Green Lights Aug. 1: Top stories this week
Don't miss a single story from the best of Callaway Climate Insights.
. . . Welcome back to Green Lights. Here’s our roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. This week, David Callaway looks at the Turnberry tariff shakedown, the surging energy demand for AI data centers, and why there’s a bigger tsunami headed our way. Have a good weekend. Please subscribe to support our climate finance journalism.
. . . . This week’s tsunami thankfully left California alone but also left us wondering why people panic so much about tsunamis but not the generational wave of fires, floods, rains and heat that is slowly endangering the world, writes David Callaway. Turns out there are two — maybe three — specific reasons tsunamis are so much scarier than climate change, though as disasters and losses from global warming pile up, the waves are looking more and more similar.
. . . . Scotland’s Turnberry golf course was the site of a classic Donald Trump shakedown on tariffs, writes David Callaway. The trade deal announced Monday almost entirely favored the U.S., tripling tariff rates to 15% and forcing through an offer you can’t refuse to more than triple its imports of liquid natural gas from the U.S. to about $250 billion a year.
. . . . Early analysis from the $13.6 billion acquisition of Chart Industries by Baker Hughes this week focused a lot on the potential for liquid natural gas, nuclear, and data center growth. But a slightly overlooked area was carbon capture, which Baker Hughes has been quietly consolidating in the past five years. It’s another example of renewable and decarbonization companies attracting interest these days after a few years of depressed equity values.
. . . . As the White House moves ahead with plans to dismantle federal programs related to climate data collection and environmental analyses, nonprofit groups are working to preserve and improve climate emissions information. A report from the MIT Technology Review details how nonprofits and academia are working to save U.S. climate programs.
. . . . Surging energy demand for data centers and the renewable energy behind it will lead to total global carbon emissions finally hitting a plateau later this year or next, no thanks to fossil fuels or the White House. David Callaway says it’s markets, not policy, that are driving the renewable transition. Policymakers can help them or fight them, but business demand is the ultimate decision maker when it comes to energy.
More greenery . . . .
Pricing climate costs: Measuring the impact of climate change on state and local governments’ fiscal health (Brookings)
Fragile ecosystems: Climate change threatens yaks, herding culture in India (Al Jazeera)
Something in the air: The Invisible Climate Change Effect That Is Most Likely to Kill You (The New Republic)
Dangerous heights: The risks of mountaineering are increasing (DW)
This is your brain on heat: How extreme heat changes the way our brains work (BBC)