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Hannah Story Brown

@hannahstoryb.bsky.social

720 followers 530 following 79 posts

nyc writer & deputy research director on climate and governance @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social big fan of the biosphere. writing a novel about love and grief on a changing planet.

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Hannah Story Brown @hannahstoryb.bsky.social · Aug 27

From me in @prospect.org this morning: a look at the ongoing efforts to keep methane pollution visible, as the Trump administration tries to help the industry go dark. The tools to observe methane from space, the sky, and the ground keep improving—as the gap between policy and reality widens.

Trump Is Blinding the Government to Methane Pollution. But Others Are Still Watching.

‘If people could see this with their bare eyes, none of this would be happening.’

prospect.org

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Ross Macfarlane @rossmacfarlane.bsky.social · 19h

Trump's decision to approve the Ambler mining road cutting across Alaska wilderness and critical habitat is not only an environmental disaster, it created a $70 million windfall for one of his biggest donors. @juddlegum.bsky.social @popular.info 1/

Trump approves mining road, delivers $70 million windfall to MAGA billionaire

On April 6, 2024, a procession of Range Rovers, Aston Martins, and Bentleys rolled up to the Palm Beach mansion of billionaire John Paulson. The occasion was a glitzy fundraiser for Donald Trump’s pre...

popular.info

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Revolving Door Project @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social · 21h

While the FAA is, by its own admission, overworked, understaffed, and working with outdated technology, its also opening the door for drones and uncertified eVTOLs to flood our airspaces.

Who asked for this? From our @kjboyle.bsky.social

The Trump Administration is Deregulating our Airspace. Who Asked for This?

Drone and eVTOL companies have spent big money lobbying with Trump-adjacent firms.

open.substack.com

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Nick Cunningham @nickcunningham.bsky.social · 1d

"The White House is offering 'concierge, white glove service' to oil, coal and other fossil fuel companies that are seeking to gain fast approval for their projects...while simultaneously slowing down or blocking solar and wind projects."

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

White House offers ‘concierge’ service to fossil fuel firms, official says

Brittany Kelm, a senior policy adviser for the National Energy Dominance Council, detailed in a podcast how the council works to advance fossil fuel projects.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Wyatt Myskow @wyattmyskow.bsky.social · 1d

On the Colorado River, there is no more water.

That's the warning from a coalition of environmental groups urging for action and transparency regarding the river's future.

My latest:

insideclimatenews.org/news/0610202...

As Colorado River Nears Collapse, It Faces Leadership, Transparency ‘Crisis,’ Environmentalists Warn - Inside Climate News

A new report from a coalition of environmental organizations offers recommendations on how to address the declining water supply in the river as negotiations over its future stall.

insideclimatenews.org

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Erin Sherman 🌱 65n Chesapeake rolling coastal plain @wearegonnafindout.bsky.social · 2d

I haven't dived into the underlying report, but this article is jaw-dropping. Data centers are apparently not *one of* PJM's demand-side problems. They are *the* problem.

Kevin J. CREATURE @kevinjkircher.com · 2d

$16 billion. That's how much the PJM market monitor estimates that electricity ratepayers will pay via increased utility bills to subsidize interconnection of data centers owned by Big Tech. A massive give-away to some of the most profitable companies in the world.

www.eenews.net/articles/dat...

Data center boom sparks sticker shock for PJM ratepayers

New analyses show that costs passed on to utility customers to guarantee future electricity demand are rising rapidly.

www.eenews.net

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Revolving Door Project @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social · 2d

In a new report out today our @toni-v-aguilar.bsky.social and @publiccitizen.bsky.social's @alanzibel.bsky.social
uncovered 100+ people with ties to polluting industries who are occupying high level offices throughout the Trump administration.

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Hannah Story Brown @hannahstoryb.bsky.social · 2d

From @allisonstanger.bsky.social: "today’s AI firms seek to leverage technical prowess to assume public functions by default, implicitly assuming that the reallocation of power will serve human flourishing...democratic societies risk permanent subordination to unelected digital sovereigns."

The AI Raj: How tech giants are recolonizing power

Just as the East India Company’s success justified new powers, AI firms seek to leverage technical prowess to assume public functions.

thebulletin.org

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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists @thebulletin.org · 2d

The Bulletin is excited to announce The AI Power Trip, a year-long project examining how the people and organizations developing AI applications are gaining control of the world's governance, information ecosystems, energy resources, military-industrial complex, and more. #AIPowerTrip

The AI Power Trip

Almost three years after its launch into the public sphere, generative artificial intelligence has permeated nearly every crevice of human life.

thebulletin.org

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Public Citizen @publiccitizen.bsky.social · 2d

BREAKING: The Trump admin has installed 100+ fossil fuel insiders and corporate lobbyists to roles across federal agencies.

These staffers are enacting a dirty energy agenda and destroying our public lands.

Our new report with Revolving Door Project breaks it all down ⬇️

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Alix Dunn @alixdunn.com · 8d

I don’t want AI companies to get a bailout. I said this to @smw.bsky.social of @ainowinstitute.bsky.social last week, and she said they already were being bailed out. We sat down to talk about it in our first full-form video interview here:
youtu.be/WvN1wQ_CBlY?...

Are AI Companies Cooking the Books? w/ Sarah Myers West

YouTube video by The Maybe

youtu.be

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Paul Waldman @paulwaldman.bsky.social · 9d

1. More Americans work at the Cheesecake Factory than in the entire coal industry, and that won't change. It's because of automation, not snooty libs.

2. Coal energy is now more expensive than wind and solar.

3. So this means: higher energy prices, more pollution, no jobs benefit. Genius!

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 10d

Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Fox: "We're announcing today expanded programs to help the American coal industry. We're helping it because for years it has been under assault. It was out of fashion with the chardonnay set in San Francisco, Boulder, and NYC ... coal just makes the world go round."

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Delaney Nolan @delaneynolan.bsky.social · 20d

With @emdashsanders.bsky.social at ExxonKnews:

Exxon is pushing through a CO2 pipeline in Cancer Alley that will run as close as 160 yards from the nearest home.

The Lens Nola @thelensnola.bsky.social · 21d

#TheLensNola🔍 Experts and residents decry hazards to people and lack of regulations, transparency

✍️ Delaney Nolan

Full Story 🔗: thelensnola.org?p=605378

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Hannah Story Brown @hannahstoryb.bsky.social · 20d

Invaluable to have a number to put on this abject squandering of public resources, courtesy of @oilchange.bsky.social: "fossil fuel companies, which spend millions every year to rig our political system in their favor, receive a 30,000% return on investment as subsidies."

Fossil Fuel Industry Receives $35 Billion Each Year in Government Handouts, New Report Finds - Oil Change International

$4 billion added by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act A new report from Oil Change International reveals the staggering scope of federal government subsidies for fossil fuel production.

oilchange.org

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Hannah Story Brown @hannahstoryb.bsky.social · 22d

"The way out of AI hell is not to regroup around our treasured flaws and beautiful frailties, but to launch a frontal assault. AI, not the human mind, is the weak, narrow, crude machine."

n+1 @nplusonemag.com · 22d

“An extraordinary amount of money is spent by the artificial intelligence industry to ensure that acquiescence is the only plausible response. But marketing is not destiny.” Out from behind the paywall: the Editors on the literature of AI resignation.
www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

Large Language Muddle | The Editors

The AI upheaval is unique in its ability to metabolize any number of dread-inducing transformations. The university is becoming more corporate, more politically oppressive, and all but hostile to the ...

www.nplusonemag.com

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 26d

This is the day's most essential read. A Guardian investigation into the Alexandria, Louisiana, facility reveals a pattern of alleged due process violations, previously unreported accounts of neglect and abuse, documented health emergencies and long stays www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Trump’s deportation hub: inside the ‘black hole’ where immigrants disappear

A Guardian investigation into the Alexandria facility reveals a pattern of alleged due process violations, previously unreported accounts of neglect and abuse, documented health emergencies and long s...

www.theguardian.com

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Revolving Door Project @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social · 28d

We’re tracking Trump’s disasters in the making, and who makes money from them. Check out today's newsletter for tools like maps, trackers, and interactive timelines we've made this year to understand the pandemonium of Trump’s second term.

A Portal into Pandemonium

We’re tracking Trump’s disasters in the making, and who makes money from them.

revolvingdoorproject.substack.com

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Revolving Door Project @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social · 29d

🔥🔥🔥 The Tenant Union Federation is uniting tenants across state lines to confront the power of corporate landlords.

TODAY, tenants in Connecticut, Michigan, Kentucky and Missouri launched a new campaign demanding better conditions from their landlord, Capital Realty Group:

Have Private Equity Landlords Met Their Match?

A new campaign from the Tenant Union Federation is uniting hundreds of tenants in four states to take on the mega-corporation that owns their homes.

inthesetimes.com

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Destenie Nock, PhD @destenie.bsky.social · Sep 9

Last winter, 600,000+ households in the Mid-Atlantic relied on LIHEAP to keep the lights on & pipes from freezing.

Now, the federal budget proposes eliminating the program entirely.

LIHEAP saves lives.

Op-Ed here: share.google/wPCWNcPEzkY6...

Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program is worth funding

Last winter, more than 600,000 households in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and the District of Columbia relied on the Low ‑ Income Home Energy Assistance Program to keep the lights on a...

share.google

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Amy Westervelt @amywestervelt.bsky.social · Aug 26

A tremendous package of stories, podcast, and documents from @alleenbrown.bsky.social on the story of Energy Transfer punishing Greenpeace for the #StandingRock protests is up @drilledmedia.bsky.social.

drilled.media/investigatio...

SLAPP’d

The story of an Indigenous nation fighting for its water, an environmental nonprofit facing extinction, and an energy giant using the courts to punish protestors.

drilled.media

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Revolving Door Project @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social · Sep 5

NEW Corruption Calendar - Weeks 32-33: An Administration Full of Grifters and Grim Reapers

The Trump White House is increasing our risk of premature death while helping its wealthy allies get richer quicker.

Weeks 32-33: An Administration Full of Grifters and Grim Reapers

The Trump White House is increasing our risk of premature death while helping its wealthy allies get richer quicker.

revolvingdoorproject.substack.com

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Oil Change International @oilchange.bsky.social · Sep 4

Since 2017, the Int'l Energy Agency has told the world the fossil fuel industry can reduce its emissions of toxic, planet-warming methane at little to no cost to itself. But industry keeps failing to clean up its act. Methane emissions are still rising in lockstep with production. bit.ly/47YXaVt

A graph showing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector rising in lockstep with production of these fossil fuels. That suggests the industry is failing to take steps to reduce methane emissions along its supply chain.

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Clare Kelly @clarekelly.bsky.social · Sep 4

Academics are under unrelenting pressure to accept the narrative of the inevitability of #generativeAI & to embrace it in teaching & learning. We resist - because it is ecologically destructive, ethically corrupt, & because it undermines the thinking abilities that make us both human & intelligent.

The Irish Times @irishtimes.com · Sep 4

Opinion: We are lecturers in Trinity College Dublin. It is our responsibility to resist AI

Even if all the known issues were magically resolved, we would still not want our students to use GenAI

www.irishtimes.com

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · Sep 3

This is all designed to pave the way for fossil fuel and other extractive industries to further entrench themselves in the U.S. economy, weakening and delaying action to transition to socially and ecologically just technologies and economic systems.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Sep 3

New, from me: The EPA is breaking.
*About 1 in 4 employees out
*Core research unit closed down
*Employees suspended and fired for writing letter for dissent
*Trump judicial appointees OK'd cancelling of $20 billion climate change program
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/your-gover...

Your government is breaking: EPA edition

Scientists purged, imaginary gold bars for the rubes

donmoynihan.substack.com

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Nick Cunningham @nickcunningham.bsky.social · Sep 3

This is why claims of gas being clean are bs. Drillers get permits to pollute nearly every time they ask. Huge amount of methane and other pollutants.

And this is just at upstream drill sites (other pollution comes from many other stages of the supply chain

www.propublica.org/article/texa...

Yet a first-of-its-kind analysis of permit applications to the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state’s main oil and gas regulator, reveals a rubber-stamp system that allows drillers to emit vast amounts of natural gas into the atmosphere. Over 40 months — from May 2021 to September 2024 — oil companies applied for more than 12,000 flaring and venting permits, while the Railroad Commission rejected just 53 of them, a 99.6% approval rate, according to the data.

The permit applications showed oil companies requested to flare or vent more than 195 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year, enough to power more than 3 million homes and generate millions of dollars of tax revenue had the gas been captured. Those emissions would have a climate-warming impact roughly equivalent to 27 gas-fired power plants operating year-round, even if the flares burned every molecule of methane released from the wells.

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