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Climate Point: Big Oil is tumbling, and California wants to remove a giant dam

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and environment news from around the Golden State and the country. In Palm Springs, Calif., I’m Mark Olalde.

It's hot out, and it's only getting hotter. But climate change isn't equal, and for some communities, urban planning is making it more difficult to escape the heat. Reporters from The News Journal in Delaware studied something seemingly ubiquitous that cools down and cleans up neighborhoods — trees — but found all is not well in the state's largest city. "Tree cover in Wilmington neighborhoods is as high as 70% in wealthier areas and as low as 10% in others," they wrote.

Here's some other important reporting...

Kevin Johnson, foreground, sits in the shade of building in Wilmington's West Center City. Johnson said increased days of extreme heat leads to more tension in the neighborhood.
Kevin Johnson, foreground, sits in the shade of building in Wilmington's West Center City. Johnson said increased days of extreme heat leads to more tension in the neighborhood.

MUST-READ STORIES

The prolonged plummet. If you read this newsletter, you're aware by now of the U.S. oil and gas industry's dangerous bet on fracking, which brought in cash hand over fist before being exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. Much of the boom was leveraged via credit, and stalled demand is claiming victim after victim. Bloomberg reports that large driller Noble Corp. filed for bankruptcy, looking to shed more than $3.4 billion in debt. Meanwhile, The Dallas Morning News writes that Denbury Resources, another oil company, announced its own bankruptcy, this one to make $2.1 billion in debt disappear.

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Don't be like Bob. Sticking to stories I've followed in this newsletter, let's check in on the corruption scandal surrounding Ohio's nuclear and coal bailout. Our USA Today network friends at the Columbus Dispatch and the Cincinnati Inquirer report that previously unnamed "Company B" in the corruption probe is none other than Murray Energy Corp., a once-massive, private coal company run by Bob Murray, an ally of President Donald Trump. The company's contribution to the alleged scheme to get the bailout passed wasn't huge — the entire alleged plan was worth $60 million — but the $100,000 it kicked in isn't nothing.

It all comes back to the environment. Each day this week, just miles north of my apartment, the sky has taken on an otherworldly orange hue as the Apple Fire — a blaze that has spread across more than 28,000 acres even with more than 2,600 firefighters battling it — sends up a plume of smoke that has reached Phoenix. Earlier this year, the Forest Service temporarily halted its own prescribed burns to tamp down air pollution in light of COVID-19. So, what does a fire like this and all its smoke mean for a raging respiratory disease? That's what California researchers are trying to figure out. They recently launched new studies that are already showing air pollution, especially from cars and trucks, leads to higher rates of COVID-19. I've got the details in The Desert Sun.

POLITICAL CLIMATE

President Donald Trump poses for a photo during a signing ceremony Tuesday for "The Great American Outdoors Act," in the East Room of the White House. At right is Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.
President Donald Trump poses for a photo during a signing ceremony Tuesday for "The Great American Outdoors Act," in the East Room of the White House. At right is Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.

Trump: environmental hero? On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed into law the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act, the Great Falls Tribune reports. On one hand, it's a major conservation win that allocates billions of dollars to pay down a backlog of long-overdue maintenance projects in the national park system. On the other, it ties the funding to revenues from the oil and gas industry, which can't coexist with long-term conservation. During the announcement, Trump struggled mightily to pronounce one of America's most beloved parks, Yosemite. Check out the video.

Hitting up the money Buffett. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has reached out to billionaire Warren Buffett, according to the Associated Press, to ask that his massive holding company Berkshire Hathaway back the largest dam removal project in U.S. history. Decades after the country raced to dam rivers as public works projects that ultimately dealt a big blow to biodiversity, conservation thinking has evolved, and removing a string of dams on the Klamath River could save salmon populations along the California-Oregon border.

What a gas. The Los Angeles Times reports that Southern California Gas, which advertises itself as the "nation's largest natural gas distribution utility," recently launched a lawsuit against the state of California. The legal action alleges that state law mandates the government must promote gas, but it appears to be another effort to protect its power as cities and counties institute measures to electrify new buildings.

A burning going full throttle on a natural gas stove.
A burning going full throttle on a natural gas stove.

THE PRICE OF HEAVY EXTRACTION

This land is mine(d). If a river is so beautiful that you have to win a lottery to even secure a slot to spend a day on it, should we be building a copper mine upstream? That's the question The Guardian grapples with in a new piece out of Montana. "This is not the first fight to stop a mine in Montana, and it probably won’t be the last. Montana has never turned down a mining permit," the story says.

Virginia's just not that into you. Uranium mining has been banned in Virginia since 1982, and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon. A year after the Supreme Court upheld the state's moratorium, a Wise County judge recently agreed, the Danville Register and Bee reports, meaning the commonwealth won't see a uranium mine anytime soon.

Oil in trouble in LA, and Louisiana. The oil industry's pollution potential was on full display this week, from the West Coast to the Gulf of Mexico. Emily Alpert Reyes of The Los Angeles Times writes that embattled oil company AllenCo Energy is being hauled into court on criminal charges stemming from a toxic drill site near USC in downtown Los Angeles. And, The Times-Picayune reports that BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster was actually much larger than previously understood, harming aquatic life and ecosystems across 124 square miles of the gulf.

AND ANOTHER THING

So coal had a bad day. Man, I could've done an entire newsletter on how this week showed coal in America is on the way out the door. But, that's a story we've known for several years, so let's just quickly check in on the latest bad news for coal. First, The Guardian reports that a new study by the Global Energy Monitor discovered the global fleet of coal-fired power plants decreased in size this year. It's the first time that has ever happened.

Then S&P Global Market Intelligence's Taylor Kuykendall and his team reported that the largest coal company in the U.S. suddenly wrote down the value of the largest coal mine in the U.S. by $1.42 billion to reflect a more accurate value. And, a quarter of recent coal sales went to power plants already slated for retirement, meaning the market will shrivel further, and fast.

Scientists agree that to maintain a livable planet, we need to reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration back to 350 ppm. We’re above that and rising dangerously. Here are the latest numbers:

Carbon dioxide concentrations continue rising despite the pandemic.
Carbon dioxide concentrations continue rising despite the pandemic.

That’s all for now. Don’t forget to follow along on Twitter at @MarkOlalde. You can also reach me at molalde@gannett.com. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here. And, if you’d like to receive a daily round-up of California news (also for free!), you can sign up for USA Today’s In California newsletter here. Mask up, people! Cheers.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Big Oil , California wants to remove Klamath River dam