Grist

The ramifications of record-shattering heat on the West’s ecosystems

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In March, a month traditionally known for heavy mountain snows and dreary lower-elevation weather, a heat wave settled across the West, shattering temperature records from Tucson, Arizona, to Casper, Wyoming. The heat wave’s intensity and early arrival shocked many climate scientists. “It is exceptionally difficult for the Earth system to produce temperatures this warm so early in the season,” wrote Daniel Swain, a climatologist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources who runs the Weather West blog. Yet not only did Western locations set new March highs; many exceeded temperature records for May. And those high temperatures kept hanging on, said Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at the nonprofit science center Climate Central, for nearly two weeks. While heat waves are a natural phenomenon, this was the earliest and most widespread one ever recorded in the Southwest. And it was caused by climate change, which is making intense heat waves much more likely. Researchers say this means understanding their fallout is even more important. Scientists are just now beginning to understand the ramifications of a devastating 2021 heat

Can a carbon price lower power bills? Virginia is betting yes.

Abigail Spanberger won a landslide victory in the Virginia governor’s race last November with a platform that focused on reining in rising electricity costs. Virginia is home to the world’s largest concentration of artificial-intelligence data centers, and the state’s biggest utility is straining to meet an expected surge in power demand. Spanberger, a Democrat, promised on the campaign trail to “make Virginians’ bills more affordable.” It might seem surprising, then, that the new governor signed a bill last month that would return Virginia to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, a carbon pricing program that covers electrical utilities in states across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Spanberger’s Republican predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, pulled out of the program in 2022. “Cap-and-trade” programs like RGGI put a ceiling on the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide that utilities are allowed to emit when they generate electricity, and they require utilities to pay for every ton of carbon they emit below that cap. These programs can help drive utilities toward cleaner fuels, but they also increase costs, and those costs get passed on to consumers. As a result, cap-and-trade programs have come under scrutiny as Democrats pivot to a focus on lowering costs for voters