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The Quest to Ban the Best Raincoats in the World
Why Patagonia, REI, and just about every other gear retailer are going PFAS-free.
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Why Patagonia, REI, and just about every other gear retailer are going PFAS-free.
Rob and Jesse talk with Michael Grunwald, author of the new book We Are Eating the Earth.
Trump just quasi-nationalized U.S. Steel. That could help climate policy later.
What the Council on Foreign Relations’ new climate program gets drastically wrong.
The Science Based Targets initiative released long-awaited guidance that doesn’t exactly clarify matters.
On energy transition funds, disappearing butterflies, and Tesla’s stock slump
Current conditions: Australians have been told to prepare for the worst ahead of Cyclone Alfred, and 100,000 people are already without power • Argentina’s Buenos Aires province has been hit by deadly flooding • Critical fire conditions will persist across much of west Texas through Saturday.
Many foreign aid programs have reportedly received a questionnaire from the Trump administration that they must complete as part of a review, presumably to help the government decide whether or not the groups should receive any more federal funds. One of the questions on the list, according toThe New York Times, is: “Can you confirm this is not a climate or ‘environmental justice’ project or include such elements?” Another asks if the project will “directly impact efforts to strengthen U.S. supply chains or secure rare earth minerals?” President Trump issued an executive order freezing foreign aid on his first day back in office. The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that aid must be released. The Times notes that “many of the projects under scrutiny have already fired their staff and closed their doors, because they have received no federal funds since the review process ostensibly began. … Within some organizations, there are no staff members left to complete the survey.”
The United States has withdrawn from a global financing program aimed at helping poorer nations ditch fossil fuels and shift to clean energy. A spokesperson from the Treasury Department said the Just Energy Transition Partnership does not align with President Trump’s vision of American economic and environmental values. The program was launched in 2021 and has 10 donor nations, including many European countries. Its first beneficiaries were Indonesia, Senegal, South Africa, and Vietnam. The U.S. had committed more than $3 billion to Indonesia and Vietnam and nearly $2 billion to South Africa under the initiative. “The U.S. withdrawal is regrettable,” said Rachel Kyte, the U.K.’s climate envoy. “The rest of the world moves on.” In January, the Trump administration canceled $4 billion in pledges to the Green Climate Fund. “We have to plan for a world where the U.S. is not transfusing funds into the green transition,” Kyte added.
Butterfly populations in the U.S. are rapidly declining due to a combination of climate change, habitat loss, and pesticide exposure, according to a “catastrophic and saddening” new study published in the journal Science. “Butterflies are vanishing from the face of the earth,” one of the study’s co-authors told The Washington Post. The research analyzed data from 77,000 butterfly surveys and found that butterfly numbers have fallen by 22% in just 20 years across the entire country. Of the 342 butterfly species that could be analyzed for trends, 107 plummeted by more than 50% and 22 by more than 90%. Just nine species saw their numbers rise. The researchers say these numbers are likely an underestimate.
The findings underscore the crisis facing all the small, underappreciated insects that pollinate flowers and crops, control pests, maintain soil health, and play a vital role in the food chain. According to the World Wildlife Fund, up to 40% of the world’s insect species may disappear by the end of the century. The study’s lead author, ecologist Collin Edwards, said there is some hope. “Butterflies have fast life cycles,” he said. “At least one generation per year, often two or three. And each of those generations lays a ton of eggs. This means that if we make the world a more hospitable place for butterflies, butterfly species have the capacity to respond very quickly and take advantage of all our efforts.”
The Government Accountability Office yesterday said that Congress can’t review (or repeal) the Environmental Protection Agency’s waiver that lets California set its own vehicle emissions standards. The decision derails plans being spearheaded by Republicans and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to use the congressional review process to overturn the waiver. California’s aggressive emissions standards, which have been adopted by many other states, would effectively end the sale of fully gas-powered cars by 2035. Republicans are mulling their next move.
Tesla’s stock price has been taking a beating as resentment grows around CEO Elon Musk’s political meddling. The company’s valuation soared from around $800 billion to $1.5 trillion in December, when it became clear Musk would become the president-elect’s right hand man. Since that moment, the company’s value has fallen by more than $600 million, effectively erasing the bump in Tesla’s market cap. Shares fell by 5.6% yesterday alone, and sales are cratering abroad and in key U.S. markets like California.
As Andrew Moseman explains for Heatmap, a big drop in sales could be a double-whammy for Tesla revenue. “Recall that the company’s most reliable revenue stream is not really its sales of electric cars, but rather the carbon credits generated by those EVs under California’s auto emissions regulatory scheme, which it can sell to other automakers who’ve yet to meet their emissions targets,” Moseman says. “Tesla’s tumbling sales in the wake of Musk’s antics could reduce the amount of credits it could sell to others, since the credits are tied to sales of low-emissions vehicles.” There was more bad news for Musk today: A SpaceX Starship rocket exploded during a test flight, sending flaming debris flying across a large area and disrupting air traffic in Florida.
A new report shows that a year after London expanded its low-emissions zone, air quality in the city has improved, with nitrogen dioxide levels across 2024 down significantly:
Current conditions: Thousands are without power and drinking water in the French Indian Ocean territory of Réunion after Tropical Cyclone Garance made landfall with the strength of a Category 2 hurricane • A severe weather outbreak could bring tornadoes to southern states early next week • It’s 44 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in Washington, D.C., where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet with President Trump today to sign a minerals deal.
The 16th United Nations Biodiversity Conference, known as COP16, ended this week with countries agreeing on a crucial roadmap for directing $200 billion a year by 2030 toward protecting nature and halting global biodiversity loss. Developed nations are urged to double down on their goal to mobilize $20 billion annually for conservation in developing countries this year, rising to $30 billion by 2030. The plan also calls for further study on the relationships between nature conservation and debt sustainability. “The compromise proved countries could still bridge their differences and work together for the sake of preserving the planet, despite a fracturing world order and the dramatic retreat of the United States from international green diplomacy and foreign aid under President Donald Trump,” wrote Louise Guillot at Politico. The decision was met with applause and tears from delegates. One EU delegate said they were relieved “about the positive signal that this sends to other ongoing negotiations on climate change and plastics that we have.”
The Trump administration yesterday fired hundreds of workers across the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, key agencies responsible for monitoring the changing climate and communicating extreme weather threats. The National Hurricane Center and the Tsunami Warning Center both operate under NOAA, and the layoffs come ahead of the upcoming hurricane season. “People nationwide depend on NOAA for free, accurate forecasts, severe weather alerts, and emergency information,” said Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman, the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee. “Purging the government of scientists, experts, and career civil servants and slashing fundamental programs will cost lives.” A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked the administration’s mass firings of federal workers, so the status of those affected in this latest round is unclear. Somewhat relatedly, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports that the Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit, was told by NOAA it had to rename a major conservation program as the “Gulf of America” or else lose federal funding.
The FBI reportedly has been questioning Environmental Protection Agency employees about $20 billion in climate and clean energy grants approved under the Biden administration, which EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has insisted were issued hastily and without oversight. According toThe Washington Post, the Justice Department has asked several U.S. attorneys to submit warrant requests or launch grand jury investigations, but those efforts have been rejected due to lack of evidence or “reasonable belief that a crime occurred.” “It’s certainly unusual for any case to involve two different U.S. attorney offices declining a case for lack of probable cause and to have the Department of Justice continue to shop it,” Stefan D. Cassella, a former federal prosecutor, told the Post. Several nonprofits said their Citibank accounts holding the funding have been frozen without explanation.
Some Democratic states are apparently freezing out Tesla in response to Elon Musk’s political maneuvers within the Trump administration. Tesla operates on a direct-to-consumer sales model, so it doesn’t have to go through dealerships. More than 25 states ban or restrict direct EV sales in some way. The company has been lobbying to get permission to sell directly in these states, but some Democratic lawmakers are “disgusted” by Musk’s moves in Washington and are rebuffing lobbyists or dropping their support for proposed legislation allowing direct sales.
Apple is in trouble for claiming some of its Apple Watches are “carbon neutral.” A group of customers are suing the company after learning its claims relied on carbon offsetting projects in protected national parks or heavily forested areas, instead of “genuine” carbon reductions. “The carbon reductions would have occurred regardless of Apple’s involvement or the projects’ existence,” the plaintiffs said in their complaint. “Because Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are predicated on the efficacy and legitimacy of these projects, Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are false and misleading.” The lawsuit seeks damages, as well as an injunction that prevents Apple from using the carbon neutral claim to market its watches. Apple has a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
Researchers in Amsterdam have examined the nests of birds known as common coots and discovered plastic items dating back to the 1990s, including a McDonald’s McChicken wrapper from 1996, and a Mars wrapper promoting the 1994 USA FIFA World Cup. “History is not only written by humans,” said Auke-Florian Hiemstra, who led the research. “Nature, too, is keeping score.”
Auke-Florian Hiemstra