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  • When China and Saudi Arabia meet, nothing matters more than oil | CNN Business

    When China and Saudi Arabia meet, nothing matters more than oil | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN Business
     — 

    Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting Saudi Arabia this week for the first time in nearly seven years, during which he is expected to sign billions of dollars of deals with the world’s largest oil exporter and meet leaders from across the Middle East.

    The visit is a sign that China and the Gulf region are deepening their economic relations at a time when US-Saudi ties have crumbled over OPEC’s decision to slash crude oil supply. As Xi wrote in an article published in Saudi media, the trip was intended to strengthen China’s relations with the Arab world.

    China is Saudi Arabia’s biggest trading partner and a source of growing investment. It’s also the world’s biggest buyer of oil. Saudi Arabia is China’s largest trading partner in the Middle East and the top global supplier of crude oil.

    “Energy cooperation will be at the center of all discussions between the Saudi-Chinese leadership,” said Ayham Kamel, head of Eurasia Group’s Middle East and North Africa research team. “There is great recognition of the need to build a framework to ensure that this interdependence is accommodated politically, especially given the scope of energy transition in the West.”

    Governments around the world have committed to drastically cutting carbon emissions over the coming decades. Countries such as Canada and Germany have doubled down on renewable energy investments to expedite their transition to net-zero economies.

    The United States has significantly increased domestic oil and gas output since the 2000s, while accelerating its transition to clean energy.

    The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February has triggered a global energy crisis that has left all countries racing to shore up supplies. And the West has further scrambled the oil markets by slapping an embargo and price cap on the world’s second biggest exporter of crude.

    Energy security has also increasingly become a key priority for China, which is facing significant challenges of its own.

    Last year, bilateral trade between Saudi Arabia and China hit $87.3 billion, up 30% from 2020, according to Chinese customs figures.

    Much of the trade was focused on oil. China’s crude imports from Saudi Arabia stood at $43.9 billion in 2021, accounting for 77% of its total goods imports from the kingdom. That amount also makes up more than a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s total crude exports.

    “Stability of energy supplies, in terms of both prices and quantities, is a key priority for Xi Jinping as the Chinese economy remains heavily reliant on oil and natural gas imports,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University.

    The world’s second largest economy is heavily reliant on foreign oil and gas. 72% of its oil consumption was imported last year, according to official figures. 44% of natural gas demand was also from overseas.

    At the 20th Party Congress in October, Xi stressed that ensuring energy security was a key priority. The comments came after a spate of severe power shortages and soaring global energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    As the West shunned Russian crude in the months that followed the invasion, China took advantage of Moscow’s desperate search for new buyers. Between May and July, Russia was China’s No. 1 oil supplier, until Saudi Arabia regained the top spot in August.

    “Diversity is a key ingredient for China’s long-term energy security because it cannot afford to put all of its eggs in one basket and turn itself into a captive of another power’s energy and geostrategic interests,” said Ahmed Aboudouh, a nonresident fellow with the Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council, a research institute based in DC.

    “Although Russia is a source of cheaper supply chains, nobody can guarantee, with utmost certainty, that the China and Russia relationship will continue to shore up 50 years from now,” Aboudouh said.

    The Saudi Press Agency cited Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman as saying Wednesday that the kingdom would remain China’s “credible and reliable partner in this field.”

    Saudi Arabia also has strong motivations to deepen energy ties with China, according to Gal Luft, co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security.

    “The Saudis are concerned about losing market share in China in the face of a tsunami of heavily discounted Russian and Iranian crude,” he said. “Their goal is to ensure China remains a loyal customer even when the competitors offer [a] cheaper product.”

    Oil prices have fallen back to where they were before the Ukraine war on fears of a sharp global economic slowdown. The extent to which the Chinese economy can pick up pace next year will have a huge bearing on how bad that slump will be.

    Beyond security of supply, Saudi Arabia could offer Beijing another prize with bigger geopolitical ramifications.

    Riyadh has been in talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in the Chinese currency, the yuan, rather than the US dollar, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Such a deal could be a boost to Beijing’s ambitions to expand the Chinese currency’s global influence.

    It would also hurt the long-standing agreement between Saudi Arabia and the United States that requires Saudi Arabia to sell its oil only for US dollars and to hold its reserves partly in US Treasuries, all in return for US security guarantees. The “petrodollar system” has helped preserve the dollar’s status as the top global reserve currency and payment medium for oil and other commodities.

    Although Beijing and Riyadh never confirmed the reported talks, analysts said it was logical that the two sides would be exploring the possibility.

    “In the near future, Saudi Arabia could sell some of its oil and receive revenues in Chinese yuan, which makes economic sense as China is the kingdom’s top trading partner,” said Naser Al Tamimi, senior associate research fellow at ISPI, an Italian think tank on international affairs.

    Some believe it’s already happening, but that neither China nor the Saudis want to highlight it publicly.

    “They know too well how sensitive this issue [is] for the United States,” said Luft. “Both parties are overexposed to the US currency and there is no reason for them to continue to conduct their bilateral trade in a third party’s currency, especially when this third party is no longer a friend of either.”

    Xi’s visit could mark another step “in the erosion of the dollar’s status” as reserve currency, he added.

    Nonetheless, there are limits to the growing ties between Riyadh and Beijing.

    “The Biden administration’s approach to the Middle East has concerned the Saudis, and they see a growing relationship with China as a hedge against potential US abandonment and a tool for leverage in negotiations with the United States,” said Jon B. Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington DC-based think tank.

    The Biden administration has reoriented its policy priorities with a focus on countering China. At the same time, it has indicated its intention to downsize its own presence in the Middle East, sparking worries among allies there that the United States may not be as committed to the region as it used to be.

    “All that being said, Chinese-Saudi ties pale in both depth and complexity to Saudi-US ties,” Alterman said. “The Chinese remain a novelty to most Saudis, and they are additive. The United States is foundational to how Saudis see the world, and how they have seen it for 75 years.”

    Despite the possibility of shifting to yuan transactions, it’s too early to say Saudi Arabia would ditch the dollar in pricing its oil sales, analysts said.

    Eurasia Group’s Kamal believes it’s “highly unlikely” that Saudi Arabia would take such a step, unless there is an implosion on the US-Saudi relationship.

    “In essence there could be discussion on pricing of barrels to China in yuan, but this would be limited in size and probably only correspond to bilateral trade volumes,” he said.

    Prasad from Cornell University said countries like China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia are all eager to reduce their dependence on the dollar for oil contracts and other cross-border transactions.

    “However, in the absence of serious alternatives and with few international investors willing to place their trust in these countries’ financial markets and their governments, the dollar’s dominant role in global finance is hardly under serious threat,” he said.

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  • UK government greenlights first new coal mine in three decades | CNN

    UK government greenlights first new coal mine in three decades | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The UK has greenlit a controversial plan to open the country’s first new coal mine in three decades, a little more than a year after the nation tried to convince the world to ditch coal at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.

    Michael Gove, the UK housing and communities secretary, on Wednesday approved the plan to open the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria, a county in northwestern England that is home to the World Heritage-listed Lake District.

    The controversial mine is expected to create more than 500 jobs. But the environmental trade-off is steep: The UK Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent group that advises the government, has estimated the mine and the coal it will produce will emit around 9 million tons of planet-warming emissions every year.

    Supporters of the mine argue the project will create jobs and secure the fossil fuel for British steelmaking; however, 85% of the coal mined is due to be exported.

    The CCC has criticized the decision. Committee chairman Lord Deben said in a statement: “Phasing out coal use is the clearest requirement of the global effort towards Net Zero. We condemn, therefore, the Secretary of State’s decision to consent to a new deep coal mine in Cumbria, contrary to our previous advice. This decision grows global emissions and undermines UK efforts to achieve Net Zero.”

    The mine’s approval was also met with fierce criticism from scientists and environmentalists.

    “A new coal mine in Cumbria makes no sense environmentally or economically,” said Paul Ekins, Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, in a statement. “It will add to global CO2 emissions, as the new supply will not replace other coal but divert it elsewhere, and it will become stranded in the 2030s as the steel industry globally moves away from coal.”

    Ekins also said that the mine’s approval “trashes the UK’s reputation as a global leader on climate action and opens it up to well justified charges of hypocrisy – telling other countries to ditch coal while not doing so itself.”

    The government initially approved the project, but then put it on hold after a wave of protests, including a 10-day hunger strike by two teenage activists.

    It came under intense pressure to reject the plan in 2021, the year it hosted the COP26 talks in Glasgow.

    Alok Sharma, the COP26 President and a lawmaker for the governing Conservative Party, campaigned against the mine.

    “Opening a new coal mine will not only be a backward step for UK climate action but also damage the UK’s hard-won international reputation, through our COP26 Presidency, as a leader in the global fight against climate change,” he said ahead of the announcement on Wednesday.

    The decision comes a little more than a year after the conference, and after lengthy discussions between the UK government, local authorities and the public.

    The Cumbria County Council had also approved the plan three times, but it backtracked its decision last February and called for a planning inquiry, effectively shifting the decision to the national government.

    The Whitehaven mine, also known as the Woodhouse Colliery, is scheduled to operate until 2049, which is just a year before the UK’s self-imposed deadline to slash greenhouse gas emissions to net zero (emitting as little greenhouse gas as possible, and offsetting any emissions that cannot be avoided).

    According to the International Energy Agency, investment into new fossil fuels infrastructure must stop immediately if the world wants any chance of achieving net zero by 2050. The latest climate science shows that achieving net zero by mid-century is necessary to keep temperatures from rising well above 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared with pre-industrial times. Beyond that threshold, the world will face climate crisis impacts that could take millennia to correct, or could be irreversible altogether.

    Climate activists have protested against the project, while West Cumbria Mining, which is developing the mine, said the project would bring hundreds of new jobs into a struggling region. Its opponents argue these jobs may not be secure, given the huge momentum in Europe to phase out coal.

    “Opening a coal mine in Cumbria is investing in 1850s technology and does not look forward to the 2030s low carbon local energy future,” Stuart Haszeldine, a professor at the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement.

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  • Chinese President Xi Jinping lands in Saudi Arabia amid tensions with US | CNN

    Chinese President Xi Jinping lands in Saudi Arabia amid tensions with US | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh on Wednesday for a multiple-day visit, China’s official news agency Xinhua reported, amid frayed ties between the two countries and the United States.

    Saudi state TV showed Xi walking down the steps of his presidential aircraft at King Khalid International Airport, where he was received by Saudi Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Abdulaziz, governor of the Riyadh region, and Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah, Saudi foreign minister.

    A purple carpet was rolled out for the Chinese president, and canons were fired.

    The visit will include a “Saudi-Chinese summit,” a China-Arab and a China-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) previously reported.

    Rumors of a Chinese presidential visit to the US’ largest Middle East ally have been circulating for months as the nations have solidified their ties, possibly to Washington’s dismay.

    The trip comes against the backdrop of a number of disagreements harbored by the US toward both Beijing and Riyadh, including grievances about oil production, human rights and other issues.

    But Saudi Arabia’s grand reception of the Chinese president is only emblematic of the magnitude of their growing relationship, specifically around oil, trade and security. The two countries are expected to sign deals worth more than $29 billion during this week’s visit, according to SPA.

    China is today Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner, with the value of the kingdom’s exports to China having exceeded $50 billion last year, constituting more than 18% of Saudi Arabia’s total exports in 2021. Bilateral trade between the two states is more than $80 billion dollars, SPA reported.

    Saudi Arabia has also traditionally been China’s top oil supplier, with Saudi barrels making up around 17% of total Chinese oil imports as of last year, according to the Saudi-backed Arab News.

    While the kingdom remains a key supplier for its Chinese partner, oil relations may have been slightly on edge this year as sanctioned Russia pours its discounted barrels into the Asian market.

    Apart from oil exports, Saudi Arabia has this year ramped up its Chinese investments, which culminated in Aramco’s whopping $10 billion dollar investment into a refinery and petrochemical complex in China’s northeast.

    These close ties have been years in the making as both countries have sought to diversify their security and energy sources, experts say.

    “Now it is the height of the bilateral relations between the two since their establishment of diplomatic relations in 1992,” Shaojin Chai, an assistant professor at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, told CNN.

    “They become closer as both sides need each other in many areas: energy transition, economic diversification, defense capacity building for KSA and climate change, to name just a few,” said Chai, referring to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and adding that “the diversification of security risk entails KSA including rising China in its hedge.”

    While China and Saudi Arabia’s friendship has blossomed over the decades, they seem to have become closer as both find themselves in precarious positions in regard to the US.

    A strong American ally for eight long decades, Saudi Arabia has become bitter over what it perceives to be waning US security presence in the region, especially amid growing threats from Iran and its armed proxies in the Middle East.

    An economic mammoth in the east, China has been at odds with the US over Taiwan, the democratically governed island of 24 million people that Beijing claims as its territory despite never having controlled it.

    US President Joe Biden has repeatedly vowed to help Taiwan in the event of an attack by China, which has not ruled out the use of force to “reunify” with the island.

    The thorny topic has gravely aggravated a precarious relationship between Washington and Beijing, who are already competing for influence in the volatile Middle East.

    China has also been cementing its ties with other Gulf monarchies, as well as with US foes Iran and Russia.

    “If they’re signaling anything to the rest of the world, I suspect it’s mainly that they are two important countries with a deep, interest-based relationship,” said Jonathan Fulton, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank.

    “At a time when negative perceptions of China dominate in much of the West, Xi will be lavishly welcomed in Saudi Arabia, the most important Arab state, the most important country in global Islam, and a major actor in global energy markets,” Fulton told CNN.

    “And the Saudis can show that they remain important to extra-regional powers, even if their relationship with Washington is rocky,” he added.

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  • US trade deficit edged up to $78.2 billion in October | CNN Business

    US trade deficit edged up to $78.2 billion in October | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    The US trade gap edged only slightly higher in October than the month before, to $78.2 billion.

    The latest reading was up just 5.4%, less than half the pace of increase from the revised September reading, when the trade deficit jumped by 12.7% to $74.1 billion.

    A strong dollar and weaker global demand weighed on exports both months. A strong dollar makes US goods more expensive to foreign buyers and it also makes imports more affordable for US buyers. But economic slowdowns in overseas markets also hit US exports in the most recent readings.

    The latest report shows exports fell 0.7% in October compared to the month before, and are down nearly 2% from the record exports set in August. Most of the drop was in the export of goods, rather than services, which fell 4.4% compared to August.

    Oil prices have come down since earlier this year, according to data released in the report. The average price of crude oil imports in the month was $82.05 a barrel, down 5.7% from September, and down 21.7% from the peak in June.

    But the United States now exports more petroleum products, by dollars, than it imports. So a lower price of crude no longer helps the trade deficit the way it might have done in the past, when crude and petroleum product imports vastly exceeded exports.

    The deficit in the movement of goods between the United States and China narrowed significantly in the latest report, falling 22.6% to $28.9 billion from $37.3 billion, one factor in the smaller trade gap increase.

    Although most of that narrowing was due to a 31.3% jump in the export of US goods to China, compared to September, a 9.5% decline in US imports of Chinese goods was also a factor in the smaller trade deficit between the two countries.

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  • As Mauna Loa’s lava inches toward a key Hawaii highway, some residents recall bygone devastation | CNN

    As Mauna Loa’s lava inches toward a key Hawaii highway, some residents recall bygone devastation | CNN

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    Mauna Loa, Hawaii
    CNN
     — 

    From a deep fracture in Mauna Loa’s dark terrain, the volcano’s magnificent eruption sends geyser-like fountains of lava spraying into the sky.

    The fissure – cracked open on the northeastern slope of the world’s largest active volcano – feeds a searing flow of molten rock that cuts through the contours of Hawaii’s Big Island. Plumes of volcanic gas, including sulfur dioxide, rise into the air, and delicate strands of volcanic glass, called Pele’s hair, float downwind.

    In the week since Mauna Loa erupted, the stream of lava has coursed northeast, away from the volcano’s summit. Once a quick-moving stream, the flow has slowed significantly as it reaches more softly sloping inclines.

    Though no communities are at risk, the lava flow is inching closer to the Daniel K. Inouye Highway, a major artery that remains open, connecting two sides of this island, according to the US Geological Survey. The lava is flowing at an average rate of 25 feet per hour, the agency said Monday.

    “Though the advance rate has slowed over the past several days, the lava flow remains active with a continuous supply from the fissure 3 vent,” the release said.

    Advance rates of the lava may be “highly variable” in the coming days and weeks with individual lobes advancing quickly and then stalling, the release said.

    “If the eruption continues, it might cover the highway. But at this stage, it’s still about 2.3 miles away from the highway. But it is advancing every day,” said Natalia Deligne, a volcanologist with the USGS at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. “We don’t know how long this eruption is going to last, and that will dictate whether or not the highway becomes more threatened.”

    If it closes, residents’ commutes could grow by hours as they seek alternate routes, creating “a tremendous inconvenience,” Hawaii Gov. David Ige told CNN on Saturday.

    Hawaii’s Defense Department activated 20 members of the state’s National Guard Monday as a result of the lava flow from Mauna Loa, a Hawaii Emergency Management Agency statement said. The National Guard members will “assist Hawai’i County with traffic control and other roles in the Mauna Loa eruption,” according to the statement.

    Mauna Loa’s eruption has attracted waves of awestruck visitors, some making the pilgrimage in the middle of the night to avoid the crowds, bundled in jackets and hats to protect against the chilly night air.

    Also erupting now is nearby Kilauea, whose monthslong eruption in 2018 was one of the most destructive in recent Hawaii history, the USGS says.

    Kilauea began erupting again in 2021 and hasn’t stopped. And though it poses no risk now to surrounding communities, Mauna Loa’s rare simultaneous eruption has rekindled memories of the pain and destruction Kilauea wrought four years ago, when it wiped out hundreds of homes and dozens of miles of road.

    Just 21 miles east of Mauna Loa, Kilauea’s ongoing eruption is now confined to a lake of lava rippling at its summit. But the history of this volcano is painful for Hawaii’s Big Island.

    Its 2018 eruption spewed lava into the large Leilani Estates neighborhood, swallowing more than 700 homes and surrounding others with thick layers of volcanic rock, creating unreachable patches of green foliage in a sea of blackened destruction.

    Dorothy Thrall can still walk to the spot where her community once stood, now blanketed with hardened lava. From the deck of her friend’s home, she can see the edge where the lava stopped and blackened into volcanic rock, still steaming years afterward.

    An area wiped out during the 2018 Kilauea eruption is seen Sunday from the sky.

    Mauna Loa’s eruption has reopened some of the wounds she and her friends still have from 2018.

    “I thought I was doing pretty good,” Thrall said. “My neighbor called me Day 2 (of Mauna Loa’s eruption), and she was in tears. She says, ‘I have PTSD, and I didn’t even know it.’ And I started crying, too, and I said, ‘I guess I do, too.’”

    Thrall has no desire to see Mauna Loa’s eruption, saying she has seen enough lava in her time. Still, though, she still appreciates the majestic beauty and importance of volcanic events.

    “Lava is beautiful. It’s Pele’s creation,” she said, referencing the ancient Hawaiian volcano deity. “That’s how the island was formed. That’s how the island was built.”

    For many Native Hawaiians, the eruption of volcanoes, including Kilauea and Mauna Loa, holds incredible spiritual significance. Some have honored this week’s occasion by leaving offerings and participating in traditional chants near Mauna Loa.

    As onlookers and tourists flock, officials urge caution and advise people not to venture into closed areas that could pose risk of lethal volcanic fumes, sudden collapses and hidden earth cracks, the National Park Service said.

    A spot for safe viewing is a one-way route is accessible through the Daniel K. Inouye Highway, the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency said, noting vehicles parked on the roadway could get ticketed or towed.

    The eruption has also created a risk of low air quality in some places due to volcanic ash and vog, or air pollution caused by volcanic gases. Sensitive groups, including children, the elderly and those with respiratory conditions, are advised to reduce outdoor activities that cause heavy breathing and reduce exposure by staying indoors and closing windows and doors, according to the Hawaii Department of Health.

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  • Venezuela and Chevron sign oil contract in Caracas | CNN

    Venezuela and Chevron sign oil contract in Caracas | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The Venezuelan government and American oil company Chevron have signed a contract in Caracas on Friday to resume operations in Venezuela, according to the country’s state broadcaster VTV.

    “This contract aims to continue with the productive and development activities in this energy sector, framed within our Constitution and the Venezuelan laws that govern oil activity in the country,” said Venezuelan oil minister Tareck El Aissami, who was slapped with United States sanctions in 2017.

    He attended the signing ceremony along with representatives from Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company PDVSA and Chevron.

    April 2023 will mark Chevron’s 100th anniversary in Venezuela, El Aissami said at the event.

    The move comes after the United States granted Chevron limited authorization to resume pumping oil from Venezuela last week, following an announcement that the Venezuelan government and the opposition group had reached an agreement on humanitarian relief and will continue to negotiate for a solution to the country’s chronic economic and political crisis.

    The US has been looking for ways to allow Venezuela to begin producing more oil and selling it on the international market, thereby reducing the world’s energy dependence on Russia, US officials told CNN in May.

    A 6-month license was granted to Venezuela by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) last week, and the US can revoke it at any time. Additionally, any profits earned will go to repaying debt to Chevron and not to the Maduro regime, according to a senior official.

    In 2017, OFAC said El Aissami had played a “significant role in international narcotics trafficking,” according to a news release.

    The Treasury Department said he “facilitated shipments of narcotics from Venezuela to include control over planes that leave from a Venezuelan air base, (and) narcotics shipments of over 1,000 kilograms from Venezuela on multiple occasions, including those with the final destinations of Mexico and the United States.”

    In addition, the department said El Aissami is linked to coordinating drug shipments to Los Zetas, a violent Mexican drug cartel, and provided protection to a Colombian drug lord.

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  • Manchin rails against Biden’s clean energy plans as he faces tough political headwinds in West Virginia | CNN Politics

    Manchin rails against Biden’s clean energy plans as he faces tough political headwinds in West Virginia | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    West Virginia political observers were not surprised when Sen. Joe Manchin appeared on Fox News on Monday to make a stunning threat: He could be persuaded to vote to repeal his own bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, if the Biden administration pushed him far enough.

    The conservative Democratic senator reiterated this to CNN, saying he would “look for every opportunity to repeal my own bill” if the administration continued to use the IRA to steer the US quickly towards the clean energy transition and away from fossil fuels.

    The IRA, passed and signed into law last year, was a sweeping $750 billion bill that lowered prescription drug costs, raised taxes on large corporations, and invested $370 billion into new tax credits for cleaner energy. Even though Manchin carved out space for fossil fuels, the bill represents by far the biggest climate investment in US history.

    From the start, Manchin has insisted the IRA was an “energy security bill,” rather than a clean-energy bill. Still, experts said he must be sensitive to the idea that he ushered in what ended up being the nation’s largest climate law, given he represents West Virginia – a state where coal and natural gas reign supreme.

    Manchin’s repeal threat “was probably good politics,” West Virginia University political science professor Sam Workman told CNN. If he decides to seek reelection in 2024, the 75-year-old senator will face his toughest political fight yet, as popular West Virginia Republican Gov. Jim Justice jumped into the race this week.

    Justice’s bid for the seat “doesn’t change anything at all,” Manchin told CNN. But political experts from his home state see a man who is gearing up for a fight.

    Since delivering President Joe Biden one of his biggest legislative wins with the IRA last summer, Manchin has spent the last few months on a rampage against the administration, homing in on what he calls its “radical climate agenda.” Manchin has voted against Biden’s nominees for high-ranking administration positions, bashed new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency and Treasury Department and clashed with members of the president’s cabinet at Senate hearings.

    Manchin’s appearance on Fox to slam Biden and threaten to repeal the law he had an outsized role in writing “is a pretty good indicator to me that he’s running,” said John Kilwein, chair of West Virginia University’s political science department.

    Manchin has been silent on whether he’ll run for reelection, but as Justice announced his candidacy, Manchin expressed confidence. “Make no mistake, I will win any race I enter,” he said in a statement.

    The Democrat beat his Republican challenger by just three percentage points in 2018. And though Justice still must get through a primary against Republican Rep. Alex Mooney, the governor is already backed by Senate Republicans’ electoral arm and many in the state think he will present a serious challenge to Manchin.

    “Justice is a likable candidate – he takes that ‘aw shucks’ thing to the next level,” Kilwein said. “This is going to be [Manchin’s] toughest fight, but I think anyone who thinks this is going to be a piece of cake is wrong. I don’t think he’s going to be easy to beat.”

    Manchin is “in danger” politically, his Democratic colleague Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told CNN.

    “Joe Manchin is the last remaining statewide elected Democrat [in West Virginia], and we want [him] back in the United States Senate,” Blumenthal said, adding Manchin was a “pillar of strength to Democrats in the last session.”

    Justice made little mention of Manchin during his official campaign launch but came out swinging against Biden and his agenda. On Friday, Justice told Fox News that Manchin “would be a formidable opponent” if he runs for reelection, but added that he’s “done some things that have really alienated an awful lot of West Virginians.”

    There is no denying that West Virginia is incredibly conservative; the state went nearly 40 percentage points for Trump in the 2020 election. But even with those fundamentals, political experts said Manchin has had tremendous staying power through retail politics and argue he can deliver for the state while standing up to Biden.

    “His whole appeal is a retail appeal; every blueberry festival, huckleberry festival, Joe Manchin’s there,” former West Virginia political science professor Patrick Hickey told CNN. “He’s a really smart and talented politician. He gets all the benefits that come from supporting (the IRA), but the next time he’s in West Virginia, he’ll be in a diner telling voters how terrible Biden is.”

    Behind the political rhetoric, the Inflation Reduction Act’s energy provisions could be a windfall for West Virginia, and Manchin is walking a tightrope in his messaging around the law.

    Despite blasting the Biden administration, Manchin has spent the past few months at home touting the benefits of the IRA and jobs it is already bringing to the state.

    Several major clean energy companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build new manufacturing plants in the state: a battery factory, a new industrial facility totally powered by renewable energy, and a plant to make electric school buses.

    “The way Manchin talked about those, he’s crediting the IRA and saying, ‘see, these are the good things that have happened,’” said Angie Rosser, executive director of environmental group West Virginia Rivers. “Those are hundreds of jobs reaching into the thousands, which for our small state is a big, big deal.”

    The John E. Amos coal-fired power plant in Poca, West Virginia. Fossil fuel energy is still a mainstay in state.

    Rosser and others pointed out that Manchin designed the IRA specifically to deliver money to West Virginia, designing tax credits to incentivize more manufacturing in coal country and funding to help these communities during the transition to clean energy.

    Morgan King, a staff member of West Virginia Rivers, has been traveling across the state recently to talk to local officials about how they can apply for federal IRA funding. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, King told CNN.

    “We’ve spoken with people of all parties,” she said. “People don’t care [about] the politics of how this bill was created so long as this funding can make it into their communities. West Virginia is set to disproportionately benefit from this bill more than any other state.”

    Manchin has been at odds with the Biden administration on several fronts, but the administration’s climate policies and implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act seem to have struck a particular nerve – and Republicans have continued to heavily criticize the law.

    A political ad from Republican dark money group One Nation is already circulating in the state, claiming that the IRA would kill 100,000 jobs in West Virginia.

    “The notion that this is just a climate bill … it is damaging here in the state because we’re pretty far to the right on these issues, especially energy issues,” Workman said. “When you sell something as a climate bill, given the economic context here and our history, it’s somewhat harder for people to see indirect benefits like jobs.”

    Manchin recently voted alongside Republicans on Congressional Review Act bills to undo EPA emissions rules for heavy-duty trucks as well as a climate-focused Labor Department rule (Biden has already vetoed one and promised to veto the other). In March, Manchin tanked top Interior Department nominee Laura Daniel-Davis, claiming she wasn’t upholding a part of the IRA that mandates offshore oil drilling in certain federal waters.

    The dynamic has put Senate Democrats in a tough spot. Democrats have a slightly expanded Senate majority after the midterms, but the continued absence of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has been away from Washington as she recovers from shingles, has made for nailbiter votes.

    “He’s one of the most independent US senators out there,” Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii told CNN. “When he is frustrated, he’s not going to be shy about it. And right now, he’s obviously extremely frustrated with the administration, and that has to get sorted.”

    Manchin has also spent the last few months lobbing a steady stream of blistering statements aimed at Biden’s agencies. When the Environmental Protection Agency proposed strong new vehicle emissions regulations intended to push the US auto market towards electric vehicles in the next decade, Manchin said the agency was “lying to Americans” and called the regulations “radical” and “dangerous.”

    And when the Treasury Department issued guidance on IRA’s new EV tax credits – which were written by Manchin – the senator called it “horrific” and said it “completely ignores the intent” of his law.

    Some of his Democratic colleagues have panned his comments about repealing the IRA.

    “Maybe he should run for president,” Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico told CNN. “He’s got one job; the president’s got another. The IRA is working.”

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  • Why Republicans can’t get out of their climate bind, even as extreme heat overwhelms the US | CNN Politics

    Why Republicans can’t get out of their climate bind, even as extreme heat overwhelms the US | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Deadly heatwaves are baking the US. Scientists just reported that July will be the hottest month on record. And now, after years of skepticism and denial in the GOP ranks, a small number of Republicans are urging their party to get proactive on the climate crisis.

    But the GOP is stuck in a climate bind – and likely will be for the next four years, in large part because they’re still living in the shadow of former president and 2024 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

    Even as more Republican politicians are joining the consensus that climate change is real and caused by humans, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has driven the party to the right on climate and extreme weather. Trump has called the extremely settled science of climate change a “hoax” and more recently suggested that the impacts of it “may affect us in 300 years.”

    Scientists this week reported that this summer’s unrelenting heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” were it not for the planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels. They also confirmed that July will go down as the hottest month on record – and almost certainly that the planet’s temperature is hotter now than it has been in around 120,000 years.

    Yet for being one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century, climate is rarely mentioned on the 2024 campaign trail.

    “As Donald Trump is the near presumptive nominee of our party in 2024, it’s going to be very hard for a party to adopt a climate-sensitive policy,” Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, told CNN. “But Donald Trump’s not going to be around forever.”

    When Republicans do weigh in on climate change – and what we should do about it – they tend to support the idea of capturing planet-warming pollution rather than cutting fossil fuels. But many are reticent to talk about how to solve the problem, and worry Trump is having a chilling effect on policies to combat climate within the party.

    “We need to be talking about this,” Rep. John Curtis, a Republican from Utah and chair of the House’s Conservative Climate Caucus, told CNN. “And part of it for Republicans is when you don’t talk about it, you have no ideas at the table; all you’re doing is saying what you don’t like. We need to be saying what we like.”

    With a few exceptions, Republicans largely are no longer the party of full-on climate change denial. But even as temperatures rise to deadly highs, the GOP is also not actively addressing it. There is still no “robust discussion about how to solve it” within the party, said former South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis, who now runs the conservative climate group RepublicEn, save for criticism of Democrats’ clean-energy initiatives.

    “The good news is Republicans are stopping arguing with thermometers,” Inglis told CNN. Still, he said, “when the experience is multiplied over and over of multiple days of three-digit temperatures in Arizona and record ocean temperatures, people start to say, ‘this is sort of goofy we’re not doing something about this.’”

    Meanwhile, the impacts of a dramatically warming atmosphere are becoming more and more apparent each year. Romney and Curtis, two of the loudest climate voices in the party, both represent Utah – a state that’s no stranger to extreme heat and drought, which scientists say is being fueled by rising global temperatures.

    “There are a number of states, like mine, that are concerned about wildfires and water,” Romney said, adding he believes Republican governors of impacted states have been vocal about these issues.

    Utah and other Western states are looking for ways to cut water use to save the West’s shrinking two largest reservoirs, Lakes Powell and Mead. And even closer to home, Utah’s Great Salt Lake has already disappeared by two-thirds, and scientists are sounding alarms about a rapid continued decline that could kill delicate ecosystems and expose one of fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the nation to toxic dust.

    “I think the evidence so far is that the West is getting drier and hotter,” Romney told CNN. “That means that we’re going to have more difficulty with our crops, we’re going to have a harder time keeping the rivers full of water. The Great Salt Lake is probably going to continue to shrink. And unfortunately, we’re going to see more catastrophic fires. If the trends continue, we need to act.”

    While Republicans blast Democrats’ clean energy policies ahead of the 2024 elections, it’s less clear what the GOP itself would prefer to do about the climate crisis.

    As Curtis tells it, there’s a lot that Republicans and Democrats in Congress agree on. They both want to further reform the permitting process for major energy projects, and they largely agree on the need for more renewable and nuclear energy.

    As the head of the largest GOP climate caucus on the Hill, Curtis’ Utah home is “full solar,” he told CNN, and is heated using geothermal energy.

    While at a recent event at a natural gas drilling site in Ohio, as smoke from Canada’s devastating wildfire season hung thick in the air, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was asked how he would solve the climate crisis. He suggested planting a trillion trees to help offset the pollution created by burning fossil fuels – a bill House Republicans introduced in 2020. The measure has not yet passed the House and has an uncertain future in the Senate.

    Rep. John Curtis, a Utah Republican, said his home is decked out in solar panels and geothermal energy.

    But the biggest and most enduring difference between the two parties is that Republicans want fossil fuels – which are fueling climate change with their heat-trapping pollution – to be in the energy mix for years to come.

    Democrats, meanwhile, have passed legislation to dramatically speed up the clean energy transition and prioritize the development of wind, solar and electrical transmission to get renewables sending electricity into homes faster.

    On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Democrats want to pass more climate legislation if they take back a full majority in Congress. He later told CNN the GOP is “way behind” on climate and there’s been “too little” progress on the party’s stances.

    “I think we’d get a lot more done with a Democratic House, a Democratic president and continuing to have a Democratic Senate,” Schumer told CNN. “Unfortunately, if you look at some of the Republican House and Senate Super PACs, huge amounts of money come from gas, oil and coal.”

    Even though Curtis and Romney are aligned on the party needing to talk about climate change, they differ on how to fix it. While Curtis primarily supports carbon capture and increased research and development into new technologies, Romney is one of the few Republicans speaking in favor of a carbon tax – taxing companies for their pollution.

    “It’s very unlikely that a price on carbon would be acceptable in the House of Representatives,” Romney said. “I think you might find a few Republican senators that would be supportive, but that’s not enough.”

    The idea certainly doesn’t have the support of Trump, or other 2024 candidates for president, and experts predict climate policy will get little to no airtime during the upcoming presidential race.

    “Regrettably, the issue of climate change is currently being held hostage to the culture wars in America,” Edward Maibach, a professor of climate communication at George Mason University and a co-founder of a nationwide climate polling project conducted with Yale University, told CNN in an email. “Donald Trump’s climate denial stance will have a chilling effect on the climate positions of his rivals on the right — even those who know better.”

    Even if climate-conscious Republicans say Trump won’t be in the party forever, Inglis said even a few more years may not be enough time to counteract the rapid changes already happening.

    “That’s still a long way away,” Inglis said. “The scientists are saying we can’t wait, get moving, get moving.”

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  • Two very different points of view on nuclear energy in the US | CNN Politics

    Two very different points of view on nuclear energy in the US | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Two distinct and unrelated stories this week convinced me it was a good moment to look at nuclear power in the US.

    Those developments, which might give anyone pause about the future of nuclear power, are counteracted by other headlines.

    The opening of a new nuclear plant in Georgia, for example, will bring carbon emission-free energy at exactly the time worldwide temperature records drive home the reality of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

    Germany made the decision to decommission all of its nuclear plants after disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima. The last nuclear reactor there was taken offline earlier this year, a decision some might have regretted after Germany’s access to Russian natural gas was threatened by the war in Ukraine.

    Next door, France is the worldwide nuclear leader. Most of its electricity is generated by nuclear power.

    Russia, while it has been ostracized from the world economy in almost every way since its invasion of Ukraine, remains a major player in nuclear power. It enriches and sells uranium through its state-controlled nuclear energy company, Rosatom, which builds and operates plants around the world, according to a March report from CNN’s Clare Sebastian that explains why the West has largely left Russia’s nuclear power industry alone.

    But it is China that is moving the quickest toward nuclear power production, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

    As of 2022, about 18% of US electricity is generated by nuclear power, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Most large US nuclear reactors are old – averaging 40 years or more.

    In addition to the Georgia reactor coming online, a new reactor began operating in Tennessee in 2016. But otherwise, the US nuclear power portfolio is old, and much of it is in need of improvement.

    For an idea of the money and corruption that can revolve around energy production, look at the sentencing last week of Ohio’s former House Speaker Larry Householder to 20 years in prison for his involvement in a bribery scheme meant to get the utility company FirstEnergy Corp. a billion-dollar taxpayer bailout for two nuclear plants.

    The bipartisan infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 included a $6 billion program to provide grants to nuclear reactor owners or operators and stave off closing them.

    More than a dozen reactors have closed early in the US over the past decade, according to the Department of Energy. At least one reactor, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California, will be kept open after a more than $1 billion grant.

    Nuclear power – and how aggressively the US and other countries should be pursuing it – is a topic that splits scientists as well.

    I talked to one nuclear expert who said the US should be slow and methodical about nuclear power and another who argued there are multiple, public misperceptions about nuclear power that should be corrected.

    The more circumspect voice is Rodney Ewing, a Stanford University professor and expert on nuclear waste who was chairman of a federal review of nuclear waste procedures. I was put in touch with him by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which aims to “reduce man-made threats to our existence.”

    Despite his decades spent focused on nuclear issues, he said something I found remarkable:

    “I don’t have yet, although I’ve tried for years, a well-formed position for or against nuclear energy,” Ewing said.

    “Too often in the enthusiasm for nuclear energy, a carbon-free source of energy – and in the present situation of the issue of climate change, really a very important existential crisis – it’s easy to say, well, we’ll solve the problems later.”

    He said the issues with nuclear energy – from the potential for disaster to the issue of how to store nuclear waste – should be compared with the potential for renewable alternatives like solar and wind energy.

    The University of Illinois energy professor, David Ruzic – who has a lively YouTube channel, “Illinois EnergyProf,” with multiple videos meant to dispel concerns about nuclear energy – has a much more positive view of nuclear energy’s future.

    Illinois, by the way, generates more nuclear power than any other state. Lawmakers there recently voted to lift a moratorium on new reactor construction that was in place until the federal government can develop a technology for disposing of nuclear waste. That new policy must still be signed by the state’s governor.

    Ruzic argues nuclear waste takes up such little space it should simply be encased in yards of solid concrete and kept at the site of nuclear reactors. The concrete, he argued, can be repaired every 70 years or so as it degrades.

    “Over the 60 years we’ve been doing this commercially, we have learned so much about how to do it extremely safely and very well,” Ruzic said, arguing that the new plant in Georgia would not be affected by an earthquake and tidal wave in the way that Fukushima was, because the new reactor in Georgia is cooled by air in case of an emergency.

    He argued that even in Fukushima, it’s important to note that there were no deaths associated with the radiation due to the failure of the plant, although many thousands were evacuated.

    Any concern you can find to raise about nuclear power, Ruzic has a ready answer. He said no one should worry about the radioactive water Japan plans to release into the ocean from Fukushima because there is a level of radioactivity in everything already.

    “You are adding something trivial and inconsequential, which will be diluted even more,” Ruzic said.

    Even the Russia-Ukraine standoff over the Zaporizhzhia plant does not concern Ruzic; the biggest threat he sees, assuming it is not targeted by bunker-busting bombs, is that the plant ceases making electricity – not that it could turn into another Chernobyl.

    “It’s really unfortunate that it’s in the middle of a war zone. But it’s also really unfortunate that chemical plants or coal plants or other plants are in the middle of a war zone as well,” he argued.

    Both professors brought up the push toward small, modular nuclear technology for which there are numerous companies speculating there will be a major market. That market could grow exponentially if the government decides to put a tax on carbon emissions to account for the harm they cause.

    Ewing argued there is not a clear US national energy strategy, and that means numerous state and federal agencies and private companies are searching, often at odds with each other, for something new. The expense and difficulty of developing nuclear technology will be a roadblock. The new Georgia plant took more than a decade to build and came in over budget.

    Ruzic said that after the initial capital expenditure, the relative low cost of fuel for nuclear plants makes them a good, long-term investment.

    When I came back to Ewing about his comment that he has no clear preference for or against nuclear energy, he said the broad question overlooks too much.

    “The nuclear landscape is, from a technical and social point of view, complicated enough that broad general positions really don’t serve us very well,” he said.

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  • Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies | CNN Business

    Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Some Amazon corporate workers have announced plans to walk off the job next week over frustrations with the company’s return-to-work policies, among other issues, in a sign of heightened tensions inside the e-commerce giant after multiple rounds of layoffs.

    The work stoppage is being jointly organized by an internal climate justice worker group and a remote work advocacy group, according to an email from organizers and public social media posts.

    Workers participating have two main demands: asking the e-commerce giant to put climate impact at the forefront of its decision making, and to provide greater flexibility for how and where employees work.

    The lunchtime walkout is scheduled for May 31, beginning at noon. Organizers have said in an internal pledge that they are only going to go through with the walkout if at least 1,000 workers agree to participate, according to an email from organizers.

    The Washington Post was first to report the planned walkout.

    The collective action from corporate workers comes after Amazon, like other Big Tech companies, cut tens of thousands of jobs beginning late last year amid broader economic uncertainty. All told, Amazon has said this year that it is laying off some 27,000 workers in multiple rounds of cuts.

    At the same time, Amazon and other tech companies are trying to get workers into the office more. In February, Amazon said it was requiring thousands of its workers to be in the office for at least three days per week, starting on May 1.

    “Morale is really at an all-time low right now,” an Amazon corporate worker based in Los Angeles, who plans on participating in the walkout next week, told CNN. “I think the hope from this walkout is really to send a clear message to leadership that we’re expecting real action from them on a number of issues, with the thesis of just, like, we need better long term decision-making that benefits not only employees but the communities that we serve.”

    The worker, who asked not to be named, said organizers are focusing the in-person walkout efforts at the company’s Seattle headquarters but have also created a way for people to participate virtually so “all Amazonians are welcome to participate.”

    One of the internal groups spearheading next week’s walkout is dubbed Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ), the same coalition that organized protests slamming the company for inaction on climate change back in 2019.

    “Amazon must keep pace with a changing world,” the group wrote in a Twitter thread Tuesday calling for the walkout next week. “To cultivate a diverse, world-class workplace, we need real plans to tackle our climate impact and flexible work options.”

    Amazon’s Climate Pledge, signed in 2019, commits the company to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, among other climate goals. But in the Twitter thread, the group blasted the pledge as “hype” and demanded “a genuine climate plan.”

    Amazon said it has made progress in meeting its goals, including by putting thousands of electric delivery vehicles on the road, and by continuing to invest in both proven and new science-backed solutions for reducing carbon emissions. Amazon also said it had the goal of powering 100% of its operations with renewable energy by 2030, and now expects to meet that goal by 2025.

    “We respect our employees’ rights to express their opinions,” Rob Munoz, an Amazon spokesperson, told CNN in a statement Tuesday.

    In response to employee concerns about the return to office, Munoz said the company has “had a great few weeks with more employees in the office.”

    “There’s been good energy on campus and in urban cores like Seattle where we have a large presence. We’ve heard this from lots of employees and the businesses that surround our offices,” Munoz said. “As it pertains to the specific topics this group of employees is raising, we’ve explained our thinking in different forums over the past few months and will continue to do so.”

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  • Several shark species are facing extinction. Here’s how you can help | CNN

    Several shark species are facing extinction. Here’s how you can help | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Older than dinosaurs and trees, sharks have endured a lot throughout their 450 million years on Earth. They’ve even survived five mass extinctions, including the asteroid that wiped out 75% of life on the planet. But many species of these aquatic apex predators are now in danger of dying out forever.

    “Sharks are in crisis globally,” says the WWF. Overfishing (hunting for their meat, fins, and other parts before they can reproduce fast enough) is their biggest threat along with unintentionally getting caught in fishing gear and the effects of climate change.

    Of the thousand known species of sharks and rays (sharks’ closest living relatives), over a third of them are at risk of extinction. And since sharks are “indicators of ocean health,” as sharks go, so does the delicate balance of marine ecosystems.

    From gathering data to educating the public to advocating for underwater life, many conservation groups are on a mission to protect these prehistoric creatures before they are lost to history. Click here to support their work or keep reading to learn how they’re taking action.

    Research is key to conservation. Scientists rely on this information to inform wildlife and habitat management and conservation plans while advocates use data to develop and recommend policy to public officials. This research can also be used for public safety purposes as well as to educate future generations that will inherit the planet.

    Often conducted in remote and dangerous environments, shark research requires time and money. But that work is paying off as researchers continually identify new species of sharks, such as those that can walk on the ocean floor and glow in the dark.

    These research-oriented organizations are exploring the world’s reefs, seas, coastlines, and oceans to ultimately benefit shark conservation:

    • Atlantic White Shark Conservancy – Based on the southern tip of Cape Cod, the conservancy’s main mission is white shark research and education. Offering expeditions to see the animals in their natural habitat, educational Shark Centers open to the public, and youth science programs, the non-profit also runs the Sharktivity app where user-reported shark sightings help researchers learn more about shark travel and behavior and keep sharks and humans safe from each other.
    • Beneath the Waves –– Since 2013, Beneath The Waves has used science and technology to promote ocean health and conservation policy. Their threatened species initiative collects research on sharks using tools such as tags, sensors, drones, and satellites to better understand shark biology and movement. The non-profit launched the first long-term study of large-scale shark sanctuaries and discovered deep-sea “hotspots” for sharks in the Caribbean.
    • MarAlliance – Headquartered in Houston, MarAlliance conducts research in tropical seas to support wildlife conservation in places such as the Gulf of Mexico, Pacific Ocean, and Caribbean Sea. Their work includes identifying potential sites for marine protected areas from fishing, training local fishing communities, and monitoring population levels of threatened marine life, like some species of sharks.
    • Mote Marine Lab and Aquarium – Founded in 1955 on Florida’s west coast, Mote Marine Laboratory has been “obsessed” with sharks since their beginning. Today, their Sharks & Rays Conservation Research Program is one of 20 marine research programs studying human and environmental health, sustainable fishing, and animals such as manatees and dolphins. Mote also runs an aquarium equipped with a 135,000-gallon shark tank viewable on a live stream.
    • Fins Attached – While the Colorado-based non-profit aims to protect the health of the entire ocean, much of its research focuses on sharks since their position at the top of the marine food chain influences the health of the entire ecosystem. Fins Attached has produced many publications on shark research and allows donors to join some research expeditions, all with conservation and education in mind.

    Unfortunately for sharks, NOAA says, “What makes them unique also makes them vulnerable.” Some species of sharks, like great whites, are slow to reproduce: they can take decades to reach breeding age, have pregnancies last up to three years, and produce small litters. And warming waters are shifting some of their migration patterns beyond protected areas, putting them at risk of fishing.

    All of it is hurting their numbers. A 2021 report showed over the last 50 years, global shark and ray populations have fallen more than 70%.

    Listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, oceanic whitetip shark numbers in the Pacific Ocean have fallen an estimated 80 to 95% within the last 30 years, according to NOAA.

    “If we don’t do anything, it will be too late,” says biologist and study co-author Nick Dulvy. “It’s much worse than other animal populations we’ve been looking at,” adding the downward trend for sharks is even steeper than those for elephants and rhinos, which are “iconic in driving conservation efforts on land.”

    While the study found we may approach a “point of no return,” there are encouraging signs that conservation efforts are starting to work for white sharks and hammerheads thanks to government bans, policies, and quotas.

    There is still a long way to go, however, so many conservation organizations like these are dedicated to rescuing and protecting these vulnerable creatures:

    • PADI AWARE Foundation – The world’s largest scuba diver training organization, PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) officially launched its global conservation charity in 1992 to promote cleaner and healthier oceans. One of its goals is to reduce the amount of sharks and rays threatened with extinction by 25%. Data collected from its new Global Shark & Ray Census will help with ongoing and future efforts to protect vulnerable species.
    • Galápagos Conservancy – Some 600 miles west of Ecuador lies one of the world’s most famous and unique ecosystems: the Galápagos Islands. As the only American non-profit solely devoted to protecting and restoring the archipelago, the Galápagos Conservancy is working to rewild and save endangered species, including sharks. The organization is helping research breeding areas of scalloped hammerhead and blacktip sharks and supporting efforts to learn more about the high concentration of whale sharks that congregate in the Galápagos Marine Reserve.
    • Shark Advocates International –– Founded by veteran shark advocate Sonja Fordham, Shark Advocates International is a project of The Ocean Foundation. The non-profit promotes science-based shark conservation policies such as fishing limits, species-specific protections, and finning bans at the local, national, and international level.
    • WildAid –– Known for its high-profile media campaigns, WildAid fights the global illegal wildlife trade by changing consumer attitudes through awareness of the multi-billion dollar industry. Its anti-shark fin campaign in China featuring NBA legend Yao Ming has been especially successful, seeing an 80% drop in shark fin consumption in the country. Through its WildAid Marine Program, the non-profit also helps protect sharks around the world, including the Galápagos Marine Reserve, home to the densest shark population on Earth.
    • Wildlife Conservation Society – Founded in 1895, the Wildlife Conservation Society is one of the oldest organizations of its kind. In addition to operating world-famous parks like the Bronx Zoo, WCS runs long-term wildlife protection projects across the world, including an initiative to develop and implement policies to help protect sharks from overfishing in low-income, ocean-dependent countries.
    • WWF – With five million supporters, projects in nearly 100 countries, and one iconic panda logo, the World Wildlife Fund (known outside of the US and Canada as the World Wild Fund for Nature) is one of the largest and most well-known conservation organizations on the planet. WWF has partnered with the international wildlife trade monitoring non-profit TRAFFIC for a joint shark conservation program with local projects all over the world.

    It’s not just sharks that are vulnerable to deteriorating conditions in the water – the entire marine ecosystem is at risk due to unsustainable fishing practices, climate change, and pollution, which has reached “unprecedented” levels within the last 20 years.

    The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest concentration of ocean plastic in the world, is now twice the size of Texas. Scientists are seeing the highest ocean surface temperatures on record this year along with a “totally unprecedented” marine heat wave in the north Atlantic Ocean. Researchers warn all coral reefs on Earth could die out by the end of the century.

    Experts say it’s not too late to reverse course, but the window to do so is shrinking. A report in the journal Nature found marine wildlife to be “remarkably resilient” and could recover by 2050 with urgent and widespread conservation interventions.

    Organizations like the ones below are committed to protecting the health of the entire ocean and all life within it:

    • Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute – Started in 1963 by one of the founders of SeaWorld, HSWRI’s mission is to conserve and renew marine life for a healthier planet. Although the non-profit institute exists as an independent entity, it still collaborates with the for-profit park on scientific research and both act as “first responders” to rescue marine wildlife.
    • Ocean Conservancy – The Ocean Conservancy’s roots date back to the 1970’s when it campaigned to save whales and other vulnerable animals. It later expanded its mission to protect the broader ecosystem, holding its first International Coastal Cleanup in 1986, and since then has collected more than 348 million pounds of trash with the help of 17 million volunteers. Other current programs include advancing ocean justice, addressing climate change, advocating for ocean health funding and legislation, and promoting sustainable fishing.
    • The Ocean Foundation – Working in 45 countries across six continents, the community foundation operates conservation initiatives focused on climate resilience, ocean literacy and leadership, ocean science equity, and sustainable plastic production and consumption. The non-profit also offers training, research and development, and support for coastal communities.
    • WILDCOAST – Known as COSTASALVAJE in Spanish, WILDCOAST’s work spans 38 million acres primarily across California and Mexico to conserve coastal and marine ecosystems and wildlife. The non-profit works to protect shorelines, coastal wetlands, mangrove forests, and coral reefs and establish protected areas for threatened sea turtles and gray whales.
    • Wild Oceans – Focused on the future of sustainable fishing, Tampa-based Wild Oceans is the oldest non-profit in America dedicated to marine fisheries management. The non-profit’s Large Marine Fish Conservation initiative focuses on conserving big fish such as marlin, swordfish, tuna, and sharks – “the lions, tigers and wolves of the sea” – to keep the entire ocean food web and habitat healthy.

    Click here to support these organization’s work and help save sharks before it’s too late.

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  • Can Biden achieve his cornerstone climate goal? Why 100% clean power is still out of reach | CNN Politics

    Can Biden achieve his cornerstone climate goal? Why 100% clean power is still out of reach | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Tucked into President Joe Biden’s ambitious, sweeping climate commitments is a crucially important goal that dates back to his campaign: Transforming the US electric grid to run entirely on clean energy by 2035.

    The goal could make or break Biden’s pledge to slash the country’s planet-warming emissions in half by 2030. And if successful, 100% clean electricity could energize vast sectors of the US economy: electric vehicles, home and office heating and cooling, and appliances. It could even power heavy industry and manufacturing, which is currently reliant on fossil fuels.

    “When you have a fully clean grid, versus a grid that either is a quarter or a half clean, that makes a significant difference in terms of the greenhouse gas performance of the things you’re plugging in to that grid,” White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi told CNN. “That electric vehicle now is twice or three times cleaner when you shift to a fully clean grid.”

    Yet while renewable energy has exploded over the past decade, bringing Biden’s cornerstone climate goal to fruition by 2035 could be beyond his grasp.

    As of this year, about 44% of America’s electricity was powered by zero-emissions sources like wind, solar, nuclear and hydropower, according to the Department of Energy. The rest comes from fossil fuels like methane gas and coal.

    After the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year – legislation that aimed to supercharge clean energy in the US – an analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory predicts the US will get to around 80% clean electricity by 2030, a number that includes renewables, nuclear energy and carbon capture on fossil fuel plants.

    By 2035, the federal analysis shows clean and renewable sources will make up about 86% of US energy, spurred in large part by the IRA. (That analysis did not include the Biden administration’s proposed pollution rules for power plants, which could increase the adoption of clean energy.)

    “That’s a doubling from today, which is huge,” Ben King, an associate director at the nonpartisan think tank Rhodium Group, told CNN. But it’s also short of Biden’s goal of 100% clean electricity by that date.

    Decarbonizing the last portion of the power sector will be the most difficult, federal officials and experts told CNN. The closer you get to 100% percent clean electricity, the harder it is to go all the way.

    “We’ve known that the last 10% – maybe the last 20 to 25% – is going to be challenging,” Zaidi said. “And the reason is because you’re not just trying to deliver clean electrons onto the grid. You’re trying to deliver cleaner electrons when you want them, where you want them. That’s a hard thing to do.”

    Not only does the power need to come from clean sources, it also needs to be readily available to energize the US economy during peak demand.

    But wind and solar are still variable – especially without massive, costly battery storage. And newer technologies, like green hydrogen, carbon capture and small modular nuclear reactors haven’t yet been built to a large enough scale.

    That could mean some fossil fuels plants outfitted with carbon capture would need to remain connected to the grid to provide power that can brought online quickly, King said.

    There are also big infrastructure hurdles for renewables to take the lead. Even if massive amounts of wind and solar are developed by the end of this decade, the US may not have enough electrical transmission infrastructure to move all of that renewable energy around the grid.

    “The bottlenecks of a lack of transmission are very real,” Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, told CNN. There also needs to be significant investment in massive batteries to store the power generated by wind and solar to be used at all hours, she said.

    While companies and the federal government are racing to scale up new zero-carbon technologies, traditional wind and solar will largely power this clean electricity transition.

    They are the most reliable and trusted clean energy sources for utilities and developers, and they have quickly become cheaper than fossil fuels – so inexpensive that it is becoming more cost-effective for some utilities to build new wind and solar, rather than constructing new fossil plants or even running existing ones, experts told CNN.

    Wind and solar are also mature technologies that developers know they can finance and get huge tax breaks on through the Inflation Reduction Act.

    They are the “natural choice for developers who are looking for those low risk and very cost-effective projects to develop,” Sonia Aggarwal, a former White House senior advisor for climate policy and CEO of nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation, told CNN. “We will see them play a large role because of how good they look from an economic perspective.”

    By the end of 2021, wind and solar together made up about 228 gigawatts of power. By 2034, NREL predicts that number – including offshore wind – will grow by more than four times to over 1 terawatt, or 1 trillion watts of power.

    “Where we are now is very different from even 5 or 10 years ago as far as the costs of clean energy, particularly renewables, being significantly lower than they’ve been in the past,” Carla Frisch, acting executive director of the US Energy Department’s Office of Policy, told CNN. “So just a really rapid acceleration that we’re already experiencing right now.”

    While getting new clean technologies to scale will be difficult, it’s work worth doing, Zaidi said.

    “Let’s deploy the stuff we have right now, right away,” he said. “And let’s work hard as we can to innovate on the stuff that we need in the future.”

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  • Arizona senator leans on astronaut past to call for climate crisis action amid blistering heat wave | CNN Politics

    Arizona senator leans on astronaut past to call for climate crisis action amid blistering heat wave | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly on Sunday leaned into his experience as an astronaut to call for climate crisis action amid a blistering heatwave across the United States, including his home state of Arizona.

    “When I went into space four times, I mean, I could see how thin the atmosphere is over this planet. It’s as thin as a contact lens on an eyeball, and we have got to do a better job taking care of it,” Kelly told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

    “I have not seen in my time in the Senate many folks that deny that the climate is changing. That was a thing of the past. Now is: What do we do about it? We passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a big down payment on reducing the amount of carbon we put up into the atmosphere. That will make a difference over time. We obviously have to do more,” he added.

    As the climate crisis ratchets temperatures higher and higher, scientists have warned there’s a growing likelihood that 2023 could be the Earth’s hottest year on record. Heat kills more Americans than any other form of severe weather, including flooding, hurricanes or extreme cold, according to National Weather Service data.

    These climate crisis warnings have been especially potent in recent days as more than 85 million people remain under heat alerts while the weekslong heat wave continues and intensifies in the Southwest. Dangerously high temperatures have continued to plague the western parts of the US throughout the weekend, with temperatures expected to grow hotter in the South in the coming days.

    More than 100 temperature records could be set through Monday across the West and South.

    “My view hasn’t really changed. We are suffering a heat wave here in Arizona. It is typically very hot in the summer. This is obviously dangerous to seniors and folks who are living on the streets,” Kelly said Sunday.

    While scientists say the heat records are alarming, most are unsurprised – though frustrated that their warnings have been largely ignored for decades.

    The world is “walking into an uncharted territory,” Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, told CNN earlier this month. “We have never seen anything like this in our life.”

    Kelly also said Sunday he was “concerned” about the impact the group “No Labels” – which is pushing for a third-party unity ticket in 2024 – could have on President Joe Biden’s reelection bid.

    “I don’t think ‘No Labels’ is a political party. I mean, this is a few individuals putting dark money behind an organization, and that’s not what our democracy should be about; it should not be about a few rich people,” he told Tapper. “So I’m obviously concerned about what’s going on here in Arizona and across the country.”

    Arizona Democrats have sued over the recognition of No Labels as a political party with the ability to place candidates on the state’s ballot – and potentially play a spoiler role in 2024, when Arizona, which Biden won by less than half a point in 2020, is poised to be a critical swing state.

    No Labels is set to host an event Monday in New Hampshire, with centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia as a keynote speaker. Kelly said he had spoken to Manchin about the issue but did not offer any details.

    “I’m not going to go into details of conversations I have with my fellow senators. That’s sort of a policy of mine,” he said.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Accelerating the EV revolution whether you like it or not | CNN Politics

    Accelerating the EV revolution whether you like it or not | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a plan to remake the way car-obsessed Americans live, using public safety rules to accelerate the shift from internal combustion to electric vehicles.

    Just a fraction of the current auto market is EVs, but under standards announced by the EPA Wednesday, up to two-thirds of new vehicles sold in the US would be zero-emission or plug-in hybrid within a decade.

    The rules, which are not yet final, would use authority under the Clean Air Act to force auto companies to cut pollution and slash vehicle emissions by more than half. They would phase in with model year 2027 vehicles and be fully implemented by 2032. Read CNN’s full report.

    While ambitious, the goals are not unprecedented. They put the federal government on track to catch up with state governments, led by California, that want to stop allowing the sale of internal combustion vehicles by 2035. Read this report from CNN Business about why that’s not as crazy as it seems.

    There is a very big legal question mark looming behind California’s action and the EPA’s effort, which still has a public comment and revision period.

    The current Supreme Court, dominated by conservative justices, has already shown its scorn for EPA rulemaking and its indifference to addressing climate change. Last year, the court nixed the Biden administration’s plan to curb emissions from existing power plants.

    I asked CNN climate reporter Ella Nilsen for her takeaways from the EPA announcement. She offered these key points:

    ► The standards are ambitious, but doable

    If enacted, the newly proposed EPA emissions standards would be one of the Biden administration’s most aggressive climate-change policies yet – moving the US auto market decisively toward electric vehicles in the next decade.

    However, multiple experts said the standards are doable, and even lag slightly behind the California standards, which will completely phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035 to usher in electric vehicles. The US is also following countries including the EU and China, which are moving more aggressively toward electric vehicles.

    ► Charging infrastructure and consumer incentives could be tricky

    This new proposed rule won’t happen overnight; it would be gradually phased in over the next decade. At the same time, the US needs to build up a network of electric charging stations in addition to the ubiquitous gas station. Federal officials have also talked about needing to incentivize more Americans to buy EVs by bringing the cost down, with federal tax credits.

    However, the new $7,500 tax credits (passed last year by Democrats in the Inflation Reduction Act) are incredibly complex due to manufacturing requirements. The credits could actually shrink the eligible number of cars that qualify (however, leased vehicles have more leeway under the new system). Regardless, it will take years for the EV infrastructure, incentives and supply to fall into place to make electric vehicles available to most Americans.

    ► This is a big deal for US climate policy

    This rule will impact the US economy, but it’s also major climate policy. The proposed EPA tailpipe standards would cut planet-warming pollution from US cars in half. Combined with the agency’s medium and heavy-duty vehicles standard, the proposals could cut nearly 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions by 2055.

    Given Americans’ reliance on cars, transportation is a big part of overall US emissions – it accounts for nearly 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the US, according to the EPA. Cutting down on tailpipe pollution from gas-powered cars and trucks is a big part of decarbonizing the US.

    While the federal government and key states are all in on moving toward EVs, and auto companies are spending big to get competitive in the market, Americans generally are not yet completely embracing the idea.

    Just 4% of Americans currently own an EV, and a scant 12% are seriously considering buying one, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. Less than half, 43%, say they would consider buying an EV in the future, and a sizable 41% are completely closed off to the idea.

    The expected partisan breakdown applies to those figures. Most of the interest in EVs is among Democrats. Most of the staunch opposition is among Republicans. Younger Americans and those making $100,000 and above are also more interested in buying an EV in the future.

    There are also key regional disparities. In the West, where states are already working to phase in EVs, only 28% say they would not buy an EV. Compare that to half of Southerners who would not consider buying an EV.

    A majority of the country is skeptical that EVs will even have an effect on the climate, according to the poll, with 61% saying EVs will help address climate change only a little or not at all.

    In a separate AP-NORC poll released this week, the most-cited major reasons for not wanting to purchase an EV – out of eight offered in the poll – were expense (60% said they cost too much) and convenience (50% said there aren’t enough charging stations available).

    Access and affordability should be addressed as inventory increases, writes CNN’s Peter Valdes-Dapena, who covers the auto industry. A decade from now, charging should be quicker and easier, EV ranges should be longer and prices should be at or below the cost of an internal combustion vehicle. Read his full report.

    Rather than fighting the rules, as the fossil fuel industry is sure to do, the auto industry is already investing heavily in EVs, responding to tougher regulation already imposed around the world and by California, which moved to ban the sale of new gas and diesel powered vehicles by 2035.

    California actually took the lead on pushing for EVs in the years when the Trump administration was dialing back on federal climate policy. Other states, like Oregon, Washington and Minnesota, have tied their standards to California’s.

    Valdes-Dapena notes that car companies with loyal customer bases are slowly making the switch. He writes:

    Currently, Toyota offers only one electric model in the United States, the BZ4X SUV, but more are planned. Honda, another Japanese brand with a loyal following, offers no EVs currently but the company is gearing up factories in Ohio to build future EV models. Honda expects to offer its first EV next year. General Motors also has a number of EV models coming in the next year or two.

    He also notes that GM has pledged to sell only electric passenger vehicles by 2035.

    And no, this does not mean internal combustion vehicles will be banned. They will still make up the vast majority of vehicles on the road in a decade even if this rule is finalized and withstands challenges in court. But it would represent a tectonic shift.

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  • AC is hard on the planet. This building has a sustainable solution | CNN Business

    AC is hard on the planet. This building has a sustainable solution | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    In mid-July at the construction site at 1 Java Street in Brooklyn, New York, the outside temperatures can reach sweltering highs in the 90s. But 500-feet underground, it’s 55 degrees all year round.

    That stable, underground temperature will be key to making life comfortable in the residential building that will soon sit on the site, a scenic spot in the Greenpoint neighborhood along Brooklyn’s waterfront.

    With 834 rental apartments plus commercial space, 1 Java Street is set to be the largest multifamily, residential building with “geothermal” heating and cooling system in New York State — and potentially the country — when it’s completed in late 2025, according to developer Lendlease.

    Geothermal technology is essentially a more eco-friendly version of an HVAC system, allowing the building spaces and water to be cooled and heated more efficiently, without traditional window AC units and natural gas. Lendlease says the technology will make it possible for the nearly 790,000-square foot building to release around 55% less carbon and achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

    With summer temperatures reaching record highs around the world, experts say finding ways to cool buildings that are less taxing on the environment could be crucial in fighting climate change. Even back in 2018, air conditioning and electric fans accounted for around 20% of total global electricity use, according to a report cpublished that year by the International Energy Agency. Now, energy and urban development experts are urging cities and developers to implement new solutions to keep buildings cooler. And both New York City and the Biden administration have identified geothermal systems as one way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

    “Whenever we look at a site, we consider how we can make it more sustainable,” Layth Madi, Lendlease’s senior vice president and director of development, told CNN, adding that the development firm is aiming to reach net zero by 2025 and be fully decarbonized by 2040.

    “I think many residents will choose to live in this building because of its green credentials,” Madi said. “We know a lot of people are thinking about climate change and our impact on the planet.”

    Geothermal plumbing works by sending water from a building deep into the ground below it to take advantage of the earth’s naturally stable internal temperature — on hot days, the underground temperature will reduce the temperature of warm water from the building to help with cooling; on cold days, it will warm up cold water to help with heating.

    At 1 Java Street, construction crews are drilling 320 holes, each around 4 inches in diameter and 499-feet deep, to create the building’s geothermal piping system through which the water will be pumped.

    “Your thermostat turns on and it tells your building, ‘I need heating or cooling.’ And it energizes pumps, and those pumps flow fluid through the [geothermal] circuit that we’ve established here on site,” said Adam Alaica, director of engineering and development at Geosource Energy, the Canadian firm that’s installing and drilling the vertical geothermal piping at 1 Java Street.

    For now, the process doesn’t come cheap. Installing the building’s geothermal system increased construction costs by around 6%, according to Madi, and required securing equipment and trained manpower that remains relatively scarce.

    “We’re seeing rapid growth — I would say approaching that of exponential growth year over year in interest in the technology, which is very exciting for the industry as a whole,” Alacia said. “The bottlenecks to that growth have always been, and will continue to be in the years to come, specialty machinery to implement this infrastructure and the people resources it takes to do this.”

    Eventually, though, as more developers invest in geothermal and more companies provide the specialty training needed to install the technology — Geosource operates its own training program — Madi said he expects the costs to come down. And once the building is up and running, it should be more cost efficient to heat and cool.

    Lendlease didn’t specify whether residents of 1 Java Street will experience any cost savings on utilities thanks to the geothermal system (the units themselves will be priced at market rate, with 30% of them set aside as affordable housing). “Ultimately, it will be up to tenants to manage their power consumption and work with the utility company on billing,” the company told CNN.

    While 1 Java Street will be one of relatively few geothermal buildings in the state, the companies behind its development say New York — and the world — could use more buildings like it.

    “Geothermal is not a new technology … there’s kind of a primitive component to it, using the earth as a heat source and heat sink,” Alacia said. “In general, geothermal can really be used anywhere you have ground under your feet … The cost and the business case can vary, but technically it has strong credentials really anywhere in the country.”

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  • Biden to highlight climate commitments during West Coast swing | CNN Politics

    Biden to highlight climate commitments during West Coast swing | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden will highlight climate commitments made by his administration and announce new federal funding for climate resilience projects as part of a three-day trip to the Bay Area in Northern California that begins Monday, according to a White House official.

    Biden’s trip builds on several campaign-related stops over the past week at which he outlined key planks for his reelection bid, including touting stricter gun safety measures at a summit in Connecticut and underscoring his economic pitch in Philadelphia.

    It also comes less than a week after four major environmental groups backed Biden’s campaign for a second term in a first-ever joint endorsement from the LCV Action Fund, NextGen PAC, the Sierra Club and the NRDC Action Fund. In a speech in Washington after the endorsement, Biden called climate change “the only truly existential threat,” adding, “If we don’t meet the requirements that we’re looking at, we’re in real trouble.”

    Biden heavily courted climate and environmental justice groups during his 2020 campaign and has made combating climate change central to his governing agenda with announcements over the past few months on environmental justice initiatives and aggressive new rules to regulate planet-warming pollution from natural gas power plants.

    Some environmental groups and activists have expressed frustration over his administration’s approval of a major Alaska oil project earlier this year and more recently over the White House pushing for the Mountain Valley pipeline to be included in the debt ceiling package enacted earlier this month.

    On Monday, Biden will tour coastal wetland areas and discuss actions his administration has taken to alleviate the climate crisis and protect the environment during a visit to the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center and Preserve in Palo Alto, California, according to the White House official.

    As part of his remarks, which will be delivered alongside state, community and environmental justice leaders, the president will announce that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is launching a $575 million “Climate Resilience Regional Challenge,” which will help coastal and Great Lakes communities “become more resilient to extreme weather and other impacts of the climate crisis,” according to a White House fact sheet.

    Biden issued an executive order prioritizing environmental justice in April, establishing the new Office of Environmental Justice within the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In a speech at the time ahead of Earth Day, Biden said that “environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government woven directly into how we work with state, local, tribal, and territorial governments.”

    The funding to be announced Monday, which is part of the president’s signature climate and health care law enacted last year, will support building natural infrastructure, protecting public access to coastal natural resources and other measures aimed at protecting communities for storm surge, flooding and rising sea levels, according to the White House.

    Biden will also announce that he expects to host a White House Summit on Building Climate Resilient Communities later this year during which his administration will release a new National Climate Resilience Framework that will outline steps the federal government can take to promote climate resiliency, according to the fact sheet.

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  • Biden announces new environmental justice initiatives | CNN Politics

    Biden announces new environmental justice initiatives | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden announced new environmental justice actions on Friday, including an executive order that the White House says will make environmental justice a central mission of federal agencies.

    “Under this order, environmental justice will become the responsibility of every single federal agency – I mean, every single federal agency,” Biden pledged at a White House Rose Garden signing ceremony surrounded by climate and environmental justice advocates just before Earth Day.

    He continued, “Every federal agency must take into account environmental health impacts on communities and work to prevent those negative impacts. Environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government woven directly into how we work with state, local, tribal, and territorial governments.”

    The executive order, which will still be up to agencies to implement, will create a new Office of Environmental Justice inside the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

    Friday’s move comes as as many environmental justice groups have been frustrated at the administration’s recent approval of a major Alaska oil project. CNN also reported Friday that the Biden administration is planning to roll out aggressive new rules to regulate planet-warming pollution from natural gas power plants – a move that could face fierce legal challenges.

    Friday’s move also took place as Biden is preparing to announce his reelection bid as soon as next week, CNN reported Thursday. During his last presidential campaign, he worked hard to court environmental justice activist groups.

    Biden’s new order directs agencies to work more closely with impacted communities and improve “gaps” in scientific data to try to better tackle the impacts of pollution on people’s health, a White House official said. If toxic substances were released from a federal facility in the future, the order requires federal agencies to notify nearby communities.

    The order comes a few years after Biden announced his signature “Justice40” initiative, vowing to direct 40% of federal climate and clean funding from new legislation to disadvantaged communities. On Friday, three additional agencies – the Department of Commerce, the National Science Foundation and NASA – will also join the initiative.

    Biden also took a swipe at Republicans in his speech, contrasting his action on environmental justice with the GOP’s policies.

    During his remarks on Friday, the president detailed how he’s spent much of his tenure in office surveying damage from extreme weather events, calling the threat of climate change “an existential threat to our nation” and criticizing congressional Republicans for attempting to block his legislative priorities focused on climate.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, recently unveiled provisions in his debt limit proposal that would overturn clean energy tax credits passed in the Inflation Reduction Act last year. The proposal also includes HR 1 – the GOP’s version of an energy permitting bill.

    Republicans, Biden argued, would “rather threaten to default on the US economy, or get rid of some $30 billion in taxpayer subsidies … than getting rid of $30 billion in taxpayer subsidies to an oil industry that made $200 billion last year.”

    “Imagine seeing all this happen – the wildfires, the storms, the floods – and doing nothing about it,” he continued. “Imagine taking all these clean energy jobs away from working class folks all across America. Imagine turning your back on all those moms and dads living in towns poisoned by pollution and telling them, ‘Sorry, you’re on your own.’ We can’t let that happen.”

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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