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Some are accusing Twitter of applying its policy on hateful conduct unequally after it allowed a tweet from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that intentionally misgendered Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine to remain on its platform. On Sunday, USA Today honored Levine, the first openly transgender Senate-confirmed federal official, as one of its “women of the year.” In a tweet Thursday, Paxton shared an image of Levine from the USA Today feature and called her “a man.” Intentionally misgendering a transgender person, meaning referring to them with the wrong pronouns or by their birth gender, is offensive, and research has...

ATLANTA — Lia Thomas took control in the final 100 yards of the 500-yard freestyle to make history Thursday as the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship. Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania senior who entered the NCAA women’s swimming and diving championships as the top seed, had a season-best time of 4 minutes, 33.24 seconds. “I didn’t have a whole lot of expectation for this meet,” said Thomas, a former male swimmer for Penn State. “I was just happy to be here and race and compete the best I could.” Virginia’s Emma Weyant was second at 4:34.99....

The International Energy Agency said Friday that a shortage of oil supply worldwide tied to Russia's invasion of Ukraine can be countered with specific actions to reduce consumption that governments and citizens can take immediately. A report issued by the IEA on Friday includes a 10-point plan that it says "could lower oil demand by 2.7 million barrels a day within four months -- equivalent to the oil demand for all the cars in China." "As a result of Russia's appalling aggression against Ukraine, the world may well be facing its biggest oil supply shock in decades, with huge implications...

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — High energy costs are stoking unrest in parts of Europe, with Spain deploying more than 23,000 police officers amid a truckers’ strike Friday and farmers in France and Greece snarling traffic with their protests. Russia’s war in Ukraine has further pushed up costs for oil and natural gas in Europe, driving record inflation and making it ever more expensive for farmers and truckers to fuel their equipment and vehicles, afford fertilizer or keep up with other costs. In Europe, which is dependent on Russian oil and natural gas, the war worsened an energy supply crunch that...

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “New Day,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said European nations that are “much more reliant upon Russia for natural gas and for oil,” are “doubling down” on becoming energy independent through green energy, “and we should be doing the same.” Co-host Brianna Keilar asked, “[W]e’ve seen these reports, the administration’s reaching out to Saudi Arabia and to Venezuela. I think folks that many Americans might consider unsavory characters, in this search for energy, to kind of fill this Russian energy void. How should Americans view this?”

MADISON, Wis. — Over the last 50 years, the average temperature on St. Patrick’s Day in Madison has increased by more than 3 degrees. Madison isn’t alone; close to 97% of weather stations in the United States have seen an increase in average spring temperatures since 1970 (data collected from the Applied Climate Information System). Climate change may have a big impact on the unofficial drink of St. Patrick’s Day: beer. Three of the key ingredients are quite fragile when it comes to rising temperatures and prolonged drought. Large qualities of water are required to brew beer; water makes up...

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) wants the Biden administration to intervene in the dispute over the state’s Line 5 oil pipeline and shut it down because keeping the pipeline open could result in an oil spill, Nessel says. Nessel told the Royal Oak Area Democratic Club during its March monthly meeting that the Department of Transportation, led by Secretary Pete Buttigieg, has jurisdiction over federal pipeline regulations and could therefore use its authority to close Line 5, according to a video of Nessel’s remarks to the club, which the conservative group Michigan Rising first provided to Breitbart News.

Today’s hawky-dove announcement by The Fed (raises rates by only 25 basis points, but hints that many rate hikes are around the corner. The US Treasury 10Y-5Y curve has slumped to zero as inflation climbs and the number of rate hikes hits 7. Do I detect a trend? And then there is the USD OIS curve. Steep much? And electric battery metal, nickel, is surging … again. Up 66.25%. When they made Narcos, Pablo Escobar should have said “Nickel or Lead” instead of “Silver or Lead.”

Joe Manchin has done it again. The senator from West Virginia threw a wrench yesterday into another key element of President Biden’s climate agenda. This time, it’s the nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin to be the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator, a role that entails monitoring emerging risks to the U.S. financial system — climate change among them.

Climate change has already made allergy season longer and pollen counts higher, but you ain’t sneezed nothing yet. Climate scientists at the University of Michigan looked at 15 different plant pollens in the United States and used computer simulations to calculate how much worse allergy season will likely get by the year 2100. It’s enough to make allergy sufferers even more red-eyed. As the world warms, allergy season will start weeks earlier and end many days later — and it’ll be worse while it lasts, with pollen levels that could as much as triple in some places, according to a...

President Joe Biden reassured donors Monday that he would use his executive powers to act on climate change, even as energy prices are at record highs. “The climate crisis is the existential threat. That’s not hyperbole; it’s a fact,” Biden said after taking the podium at a Democratic National Committee Fundraiser in Washington, DC. Biden promised to take “aggressive” executive actions on climate regulations even if the Supreme Court overruled him. He acknowledged that progress on the issue of climate change was difficult to achieve in Congress, hinting that donors could help him pressure lawmakers. “Our grandchildren will never forgive...

OVERSCHILD, Netherlands, March 15 (Reuters) - Images of bombed-out hospitals and apartment buildings across Ukraine reminded Jannie and Bert Schrage of their home country during World War Two. Then the retired couple, who live in the north of the Netherlands, realised they had a resource to help slow President Vladimir Putin's campaign – natural gas. The Schrages live above the Groningen gas field, Europe's largest. They have been opposing gas production since earthquakes started to force them out of their homes a decade ago. Now, like a majority of those polled in their province, they say that if it would...

Talks between Riyadh and Beijing have accelerated as the Saudi unhappiness grows with Washington (Rest behind paywall)

The Wall Street Journal reports active talks between Riyadh and Beijing about pricing some Saudi oil sales to China in yuan instead of dollars. Chatter about this sort of arrangement has been ongoing for several years, but recent events have brought a new urgency to talks, according to the report, which says the Saudis are questioning longstanding U.S. security commitments to the Kingdom. Among the issues is what the Saudis believe to be less-than-enthusiastic support for the war in Yemen, the White House's attempt at an Iran nuclear deal, and shock at the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. China is a...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are seeking an investigation into a U.S. Postal Service plan to replace its aging mail trucks with mostly gasoline-powered vehicles. The plan largely ignores White House calls to replenish the mail-service fleet with electric vehicles and has drawn sharp criticism from the Biden administration, Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists, who say it falls far short of President Joe Biden’s goals to address climate change. In a letter Monday, Democrats on the oversight panel asked the agency’s inspector general to investigate whether the Postal Service complied with the National Environmental Policy Act and...

A spike in hospitalizations for a dangerous low-salt condition is the latest in a growing list of health threats linked to climate change. An average global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit could lead to a 14% increase in hospitalizations for critically low sodium levels in the blood, a condition called hyponatremia, according to a Swedish study. Hyponatremia cases increase in the summer months, but the impact of warming temperatures due to climate change was unclear. To learn more, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden, analyzed nine years of data on Swedish adults and identified more than 11,000...

How Russia’s invasion is affecting U.S. nuclear By Hannah Northey | 03/14/2022 06:20 AM EST Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is raising questions about the cost and flow of fuel to existing and yet-to-be commercialized advanced U.S. reactors touted by advocates as a tool for tackling climate change. President Biden didn’t target the nuclear sector when he issued an executive order this month to block imports of Russian crude and natural gas. But as the war drags on for a third week, the White House is consulting with the nuclear sector about the potential impact of imposing sanctions on Rosatom, Russia’s...

Mainers are no strangers to winter road hazards. Bad weather brings dangerous driving conditions. Rock salt eats up undercarriages and metal infrastructure. Springtime thaws bring frost heaves and potholes. For generations, those headaches were at least fairly predictable. But as global climate change warms the state’s winters, erratic, severe weather will likely mean more damaging potholes and water pollution from excessive salting to keep up with more frequent ice storms. The extent to which warming trends are damaging Maine roadways is unclear. There’s been limited research, but early results from of recent study by Minnesota’s Department of Transportation found no...

A nuclear war would be disastrous for the earth’s climate, according to a recent piece in the Atlantic that drew harsh criticism for its focus on the harms posed to the environment by a potential nuclear exchange resulting from the current conflict in Ukraine. The Wednesday essay, titled “On Top of Everything Else, Nuclear War Would Be a Climate Problem,” was penned by Atlantic staff writer Robinson Meyer and began by noting climate change is often associated with energy policy.

Maksym Borodin has spent much of the past decade battling for an improved quality of life in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Today, his city is fighting for its very survival. That progress now looks set to be lost amid the rubble of this city of more than 400,000 people, as Russian forces besiege it and satellite images show utter devastation. Before the Russian invasion, Borodin, an activist turned politician, was among those who felt that, however slowly, progress was being made on environmental and climate issues in Ukraine. But as the war enters its third week, the fighting is...