Hello again, and welcome back to Forge the Future. My home town of London is the hub of another Extinction Rebellion protest - they’re aiming for an even bigger impact and turnout than in April, when more than 1000 were arrested. The police are trying to preempt the protesters this time around, raiding supplies before the protest, but that doesn’t seem to have slowed things much, with more than 200 arrested in just the first day. Boris Johnson responded by calling them ‘uncooperative crusties’.
As Extinction Rebellion is in the spotlight once more, some are asking hard questions about how diverse the movement is. It’s an important question - climate change will impact the poorest hardest, and even here in the UK, the most diverse neighbourhoods are the most polluted. If we don’t involve everyone equally in the struggle, and take an approach that allows everyone to participate, we risk alienating those who will be most impacted.
State of the Climate
CO2 levels this week: 407.96 ppm
This time last year: 405.49 ppm
The storms continue to flow, with Hurricane Lorenzo hitting the Azores before finally trailing out over the UK, whilst in the Pacific, Super Typhoon Hagibis has torn through Guam, and is now headed for Japan. Lorenzo was a Category 5, the strongest storm ever seen this far north and east in the Atlantic, whilst Hagibis is one of the fastest developing storms ever recorded - wind speeds strengthened from 60mph to 160mph in 24 hours. This took it from a tropical storm to a Category 5 equivalent in less than a day. Whilst it has currently decreased to Category 4, it may well strengthen again as it crosses open ocean.
Land isn’t doing amazingly either, with a huge heatwave sweeping the US, with hundreds of record highs making September the hottest ever September on record at a global level. This comes after the hottest July, and the second hottest August ever. Montana had other ideas however, receiving 4 feet of snow in a huge September snowstorm. The monsoons in India, which have carried on a month later than normal, have in total killed 1600 people since June, and are the heaviest in 25 years.
Melting ice is putting pressure on polar bears, which are struggling to survive the summer months. Surveys in 2015 showed some populations down by 40%, but this year surveyors couldn’t even gather results as the ice was too thin. Warmer temperatures and retreating glaciers are causing problems in the Swiss Alps, where rock falls are becoming more common as the mountains adapt to the changing conditions.
Visualisation of the Week
This week’s visualisation comes from the Copernicus results confirming September as the hottest September on record, and shows running 12-month averages of global and European temperature anomalies, relative to a 1981-2010 baseline.
Pushing the levers on Power
There’ve been a number of stories this week about the changing prices of power, and indeed it’s been a recurring theme throughout the last year or so. A couple of stories have cropped up about the new Dogger Bank offshore wind project, which has once again shown that offshore wind can easily compete price-wise with other forms of energy. This is due to increased capacity factor and sheer scale - the GE Haliade X turbines that will be used are 260m tall, and each is rated at 12MW. This increased competitiveness is behind a number of US utilitiesmaking plans to go carbon-free. The reasons are largely economic - wind and solar are simply cheaper than other forms of power, especially coal (despite the current US administration’s desire to prop it up). Colorado bidders are selling wind for $12/MWh, or $30/MWh if you throw in some battery storage. That compares with $39/MWh for gas, $67/MWh for coal, and a whopping $105/MWh for nuclear. These prices aren’t even taking into account the 30% tax credits for building renewables before 2023. It’s a similar story in mainland Europe, where RWE is making a plan to become carbon neutral by 2040, and is committing €1.5bn/yr to on- and offshore wind and solar PV.
So how has this happened? I mentioned the increased capacity factor and scale of wind turbines, but all of this comes down to the market being there, and that is due to subsidies. Governments around the world have subsidised solar and wind heavily, as both (PV solar particularly) were incredibly expensive when first developed. Subsidies made these technologies viable for manufacturers, which drove increased production, which lead to scale. Increased scale led to lower prices, which meant more uptake, increased competition, yada yada, you get the idea. Once the system reaches a certain point, the new technology becomes competitive without the crutch of subsidy, and market forces take over. For example, now that banks see that wind farms are viable, they’re lowering interest rates on loans to build these projects - pretty crucial given the scale (the Dogger Bank project is estimated at around $11 bn!).
What I’m getting at is the crucial role government policy plays in guiding the market. The market is immensely powerful at driving adoption once conditions are right, but policies and incentives are what get change to that point. For example, the UK government is considering moving up a planned ban of petrol and diesel cars forward from 2040 to 2035. That is a hugely powerful lever in driving mass adoption of EVs, albeit a fairly blunt one.
It’s also why fossil fuel subsidies need to end (I’m looking at you, Canada, amongst many others) - it distorts the system in the wrong direction. They will need to be phased out in a way that doesn’t simply dump the cost straight onto citizens (see the current riots in Ecuador and the Gilets Jaunes in France for how that can backfire), but it can be done. We need to push the economic buttons that power the fossil fuel industry, and cut the money flow - push the biggest banks to pay more than lip service to sustainability, and stop funding industries that wreck the planet. We need to push our governments to implement meaningful regulation of aviation, rather than the offsetting mess that is CORSIA. Policy works to change the system - it’s slow, but it moves at a massive scale, which is why fossil fuel proponents are so keen to lobby against it.
News Highlights
US versus the Climate
The Trump administration removed language about climate change posing ‘a serious challenge’ from their proposal to revoke California’s ability to set stricter emissions regulations. Lawyers examining the language of the proposal have pointed out it could put many other unrelated laws under threat, including speed limits, gas taxes, and more.
The administration has also argued that climate change is not a threat in order to push forward with plans to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve
The White House has refused to meet with several groups of air pollution regulators about their plans to roll back car emissions regulations, despite meeting with industry advocates.
A bipartisan report highlights just how little regard the current government has for science, citing ‘almost weekly violations’ of previous safeguards. Data is deleted from reports, speakers are blocked from conferences, and environmental concerns are removed from policies.
In a surreal turn of events, AOC is being attacked as ‘supporting cannibalism’ by right wing figures (including the president himself) after a woman stood up in her NYC town hall to declare that ‘eating children’ was the only solution to climate change. It was revealed soon after that the woman was a plant by a right-wing PAC which specialises in spreading conspiracy theories, though none of those who’ve attacked AOC have come forward to apologise or even acknowledge that the events were a sham.
Other News
As many as 1.5 million people have turned out in Bolivia to call on their government to declare the Amazon fires a national emergency and let international aid in
New research suggests that carbon taxing schemes should start high, then decrease, to speed innovation away from carbon. The findings also put a high price on inaction - $1 trillion after a year, rising to $100 trillion in 10 years if we do nothing
Brazil is planning to open up mining further, including on indigenous lands, effectively legalising currently illegal ‘wildcat’ mines
New research suggests that the extraction of groundwater could be a ticking time-bomb, causing subsidence, unstable infrastructure, not to mention destroying freshwater ecosystems
The West Nile virus has been found in Germany for the first time. This is likely due to a warming climate allowing the mosquitos that carry the virus to survive further north than before.
The most comprehensive study yet on microplastics in California has found that most are from car tyres
A quarter of mammals and nearly half of bird species are at risk of extinction in the UK, leaving the UK ‘among the most nature-depleted countries in the world’
The Ocean Cleanup’s giant pool noodle is finally collecting plastic - after repeated iterations and testing, the team has a design that works
Long Reads
A look at how we might design floating structures to protect ecosystems and our coastlines
The story of those seeking compensation from PG&E, the utility company whose aging infrastructure started several of the recent devastating California wildfires
An exploration of the UK’s phase-out of coal power, which has led to it decarbonising its electricity generation faster than almost every other major economy
End of the Line
That’s everything for this week - if you got this far, thanks for reading! As always, please do share if you liked it - the more that read this, the better :)
See you next week,
Oli