FtF News #73 - 21st October 2020
Lowering shipping emissions, the slow demise of coal. Oh, and America is still on fire...
Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly rundown of the latest climate news.
This week has mostly involved watching my country throw itself off a cliff into a fiery chasm, all the while smugly congratulating itself on how clever it’s being. I’ve spent a dark few days researching EU escape options, but for a ‘self-employed’ (or more aptly ‘unemployed but in denial’) climate human, it ain’t so easy. I guess I will have a front row seat for the impending chaos after all. Between the UK and the US, these next couple of months are going to be ‘character-building’.
I did however wrap up part 2 of my aviation deep dive - exploring the technologies that have the potential to reduce aviation emissions. It’s rather lacking in pictures, mostly because there wasn’t actually space for any - I wrote too many words, and ran into the GMail clipping limit. If a picture is worth a thousand words, you missed out on a good 4 or 5 pictures - I can only apologise.
State of the world
Climate research and findings, weather events and studies
The US West Coast is still under fiery siege, with California likely to face heat and dry winds until the end of the month, if not longer. PG&E has been cutting power to tens of thousands of homes to avoid starting yet more blazes. The state did manage to get federal relief funds approved, although there was a back-and-forth where initial requests for aid were refused. The Cameron Peak Fire has become the largest in Colorado’s history, breaking a record that stood for a mere 48 days. Arizona has also been experiencing record heat, with Phoenix suffering triple digit heat for 144 days this year, and the hottest August since records began in 1896.
There have been many fires worldwide this year, but one that keeps slipping under the radar is the Pantanal wetland in Brazil. Whilst fire is a part of the seasonal cycle there, this year has seen 22% of the region go up in flames (the wetland is larger than Greece). It is host to a vast array of flora and fauna found nowhere else on the planet, and that biodiversity is increasingly at risk.
On the other side of the world, North Korea is being battered by a series of natural disasters - the country has been hit by 3 typhoons in the last couple of months, with those coming on top of US-backed sanctions and COVID-19. Outside observers are fearing the country may face the worst food shortages it has seen since the 1990s, with leader Kim Jong Un even publicly saying that they are struggling. Around 40% of the population was estimated to be undernourished even before the storms hit, and the country is heavily reliant on food aid from China.
A fresh round of studies and reports this week once again confirm that all is not well with our planet. Swiss Re found that a fifth of countries are at risk of ecosystem collapse due to destruction of wildlife and their habitats - especially worrying considering that over half of global GDP depends on high-functioning biodiversity. The Atlantic Ocean is the hottest it’s been in 2,900 years, with oceans having absorbed more than 93% of the heat from climate change. That ocean heat is present worldwide, and is one of the principal contributors to over half of the Great Barrier Reef’s corals dying since 1995. A new report from the UN highlighted a ‘staggering’ rise in the size and number of natural disasters over the past 20 years.
Planet positives
Moving towards a greener and more equitable world
Cooling on coal
Poland seems to be changing its tune rapidly on coal, perhaps realising that the fuel is rapidly becoming unviable. At the recent BNEF conference, the country’s Climate Minister has suggested that Poland could go from 75% of electricity generated from coal to just 11% in the next 20 years. Poland’s largest utility, PGE (not to be confused with PG&E) is planning to spend 75bn zloty ($19bn) by 2030 on its path to become climate neutral by 2050. In the next 10 years, the company plans to ramp up zero- and low-emissions electricity sources to 85% of its portfolio. It is worth noting that it’s planning to do this partly by spinning off its current coal assets to a separate, state-owned company, rather than shutting them down.
Over in the US, the last coal-fired power plant in Oregon has been closed, courtesy of a 2010 legal case brought by environmental groups under the Clean Air Act. Rather than fit expensive emissions regulating equipment, the owners, PGE (yes, another one) elected to close it in 2020, some 20 years ahead of schedule.
Sailing forth
The International Maritime Organisation, the global body responsible for regulating shipping, is purportedly nearing an agreement to reduce shipping emissions. The IMO set a goal of halving shipping emissions by 2050, but until now has not produced concrete plans detailing how this would be accomplished. The proposed scheme will likely involve a ratings system for the carbon intensity of ships, but currently members are still disagreeing over how the ratings would be calculated as well as how it would be enforced. Sadly, much like CORSIA in the aviation world, whilst this agreement will have the backing of nearly 200 countries, that consensus comes at the cost of real teeth - the deal will likely fall short of what is truly needed, though it is a start.
Adverse circumstances
Events that move the needle in the wrong direction
Odious Oil
Some things never change, one of them being ExxonMobil. Three years ago, Geoffrey Supran And Naomi Oreskes published a peer-reviewed paper demonstrating that ExxonMobil knew about climate change for decades and yet deliberately muddied the public narrative. They have been fighting back ever since, with their latest attempt earlier this year (citing non-peer-reviewed studies that Exxon themselves funded!). Supran and Oreskes have just released their (peer-reviewed) rebuttal, and it’s a zinger - they went back to address Exxon’s challenges, including that their study only analysed a subset of the company’s advertisements. The new study analysed the missing information, and found the evidence even more damning than before - it made an even stronger case for their original thesis!
Beyond the immediate case at hand, it highlights a wider point around the arguments that these companies make. Even in the most open-and-shut cases, the main thing companies like Exxon are trying to do is to introduce doubt. Even if their argument is paper-thin, by constantly fighting back, smearing scientists’ reputations, they make it seem like there’s a debate over results when in reality, no such uncertainty exists. Uncertainty and doubt slows resolve to push these companies to change, which is of course exactly what they want - the continuation of the status quo.
Long Reads
Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics
The Guardian covered the release of a recent book on the contamination of the Pacific by the US military - Poisoning the Pacific. British journalist Jon Mitchell explored more than 12,000 pages of documents detailing the many and varied ways the military contaminated indigenous islands and ocean with radioactive waste, chemical weapons and nerve agents.
I also wanted to highlight the superb Climate Matters newsletter by Neelima Vallangi. Every episode I’ve read is to the point, excellently written and packed with a ton of research. The latest issue from last week gave an overview of where emissions come from and who causes them.
That’s all I have for you this week. As always, thank you for reading, and if you liked it, why not share it with a friend? If you’ve any thoughts, feedback or suggestions, I’d love to hear them - you can reach me at oli@forgethefuture.com.
Stay safe, wear a mask, and see you next week,
Oli