(The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Big Tech's Pro-Climate Rhetoric is Not Matched by Policy Action, Report Finds. The Guardian has the post: "The world's biggest tech companies are coming out with bold commitments to tackle their climate impact but when it comes to using their corporate muscle to advocate for stronger climate policies, their engagement is almost nonexistent, according to a new report. Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google's parent company), Facebook and Microsoft poured about $65m into lobbying in 2020, but an average of only 6% of their lobbying activity between July 2020 and June 2021 was related to climate policy, according to an analysis from the thinktank InfluenceMap, which tracked companies' self-reported lobbying on federal legislation. The report also sought to capture tech companies' overall engagement with climate policy by analyzing activities including their top-level communications as well as lobbying on specific legislation..."
File image (UK Met Office/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Climate Scientist Katharine Hayhoe's Faithful Quest to Heal a Divided World. Here's an excerpt of an interview at Religion & Politics: "...Though we have been very focused on the divide between the people who think that climate change is real and those who do not, we should be more concerned with the divide between those who think it's real and those who think it matters to them. You can concede that climate change is real and important and even serious, but if you don't think it matters to you, then you're unlikely to do anything to fix it. I should add, too, that polling data shows we are not talking about it. We are not having conversations about climate, and the media is not covering it. I saw a pretty shocking statistic recently: that Jeff Bezos' space launch had received as much media attention in a single day as climate change had received in the previous year. So we aren't talking about it, and talking is a window into our minds. It's our means for showing others what we think about, what we care about. We can't read each other's minds. If we, as individuals and as a nation, are not talking about climate change, then it will never receive the priority that it requires..."
(Paul Douglas/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Xi Announces Ending Of Chinese Coal Support Abroad: Climate Nexus has headlines and links: "China will no longer build coal-fired power plants overseas, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced Tuesday in an address to the UN General Assembly. Xi gave no timeline, the announcement is likely to mark the beginning of the end of coal plant construction in the developing world. Depending on when it is implemented, China's new policy could cut off $50 billion of foreign investment and halt the construction of up to 47 planned coal plants in 20 countries, about equal to the entire remaining German coal fleet. "It's a big deal. China was the only significant funder of overseas coal left. This announcement essentially ends all public support for coal globally," Joanna Lewis, an expert on China, energy and climate at Georgetown University, told the AP. "This is the announcement many have been waiting for." Asia Society Policy Institute fellow and former climate diplomat Thom Woodroofe described the announcement as a "line in the sand" and told the Guardian, "It is further evidence China knows the future is paved by renewables. The key question now is when they will draw a similar line in the sand at home." (The Guardian, NPR, Wall Street Journal $, Reuters, New York Times $, Politico, Axios, BBC, Reuters, Climate Home, CNET, FT $, Washington Examiner)
