A lot has happened since we were last in your inbox.
On Sunday, President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, clearing the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place, and it’s now highly likely that she will be running against former President Donald J. Trump in November.
Harris, as Lisa Friedman wrote, “has for years made the environment a top concern,” and earlier in her career took positions far to the left of Biden on climate change. She prosecuted polluters during her time as California’s attorney general, was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal as a senator and cast the tiebreaker that led to the passage in 2022 of the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in U.S. history.
This is partly why Harris is widely expected to continue the work Biden started if she is elected.
We have a hint about what that could look like. Harris’s climate adviser, Ike Irby, told Friedman that the vice president would focus on implementation of the I.R.A. if elected.
That may sound underwhelming, but experts told me it’s actually a pretty big challenge and key to hitting the U.S.’s climate goals.
Making it count
Ensuring that the hundreds of billions of dollars for clean energy in the I.R.A. and the bipartisan infrastructure law signed in 2021 actually translate into lower emissions is easier said than done.
Brad Plumer, who has been covering this process, told me that the I.R.A. could end up helping to cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions either a lot or just a modest amount, depending on how the law is implemented.
For instance, Plumer has written about how wind and solar developers hoping to take advantage of the law’s lucrative tax credits are still facing enormous logistical obstacles, such as difficulties in obtaining permits and connecting to the grid. The next administration will need to figure out how to help ease those bottlenecks in order for the law to have its intended effect.
According to a report published today by the Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan research firm, last year U.S. emissions were 18 percent lower than they were in 2005. Under President Biden, as part of the Paris Agreement, the U.S. has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.
I asked Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium, how exactly implementation of the Biden administration’s climate policies could alter the trajectory of U.S. emissions.
Houser told me that, if implementation goes really well, the U.S. would get emissions down to 40 to 45 percent by 2030. If implementation doesn’t go well, emissions would go down a little over 30 percent compared with 2005 levels.
The federal government is also still sitting on tens of billions of dollars worth of grants and loans for the development of hydrogen, nuclear power and other projects. For instance, the Department of Energy has yet to give out roughly $9 billion for retrofitting homes and almost $200 billion in loan authority for advanced clean energy projects.
At the same time, the Department of Energy and other federal agencies have been trying to speed up the build-out of transmission lines and issue permits for offshore wind projects, but those efforts are still ongoing.
“None of that is going to happen automatically,” Plumer told me.
More regulation
You may have noticed that none of the above get the U.S. all the way to fulfilling its 2030 goals, let alone its aims to reach net zero emissions by 2050. That big gap is explained, in part, by sectors that are harder to transform, such as industrial plants, buildings and agriculture.
As Coral Davenport reported, the Biden administration intended to pursue tougher regulations for steel and cement plants, factories and oil refineries during a possible second term. Those, as Davenport explained, are parts of heavily polluting industries that have never before had to rein in their heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Experts say that it’s very likely that the industrial sector will be the largest source of pollution in the country by 2035.
But there is a catch, Davenport told me. All regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, including planned ones, are more legally vulnerable after the Supreme Court limited the authority of all federal agencies in a major ruling last month.
New climate directions
Researchers and activists already have a sense of what new policies they would like to see under a new administration. Houser, of the Rhodium Group, said the government could adopt a standard that would cap greenhouse gas emissions for different types of manufactured goods like steel and cement. That would push manufacturers to produce cleaner products.
Houser also mentioned the possibility of a second climate investment bill that would issue grants, loans and tax credits for the industrial sector to use greener technologies.
Dan Lashof, the U.S. director of World Resources Institute, told me a price on carbon emissions would be an important incentive to clean up the economy. And Melinda Pierce, who oversees the Sierra Club’s lobbying efforts, said an ambitious administration could end billions in fossil fuel subsidies.
But no president could enact all of that alone. Most of those ideas would require approval by Congress.
A trip into tornado alley
Spend enough time with Reed Timmer and you’re liable to be driven inside a tornado. Timmer is the world’s most well-known storm chaser and, at 44, is the speeding, screaming, occasionally manure-splattered face of extreme weather in America.
The photographer Natalie Ivis and I profiled Timmer for The New York Times Magazine, and getting to know him gave me a new appreciation for the awesome power of tornadoes, for the remarkable science behind contemporary meteorology and for the peculiar mix of thrill-seeking and public service that animates storm chasers.
Timmer roams the country in the Dominator 3, a custom Ford F-350 clad in bulletproof armor, outfitted with scientific instruments and shaped like a giant armadillo, seeking out the worst weather he can find. Of the more than 1,000 tornadoes to touch down in the U.S. this year, he has seen at least 75 of them.
Timmer has a Ph.D. in meteorology and is consumed by a desire to learn as much as is humanly possible about tornadoes. Doing so might improve forecasts and ultimately help save lives.
Although it has been an unusually active year for extreme weather, there’s not yet any evidence that climate change is making tornadoes more likely. Instead, it seems to be spreading them out further across the country and the calendar year. And that is keeping Timmer busier than ever.
He’s a showman and a scientist, an adrenaline junkie and an early warning system, and he does it all with his elderly, infirm Yorkshire terrier, Gizmo, seated on his lap. — David Gelles Read the whole story here.
Elon Musk and Trump’s changing tone on electric vehicles
Former President Trump has spent years ridiculing electric vehicles, saying they don’t go far, are too expensive and are made in China. He has promised to end federal support for electric vehicles, a central feature of President Biden’s strategy to cut the carbon dioxide that is heating the planet.
But in recent months, Trump has been saying some nice things about E.V.s. While he still throws some shade on electric vehicles, in the same breath he also tells crowds that he likes them.
On Saturday, he went further, telling a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., “I’m constantly talking about electric vehicles but I don’t mean I’m against them. I’m totally for them.” Moments later he said, “I’ve driven them and they are incredible, but they’re not for everybody.”
This subtle softening began after Mr. Trump met in March with Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla, in Palm Beach, Fla. — Lisa Freidman. Read the whole story here.
More climate news:
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July 21 was the warmest day on record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Daily global average temperatures hit 62.76 Fahrenheit, or 17.09 Celsius, slightly exceeding a record set last July.
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It’s nearly impossible to completely rid your diet of forever chemicals, according to experts who spoke to The Guardian. That said, there are some things you can do to cut them down.
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The U.S. added roughly 700 new public fast-charging stations for electric cars in the second quarter, according to Bloomberg, bringing the total to nearly 9,000. (Subscription required.)
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The Washington Post explains what we know about Republican plans to privatize federal weather data services.
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Ethiopia became the first country in the world to ban the import of gas and diesel cars. But the country only has around 50 E.V. charging stations, Rest of World reports.
The post Can Kamala Harris Finish Biden’s Climate Agenda? appeared first on New York Times.
