As American As PFAS Pie

PRESENTED BY EPYRIFENACIL

There are many schools of thought on the proper way to make an apple pie, including the methods of making the pastry, which apples to use, how to cut them, how it should be topped. There are tips and tricks to assist the baker avoid common pitfalls, such as using shortening in lieu of some of the butter, adding vodka to the dough, glazing the shell with jam or marmalade, prebaking the filling, adding angostura bitters, mixing tart apples with sweet apples, slicing the apples thin, slicing them thick, dicing them… But it’s just a pie, you know?

The one truly important thing is that a pie is a dish meant for sharing. It is a gift to have friends and family to be with, to feed, to welcome into your home or to be welcomed. Our world is a gift to all of us, to be shared. It is easy to be grateful.

It’s the giving season from the fascist Trump regime: The Trump Environmental Protection Agency is illegally abandoning rules that limit deadly soot pollution (PM2.5). The Trump Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced last Thursday a plan for new oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts. The Trump White House is illegally exempting coal used in steelmaking from Biden-era Clean Air Act limits on pollutants including mercury, formaldehyde, soot and dioxins for two years. The Trump Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to illegally weaken the Endangered Species Act. The Trump EPA is proposing to illegally weaken PFAS standards. The Trump EPA has proposed approving a fifth PFAS pesticide this year. The Trump EPA has abandoned the cleanup of a liquid asphalt spill in Chicago. A federal appeals court last week halted a California law requiring companies to disclose the risks that climate change poses to their business. Last night, the Trump EPA illegally stalled methane pollution rules.

Also, Thanksgiving is wildly more expensive.

Thanks for nothing, Donnie.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF FRACKING-POWERED UNIVERSAL PAPERCLIPS

We Build Progress’ Katie Thomas Carol and Graham Steinberg have completed a masterful overview of reality of the data-center boom in the United States. A handful of states are trying to protect their residents from the high costs of the AI slop bubble as the Trump regime tries to tear everything down. (We Build Progress is the new name for the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center.)

While Oregon, Nevada, Illinois, and Maryland are leading on mechanisms to protect their ratepayers from footing the bill for these power hogs, Florida’s Public Service Commission on Thursday approved a $7 billion rate hike for Florida Power & Light. The deal raises rates for average customers while cutting rates for commercial users.

Last month, on October 7th, FERC issued a final rule to severely reduce the ability of affected landowners, communities and environmental organizations to legally challenge methane gas infrastructure projects, in order to “encourage the orderly development of plentiful supplies of natural gas. . . particularly the development of data centers to advance artificial intelligence.”

Amazon is running at least 924 data centers in more than 50 countries, twice as many as experts had estimated.

The reviews are in on the round of international climate talks that concluded in Belém, Brazil with the active participation of U.S. polluting industry but no official U.S. government negotiators. Mark Hertsgaard writes that the petrostate resistance prevailed over the efforts to move forward on a fossil-fuel phaseout.

Genevieve Guenther called out our global leaders’ cowardice:

A global climate finance tracker from the Climate Policy Initiative finds a shift from fossil fuels to clean energy in project-level financing but no progress at at the level of credit finance for such projects.

Enel switched on its $1.8 billion Solar Superhub in Texas on November 18, 2025. The 911-megawatt project is now the nation’s largest solar power plant.

I conclude every Hill Heat post with thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. I mean that thanks sincerely. I have deep gratitude that I get to do this work for you.

If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected], @climatebrad on Threads, and @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.