Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly rundown of the latest climate news.
Glancing over the news this week, it seems we’re back to visions of the climate apocalypse once again, with California burning, and multiple tropical storms wreaking havoc on their way across the Gulf of Mexico. The UK has flipped from heatwave to violent storms, and flooding is continuing in Africa. Taking a walk through a local park this weekend, the leaves are already falling in what would normally be the height of summer. It very much feels like the world is changing around us, and fast.
This week’s newsletter seems very US centric, but that’s the way the news cards fell over the past seven days. I am trying to find more sources of non-US climate news, so if you know of any good authorities on such matters, please do let me know, I’m all ears!
State of the world
Climate research and findings, weather events and studies
Flash floods have been hitting Sudan for weeks, leaving at least 60 dead, and destroying thousands of homes. All but one of the country’s provinces have been affected, with hundreds of thousands impacted. A major dam near the city of Bout collapsed last month, leaving many with no available water supply for the foreseeable future.
In California, wildfires have continued to spread, with tens of thousands evacuated and several killed so far. The situation is amplified by grid blackouts as the power network struggles with extreme temperatures - some have blamed the power outages on the state’s aggressive push towards renewables, although it looks more likely that it was poor capacity planning and grid management that led to the failures. Of course, all of this takes place amidst the backdrop of COVID-19, which is still spreading uncontrollably in much of the US, making emergency shelters a risky proposition even amidst other disasters.
On the other side of North America, Tropical Storm Laura has blazed a trail of destruction across Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, killing at least 13, and taking out power for up to a million. The storm is expected to strengthen to hurricane status as it crosses towards the US, potentially leading to the unprecedented situation of two hurricanes at once in the Gulf of Mexico - Tropical Storm Marco strengthened into a hurricane over the weekend.
New data on deforestation in Indonesia suggests a huge spike in forest clearance during the coronavirus pandemic. Lockdowns meant that environmental enforcement largely halted whilst logging accelerated, with tree clearance up 130% in March versus the three year average from 2017-2019.
Planet positives
Moving towards a greener and more equitable world
Trumping emissions rules
In an excellent turn of events, 5 major carmakers have entered into an agreement with California to lock emissions to a lower level than the new US national standard. As the agreement was entered into voluntarily, the Trump administration cannot act against it, despite their clear desire to roll back emissions standards nationwide. The five manufacturers - Ford, Honda, BMW, VW and Volvo - combined make up around 30% of the US car market, and will have to increase average fuel economy to 51mpg by 2026. A spokesman cited a need for consistency amidst a constantly changing policy landscape as a key motivator for striking the deal.
Housing reform
Portland has become the latest US city to pass zoning law reforms that will allow high density housing, allowing more small and affordable homes. This might not seem climate related, but this is significant for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it removes requirements for parking requirements on much of the city’s land, a key step to higher density which in turn makes public transit far more viable (as well as meaning that not everyone needs to own a car). Secondly, it allows the development of more homes that are affordable to the middle class - a lot of current US zoning laws offer few options for those without huge budgets, often trapping people in poor neighbourhoods. Indeed, the original intent in many cases was to segregate by class, race, age and income. These types of reforms start to right some of those wrongs.
Costly Carbon
The price of carbon in the EU’s ETS has hit a record high in the last four months, rising above €30 per ton. This is despite the current pandemic-induced recession reducing direct demand for the credits. Many investors are seeing carbon as a safe bet, particularly in the current chaos, as the backing of the EU and political pressure means that the price is near certain to rise over time. This artificial demand is thought to be behind at least some of the current rise, which has led to coal becoming largely economically unviable in Europe now. Opinions are divided on the trend - some are fine with the price rising, whatever the mechanism, whilst others are uncomfortable with banks and investors effectively profiting from the needed climate transition. There’s also a worry that increased demand could see carbon prices rising faster than industries can adjust, leaving entire sectors high and dry far sooner than they expected.
Adverse circumstances
Events that move the needle in the wrong direction
Fossil fuel flip-flop
Keen-eyed political eagles in the US noticed this week that the DNC had quietly dropped pledges to end fossil fuel subsidies from its platform, despite these being included in 2016. Both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ran on bids to end fossil fuel subsidies, so this seemed particularly underhand, especially given the Republican Party’s unashamed embrace of the fossil fuel lobby. So far, the only word from the DNC is that the original inclusion of language about ending subsidies was an ‘error’. Joe Biden’s campaign has reiterated his support for ending subsidies in a statement issued after this ‘error’ was uncovered, so all is not lost.
Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute (API) has ramped up its advertising spending significantly in the wake of Biden’s climate plan announcement in July. The API has been spending $24,000 a day on Facebook ads since the announcement, roughly 6 times its average daily spend over the previous six months. Its main push is to promote natural gas as a climate-friendly fuel. The lobbying group has also spent over $3m on TV ads this year, 50% up on the same period last year.
Fatal Fumes
New research on air pollution in the US has found that the effects are roughly twice as bad as previously thought, leading to nearly 250,000 premature deaths per year. Much of this increase is due to vastly better data in recent years, particularly with massive datasets flowing in from studies in places like China. Even this figure is likely an underestimate, as there are other clear effects from air pollution for which reliable quantified evidence has not yet been found.
However, this unpleasant finding comes with a silver (well, more a grey smoggy) lining - aggressive decarbonisation could reduce US pollution deaths by 40% in a decade. Moreover, the co-benefits from air pollution reduction alone vastly outweigh the costs of that decarbonisation. This means that air pollution could prove a useful tool in breaking the stalemate over who takes action on climate change. Currently, on an international level there is much finger-pointing, with nations blaming each other for climate impacts. However, air pollution affects are much more localised, but the solutions help with tackling global climate change, meaning nations can improve air pollution for selfish reasons, whilst contributing to the global solution.
That’s all I have for you this week. As always, thank you for reading, and well done if you made it all the way through! If you enjoyed it, I’d love it if you could share it - the more the merrier! If you have any feedback, thoughts or suggestions, or just want to chat climate, you can reach me at oli@forgethefuture.com.
Stay safe, and see you next week,
Oli