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Podcast

Introducing Shift Key, a New Climate Podcast from Heatmap News

Hosted by me and Princeton University Professor Jesse Jenkins.

Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins.
Heatmap Illustration

I have some exciting news this morning: Heatmap is launching its first podcast.

It’s called Shift Key, and it’s hosted by me and Professor Jesse Jenkins, an expert on energy systems engineering at Princeton University.

Here’s the idea of Shift Key: It’s going to be like listening in on a call between Jesse and me every week. We want to bring you the most interesting conversation about climate change and decarbonization that you’ll hear each week.

Follow us right now at Apple Podcasts or on Spotify.

You’ve almost certainly seen Jesse’s work on Heatmap or heard him on another podcast before. He’s one of the country’s most important experts on decarbonization and his research helped inform the Inflation Reduction Act.

And while you are probably familiar with my work here at Heatmap, you may not know I’ve been covering climate change since 2015.

The founding idea of Shift Key — and something that Jesse and I agree on — is that the energy transition and climate change are not niche topics, and they’re not something happening hypothetically in the future.

Decarbonization and the shift away from fossil fuels are happening now — and it impacts everything from Main Street to Wall Street, from domestic politics to geopolitics. It is profoundly reordering the economy, public health, and consumer decisions.

So subscribe to Shift Key now at Apple Podcasts and listen to our teaser below. Our first episode will come out later this week.

Thanks as always for your support — and thank you for listening.

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Air conditioners in Spain.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

There is a heat wave in Europe, the world’s fastest warming continent. And so, as you may have heard, a perennial topic of online climate discourse has returned: Why don’t more Europeans have air conditioning?

I’m partially convinced this is psy op, or at least a figment of how social media organizes attention. I have a hypothesis that various “For You” page algorithms, especially that of the social network X, began to reward content that performed unusually well across national borders a few years ago. Since then, the amount of America vs. Europe content has surged. (Of course, writers have been comparing American and European lifestyles for much longer than that.)

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The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Virginia Beach, Virginia – The right-wing interest group lawsuit against Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind is now dead, concluding one of the wackier tales of the Trump 2.0 energy era.

  • In case you may have forgotten, conservative activists – including climate denial organization the Heartland Institute – sued the federal government in 2024 to strike down the permits for the Virginia offshore wind project arguing that it didn’t take into account impacts on North Atlantic right whales. The lawsuit played into misinformed public fears that offshore wind was killing lots of endangered whales.
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