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Valentine’s Day is coming up on Sunday. Mardi Gras comes two days later. And the Senate trial of Donald Trump has begun. Guess what: They all have climate implications.

Mardi Gras and Valentine’s Day are two holidays that have been destroyed by modern consumerism. In the case of Valentine’s Day, marketing has thoroughly hijacked deep cultural norms around gift-giving, to the point where loads of heart-shaped crap no one wants is going to be bought this week and wind up in landfills. Resist it. As you’ll read in our coverage later this week, Valentine’s Day tchotchkes probably aren’t going to help your love life anyway. There are, however, better ways to celebrate if that’s what you’re looking for.

Mardi Gras is canceled in New Orleans this year due to the coronavirus. The region is already waist-deep in environmental crises, which means this forced pause is a good time to figure out how to keep Mardi Gras from adding unnecessarily to that mess. We’ll have a piece on that ready for you later this week, as well.

And finally, the impeachment trial. While there are good reasons for this process to be taking place, it unavoidably pushes back other items on the agenda, like the confirmation process for Biden nominees Michael Regan (Environmental Protection Agency) and Deb Haaland (Interior Department, which controls drilling permits and leasing on public lands, the Forest Service, and more). As TNR’s Nick Martin points out today, there are certain knock-on effects from that, pushing some key administrative decisions down the literal pipeline. It also means delaying work on climate legislation—something Apocalypse Soon will say more on shortly. 

Really, this week’s newsletter boils down to two directives: Watch this space and, in the meantime, don’t buy Valentine’s Day junk.

–Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor

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Climate change is lengthening pollen season. 

That’s the number of people who died in 2018 due to fossil fuel pollution, according to research published Tuesday conducted by scientists at four different universities. This is roughly twice the prior estimate.

The New York Times has a wild story about emissions standards indirectly driving a rash of thefts of catalytic converters, which are being sawed off from under people’s cars for the precious palladium. Notably, there are potential policy fixes to cut down on the sale of stolen parts, but they would require multistate coordination:

Stricter car emissions rules around the world—particularly in China, which has scrambled in recent years to get its dire air pollution problem air pollution problem under control—have sent demand for the precious metals in catalytic converters surging. That has pushed up the asking price for some of the precious metals used in the device—like palladium and rhodium—to record highs.… The soaring prices may be accelerating the shift to electric cars, analysts said, noting that catalytic converters now make up a much larger proportion of a gasoline-powered vehicle’s cost than they did even just a year ago.

The metals prices, in turn, are fueling a black market in stolen catalytic converters, which can be sawed off from the belly of a car in minutes, and fetch several hundred dollars at a scrapyard, which then sells it to recyclers who extract the metals. These global trends in emissions regulations, metals markets and larceny appear to have converged that rainy night in Mr. Kevane’s driveway.

Hiroko Tabushi | The New York Times 

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