Climate Change

Florida Politics reports: Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a pair of bills to address the impact of climate change and sea level rise. The measures were among the Governor’s priorities. House Speaker Chris Sprowls similarly marked them as top priorities. “Today, we probably take the most significant steps that have been taken in Florida in quite some time,” DeSantis said. …

The New York Times reports: Taking a page from congressional Republicans who in 2017 made liberal use of a once-obscure law to roll back Obama-era regulations, Democrats will invoke the law to turn back a Trump methane rule enacted late last summer. That rule had eliminated Obama-era controls on leaks of methane, which seeps from oil and gas wells. The …

The Washington Post reports: Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen joined the U.S.-led climate change conference on Friday to detail some of the big plans her country had to help it achieve a 70 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Chief among the Danish plans was what has been dubbed an “energy island” — an offshore structure in the …

Mediaite reports: Host of the Ingraham Angle, Laura Ingraham, played the song “We Are the World” while mocking President Joe Biden’s climate conference. The song played while she mentioned list article number two on her punny “climate con” list, claiming “That the world is united in the climate change fight,” was a lie. Ingraham said that the fight against climate …

The New York Times report: President Xi Jinping of China, the United States’ biggest rival on the world stage, has said he will attend the virtual summit. So have Presidents Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, with whom the Biden administration is trying to negotiate a plan to protect the Amazon rainforest. A number of prominent …

CNN reports: President Joe Biden on Thursday will kick off a climate summit attended by 40 other world leaders by announcing an ambitious cut in greenhouse gas emissions as he looks to put the US back at the center of the global effort to address the climate crisis and curb carbon emissions. At the White House summit, which will take …

The Wall Street Journal reports: Brazil’s government, widely criticized by environmental groups as a negligent steward of the Amazon rainforest, has made an audacious offer to the Biden administration: Provide $1 billion and President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration will reduce deforestation by 40%. The proposal was made as the Brazilian president prepares for a virtual environmental summit with roughly 40 heads …

Axios reports: Climate activist Greta Thunberg will testify before the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Environment on Thursday, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), chairman of the panel, announced Tuesday. Why it matters: The Earth Day hearing — titled “The Role of Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Preventing Action on the Climate Crisis” — will coincide with the White House’s climate summit, which …

USA Today reports: After the most ferocious hurricane season on record in 2020, top hurricane forecasters on Thursday said we should expect another active, above-normal season again this year. For the season, which begins June 1, meteorologist Phil Klotzbach and other experts from Colorado State University – among the nation’s top seasonal hurricane forecasters – predict 17 named tropical storms …

NBC News reports: As millions of Texans went without power for days during February’s devastating storm, Texas oil and gas regulators were circulating talking points from a noted climate skeptic blaming system failures on the state’s embrace of wind and solar energy, emails obtained by NBC News show. The talking points from Alex Epstein, author of “The Moral Case for …

Changing America reports: New research posits that the seasons changing ahead of time could be a result of climate change and the warming of average global temperatures, resulting in a prolonged summer. These balance shifts could have dangerous implications for agriculture and natural environments, as well as human health. Published in the journal of Geophysical Research and Letters, the study …

Via press release from the White House: Today, President Biden invited 40 world leaders to the Leaders Summit on Climate he will host on April 22 and 23. The virtual Leaders Summit will be live streamed for public viewing. President Biden took action his first day in office to return the United States to the Paris Agreement. Days later, on …

NOAA reports: The average temperature across the contiguous U.S. last month was 30.6 degrees F, 3.2 degrees below the 20th-century average, making it the 19th-coldest February in the 127-year record. It was also the coldest February since 1989. Below-average temperatures dominated much of the nation from the Northwest to the Great Lakes and south to the Gulf of Mexico. For …

Axios reports: Florida lawmakers unveiled a suite of bills at USF’s St. Petersburg campus on Friday aimed at preparing the state for flooding caused by climate change-induced sea-level rise. A study released by the First Street Foundation last week found that Florida accounts for the nation’s heaviest concentration of expected economic loss due to residential flood risk, at nearly $8 …

The Washington Post reports: The United States has officially rejoined the Paris climate accord. That was the easy part. Friday marks the first day the country is again part of the international agreement meant to stop the world from warming past a critical climate change threshold — a global average of 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Now the Biden …

The Associated Press reports: Blame the polar vortex, a weather pattern that usually keeps to the arctic, but is increasingly visiting lower latitudes and staying beyond its welcome. Scientists say global warming caused by humans is partly responsible for making its southward escapes longer and more frequent. More than 100 million people live in areas covered Wednesday by some type …

The Tampa Bay Times reports: Faced with mounting evidence that sea level rise and intensifying storms will cost Florida governments billions into the future, Gov. Ron DeSantis this week announced a $1 billion investment over four years to allow local governments to build new infrastructure to address the impacts. If the Legislature approves the new program, “Resilient Florida” will use …

CNBC reports: President Joe Biden on Wednesday is set to sign several executive orders to tackle climate change and transition the country to a clean energy economy, the White House said. The executive actions include establishing climate change as a national security priority, conserving at least 30% of federal land and oceans by 2030 and canceling new oil and gas …

CNN reports: “There’s no time to start like today,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office as he began signing a stack of orders and memoranda. “I’m going to start by keeping the promises I made to the American people.” With the stroke of a pen, Biden has halted funding for the construction of Trump’s border wall, reversed his travel …

Reuters reports: President-elect Joe Biden is scheduled to publicly introduce his climate and energy team on Saturday, a history-making group that will be tasked with advancing his ambitious climate policy and strengthening safeguards against pollution. Biden has promised to make tackling climate change one of the pillars of his Democratic administration. But with a slim majority in the U.S. House …