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Fat Bear Week Is Saved at the 11th Hour

The social media sensation is back, thanks to bipartisanship.

10/02/2023

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Over the weekend, Congress (temporarily) got its act together and passed a 45-day stopgap bill to avoid a government shutdown. Federal agencies will remain open, and the deal even includes an additional $16 billion in federal disaster assistance.

This is all well and good, but one thing is especially important: the National Park Service is funded, which means the employees of Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska will be going to work this week, which means Fat Bear Week is continuing as planned.

Fat Bear Week is, rightly, a sensation. More than one million people voted in last year's contest, which was briefly rocked by revelations of vote-stuffing before a bear nicknamed 747 was crowned the winner:

Fat Bear Week is run by national park employees, however, and a spokesperson told the AP that a shutdown would have meant a change in schedule. If a delay went on for too long, the bears could have gone into hibernation before voting began.

But! Fear not. Thanks to a rare (dare I say heroic?) showing of bipartisanship in the House, Fat Bear Week begins as planned on Wednesday, October 4, and ends next Tuesday, October 10 — Fat Bear Tuesday. You can cast your vote on the Fat Bear Week website: https://explore.org/fat-bear-week

Yellow

Neel Dhanesha

Neel is a former founding staff writer at Heatmap. Prior to Heatmap, he was a science and climate reporter at Vox, an editorial fellow at Audubon magazine, and an assistant producer at Radiolab, where he helped produce The Other Latif, a series about one detainee's journey to Guantanamo Bay. He is a graduate of the Literary Reportage program at NYU, which helped him turn incoherent scribbles into readable stories, and he grew up (mostly) in Bangalore. He tweets sporadically at @neel_dhan.

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Microsoft Sustainability Chief Hounded by Protestors at Seattle Climate Week

“Microsoft, you can’t hide, we can see your dirty side!”

Katie Brigham •

07/17/2026

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Katie Brigham

Protestors interrupted one of the final sessions of PNW Climate Week — a conference that brings together climate leaders across Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia — objecting to Microsoft’s rising carbon emissions from data centers and partnerships with oil and gas companies. The company’s Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa was having a one on one conversation with GeekWire climate reporter Lisa Stiffler at Seattle’s City Hall when protestors carrying signs reading “Microsoft’s AI pollutes” and other slogans began shouting from the audience.

I was there, having just moderated the prior panel on how to finance Washington’s clean energy ambitions. Early on there were some rumblings in the crowd from up front. “Climate leaders don’t build gas pipelines in Moses Lake,” was the first objection I heard clearly. It came shortly after Nakagawa kicked off the conversation by highlighting Microsoft’s partnership with sustainable aviation fuel startup Twelve, which recently opened its first commercial-scale SAF plant in Moses Lake, Washington. The tech giant has supported the project through a strategic investment from its Climate Innovation Fund, as well as an offtake agreement for the fuel that will help offset its emissions from employee travel.

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Fat Bear Week Is Saved at the 11th Hour

The social media sensation is back, thanks to bipartisanship.

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