Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly rundown of the latest climate news.
It’s been a chaotic week for me, trying to balance keeping up with all the climate happenings alongside trying to solidify the early stages of a climate company. There’s a lot going on, and as I need to travel across the country next week, I won’t be able to put together a newsletter then. Given that, I’ve put in plenty of Long Reads this week to tide you through!
As I’ve mentioned in previous weeks, my escalating workload means I’ll probably be a little more intermittent with FtF, at least until things have settled into some sort of equilibrium. To that end, I’m shutting down the paid subscriptions for the newsletter, as I don’t feel it’s reasonable to take money for a reduced output. I’m immensely grateful to all those who have contributed to FtF along the way – it’s really helped me continue working on climate full time, something I feel privileged to continue to do!
Once again, this week’s issue was ably assisted by Syuan Ruei Chang, who contributed a number of the articles and stories featured this week.
State of the world
Climate research and findings, weather events and studies
Heavy rains and flooding have continued to worsen across Bangladesh and NE India, with more than 9.5m people stranded with little food or drinking water. In some areas of Bangladesh, the floods are the worst in more than a century, and several Indian states have received over double their normal amount of rain. This is part of a wider pattern of increased unpredictability in monsoon rains, which is strongly correlated with climate change.
Meanwhile, the US has continued to swelter, with a ‘heat dome’ passing across from the West coast over towards the SE, with temperature records falling like (overheated) flies. Currently many of the Gulf coast states are experiencing record heat, though the worst is expected to pass soon.
A new study suggests that the impact of food miles, long thought to be minimal, could be larger than expected. The research takes into account transportation of a host of other elements in the food system such as fertiliser, animal feed and machinery, and finds that transportation could be as much as 1/5th of total food system emissions. Despite this, eating local won’t reduce this much, as last-mile transport tends to be the least efficient. The biggest change will come from wealthy people eating seasonal produce and less meat.
Another piece of research suggests that farmers could continue to see high yields with vastly less fertiliser by adopting sustainable farming practices. The work looked at long-running trials of various techniques like adding manure and compost to soils, moving away from mono-cropping, and mixing in nitrogen-fixing plants. Whilst these approaches add little to current high-fertiliser farming, they could help hugely if less fertiliser was used, not only reducing damaging nitrogen run-off but also helping farmers avoid economic shocks such as the current spike in fertiliser price.
Planet positives
Moving towards a greener and more equitable world
Scale is Key
One of the challenges with new technology is that it often is more expensive until it reaches a critical scale, making development and adoption an uphill battle. Solar and wind both benefited from government support and subsidies that helped push it over that tipping point, and now both are plummeting in cost. Now the NYCHA, New York City’s biggest landlord, is planning to do the same with heat pumps. The organisation is responsible for housing 1 in 16 people in the city, and is tendering for new heat pumps to bring its housing stock up to scratch. Because of its scale, it’s able to offer huge contracts to winning designs, hopefully helping to bring costs down much further than would otherwise be possible.
Adverse circumstances
Events that move the needle in the wrong direction
Rapid Reversal
The G-7 met earlier this week, and unfortunately, one outcome of that summit was a reversal on the group’s previous ban on financing of overseas fossil fuel projects. The change was heavily pushed by Germany, which is struggling to find alternatives to the Russian oil and gas it still depends heavily upon. The summit also saw Japan push back on a draft statement for a concrete target on zero-emissions vehicles – the group proposed reaching at least 50% by 2030, but Japan was keen to remove any solid numbers in favour of a much more vague aspirational wording. The Japanese car industry has been slower to embrace electrification and decarbonisation than those of many other nations, perhaps explaining its reluctance to embrace high targets.
Dark Days
This week also saw the US Supreme Court overturn Roe v Wade, a dark turn not just for women’s rights and reproductive justice in the US, but for much more besides – the decision explicitly targeted gay marriage and other key past equality judgements for future revision – but the precedent now set puts the Supreme Court on a path that could see it overturn a host of other decisions, including many that govern key environmental rulings.
Long Reads
Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics
I’ve got a good selection of long reads for you this week. I’m going to try a slightly shorter format to summarise them a little more succinctly.
Indigenous peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon are working to carve out legal and systematic protection for their lands from government and other attempts to mine gold, oil and other precious resources.
China’s continuing its expansion of mining in Africa with a huge project to mine out the Simandou mountains – the largest untapped iron ore deposit on the planet. However, that mining comes at a steep environmental and social cost, mostly to those least able to have a say.
Unilever executives have spent years discussing the growing problem of single-use plastic sachets, but in private, the company has worked to lobby against laws that would ban the packages – one of the only real methods to cut down on the pervasive packets that litter land and sea across much of the developing world.
Farmers in Mexico were hopeful that a proposed forest protection scheme could help supplement failing incomes, but the WRI-supported projects have paid out a pittance, whilst providing the buyer, BP, with a huge pool of highly profitable carbon credits in what some have called carbon colonialism.
Wilmington lives in the shadow of a vast oil refinery, and the low-income community is plagued by health problems. Whilst residents are making the connection between their own ill-health and the toxic environment they live in, they find themselves trapped with no real way to move away.
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò has become increasingly well-known of late, particularly for some of his radical theories on reparations. His passion for justice and equity has inevitably led him to climate change, and his thoughts and views on the topic are insightful and well worth diving into.
Quick Headlines
Some quick climate news nuggets to sate your appetite
Canada is to ban six major types of single-use plastic from the end of this year.
The UK becomes the third country globally to report on GHG emissions on a quarterly rather than annual basis.