Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?
Climate hawks fight for clean energy…
The Environmental Protection Agency’s new scientific integrity rules are “pathetically weak,” Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility says. [PEER]
Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) wrote to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson Monday to limit the Halliburton loophole as the agency weighs how to handle permitting for fracking operations that inject diesel fuels underground. [E2]
The U.S. Energy Department announced it was offering a $967 million loan guarantee to back a 290-megawatt solar plant in Arizona. [UPI]
Environmental and public-health groups, frustrated by the Environmental Protection Agency’s delay of standards governing ozone pollution, joined together Monday to ask a federal court to set a deadline for the agency to act. [WSJ]
Wet Hot Killer American Summer…
Persistent, scorching heat in the central and eastern regions of the United States shattered long-standing daily and monthly temperature records last month, making it the fourth warmest July on record nationally, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. [NOAA]
The Southeast and southern Plains broiled under more record-breaking heat on Monday while heavy rain and gusting winds threatened to pummel the nation’s midsection. The death toll in Oklahoma is likely 25 people. [Reuters]
Extreme temperatures continue to penetrate Delaware and eastern Maryland, but residents and tourists will get a break from the record-breaking heat wave and humidity that claimed the lives of at least two people. [Delmarva Now]
The July 23 death of a 65-year-old Sparta woman is being blamed on the heat wave that blanketed Wisconsin, bringing the state’s heat-related death toll to five. [Capital Times]
In the Memphis, TN area, the heat wave death toll has reached five. [Commercial Appeal]
Three more elderly people have died in New York City’s scorching summer heat wave — bringing the total number of local heat-related deaths to seven, officials said yesterday. [New York Post]
International climate disasters…
Tohoku Electric Power Co., the utility that provides electricity to the region in Japan devastated by the earthquake and tsunami, may have to consider rolling blackouts because of a heat wave. [Bloomberg]
A flash flood last week fueled by days of heavy rain smashed a hilltribe shelter in Thailand, killing seven occupants and injuring a few others. [Signs of the Times]
Tropical storm Emily hit the southern coast of Hispaniola, leaving three dead in the Dominican Republic and one in Haiti. [All Media NY]
North Korea says it suffered at least 10 people dead or injured and thousands of hectares of cropland damaged as Tropical Storm Muifa swept across its territory Tuesday. [Voice of America]