Hello again, and welcome back to Forge the Future. We’re rapidly approaching the Global Climate Strike (set for the 20th and 27th September). Workers from both Microsoft and Amazon have announced they’ll be participating, alongside the thousands of already registered events. From the level of buzz and discussion around this, I’m hopeful that this could be one of the biggest global climate awareness events yet.
State of the Climate
This week, CO2 levels are at 409.06ppm (versus last year’s level of 405ppm). The big weather event this week is Hurricane Dorian, a hugely powerful storm that hit the Bahamas at Category 5, with 185mph sustained winds making it the joint strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane. Fortunately, the Bahamas are fairly well prepared for storms, but the toll is still likely massive.
The Hurricane also saw a strange incident from the Trump administration. President Trump tweeted (incorrectly) that the storm was predicted to hit Alabama. The National Weather Service issued a corrective notice, but were then pressured by the NOAA to apologise, after the Secretary of Commerce threatened to fire senior NOAA officials over the issue. The whole incident is bizarre - apparently government agencies are expected to blindly back the President even if he issues incorrect information about a national emergency.
Elsewhere, there’s growing concern over the damage being done to mountains due to rising tourism levels. The mayor of Saint-Gervais, near Mt Blanc in the Alps, highlighted several incidents to the French President, including that of a British tourist who hauled a rowing machine up the mountain, then had to abandon it due to poor weather.
Visualisation of the Week
This graphic from Reuters shows the number of plastic bottles purchased worldwide per day - 1.3 billion - versus the Eiffel Tower. The accompanying article shows everything from an hour to the past decade’s plastic bottle consumption, and really brings homethe sheer scale of the plastic problem we face globally.
Plastic Fantastic
This week I wanted to look at plastic a bit more closely. It’s often raised in climate and environmental discussions, from the West’s offloading of plastic waste to microplastics in the deepest ocean trenches. Why is it so reviled, and if it’s so bad, why haven’t we fixed the issue?
Plastic is usually divided into 7 categories, broadly based upon the type of plastic involved. Of those, 2-4 types are commonly recycled, and the rest are either difficult or not economical to recycle. Of course, separating it into the various categories is really hard - with the myriad types of containers, consumers have little chance, and it’s hard for recycling plants as well - there are so many subtle variations, and getting it wrong can ruin otherwise usable batches.
Even amongst the material that can be recycled, recyclers must decide if it’s economically viable to do so - whilst many countries have landfill fees, transporting and sorting recycling is not free, so it’s only worthwhile if the recyclers can obtain a good value for it on the plastics market. Contaminations (anything from food to colourings, impurities, metals and more) will lower the price, as they limit what can be done with the resulting material.
So what about the material that isn’t recycled? Landfill is always an option, although not great - plastic is already part of the fossil record. Incineration is a common option in many areas. It has a bad press, but modern incinerators can capture almost all emissions and particulates, and metals and other impurities can often be recycled from the waste slag.
A final option is converting the waste plastic to fuel. This is sometimes referred to as tertiary recycling (with incineration as quaternary, and primary/secondary involving direct recycling of the material), and involves breaking down the plastic into its base hydrocarbons, for use either as fuel, or as feedstocks for new plastics. However, this option is far from simple, with different plastics requiring radically different conditions. A few novel technologies have been touted as converting mixed plastics to substances like jet fuel, but they are mostly in the research phase - few if any have made it to commercialisation.
Ultimately, the story for plastics follows everything else - ideally we reuse, then we recycle if we can, then come options like breaking it down to fuel or incineration. We definitely shouldn’t be landfilling it, and where we can, we should cut down on use in the first place. We can’t get rid of it, however much we might want to - it’s an immensely useful material, and irreplaceable in countless industries, from manufacturing to healthcare.
We definitely need more innovation in recycling and other reuse technologies, as well as those tertiary and quaternary recycling methods. Unfortunately, for that to happen, as with anything, we need government incentives to motivate innovation. Right now, it’s just not economically viable to fix the problem, but if we don’t do something soon, we will leave a plastic coated legacy for the generations to come.
News Highlights
VW announced has announced the first of its new electric cars - the ID.3. VW has put enormous amounts of money into EVs after the dieselgate scandals a few years back, and as the largest car manufacturer in the world, they could have the scale to make EVs cheaper than internal combustion cars. They are rumoured to have pushed battery prices below $100/kWh - widely seen as a tipping point for EV affordability.
China is making a huge push into Fuel Cell vehicles, declaring it wants 1 million FCEVs (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles) on Chinese roads by 2030. They’re backing that up with massive subsidies (~€20k for private vehicles, and ~€50k for commercial), likely in an attempt to capture a significant percentage of the nascent fuel cell vehicle market.
The Trump administration continues to baffle on environmental issues. This week, they rolled back rules requiring energy efficient light bulbs, and are launching an antitrust investigation against the 4 carmakers (BMW, Ford, Honda and VW) that agreed with California to increase their average fuel efficiency despite the EPA rolling back fuel regulations at the national level. They claim it’s anti-competitive, but critics have suggested this is another attack on environmental regulations.
The New Zealand government has committed to planting 1 billion trees by 2028. While trees won’t solve the Climate Crisis alone, it’s great to see commitment like this at a government level to a simple yet effective approach.
A number of environmentalists and climate campaigners have noticed Google’s Discover feature surfacing Climate Change denial stories. This follows a pattern seen in other similar services like YouTube, where ‘controversial’ aspects of a topic such as Climate Change receive more attention, so are surfaced by the algorithms more frequently.
Crops and solar panels can not only exist, but can complement one another, according to a new study. The solar panels reduce evaporation and soil temperatures, reducing water use and increasing crop yield, and the panels benefit from reduced air temperatures.
The slow decline of fossil fuels continues, with BNP Paribas research suggesting oil would need to be at $10-20/barrel to compete with EVs as a transport fuel. The New York Times dropped sponsorship of one of the world’s biggest oil conferences after pressure from activists, and ExxonMobil has dropped out of the S&P 500 index’s top 10 for the first time since the index’s creation in 1957.
This comes as it was revealed that major oil and gas companies have spent $50 bn on projects which undermine global climate goals. Investigations have also shown that the massive funds Blackrock and Vanguard blocked fossil fuel, energy and car companies’ executives from accountability for their lack of action on Climate Change.
Long Reads
I’ve decided to trial a new section this week. I often come across longer-form pieces which I think are worth sharing, but that aren’t necessarily news. I’ve included a few here, but let me know what you think - would you like to see more like this?
A deep dive into Global Fishing Watch - an organisation who aim to make the fishing industry more transparent, by using all manner of satellite and other data sources to track fishing fleets and bring attention to illegal fishing.
Ever wondered how clouds form, or why some become storms, and others fade away to nothing? Turns out, it’s really complex, and scientists are gathering huge amounts of data to make sense of them. This in turn could help make climate models much more accurate, which is of vital importance when predicting the effects of Climate Change.
An exploration of Barcelona’s proposed ‘superblock’ plans - where multiple city blocks are turned into car-free zones in order to take back public space for residents and pedestrians.
The End is Nigh
That’s everything I’ve got for you this week - if you have been, thanks for reading, and as always, please do share it if you enjoyed it!
Oli