Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! It’s that time of year again when we’re loving the “stellar” warm weather, as our friends at the Capital Weather Gang described it, but fending off the climate anxiety.
In today’s edition, we’ll cover how the Biden administration is trying to boost clean hydrogen and how climate change is destabilizing the insurance industry. But first:
A key Republican in the farm bill debate is open to redirecting some climate funding
Environmentalists breathed a sigh of relief when the debt ceiling bill didn’t ax the green spending in Democrats’ signature climate law, despite Republicans’ efforts to rescind the money.
But a similar battle could emerge over the 2023 farm bill, which Republicans could use to strip the Inflation Reduction Act’s spending for climate-friendly agriculture practices.
Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, told The Climate 202 yesterday that he is open to redirecting some of the climate law’s funding, as long as the money hasn’t already been allocated.
“Quite frankly, if the dollars have been authorized but the checks haven’t been written yet, then they should be up for reconsideration,” Thompson said, adding that he is looking for ways to lower the farm bill’s price tag after the Congressional Budget Office raised its cost estimates.
The IRA provided an additional $19.5 billion for voluntary conservation programs at the Agriculture Department, including about $8.5 billion for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which pays farmers to restore ecosystems or reduce emissions.
Some GOP lawmakers have recently voiced interest in rescinding or redirecting that money via the farm bill, which is reauthorized roughly every five years. The next farm bill must be reauthorized by Sept. 30.
Freedom Caucus
Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus took a harder line than Thompson.
“A lot of the IRA green energy stuff that we sought repeal of in the [debt ceiling bill] we will probably seek repeal of in other legislative vehicles,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told The Climate 202 yesterday. “The farm bill probably wouldn’t be spared.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), policy chair of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters yesterday that while he is unfamiliar with the climate law’s funding for climate-friendly agriculture, “I’m not a big fan of most, if not all, of the Inflation Reduction Act, so I’ll take a look.”
Still, while Freedom Caucus members were able to extract significant concessions from Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) during his bid to become House speaker, the lawmakers would have limited leverage over what goes into the bipartisan farm bill.
In the Senate
Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the second-highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, said last month that he wants to provide more flexibility in how the climate law’s conservation funding can be used. Under the law, the funding specifically targets practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“A lot of stuff that we do in the conservation title in the farm bill would accomplish those same objectives and it would stretch our farm bill dollars further,” Thune said.
Patrick Creamer, a spokesman for Republicans on the Senate Agriculture Committee, echoed this sentiment. “Maintaining the IRA’s very narrow focus on greenhouse gases and sequestration means traditional conservation programs that provide important environmental, resource management and wildlife habitat benefits would be shortchanged,” Creamer said in an email.
Still, such changes would have to go through Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who has vowed to preserve the climate law’s spending. It’s something of a legacy issue for Stabenow, who has said she won’t seek reelection in 2024.
Green groups, red states
Green groups are gearing up for a fight.
“Republicans — especially House Republicans this Congress — really have made attacking the IRA and rolling it back a big part of their agenda,” said Madeleine Foote, deputy legislative director at the League of Conservation Voters. “We’ll be fighting really hard to make sure that funding stays put.”
She argued that repealing the climate law’s agriculture money could harm Republicans’ own constituents — and possibly backfire politically.
“It would be a mistake for Republicans to go after this funding since it would impact farmers in their own districts and states,” Foote said. “They would do so at their own risk.”
Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, also noted that many of the conservation programs are hugely popular and oversubscribed, meaning the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service has been turning away farmers across the country.
“Red states, blue states, whatever — there’s a lot of demand for these programs,” he said.
Terry Cosby, the chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, agreed.
“When these clients come in, they’re not thinking about political parties,” Cosby said in a recent interview. “They’re thinking about conservation.”
Agency alert
Biden administration unveils national clean hydrogen strategy
The Energy Department announced a new goal yesterday to generate 50 million metric tons of clean hydrogen fuel by 2050 — an effort that the agency said would slash 10 percent of U.S. emissions by that date, Ella Nilsen reports for CNN.
The strategy comes as the Biden administration increasingly eyes clean hydrogen, a liquid energy source that burns without pollution, to fuel hard-to-decarbonize sectors. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi told reporters Monday that several new “hydrogen hubs” will be unveiled across the country in September, acting as pilot projects for a future hydrogen-fueled economy.
“When you’re creating an entirely new sector, which is really what this hydrogen clean economy will be, you have to do everything everywhere all at once,” Granholm said. “We believe it could decarbonize some of our hardest-to-abate sectors, like heavy industry and transportation.”
Still, clean hydrogen technology is far from being deployed at scale. And although hydrogen can be generated from water, it can also be produced from the fossil fuels it seeks to replace.
Pressure points
Climate change might make it harder to insure your home
It is becoming harder and more expensive for people across the country to insure their homes as climate change intensifies extreme weather disasters, The Post’s Brianna Sacks reports.
Already, residents in disaster-prone states like California, Louisiana and Florida are seeing jacked-up rates that reflect global warming, inflation and the costs of building materials. In other cases, insurance carriers are either no longer offering new policies to customers or going insolvent, leaving tens of thousands of homeowners without coverage and vulnerable to financial burdens in the aftermath of a storm.
Last week, State Farm and All State announced they would not accept any new homeowner insurance applications in California because of the increased risk of catastrophes like wildfires. More carriers are expected to follow suit or charge even higher rates as climate change worsens.
Meanwhile in Florida, there has been a lack of action to hold carriers accountable because regulators are afraid of losing even more insurers. The result is residents, who are living paycheck to paycheck, having no other option but to pick cheap policies with higher deductibles and less protection.
Carbon dioxide levels in atmosphere surge, hit a new all-time high
Carbon dioxide levels rose this year at the fourth-highest rate since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began keeping records 65 years ago, reaching a record high in May, according to a report released yesterday by NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, The Washington Post’s Amudalat Ajasa reports.
The current amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now double the amount it was before the industrial era, averaging 424 parts per million, NOAA and Scripps scientists said.
The findings are “disappointing, but not surprising,” said Ralph Keeling, a geochemist at Scripps. “We’re still seeing CO2 rise at the same pace as it has for the last few decades.”
CO2 emissions are already exacerbating extreme weather events, including heat waves, drought, wildfires and flooding. Meanwhile, last year was declared the fifth- or sixth-warmest year on record by five different scientific organizations.
In the atmosphere
- Extreme heat, wildfire wreaking havoc with hottest months still ahead — Ian Livingston, Dan Stillman and Jason Samenow for The Post
- India cracks down on critics of coal — Gerry Shih, Karishma Mehrotra and Anant Gupta for The Post
- Electric vehicles appeal to conservative buyers sick of gas guzzlers — Jeanne Whalen for The Post
- Agenda spat at UN climate talks as top official sees chance to ask ‘difficult questions’ in Dubai — the Associated Press
Viral
Thanks for reading!
