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Sparks

Marc Benioff and Bill Gates Are Feuding About Trees

Trees are wonderful, but Gates is probably right.

Marc Benioff.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

This got me:

The background here is that Bill Gates recently said trees are “less proven” as reliable carbon offsets and it’s “complete nonsense” to think planting trees could single-handedly solve climate change. Both are accurate statements. He also said, “Are we the science people or are we the idiots?” which Marc Benioff, the tech billionaire who’s trying to plant a trillion trees, might have taken personally.

As Alan Buis wrote in a 2019 NASA feature, while existing trees do indeed sequester incredible amounts of carbon, planting trees on the scale needed to negate the impacts of fossil fuels will take billions of acres of more land than the forested area that exists on our planet. Besides which those trees will take a century or more to mature.

Benioff is right to want to protect trees, but focusing on trees instead of a reduction in fossil fuels is exactly the kind of red herring Republicans and oil executives have been pushing for years. Plus, tree-based carbon offsets are often fake.

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Sparks

Majority of North Carolina Voters Want to Keep the IRA, Poll Finds

The state’s senior senator, Thom Tillis, has been vocal about the need to maintain clean energy tax credits.

A North Carolina sign and solar panels.
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Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

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With the intensity of storms, heat waves, droughts, and wildfires growing every year, some utilities are now turning to artificial intelligence in their quest to adapt to new climate realities. Rhizome, which just announced a $6.5 million seed round, uses AI to help assess and prevent climate change-induced grid infrastructure vulnerabilities. It’s already working with utilities such as Avangrid, Seattle City Light, and Vermont Electric Power Company to do so.

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