment from the National Resources Defense Council, with a sample script.
“If changing the system was easy,” writes Strong Towns, “we’d have done it long ago.” Many campaigns take years to come to fruition — being persistent and building a consensus, so advocates are working together toward the same cause, are two of the biggest lessons for success that Transportation for America stresses in their case studies.
It may take getting creative. Join the greater transportation advocacy community; listen to relevant podcasts, read related books, watch relevant YouTube videos, and learn from other campaigns. “You need a website, you need a public petition, and you need a T-shirt, because otherwise you’re just somebody with an opinion,” Rob Goodspeed, a founder of Trains Not Lanes, which successfully convinced Michigan’s Department of Transportation to drop highway expansion plans, told Streetsblog.
And when you do finallysucceed? Celebrate. Promote it. Share your lessons with other organizers. Then identify a new project and begin again.
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On the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Canada’s new prime minister, and CERAWeek
Current conditions: Firefighters successfully controlled brush fires in Long Island that prompted New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to declare a state of emergency • Brisbane, Australia, recorded its wettest day in more than 50 years • Forecasters are keeping an eye on a storm system developing across the central U.S. that could pack a serious punch this week.
The nonprofit Climate United filed a lawsuit over the weekend against the Environmental Protection Agency and Citibank for withholding $7 billion in climate funds awarded as part of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. The move escalates a dispute over some $20 billion in grants from the IRA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was designed to help mobilize private capital toward clean energy and climate solutions. President Trump’s EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has been on a mission to claw back the funds, claiming their distribution was rushed and mismanaged. In its lawsuit, Climate United says it has been unable to access the $7 billion it was awarded, and that the EPA and Citibank have given no explanation for this. It wants a judge to order that the money be released. “We’re not trying to make a political statement here,” Beth Bafford, chief executive of Climate United, toldThe New York Times. “This is about math for homeowners, for truck drivers, for public schools — we know that accessing clean energy saves them money that they can use on far more important things.” The Trump administration has reportedly demanded that the eight organizations tapped to receive the money turn over records to the FBI and appear in federal court later this month.
Canada’s Liberal Party has elected Mark Carney, a net-zero finance advocate, to succeed Justin Trudeau as prime minister. Carney is not a career politician. Instead, he comes from the financial world, having overseen both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, and is an evangelist for green investment and a net-zero financial sector. He was the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance in 2019, and “has made clean energy, climate policies and economic prosperity for Canada some of the central facets of his campaign,” CNN reported. If he wins the upcoming general election, Carney will be tasked with navigating President Trump’s tariffs and making key decisions about the future of Canada’s vast natural resources, including fossil fuels and rare minerals.
The U.S. has withdrawn from yet another global climate initiative, this one aimed at helping developing nations recover from natural disasters. The United Nations loss and damage fund was one of the biggest wins to come out of COP28 in 2023, with nearly 200 countries signing on in support. It’s expected to start funding projects this year. About $740 million has been pledged so far, and the U.S. has said it will give about $17.5 million, though it’s unclear if that money will actually be handed over now. “This decision, made by the nation with the largest historical responsibility for climate change, jeopardises vital support for vulnerable countries facing irreversible climate impacts,” said Ali Mohamed, the chair of the African Group of Negotiators.
The energy industry descends on Houston, Texas, this week, for the annual CERAWeek conference. This year’s event, titled “Moving Ahead: Energy Strategies for a Complex World,” will focus on the changing global energy landscape. Key themes include shifting regulations, the turbulent oil and gas market, electrification and power demand, the rise of AI, managing emissions, and the policy outlook for renewables. According toReuters energy columnist Ron Bousso, fossil fuel executives are going into the conference with a case of “Trump buyer’s remorse” as new tariffs and geopolitical policies from the Trump administration have “created turmoil in financial markets and clouded the outlook for the global economy and energy prices.”
Argentina will observe three days of national mourning after 16 people were killed in flash flooding over the weekend triggered by unprecedented rainfall. Nearly a year’s worth of rain – about 16 inches – fell in just eight hours in the port city of Bahia Blanca in the Buenos Aires province. Many people are still missing. Environment official Andrea Dufourg said the event was a clear example of climate change. “Unfortunately this will continue to take place,” Dufourg said. “We have no other option than to prepare cities, educate citizens, and establish effective early warning systems.”
Twenty-one House Republicans have signed a letter urging the GOP to uphold the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy tax credits in their budget bill, warning that gutting the credits would “risk sparking an energy crisis in our country, resulting in drastically higher power bills for American families.” That’s three more than signed a similar letter during the last Congress.
While they’re getting more accurate all the time, they still rely on data from traditional models — and possibly always will.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has had a bruising few weeks. Deep staffing cuts at the hands of Elon Musk’s efficiency crusaders have led to concerns regarding the potential closure of facilities critical to data-gathering and weather-forecasting operations. Meteorologists have warned that this could put lives at risk, while industries that rely on trustworthy, publicly available weather data — from insurance to fishing, shipping, and agriculture — are bracing for impact. While reliable numbers are difficult to come by, the agency appears to have lost on the order of 7% to 10% of its workforce, or more than 1,000 employees. NOAA’s former deputy director, Andrew Rosenberg, wrote that Musk plans to lay off 50% of the agency, while slashing its budget by 30%.
Will that actually happen? Who the heck knows. But what we can look at are the small cracks that are already emerging, and who could step in to fill that void.
One thing that’s certain is that the National Weather Service, a division of NOAA, announced last week that it is suspending operations at a weather balloon launch site in Alaska, due to staffing shortages. The data gathered at this remote outpost helped inform the agency’s weather forecasts, which are relied upon by hundreds of millions of people, as well as many of the world’s largest companies and public agencies.
Perhaps to Musk’s department, this looks like a prime opportunity for the private sector to step up and demonstrate some nimble data gathering prowess — and indeed a startup that I’ve covered before, WindBorne, has already offered its services. The company, which makes advanced weather balloons, has offered to provide NOAA with data from its own Alaska launches for six months, at no cost. WindBorne is also one of a number of private companies creating AI-based weather models that have outperformed NOAA’s traditional, physics-based models on key metrics such as temperature, wind speed and direction, precipitation, humidity, and pressure.
All this raises the question, though, of what kind of role the private sector could and should play in the weather forecasting space overall. If the architects of Project 2025 have their way, NOAA would be “broken up and downsized,” and its National Weather Service division would “fully commercialize its forecasting operations.” If the Trump administration achieves these goals, “the Weather Service would cease to function in a way that it could meet its mandate to protect American life and property,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, told me.
But given that heavyweights like Google, Huawei, and Nvidia are already in the AI-based weather prediction game, along with startups such as WindBorne and Brightband, which is making weather predictions tailored to the needs of specific industries such as insurance, agriculture, or transportation, it wasn’t clear to me whether, if NOAA were to crumble, the accuracy of weather forecasts necessarily would, too. I thought that perhaps Musk, the White House’s most notorious AI enthusiast, might be thinking the same thing. So I asked around.
“There’s actually a very good argument that I think would be very uncontroversial to expand the role of the private sector, even to offload certain parts of the workflow to the private sector,” Swain told me, with regards to NOAA and its adoption — or lack thereof — of AI-based weather forecasting. But what nobody wanted was to get rid of free, publicly available government forecasts completely.
“I don’t want to have to figure out what company to trust. I just want to be able to go and open the National Weather Service and know what’s going on,” John Dean, the CEO and co-founder of WindBorne, told me.
Julian Green, the CEO and co-founder of Brightband, agreed. “The government doesn’t just forecast the weather, but it gives people alerts. And there’s regulation around whether [it tells you that] you should evacuate, or shut your factory down, or so on.” It’s not hard to imagine the ethical quandaries that could arise from a private company with a profit motive deciding who can access potentially life-saving forecasts, and for how much.
WindBorne’s and Brightband’s AI models, as well as those from tech giants such as Google, are significantly less computationally intensive to operate than those from NOAA or the other leading weather forecasting agency, the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. These traditional models rely on supercomputers crunching complicated atmospheric equations based on the laws of physics to make their predictions.
But this doesn’t mean the physics-based models are getting replaced by AI now, or potentially ever. Government data and traditional forecasts still make up the backbone of advanced AIs, which are trained on decades of data largely gathered by NOAA satellites, weather balloons, and radar systems, and then interpreted through the lens of standard physics-based models. After training is complete, the AI models can predict what weather patterns will develop, much like ChatGPT predicts the next word in a sequence, but only after being fed a snapshot of initial weather conditions — also pulled from traditional physics-based models.
Essentially, these AI forecasts are built on the backs of the giants, and while their outcomes are hugely promising, they could not exist without that solid foundation. While one day, it might be possible to operate AI forecasting models without relying on traditional models, Dean and Green told me that physics-based models might always be critical for training the AI. So while their companies’ respective models have yielded impressive results, both Dean and Green nixed the idea that their companies could wholly replace the predictions made by the National Weather Service.
All of this is in flux of course, but as Green put it to me in an email, “a good mechanic doesn't throw away good older tools just because you get new tools.” Plus, as Dean explained, there are still conditions under which physics-based models tend to outperform AI, such as “really small-scale and high-res phenomena — let’s say convective events, let’s say severe thunderstorms in the Plains, or tornado formation.”
Even Project 2025’s authors point out that private industry forecasters rely on publicly available NOAA data, though it doesn’t make any reference to AI models or physics models. The document simply says that the agency “should focus on its data-gathering services” and the “efficient delivery of accurate, timely, and unbiased data to the public and to the private sector.”
There are also questions around whether AI models, trained on data from the past, will be able to predict the types of unusual and extreme weather events that are becoming more and more common in a warming world, Swain told me. “Does it fully capture those?” he asked. “There’s a lot of evidence that the answer is no.”
Lastly, NOAA’s weather model, the Global Forecast System, is simply measuring much more than the AI models do today. “It predicts so many different phenomena, like different types of snow, hail, mixing ratios, turbulence,” Dean said. “We’re building up over time to add more and more variables. But for both WindBorne and other models, it’s not the same currently as what GFS does.”
So while the Heritage Foundation might want to delegate all forecasting responsibilities to private companies, the vision I heard from the startups I talked to looked more like a mutually beneficial arrangement than the full commercialization of weather prediction, or even a clean division of labor. “It’s not privatized weather, it’s a public-private partnership,” Dean said of his ideal future, “where you get freely available forecasts from a public institution like NOAA, but they work with our industry to iterate faster and to drive more innovation.”
What everyone seems to want is simply for the government to forecast better, and today that means moving quickly to build AI-based models. NOAA has taken some steps forward, prototyping some models, bolstering its computing capabilities, and even recently partnering with Brightband to optimize its observational data to train AI models. But it remains behind other agencies in this regard. “The Chinese government and the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts have done a far better job at adopting AI-based weather forecasts than NOAA has,” Dean told me. “So something does need to change at NOAA to get them to move faster.”
Indiscriminately laying off hundreds of the agency’s employees may not be the best place to start. But if there’s anything we know Musk loves, it’s AI and private sector ingenuity. So maybe, just maybe, this administration will be able to forge the kind of partnerships that can supercharge federal forecasting, while keeping NOAA’s weather predictions free and open for all. Or maybe we’ll all just be paying the big bucks to figure out when a hurricane is going to hit.
On energy transition funds, disappearing butterflies, and Tesla’s stock slump
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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: