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You can turn even the wonkiest policy into a culture war issue if you try hard enough.
“We need a leader,” said JD Vance as he accepted the Republican nomination for vice president, “who rejects Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Green New Scam and fights to bring back our great American factories.” The election, he said, is “about the auto worker in Michigan, wondering why out-of-touch politicians are destroying their jobs,” and “the energy worker in Pennsylvania and Ohio who doesn’t understand why Joe Biden is willing to buy energy from tinpot dictators across the world, when he could buy it from his own citizens right here in our own country.”
This is the tale Vance tells about energy and climate — one of contempt and betrayal, elitists sacrificing hard-working blue-collar Americans on the altar of their alien schemes. On the surface it may sound like it’s about jobs and economics, but it’s really about the eternal culture war that divides us from them.
This is nothing new. Maintaining this artificial division between environmental and economic concerns is central to the effort to protect the fossil fuel industry, and has been for decades. Voters must be convinced that any attempt to do something about climate change is not just unserious but an assault on virtuous working people waged from Washington and other places controlled by the snobbish liberal elite.
The argument plays on beliefs about environmentalism that go back decades. Beginning in the 1970s, a group of political scientists led by Ronald Inglehart drew attention to a change in public opinion in advanced societies around the world, as “post-materialist values” based on autonomy and self-expression grew in political prominence. The generations that grew up after World War II, they argued, were less focused on material scarcity and more concerned with issues like abortion, equal rights for women and minority groups, and the environment.
The idea that environmental concerns were separate from economics — that they are fundamentally cultural and not material — has always been used by the right to discredit environmentalism and those who advocate for it. As George H.W. Bush said about Al Gore in 1992 when Gore’s warnings about climate change were considered a little wacky, “This guy is so far off in the environmental extreme, we’ll be up to our neck in owls and out of work for every American.”
Since then, the problem has only gotten worse. But the solutions have also gotten more real.
In Vance’s home state, for instance, an “energy worker” is much more likely to be working in green energy than fossil fuels; as Semafor recently noted, “Clean energy-related companies now employ about 114,000 people in Ohio, compared to 71,000 working in oil and gas.” The state is enjoying something of a solar boom, as well as a significant increase in production of batteries that will power the electric vehicles Vance and his running mate despise. The “great American factories” Vance celebrates apparently don’t include projects like the joint LG-Honda battery plant in Jeffersonville, an hour’s drive from his home town of Middletown, which will complete construction later this year and is slated to employ 2,200 of his constituents.
But in the picture painted by Trump, Vance, and others running on the anti-anti-climate change agenda, there is essentially no such thing as a green job; efforts to lower emissions have only costs and no benefits. And the cost is not just to our economy but to our spirit, making us impotent and weak. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who may well become Secretary of Energy if Trump wins, began his convention speech with a call-and-response to the audience. “Who will make America energy dominant?” he asked three times, to which the audience responded, “Donald Trump!” “Energy dominant” has replaced “energy independent” as the goal for the Trump-era GOP, not surprising given that dominance and submission is one of the central themes of Trump’s life.
“Energy dominance” isn’t so much a practical state of affairs as a feeling, the sense that our heads are held high and others grovel before us, whether that has any relation to reality or not. After all, under Joe Biden the country is about as energy dominant as it could be, and not always for the best. America is not only producing more oil than any country in the world, it’s producing more than any country in human history. We’re also the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas.
Yet according to Burgum, the next four years will bring either an apocalypse of enfeeblement as we huddle together in darkness or an explosion of manly strength, depending on which president we elect. “Imagine: no electricity for your fridge, your lights or air conditioning,” he warned. “President Trump will ensure there’s power for you, and importantly, that we have the power as the United States to beat China in the AI arms race.” You can almost feel the power Trump will give you, like a steroid shot to the national soul — or a dose of something even more potent. “Teddy Roosevelt encouraged America to speak softly and carry a big stick,” Burgum went on. “Energy dominance will be the big stick that President Trump will carry.” To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a stick is just a stick — but not this time, I think.
All that was no doubt music to the ears of the American Petroleum Institute, one of the convention’s sponsors, as well as both Trump and Vance, who has introduced a bill to repeal the EV subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act and replace them with subsidies for internal combustion vehicles. “The whole EV thing is a scam,” Vance has said.
In other words: Don’t be fooled when Democrats tell you that climate change is an economic threat and that transitioning to a green economy will actually increase prosperity. All you need to know is that the “Green New Scam” is being imposed by the people you hate.
Those resisting climate action would prefer that voters continue to see it as solely a cultural issue, as though the environmental conversation were still confined to beautifying highways and picking up litter, something we can set aside with no material cost. But the truth is that culture and economics are entwined, and always have been. The Republicans who took the stage in Milwaukee to rail against green energy and present themselves as the protectors of the working class understand that only too well.
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On the Chevy Bolt’s return, China’s rare earth crackdown, and Nestle’s spoiled climate push
Current conditions: A possible nor’easter is barreling toward New York City with this weekend with heavy rain, flooding, and winds of up to 50 miles per hour • While Hurricane Priscilla has weakened to a tropical storm, it’s still battering Baja California with winds of up to 70 miles per hour • A heatwave in Iran is raising temperatures so much that even elevations of more than 6,500 feet are nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Bureau of Land Management has canceled Nevada’s largest solar megaproject, Esmeralda 7, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman scooped late Thursday. The sprawling network of panels and batteries in the state’s western desert was set to produce a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power — equal to nearly all the power supplied to the southern part of the state by the state’s main public utility. At maximum output, the project could have churned out more power than the country’s largest nuclear plant, the nearly 5 gigawatts from Plant Vogtle’s four reactors in Georgia, and just under the nearly 7.1-gigawatt Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam in Washington, the nation’s most powerful electrical station. It would have been one of the largest solar projects in the world.
Backed by NextEra Energy, Invenergy, ConnectGen, and other renewables developers, the project was moving forward at what Jael called “a relatively smooth pace under the Biden administration, albeit with significant concerns raised by environmentalists about its impacts on wildlife and fauna.” The solar farm notched a rare procedural win in the early days of the Trump administration when the Bureau of Land Management advanced its draft environmental impact statement. When the environmental review came out, BLM said the record of decision would arrive in July. “But that never happened,” Jael wrote. Instead, as part of a deal with conservative harderliners in Congress to pass his tax megabill, Trump issued an executive order that, among other actions aimed at curtailing renewables development, directed the Department of the Interior to review its policies toward wind and solar. A series of departmental orders followed that effectively froze all permitting decisions for solar. Fast forward to today, when Esmeralda 7’s status on the BLM website was changed to “cancelled,” normally an indication that the developers pulled the plug.
The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, a 2.6-gigawatt giant that’s nearly triple the size of the nation’s current largest operating seaborne wind farm, is just six months from coming online, its leadership said. In an August earnings call, Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue said the project would start producing electricity in “early 2026.” But on Thursday, the company told Canary Media’s Clare Fieseler that “first power will occur in Q1 of next year,” and “we are still on schedule to complete by late 2026.” As of the end of last month, Dominion had installed all 176 turbine foundations.
Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has waged what Jael called a “total war on wind power,” halting work on projects that were nearly 80% complete and ordering a half dozen federal agencies to join the effort. But the industry has fought back. Two weeks ago, as I reported in this newsletter, a federal judge lifted the administration’s stop-work order. While Secretary of Energy Chris Wright last month brushed off the targeting of offshore wind as a “one-off complication,” the assault has alarmed even the administration's favored sectors of the energy industry. Earlier this week, Shell’s top executive raised the alarm over what she said could set a precedent that blows back to big oil in the future.
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A fresh jolt for the Bolt. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Elon Musk’s promise to deliver a Tesla for under $30,000 may — as I wrote here yesterday — remains unfulfilled, but one of his biggest rivals is bringing back its popular affordable electric vehicle. General Motors announced on Thursday that it’s rolling out a new line of Chevrolet Bolts in 2027, starting at $29,990 and later introducing a $28,995 model. “The Chevrolet Bolt was the industry’s first affordable mass-market, long-range EV and it commanded one of GM’s most loyal customer bases thanks to its price, versatility and practicality,” Scott Bell, Chevrolet’s global vice president, said in a statement. “After production ended, we heard our customer’s feedback and their love for this product. So the Bolt is coming back — by popular demand and better than ever — for a limited time.” When Chevy discontinued the Bolt in 2023, the car was popular but had some problems, Andrew Moseman wrote Thursday in Heatmap. And while the 2027 Bolt “is virtually indistinguishable from the old car,” he wrote, “what’s inside is a welcome leap forward.” Notably, the new Bolt’s lithium-ion-phosphate battery delivers a max range of 255 miles and can handle a 100% charge without risking long-term damage to the battery’s lifespan.
Though the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles expired last month, it’s morning in America for battery-powered car drivers. The U.S. is adding charging stations at a record clip, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
China’s Commerce Ministry announced a new edict Thursday requiring foreign suppliers to obtain approval from Beijing to export some products with certain rare earths if the metals account for 0.1% of the goods’ total value. Export applications for products with military uses “generally won’t be approved,” The Wall Street Journal reported, and licenses related to semiconductors or artificial intelligence will be granted on a case-by-case basis. “This is a very big deal,” Dean W. Bell, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, wrote in a post on X. “China has asserted sweeping control over the entire global semiconductor supply chain, putting export license requirements on all rare earths used to manufacture advanced chips. If enforced aggressively, this policy could mean ‘lights out’ for the US AI boom, and likely lead to a recession/economic crisis in the US in the short term.” The new restrictions even apply to some lithium batteries and equipment used to make them.
Less than two years ago, Nestle formed an industry alliance with food giants Danone and Kraft Heinz to cut methane emissions from the dairy industry’s hundreds of thousands of suppliers. But last month, Nestle’s logo vanished from the initiative's website. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that the Swiss behemoth had abandoned the effort. “We have decided to discontinue our membership of the Dairy Methane Action Alliance,” a company spokesperson told the newswire.
The exit comes as sustainability executives, academics, and carbon-accounting experts spar over how to measure companies’ emissions in what Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo called an “obscure philosophical battle that could reshape the clean energy economy.” With the Trump administration phasing out wind and solar tax credits next year, Emily wrote, “voluntary action by companies will take on even greater importance in shaping the clean energy transition. While in theory, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol solely develops accounting rules and does not force companies to take any particular action, it’s undeniable that its decisions will set the stage for the next chapter of decarbonization.”
Increasingly extreme weather is driving up insurance costs all over the world, making homes almost impossible to underwrite in fire- or flood-prone places such as California or Florida where climate change is raising recovery costs. But Japan’s largest non-life insurer is taking a different approach than just canceling policies. As the Financial Times reported Thursday, Tokio Marine purchased Integrated Design & Engineering this year for roughly $642 million in a bid to offer the design consultancy’s services to “Japanese companies at risk of landslides, flooding, and natural disasters related to climate change” to upgrade facilities before destruction occurs.
It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.
The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada has been canceled amidst the Trump administration’s federal permitting freeze.
Esmeralda 7 was supposed to produce a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power – equal to nearly all the power supplied to southern Nevada by the state’s primary public utility. It would do so with a sprawling web of solar panels and batteries across the western Nevada desert. Backed by NextEra Energy, Invenergy, ConnectGen and other renewables developers, the project was moving forward at a relatively smooth pace under the Biden administration, albeit with significant concerns raised by environmentalists about its impacts on wildlife and fauna. And Esmeralda 7 even received a rare procedural win in the early days of the Trump administration when the Bureau of Land Management released the draft environmental impact statement for the project.
When Esmeralda 7’s environmental review was released, BLM said the record of decision would arrive in July. But that never happened. Instead, Donald Trump issued an executive order as part of a deal with conservative hardliners in Congress to pass his tax megabill, which also effectively repealed the Inflation Reduction Act’s renewable electricity tax credits. This led to subsequent actions by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to freeze all federal permitting decisions for solar energy.
Flash forward to today, when BLM quietly updated its website for Esmeralda 7 permitting to explicitly say the project’s status is “cancelled.” Normally when the agency says this, it means developers pulled the plug.
I’ve reached out to some of the companies behind Esmeralda 7 but was unable to reach them in time for publication. If I hear from them confirming the project is canceled – or that BLM is wrong in some way – I will let you know.
It’s not perfect, but pretty soon, it’ll be available for under $30,000.
Here’s what you need to know about the rejuvenated Chevrolet Bolt: It’s back, it’s better, and it starts at under $30,000.
Although the revived 2027 Bolt doesn’t officially hit the market until January 2026, GM revealed the new version of the iconic affordable EV at a Wednesday evening event at the Universal Studios backlot in Los Angeles. The assembled Bolt owners and media members drove the new cars past Amity Island from Jaws and around the Old West and New York sets that have served as the backdrops of so many television shows and movies. It was star treatment for a car that, like its predecessor, isn’t the fanciest EV around. But given the giveaway patches that read “Chevy Bolt: Back by popular demand,” it’s clear that GM heard the cries of people who missed having the plucky electric hatchback on the market.
The Bolt died at the height of its powers. The original Bolt EV and Bolt EUV sold in big numbers in the late 2010s and early 2020s, powered by a surprisingly affordable price compared to competitor EVs and an interior that didn’t feel cramped despite its size as a smallish hatchback. In 2023, the year Chevy stopped selling it, the Bolt was the third-best-selling EV in America after Tesla’s top two models.
Yet the original had a few major deficiencies that reflected the previous era of EVs. The most egregious of which was its charging speed that topped out at around 50 kilowatts. Given that today’s high-speed chargers can reach 250 to 350 kilowatts — and an even faster future could be on the way — the Bolt’s pit stops on a road trip were a slog that didn’t live up to its peppy name.
Thankfully, Chevy fixed it. Charging speed now reaches 150 kilowatts. While that figure isn’t anywhere near the 350 kilowatts that’s possible in something like the Hyundai Ioniq 9, it’s a threefold improvement for the Bolt that lets it go from 10% to 80% charged in a respectable 26 minutes. The engineers said they drove a quartet of the new cars down old Route 66 from the Kansas City area, where the Bolt is made, to Los Angeles to demonstrate that the EV was finally ready for such an adventure.
From the outside, the 2027 Bolt is virtually indistinguishable from the old car, but what’s inside is a welcome leap forward. New Bolt has a lithium-ion-phosphate, or LFP battery that holds 65 kilowatt-hours of energy, but still delivers 255 miles of max range because of the EV’s relatively light weight. Whereas older EVs encourage drivers to stop refueling at around 80%, the LFP battery can be charged to 100% regularly without the worry of long-term damage to the battery.
The Bolt is GM’s first EV with the NACS charging standard, the former Tesla proprietary plug, which would allow the little Chevy to visit Tesla Superchargers without an adapter (though its port placement on the front of the driver’s side is backwards from the way older Supercharger stations are built). Now built on GM’s Ultium platform, the Bolt shares its 210-horsepower electric motor with the Chevy Equinox EV and gets vehicle-to-load capability, meaning you’ll be able to tap into its battery energy for other uses such as powering your home.
But it’s the price that’s the real wow factor. Bolt will launch with an RS version that gets the fancier visual accents and starts at $32,000. The Bolt LT that will be available a little later will eventually start as low as $28,995, a figure that includes the destination charge that’s typically slapped on top of a car’s price, to the tune of an extra $1,000 to $2,000 on delivery. Perhaps it’s no surprise that GM revealed this car just a week after the end of the $7,500 federal tax credit for EV purchases (and just a day after Tesla announced its budget versions of the Model Y and Model 3). Bringing in a pretty decent EV at under $30,000 without the help of a big tax break is a pretty big deal.
The car is not without compromises. Plenty of Bolt fans are aghast that Chevy abandoned the Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integrations that worked with the first Bolt in favor of GM’s own built-in infotainment system as the only option. Although the new Bolt was based on the longer, “EUV” version of the original, this is still a pretty compact car without a ton of storage space behind the back seats. Still, for those who truly need a bigger vehicle, there’s the Chevy Equinox EV.
For as much time as I’ve spent clamoring for truly affordable EVs that could compete with entry-level gas cars on prices, the Bolt’s faults are minor. At $29,000 for an electric vehicle in the U.S., there is practically zero competition until the new Nissan Leaf arrives. The biggest threats to the Bolt are America’s aversion to small cars and the rapid rates of depreciation that could allow someone to buy a much larger, gently used EV for the price of the new Chevy. But the original Bolt found a steady footing among drivers who wanted that somewhat counter-cultural car — and this one is a lot better.