"The town of Mayfield, which has already been through too much, has had significant rain and likely significant damage. For all the communities that have been impacted, I am now signing a state of emergency," Beshear said in a video posted to Twitter Wednesday.

Western Kentucky has seen waves of thunderstorms that are blanketing cities like Mayfield in water, prompting several water rescues across the area.

Graves County, which is home to the city of Mayfield, has seen 11.28 inches of rainfall from 12 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, which would break the 24 hour rainfall record for the state if verified, according to the National Weather Service of Paducah, Kentucky. The previous 24 hour record was 10.48 inches in 1997 in Louisville, Kentucky, according to NWS.

Mayfield is still recovering from an EF4 tornado that left 80 people dead in December 2021.

"Major flooding like many have never seen is occurring," the Graves County Sheriff's Office wrote in a post on Facebook early Wednesday morning. The office also shared photos of washed out roads now closed due to the storm.

A tornado ripped through a North Carolina city Wednesday, damaging a Pfizer pharmaceutical plant, several residential homes and roadways. 

The tornado touched down in the Rocky Mount area of North Carolina shortly after 12:30 p.m., leaving downed trees and power lines in its path, according to Nash County officials.

The National Weather Service of Raleigh said Wednesday night the damage found north of Rocky Mount is consistent with an EF3 tornado and wind speeds of 150 miles per hour.

Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone confirmed the tornado damaged a Pfizer pharmaceutical plant in the Rocky Mount area, leaving medicine and debris strewn around the facility. 

Stone said the Pfizer plant holds large quantities of medicine, telling reporters, “I’ve got reports of 50,000 pallets of medicine that are strewn across the facility and damaged through the rain and the wind.” Stone said he has not been able to confirm the extent of damage.

In a statement to The Hill, Pfizer confirmed the damage to its Rocky Mount facility, noting staff followed safety protocol and were able to evacuate. The pharmaceutical company said all of its staff are safe and accounted for with no injuries reported.

“Our thoughts are with our colleagues, our patients and the community as we rebuild from this weather incident,” the statement read.

The pharmaceutical company said it is assessing the situation to determine how production will be impacted.

According to Pfizer’s website, the company’s Rocky Mount location is “one of the largest sterile injectable facilities in the world,” with around 25 percent of all sterile injectables used in U.S. hospitals being produced at the site. The location makes several products, including anesthesia, therapeutics and anti-infectives. 

The Nash County Sheriff’s Office also confirmed several homes were damaged, with six residents being treated on the scene by EMS and another two taken to the hospital. The twister caused several downed trees and power lines along highways, forcing officials to temporarily shut down both the north and south sides of I-95 in the area. 

Stone urged the public to stay off the roads while transportation and power crews work to repair the damage, which also included a gas leak. 

The National Weather Service said a tornado watch is in effect for nine North Carolina counties until 7 p.m. EST.

The tornado is the latest extreme weather event in recent days, as a dangerous heat wave continues in the Gulf Coast and Southwest and extreme flooding overwhelms the Northeast.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The new Quinnipiac poll found that 55 percent of Americans are expecting a “significant negative effect” from climate change, while 41 percent are not. Two-thirds of respondents said they are concerned about climate change, including 42 percent saying they are very concerned and 25 percent saying they are somewhat concerned.

The poll also noted that about one-third say they are not so concerned or not at all concerned about climate change.

“Searing heat, devastating flooding, choking smoke. Americans are enduring a summer of weather-related calamities, with no age group more concerned than the youngest Americans," Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said.

Six in ten Americans said they believe climate change is related to extreme weather events in the U.S. over the past several years, but 34 percent said they are unrelated. Just over half of respondents said they are not worried that they or a family member may be affected by an extreme weather event while 46 percent of respondents said they are worried.

This new poll comes as a large portion of the U.S. has faced severe weather in summer 2023, including a weeks-long heatwave, fatal flash flooding and dangerous storms.

The poll was conducted among 2,056 adults from July 13 to 17 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

Gov. Josh Green (D) had declared the emergency Tuesday in anticipation of the storm. He granted administrative leave for all nonessential government employees on the Big Island and warned residents to prepare for mudslides and wind damage.

“I spoke with the FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] director today; they’re prepared to support us in case of a big disaster,” Green said in a video message Tuesday.

The storm poured as much as 2 inches of rain on parts of the Big Island Tuesday, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. A total of 4 to 8 inches of rain is expected on the island, according to Green.

The storm’s winds are about 45 miles per hour with gusts topping 55 miles per hour, NWS said. It is forecast to weaken as it moves west across the other Hawaiian islands Wednesday.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Republican Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler (Pa.) have filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court in support of the controversial pipeline, which was approved in the debt limit deal earlier this year.

Last week, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., granted a stay on construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural gas project championed by Manchin. The deal to raise the debt ceiling in June included a provision approving the pipeline and transferring jurisdiction over the matter to a Washington, D.C., appeals court.

In response, the company behind the pipeline filed an emergency request Monday asking Chief Justice John Roberts to intervene, citing the provision in the debt deal. Roberts has the option of either deciding on the matter himself or putting it to the court for a full vote.

Manchin filed the brief in support of the request Tuesday, while Reschenthaler filed his own Wednesday.

“It’s a shame when members of Congress have to ask the Supreme Court to intervene to maintain the credibility of the laws that we have passed and the President has signed, but I am confident that the Court will uphold our laws and allow construction of [the Mountain Valley Pipeline] to resume,” Manchin said in a statement.

Reschenthaler added in his own statement Wednesday that "[t]he Fourth Circuit judges are not supreme rulers and lawful orders issued by the legislative and executive branches must be followed. Congress was well within its power to restart the Mountain Valley Pipeline construction and usher in a new era of energy independence for the region.”

“Instead of halting the pipeline, I urge the Supreme Court to plug up the ludicrous activism seeping out of the lower court so American families can enjoy lower energy costs, substantial land royalties, and most importantly — law and order in America,” he added.

The Richmond court ordered the halt to construction on a portion of the pipeline after the Wilderness Society sued over the provision that removed the 4th Circuit's jurisdiction.

“We came here to break new ground, which we think is important at this stage, and it is clear that we are going to need a little more work to be able to complete that task,” he said during a press conference Wednesday. 

He said that the two sides would “work intensively in the weeks ahead” on issues such as integrating renewable energy into the power sector as China largely relies on coal power.

Meanwhile, in remarks this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the country’s commitments on climate change are “unwavering” but also said they “must be determined by the country itself, rather than swayed by others,” per the official People’s Daily newspaper. 

China is currently the world’s largest emitter of planet-warming gasses while the U.S is the second-largest, though the U.S. is the greatest historical emitter. The U.S. is currently seeking to reduce its emissions, while China has said that it intends for its emissions to peak in 2030.

The talks come after China halted its cooperation with the U.S. on issues including climate change for a few months last year after then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Taiwan. They resumed talks on climate change in November. 

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) -- Delta Air Lines canceled a flight from Las Vegas to Atlanta on Monday after extreme heat led to illnesses among passengers.

The number of passengers who were sick was not disclosed in a statement from the airline. Reports that the passengers were in the cabin on the ground for four hours could not be confirmed.

"We apologize for the experience our customers had on Flight 555 from Las Vegas to Atlanta on July 17, which ultimately resulted in a flight cancelation. Delta teams are looking into the circumstances that led to uncomfortable temperatures inside the cabin and we appreciate the efforts of our people and first responders at Harry Reid International."

The apology to customers came along with a "compensatory gesture," the airline said.

Multiple people were reportedly wheeled off the plane by paramedics, and multiple flight attendants were also said to have fallen ill.

The official high temperature in Las Vegas on Monday was 108 degrees, 9 degrees lower than on Saturday when the temperature was just a degree below the all-time record of 117.

Delta said passengers on Flight 555 were moved to other flights.

At least one customer sought treatment for heat-related discomfort, according to the airline.

"Medical teams responded to a call aboard an aircraft yesterday afternoon," according to a statement from Reid International Airport late Tuesday afternoon. The statement directed further questions to Delta.

Planes do have air conditioning, a former pilot Billy Nolen told The New York Times. In most cases, there is a cooling system that works when the engines are on and an auxiliary unit that supplies cool air when the plane is on the tarmac.

But, planes can get hot, like when it is switching between cooling systems, Nolen notes. A plane sitting in warm weather will also, inevitably, get warm, just as your car does when it sits in the sun.

The nation is baking in a record heat wave that is serving as a reminder of how climate change is rapidly affecting human life — from endangering outdoor workers to raising existential questions about communities at sea level.    

Yet when it comes to the GOP presidential field, climate change is mostly shrugged off.    

None of the 11 major candidates for president is offering significant warnings about the issue. 

Most have acknowledged the existence of human-caused climate change, and some have taken action to combat it while holding lower offices. 

But most of the candidates are putting more of an emphasis on drilling for oil and natural gas than on taking steps to control emissions.  

None of them has a dedicated climate change subsection on the issues page of their campaign website — although biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy’s economic plan includes the bullet point “abandon the climate cult and unshackle nuclear energy” — and none of the candidates with a dedicated page for energy policy advocates scaling back fossil fuel development. 

Playing down the threat 

Former President Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, stands out from the rest of the Republican field on the issue for his active minimization of the threat of climate change.

Trump, who withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accords under which countries promised to lower emissions, has in the past acknowledged humans have played some role in changing the climate. However, he has repeatedly played down the dangers, including by misrepresenting the threat of rising sea levels and claiming without any scientific basis that climate change will reverse itself. 

Trump has vowed to aggressively expand domestic fossil fuel production and “ensure the United States is never again at the mercy of a foreign supplier of energy.”    

His campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.   

In addition to withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement — which President Biden reentered in 2021 — Trump also staffed his former administration with climate change skeptics, including former Environmental Protection Agency Administrators Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler, and unwound more than 100 existing environmental regulations while in office.  

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is behind Trump in the polls but widely seen as the second-leading candidate in the GOP field, has also minimized climate change as an issue. 

He governs a state that is on the front lines of climate change. Miami this week suffered from a historically high heat index, and it and other seaside communities face an existential threat if seas continue to rise because of climate change. 

As governor, DeSantis has taken some action to build resilience to rising sea levels in the state, creating the position of chief resilience officer and allocating hundreds of millions of dollars for flood adaptation efforts, but he has been dismissive of efforts to actively cut greenhouse gas emissions. 

More on Energy & Environment from The Hill

• The world is burning from a record heat wave. GOP presidential candidates are shrugging
• ‘Massive emissions ramifications’: Forthcoming hydrogen policy stirs intense debate
• Biden approves additional aid to Vermont after severe storms, flooding
• UN agency warns of heart attack, death risk from heat wave

In 2021, the governor, speaking in Pinellas County, claimed climate change is frequently invoked to advance liberal priorities, saying “we’re not going to do any left-wing stuff.” 

Like DeSantis, Ramaswamy has stopped short of denying climate change but has largely discussed it in the language of the culture war rather than that of economics or policy. 

Ramaswamy, who has polled in the mid-single digits in the primary, largely built his national profile on opposition to environmental and sustainable governance (ESG), the practice of weighing environmental and climate issues, among others, in investment and financial decisions that has attracted increasing opposition from Republicans, including DeSantis.  

Ramaswamy has called fossil fuels “a requirement for human prosperity” but has also been a proponent of nuclear energy, which some consider a potentially valuable renewable energy source while others raise safety concerns about its storage. 

Asked if the candidate considers climate change a threat that requires intervention by the federal government, a spokesperson for the Ramaswamy campaign told The Hill in an email that he believes “there's a reason why climate activists are the biggest opponents of nuclear and hydroelectric energy, and why they restrict fossil fuel production in the US while shifting it to places like Russia & China: their agenda has nothing to do with ‘climate’ & everything to do with global ‘equity.’” 

Passing the buck to private enterprise 

Several of the GOP candidates, including DeSantis, have indicated that they believe efforts to combat climate change should be the purview of private industry rather than the government. 

The Florida governor’s campaign referred The Hill to comments he made in an interview with Fox News’s Stu Varney, in which DeSantis, asked directly whether he had a climate plan, said: “In Florida, we've actually had a huge reduction in emissions, but it was done through innovation. It was done through market forces, not command and control. So we'll go about that in a much different direction than Joe Biden.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a long shot for the Republican nomination, has made little reference to climate change on the campaign trail, but as governor made comments pointing to a similar belief. "Our power companies have voluntarily embraced sources of alternative energy without heavy-handed regulation from government,” he told Reuters in 2020. "Which indicates to me that they are following the markets. We prefer a market-driven response to government mandates."  

Similarly, Ken Farnaso, a spokesman for former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s campaign, told The Hill in an email she “believes that when it comes to climate change, capitalism and economic freedom aren’t the problem—they’re the solution.” 

Haley, who has garnered mid-single-digit support in polling, has backed carbon-capture technology, which sucks carbon dioxide from the air, calling it an example of “innovative ideas that actually work” in contrast to policies pursued by the Democratic Party. 

She has also pledged to roll back Biden administration energy subsidies and environmental regulations and promote domestic oil and gas production if she is elected. 

“As president, she will pursue an all-of-the-above energy policy that lowers costs for Americans," Farnaso said. 

A mixed history of climate stances 

As U.N. ambassador during the Trump administration, Haley played a key role in the former president’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, which she touts on her campaign website. The move was also enthusiastically backed by former Vice President Mike Pence and by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who was one of its most fervent supporters in the Senate — even as both have for years acknowledged humanity’s part in changing the climate.  

Scott’s campaign did not immediately respond when asked whether he would withdraw from the agreement again if elected, but both Haley’s and Pence’s campaigns confirmed to The Hill that they would, as did Ramaswamy’s. 

Pence, who is polling in third place in the primary behind Trump and DeSantis according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, acknowledged the human role in climate change as early as 2016. In a June CNN town hall, during a period where much of the East Coast was blanketed in haze from Canadian wildfires, Pence said “clearly the climate is changing,” but not “as dramatically as the radical environmentalists like to present.” 

But in addition to backing Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, he has also been a proponent of increased oil and gas development, like most of the GOP candidates. A Pence adviser said the former vice president has not released a formal climate policy, but referred The Hill to policy proposals from his communications firm Advancing American Freedom, which call for an end to federal subsidies for “any energy source” as well as expansions of oil and gas exploration and increased exports of liquefied natural gas. 

Scott, who has also been polling in the low single digits, told the Charleston Post & Courier in 2017 that “there is no doubt” humanity has contributed to climate change, adding that he is “not living under a rock.” But along with supporting withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, Scott joined every other Republican in the Senate last year in voting against the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant climate bill in the country’s history. 

He has also touted support for further extraction of fossil fuels in the U.S. on the campaign trail, saying in Iowa that "making sure we have the strongest excavation of our natural resources is absolutely essential to the future of our nation." At the same appearance, he also highlighted his support for biofuels. 

A spokesperson for the Scott campaign referred The Hill to Scott’s record of supporting some policies that would promote renewables in the Senate, including his backing for the nuclear production tax credit, his support for energy permitting reform plans introduced by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), and his co-sponsorship of the RISEE Act, which would distribute offshore wind revenues to states.  

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another candidate polling in the low-single digits, also has a mixed record on the issue. He has acknowledged the existence of human-caused climate change since 2011, a period when many of his fellow Republicans outright denied its existence. However, as governor he also withdrew the Garden State from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon emissions trading program involving several northeastern states that aims to cap regional carbon emissions through the issuance of tradeable carbon allowances. New Jersey rejoined RGGI in 2018 under Christie’s successor, current Gov. Phil Murphy (D).  

Christie, whose 2024 campaign has largely hinged on his willingness to criticize Trump, has made little mention of climate on the campaign trail.  

Taking a stronger stand 

Some of the long-shot candidates in the race have taken more moderate — or even relatively hawkish — stances on the issue than their opponents who are garnering more support. 

In June, for instance, former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) went further than many of his fellow candidates toward acknowledging climate change as a significant threat. Addressing the wildfire smoke that is spreading across much of the U.S., he tweeted that “reducing both the frequency of destructive wildfires and the billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions they generate is a must to address Climate Change.” 

“When more people think Climate Change is impacting them personally, then we will see the focus required to fix it while staying energy independent,” he added. 

Hurd’s record on the issue while in office was far from aggressive, however. While he was considered a moderate member of his caucus during his six years in the House, he received a lifetime score of only 13 percent from the League of Conservation Voters for his voting record on what experts deemed important pieces of environmental legislation. 

Two other long-shot candidates, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, are the only contenders with a record of actively seeking to cut emissions. Both are currently polling close to 0 percent, according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average. 

Suarez has perhaps the most aggressive record in office on climate change of any GOP candidate, setting a goal in 2020 to make the city emission-neutral by 2050. The details of his plan include converting the city’s electricity supply entirely to renewables by 2035.  

Burgum, meanwhile, has set a goal to make his state carbon-neutral by the end of the decade. North Dakota relies heavily on fossil fuel industry jobs, as the third-leading state for crude oil production, and Burgum has also heavily touted carbon-capture technology rather than phasing out the use of fossil fuels as a way to achieve carbon neutrality. 

In an email to The Hill, Suarez said he believes the party can make space for sensible climate action without accepting the Democratic Party’s framing of the issue. 

"I think my party would be wise to acknowledge that we all need to respect our environment. That our goal should be to leave a world to our children that is better than the one our parents handed us. But that doesn’t mean we have to buy into the Al Gore ‘we are all going to die’ extremism,” he said. “We should practice the three climate R’s. Be Responsible, Be Reasonable and be Rational … and understand that the environment IS the economy, it's not one or the other." 

In both agenda and rhetoric, the Republican field is in sharp contrast with Biden on climate. Biden, the far-and-away front-runner to once again claim the Democratic nomination, has called climate change “the only truly existential threat” to humanity. While he has taken several steps that have drawn criticism from climate advocates in recent months, most notable among them his approval of a major oil drilling project in Alaska, Biden has staked out an aggressive stance on the issue as president, including by championing the Inflation Reduction Act, rejoining the Paris Agreement and imposing a pause on new oil leasing on federal lands that has since been struck down by the courts. He has touted his climate-related accomplishments and goals on the 2024 campaign trail and garnered endorsements from several major environmental organizations in his reelection bid. 

On the Republican side, meanwhile, even the candidates who have acknowledged human-caused climate change as a threat or worked to fight it in the past have so far made little mention of it on the campaign trail. 

At this stage in the race, there’s little political incentive for Republicans to discuss climate change, said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist based in Florida, even if they may have an environmental record to draw on like DeSantis.  

“What you do not see from the Republicans is sort of what Republican [voters] see as a green energy assault on the economy,” O’Connell told The Hill. “You have to balance the environment with the world’s leading economy.”  

“I don’t think, necessarily, that the Republicans do the best job of making that point to the voters,” particularly those under 35, he added, and those younger voters will be a far larger problem in a general election.   

Forthcoming guidance from the Treasury Department that could have major implications for climate change is sparking fierce debate in Washington. 

The guidance will set the rules for the hydrogen energy industry — which has the potential to cut emissions from hard-to-abate sectors like the steel, cement and chemicals industries — as it looks to take advantage of a lucrative tax credit provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.

Climate activists, however, say that if the policy gives the industry too much leeway on where it gets its power to produce the hydrogen, it could be a disaster for the warming planet. 

Lena Moffitt, executive director of climate advocacy group Evergreen, called the forthcoming guidance “the key determinant of whether or not we get truly clean hydrogen in this country — with massive emissions ramifications.”

The Democrats’ climate, tax and health care bill provides a tax credit for low-carbon hydrogen energy. This type of energy is produced by using low-carbon energy to power an electrolyzer that sends an electric current through water to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen.

Among other applications, hydrogen is seen as a way to cut emissions from sectors that are difficult to decarbonize, including the iron, steel, chemicals industries, as well as long-haul transportation. 

But, the extent of hydrogen’s climate benefits could be determined by the Treasury guidance, which is due by the middle of August, and could set the rules for what a hydrogen producer needs to do in order to qualify. 

Environmental advocates have pointed to research that found putting strict rules on how the industry sources its low carbon power will have significant emissions benefits. They have raised concerns that looser rules could allow hydrogen to compete with other electricity users on the grid for clean power — driving up electricity demand and indirectly spurring more fossil fuel use. 

One analysis from consulting firm Evolved Energy Research, for instance, found that if the Treasury Department puts strict requirements in place, between 250 and 640 million metric tons of carbon dioxide would be avoided through 2032 — the equivalent of one year of emissions from between 67 and 171 coal-fired power plants.

On the other hand, some industry players say the policies favored by the climate movement could stifle the nascent hydrogen industry. 

Shannon Angielski, president of the Clean Hydrogen Future Coalition, which advocates for spurring hydrogen energy development, says the immediate goal of the guidance should be to “get this clean hydrogen industry launched with very pragmatic rules of the road so that way it can scale.”

That group’s members include oil companies and utilities as well as producers of gas, hydrogen, renewable energy and nuclear energy. 

Advocates on this side of the ledger have pointed to an analysis finding that if the Treasury Department takes a stricter position on a key provision in its guidance, it would be “ultimately hindering the economic competitiveness and adoption” of green hydrogen. That same analysis from research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie found that if the department adopts a looser position it would result in a “marginal” emissions increase. 

The tax credit included in the Inflation Reduction Act is itself considered a major boost for both hydrogen energy in general and hydrogen produced from low-carbon sources in particular, with BloombergNEF hydrogen analyst Adithya Bhashyam calling it a “game-changer.”

“For the domestic market, hydrogen would need some sort of policy support to compete with existing fossil fuels in most use cases” without the credit, Bhashyam said, adding that it puts the U.S. in a position to possibly become a hydrogen exporter. 

But, the contours of what hydrogen producers will have to do to qualify are still forthcoming. One major point of dispute is whether hydrogen counts as “clean” if it uses energy that is already on the grid — or if there should be a requirement for the power to come from new energy sources.

Climate advocates warn that if hydrogen production uses up low-carbon electrons that are already on the grid, it raises electricity demand across the board — and could result in the utilization of more fossil fuels.

The hydrogen industry, meanwhile, has raised concerns about how long it takes to get new carbon-free power up and running. 

Other questions in the debate include where the clean energy to power the hydrogen production should come from and how often they have to match their energy usage to clean power sources. 

Climate advocates say electrolyzers should essentially run constantly on clean power, having to match their electricity use to a clean energy source every hour, and that the power should come from the same area as the hydrogen plant.

Industry, on the other hand, favors a system in which a hydrogen producer can use whatever power is available on the grid as long as it makes a yearly purchase of the equivalent amount of clean power. 

Frank Wolak, president and CEO of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, said that hourly matching has practical barriers, including that it’s not universally available.

“Today there are measurements and market indications that time matching can be available, but … until that is available universally where there’s clear market signals and pricing and you can go to brokers to actually get an hourly matched renewable energy credit or a series of brokers to get competitive pricing the application of hourly matching is sort of scenario and theoretical,” he said. 

Environmental groups have said that collectively, all three of the policies they’re pushing for are critical to ensuring the future of hydrogen is climate-friendly. 

“They are the best system of guardrails that we have to make sure that these … very power hungry assets that are electrolyzers do not increase emissions on the grid,” said Rachel Fakhry, policy director for emerging technologies at the Natural Resources Defense Council. 

“If you strip one out … what we are seeing from analyses that examine the impact on the power sector, on the economy is that the system would be significantly compromised,” Fakhry added. “They all have to work together.”

Meanwhile, there may be at least some congressional support for the Treasury Department to take a more lenient approach in its forthcoming guidance. The Senate Appropriations Committee recently approved an amendment to a funding bill submitted by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) that expressed concern “that the Department of the Treasury is considering imposing additional limitations or restrictions … in order to qualify for the clean hydrogen production tax credit.”

A Treasury spokesperson declined to comment on the guidance ahead of its release. 

Others have staked out what they describe as middle ground positions in the debate. For instance, the American Clean Power Association, which represents renewable energy companies, says that there should be a window in which “first-mover” projects get the more relaxed requirement to match their use of electricity with equivalent purchases each year but those that break ground starting in 2029 have to do stricter hourly matching.

JC Sandberg, the group’s chief advocacy officer, said the organization was trying to strike a balance between “too much regulation in the beginning which would not allow the industry to reach its full potential” and “too little regulation” that prevents it from cutting emissions. 

Hydrogen energy may also play a significant role in the future of power generation that currently occurs at natural gas plants thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

A new EPA rule would require some gas plants to cut their emissions using methods including potentially co-firing hydrogen with gas to reduce the amount of fossil fuel that is burned, potentially giving the emissions associated with hydrogen production even greater implications. 

Moffitt, from Evergreen, said that as a result of that EPA rule, if “the hydrogen that we get flowing into the market subsidized by … public climate money is dirty, that could dramatically undercut the impact of the carbon standards for power plants.”

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the U.N.’s authority on weather and climate, said global temperatures have reached “unprecedented” levels within the last few weeks in a post on its website.

According to the agency, multiple regions around the world including “North America, parts of Asia and across North Africa and the Mediterranean,” have seen temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for a “prolonged” period of time this week.

“Heat is a rapidly growing health risk, due to burgeoning urbanization, an increase in high temperature extremes, and demographic changes in countries with aging populations,” the WMO said in the post on its website. “Hundreds of thousands of people die from preventable heat-related causes each year.”

The agency said that because of increased overnight temperatures worldwide, human bodies have trouble recovering from the higher temperatures of the day. This then creates a larger risk during the daytime heat.

The WMO said this lack of recovery time leads to “increased cases of heart attack and death.”

The WMO also cited a recent study that showed Europe saw 60,000 additional deaths last summer from “extreme heat.” The agency said this calculation is considered a “conservative estimate” among experts and governments. 

In a news release, the White House said Biden made the decision Monday night to send additional disaster relief to Vermont. Biden authorized an increase of federal funding for emergency protective measures undertaken in the state due to the severe weather conditions. 

The latest move comes a week after Biden initially issued an emergency declaration, which enabled federal disaster relief to be sent to the state and helped aid state authorities with assistance on things like evacuation and sheltering. 

Storms dumped up to two months worth of rain in a couple of days in parts of Vermont last week. This surpassed the amount that fall when Tropical Storm Irene hit in 2011 and caused major flooding in the state. 

The flooding, which has caused one death, also caused damage to the state’s agriculture, with Vermont Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts saying in a news conference that the storm is expected to destroy "a large share of our produce and livestock feed.”

Tebbetts said it is too soon to determine the costs of the damages. 

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) said he asked the Department of Agriculture to issue a disaster designation for the state due to damage to crops. 

“In our mountainous state, much of our most fertile farmland lies in river valleys, and countless fields of corn, hay, vegetables, fruit, and pasture were swamped and buried,” Scott said. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Phoenix is slated to break its heat record as the city approaches its 19th consecutive day of hitting 110 degrees or hotter in the area.  

Phoenix tied the city's 1974 record for the most consecutive days with a high temperature of at least 110 degrees at 18, the Phoenix National Weather Service (NWS) said.

Phoenix also broke its record for the highest overnight low temperature on Monday with a low of 95 degrees, which surpassed the 2009 record of 93 degrees. It was the eighth consecutive day of overnight lows being above 90 degrees, which was another record for the area.

The NWS issued an extreme heat advisory for the region through Friday, noting afternoon temperatures could reach up to 117 degrees. This comes as most of the Southwest has been under a heat wave for weeks, which is likely going to start spreading eastward this week.

The weather service said in its Tuesday forecast that the Four Corners states, Texas, the lower Mississippi Valley and South Florida will see record-breaking heat through the middle of the week. The NWS also said the desert Southwest and Texas will likely see triple-digit temperatures over the next few days, while the Gulf Coast and mid-South should expect high temperatures in the upper 90s.

“Daily low temperatures will remain quite warm, breaking record warm daily minimums in some areas, allowing for minimal relief from the heat overnight,” the NWS said. “An expansive area of Excessive Heat Warnings and Heat Advisories remains in the Southwest, Southern Plains, western and central Gulf Coast, and even parts of South Florida where well above normal sea surface temperatures and lighter than normal winds are contributing to stifling heat.”

The Associated Press contributed

On his second day of talks in Beijing, Kerry met with the ruling Communist Party's head of foreign relations Wang Yi, telling him Biden hoped the two countries could “achieve efforts together that can make a significant difference to the world.”

Ties between the countries have hit a historic low amid disputes over tariffs, access to technology, human rights and China’s threats against self-governing Taiwan.

In his opening remarks, Wang said the sides had suffered from a lack of communication, but that China believes through renewed dialogue “we can find a proper solution to any problems.”

“Sometimes, small problems can become big problems,” Wang said, adding that dialogue must be conducted on an “equal basis.”

That was an apparent reference to U.S. criticism of China's aggressive foreign policy, rights abuses against Muslim and Buddhist minorities and travel sanctions against officials ranging from the Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong to the country's defense minister.

Coinciding with Kerry's visit, former U.S. national security adviser and secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, arrived in Beijing this week and met with Defense Minister Li Shangfu on Tuesday.

China's Defense Ministry quoted Li as praising the role the 100-year-old Kissinger played in opening up China-U.S. relations in the early 1970s, but said bilateral ties had hit a low point because of “some people on the American side who are not willing to meet China halfway.”

“We are constantly striving to establish stable, predictable and constructive China-U.S. relations and hope that the U.S. side will join with the Chinese side in consolidating the consensus of the two countries' leaders and jointly advance the healthy and stable development of relations between our countries and their militaries,” Li was quoted as saying.

China broke off some mid- and high-level contacts with the Biden administration last August, including over climate issues, to show its anger with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. China claims the island as its own territory to be brought under its control by force if necessary, threatening to draw the U.S. into a major conflict in a region crucial to the global economy.

Contacts have only slowly been restored and China continues to refuse to restart dialogue between the People's Liberation Army, the party's military branch, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Kerry is the third senior Biden administration official in recent weeks to travel to China for meetings with their counterparts following Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Kerry said he appreciated the opportunity to “change our relationship for the better” and that Biden is “very committed to stability within this relationship and also to achieve efforts together that can make a significant difference to the world."

Biden “values his relationship with President Xi (Jinping), and I think President Xi values his relationship with President Biden, and I know he looks forward to being able to move forward and change the dynamic,” Kerry said.

Kerry later paid a courtesy call on newly appointed Premier Li Qiang, the party’s second-ranking official, who told him China and the U.S. should cooperate more closely on the “extremely large challenge” posed by global warming.

Kerry responded that “working and showing the rest of the world how we can cooperate and begin to address this with the urgency it requires is incredible.”

He pointed to previous agreements on reducing the output of methane, a major contributor to global warming, as well as transitioning away from coal as a power source and addressing deforestation.

“Now, I can’t tell you for sure, but you know and I know that things are changing and predictions are much more serious than they’ve ever been,” Kerry, a former U.S. senator, secretary of state and presidential candidate, told Li.

No meeting has been announced with Xi, and China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang has been absent from public sight for three weeks.

There was no immediate comment on Kerry's Monday meeting with his counterpart Xie Zhenhua in the first extensive face-to-face climate discussions between representatives of the world’s two worst climate polluters after a nearly yearlong hiatus.

China leads the world in producing and consuming coal, and has proceeded with building new plants that add tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually, while also expanding the use of renewables such as solar and wind power.

China has pledged to level off carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060. The U.S. and the European Union have urged China to adopt more ambitious reduction targets.

As with the U.S. and Europe, China has seen record stretches of high temperatures that have threatened crops and prompted cities to open Cold War-era bomb shelters to help residents escape the heat.

U.S. lawmakers have faulted China for refusing to make bigger cuts in climate-damaging fossil fuel emissions, along with the country’s insistence that it is still a developing economy that produces far less pollution per capita and should be exempted from the climate standards adopted by developed Western economies.

Biden and Xi spent days together when both were their countries' vice presidents and met in November at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia. However, no state visits have been held following the COVID-19 outbreak and no plans have been announced for their next face-to-face meeting.

Asked about U.S. restrictions on technology transfer and the overall state of bilateral relations, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, said China “has always opposed the U.S. politicizing and weaponizing economic, trade and technological issues.”

“We hope the U.S. will implement President Biden’s promise that he has no intention of decoupling from China, obstructing China’s economic development, or encircling China, so as to create a favorable environment for China-U.S. economic and trade cooperation,” Mao told reporters at a daily briefing.

(NEXSTAR) - A woman was airlifted to a hospital with "significant injuries" after she was gored by a bison at Yellowstone National Park, officials said Monday.

The 47-year-old woman from Phoenix was walking with another person in a field near the Lake Lodge Cabins on Monday morning, a news release from the park explained. The pair told officials they saw two bison and turned to walk away from the animals.

Unfortunately, one of the bison charged and gored the woman. She suffered "significant injuries to her chest and abdomen," according to officials, and was airlifted to an Idaho hospital.

Yellowstone rangers say they haven't yet determined how close the woman and her companion were to the bison when it charged, and the incident remains under investigation. Additional details weren't immediately available.

The park warns that between mid-July and mid-August, bison are in mating season and "can become agitated more quickly."

"Bison are unpredictable and can run three times faster than humans," rangers said.

The National Park Service reminds that park regulations require visitors to remain more than 25 yards from large animals like bison, elk, sheep, moose, and deer, and at least 100 yards from bears and wolves. Violating those regulations could result in fines, or more seriously, injury and death.

This is the first reported bison goring of 2023, according to Yellowstone rangers. The last reported incident happened in June 2022 when a 34-year-old Colorado Springs man was gored and suffered an arm injury. Rangers said the man was walking with his family on a boardwalk near Giant Geyser at Old Faithful when the bison charged them. The family did not leave the area, and the bison proceeded to charge and gore the man.

Just days later, a 71-year-old woman was gored by a bison she and her daughter “inadvertently approached” in Yellowstone. Months earlier, a 25-year-old woman was tossed 10 feet into the air by a bison she approached while walking near Old Faithful.

Yellowstone officials note that if you see a visitor in person or online doing something that “might hurt them, others, or the park” to report it to a ranger or, if you’re in the park, dial 911.

When reservoir levels and river flows succumb to dry heat, hydropower plants can no longer operate — meaning that utilities must kindle facilities that burn coal and natural gas to meet rising electricity demand.

But the researchers found that with such a shift comes dramatic consequences.

This sharp transition from hydropower to fossil fuels results in surging carbon dioxide emissions, methane leakages, air quality-related deaths and enormous financial expenses, the scientists recently revealed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The impact on greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and human health could represent a large and unaccounted-for cost of climate change,” lead author Minghao Qiu, a postdoctoral scholar in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, said in a statement.

Qiu and his colleagues calculated that the total health and economic damages caused by drought-driven fossil fuel power generation in the U.S. was equivalent to about $20 billion between 2001 and 2021.

Carbon emissions were the biggest contributor to these damages, costing about $14 billion, while deaths associated with fine particle pollution accounted for about $5.1 billion and methane leakages were responsible for just under $1 billion, according to the study.

To draw their conclusions, the authors conducted their calculations based on widely accepted estimates for costs of carbon and methane emissions.

They assessed the statistical value of a human life based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s “mortality risk valuation” — a measure that considers how much people are willing to pay for small reductions in air pollution-related risks of death.

The authors also used best available estimates to ascertain how much methane leaks to the atmosphere during the production, processing and transportation of oil and gas: 2.3 percent per unit of gas consumed.

Under extreme drought conditions, electricity generation from individual fossil fuel plants can skyrocket up to 65 percent relative to average conditions, mostly due to the need to compensate for lost hydropower, according to the study.

And the resultant pollution does not respect state lines.

More than 54 percent of this drought-driven, fossil fuel-based electricity production is transboundary, with drought in one region leading to net imports of electricity — and therefore increasing emissions from power plants in other regions, the authors found.

“This is not a local story,” Qiu said. “A climate shock in one place can have serious ramifications for a totally different geographic area due to the interconnected nature of many energy systems.”

The total monetized costs of excess death and greenhouse gas emissions are about 1.2 to 2.5 times greater than reported economic costs that directly result from reduced hydropower production, the researchers estimated.

In California alone, the drought-induced shift away from hydropower electricity production led to more than $5 billion in damages from 2012 to 2016, or 2.5 times the direct economic cost of switching to more expensive fossil fuels, according to the study.

Those states that are heavily dependent on hydropower for their electricity — such as California, Washington and Oregon — have suffered particularly dramatic effects from the switch to fossil fuel reliance during dry periods.

During future years of extreme drought, such shifts could end up responsible for up to 40 percent of total emissions released via electricity production, the scientists warned.

Previous research, they contended, has underestimated the toll droughts are taking on electricity systems by failing to account for factors beyond the direct economic costs of these disruptions.

Increasingly frequent extreme heat periods will therefore present a challenge to policymakers set on achieving net-zero emission goals in hero-dependent states, according to the authors.

While this specific study focused on the American West, the researchers stressed that many countries around the world are facing similar risks.

Higher-emitting coal-fired plants could end up replacing lost resources in some nations, as opposed to the comparatively lower-emitting fossil fuel — natural gas — that tends to stand in for hydropower in the West, the authors explained.

Meanwhile, other countries that lack excess generation capacity could endure blackouts if hydropower operations shut down, they warned.

“In these regions, drought’s interaction with the energy system can have a cascading series of negative impacts on emissions and health,” corresponding author Marshall Burke, an associate professor at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, said in a statement.

Going forward, the scientists recommended that policymakers implement “more ambitious and targeted measures” to mitigate the both the emissions and health burden that stems from the electricity sector during drought.

“If we want to solve this issue, we need an even greater expansion of renewable energy alongside better energy storage, so we don’t need to tap into fossil fuels as much,” Qiu said.

“Ultimately, to limit future warming and the drought risks that come with it, we need to reduce our emissions,” he added.