Another week in the books! You can feel that Big May Energy in the air… schools are wrapping up… the weather is warming… pool season is coming—or here, depending on where you live. But if you’re heading to a Florida beach… you better read below. ⬇️
This week’s must read: The seaweed blob (technical term) has landed! If you live in Florida, especially along the coast, you may have heard of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt. Whether you have or you haven’t, you will want to read the latest from Mary Anna Mancuso, Get Ready for the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt—and take action to prevent more unsavory blobs in the future. (The Invading Sea)
“While the jury is out on whether climate change is the driving cause for the proliferation of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, scientists are pointing to water pollution, increased agricultural runoff and human waste as contributing factors to the rapid growth of sargassum in our ocean. A recent study has found that nitrogen, found in fertilizer and animal waste, levels are 35% higher on average than 30 years ago due to sewage and farm runoff,” she writes. “Also, sargassum, like other algae blooms, peaks in summer months due to its ability to thrive in warm water. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide causing global warming have led to an increase in average ocean temperatures of 1.5°F since 1901. Warmer water is easier for small organisms to move through and allows algae to float to the surface faster, which is bad news for summer beach goers, not to mention what the impacts of such a vast amount of sargassum might have on wildlife.”
We await the release of a new sub-genre of horror movies.
EcoRight Speaks, season six, episode 14: Andrew Jones, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Climate Interactive
Andrew Jones is a fantastic guy and so easy to talk to, so even if you don’t think climate modeling is your thing, you will after you listen to this episode.
The Executive Director and Co-Founder of Climate Interactive and a Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan, Jones is an expert on international climate and energy issues, he is a system dynamics modeler and designer of simulation-based learning environments.
Trained in environmental engineering and system dynamics modeling through a B.A. at Dartmouth College and a M.S. in Technology and Policy at MIT, he worked in the 1990s at Rocky Mountain Institute and in the 2000s with Dana Meadows at Sustainability Institute. He teaches system dynamics at MIT Sloan and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He and his team at Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan developed C-ROADS and En-ROADS, two user-friendly climate simulations in use by analysts around the world. We are going to talk about what that means,
Coming up next week: Sarah Spence, the executive director of the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum!
Climate Leadership Council on Congressional speed dials: We recently hailed the honor bestowed upon Greg Bertelsen as a top energy influencer and we frequently hail the brilliance of Catrina Rorke, thus none of us were too surprised to read that the Climate Leadership Council is a bipartisan sounding board for lawmakers looking to forge an agreement on a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). In an article published by E&E News, written by recent podcast guest Emma Dumain, Senator Kevin Cramer said of CLC’s policy approach: “they’re serious about the issue, and serious about the solutions and serious about the process of legislating and political capital and increments and all of the things that more extreme organizations or more unilateral or singularly focused organization probably wouldn’t do.”
From Senator Bill Cassidy, a huge proponent of a CBAM: CLC is “one of those sounding boards where you say, ‘Can it work?’ and they say, ‘No, it can’t.’ ‘OK, why not?’ ‘OK, well, it can, but you’d have to change it.’ ‘OK, yeah, but what about this guy’s perspective?’”
We really love this for our friends at CLC!
This week’s must watch: This video has a who’s who of EcoRighters (including Bob, including some past EcoRight Speaks guests) talking about trust in climate messaging.
Who earns your trust in climate change?
Research reveals the impact of Republicans and military leaders speaking up. @ChaseCainNBC explores the significance of messengers in climate discussions and how they could be the key to sparking real action. pic.twitter.com/ZlFt0tl1w6
— LX News (@NBCLX) May 12, 2023
John Curtis makes case for conservative climate action:
We know him as the guy who founded the House Conservative Climate Caucus, as a two-time guest on the EcoRight Speaks who talks passionately about the need for the GOP to come to the table to talk about climate solutions. It isn’t always easy, but he’s driven.
“Part of what motivated me was doing town halls and looking in their eyes and seeing how disappointed they were in their party,” he said in a recent interview with the Deseret News with journalist Ethan Bauer. “We can’t afford to lose the next generation of Republicans on this issue.”
“That John Curtis has been able to do this, it’s just amazing,” our own Bob Inglis noted in the story. “If you had told me in the 2010 cycle that there will be a Conservative Climate Caucus, and that John would be able to recruit that many members to it — I would have thought you were nuts.”
“There’s this pent-up desire to be good on this subject,” Curtis said. “To have answers. To respond to our critics.”
Don’t. We. Know. It.
You know what else we know? That it’s time to close your laptop and have a great weekend!