Current conditions: Conditions in the central Atlantic appear “conducive” to the possible formation of Tropical Storm Francine over Labor Day weekend • A cold front is relieving the more than 20 million Americans who were under a heat alert this week • An “exceptionally rare deluge” could bring rain to parts of the Sahara Desert for the first time on record in August.
THE TOP FIVE
1. BLM finalizes plan to free 31 million acres for solar development
On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management
released its Final Utility-Scale Solar Energy Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and Proposed Resource Management Plan Amendments — a mouthful more commonly known as the Western Solar Plan. The idea is to “drive responsible solar development to locations with fewer potential conflicts while helping the nation transition to a clean energy economy,” BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning said in a statement.
To speed up the approval process of solar projects, the Western Solar Plan identifies 31 million acres of public lands across 11 western states as available for potential development, singling out regions that would bring solar “closer to transmission lines or to previously disturbed lands” and avoid “protected lands, sensitive cultural resources, and important wildlife habitat,” according to the BLM. Individual projects would still need to be authorized through site-specific environmental reviews and public comment periods.
BLM
2. Kamala Harris commits to fracking in first major interview as candidate
CNN’s Dana Bash pressed Kamala Harris on her former opposition to fracking on Thursday night during the candidate’s
first major sit-down with the press since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. Asked if she stood by her 2019 statement that “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” Harris stressed, “As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.” Harris said her “values have not changed” and that “we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate,” but that she has become convinced “we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.”
Harris has had
weak recent poll numbers in Pennsylvania, where the fracking industry employs about 24,000 people, and which could be a deciding factor in the November election. The Trump campaign has seized on her potential weakness there, telling Axios in the aftermath of the interview that Harris “has promised to ban fracking and kill good-paying energy jobs in Pennsylvania and across the heartland.”
3. It’s official: This summer was disgusting
Saturday, August 31, marks the end of meteorological summer (even if real ones know summer doesn’t end
spiritually until next Tuesday and astronomically until the 22nd). And yes, this was another one for the books: Specifically, summer 2024 was the most humid in 85 years of record-keeping, and likely the most humid summer on Earth, as well, The Washington Post reports based on calculations by the climate scientist Brian Brettschneider.
“June 2024 and July 2024 both set records for highest dew point for their respective months,” Brettschneider told the
Post. “I expect August 2024 to be a record too. Summer 2024 should break the record set in summer 2023.” Humidity notably makes extreme heat more dangerous, a process that is accelerating because warmer air caused by climate change can hold more moisture.
4. More than half of Americans would back a permitting reform compromise
Just over half of Americans (52%) would support a bipartisan law that made it easier to build new clean energy projects and benefit some oil and gas development, a new poll by Heatmap has found. “That’s good news for one of the last remaining pieces of environmental policy that Congress could pass under this presidency: a bipartisan proposal from Senators Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that would speed up the process of building climate-friendly infrastructure in exchange for concessions to the oil and gas industry,”
writes Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer.
Though many people polled said they didn’t know enough
about the bill to make a call one way or the other, those who did were largely in favor, including 58% of GOP voters, who were a little more amenable to the compromise than Democrats. “This all suggests that the permitting reform deal could remain largely depoliticized as Congress continues to debate it through the fall,” adds Meyer. “If you were to summarize respondents’ reactions to the survey, it might look like, ‘Sure, whatever, sounds good.’”
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5. August’s extreme heat may be behind youth football deaths
At least seven teenage athletes have died in the U.S. in August during or immediately after football practice, with experts saying extreme heat may be to blame. Three of the deaths — 15-year-old Javion Taylor of central Virginia; 14-year-old Semaj Wilkins of Alabama; and 16-year-old Junior Leslie Noble of Maryland — were linked to heat, while others involved traumatic head injuries. But heat can also increase the risk of brain injuries, Kei Katawa, an assistant professor of clinical neuroscience at Indiana University Bloomington, told NPR. “At that point, your brain [already has] asymptomatic heat exhaustion — pre-heat exhaustion. And then on top of that, you sustain head impact. It has a potential of amplifying head impact effect,” he said. Since 1960, at least 157 football players across all levels of the sport have died of heatstroke, according to The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research.
THE KICKER
A “daring team of three Tesla enthusiasts” is set to embark this week on a six-day, 460-mile round trip journey from Dawson City, Yukon, to the Arctic Ocean … in a Cybertruck. The drive — which is intended to promote “the sustainable energy future through electric vehicle travel” — is off to a bit of a rough start, per Futurist, which reports the adventurers have been struggling to reach their starting point due to northwestern Canada’s limited charging infrastructure.
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