The congressionally mandated report compiles the recent work of tens of thousands of scientists from around the world. Among its major findings: America is warmer now than it has been in at least 1,500 years. And the quickly melting Arctic will have significant consequences for the U.S. mainland.

There’s a bit of debate over whether the draft obtained by the Times was a true “leak,” as it was portrayed in the initial front-page story. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, one of the report’s lead authors, said on Twitter that versions of the document identical to the one the Times first published had been publicly available for months. (In fact, outlets had already reported on previous drafts.) The Times’ Brad Plumer said the newspaper updated its story after its initial publication with a version of the report that Hayhoe confirmed was not publicly available prior to Tuesday.

The science in the report is well-known, but there are concerns that the Trump administration will attempt to suppress it. Several cabinet secretaries in charge of signing off on the report deny its findings. Those same people have already been hard at work burying climate science.

If the goal of the scientists who contacted the Times was to gain publicity for their report — Hayhoe says it wasn’t her — that’s definitely worked. “Leaking” climate science might be the only way to get it through government censors.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative announced yesterday that it plans to curb power plant emissions by 30 percent between 2020 and 2030.

The participating states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont — will finalize the agreement on Sept. 25. According to the Washington Post, Massachusetts wanted to set the bar higher by “reducing carbon emissions 5 percent a year. But Maryland balked and threatened to pull out of the pact, saying it would lead to higher energy costs for consumers.”

The agreement caps the emissions from the power generation only (unlike California’s system, it does not include other industry, transportation, or agriculture), and allows those electricity generators to buy and sell emissions rights. This latest move simply lowers the cap.

Even though Washington, D.C., tends to suck up all the oxygen in the conversation, local and regional leaders are trying different approaches to suck all the carbon out of the economy. In these statehouses, it’s a lot less hot air, and a lot more action.

I didn’t listen to President Trump’s speech Tuesday night in Phoenix, because, well. It’s fine — I can read. The following syntactic hallucination, however, tested that ability:

We’ve ended the war on beautiful, clean coal, and it’s just been announced that a second, brand-new coal mine, where they’re going to take out clean coal — meaning, they’re taking out coal. They’re going to clean it — is opening in the state of Pennsylvania, the second one.

Hmm, good. OK! There are a few ways to clean a coal: Carbon capture and storage is the most climate change–relevant way, and also probably the one that Trump knows the least about. Basically, coal-fired power plants develop mechanisms to “capture” the CO2 they emit once it’s out the door. The Petra Nova plant in Texas is the only working “clean coal plant” in the country right now. Another built in Mississippi (which Grist investigated in 2015) doesn’t actually work and has replaced coal with natural gas. 

The New York Times reports that Trump’s proposed 2018 budget will cut funding for research into coal pollution reduction by 85 percent, which means that the way we “clean” coal will likely become just sloshing it around in a bath. (That’s a real practice, does nothing to reduce CO2 emissions, and was likely something Trump read about in a 1979 issue of the Wall Street Journal.)

Legal challenges and political uncertainty had etherized the scheme — at an auction last year, 98 percent of the credits were left unsold. Nobody wanted to buy into a program that might die. But now that the courts have cleared the legal challenges and the legislature has extended a bulletproof version of the policy until 2030, industry has bought up every carbon credit available.

Earlier this month, California and Quebec, working together, auctioned off 64 million carbon credits at $14.75 — the highest price in years. The sale raised nearly a billion dollars. Some $300 million of the proceeds will go to low-income electricity users and pay for energy efficiency programs in California and Quebec. The balance, $640 million, will go to California’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, an all-time high, according to the Environmental Defense Fund’s Erica Morehouse.

California’s cap-and-trade system sets a limit on greenhouse gases then lets the market figure out who gets to emit those gases. You can see a fun explanation in video, here.

So now that the trade part is working, California will have to take a close look at the cap: Is it limiting greenhouse gas emissions enough to meet its goals?

Many around the country are anxious about Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s pending decision on 21 national monuments, which he plans to release on Thursday. But Zinke seems to be taking the pressure in stride — and in a chicken apron.

Lola Zinke tweeted this picture of her husband, also known as “Z,” on Tuesday. Note that beneath the goofy apron, “Z” sports casual cooking attire: a white button-down, a red tie, and black dress shoes.

Last week, Lola’s tweets showed the two on vacation in the Mediterranean, prompting some questions about how seriously Zinke was taking the upcoming monument decision.

But if he takes one thing seriously, it’s breakfast. We can’t help but wonder if Chef Zinke makes his pancakes in fun shapes. Might we suggest bears ears?

As the United States momentarily plunged into darkness on Tuesday, from California to North Carolina, the electricity grid ran smoothly — despite the loss of a predicted 12,000 megawatts of solar power supplies.

“Things went really, really well,” said Eric Schmitt, vice president of California’s grid operator, at a press briefing.

Prior to the eclipse, some utilities were worried the temporary dip in solar resources might put strain on the grid. But others saw it a “dress rehearsal” for how the renewable-heavy system of the future might handle such disruptions. As solar and wind resources fluctuate with the weather — as opposed to fossil fuels, which can be burned continuously — it’s important to establish that they can reliably meet America’s energy needs.

For reference, solar made up just 1 percent of the electricity produced in the country in 2016. It reached the 2-percent milestone for the first time in March this year.

So, the eclipse came and went, but solar power — fresh off this small proof-of-principle — appears to be here to stay.

That’s worrisome, especially for communities still struggling to recover from the damage of Hurricane Katrina — which was 12 years ago this week.

Since Aug. 10, New Orleans has been operating under a state of emergency in the aftermath of a freak storm earlier this month. To make things worse, city officials lied about the state of the below-sea-level city’s pumping infrastructure, which the mayor said has “never been fully operational.” As of Monday, 15 of the city’s 120 pumps were offline for repairs, and fixing the system is expected to take weeks.

Now, the New Orleans Advocate reports that officials are developing a plan to evacuate the city if more than a foot of rain is expected within a 24-hour period before repairs can be completed.

The good news is that the last time that kind of rain fell was 1995, so it’s a pretty rare occurrence. The bad news: Evacuating on the forecast of a rainstorm would be unprecedented in city history. In fact, I can’t recall ever hearing of such an evacuation anywhere in the world.

Potentially related: There’s a tropical system brewing in the Gulf of Mexico with a “near 100 percent” chance of development in the next five days. It’s expected to head very slowly northward — a perfect recipe for intense rain.