"Literally insane"

PRESENTED BY LIZZANUZZI’S SMACKOVER NAPTHENIC LUBRICANTS

I had arrived in Smackover. The moon swelled bulbous over its gleaming pipes and valves. My brain was flooded by the viscous crude energy piped in to Refinery. I knew its 7,500 barrels per day of refined products were bringing carcinomas and emphysema to the children downwind of its fumes and flaring operations. But its terrible flames lit a fire in my own loins. When I finally breathed in its naphthenic lubricants, distillates, and asphalt, I fell in love.

I apologize to my readers for not writing the rest of today’s newsletter in the style of the promiscuous prose of Olivia “I Did It For The” Nuzzi.

I sat before my laptop. I had to write a newsletter on the news, the modest endeavor I founded myself, Hill Heat. The bamboo in the front yard had spread its hungry roots unchecked, strangling a rose bush. Like Trump was strangling our democracy. Tempus fugit, some ancient wrote, time flies. I thought that thought and then thought about fruit flies. I wrote the sentence I had been dreading.

“Josh Shapiro has pulled out.”

I apologize for not writing the rest of today’s newsletter in the style of the overheated prose of Ryan “Not Lizzo” Lizza.

I’m just going to share some important climate news, with birds.

Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.), long skeptical of the successful multi-state climate compact known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), has pulled Pennsylvania out. David Masur, executive director of PennEnvironment, responds:

In Belém, Al Gore said it’s “literally insane” to keep using the atmosphere as an “open sewer.”

A quarter of the world’s population lives within three miles of operational fossil fuel projects like Arkansas’s Smackover Refinery.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United States are the top suppliers of fuel to Israel during its genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza.

Social media is driving climate disinformation globally. The Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change was launched last week.

More than 300 Big Ag lobbyists have joined the 1,600 Big Oil lobbyists at COP 30.

Industrial methane continues to spew into our skies.

Jamaica, battered by the fossil-fueled Hurricane Melissa, doesn’t want charity—the small-island nation wants justice.

The American climate movement, like other civic institutions, is undergoing seismic changes under the relentless pressure of techno-fascist oligarchy. Greenpeace USA has suspended operations as it fights a ruinous SLAPP lawsuit brought against it by the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Sierra Club is in the throes of change amid generational conflict and the catastrophic reign of Ben Jealous. And 350 has shut down its national operation in the United States and cut back international programs by 30 percent. The national 350 group is succeeded, however, by the thriving 350 Network Council, federation of local 350 chapters in 16 states. Each organization’s form of institutional decline is unique to its structure and personalities, but the process of fracture and decline is caused by the unceasing force of fossil-fueled pressure against civic society.

Relatedly, in a a major blow to shareholder democracy, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced yesterday that it will “allow companies that wish to exclude a shareholder proposal from their proxy ballot to simply notify the commission of its decision before filing a definitive proxy statement.”

David Fenton notes that Jeff Epstein’s pal Bill Gates has always been a bilious blowhard on climate.

Remember to be kind.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10:15 AM: House Budget Committee
  Oversight of the Congressional Budget Office

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.