Jeff Bezos twists the knife
The Washington Post editorial board is now cheerleading for President Trump's climate rollbacks.
Less than a week after sending layoff notices to most of its climate change reporters, the Washington Post published an editorial applauding the Trump administration for ripping up the federal government’s authority to regulate climate pollution.
The headline: “EPA is right to reverse Obama overreach.”
Read the thing if you want. But know that the Post’s opinion page was revamped by the newspaper’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos last year, a few months after he blocked the editorial board’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris.
Unsurprisingly, the Post’s argument for ripping up the “endangerment finding” — and declaring that greenhouse gases do not endanger public health — was nonsense.
“Climate change is a real problem facing humanity, and reasonable people could support government regulation to push down greenhouse gas emissions,” the Post’s editorial board wrote. “There may come a time when the people elected to enact laws decide the modest benefits of regulating greenhouse gases outweigh the considerable economic costs.”
Sorry, the “modest benefits” versus the “considerable economic costs” of regulating emissions? Was this written by a climate skeptic?
The editorial also criticized the endangerment finding being used to justify tougher emissions rules for vehicles: “Despite the obsession with gas-powered vehicles, light and medium-duty cars and trucks [in the U.S.] combined to generate just 1.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2022.”
Um…when considering Earth’s carbon budget, 1.8% is huge. That’s one of the biggest levers in existence, a pot of emissions roughly equivalent to the entire country of Iran. If you’re going to claim that regulating 1.8% of all emissions is a costly waste of time, you might as well argue that fighting climate change is a costly waste of time.
Which, come to think of it, was basically the Post’s argument.
It’s sad to see how far Jeff Bezos has fallen. This is the guy who just a few years ago promised that his company, Amazon, would meet the goals of the Paris agreement a decade ahead of schedule; he called it the Climate Pledge and was so excited about it that he paid to name a hockey arena after it. He committed $10 billion to fighting the climate crisis through the Bezos Earth Fund.
Fortunately, the Bezos Earth Fund continues to give out money — no small thing. But Amazon’s planet-warming emissions have risen substantially since the Climate Pledge was announced. The company also expects its energy demands to keep growing due to AI data centers, which could push up emissions even more.
Meanwhile, Bezos is ingratiating himself with Trump and gutting the Post, including its climate team. Tuesday’s editorial was only the latest indignity.
To learn more about the federal endangerment finding and why it’s important, check out this story by my former L.A. Times colleagues Hayley Smith and Ian James. When I shared their piece on Bluesky, I received a powerful reply from Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, founder and CEO of Jewish climate advocacy group Dayenu:
I think that’s why the Post’s climate editorial was so disturbing to me, too: Not only did it deny a fundamental truth, it served the cause of injustice. I felt the same way when Bill Gates insisted that global warming isn’t so terrible, and when a New York Times contributor argued that Democrats should embrace oil and gas, and when the Los Angeles city councilmember whose district burned in last year’s Palisades fire — a Democrat! — told her constituents that climate change had nothing to do with it.
These aren’t Fox News hosts preaching to the MAGA choir. They’re moderate voices talking to center-left voters, many of whom probably care about the climate crisis but aren’t especially well-informed.
Not everyone will be swayed by their arguments. But some people will.
Greenhouse gases are dangerous. Keep saying it. Support media that say it.
Valentine’s Day on the Colorado River
Yesterday was Saturday, February 14 — aka Valentine’s Day, aka the deadline set by federal officials for the Colorado River Basin states to reach an agreement to use less water and prevent Lake Mead and Lake Powell from crashing.
The states failed to strike a deal, the Arizona Republic’s Brandon Loomis reported.
It didn’t appear likely that the Trump administration would start rationing water or otherwise penalize the states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — for missing the deadline. At least not right away.
As of last Sunday, Lake Mead was 34% full. Lake Powell was 26% full.
Barring anything unexpected, interstate negotiations will continue. The real deadline is this fall, before current rules for operating the reservoirs expire.
In case you missed it, I had a guest essay in the New York Times this month blaming the Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) for the stalemate. I also discussed the negotiations with KJZZ’s Mark Brodie.
A great run regardless
I’m sad to report that the Italian women’s hockey team was shut out by Team USA on Friday in Milan, 6-0. USA will advance to the Winter Olympic semifinals.
Normally I would have cheered for America. But playing for Team Italy was Jacquie Pierri, a New Jersey-raised sustainable energy engineer and vocal climate advocate. I wrote about her remarkable life this month. The fact that Italy made the quarterfinals at all, unexpectedly winning two games, was a huge achievement.
When I asked Pierri what she’d do after the Olympics end, she told me she wasn’t sure — but she’d probably return to a career in sustainable energy.
Even before Friday’s loss, though, Pierri was already back to work fighting for a safer planet. She was one of 88 Olympic and Paralympic athletes who signed a letter urging the International Olympic Committee to ban fossil fuel sponsorships.
RE: Washington Post editorial on EPA. The Washington Post articles and editorials have great comments...often more informative than the pieces, themselves. All comments sections provide a summary of the comments (which is often AI-generated). For this article, there are currently 1,216 comments, nearly every one being highly negative. Here's a portion of the Posts summary of the comments: "Participants in this discussion express strong disapproval of the opinion piece, criticizing it for being misleading, shortsighted, and seemingly aligned with fossil fuel interests. Many comments suggest that the piece downplays the importance of environmental regulations and the role of the EPA in combating climate change. There is a recurring theme of disappointment with the Washington Post's editorial stance, with several commenters indicating they are reconsidering or ending their subscriptions. "
One commenter asks: "Is this op-ed part of Bezos’ gift of $75 million to Trump and Melania?"
The Washington Post editorial reads as if it was run through AI to read at a 6th grade level. Unworthy of a national newspaper. The comments are more thoughtful.