FtF News #123 – 13th October 2021
Inequity in climate research, fossil fuel subsidies and a look at climate justice
Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly rundown of the latest climate news.
This week is definitely another heavy one for climate news. It always ebbs and flows, but fair warning – there’s less to celebrate on the climate front than usual this week. That is the nature of the climate crisis, but also to some extent of the news media – unfortunately, bad news travels fast, and we’re living in a world full of it. I’ve linked it before, but this article by Mary Heglar called ‘Home is always worth it’ is one I often return to when the news cycle has a particularly harsh week.
State of the world
Climate research and findings, weather events and studies
An analysis of 100 of the most-cited climate research papers by Carbon Brief has found massive inequity in environmental research. The vast majority of the 1,300 authors studied were from the global north, with less than 1% of authors based in Africa, and only 12 of the papers having a female lead researcher. Some 90% of the scientists were affiliated with research institutions in North America, Europe or Australia. The in-depth article backing the analysis details some of the many challenges facing researchers from outside these regions, from lack of funding, ‘colonial’ research approaches, and an ‘old-boys’ club’ mentality within academia and journals.
The UN has released a report on the impending crisis in global water management. Flood-related disasters have more than doubled since 2000 versus the two decades before, and droughts have likewise become more widespread. A quarter of all cities are experiencing regular water shortages, and the number of people worldwide with inadequate water supply is expected to rise to 5bn by 2050.
China’s ongoing coal shortages have been exacerbated by flooding in the key mining province of Shanxi, which has closed 60 mines and displaced over 120,000 people. With India also suffering shortages, import coal prices have sky-rocketed, resulting in power outages across the country. Some are pointing to recent climate-centric policy changes, though further analysis suggests that the true cause is clashes between many levels and areas of policy that have combined in a ‘perfect storm’.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon continues apace, with INPE reporting a 77% increase in selective cutting linked to logging between September 2020 and September 2021. The numbers put selective cutting at its highest levels in at least five years.
The world has lost 14% of its coral in less than a decade, with 11,700 sq km lost between 2009 and 2018 – more than all the living coral in Australia. A big cause has been coral mass bleaching events, when warmer ocean waters kill off huge amounts of coral in a short period of time. However, there are signs of hope – when reefs have had the chance to recover, they are surprisingly resilient and do rebound if they can.
Planet positives
Moving towards a greener and more equitable world
Quick wins for methane?
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with 28x the warming potential of CO2 over the course of a century. However, it has largely been overlooked, although that is starting to change with recent agreements by the US and EU amongst others to cut methane by 30%. One of the distinguishing features of methane is that several major sources of the gas are actually relatively straightforward to tackle – emissions from oil and gas facilities and landfill will be around 40% of all emissions by 2030, but up to 80% of this can be halted with existing technology. In fact, most methane leaks from fossil fuel processing can be stopped at minimal cost, or even result in savings for the firms who run the infrastructure.
At the global scale, raising the ambition of methane pledges from 30% to a 50% cut in emissions by 2030 could prevent 0.3°C of warming by the 2040s, and 0.5°C by 2100. Given how fine a margin we have to keep warming under 1.5°C, this seems like a win-win situation for all involved.
Adverse circumstances
Events that move the needle in the wrong direction
Money talks
New analysis by the IMF has found that the world subsidised fossil fuels to the tune of $5.9 trillion in 2020 – a staggering $11m per minute. Not a single country priced fossil fuels sufficiently to account for their full supply and environmental costs, with the biggest missing costs being the impact of air pollution and the damage caused by global heating. The IMF estimates that if fuels reflected their true cost, global emissions would fall by over ⅓ immediately. Just five countries were responsible for ⅔ of that immense sum – China, the US, Russia, India and Japan.
Not so negative emissions
Chevron’s massive Gorgon gas facility incorporates one of the largest CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) plants in the world – part of the approval for the facility rested on it capturing 80% of the first five years’ emissions. Unfortunately, whilst it has captured around 5m tonnes of CO2, that is barely half of the 9.6m tonnes it was required to remove. Experts are increasingly warning of the poor success of such CCS facilities, with over 80% of attempted projects in the US having failed, and CO2 capture rates virtually impossible to verify. The fossil fuel industry has been pushing CCS hard as a lifeline for coal, gas and more, but it’s looking more and more like the technology does not live up to the heady promises being made.
Long Reads
Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics
Climate justice has really come to the fore of the wider climate activism movement in the past couple years, but the term itself has been around much longer. Carbon Brief took an in-depth look at the origins of climate justice, and the key arguments it makes about climate change being less a scientific problem, and more about addressing human rights and fundamental social and societal inequities.
Modern cities are increasingly crammed with cars and car-centric infrastructure. Whilst electric cars may reduce emissions, some cities are looking at broader approaches to decarbonisation. The New York Times took a look at various cities trying to decarbonise in more radical ways, from Berlin expanding its tram network, Bogotá building cable cars to relieve congestion and Bergen electrifying buses and ferries. These bigger changes are not without their opponents, but offer a chance at a quieter, more equitable city-scape.
Quick Headlines
Some quick climate news nuggets to sate your appetite
South Korea is looking to strengthen its emissions targets ahead of COP26, potentially targeting a 40% cut by 2030 from 2018 levels.
Google will no longer run ads alongside climate denial content, as part of a wider set of environmentally focused moves.
Japan is the first G-7 nation to factor ESG into foreign investments made by its finance ministry.
Drax power plant is the UK’s biggest single emitter of CO2, despite being declared as ‘renewable’ by the government and excluded from emissions totals.