“President Donald Trump on Saturday said he approved new fuel economy standards, reversing former President Joe Biden’s stricter policies meant to fuel electric vehicle adoption,” CNBC reports.
“It is unclear what the final fuel economy standards will be, although Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy previously said that they would be sharply lower than the Biden-era policies.”
“Data centers and artificial intelligence may not rank among voters’ top concerns heading into the midterms, but growing anxiety over their effect on electricity bills and local communities is giving Democrats and allied groups an opening to connect the industry’s rapid expansion to the issue that has consistently dominated the campaign: the cost of living,” MS NOW reports.
“Ever since Theodore Roosevelt ventured into the wilderness of California’s Yosemite Valley in 1903 and emerged with a sweeping conservation policy, presidents in both parties have valued the country’s national parks,” the New York Times reports.
“The public has, too. Polling shows that Americans of all stripes and political persuasions overwhelmingly love their parks.”
“But President Trump’s administration has thrown the 433 sites managed by the National Park Service into turmoil, shifting funding and workers to pet projects in Washington, slashing staff across the country and scrubbing exhibits that it says ‘inappropriately disparage Americans.'”
“The Trump administration is considering proposals for at least 12 data centers and data center-related infrastructure projects to be built on federal public lands — far more than previously known,” the Washington Sun reports.
“The Bureau of Land Management is reviewing data center-related proposals covering at least 17,600 acres of public land across six states — Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming, according to public records of right-of-way proposals reviewed by The Washington Sun.”
“In what would be a seismic shift, the Trump administration is quietly moving to strip a core protection of the Endangered Species Act,” the New York Times reports.
“Under a new interpretation of the law’s language outlined in the memo, the accidental killing or injury of an animal would no longer be considered illegal; only actions specifically intending to target an animal would.”
“The Trump administration plans to announce Monday that the United States will no longer limit the planet-warming pollution that power plants pump into the air while burning coal and gas,” the New York Times reports.
“The shift by the Environmental Protection Agency would complete the administration’s erasure of the most consequential climate policies of Presidents Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama. If the move survives expected legal challenges, it could also prevent future administrations from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.”
Wired: “August was the planet’s hottest month ever recorded, capping a remarkably grim summer of heat records. With El Niño strengthening—and climate change continuing to heat things up—more records are likely in store well into next year.”
“The Diablo Canyon Power Plant, which sits on a cliff on California’s Central Coast, has been the subject of ceaseless protests and political battles since it was proposed in 1963,” the New York Times reports.
“Now, the plant is at the center of yet another major debate. After shuttering all the state’s other nuclear power plants in recent decades, California is considering extending Diablo’s life and lifting a moratorium on new reactors.”
“That these decisions are even on the table in California is a testament to the substantial change in public views of nuclear energy, which for decades has been reviled by the liberal lawmakers and environmental groups that wield tremendous power and influence in the state.”
“The Trump administration is planning to significantly reorganize the National Park Service and other bureaus of the Interior Department, the second major shake-up of the nation’s public lands infrastructure in less than two years,” NOTUS reports.
The Atlantic: “In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, along the equator, scientists have drawn a box. It’s a big box, two-thirds the size of China, yet hardly anyone lives inside it. This rectangular swath of open ocean is monitored by satellites and a network of moored buoys that measure minute changes in the temperature of the water, with an eye toward anomalies.”
“Every few years or so, driven by changing winds and currents, the water temperature in this part of the ocean starts to rise; even a half degree Celsius above normal over months warrants a designation that an El Niño phase has begun. That’s enough warming to unleash floods and fires, drought and famine, around the world. The box is called Niño 3.4. Right now, it’s hot in the box.”
“In the latest salvo in California’s ongoing environmental battle with the White House, the state on Friday sued the Trump administration over its attempt to kill offshore wind farms,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Trump has long despised offshore wind power, falsely saying that it does not work and kills whales. This spring, his administration struck deals with energy companies. In exchange for refunds for what they paid for offshore wind leases, the companies agreed to use the money on oil and gas projects.”
“For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer,” NOTUS reports.
“The Trump administration has taken a series of extraordinary steps to attack California’s position as a national leader in environmental protection, enlisting at least a half-dozen federal agencies to undermine the state’s efforts to pivot away from fossil fuels,” the New York Times reports.
“The U.S. Forest Service is aiming to open more than 44 million acres of national-forest land to logging and road construction, a reversal of a policy that protected wildlife habitats for decades,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The agency intends to rescind a 2001 rule that blocked most development and timber harvesting in certain national forests, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Tuesday. The new proposal would give local forest managers authority to develop the land, she said.”
“A series of severe heatwaves and prolonged droughts have turned many European riverbeds into barren sandscapes this summer,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Major arteries for trade and agriculture across the continent—including the Rhine, Danube and Po—are now at record low levels, disrupting freight transportation, forcing nuclear power plants to shut reactors and eroding agricultural productivity.”
“Lakes Powell and Mead, the nation’s largest reservoirs, are drying up, sending a Colorado River system that provides water and electricity for millions of people into a state of crisis with no end in sight,” the New York Times reports.
“Water levels in Lake Powell, along the Utah-Arizona border, fell to a record low on Saturday. Lake Mead, the larger of the two and farthest downstream on the Colorado River, dropped to its lowest recorded point a week earlier.”
“Shipping cargo through an Arctic shortcut never made economic sense—until now,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Climate change and war in the Middle East are flipping the math that previously kept ships plying longer routes from Asia to Europe. A Chinese company on Saturday is starting the first regular cargo service to Europe through Arctic waters, seeking to reap the benefits of quicker travel time and less fuel use.”
“A week of stifling heat in Europe this June was unusually deadly, mortality data shows, producing a historic spike in deaths in a continent where major heat waves are becoming more common,” the New York Times reports.
“Around 16,000 more people than usual died in Europe during the heat wave, according to an analysis by the European Mortality Monitoring Network. Most of the deaths were in northern countries — France, Belgium and Germany — that are not accustomed to such high temperatures and struggled to respond.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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