🌞 Celebrating Climate Progress: The Best of This Week's 'Sunny Climate News'
🗞️ EXTRA, extra: your latest & greatest positive progress on climate & clean energy
🌅 EXTRA, Extra— Sunny Climate News: On the Horizon
🗣️ Quote-ovoltaic Climate Power: “Don’t wait for the UN or don’t wait for your governments to deliver on these solutions. It is our future. We have to sometimes take matters into our own hands.” –Jayathma Wickramanayake
1. Prioritizing People’s Health Over Polluter Profit
‘No other way to do it’: Biden about to go big on power plants | New rules aimed at reducing leaks of methane | Is carbon capture viable? In a new rule, the EPA is asking power plants to prove it. | Environmental Justice and the Built Environment: Protecting Children and families | Strengthening Federal Rules and Resources to Support Healthier Homes | NEW BlueGreen Alliance Clean Aluminum Advocacy Campaign | Biden administration announces plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions from power plants | EPA issues plan to clamp down on power plant carbon emissions | Oil and gas health impacts cost $77 billion per year (imagine all we can save and more transitioning to clean energy) | Biden announces new fund to help low-income housing get climate upgrades
2. Accelerating Change Electrifying Movement
‘Explosive’ growth means one in three new cars will be electric by 2030 | EPA’s car pollution rules would save Americans trillions of dollars | One in five cars sold in 2023 will be electric | Fast EV Chargers to Nearly Double on U.S. Highways Under Expansion Plan | An all-electric car share in Minneapolis-St. Paul exceeded expectations in 2022, logging 25K trips & reducing 741 tons of emissions. The program aims to serve low-income riders & communities of color. | Could churches be prime locations for EV charging stations? One company thinks so. | The $25,000 electric vehicle is coming, with big implications for the auto market and car buyers | Maryland Embraces Gradual Transition to Zero-Emissions Trucks and Buses | In Minnesota, electricians are plugging into a new niche installing EV chargers | What If Your Tesla Could Run on Sodium? | Electric car sales surged by 55% last year to surpass 10 million, and China led the way | Massachusetts prepares to launch new electric vehicle rebates early this summer
“People need something to believe in. The role of young people in politics and movements throughout the years has been to hold the moral line, and not move from it one inch—and that is what we’re doing. And that requires us to say things that may seem crazy, illogical. But we’re looking at the science. And to us, honesty means looking at what the science says, right now, and even if it seems impossible, we’re saying, “That’s what’s necessary.” So that’s what we go for.” –Varshini Prakash
3. Let’s Meet at the Clean Energy Future Crossroads Already Happening
With revenue flowing into its coffers, a German village broadens its embrace of wind power | How Community Solar Can Revolutionize Clean Energy Access in California | Octopus Energy is bringing clean, distributed energy to the masses | New York state just approved publicly owned renewables | Here’s what local climate action looks like in small-town USA | Tesla’s battery-storage sales are growing way faster than EV sales | Historic launch of the UK’s first national grid-connected solar farm | Why some climate experts are optimistic about the future of cleantech
“When the grid is stressed, wouldn’t it be great if instead of firing polluting fossil fuel peaker plants typically located in disadvantaged communities, we were using our electric vehicles?” —said Kurt Johnson, community energy resilience director at the California nonprofit The Climate Center.
What brightness are you glinting out there in the wide wonderful world? Let me know!
I appreciate you catching up on sunny climate news here. Thanks for all you for do! For a more beautiful tomorrow, today— the future thanks you, too.
Your #MondayMotivation courtesy of PlantKween
🧭 Cool Climate Tool: More Risky Heat Days + Report
🎶🖌🎨✨ Climate Culture Corner
Dolly Parton just released a new song about climate denial from her forthcoming rock album:
Liar, liar, the world's on fire / What you gonna do when it all burns down? / Fire, fire, burnin' higher / Still got time to turn it all around — Dolly Parton, World on Fire
Speaking of world-reknown musical icons with a climate message, BTS has a new climate song, too:
Finally, the latest Nintendo Switch game sending people to hibernate in their virtual worlds for eons just dropped— Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. As such, here’s some solar-farm inspired Hyrule AI imagery:
✉🗳️ Climate Advocacy Action: Send Postcards to Voters in Arizona with the Environmental Voter Project
📣 Climate Power Clean Energy Boom Advocacy Resources
Here are a few materials, including Climate Power’s previous reports as well:
States Report: The Clean Energy Boom in the States (*NEW* today)
National Report: National Clean Energy Boom
R District Report: Clean Energy in Republican House Districts
Data Set: All Clean Energy Boom Projects (this includes States and Congressional districts)
Website: thecleanenergyplan.com
Social Media: Twitter here and a toolkit here (includes national and state-specific graphics)
Here are some new climate poetry & recommendations from me:
For last week’s edition of Sunny Climate News:
“I speak for young girls who are fighting with their societies to access basic education. I speak for the young women breaking glass ceilings and achieving greater heights.
I speak for young people, who are not willing to give up, even if conflict and grief have wreaked havoc in their lives.
I speak for all of us, and the generations to come, who have the right to a better world.” —Jayathma Wickramanayake