FtF News #74 - 28th October 2020
Japan going net-zero, typhoons and impending elections
Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly rundown of the latest climate news.
I have to make a concerted effort each week not to focus overly on the US, despite its outsize influence on the news (especially with the current administration!). However, with elections imminent, coverage is inevitably dominating matters, so there’s a dedicated section for it this week.
Elections aside, 2020 doesn’t look like it’s going to go out quietly, with Atlantic storms #26 and #27 (and no sign of an end to the storm season yet), storms in SE Asia, not to mention more fire. While 2020 has definitely been its own unique brand of disaster, it does seem like many of the changes it saw are here to stay.
State of the world
Climate research and findings, weather events and studies
South East Asia has seen a wave of severe weather, with Vietnam experiencing its worst floods in decades. More than 100 people have been killed, and thousands of homes flooded, with crops and livestock hit heavily. The country is now being struck by Typhoon Molave, a massive storm that has swept across much of the region including the Philippines, where thousands were evacuated last week as a result. The increased intensity of storms in the region this year is thought to be due to the development of a La Niña effect in the Pacific.
After the second-lowest Arctic sea ice extent ever this summer, the Laptev Sea, known as the main nursery of Arctic sea ice, is failing to freeze. This year is the latest that the sea has been ice free, which is due to the massively elevated Arctic ocean temperatures this year - some 5°C above average. Whilst scientists are hardly shocked by this development, it is nevertheless a grim sign of the times, and bodes poorly for the future of Arctic sea ice. The Northwest Passage - the route between the Atlantic and Pacific over the top of Canada - has been open for over 100 days this year, and will set a record for both earliest opening and latest closing.
Carbon Brief have released their State of the Climate report for Q3, and whilst none of it is surprising, it’s still grim reading. 2020 is on track to be the warmest year on record, and if not, will definitely be the second-warmest. It is by far the warmest year without the influence of an El Niño cycle. CO2, methane and NO2 have all reached their highest levels in millions of years, none of which bodes well for the future unless radical change occurs.
To end this on a more positive note, Gharials, a distinctive sub-species of crocodile, have been making a come-back after nearly going extinct. The reptiles are found only on the Indian subcontinent, and numbers dipped from around 10,000 in 1946 to less than 250 in 2006. Fortunately, concerted efforts have been made on certain rivers to watch over and protect the animals and their nests from threats including fishing, hunting and sand mining, which have helped numbers to bounce back in recent years.
Planet positives
Moving towards a greener and more equitable world
Japan’s green ambitions
Japan’s new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has, in his first major policy speech, pledged Japan will reach net-zero emissions by 2050. This brings the world’s third largest economy in line with the EU and China, both of whom have similar targets. So far, the pledge has little detail, though an energy plan is to be drawn up by the end of the year. The country currently has a heavy reliance on coal, and given public sentiments around nuclear power, renewables look like the primary answer. Whatever the chosen power mix, big changes are afoot for the Japanese economy.
The price is right
New analysis from UBS suggests that EVs will reach price parity with fossil fueled vehicles as soon as 2024, with battery prices likely to drop below $100/kWh in just two years time. As one analyst put it,
“There are not many reasons left to buy an ICE car after 2025”
With so much expansion of the EV market, cell and battery manufacturers are becoming major power brokers of the new vehicle industry. Most cell manufacturers are based in SE Asia, and both battery and cell industries are dominated by a few massive companies. Companies are trying to hedge their bets by signing deals with multiple suppliers, but ultimately, there aren’t (yet) enough batteries to go around.
Election Time
With the US election less than 10 days away, the stakes are heating up
The latest presidential debate resulted in a (slightly) more civil conversation than the first, particularly on the environmental front. Biden was able to elaborate more on his environmental message, and raise his concerns on environmental justice, whereas Trump focused much more on protecting the oil industry. However, the Trump campaign has seized on Biden’s plan to transition away from oil entirely, and has gone on the offensive. By and large, the media has followed his take, focusing on the loss of oil jobs, rather than the plan to fairly transition, let alone the huge costs of not taking action on the climate.
The Atlantic dove into research exploring the impact of coal on the 2016 election, and how that might project forward to this year. Coal has been linked across the world to very partisan responses, with communities coming together around coal and voting on it as a key issue. The question is - will fracking be a similar dividing issue? Fracking is much shorter-lived, and the majority of Americans don’t really care for it. However, those that do, really do - it becomes the only issue that they focus upon.
Adverse circumstances
Events that move the needle in the wrong direction
Cash for clunkers
A new UN Environment Program report has taken a thorough look at the used car trade for the first time, and it makes for rather grim reading. Whilst developed nations have been mandating stricter policies on emissions and safety at home, they have been happily exporting their old cars to less developed nations, many of which lack standards for emissions or safety. On the one hand, this gives these nations a ready supply of cheap vehicles to fuel their growing needs for transport, but on the other, produces a huge problem with air pollution and safety.
One investigation in the Netherlands found that exporters were actively removing the precious metals from catalytic converters before export, thus making the vehicles more polluting than they were originally! Nations such as Kenya are fighting back by placing a maximum age on imported vehicles, which has cleaned up their emissions significantly. However, of the 146 importing countries reported on, 86 had weak or very weak laws around age and/or environmental performance of imported used vehicles.
Long Reads
Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics
The New York Times takes a into the surreal world of US cattle feedlots - a vast industrial operation to fatten up cattle as fast as possible. The process operates at huge scale, and so small changes, from what cows are fed to how long they are raised before slaughter can significantly affect emissions at a national scale.
I’d like to give another callout to a climate-related service this week. The Daily Breather isn’t a newsletter, but rather a daily email that gives you air quality updates for where you live, along with explainers of what that means for day to day life.
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