Green Lights Oct. 18: 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 weekly roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. David Callaway offers a climate stock investor’s playbook ahead of the presidential election, and looks at nuclear and carbon capture and storage technologies. Bill Sternberg asks if the $200 billion energy loan program could survive a Trump redux. (Don’t bank on it) And, Mark Hulbert has the word of the day: “greenstalling.” Have a great weekend, and please support our great climate finance journalism by subscribing.
. . . . It’s ironic that the same fossil fuel companies who claim carbon capture and storage technologies will clean up all their harmful, toxic emissions once they are developed in several years’ time demanded an emergency stay of the new EPA rules requiring that same clean up in several years because they say the technology has still not been “adequately demonstrated.” The U.S. Supreme Court was right to reject the stay request and allow the EPA’s rules to proceed pending lower court proceedings. While it was mostly a technical procedure, writes David Callaway, it’s something investors should remember.
. . . . It’s more than a little rich, Bill Sternberg writes, that in this year’s presidential campaign Tesla CEO Elon Musk has gone all-in for Donald Trump — who has mocked electric vehicles and who would likely slash the very government program that helped Tesla survive.
. . . . Stung by two costly hurricanes less than a week apart, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is facing a funding crisis after spending almost half of the $20 billion allocated to it in September as part of the government stopgap spending extension through the end of 2024.
. . . . The trend in large companies delaying or abandoning their earlier climate pledges has become so alarming that it now has a name — greenstalling. Unlike greenwashing, where CEOs tried to spiff up their company’s green credentials with wild promises of net zero and decarbonization several years ago, greenstalling is simply a result of companies realizing it’s just too hard and delaying for a few years, writes Mark Hulbert. But there is a silver lining for investors.
. . . . With the U.S. stock market soaring to new record highs all year, investors are suitably concerned about who wins the presidential election next month — to see if the rally can be extended. David Callaway is looking at each candidate, what the trades are, and what savvy climate investors can expect starting Nov. 6. First up, Donald Trump.
. . . . Google this week became the latest tech giant to turn to nuclear energy to power its surging demand for AI data. It joins Microsoft, which said it would buy nuclear power from Constellation Energy after it restarts the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. The hitch, writes David Callaway, is that the tech companies need this power now.
More greenery . . . .
Cat-astrophe?: ‘Is my cat contributing to climate change?’ (Yale Climate Connection)
New requirement for graduation: Take a climate course. (The Guardian)
Now largest on record: Global coral bleaching event expands (Reuters)
The global water cycle is off balance: ‘for the first time in human history’ (CNN)
No Ice Castles: Beloved winter attraction at Lake Geneva, Wis. doomed by warm weather (NBC Chicago)
More than a tail wind: Climate change gave significant boost to Milton’s destruction (The AP)