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Sparks

Can an Advertising Blitz Teach Americans What’s In Biden’s Climate Law?

No one knows what’s in the Inflation Reduction Act — but maybe $80 million can help.

President Biden.
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A climate advocacy group is planning to spend $80 million on advertising in an effort to boost President Biden’s environmental bona fides ahead of next year’s election, The New York Timesreports. Climate Power will use television and digital ads to remind — or, in many cases, educate — voters of Biden’s green credentials. “There is a huge swath of people who just don’t know anything,” Climate Power’s executive director, Lori Lodes, told the Times. “We need to make sure that the Biden coalition, the folks who got him into office in 2020, sees that he’s delivered on his promises. And he has.”

The assertion that many voters “just don’t know anything” on the issue squares with results from Heatmap’s own polling from earlier this year, which reveal that a majority of American adults — including 53% of Democrats and a whopping 73% of self-identified independents — know “not much” or “nothing at all” about the Inflation Reduction Act, the signature legislative and environmental achievement of Biden’s presidency.

Similarly, while 70 percent of respondents to a July Washington Postpoll said that the next president should use the powers of government to combat climate change, 57 percent disapproved of Biden’s handling of the environment.

Some young voters are angry at Biden’s approval of the $8 billion Willow oil drilling project, but Lodes sounds unconcerned. “Climate activists are going to push and push,” she told the Times. “And you know what? The Biden administration need[s] to be pushed to do more and to go further. But at the end of the day, the reality is that he has done more than any other president in American history on climate.” And, of course, no matter how disappointed in Biden those activists might be, when it comes to climate, the likely alternative would be utterly disastrous.

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Sparks

Trump’s Offshore Wind Ban Is Coming, Congressman Says

Though it might not be as comprehensive or as permanent as renewables advocates have feared, it’s also “just the beginning,” the congressman said.

A very large elephant and a wind turbine.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon.

“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”

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One Reason Trump Wants Greenland: Critical Minerals

The island is home to one of the richest rare earth deposits in the world.

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

A top aide to incoming President Donald Trump is claiming the president-elect wants the U.S. to acquire Greenland to acquire more rare minerals.

“This is about critical minerals. This is about natural resources,” Trump’s soon-to-be national security advisor Michael Waltz told Fox News host Jesse Watters Thursday night, adding: “You can call it Monroe Doctrine 2.0, but it’s all part of the America First agenda.”

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Green
Sparks

An Insurance Startup Faces a Major Test in Los Angeles

Kettle offers parametric insurance and says that it can cover just about any home — as long as the owner can afford the premium.

Los Angeles fire destruction.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Los Angeles is on fire, and it’s possible that much of the city could burn to the ground. This would be a disaster for California’s already wobbly home insurance market and the residents who rely on it. Kettle Insurance, a fintech startup focused on wildfire insurance for Californians, thinks that it can offer a better solution.

The company, founded in 2020, has thousands of customers across California, and L.A. County is its largest market. These huge fires will, in some sense, “be a good test, not just for the industry, but for the Kettle model,” Brian Espie, the company’s chief underwriting officer, told me. What it’s offering is known as “parametric” insurance and reinsurance (essentially insurance for the insurers themselves.) While traditional insurance claims can take years to fully resolve — as some victims of the devastating 2018 Camp Fire know all too well — Kettle gives policyholders 60 days to submit a notice of loss, after which the company has 15 days to validate the claim and issue payment. There is no deductible.

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