Washington Post: “The Biden administration is rushing to spend billions of dollars in the Democrats’ climate law before January 2025… Yet little-noticed language in the Inflation Reduction Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to spend $27 billion by Sept. 30, 2024 — a much earlier deadline — or return the money to Congress.”

“At issue is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which will provide $27 billion worth of grants to states, territories, tribes and others for projects that cut greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution… House Republicans already have the program in their crosshairs.”

“Global temperatures have smashed through records this week, underscoring the dangers of ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions generated from burning fossil fuels,” Bloomberg reports.

“The new highs illustrate the extremity of 2023’s summer in the northern hemisphere, and bring into focus the slow pace of global progress on curbing emissions.”

Monday, July 3, was the hottest day ever recorded globally, Reuters reports.

“Much of the United States felt like a blazing inferno on Wednesday, as record heat attacked the South like a blowtorch, thick smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed the Great Lakes region, and triple-digit temperatures threatened to wallop California for the first time this year,” the Washington Post reports.

Meanwhile, from CNN: “More than third of the U.S. population is under air quality alerts, covering more than a dozen states from the Midwest to the East Coast.”

Politico: “The court’s May 25 decision shrinking federal wetlands protections took a wrecking ball to an expansive permitting regime that has been in place for nearly 50 years.”

“The 5-4 ruling put at least half the country’s marshes, swamps and other wetlands outside the reach of federal water protections, an outcome that could speed the way for pipelines, power lines, highways and housing projects across the U.S.”

President Biden announced over $600 million in climate investments to help coastal communities around the country fight climate change, CNBC reports.

Washington Post: “This year alone, 195 new bills were introduced in dozens of state legislatures, seeking to require that an expanding list of products be PFAS-free.”

“Until the EPA and other federal agencies do set stricter policies on PFAS use in products and start levying fines to violators, some lawmakers say, state laws are the only recourse.”

“Roads in Florida could soon include phosphogypsum — a radioactive waste material from the fertilizer industry — under a bill lawmakers have sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis,” NPR reports.

“Conservation groups are urging DeSantis to veto the bill, saying phosphogypsum would hurt water quality and put road construction crews at a higher risk of cancer.”

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“To call what’s happening in the oceans right now an anomaly is a bit of an understatement. Since March, average sea surface temperatures have been climbing to record highs,” Wired reports.

Associated Press: “Some researchers think the jump in sea surface temperatures stems from a brewing and possibly strong natural El Nino warming weather condition plus a rebound from three years of a cooling La Nina, all on top of steady global warming that is heating deeper water below. If that’s the case, they said, record-breaking ocean temperatures this month could be the first in many heat records to shatter.”

“The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are now losing more than three times as much ice a year as they were 30 years ago,” the AP reports.

Bloomberg: “Drought conditions not seen in some places since the Renaissance are becoming the continent’s new normal, with perilous knock-on effects for food security and supply chains in the European Union, the world’s third-biggest economy. Water levels on European rivers have been shrinking now for six years, with farmland drying up and Alpine glaciers in retreat.”

“Taken together, they’re creating climate feedback loops. Hotter temperatures mean more glacial melting and evaporation; less rainfall and Alpine runoff reduce river flows; dried-out water basins and shriveled vegetation create fuel for wildfire.”

“While heat and drought are also afflicting regions from Asia to East Africa, Europe is a climate change front-runner, warming at twice the rate as other inhabited continents.”

New York Times: “Tangles of the goopy, leafy seaweed have already begun to wash ashore beaches in southern Florida and Mexico. In the coming months, they could start emitting a rotting stench as they decay, potentially posing health risks to beachgoers.”

“Green tax credits from last year’s climate law are likely to be far more popular than anticipated, potentially reducing carbon emissions—but also increasing costs to U.S. taxpayers,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Buyers of electric vehicles and clean-energy producers could claim tax credits worth hundreds of billions of dollars more than lawmakers expected when they passed the Inflation Reduction Act.”

“The Biden administration is proposing strict new automobile pollution limits that would require as many as two-thirds of new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2032, a nearly tenfold increase over current electric vehicle sales,” the AP reports.

CNN: “The standards would also have the effect of cutting planet-warming pollution from cars in half. Transportation accounts for nearly 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the US.”