Tens of millions of Americans were under heat advisories this week as soaring temperatures broke records across the Midwest and Northeast of the country.
"In a maddening loop, those emissions are contributing to more extreme weather events, which are straining our power grid," said Vivian Yang, energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.Urging residents to take precautions earlier this week, the governor of New York State Kathy Hochul said:"We must be conscious of the fact that heat is the number one cause of death for weather-related fatalities here in the United States.
"We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell, and the truth is we have control of the wheel" he said. The Chinese economy will remain powered by polluting fuels for some time to come - coal-fired power stations are still being built.In 2023, China installed more solar power than the entire world commissioned in the previous year, according to a report by the International Energy Agency.
"While was the biggest piece of climate legislation that we’ve ever had, it’s important to recognise too that it was watered down in order to become passable," she said. "Places like Wyoming and Dakota have really seen a fracking boom over the last couple of decades," Dr Dahl said. "Those are not real risks from these projects, but there's still a lot of misinformation about it," he said.
As renewable energy gets cheaper – and the weather gets hotter - it seems attitudes among American consumers are shifting too.