Hey, Beacon readers! AI is the hottest of topics right now (ok, except for Threads), and is already showing itself to be a powerful tool in propelling green technologies and enhancing environmental accountability, as news and politics fellow Akielly Hu outlines in our first story.

Akielly also warns us of its alarming pitfalls, like how, during a recent study on artificial intelligence, Google’s AI chatbot told a researcher, “There is nothing we can do to stop climate change, so there is no point in worrying about it.”

Spreading misinformation is one of several unsettling ways the technology could erode climate progress, Akielly reports.

Of course, that AI chatbot was wrong. There’s a whole lot we can do to address climate change — like, say, bringing zero-emissions mass transit to car-heavy cities and blocking lobbyist efforts to undermine clean energy.

We’ve got stories on those efforts, too — written by real, live humans.

Artificial intelligence is being used to combat climate change in some remarkable ways, like targeting deforestation, improving weather forecasting, and enhancing the efficiency of solar panels. But as Akielly reports, in some cases, it is undermining efforts to combat climate change.

One particularly alarming example is the technology’s ability to create and spread misinformation, like with a photo circulated by the fossil fuel-backed Texas Public Policy Foundation that depicted a beached whale with offshore wind turbines in the background.

The implication was that offshore wind is killing whales, a theory the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has rejected. The photo was a fake — created by an AI image creator.

There’s also the fact that oil and gas companies are using AI to find new drilling sites and increase profits — not to mention the massive amount of energy consumed by computer servers powering AI software.

Like all technologies, AI can be used for good or for bad, and which way the scales tilt will depend in part on how governments regulate it. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a positive use of climate AI: detecting methane super-emitters in real time.

Last weekend, people in Honolulu were able to ride the long-awaited Skyline rail — the first passenger rail system on Oahu since the 1940s — for the first time.

The Skyline, which voters approved 15 years ago, will be almost 20 miles long when fully complete. It will connect residents in communities west of Honolulu’s center to its downtown and civic districts and include a stop at the airport. Officials anticipate daily ridership of 84,000 passengers.

Ground transportation accounts for 20 percent of emissions in Hawaii. Fast, convenient, and abundant public transportation options can help the state reach its goal of being carbon negative by 2045.

For the rail to reach its full potential, it will need to be integrated with other avenues of climate-friendly transportation, like pedestrian walkways, bike-share programs, and bus routes. Honolulu’s Department of Transportation is already working on this by connecting rail stops to express bus routes and allowing for free transfers between the two.

The segment that opened last weekend is about 11 miles long and contains nine stops, with stations near two college campuses, a shopping center, and a community center. “This system actually serves the people who live here,” one Hawaii transportation expert told me.

Last week, Connecticut joined Maine and Colorado in banning utility companies from using money collected from customers to fund lobbying and political efforts.

Connecticut’s law may be the most expansive yet, according to Akielly. It uses a broader interpretation of lobbying that includes efforts to influence administrative actions by executive agencies, like state commissions that oversee utilities. It also asks utilities to provide an itemized list of their annual political expenditures.

The laws are meant to curb the practice by investor-owned utilities of using ratepayer dollars to finance anti-clean energy efforts. Last year, a report by the think tank InfluenceMap found that nearly half of the 25 largest investor-owned utilities in the U.S. were actively working to slow the transition to renewables through lobbying, advertising, and funding political campaigns.

Akielly reports that utilities in Connecticut spend more on lobbying than any other sector in the state. Eversource, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, spent over $300,000 in lobbying during the first quarter of 2023 alone.

New York and Minnesota have similar laws, though they’re not as comprehensive, says Akielly. Staff writer Kate Yoder has written about what could be done at the federal level to address the issue.