Debate Night! Hot Hot Hot

PRESENTED BY THE WEIRD DEEP

Vice President Kamala Harris and electric-shark-phobic felon Donald Trump are squaring off in Philadelphia tonight at 9 pm. I can’t wait for the latest sanewashing effort from the New York Times amid their greenwashing ads from BP and the National Propane Council.

I would not be surprised if there is a question about Pennsylvania’s fracking industry from moderators Linsey Davis or David Muir, though I will be surprised if they express any concern for how fracking executives screw over homeowners and poison their workers while profiting from planetary destruction.

The United States and other Western democracies are cracking down on climate protesters. Typhoon Yagi has killed at least 87 people in Vietnam, and Francine is on track to hit Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane tomorrow night with a life-threatening storm surge. Don’t worry: Big Oil is taking steps to protect their oil rigs in the Gulf. Southern California’s fossil-fueled heat continues to shatter records; the triple-digit heat helped Shohei Ohtani hit a 450-foot home run, so that’s cool.

Today’s Axios Generate is sponsored by fracking giant Cheniere Energy.

This year’s Grist 50 is out, celebrating fifty climate leaders crisscrossing communications, business, science, organizing, and advocacy.

The domestic solar industry is booming, thanks to Biden-Harris climate policies. Manufacturing capacity has quadrupled since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and 75 GW of solar has been installed.

Bloomberg’s Ari Natter and Michelle Ma speculate that Trump could turn the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, revitalized by President Biden into a renewable juggernaut, into a fossil-fuel subsidy machine.

Oliver Laughland, Sara Sneath, and Will Craft have a devastating report on the corrupt cover-up of the toxic August 2023 fire at Marathon Oil’s Garyville, Louisiana refinery, the third-largest in the country. The three-day blaze “produced one of the largest accidental releases of flammable chemicals” since the EPA started keeping records.

“I thought I was back in Vietnam, in the combat zone,” 73-year-old resident Warren Glass Jr. told the reporters.

I’m very sad to report the passing of climate communications expert Hunter Cutting, a dear friend and colleague. For many years, Hunter represented the international climate movement at climate negotiations as the spokesperson for Climate Action Network International, and contributed to several Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. He co-edited Talking the Walk: A Communications Guide for Racial Justice (2006) and co-founded Climate Nexus, a unique climate-communications organization that recently shuttered due to lack of funding. We had long debates about how to best communicate the culpability of the fossil-fuel industry for climate disasters; it is hard to believe the conversation has ended.

Congratulations to Camila Thorndike, who has been named the Harris-Walz climate engagement director. Thorndike, formerly a climate advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has been working at the renewable-energy advocacy group Rewiring America. You’re invited to join the Climate Voters for Harris-Walz list and the Climate Voters debate watch party tonight.

Veteran environmental justice expert Leslie Fields, Esq. is the new chief federal officer for WE ACT for Environmental Justice. Nathan Kauffman has joined RMI (formerly the Rocky Mountain Institute) to work on cutting methane pollution.

JERBS: Crooked Media is expanding its climate reporting, thanks to a six-month grant. They’re hiring reporting fellows in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. (annual salary, $120K-$150K) and a social content producer (annual salary, $90K, LA).

The Center for Community Investment is still looking for qualified candidates to be their climate initiatives director ($115K-150K, DC/hybrid).

The All We Can Save Project is hiring a programs and communications manager ($85K, Atlanta/NYC preferred).

The Federation of American Scientists is seeking a clean energy manager to oversee its advocacy on the federal energy workforce and clean-energy legislation ($70K-$87.5K, DC).

At 10:30 am, the House Natural Resources oversight subcommittee holds a hearing on the Fish and Wildlife Service's Operation Long Tail Liberation, which broke up a multi-million-dollar smuggling ring that was smuggling long-tailed macaques from Cambodia into the United States for the benefit of Big Pharma drug testing. Because this is a Republican-led hearing, the Fish and Wildlife Service is going to be attacked.

At 2 pm, the Natural Resources water, wildlife, and fisheries subcommittee reviews four bills under its jurisdiction, notably Rep. Glenn Grothman’s (R-Wisc.) H. R. 8632 to rescind Interior’s proposed rule protecting the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the National Wildlife Refuge System.

At the same time, the Financial Services oversight committee holds yet another hearing attacking environmental, social, and governance standards, with a special focus on proxy advisory firms.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10:30 AM: House Natural Resources
  Oversight and Investigations
  Examining the Fish and Wildlife Service's Operation Long Tail Liberation

• 2 PM: House Natural Resources
  Water, Wildlife and Fisheries
  Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries Legislation

• 2 PM: House Financial Services
  Oversight and Investigations
  Environmental, Social, & Governance Standards and Proxy Advisors

Climate Action Today:

• 7:30 PM: Movement Infrastructure Project
  Grassroots Organizing Panel and Debate Watch Party in DC

• 8:30 PM: Climate Voters for Harris-Walz
  Online Debate Watch Party

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. 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.