Green Lights Feb. 13: Top stories
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 weighs in on the real victim of canceling the endangerment finding and explains what climate finance investors should take from the sudden collapse in the gold and silver rally. Have a great weekend, enjoy the Olympic snow while it lasts and please subscribe to support our climate finance reporting.
. . . . Aside from the symbolic meanness that is a hallmark of this administration, the immediate impact on climate of canceling the endangerment finding is limited, writes David Callaway. The real impact will be on AI data centers, which rely heavily on natural gas to power AI processing demands. That’s why most business leaders were against tampering with endangerment, which really has no teeth anyway if the administration behind the EPA doesn’t care about climate.
. . . . It’s only been two weeks since the sudden collapse in the gold and silver rally and already investors are talking about new targets for records again, writes David Callaway. In an age in which buying the dips — and dramatic drops — has become the norm for many investors, taking aboard the history of market cycles has become less of a priority. It’s a lesson for climate and green investors, who have enjoyed some ups and downs but mostly ups in the past year as the data center frenzy has lifted all types of energy companies. But the potential for a big correction in AI stocks also extends to those green energy companies, and lessons like the gold drop a few weeks ago should not be ignored.
. . . . Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi presided over a rally in Japanese stocks as investors directed money toward companies and industries best positioned to benefit. In the climate and energy space, that would mean nuclear power. Takaichi is a strong proponent of the energy security theme, which means investing in new forms of energy as well as traditional fossil fuels.
. . . . Amid the political and cultural chaos this week over the latest White House attack on climate regulations and the Puerto Rico power grid, a major shift in the global fight against climate change occurred in China. For the first time in more than a decade, the world’s largest burner of coal for energy reported an annual decline in coal usage in 2025, despite an increase in energy demand. David Callaway notes that even with years more decline, China will remain the largest burner of coal.
. . . . Experts say that the reality of finding, extracting, and transporting Greenland’s precious and rare earth minerals to refineries and markets is “far more complicated, and environmentally fraught, than the Trump administration may have anticipated,” says a report titled U.S. Push for Greenland’s Minerals Faces Harsh Arctic Realities, from Yale Environment 360. And consulting firm Wood Mackenzie says, “Given that Greenland is already open to U.S. investment, any uplift from a change in administration may be limited. Ultimately, we expect the severe climate and high capital requirements, together with a lack of infrastructure and skilled labour, to be major limiting factors whoever runs the territory.”
More greenery . . . .
Be mine: Frog Love Songs And The Sounds Of Climate Change (Eurasia Review)
Location, location, location: Climate change in the U.S. impacts each state differently (Earth.com)
Bundle up: How Does Climate Change Affect These Winter Storms? (The New York Times)
Coffee DNA: An unexpected consequence of climate change (Inter-American Development Bank)