How Should Democrats Talk About Climate Change?

Before we explain a big shift in Democratic messaging on climate, and a big milestone for solar power, let’s get caught up:

NOAA declares that El Niño is here and flashing danger signs: Meteorologists said Thursday that an El Niño has formed in the tropical Pacific and will likely intensify in the coming months, setting off more extreme weather and higher temperatures around the world.

El Niño is the name given to a natural phenomenon that occurs every few years when trade winds shift and the Pacific Ocean warms. And if history is any guide, a powerful El Niño could hit hard.

Two big shifts

A big milestone and a changing message

Despite the Trump administration’s attempts to slow the growth of renewable power, the cleanest source of energy is growing, while the dirtiest source is fading.

Last month, solar power overtook coal as an electricity source in the United States for the first time, according to Ember, an energy research firm.

It’s a milestone both technical and symbolic.

Solar supplied 12.8 percent of U.S. electricity in May, edging out coal, which supplied just 12.2 percent. That was the highest ever share of electricity generation for solar, and the fourth-lowest monthly share for coal.

And it happened despite the number of new solar installations falling last year in the United States in the face of attacks from the Trump administration. Last week, the Trump administration also announced a total of $700 million in federal money to reinvigorate the domestic coal industry, which has been declining for years.

This wasn’t the first time that a form of renewable energy has beaten out coal. Wind has supplied more electricity than coal several times over the past five years, Ember notes. And in March, renewables including nuclear power generated more electricity than gas, the biggest source of energy for the grid, for the first time.

But the steady rise of solar reflects a sweeping global shift, with photovoltaic panels that are cheaper and more powerful than ever before.

Democrats change their tune

Yet even as solar continues its rise, Democrats are taking a more cautious approach when talking about climate change.

As Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer write, many of the party’s leaders are becoming less hostile to fossil fuels. The shift comes amid rising gas prices, higher energy bills, nagging inflation and an 18-month stretch during which the Trump administration has promoted oil, gas and coal interests.

In California, Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, emerged as the front-runner to be the state’s next governor while taking campaign donations from fossil fuel companies and questioning the wisdom of California’s most stringent climate goals, like ending sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. In the state’s nonpartisan primary, Becerra finished ahead of Tom Steyer, a billionaire investor and climate donor, who ran on a climate platform and called for breaking up utilities like PG&E.

In the Northeast, Democratic governors including Kathy Hochul of New York, Ned Lamont of Connecticut and Maura Healey of Massachusetts, have all expressed openness to new gas pipelines.

The shift has opened up a rift in the Democratic Party. While some leaders, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts still rail against oil and gas interests, many of their colleagues are becoming more accommodating to fossil fuel companies. And some activists are even no longer using “keep in it in the ground” as a rallying cry.

“It’s something we are struggling with,” said Cassidy DiPaola, a spokeswoman for Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit group, told the Times. “We are still committed as a movement to the ideas of keeping it in the ground, but as a campaign message, it’s more effective to talk about building clean energy.”

Renewable energy

The costs of delaying wind and solar

In a new study, the Corporate Energy Buyers Association, a business group that promotes emissions-free power sources, found that if no additional wind and solar energy were added to the grid, it would add $11.6 billion in annual electricity and natural gas costs to electricity bills for U.S. households.

Without those low-cost renewables coming online, electricity prices would rise sharply in the years ahead, the study found. The rate increases would be the highest for ratepayers in Texas.

Solar and wind are among the cheapest forms of energy right now. Yet barriers put up by the Trump administration, states and utilities can make it hard for consumers and businesses to access them. The federal government has come down particularly hard on the wind industry.

Beyond simply slowing the growth of renewables, the study found, these roadblocks also increase the use of natural gas and coal.

“We already see really significant delays on new large projects of all types,” Rich Powell, chief executive of CEBA, said in an interview. “Our members are experiencing delays on both solar and wind.”

In addition to reversing some of the recent Trump-era policies that have throttled wind and solar growth, Powell is calling for sweeping permitting reforms that would level the playing field for renewables. One specific change he’d like to see: “permit certainty.” That is, making sure that a project that is approved during one presidential administration can’t be undone by the political whims of the next administration.

new research

Recent landslides in Indonesia devastated rare orangutans

The critically endangered Tapanuli orangutans found on the Indonesian island of Sumatra are a step closer to extinction, scientists found, after landslides last year that were fueled by climate change. More than 50 of the rare animals were estimated to have died in the landslides, out of a population of around 800.

The findings, published in the journal Current Biology on Wednesday, add a heavy ecological toll to a storm that caused mass human devastation, killing more than 1,000 people and displacing hundreds of thousands.

The analysis offers the latest example of how climate change is pummeling wildlife populations already depleted by decades or centuries of habitat loss and hunting. — Catrin Einhorn

Read more.

quote of the day

‘Climate change is now affecting the spectacle that you see.’

That’s Mike Tipton, a professor of human applied physiology at the University of Portsmouth in England, discussing how extreme heat is changing sports like this year’s World Cup, which begins Thursday. Quinn Glabicki reports that this year will feature 104 matches, 40 more than any previous tournament, and a quarter of the games are likely to be played under conditions that risk heat stress, according researchers at World Weather Attribution.

Last month a group of scientists wrote to FIFA, the sport’s governing body, saying that its current safety guidelines for heat were insufficient and “impossible to justify.”

Read more.

More climate news from around the web:

• Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said his agency would not set environmental standards for data centers, Politico reports. Zeldin said the agency would defer to state and local officials to set the rules.

• “The Netherlands has spent decades building and perfecting one of the most sophisticated water-defense systems in the world,” CNN reports. But, “experts say the systems that kept the country safe for decades will struggle to keep pace without significant upgrades.”

• Drought and relatively inexpensive drone technology is fueling a new generation of cloud-seeding companies, Bloomberg reports, some of which are trying to sprinkle chemicals into the sky to produce more rain.

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