FtF News #101 – 12th May 2021
Melting ice, raised German climate ambition, and trains versus planes in Europe
Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly rundown of the latest climate news.
I feel like this issue should be some sort of ‘intro to climate news’ for issue #101, but for better or worse, we’re just sticking to the same old formula! In a way, however, the week is a microcosm of climate change as a whole – the environment is shifting, warming, melting, and the impacts of our activities are being felt ever more strongly, particularly by those who are most vulnerable and least heard. However, changes are afoot, some slow but significant, others more immediately impressive, but possibly just hollow gestures. And above it all hangs the eternal question: will it be enough?
State of the world
Climate research and findings, weather events and studies
Another week, another round of papers on glacial melting. The first reports that 10% of all mountain glacier ice will have melted by 2050, regardless of climate policy. In central Europe, North America and low latitudes, glacier mass could more than halve, as existing warming continues to wreak havoc on mountain ice. However, climate policy is vital for preventing further melting in the second half of the century.
Other studies focused on the sea level rise implications of ice melting. One report found that limiting warming to 1.5°C could halve the sea level rise from glaciers and major ice sheets by 2100, from 10 inches to around 5. A further study found that if warming reached 3°C above pre-industrial levels, Antarctic melting will rapidly increase around 2060, accelerating to ten times current rates by the end of the century.
The US is now 1°F hotter than it was in 2000, according to the latest NOAA data. The agency publishes climate ‘normals’ – averaged measures of the climate over periods of 10 years – and has just released its latest iteration. Almost every state has risen in temperature, some by as much as 1.5°C (sorry for the mixed units!). Some scientists are calling for the agency to move away from the concept of ‘normals’, as the rate of change is growing ever more severe, and the approach runs the risk of normalising these massive shifts in climate.
A new study suggests that natural gas and other so-called ‘bridge’ fuels could be responsible for tens of thousands of deaths per year in the US due to air pollution. The fossil fuel industry has long stuck to the narrative of gas, biomass and wood being clean alternatives to coal, but as coal’s influence wanes, the impact of these fuels is becoming apparent.
Planet positives
Moving towards a greener and more equitable world
More Positive Policies FTW
After Germany’s supreme court ruled that the country’s climate targets were insufficient, the Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has announced significantly upgraded ambitions, including a 65% cut in emissions by 2030, and 88% by 2040, leading to ‘nearly net zero’ by 2045. The plan is likely to be tricky to implement, especially given public sentiment on various clean technologies, but is definitely welcome. The current ruling party is likely feeling the pressure to improve its green credentials given the rapidly rising profile of Germany’s Green party in recent elections.
Massive chemicals company DuPont has lost a major investor vote over pollution transparency by a record 81%. The proposal would see the company reporting on how much plastic it releases into the environment each year, and was opposed by management. Investor activism is becoming more common each year, and it seems to be becoming more viable to push major companies in this way towards greater action on environmental and diversity issues.
Southern California is weighing up legislation to tackle pollution from trucks serving one of the US’ key warehouse clusters. The region contains thousands of warehouses and the pollution from the trucks that supply them is proving a blight on local communities, who are often lower income and majority non-white, and have struggled to make their voices heard against the massive e-commerce companies who run the facilities.
Adverse circumstances
Events that move the needle in the wrong direction
All bark, no bite
The UK environment ministry is under pressure after a leaked memo showed that they have no plans to meet their emissions targets. This comes after campaigners have raised concerns over the lack of substance to UK government climate policy in recent weeks. The environment minister, George Eustice, is also under criticism for watering down government commitments to use Brexit to reform farming and tackle climate change.
The UK government is also currently consulting on ideas to cut taxes on domestic flights as part of a COVID recovery plan. It’s emerged that this came straight from lobbying by airlines, and would give domestic flights even more of a boost over the UK’s beleaguered trains, at a time where we need to be flying less, especially where viable alternatives do exist (see this week’s Long Reads for how Europe is approaching this!).
Timber!
Deforestation never seems far from the climate news desk these days. Deforestation in the Amazon has accelerated for the second straight month, and is up 43% on the same time last year. The Biden administration is threatening more severe action against Brazil if deforestation doesn’t decrease, but what form that will take remains to be seen. UK supermarkets have reinstated a threat to boycott Brazilian products if their national congress votes in favour of a bill that could enable even faster deforestation. A similar bill emerged last year, and was withdrawn after the supermarkets threatened action the first time around, but has now re-emerged.
A new report alleges that Chinese banks are the second largest financiers of commodities implicated in the destruction of tropical rainforests. Trade in such products accounts for around 40% of global deforestation, and Chinese institutions have provided $15bn in loans and underwriting for firms trading in the goods in south-east Asia, Brazil and Africa – all key hotspots for old growth forest destruction.
Turning up the heat
As the world gets ever warmer, cities are increasingly struggling to manage. A study this week found that the likelihood of overlapping heatwaves and power cuts is rapidly rising for US cities. A look at 3 major US cities found that ‘cooling centres’ would only provide for at most 2% of the population, and even those were poorly set up for both heatwaves and power failures. Such an incident would likely prove lethal for many, particularly the most impoverished.
Elsewhere, the challenge of adapting cities to changing and warming weather is proving complex. Athens’ current mayor is battling rapid heating and decades of poor urban planning to try and improve the city’s resilience to ever more common 40+°C summers. In São Paulo, utilities are fighting growing populations, pollution and deforestation as well as more frequent droughts in their battle to keep the population supplied with clean drinking water.
Long Reads
Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics
Europe (particularly western Europe) has long had good rail networks, but in recent years, many have switched to flying rather than taking the train. As the impacts of COVID start to abate, many European countries are now looking to revive the train rather than see people flood back to flying, especially in light of ever tighter environmental goals. However, it’s not an easy task to shift people from one mode to another, requiring infrastructure and service investments, policy changes, and more.
The clean energy transition is a huge change that holds many challenges within it, not least sourcing the vast amounts of minerals needed to produce everything from solar panels to batteries. The IEA estimates that the EV industry alone may require over 30 times more lithium, nickel and other key metals by 2040 to meet global climate targets. A lot depends on how batteries evolve, but what is certain is that we’re likely to do a lot more mining to shift the world to clean energy in a reasonable time frame.
Quick Headlines
Some quick climate news nuggets to sate your appetite
IKEA in the UK is planning to offer a returns scheme for unwanted furniture, to lower waste sent to landfill.
Pledges from the recent US climate summit (if fulfilled) would take the world to 2.4°C of warming by 2100 – an improvement, but still far from ≤1.5°C.