Zeus: Summer of climate tipping points forcing unusual business deals

The renewable transition is going to be a lot messier than we thought.

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It was hot in June, and it’s been even hotter so far in July. Above, the monthly reanalysis map of surface temperatures (°C.) for June 2023. Map: Climate Reanalyzer, Climate Change Institute, University of Maine.

(David Callaway is founder and Editor-in-Chief of Callaway Climate Insights. He is the former president of the World Editors Forum, Editor-in-Chief of USA Today and MarketWatch, and CEO of TheStreet Inc. His climate columns have appeared in USA Today, The Independent, and New Thinking magazine).

NEW YORK (Callaway Climate Insights) — When I moved back to Northern California from New York City three years ago, I wrote that I wanted to launch this newsletter from the front line of climate change, which in North America at the time was indisputably there.

That line has now expanded to the rest of the U.S. and Canada, with wildfires raging to the north of us and killer heat and smoke enveloping the rest of the country. As I landed in New York this week, temps in the mid-90s baked the city while to the north upstate and neighboring Vermont floodwaters cut off towns and killed people. In Europe, it was reported yesterday, more than 61,000 people died of heat exposure last year.

Scientists are talking about climate tipping points this summer, as the gradual changes of the past few decades now yield to rapid and unpredictable destruction. But as global warming has accelerated, so too has the economic transformation to renewable energy, with businesses making tough decisions that three years ago would have seemed illogical.