Green Lights July 17: 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 takes the temperature at hotspots around the world: nuclear plants in France, Wall Street, and smoke-choked regions of the northeast. Stay cool, have a good weekend and please subscribe to support our climate finance reporting.
. . . . In London, a relentless heatwave has melted train lines, closed businesses, and is now starting to affect commercial property prices in the City, for those thousands of properties that don’t have air conditioning, writes David Callaway. In New York, a wave of toxic wildfire smoke descended on the city and the entire Northeast region from Canada and the upper midwest again this week, choking commuters, holiday makers and businesses — and even threatening the final of the World Cup this weekend. It’s a stark example to Wall Street and Washington that climate change has no borders.
. . . . The record heat across the U.S. and Europe this summer is causing a surge in power outages as electric grids struggle to keep up with demand for air conditioning while also watching out for high winds that can cause transmission lines to fall and cause wildfires. As this next stage of worsening global warming hits a world still at odds with climate change, the markets are starting to choose winners and losers, writes David Callaway in his Zeus column.
. . . . Lots of politicians have made hay by criticizing data centers for their environmental impact, but New York Gov. Kathy Hochul took it to a whole new level this week. Hochul signed an executive order establishing a one-year moratorium on permits for construction of new data centers to give lawmakers time to put regulatory safeguards in place. Read more about what this will mean for the midterms.
. . . . The scorching summer in the U.S. and Europe and wildfires across both continents are well documented, but global warming flexed its power in a new way this week as France said it shut down a handful of nuclear reactors because of the extreme heat.
. . . . One of the hottest speculative plays in the energy innovation space in the past several years — fusion — has taken place entirely in the private markets, until this week. General Fusion (GFUZ), a 24-year-old Canadian company with backing from Jeff Bezos, debuted on the Nasdaq Monday and shares promptly soared.
More greenery . . . .
Don’t forget your sunscreen: The health hazards of heat (World Health Organization)
Growing problem: Forecasting climate-driven farm decline by end of century (Euronews)
Accountability: Top Science Panel Backs Research Linking Extreme Weather to Climate Change (The New York Times)
Bad dreams: Climate Change is Costing People Sleep (Climate Central)
Location, location, etc.: For a reliable energy grid, the future is all about location (MIT News)