Green Lights Sept. 19: 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. Monday is the first day of fall. And David Callaway’s heading to New York 🗽 for Climate Week, including a special event with The Independent. Plus, check out out latest insights on hopes to make the small nuclear reactor dream come true, and Mark Hulbert’s analysis of voting on ESG-specific proxies 😟. Have a great weekend and please subscribe to support our climate finance journalism.
. . . . Next week is not only the start of fall, it’s also the start of the 16th New York Climate Week. Despite the hostility toward green energy from the White House, investors, advocates and protesters will be out in force in the Big Apple. And it’s time for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. Callaway Climate Insights is joining The Independent in New York City next week to honor The Independent’s annual Climate 100 list of entrepreneurs, political leaders, green advocates, and celebrities making a difference in helping the world transition to renewable, sustainable energy. The event will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 23 at The Independent’s New York bureau in midtown and feature Octopus Energy Founder and CEO Greg Jackson, speaking with Independent Editor-in-Chief Geordie Greig. It also will feature a Q&A with David Callaway and Independent World Affairs Editor Sam Kiley, who just returned from a climate reporting trip to Africa.
. . . . Exporting the small nuclear reactor dream: President Donald Trump arrived in the UK this week to be greeted with as many as five deals worth what his team said could be $100 billion to build small nuclear reactors in partnership with U.S. and British businesses. But investors should take the new business with a grain of salt. These deals tend to last about as long as the headlines that describe them.
. . . . Mutual fund giants report a surge in investors participating in new proxy voting programs, with Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street all claiming higher numbers of investors eligible to take part this year, writes Mark Hulbert. At the same time, the number of shareholders voting ESG-specific proxies plunged — at Vanguard by about half. Hulbert tries to make sense of the disconnect and finds that it’s a combination of a confusing voting process steps and the sheer legal bulk of these types of policies.
. . . . Trump’s call this week for public companies to eliminate quarterly earnings reports in favor of every six months follows a well-trodden path for this administration in seeking to eliminate helpful data wherever it can, writes David Callaway. The amount of data and scientific research the administration is seeking to wipe out this year is staggering. It weakens the credibility of the U.S. government as well as U.S. companies on the global stage. But there are plenty of other sources of data on corporate performance and smart investors will simply migrate to those.
. . . . The “Big Beautiful Bill” landed many blows to programs and incentives to fight climate change. One that flew under the radar makes using harmful carbon to push more oil out of the ground as financially attractive as storing the CO₂. Experts predict that tax credit will just shift carbon storage efforts to producing more oil. Allison Prang reports.
. . . . Ready for fall? In the Northern Hemisphere the autumnal equinox will be at 11:19 a.m. Monday, Sept. 22, as our sun crosses the celestial equator going south. The steadily increasing length of night during autumn is a big factor in the beautiful color changes we see in foliage this time of year. Want to know when are where the leaves will be most autumnal? Check out this 2025 leaf-peeping prediction map.
More greenery . . . .
That’s sweet: Robotic beehives use AI to protect bees from climate change (CNBC)
Hybrid vigor: Can Hybrid Grapes Solve the Climate Change Dilemma for Wine Makers? (NYT)
Endangered economic sectors: Building Economic Resilience to the Health Impacts of Climate Change (World Economic Forum)
Grim forecast: Wildfire smoke will cause many more premature deaths in the U.S. (Inside Climate News)
Soccer score: World Cups to have early kick-offs, postponements amid unsafe heat (NYT)