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Originally published by Union of Concerned Scientists, The Equation.
By Christina Swanson 

How many times have we said this before? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) new report, its sixth since 1990, is a “wake-up call.”

The report, authored by more than 200 scientists from across the globe and based on more than 14,000 individual studies, is a comprehensive synthesis of the latest science on the changing state of our climate system. It concludes that it is “unequivocal” that climate change is being caused by human activities, primarily the burning of coal, oil, and gas. Yet, California, a state known for its progressive climate stance, just approved 40,000 new oil wells in Kern County, an area already littered with tens of thousands existing wells and among the most polluted regions in the state.

The IPCC reports that now, decades after scientists’ first warnings, our actions have pushed our climate into an “unprecedented” state. The increase in temperature measured since 1970, when I was a young teenager, is faster than for any other 50-year period going back at least 2000 years.

The IPCC’s report provides graphic descriptions of the human, ecological, and financial costs that we are already paying for climate driven heat waves, droughts, floods, and fires, and which will be worse in the future. According to the report, these types of climate and weather extremes are already affecting every inhabited region of the globe. As I write this, my drought-parched state, California, is burning again, with the Dixie fire consuming nearly 600,000 acres (almost 900 square miles!), destroying whole towns, and forcing thousands to evacuate.

And the IPCC sounds an urgent call for action, warning that we have very little time left if we are to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and avoid the worst, most catastrophic, and irreversible impacts of climate change. Global temperatures have already risen by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius.

Reading the report, it is painfully clear that, by our ongoing societal failure to act on our knowledge to slow and reverse climate change, we are not only bringing disasters down upon ourselves, we are jeopardizing our children’s future.

Climate change is not just an environmental problem that is damaging ecosystems, harming, displacing, and killing people, and driving species toward extinction on land and sea. It is not just an environmental justice problem that is inflicting disproportionate harm on marginalized and vulnerable communities, countries, and regions of the globe. Climate change, and its resultant and escalating environmental, social, and economic harms and costs, is a generational justice problem that my generation — and the nearly 70% of the total cumulative emissions that were generated during my lifetime — is dumping on our children and future generations. That’s not right.

But the report also tells us that there is hope and a path — a very slim and very challenging path — for us to reduce our carbon pollution enough to limit global warming to that critical 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold.

We know, and in fact we have known for decades what we need to do: replace coal, oil, and gas with clean energy alternatives for electricity, transportation, industry, and buildings; change the ways we use land and produce food to protect and regenerate the natural systems, like forests and wetlands, that absorb carbon dioxide; and, because climate impacts are already upon us, we need to change how and where we build, work, and live to adapt to survive our changing climate.

All of these changes are well understood and feasible, some are already in progress, and most of them will provide social and environmental benefits beyond their positive climate effects, like improved health from less air pollution. So why are we failing?

One simplistic answer is that change is hard and often slow because the societies and systems in which we live have the tendency for inertia. At a time when we need different and difficult decisions, by governments, by industries and businesses, by the finance and investment sector, by communities, and by individuals, we are instead intentionally framing and grounding our expectations, planning, and decisions in the context of the status quo, the way things are and have been and in pursuit of short-term outcomes.

And so, informed by the IPCC report, motivated by our own self-interest, and inspired by our moral and ethical responsibilities to our children and future generations, here is one approach that we can take to help guide and facilitate those different and difficult decisions. Rather than making decisions based on the status quo, we could instead evaluate our options and make decisions based on the future and what we want that future to be. For every proposal for a new oil well, pipeline or power plant, or for an expanded highway, urban development, or logging plan, we should be asking “Is this project consistent with the characteristics and constraints of a world in which we meet our climate goal and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius?” If it’s not, we shouldn’t do it.

“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”

This quote is perhaps overused by many of us in the environmental community, but it has always been one of my favorites. It resonates with my deep personal connection with nature, my training as a biologist, and my commitment to apply my professional efforts and talents to better protect our planet. But, with each passing year, as I have watched with joy and pride the next generation of my family grow to adulthood, it feels gloomier and more ominous, an accusation rather than inspirational rallying cry.

The new IPCC report is telling us — again — that we are trashing the planet we have borrowed from our children. We know we are doing it, we know what we need to do to stop it, and we don’t have much time left before the damage becomes catastrophic and irreversible. We are all responsible. We all have the responsibility to act. Most importantly (and most impactfully), policymakers at all levels of government, but especially those in Washington, must take decisive steps to confront the climate crisis. Not next year: now. And that means Congress should advance President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, which weds an equitable recovery from the pandemic-drive downturn with the climate action we need now.

So please, let’s all of us wake up and get to work.

 

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Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

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3 hours ago

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July 4, 2025

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Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

electrek podcast

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.

The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.

As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.

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After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:

We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.

Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:

Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:

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Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller

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4 hours ago

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July 4, 2025

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Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller

A new Tesla prototype was spotted again, reigniting speculation among Tesla shareholders, even though it’s likely just a Model Y, potentially a bit smaller, and the upcoming stripped-down, cheaper version.

Over the last few months, there have been several sightings of what appears to be a Model Y with camouflage around Tesla’s Fremont factory.

It sparked a lot of speculation about it being the new “affordable” compact Tesla vehicle.

There’s confusion in the Tesla community around Tesla’s upcoming “affordable” vehicles because CEO Elon Musk falsely denied a report last year about Tesla’s “$25,000” EV model being canceled.

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The facts are that Musk canceled two cheaper vehicles that Tesla was working on, commonly referred as “the $25,000 Tesla” in early 2024. Those vehicles were codenamed NV91 and NV92, and they were based on the new vehicle platform that Tesla is now reserving for the Cybercab.

Instead, Musk noticed that Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y production lines were starting to be underutilized as the Company faced demand issues. Therefore, Tesla canceled the vehicles program based on the new platform and decided to build new vehicles on Model 3/Y platform using the same production lines.

We previously reported that these electric vehicles will likely look very similar to Model 3 and Model Y.

In recent months, several other media reports reinforced this, and Tesla all but confirmed it during its latest earnings call, when it stated that it is “limited in how different vehicles can be when built on the same production lines.”

Now, the same Tesla prototype has been spotted over the last few days, and it sent the Tesla shareholders community into a frenzy of speculations:

Electrek’s Take

As we have repeatedly reported over the last year, the new “affordable” Tesla “models” coming are basically only stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

They might end up being a little smaller by a few inches, and Tesla may use different model names, but they will be extremely similar.

If this is it, which is possible, you can see it looks almost exactly like a Model Y.

It’s hard to confirm if it’s indeed smaller because of the angle of the vehicle compared to the other Model Ys, but it’s not impossible that the wheelbase is a bit smaller – although it’s hard to confirm.

Either way, the most significant changes for these stripped-down, more affordable “models” are expected to be cheaper interior materials, like textile seats instead of vegan leather, no heated or ventilated seats standard, no rear screen, maybe even no double-panned acoustic glass and a lesser audio system.

As previously stated, the real goal of these new variants, or models, is to lower the average sale price in order to combat decreasing demand and maintain or increase the utilization rate of Tesla’s current production lines, which have been throttled down in the last few years to now about 60% utilization.

If this trend continues, Tesla would find itself in trouble and may even have to close its factories.

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Ethereum is powering Wall Street’s future. The crypto scene at Cannes shows how far it’s come

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July 4, 2025

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Ethereum is powering Wall Street's future. The crypto scene at Cannes shows how far it's come

Ethereum succeeded beyond anyone's expectations, says network co-founder Vitalik Buterin at EthCC

CANNES — Wall Street’s new plumbing is being built on Ethereum and this week its architects took over the same French Riviera villas and red carpet venues that host the Cannes Film Festival in May.

The Ethereum Community Conference, or EthCC, took over the beachside town that was swarming with crypto founders, developers, and some of the institutional giants now building atop the infrastructure.

The crypto elite climbed the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a cinematic landmark now repurposed as the stage for Ethereum’s flagship European event.

“The atmosphere this year was palpable in Cannes,” said Bettina Boon Falleur, the powerhouse behind EthCC for the past seven years. “The prestige of the location, combined with the quality of talks, has reinforced Ethereum’s stature and purpose in the wider ecosystem.”

Private parties sprawled across cliffside estates and exclusive resorts, but the conversations were less about price action and more about the blockchain’s evolving role as the back-end of global finance.

EthCC, now in its eighth year, has tracked Ethereum’s trajectory from scrappy experiment to institutional backbone.

“That impact was unmistakable this year,” Falleur said. “From Robinhood embracing decentralized finance infrastructure via Arbitrum to local governments like the City of Cannes exploring deeper integration with the crypto economy.”

Indeed, one of the boldest moves came this week from Robinhood, which became the first publicly traded U.S. company to launch tokenized stocks on-chain.

At a product showcase held inside a Belle Époque mansion overlooking the sea, Robinhood unveiled a sweeping new crypto strategy — including the ability for European users to trade tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs via Arbitrum, a Layer 2 network built on Ethereum.

The announcement helped push Robinhood stock past $100 for the first time, capping off a week of fresh all-time highs and a more than 30% rally since being snubbed by the S&P 500 during a recent rebalance.

Inside the Palais des Festivals, ETHCC draws founders, developers, and institutions into the same halls that host the world’s biggest film premieres — this time, for the future of finance.

MacKenzie Sigalos

Ether, the token native to the Ethereum blockchain, was up nearly 6% on the week and several public equities tied to the blockchain have rallied alongside it.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a company that mines bitcoin, gained more than 1,200% since announcing it would make ether its primary treasury reserve asset. Bit Digital, which recently exited bitcoin mining to “become a pure play” ethereum staking and treasury company, gained more than 34% this week. And SharpLink Gaming, which added more than $20 million in ether to its balance sheet this week, jumped more than 28% on Thursday.

Ether ETF inflows are rising again too — a sign that institutional investors are warming back up.

Ether is still down more than 20% this year and lags far behind bitcoin in market cap and adoption. But funds tracking ETH have seen two straight months of mostly net inflows, according to CoinGlass data. Still, ether ETFs total just $11 billion — compared to $138 billion in bitcoin ETFs.

Institutions aren’t betting on Ethereum for hype — they’re betting on infrastructure.

Even as prices stall and the network faces headwinds from slower base layer revenues and faster rivals like Solana, the momentum is shifting toward utility.

“Ethereum is getting plugged into these core transactional systems,” Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at EY, told CNBC on the sidelines of EthCC. “Investors, savers, people moving money — they are going to start shifting from some of the older mechanisms of doing this into Ethereum ecosystems that can do these transactions faster, cheaper, but also very importantly, with significant new functionality attached to it.”

Crypto founders and developers climb the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a familiar backdrop for the Cannes Film Festival, now repurposed for Ethereum’s flagship European event.

MacKenzie Sigalos

Deutsche Bank recently announced it’s building a tokenization platform on zkSync — a faster, cheaper blockchain built on top of Ethereum — to help asset managers issue and manage tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets while meeting regulatory and data protection requirements.

Coinbase and Kraken are also racing to own the crossover between traditional stocks and crypto.

Coinbase has filed with the SEC to offer trading in tokenized public equities, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro.

Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets.

BlackRock‘s tokenized money market fund, BUIDL — launched on Ethereum last year — offers qualified investors on-chain access to yield with redemptions settled in USDC in real time.

Stablecoins, meanwhile, continue to serve as the backbone of Ethereum’s financial layer.

Circle’s USDC — the second-largest stablecoin — still settles around 65% of its volume on Ethereum’s rails. According to CoinGecko’s latest “State of Stablecoins” report, Ethereum accounts for nearly 50% of stablecoin market share.

“The builders and contributors at EthCC aren’t chasing the next bull run,” Falleur said, “they’re laying the groundwork to make Ethereum home for the next billion users.”

Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum is proving its staying power as a trusted network.

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, told CNBC in Cannes that there is an assumption that institutions only care about scale and speed — but in practice, it’s the opposite.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivers a keynote at ETHCC, laying out the network’s next steps — and its values test — as institutional adoption accelerates.

EthCC

“A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it’s stable and dependable, because it doesn’t go down,” he said.

Buterin added that firms often ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, “really value.”

Tomasz Stańczak, the new co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, said institutions are choosing Ethereum for the same core reasons.

“Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades, with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance,” he said.

He added that when institutions send orders to the market, they want to be “absolutely sure that their order is treated fairly, that nobody has preference, that the transaction actually is executed at the time when it’s delivered.”

Those guarantees have become increasingly valuable as stablecoins and tokenized assets move into the mainstream.

The Senate’s recent passage of the GENIUS Act, along with Circle’s IPO, gave the industry a regulatory tailwind and helped reinforce Ethereum’s role as the infrastructure layer for tokenized finance.

Ethereum’s core values — neutrality, security, and censorship resistance — are emerging as competitive advantages.

The real test now is whether Ethereum can scale without losing its values.

“We don’t just want to succeed,” Buterin said from the mainstage of the Palais this week. “We want to be something that is worthy of succeeding.”

He said the hope is that future generations will look back and see a network that truly delivered openness, freedom, and permissionless access to the masses.

White-clad guests dance poolside at the rAAVE party in Cannes.

MacKenzie Sigalos

But the week didn’t end in the conference halls, it closed with tradition. On the balcony of Villa Montana, overlooking the Bay of Cannes, the rAAVE party lit up.

White-clad guests sipped cocktails as the DJ spun by the pool, haze curling from smoke machines.

This year, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov and DeFi icon Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave, stood atop the balcony overlooking the crowd and the light-dotted skyline of Cannes.

It was a fitting snapshot of the momentum behind Ethereum’s institutional rise and symbolic of Web3’s shift from niche experiment to financial mainstay.

WATCH: Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explains ‘dual purpose’ behind trading platform’s new crypto offerings

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explains 'dual purpose' behind trading platform's new crypto offerings

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