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Sparks

Biden: Look at These Pretty Wind Turbines (Also, We’re Expanding Oil Drilling)

No one is pleased.

President Biden.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

An announcement Friday by the Biden administration to extend the nation’s offshore oil leasing program perfectly encapsulates the Catch-22 the president finds himself in over his climate goals. The press release brazenly advertises the drilling expansion plan as “Reflecting America’s Rapid and Accelerating Shift to Clean Energy,” all while reading like someone trying to convince you that they’ve got a gun to their head.

This plan was a long time coming. The Interior Department is responsible for establishing a five-year leasing schedule under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that will “best” meet the United States' energy needs, and the previous plan is about to expire. Lease sale 261, which was supposed to be held on Wednesday but has been delayed until later this fall, is the last one on the agenda.

The agency could, in theory, issue a schedule with zero lease sales over the next five years. But due to provisions added into the Inflation Reduction Act by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, such inaction would prevent the government from being able to open up more of the nation’s coast to offshore wind development. Before the Interior Department can put up any offshore acreage for wind, it has to have put up at least 60 million acres for oil in the previous year, the law says.

So instead of calling it an offshore oil lease plan, the agency is describing it as an offshore wind-enablement plan. The IRA’s handcuffs were referenced roughly four times in the press release, including in the first sentence, which reads, “Consistent with the requirements of the Inflation Reduction Act …” The plan to hold three oil and gas sales in 2025, 2027, and 2029 is the “minimum number” the department could schedule in order to continue the expansion of offshore wind, it said, and “the fewest … in history.” The subheading of the page even calls it a plan that “phases down oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico,” and the image paired with the announcement on social media featured wind turbines.

There’s nothing factually wrong about any of this. The final plan calls for significantly fewer sales than the 47 initially proposed in 2018 by the Trump administration, and a marked reduction from the 11 proposed by Biden last summer. The plan also restricts drilling to areas in the Gulf of Mexico that are already under development, rather than opening up new areas in Alaska or the Atlantic, as Trump wanted to do. But it does put the U.S. on a path to increased oil production, and at least one analysis asserts that the administration doesn’t even need to hold any more wind lease sales to achieve Biden’s clean energy goals.

It’s unclear who the apologetic tone or desperate image of wind turbines was for. By all accounts, the announcement was a letdown to all sides.

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Sparks

JD Vance on Climate Change: ‘Let’s Just Say That’s True’

“For the sake of argument.”

JD Vance.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

We didn’t have to wait long for climate to come up during tonight’s vice presidential debate between VP hopefuls Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz — the night’s second question was about the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene and fueled by warmer air and waters due to climate pollution.

Vance started off his answer innocuously enough, extending his thoughts and prayers to those affected by the hurricane and then proceeding to some campaign boilerplate. “I think it’s important for us, first of all, to say Donald Trump and I support clean air and clean water,” Vance said up top, echoing Trump’s claim that he wants “absolutely immaculate clean water and … absolutely clean air,” from the presidential debate back in June. (It’s worth noting, of course, that his policy choices tell a different story.)

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Sparks

More Hurricanes Are Already Forming in the Atlantic

The lull is over.

Hurricanes in the Atlantic.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

If Hurricane Helene were the only memorable storm to make landfall in the U.S. in 2024, this would still be remembered as an historically tragic season. Since its arrival as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday night in Florida’s Big Bend region, Helene has killed more than 100 people and caused more than $160 billion across six states. Recovery efforts are expected to last years, if not decades, in the hardest-hit regions of Western North Carolina, some 300 miles inland and 2,000 feet above the nearest coastline. “Helene is going to go down as one of the most impactful hurricanes in U.S. history,” AccuWeather’s senior director of forecasting operations, Dan DePodwin, told me when we spoke on Friday.

As of Monday morning, the National Hurricane Center is tracking five additional systems in the Atlantic basin. Two of those storms reached named status on Friday — Joyce and Isaac — though their paths appear to keep them safely in the middle of the Atlantic. A third storm, Kirk, reached tropical storm strength on Monday and is expected to strengthen into a major hurricane, but is likewise likely to turn north and stay out at sea.

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Sparks

Tennessee Is Hurricane Country Now

Ocean-based storms are increasingly affecting areas hundreds of miles from the coasts.

Rushing water.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

After a hurricane makes landfall comes the eerie wait for bad news. For Hurricane Helene — now a tropical storm as it barrels toward Nashville — that news came swiftly on Friday morning: at least 4 million are without power after the storm’s Thursday night arrival near Florida’s Big Bend region; more than 20 are dead in three states; and damage estimates are already in the billions of dollars.

But that’s just the news from the coasts.

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