OVERNIGHT ENERGY: UN issues dire warning on climate change | Senate budget resolution includes Interior funding after Democratic urging | House Democrats call for more conservation, transportation funds

MONDAY AGAIN. Welcome to Overnight Energy, your source for the day’s energy and environment news. 

Please send tips and comments to Rachel Frazin at rfrazin@digital-staging.thehill.com. Follow her on Twitter: @RachelFrazin. Reach Zack Budryk at zbudryk@digital-staging.thehill.com or follow him at @BudrykZack. 

Today we’re looking at the IPCC’s stark warnings on climate change, Interior funding in the budget resolution and the House Democrats who think it should go further.

HOT SEAT: UN issues dire warning on climate change in new report

The newest climate report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that climate change is “unequivocally” caused by humans and warns that global temperatures are expected to reach a significant warming milestone in the next 20 years.

The planet is expected to reach average temperatures that are 1.5 degrees warmer than a pre-industrial baseline by 2040, according to the report, which was released on Monday. 

A prior special report from the IPCC found that keeping warming below this level would prevent climate-related impacts on extreme weather, biodiversity and food security. 

“A 1.5 degree Celsius world is a fundamentally different world with larger extremes and larger climate damages than a 1 degree C world that we’re more or less in right now, which is fundamentally different than the world before this all started,” said Kim Cobb, the lead author of the report’s first chapter, in an interview with The Hill.

“We’re already reeling, clearly, from so many of these impacts that the report highlights, especially in the category of extremes that are gripping these headlines and causing so much damage, but of course the 1.5 degree C world is notably and discernibly worse,” Cobb said.

What other effects will it have? The report also warns that climate change will increasingly be seen in heat waves, more frequent and intense precipitation and droughts. 

The report from the IPCC, which was created by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations, stated that increases in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere since about 1750 were “unequivocally caused by human activities.”

“The fact that the IPCC has agreed — with the agreement of all member countries, 195 member countries —  that it is unequivocal that human activity is causing climate change, is the strongest statement the IPCC has ever made,” Ko Barrett, IPCC vice chair, told reporters on Sunday. 

It said that it’s likely that humans had already caused about 1.07 degrees Celsius of extra warming compared to pre-industrial temperatures between 1850 and 1900.

Read more about the report here.

CHILDREN OF THE RESOLUTION: Senate budget plan includes Interior funding

The $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation framework released Monday by the Senate’s Democratic majority includes more than $200 billion for energy and environmental policy items, including funding for Interior Department programs Democrats were concerned could be excluded.

Under the framework described in a Dear Colleague letter Monday, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources would receive the instruction of $198 billion. This includes funding for a clean electricity payment program as well as the addition of Department of Interior programs to the framework.

The potential exclusion of Interior programs from the framework had been a major bone of contention, with both activists and congressional Democrats urging Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to ensure those funds were included.

What have they been saying? In a letter Friday, 13 Democratic senators representing western states called it “imperative” that the reconciliation process include major Interior and U.S. Forest Service programs.

“Without that funding it will appear the American West, and the millions of people who call it home, have been abandoned at a time when the rest of the country is seeing generational investments in their future,” they wrote.

Read more about the announcement here.

INFRA PENNY, INFRA POUND: House Democrats urge more conservation, transportation funds

House Democrats including Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.) warned Monday that the Senate’s current budget $3.5 trillion resolution has insufficient funding for what they called key transportation and conservation agenda items.

“Regardless of how much good work this resolution does in other areas, you can’t spin away the fact that it doesn’t offer the Interior Department enough money to meet some of our critical climate goals, including pressing needs like drought mitigation throughout the West,” Grijalva said in a statement.

In a separate interview with The Hill, Grijalva spoke of the need for more funding to resolve tribal issues and water infrastructure projects.

“I think those are all missed opportunities,” he said. “I understand the direction [of the budget resolution], but it’s not an either/or direction.”

What’s next? Grijalva added that he and allies had been “publicly and privately advocating for something more substantial… and so we’ll continue that effort.”

“I don’t think I’m alone in this, I think there’s a number of colleagues in Congress an also organizations and tribes that se the role that resources can and should play in dealing with the climate crisis,” he said.

Grijalva added that after he and like-minded colleagues had entered “one confrontation after another” with the Trump administration over Interior resources, “we felt that we were going into a thing where there will be a deeper understanding” on conservation goals.

Read more about the objections here.

WHAT WE’RE READING:

Regulators refuse to step in as workers languish in extreme heat, Politico and E&E News report

Study reveals effects of extreme heat on tens of millions of Americans, The Guardian reports

 Dominion planning ‘largest clean energy submission to date’ in Virginia filing, Utility Dive reports

Florida is suing Piney Point’s owners. Is the state also to blame?, The Tampa Bay Times reports

Texas power demand expected to hit 2021 highs during heatwave, Reuters reports

ICYMI: Stories from Monday (and the weekend)…

Here are the key parts of Democrats’ $3.5T budget resolution

House Democrats urge more conservation, transportation funds in reconciliation package

Senate budget resolution includes Interior funding after Democratic urging

UN issues dire warning on climate change in new report

Lead pipe replacement funds in bipartisan deal draw skepticism

Five missing as Dixie Fire ravages California towns

Thousands evacuated in Greece due to forest fires

OFFBEAT AND OFF-BEAT: Ball is life