| | | | | Dad stereotypes come in all flavors. You have the grill master, the football fanatic, the garage mechanic and the Little League coach. My dad spent countless hours tossing a baseball with me, discussing the finer points of Orel Hershiser's fastballs. We should now add "climate dad" to the list. | | What are climate dads into? "Heat pumps," wrote Peter Kalmus, a NASA climate scientist, on Twitter. "E-bikes and bike paths, solar panels, climate income, activism, and other great and useful things." The nerdiness of climate solutions is catnip for climate dads. They can talk for hours about the nitty-gritty of electrifying their homes. Long-distance transmission lines stir passionate debate. Worried about the latest IPCC reports? Climate dads like Peter Olivier are too busy reading engineering textbooks to rewire the dimmers for LEDs in the den. "It is a really wonderful, charming reaction to our moment," says Olivier, who connects with other climate dads on Twitter. "I see it in myself and my friends." | | Yet few role models exist. Caring about the environment isn't seen as traditionally masculine. According to a 2016 study in the Journal of Consumer Research, on average men are more averse than women to ostensibly "eco-friendly" lifestyles. "The concepts of greenness and femininity are cognitively linked," the authors write, a conclusion reflected in other research. But that's not inevitable. It's a product of culture. And one, I suspect, that is changing. As the existential threat of climate change comes into focus, and what's needed to create a safe climate for their children becomes clear, climate dads are having a moment. Vehicles like the electric Mustang Mach-E probably help, too. | | As for me, I'm a proud climate dad. My son was born last June. California had just endured six years of brutal drought, raging wildfires and searing heat domes. Suddenly the climate in 2050 was no longer an abstraction. It was a world Vaughan would live in and I owed it to him to make it better. Thank you, readers, for joining me in that. Are you a climate mom or dad? Send me your stories. | |  | | Harry Stevens/The Washington Post | | To environmental advocates, Willow's approval was a betrayal by a president who won their support by promising to end drilling on federal land. Yet the U.S. oil industry is equally upset at Joe Biden. Read Harry Stevens's Climate Lab column to understand why the president's oil policies have disappointed both sides. | | | After years of steep declines, the price for adding solar panels to homes is ticking up. The median cost for a 10-kilowatt system rose more than 5 percent in 2022, over the previous year, despite generous federal tax credits, according to Energy Sage, a marketplace for home solar and battery systems. | | | The main reasons: Strong demand, labor shortages and snarled supply chains. But prices will probably resume falling as the solar transition accelerates. | | | "A 'severe' geomagnetic storm spawned brilliant northern lights as far south as Virginia, North Carolina and Arizona," writes The Washington Post's Kasha Patel. "Auroras are generated during geomagnetic storms when energy and particles from the sun disturb Earth's magnetosphere. Some particles travel along Earth's magnetic field lines into the upper atmosphere, where they excite oxygen and nitrogen molecules and release photons of light." | |  | | From The Post Whisky distilleries are going net zero by 2040 with help from wind farms off Scotland's whisky isles. A barrage of grim U.N. reports and headlines are creating climate "doomers," a generation of people who think climate change can't be stopped. In the face of winds up to 170 mph in the Rolling Fork tornado, the sturdiest buildings crumpled. Here's what happened to mobile homes. Tucson is reviving the ancient art of rain farming in the Arizona desert. Rain could sustain the city — if residents were game to catch it. | | From elsewhere: Tragedy, death and hope in a warming world: CNN assembled 10 photographs that awoke the world to climate change. I have competition. In Massachusetts, "heat-pump coaches" are helping homeowners swap out fossil fuels to stay warm in their homes. | |  | | Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get The Climate Coach in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday. | | See you next Tuesday, Michael Coren, Climate Coach | | Did you know I read all your emails? Be part of the Climate Coach community. Write with thoughts on the newsletter and photos from life in your neck of the woods to climatecoach@washpost.com. | | | | | | | | | |
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