HEATED

What is coming when it comes to hantaviruses and climate change? How are they connected? And how could the rapidly approaching Super El Nino—a phenomenon worsened by climate change—affect the spread of hantavirus and other infectious diseases?

That’s what we’re going to explore today.

Special thanks to Drs. Kirk Osmond Douglas, James Shepherd, and Angel Desai for sharing their expertise that informed this story.

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Our good friends at the Popular Information newsletter have calculated the real cost of the Iran War so far: $72 billion for the first 60 days, or about $1.2 billion in taxpayer dollars per day.

The numbers are revealing, in that they show the Trump administration is perfectly capable of finding money when the goal is destruction. But when it comes to protecting Americans from fossil-fueled extreme weather, suddenly we’re told the cupboard is bare.

The Trump administration recently released a proposed budget that would cut NOAA by 26 percent. This proposed $1.6 billion cut—equivalent to about 1.3 days of the war in Iran—would eliminate NOAA climate, weather, and ocean research labs, zero out grants that help improve rainfall and flood prediction, and cut the Integrated Ocean Observing System—our national system for monitoring what is happening in the ocean, where hurricanes strengthen, and where coastal flooding begins. And this comes on top of DOGE-driven layoffs last year that eliminated roughly 880 NOAA jobs, including staff at the National Weather Service.

The stupidity of this is almost difficult to overstate. Because Trump is not proposing to gut NOAA during some calm, stable weather period. He’s doing it at the very moment forecasters are warning that a potentially dangerous El Niño may be on the way.In today's episode, we talk to Craig McLean, the former acting chief scientist of NOAA, who spent more than 40 years at the agency. McLean recently wrote that the NOAA budget request “is not streamlining. It’s sabotage.” McLean knows what it looks like when politics corrupts weather science. You might recall, McLean was the NOAA official at the center of “Sharpiegate,” the infamous Trump-era scandal in which the president falsely claimed Hurricane Dorian was threatening Alabama, then displayed a forecast map that appeared to have been altered with a Sharpie to make him look right. McLean pushed back after NOAA leadership rebuked its own forecasters for correcting the president, calling for an investigation into whether the agency’s scientific integrity policy had been violated. McLean was then relieved of his position.

In our interview, McLean speaks about what these cuts would actually do, why NOAA research matters far beyond “the weather,” what Sharpiegate revealed about scientific integrity under Trump, and why attacking climate science is so dangerous at the exact moment Americans need it most.

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In our full, subscribers-only interview with Mike Meno, the communications director for the Center for Climate Integrity, we discuss the ins and outs of Big Oil's push for legal immunity, both in and outside the court.

I’ve been trying to “detox my life” from plastic for a few weeks now. In today's episode, we talk about all the ups and downs. I’ll update you all again when I get the results of my pee test back. Make sure you’re subscribed to get it.

In related recent news…

* Now may actually be a good time to start shifting away from plastic. The American Prospect reports:

Petrochemical prices are spiking to four-year highs as the key ingredients, known as feedstocks, cannot get out of the Persian Gulf. Roughly $20 billion to $25 billion worth of petrochemical products moves through the strait annually, and about 40 percent of exports of polyethylene, used mostly in packaging and containers, came from the Middle East last year. Polyethylene prices are up 37 percent since February, and polypropylene prices are up 38 percent.

* Oregon passed a law to shift more of the costs of plastic onto producers. But producers are fighting back. Central Oregon Daily reports:

The future of Oregon’s Recycling Modernization Act is up in the air after a federal judge said portions of the law may be illegal, and can’t be enforced without full argument. On Feb. 6, Judge Michael Simon issued his initial order in the lawsuit that aimed to overturn the law meant to reform Oregon’s recycling system.

* Millions of pre-term births and thousands of infant deaths linked to phthalates: From NYU Langone:

Exposure to a chemical commonly used to make plastic more flexible may have contributed to about 1.97 million preterm births in 2018 alone, or more than 8 percent of the world’s total, a new analysis of population surveys shows. The chemical was also linked to the deaths of 74,000 newborns, the researchers further estimate…. According to the new work, [phthalate] exposure may have contributed to 1.2 million years lived with disability, a measure of all the years that people have lived or will live with illnesses, injuries, and other health issues caused by being born prematurely.

* New study shows changing your personal care products actually does make a difference. From U.S. Right to Know:

The findings, published in the May issue of Environment International, indicate that switching from conventional personal care products to nontoxic alternatives can rapidly and significantly reduce exposure to harmful chemicals. Even a few changes in only a few days can lower body levels of substances linked to hormone disruption, cancer, developmental problems, and reproductive toxicity, the study shows.

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Last week, Big Oil’s top-funded Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Representative Harriet Hageman (R-WY) introduced a bill called the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026. They framed it as a way to “protect American energy from leftist legal crusades punishing lawful activity.”

What it actually does is give the fossil fuel industry a permanent shield against lawsuits and state laws that seek to hold the industry financially accountable for climate change, and for misleading the public about the catastrophic health, economic and environmental consequences of using their products.

In this episode, I break down what this bill actually does, how it would shut down climate lawsuits across the country, and why the fossil fuel industry is pushing for blanket legal immunity right now. I also walk through the legal arguments their lawyers are using to try to kill these cases—and why those arguments only work if people don’t actually read the lawsuits.

Read more and support my work at http://heated.world, or search HEATED in Substack.

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What are plastics actually doing to our bodies—and why is so much of the conversation focused on individual choices? In this episode of HEATED, Emily Atkin interviews Dr. Shanna Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist whose research on chemicals in plastics—like phthalates—has linked them to fertility problems and changes in reproductive development. The conversation is anchored in the new Netflix documentary The Plastic Detox, which follows couples attempting to reduce their plastic exposure in order to conceive. But we go beyond the individual-level “detox” framing to talk about the larger systems that made this problem so widespread.

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Texas-based journalist Saul Elbein believes solid waste is the most important—and most overlooked—environmental story of our lifetimes.

Yes, he argues, climate change, air pollution, and liquid waste from fracking are crucially important issues. But across Texas and Oklahoma, he says fracking companies have been spreading their potentially radioactive, PFAS-filled solid waste on farmland and near communities, largely without scrutiny, for decades.

Saul told me he sees this as a modern-day Silent Spring: a slow-moving, mostly invisible contamination story hiding in plain sight, one that will only become undeniable once until the damage is already done.

In his latest reporting for The Barbed Wire, that story comes into focus through a whistleblower named Lee Oldham. For years, Lee spread drilling waste across fields in the Dallas-Fort Worth area—waste he didn’t know was radioactive. Over time, he began to suspect something was wrong. Eventually, Lee says, his teeth began to loosen, and his jaw began to break down.

It’s a shocking claim that Saul cannot definitively prove was a result of Lee’s exposure to fracking waste. But what he can prove is that, on the very site where Lee once spread that fracking waste, developers built an elementary school where children attend class today. He says the soil has never been comprehensively tested.

In our conversation, Saul walks me through how this happens—how millions of tons of drilling waste can be legally classified as “non-hazardous,” spread across land in rapidly developing areas, buried without record, and effectively lost to history. We also talk about what we know, what we don’t, and what it would take to hold anyone accountable if those sites turn out to be unsafe.

Finally, we talk about why this might be one of the few climate-adjacent issues that could unite people across political lines.You can listen to our interview at the top of this newsletter or on any podcast app, watch it on Youtube, or read an edited version on Substack.

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Before the U.S. and Israel launched their war in Iran, the national average for a gallon of gas was $2.94. One month later, gas is now averaging $3.98 a gallon—the largest one-month jump in U.S. gas prices in the last 30 years.

Setting aside the horrors of the war itself—more than 1,000 Iranians have been killed, along with more than a dozen U.S. servicemembers—the spike in gas prices is doing something climate advocates have been trying to do for decades: making people seriously consider electric vehicles.

Search traffic for electric vehicles was up 20 percent the week following the initial attack on Iran, according to Bloomberg News, with search interest doubling for Tesla Model-Y and Chevrolet Equinox cars. By mid-March, nearly one in four car shoppers were researching electric vehicles, according to Edmunds, a car shopping research platform. That’s the highest level of EV interest recorded so far this year.It's not hard to see why. At $4/gallon, the math on switching to an EV starts to look pretty compelling: The average American would spend nearly $2,000 a year on gas, compared to as little as $540 to charge an EV. And it’s never been cheaper to own an EV, especially as the used car market is now flooded with pre-owned zero-emissions vehicles. But interest and action are two very different things. Despite the surge in searches, new EV sales are actually down nearly 27 percent compared to this time last year—a hangover from the Trump administration's decision to repeal federal EV tax credits last fall. One analyst told the Boston Globe that gas would need to climb above $5 a gallon, and stay there, before most drivers seriously pull the trigger. And there's another reason people aren't making the switch, one that's harder to fix with policy: persistent misinformation.

That's the issue we're tackling on this week's podcast. First, we debunk a couple of the most popular and persistent myths about electric vehicles—including one that half of all Americans currently believe. (ICYMI: feel free to revisit our two-part guide to EV misinformation, published back in 2024, for even more debunking).Then, we sit down with Dr. Christian Bretter, an environmental psychologist from the University of Queensland in Australia, who doesn't just study what people believe about EVs—he studies why they believe it, and what can actually be done to change their minds. The answer, it turns out, has less to do with facts and more to do with how you deliver them. Emily learned something about her own communication style that she did not love hearing. Listen, watch, or read the transcript below to find out what it was.

The HEATED podcast is a new endeavor, and it only exists because of our community. If you have the means, becoming a paid subscriber ensures we can continue this work.

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On this week’s podcast, Tracy and I watch and analyze fossil fuel ads—and we do it with Nayantara Dutta, head of research at Clean Creatives and the lead author of their new report analyzing nearly 2,000 fossil fuel ads from 2020 to 2024. (ICYMI: We covered that report for Tuesday’s newsletter. Check it out!) You can watch/listen at the top of this newsletter, on Youtube, or on any of your podcast players. But if you’re short on time, here are some of the most common ways fossil fuel ads try to manipulate and mislead us:

* By using the phrase “lower carbon.” It sounds so nice doesn’t it! But “lower” carbon is not “low” carbon. It’s also not “no” carbon. And it’s definitely not “net zero.” It just means “lower than before.” How much lower than before? And are they really doing it? Who cares! Stop asking so many questions!

* By using the phrase “carbon intensity.” Oil companies often talk about lowering their “carbon intensity.” But that doesn’t mean they’re lowering their overall carbon emissions. An oil company can lower the carbon intensity of a barrel of oil, while still increasing its overall carbon footprint because it’s drilling more oil than ever before. And for the most part, that’s precisely what’s happening. This is a fancy marketing term designed to mislead.

* By playing up the benefits for local communities. Ads often feature "regular" people—workers, families, neighbors—to make oil companies seem like pillars of their communities. What these ads quietly leave out: the fishing communities, cancer alley residents, and others harmed by the very offshore drilling and refinery operations being celebrated. This form of lying is called “paltering,” the practice of “using statements that are technically true, but also leave out critical information in order to mislead people.”

* By using guilt. One ad we watched reminded us that offshore oil workers are out there on the platform every single day, including holidays, keeping your lights on while you sit at home. The implicit message: how dare you criticize us? It's emotional manipulation dressed up as a human interest story, designed to make us feel personally indebted to the oil industry rather than asking hard questions about it.

* By tying oil to “new” technology like AI. This is the newest trick in the playbook, and it’s an attempt to position old, dirty fossil fuel infrastructure as new, clean, cutting-edge innovation. But the pitch doesn't hold up. We don’t need fossil fuels to power AI. And renewables are already cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable than the fossil-fuel-derived alternatives the industry keeps proposing.

And more! We’ll also be releasing some fun bonus content tomorrow. Make sure you’re a paid subscriber to get it!

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After our interview with Tom Steyer, Tracy and I decided to take a few minutes to record our immediate reactions. Here’s that tape!