Hey, that's not a skunk

Greens in Houston, techies in Boston, storms in Arkansas

Author

Brad Johnson
March 31, 2022

PRESENTED BY HAY FEVER FEVER

The nation’s environmental journalists and climate hawks are gathering in Houston, Texas, for the first in-person Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference in years. Today is field trip day—fishing in Galveston Bay, talking prescribed burns at nature reserves, visiting the Houston Advanced Research Center, going to neighborhoods deliberately flooded during Hurricane Harvey, and touring the toxic Houston Ship Channel and San Jacinto Waste Pits.

The SEJ2022 speaker list is a bit different from Houston’s recent CERAWeek oil & gas conference, I guess all the Big Oil executives are partied out. I’m sincerely sad to be missing out on this gathering of many of my favorite people.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is the main arm of the federal government engaging with this conference; strikingly, no representatives from the government’s top polluters—the Department of Energy and Department of Defense—despite their growing work on clean tech and climate resilience—will be in attendance.1 To be clear, the EPA is showing precisely how important they think the SEJ conference is by sending chief Michael Regan, who attended CERAWeek in person, to SEJ in the form of a pre-recorded video.

Across the river from Boston, the MIT Energy Conference begins today, with IEA head Fatih Birol (remote) and White House climate lead Gina McCarthy (in person) offering keynotes, and ARPA-E officials Jack Lewnard and Scott Litzelman on panels. One pleasing development is that the clean-tech conference, which until recently was sponsored by fossil-fuel giants like Shell, Chevron, and Saudi Aramco, has dropped the big-oil sponsors. Keep up the pressure, MIT Divest!

Reps. Sean Casten (D-Ill.), Katie Porter (D-Calif.), Don McEachin (D-Va.), and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) are pushing for the quick passage of the End Oil and Gas Tax Subsidies Act (H.R. 2184). Shadow president Joe Manchin has not yet announced his veto.

As fossil-fuel carbon dioxide rises in the atmosphere and temperatures increase, the pollen season will start earlier, last longer, and be more intense, with total pollen increasing 16–40% over the United States.

Looking at the polls, one would think Democrats should be doing everything they can to bash Republicans on climate change, health care, and Social Security:

Let’s Read the Headlines!

Boy, that greening-crypto effort has its work cut out for it, huh.

Hearings on the Hill:

Climate Action Today:

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. DMs are open—@climatebrad

1 Fact-checking myself here: With the exception of Kelly Burks-Copes, Chief, Program Support Branch, Mega Project Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District.

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