It\u2019s just the Trump administration\u2019s latest attack on wind. The Department of the Interior has led the charge, launching a witch hunt<\/a> against any policies perceived to favor wind power, de-designating millions of acres<\/a> of federal waters for offshore wind development, and kicking off an investigation into bird deaths<\/a> near turbines. Last month, the Department of Commerce joined the effort<\/a>, teeing up future tariffs with its own probe into whether imported turbines pose a national security threat to the U.S. In response, the Democratic governors of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey on Monday issued a statement<\/a> calling on the administration \u201cto uphold all offshore wind permits already granted and allow these projects to be constructed.\u201d<\/p>\n 2. California and Exxon Mobil battle over plastics<\/p>\n In what the New York Times<\/a> called a \u201csharp escalation\u201d of its legal strategy to fend off liability for pollution, Exxon Mobil has countersued California, accusing the state\u2019s landmark litigation over plastic waste of defaming the oil giant. At a court hearing last month, Exxon attorney Michael P. Cash described the lawsuit California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a cadre of environmental groups first filed last year as \u201can attack\u201d aimed at the oil company\u2019s home state of Texas and said the issue should be litigated there. As Times reporter Karen Zraick noted, Cash illustrated his point by displaying \u201ca graphic showing a missile aimed at Texas from California\u201d and by comparing Bonta and his nonprofit allies to \u201cThe Sopranos.\u201d<\/p>\n Backed by a parallel lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club, Baykeeper, Heal the Bay, and the Surfrider Foundation, Bonta sued Exxon in state court on the grounds that the company had deceived Californians by \u201cpromising that recycling could and would solve the ever-growing plastic waste crisis,\u201d alleging that the pollution had created a public nuisance and sought damages worth \u201cmultiple billions of dollars.\u201d The lawsuit mirrors past litigation over planet-heating emissions, but targets the petrochemical division that has been one of the fastest-growing for Exxon and other oil giants. The courtroom drama came right as international negotiations in Geneva over a global treaty to curb plastic pollution failed after the United States joined Russia and other petrostates to block measures supported by more than 100 other nations that would have curbed production.<\/p>\n 3. The U.S. is facing potential uranium shortfalls <\/p>\n In North America, nuclear fuel may soon become harder to come by. Canadian uranium giant Cameco has warned<\/a> that delays in ramping up production at its McArthur River mine in Saskatchewan could shrink its forecast output for the year. The move came just a week after one of the world\u2019s other major suppliers of uranium, Kazakhstan\u2019s state-owned miner Kazatomprom, announced plans<\/a> to slash its production by 10% next year. <\/p>\n The pullback is happening right as the U.S. nuclear industry\u2019s dealmaking boom is taking off. Now that Trump\u2019s tax law assured that support for atomic energy would continue, Adam Stein from the Breakthrough Institute told Heatmap\u2019s Katie Brigham<\/a> that more reactor plans are coming. \u201cWe might have seen more deals earlier this year if there wasn\u2019t uncertainty about what was going to happen with tax credits. But now that that\u2019s resolved, I expect to hear more later this year,\u201d he told Katie. That includes Europe. Despite similarly lethargic construction of reactors over the last three decades, France and Germany have finally united around the need for more atomic energy to power the continent\u2019s energy transition. A pact signed at last week\u2019s Franco-German summit \u201cappears to herald rapprochement on reactors,\u201d the trade publication NucNet<\/a> surmised.<\/p>\n 4. Cadillac\u2019s rebirth as a luxury EV maker faces a test<\/p>\n Once a stodgy gas-guzzling automaker, Cadillac refashioned itself as a luxury electric vehicle maker in recent years, rising alongside Chevrolet to put General Motors in the No. 2 slot behind Tesla. Roughly 70% of buyers who purchased the electric versions of the Cadillac Optiq or Lyriq switched from other luxury brands, including 10% who previously owned Tesla. That number could rise with Tesla\u2019s brand loyalty nosediving, as this newsletter previously reported<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re in a position of great momentum,\u201d John Roth, the global vice president of Cadillac, told The New York Times<\/a>. \u201cWe offer more electric S.U.V.s than any luxury manufacturer, all with more than 300 miles of driving range.\u201d But as Times reporter Lawrence Ulrich wrote, \u201cthat moment will soon be tested\u201d as the electric car industry reels from the repeal of tax credits in President Trump\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill. <\/p>\n The challenges ahead are best illustrated through the Escalade, Cadillac\u2019s iconic luxury SUV. The company sold just 3,800 electric Escalade IQs in the first six months of the year. While that\u2019s a strong showing for a three-row SUV starting around $130,000, the V-8 engine gas-powered Escalade starts at about $87,000, and sold about 24,000 vehicles \u2013 roughly six times as many as the electric version.<\/p>\n 5. Legal fight over Border Patrol\u2019s arrest of firefighter heats up<\/p>\n Lawyers in Oregon are demanding<\/a> the release of a firefighter arrested last week by Border Patrol while fighting a wildfire in Washington state. The man, whose name hasn\u2019t been released, was among two firefighters cuffed in the Olympic National Forest as they fought to contain the Bear Gulch Fire that had burned about 14 square miles as of Friday and forced evacuations. The arrests sparked a political firestorm over what critics saw as a jarring example of the warped priorities of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown. That\u2019s particularly so in the case of this firefighter, who attorneys said had received his U-Visa certification from the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Oregon in 2017 and had submitted his U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services application the following year.<\/p>\n When the AP asked the Bureau of Land Management why its contracts with two firefighting companies were terminated and 42 firefighters were escorted away from Washington\u2019s largest wildfire, the agency declined to comment. The decisions came as the American West is essentially a tinderbox. As Heatmap\u2019s Jeva Lange reported<\/a>, Washington and Oregon are both at high risk of a megafire igniting this fall.<\/p>\n THE KICKER<\/p>\n Turns out mammoths weren\u2019t just in the icy tundra. Scientists in Mexico discovered mammoth bones, shedding light on a once-obscure population of extinct tropical elephantids that ranged as far south as Costa Rica. In a paper<\/a> published this week in Science<\/a>, National Autonomous University of Mexico paleogenomicist Federico S\u00e1nchez Quinto documented the previously unknown lineage of the Santa Luc\u00eda mammoths, which he said split from northern Columbian mammoths hundreds of thousands of years ago. \u201cIf you had told me 5 years ago that I would be collecting these samples, I would have said, \u2018You\u2019re crazy,\u2019<\/strong>\u201d he said. \u201cThis paper really is an exciting beginning of something.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE TOP FIVE1. Transportation Department Joins the War on Wind Add the Department of Transportation to the list…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[17829,30900,18,20441,19,17,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-40543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-carbon-dioxide","9":"tag-co2","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-fossil-fuels","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1756892108_846_image.jpg\")