By Claire Brown

Nearly two weeks into the conflict, the war in Iran has triggered “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market,” the International Energy Agency said on Thursday. That comes despite an agreement among world leaders on Wednesday to release some 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves. Here’s what else to know:

Oil price warnings. A spokesperson for Iran’s military command warned on Wednesday that oil could reach $200 barrel, far exceeding previous records. The U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, said that’s unlikely.

President Trump shrugged off concerns about rising prices, pointing out on social media that the United States is the largest oil producer in the world. “When oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” he wrote Thursday morning.

A crucial shipping lane remains largely closed. On Thursday, Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, vowed to continue blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow body of water that conveys about 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies. Two oil tankers were set ablaze early on Thursday, leading Iraq and Oman to close oil terminals.

The environmental consequences. In Iran, damage to fossil fuel infrastructure has caused black rain and thick smoke over Tehran, prompting concerns that tanks of mazut, a bottom-of-the-barrel oil residue product used in power plants, have caught on fire, releasing huge quantities of sulfur and other toxic pollution into the air.

Will all this upheaval push governments around the world to pick up the pace of renewable energy installations? Not necessarily, Brad Plumer and Lisa Friedman write. And in the short term, some countries are likely to burn more coal.

What questions do you have about the environmental fallout of the war in Iran or its effects on the world’s energy supplies? Email us at climateforward@nytimes.com and we’ll answer your questions in future newsletters.

Kicked out of the Sierra Club

	By David A. Fahrenthold David Fahrenthold is an investigative reporter based in Washington who covers nonprofit organizations.

Last year, the Sierra Club’s national magazine honored Delia Malone as a “changemaker” — an activist to inspire other activists — for her yearslong campaign to reintroduce wolves to wild areas of Colorado.

A year later, the Sierra Club kicked her out.

In February, the club sent Malone, 71, a letter saying she had committed “serious violations of Sierra Club Member Obligations.” The letter listed seven rules that she had violated, including provisions requiring members to be respectful of each other, and to represent the club positively in public.

“You are no longer a member of Sierra Club,” said the letter, which was signed by the club’s office of general counsel. “Revocation of your status as a member of Sierra Club is permanent, meaning that you will no longer be eligible for any form of Sierra Club membership.”

What the letter did not say was what Malone actually did to deserve this rare punishment — which the club says is for members whose misconduct is “beyond repair.”

Malone said she believed that she was targeted in part because she talked to The New York Times last year, a claim the organization denies. She was quoted in a Nov. 7 article about how the Sierra Club had embraced social-justice issues far removed from its traditional environmental goals.

In that article, Claire Brown and I reported that the nonprofit organization’s shift was followed by years of internal strife and declining membership, leaving the group weakened just as the Trump administration has ramped up its attacks on environmental protections.

Delia Malone, an ecologist and activist, was expelled from the Sierra Club last month. Kristin Braga Wright for The New York Times

‘I had no idea’

In an interview, Malone said the club had not notified her that she was facing this punishment, had not told her what she was accused of doing and did not give her a chance to defend herself.

“I had no idea this was going on,” Malone said.

An ecologist by training, she had been a volunteer for the Sierra Club for 12 years and had previously served as one of the Colorado chapter’s statewide leaders. She helped lead the club’s efforts to campaign for a 2020 ballot measure authorizing the reintroduction of wolves to the state. It passed narrowly, and now the state says at least four packs of wolves live in Colorado.

In the November article, Malone had said she had once been scolded by a Sierra Club staffer for saying that the club should lobby the Colorado Legislature for more protections for wolves.

“One of the staff said, ‘That’s fine, Delia. But what do wolves have to do with equity, justice and inclusion?’” Malone said then. After that, Malone said she had heard from an investigator hired by the club, who had asked her questions but declined to say what she was being investigated for. The Colorado chapter of the Sierra Club told us last year that “no one was investigated or accused of values misalignment on the basis of wolf conservation efforts.”

A month after the Times story came out, the Sierra Club’s Colorado chapter removed Malone from her unpaid role as “Wildlife Chair.” It cited the same section of the club’s rules that the Sierra Club’s national leaders later cited to strip her membership.

Malone said she believed the Times article helped trigger both punishments. “It gave them a specific reason to say, ‘She’s not abiding by the rules,’” she said.

A day earlier, the Sierra Club had also voted to strip membership from another former leader of the Colorado chapter, Kent Abernethy.

In an interview, Abernethy, 64, said he had been a Sierra Club member for 40 years and had until recently led a local branch of the Colorado chapter. He said his letter from the club was identical to Malone’s: it described the rules he had violated, but not how he had violated them.

The future of the Sierra Club

Abernethy said he believed his dismissal was also rooted in the broader debate over the Sierra Club’s direction. The Colorado chapter has been a center of that debate: in 2022, the Sierra Club’s national leaders ousted the chapter’s elected leaders for fostering what it called a “harmful and non-inclusive management culture.” It replaced them with an unelected “steering committee” approved by the club’s national leaders, an arrangement that continues today.

Abernethy had recently emailed his local Sierra Club branch to criticize the club’s leaders for stifling dissent and punishing Malone.

The Sierra Club has defended its shift in focus, saying that its embrace of social justice is necessary to build a broader coalition. A spokesman for the club, Jonathon Berman, declined to describe what Malone and Abernethy had done to trigger their punishment, but said “the decision was not made as a result” of the Times article.

Berman said that the club encouraged debate among its members: “Any claim that an action taken to protect our members and staff is meant to silence dissent is false.”

Malone now leads her own environmental group, ColoradoWild, and Abernethy sits on its board. Both said they would continue their environmental work outside the Sierra Club. Malone said she looked back fondly on her work with the organization.

“There’s families of wolves thriving in Colorado,” Malone said. “That’s amazing.” She said the Sierra Club’s national leadership at the time had provided crucial help: “They were very supportive, up until they weren’t.”

The Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee advises the E.P.A.’s leadership on the latest scientific evidence on soot, smog and other hazardous pollutants. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Eye doctor named to air pollution advisory board draws pushback

The Trump administration has tapped an eye doctor with no background in air pollution science to advise the Environmental Protection Agency on what levels of air pollutants are safe to breathe.

The E.P.A. named Brian Joondeph, a Colorado-based ophthalmologist and political commentator, on Monday to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, an influential panel that advises the agency’s leadership on the latest scientific evidence on soot, smog and other hazardous pollutants.

Dr. Joondeph has never published a peer-reviewed paper dealing with air pollution. He has coauthored a handful of peer-reviewed papers about eye diseases, as well as dozens of opinion pieces in conservative publications, many of which praised President Trump’s style of governing and foreign policies.

It was the government’s latest move to sideline or shun scientific expertise, drawing criticism from past members of the advisory panel. — Maxine Joselow

Read more.

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Researchers have developed a reactor that pulls carbon dioxide directly from the air and converts it into sustainable fuel, using sunlight as the power source. Credit: University of Cambridge

Scientists have developed a sunlight-powered reactor that directly captures CO₂ from the air and transforms it into sustainable fuel.

The post Scientists Just Built a CO2-Eating Machine That Runs on Sunlight appeared first on Good News!.

Jane Goodall only wants one thing

When I caught up with Jane Goodall in 2019, she was calling on consumers and businesses to make responsible choices and protect the natural world.

Now she is telling people something much more simple: vote.

The celebrated primatologist thinks governments around the globe are not working hard enough to combat climate change. And in a year when more than 40 countries — including the United States, India and South Africa — will be electing their leaders, Goodall is telling anyone who will listen that the health of Earth itself is on the ballot.

“Half of the population of the planet is going to be voting,” she said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. “This year could be the most consequential voting year in terms of the fate of our planet.”

As my colleague Manuela Andreoni wrote last week, the leaders elected this year will face consequential choices on energy policy, deforestation and emissions reductions. In the United States, Republicans are planning to undo environmental regulations if former president Donald J. Trump wins re-election. In Mexico, the favorite to win the presidency in June is Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist who is now mayor of Mexico City and has vowed to take action to reduce emissions.

Goodall noted that the outcomes of national elections can have profound and immediate impacts. She pointed to Brazil, where two years ago, voters ousted the far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro, and brought back President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Overnight, Lula abandoned Bolsonaro’s laissez faire approach to environmental regulation and redoubled efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest.

Similar swings in policy will reverberate around the world as people go to the polls in the months to come, Goodall said: “Every vote matters, more this year than perhaps any time in history.”

‘The wealthy are being hit’

Goodall refrained from endorsing specific candidates.

But she believes that as extreme weather batters every corner of the globe, more voters were coming to understand that climate policies matter.

“When climate change began to make itself known, it was Bangladesh and the poorer countries that were suffering,” she said. “Now the wealthy are being hit. The industrialized countries are being hit where it hurts them economically.”

In the United States alone last year, there were 28 storms, wildfires or other disasters that each cost at least $1 billion or more in damages, my colleague Christopher Flavelle reported this month.

“There are floods in New York, floods in Britain, floods in several parts of Europe, unprecedented heat waves killing people in France,” Goodall told me. “It has changed.”

Yet in what is expected to be a tight race between President Biden and Trump, climate is not one of the dominant issues of the campaign. Inasmuch as it is a factor, it is often invoked by activists who believe the Biden administration is not doing enough to curb emissions, or by Trump with promises to expand oil and gas drilling.

Goodall also expressed hope that companies could do more to reduce emissions. Just as voters might respond to climate crises at the polls, she said corporations might begin funneling their lobbying dollars toward candidates who prioritized climate issues.

“I’m hoping that because companies are being hit economically, some of them will think, ‘Well, we better put a bit more money into the right politicians,’” she said.

‘An all of the above moment’

Goodall, who turns 90 in a few months, was in Davos talking up her efforts to educate young people about the plight of the natural world — and to bend the ear of the policymakers and C.E.O.s who sought her out for selfies.

Elections, she said, matter to the degree that they help preserve the natural world.

“The ecosystem is this tapestry of interconnected plants and animals, and each single one has a role to play,” she said. “When a species becomes extinct, it’s like pulling a thread. And if enough threads are pulled, the tapestry hangs in tatters. The ecosystem will collapse.”

Goodall, who spent decades living in the jungle studying chimpanzees, is not dogmatic in her approach to fighting climate change.

“We need the technology,” she said. “We need transfer to renewable energy. We need to stop subsidizing fossil fuel companies. We must think about human population with its cattle. It’s an all-of-the-above moment.”

But she said those policies will only be enacted by leaders who appreciate the gravity of the crises facing planet Earth.

“We’ve got to get the message out there for people to understand, and then they’ll vote in the right way,” she said. “Then they’ll understand how important it is for their children, and their children’s children.”

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Nuclear fusion saw another major breakthrough… a ‘huge step’ in the quest for clean energy.

A woman was cured of HIV through a breakthrough stem cell treatment.

MIT engineers created an ‘impossible’ new material… stronger than steel but as light as plastic.

An international team of scientists used supercomputers to unlock a ‘giant leap’ in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

A new ‘game-changing’ carbon capture technology could deliver a step change in our ability to remove dioxide from the air.

Researchers set a new Guinness World Record for fastest-ever DNA sequencing technique… using it to sequence a human genome in just 5 hours and 2 minutes.

A new breakthrough in spinal cord implant ‘could potentially allow paralysed people to walk again’.

A ground-breaking new technology regrew a frog’s lost leg… and it might work on humans too.

Surgeons completed the first-ever heart transplant with a genetically-modified animal heart… saving the life of a 57-year-old and taking a big step towards helping solve the global donor organ shortage.

Biodegradable surgical tape has been invented… making some intestinal fixes as easy as ‘duct tape around leaky pipes’.

James Webb, the awe-inspiring $10 billion space telescope 25 years in the making, took its first images… a huge scientific milestone.

An autonomous drone carrying a defibrillator saved the life of a 71-year-old having a heart attack… a first in medical history.

Researchers in Sweden found a promising way to use solar power to convert carbon dioxide into fuel… using ultra-fast laser spectroscopy.

Just a few of many incredible achievements in the first 50 days of the year.

The world is far from perfect, but we shouldn’t forget that about 90% of all scientists that ever lived are alive today. Never before have we had so many people whose sole purpose of work is to better understand how the world works.

2022 is shaping up to be a remarkable year in science and technology.

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We All Play a Part in Energy Conservation
October is Energy Action Month. It’s the time of year when we turn our attention toward the importance of energy conservation and resiliency. The call to save energy can reach everyone this October, from Soldiers to civilian employees to families. The U.S. Army Reserve is leading that call because conservation advances their mission, protects communities and empowers Soldiers to charge ahead.

From the electricity that powers Army Reserve facilities, to the fuel that powers their vehicles, energy touches nearly every aspect of the Army Reserve’s mission. Conserving power can help protect our energy future.

However, we all face threats to our energy security; from increasing global demands to natural disasters, fluctuating fuel costs and innovative adversarial attacks like cyber weapons. Conservation helps ensure Soldiers have the energy they need, when and where they need it, to accomplish their missions – at home and abroad, now and in the future. The Army Reserve is also focused on prioritizing energy and water security requirements to ensure Soldiers always have available, reliable power and water to continuously sustain critical missions.

Energy Action Month is an opportunity for the Army Reserve Energy Program to help the public understand the important role everyone can play in energy conservation and resiliency and offer practical, smart energy tips that everyone can implement in their daily lives.

Simple ways for everyone to reduce their energy footprint include:
 Weathering your home to eliminate air leaks and adding insulation
 Replacing your incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) or light emitting diodes (LEDs)
 Creating a more energy efficient office by using natural light wherever possible
 Powering down computer monitors at end of each day
 Unplugging electronics that aren’t in use for extended periods and using power strips
 Recycle packaging materials like paper and cardboard, as we continue to increase shipping supplies to our homes
 Adjusting your thermostat to 68 degrees during the fall and winter and 78 degrees in the spring and summer

Colonel Daniel Cederman, Director, Army Reserve Installation Management Directorate will be available to help your audience learn more about reducing their carbon footprint. COL Cederman will also discuss the energy conservation innovations employed by the U.S. Army Reserve and how the public can similarly do their part to reduce energy waste.

Interview courtesy: U.S. Army Reserve

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