Emily Pontecorvo

Was watching this classic clip from On the Town the other night and it's amazing to see how smoggy the city was in the 40s.
A true hell of a town amirite

It's such a privilege to work at a thriving news organization in 2026 and it's not going to get any easier with AI rapidly encroaching on the news business. A huge huge THANK YOU to our readers for getting us here. 🎂🎂🎂

atrocious!

a $95 train ticket from nyc to philly is a crime

If there's media you care about, it's hard to overstate how important it is that you subscribe to it. Ad rates are garbage, and the changes to search mean fewer new folks discovering sites they didn't already visit.

But today, the whole southeast is full of prescribed fire. That’s the right way to manage the problem. Get ahead of it. Choose the time and place of the firefight instead of letting nature decide. CA has a lot to learn from FL, GA, and other southeastern states about wildfire resilience at scale.

Trump’s Renewables Permitting Thaw Is Also a Legal Strategy The administration has begun shuffling projects forward as court challenges against the freeze heat up.

"The Trump administration really wants you to think it’s thawing the freeze on renewable energy projects. Whether this is a genuine face turn or a play to curry favor with the courts and Congress, however, is less clear." - @jael.bsky.social
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Judge to Trump on Congestion Pricing: Get Outta Here “It is difficult to imagine more arbitrary and capricious decisionmaking than that at issue here.”

BREAKING:

A federal judge dismissed Trump’s challenge to New York’s congestion pricing program, writing, “It is difficult to imagine more arbitrary and capricious decisionmaking than that at issue here.”

Here’s @emilypont.bsky.social with the backstory:

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Judge to Trump on Congestion Pricing: Get Outta Here “It is difficult to imagine more arbitrary and capricious decisionmaking than that at issue here.”

One of my 2026 predictions has come to pass
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Trump’s Greenhouse Gas Rule Will Get a Court Test Sooner Than We Thought The Supreme Court agreed to hear Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which concerns jurisdiction for “public nuisance” claims.

The federal government claiming state preemption after killing the endangerment finding “feels like a bad ex-boyfriend who says, I don’t want to date you anymore, but you can’t date those other people either,” Georgetown Prof. Vicki Arroyo told @emilypont.bsky.social

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Trump’s Greenhouse Gas Rule Will Get a Court Test Sooner Than We Thought The Supreme Court agreed to hear Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which concerns jurisdiction for “public nuisance” claims.

It will take years for cases related to the Trump EPA's repeal of the endangerment finding to work their way through the courts.

Meanwhile, SCOTUS just agreed hear a case that touches on many of the same arguments.

Here’s @emilypont.bsky.social with the story:

heatmap.news/climate/enda...

Trump’s Greenhouse Gas Rule Will Get a Court Test Sooner Than We Thought The Supreme Court agreed to hear Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which concerns jurisdiction for “public nuisance” claims.

Legal challenges to the EPA's big reversal on the endangerment finding could take years to get to the Supreme Court.

But the Court will now have to confront the agency's actions as soon as this fall when it reviews Colorado's lawsuit against Exxon.
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this is big

free idea: onlyfans for forest conservation

Scoop: NRG Buys New York’s Biggest Fossil Fueled Power Plant The sale of Ravenswood Generating Station closed at the end of January.

✨Mini scoop for this Friday afternoon:

In January, energy company NRG bought the biggest power plant in New York State — the Ravenswood Generating Station. Plans to convert the site into a renewable energy hub have been hanging by a thread.

heatmap.news/energy/nrg-r...

Rice contribution is eye-popping 😮

How to Save Ski Season Europeans have been “snow farming” for ages. Now the U.S. is finally starting to catch on.

Sometimes solutions are deceptively simple. As in: Ski areas aren’t getting enough snow to open for the season? What if you made a REALLY BIG PILE OF SNOW to save for the next year? heatmap.news/adaptation/s...

This bill passed the state House yesterday, albeit with some trimming to get it past the Microsoft/Amazon lobby. It's still a good bill implementing the recommendations of our data center workgroup. Also need to pass 2245/5982, to make sure large new loads comply with the 100% clean electricity law.

The 3 Arguments Trump Used to Gut Greenhouse Gas Regulations Whether any of them will hold up in court is now the big question.

How did EPA ultimately justify its decision to reverse course on greenhouse gas emissions?

The agency's 3 arguments will define the inevitable court battle over this move. Here's what they are. heatmap.news/climate/epa-...

The 3 Arguments Trump Used to Gut Greenhouse Gas Regulations Whether any of them will hold up in court is now the big question.

The Trump administration finally issued its justifications for repealing the endangerment finding for greenhouse gases.

Now the big question: Will they hold up in court?

@emilypont.bsky.social walks through the arguments:

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lol

While I anxiously refresh various government websites because the EPA hasn't actually posted its formal repeal of the endangerment finding yet, here's what we know and don't know...

Check out the tool here! bsky.app/profile/carb...

This New Wildfire Risk Model Has No Secrets CarbonPlan has a new tool to measure climate risk that comes with full transparency.

I wrote about the first 100% transparent climate risk tool. You can look up your home's wildfire risk, w/ all underlying data, methods, and code available to dl. The hope is to get this info out of black box models and invite public/scientific scrutiny and collaboration. heatmap.news/adaptation/c...

The Climate-Smart Program Trump Didn’t Kill (Yet) New guidelines for the clean fuel tax credit reward sustainable agriculture practices — but could lead to greater emissions anyway.

The Treasury's guidance for 45z, the Clean Fuel tax credit, indicates its moving forward with allowing biofuels producers to account for "climate smart agriculture" — which could ultimately just make the credit an even bigger subsidy for ethanol heatmap.news/politics/45z...

The 3 Big Unknowns About the EPA’s Biggest Climate Science Rollback Ever What to watch for when the agency releases its final decision on the greenhouse gas endangerment finding.

We are expecting the EPA to make a decision about its "endangerment finding" for greenhouse gases in the next week or so. While many expect the agency to rescind it, there's a few important questions to look out for about how the move is justified. Here's why. heatmap.news/climate/epa-...

Bye-bye, corporate conglomerates. Hello personal conglomerates. | TechCrunch Elon Musk's reported merging of SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla harkens back to the heyday of General Electric — or maybe the robber barons of the Gilded Age.

What if our thinking about Elon Musk is all wrong? What if he isn't the next Henry Ford, but the 21st century's Jack Welch or John D. Rockefeller? techcrunch.com/2026/02/01/b...

climate reporting under the Biden admin: tracking grant announcements

climate reporting under the Trump admin: tracking lawsuits

Why Michigan’s Big Oil Lawsuit Is Not Like the Others Fossil fuel companies colluded to stifle competition from clean energy, the state argues.

Michigan's new fossil fuel lawsuit is fascinating. The state is alleging antitrust violations, arguing that Big Oil colluded to stifle competition. I spoke to experts about the case and the challenge of proving conspiracy vs. independent responses to market pressures. heatmap.news/climate/mich...

The great e-bike crackdown has begun New Jersey just approved a wildly out-of-step new law that restricts all e-bikes, regardless of speed or power capabilities. Will other states follow?

"Forcing someone who owns an e-bike without a throttle that can’t go faster than 20mph to register their bike with the DMV, acquire a license, and buy insurance ... will absolutely harm efforts to encourage more sustainable transportation" -@andyjayhawk.bsky.social
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