By Jennifer A Dlouhy President Joe Biden will seek to highlight US progress in confronting climate change during a speech that will emphasize the economic rewards of clean-energy investment and draw a contrast with Republicans on the issue. Biden will use the address on Tuesday, coming amid the UN General Assembly in New York, to tout the emission-cutting and job-creating dividends of federal climate policies — and invite other countries to follow suit, key advisers said. It's a shift from a "doom and gloom" message to one of economic opportunity, with climate action luring capital investments, nurturing a new offshore wind industry and restarting nuclear power plants, said Ali Zaidi, White House national climate adviser. Industry leaders and investors in New York this week know that "in the United States, the case for investing in clean energy has never been stronger," Zaidi said in a briefing previewing the president's speech at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum. "The economics for climate action are irresistible here in the United States, and that's going to cascade around the world." Read the full story on Bloomberg.com — and watch a live stream of the Global Business Forum starting at 3:30pm ET here. US President Joe Biden Photographer: Yuri Gripas/Abaca With events all across the city, it's hard to keep track of everything happening — especially today. Here are some other things on our agenda: Feeling energetic? If you're fast, there might still be time for you to join an early morning run co-sponsored by the Bill Gates-backed team at Breakthrough Energy. Further details here. Prince William's Earthshot Prize will make a big reveal. Today it will announce the finalists for its annual award for companies and groups working to address the environmental crisis. Out of the 15 finalists, five eventual winners will receive £1 million ($1.3 million) to scale their solutions. Watch the live stream from 9:30am ET here. The Earthshot Prize was founded in 2020 by Prince William in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies. (Michael Bloomberg is the majority owner Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, as well as the founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies.) There are some cool things happening downtown. Take a look at the future of green finance with a panel at the SoHo digs of the Jain Family Institute, which produces a reliably interesting and wonky climate newsletter called the Polycrisis. The Arctic tundra. The vast floodplains of Brazil. Indonesian peatlands. In these disparate locales, a particular breed of wildfire is burning up huge stores of carbon and threatening to worsen global warming. What sets these fires apart is their tendency to move below ground into carbon-rich soil layers. While wildfires generally flame upwards — quickly consuming forest and grassland — the increasingly intense blazes of recent years move downward, where they smolder flamelessly below the surface, consuming layers of organic material. These little-studied fires are becoming more common as severe wildfires have doubled in frequency over the past two decades. In the Arctic, 2024 is shaping up to be the worst fire year since 2020, when blazes burning across Siberia for several months consumed 8.6 million acres of tundra and sent emissions surging to a record. Alberta firefighters responding to boreal wildfires still burning from the 2023 wildfire season in Fox Lake, Alberta, Canada, in February 2024. Photographer: Government of Alberta By Brian K Sullivan, Scott Squires, and Mary Hui Hurricane John, a compact but powerful storm, came ashore on Mexico's Pacific coast — pushing a dangerous surge in front of it and unleashing deadly flooding rains across the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. The storm hit Guerrero at about 9:15 p.m. local time, with tree-snapping winds reaching up to 220 kilometers (136.7 miles) per hour, according to the Mexican government. That makes it a Category 3 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale that may trigger floods and landslides across the region. The authorities had urged people to take "extreme precautions." Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado Pineda said in a post on X that she had ordered all temporary shelters in the state's coastal areas to be opened. Read more here. Empty beach in Salina Cruz ahead of the arrival of Hurricane John in Oaxaca State, Mexico, on Sept. 23. Photographer: Rusvel Rasgado/AFP/Getty Images In a little more than six weeks, Americans will cast their votes in a presidential election that has enormous stakes for the future of the planet. On the latest episode of Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with energy and environment reporter Jen Dlouhy to talk about how Kamala Harris' still-opaque plans could continue President's Joe Biden's climate legacy — and how Donald Trump has already signaled he plans to chip away at it. "Starting on day one, he's already said he intends to direct federal agencies to begin repealing and replacing climate regulations," Dlouhy tells Zero. Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday. |
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