Interesting stuff

1. Watch how amazing octopuses are!
2. Watch “South Park The Streaming Wars” for an excellent farce on water rights (and mismanagement) in Colorado.
3. Analyze the changing energy sources of our electricity. (The Dutch are probably the worst in Europe, and NL is certainly worse than the US!)
4. Read: Gonzo right-wingers may destroy the US government’s administrative capacity (if the Supreme Court agrees). Wow.
5. Read How the Feds bounced Binance
6. Read “What happened after my wife and I removed Wi-Fi from our home” (their lives got better — and a marriage was saved!)
7. Read how the natural gas industry keeps expanding its market share (and thus GHG emissions) with “bridge to sustainability” promises lies.
8. Rhinos for sale? Good. Profit incentives can beat poachers.
9. Holy fuck. The World Coal Association has rebranded itself as “FutureCoal: The Global Alliance for Sustainable Coal.” Matt Levine is hilarious on this (while also highlighting ongoing ESG fraud laziness):
   We talked a few months ago about a company called GreenSaif Pipelines Bidco, which is Saudi Aramco. I mean, it isn’t really; it’s a special purpose vehicle that owns some Saudi Aramco pipeline joint ventures and that sold some bonds to finance them. The bonds found their way into an index of environmental, social and governance investments, because technically they were not bonds issued by an oil or pipeline company (bad ESG) but by an investment company (good ESG, or at least neutral). Even though “Pipelines” is right in the name. But “Green” is in the name first. If you were an extremely careless ESG investor — and it is arguably rational to be an extremely careless ESG investor? — you might look at that name, see the word “Green,” stop reading before you got to “Pipelines,” and buy the bonds. I guess.Anyway here’s coal:

   The World Coal Association has rebranded itself as “FutureCoal: The Global Alliance for Sustainable Coal,” Chief Executive Officer Michelle Manook said at a press conference in Delhi.

   “For too long our global coal value chain has allowed anti-coal sentiment to dominate and fragment us,” Manook said in a statement. That’s “resulted in a lowering of the global coal IQ,” which the group defines as an understanding of coal’s contribution to society.

   “Lowering of the global coal IQ” is a magnificent bit of marketing and I lost several points of (regular) IQ just by reading it. But presumably the point here is that some investors, activists, governments, etc., are going to see that name and read “The Global Alliance for Sustainable” and figure “ah well that’s good then” without getting to the word “Coal.” I suppose starting with “FutureCoal:” is a mistake? Really they should put that off as long as possible. Call it “FutureGreen: The Global Alliance for Responsible, Sustainable and Clean Energy Derived From Natural Resources Such As Our Favorite Resource, One You Might Have Heard of, It’s a Really Good One, You’re Not Going to Believe This, Get Ready, It’s Coal.” No one’s gonna read that far.

H/Ts to MM and TB