Schmoozing for climate

The DC fundraising circuit, deadly deluges, and power shifts

Author

Brad Johnson
June 18, 2024

PRESENTED BY THE BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON

Hill Heat had a excellent time last night at climate fundraiser for the Biden-Harris campaign, hosted by such longtime climate hawks as Frank Loy, Michelle Deatrick, Jim Barrett, Sam Ricketts, and Karen Wayland. Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) were the primary speechifiers, but the real attraction was seeing old movement friends and making new ones.

Sen. Warnock did an excellent job of reminding the audience of the strange contingencies of politics. Democratic control of the Senate—which allowed the difficult compromise with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) enacting the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act—hinged on the success of two January 2021 runoff elections in a single state, and that state was Georgia.

The vibes, I must admit, were different from the last candidate fundraiser I attended, for Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.). The Green New Deal champion and Squad member is facing a $20 million primary challenge from AIPAC. The attendees of this fundraiser were young, diverse, and ideologically committed to the causes she champions and the Democratic Party publicly espouses. Anyone who (understandably) wants Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump needs to rally behind movement leaders like Cori Bush.

The Democratic Party is a creaky coalition, but I do think that those committed to destroying our climate for profit make a good common enemy.

POWER SHIFTS: The Senate is about to send a big nuke-boosting bill to the president—it’s been attached to S. 870, the Fire Grants and Safety Act. The Union of Concerned Scientists’ Edwin Lyman warns the bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Sheldonw Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tom Carper (D-Del.), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W. Va.), will dangerously weaken the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s safety mandate.

Massive flood event forecast for Central America over the next 2 weeks!! Certainly possible some locations will receive >4 feet of rain!!

The pollution from the fossil fuels that helped build the United States into a global superpower are making the world increasingly unlivable.

It’s time to recognize extreme heat and wildfire smoke as natural disasters, a broad coalition of climate and health groups tell the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The petition, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, urges FEMA to amend its regulations to include extreme heat and wildfire smoke in the Stafford Act regulatory definition of “major disaster,” much as FEMA acted to recognize the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking of which, smoke from the exploding South Fork Fire is spreading across New Mexico right now.

Central and South America is whipsawing from deadly heat to deadly deluge, with unimaginable rains bringing floods and landslides killing at least 13 in El Salvador and Guatemala and six people in Ecuador. The massive spiral of tropical moisture may form into a tropical storm as it crosses over into the Gulf of Mexico and spins back toward the east coast of Mexico, threatening Mexico and southern Texas with flooding rains.

As Samantha Pearson writes, last month’s catastrophic floods upended Brazil, creating hundreds of thousands of internal climate migrants.

“There's too much carbon in the air and too little carbon in the soils.” Thus World Food Programme director Martin Frick explains that some of the poorest parts of the world have tipped over into zero harvests, with drought, heat, and floods leading to total crop failure as soil degrades to nothingness.

President Joe Biden may be closing the border to new climate migrants, but he’s marking the 12th anniversary of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals today by providing amnesty for the over 500,000 undocumented immigrants who are married to or children of U.S. citizens.

Tons of mud destroyed homes in Baños, Ecuador. Credit: Roberto Luque

Tons of mud destroyed homes in Baños, Ecuador. Credit: Roberto Luque

I should mention it’s primary day in Virginia and Oklahoma. The big race on the Democratic side is in Virginia’s 10th Congressional, where several candidates have lined up to succeed Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.). Progressives have lined up against the AIPAC-backed Eileen Filler-Corn, but have been split between the grope-y state Del. Dan Helmer, the Wexton-backed state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam, and other candidates.

Exxon’s suit attacking climate resolutions from activist shareholder Arjuna Capital was dismissed by a federal judge yesterday, but only because Arjuna pledged to never pursue climate resolutions against Exxon ever again.

The headquarters of the openly criminal fossil-fuel conspiracy, the American Petroleum Institute, has published its latest evil plan. With much cackling, API calls for cutting taxes on oil and gas companies, repealing climate standards, and ending any constraints on oil and gas expansion.

Today in micro-audience memes, via Matthew Sekol:

Finally: The Summer Olympics in Paris are going to be trés chaud.

Hearings on the Hill:

Climate Action Today:

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