Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future. This week has mostly seen the end of the two week long XR protest in London and elsewhere, with protests continuing despite a London-wide ban on the organisation’s protests. They courted controversy on Thursday after a small subgroup of activists blocked the Tube, leading to confrontations between activists and frustrated commuters. XR are trying to learn from the incident - given their distributed structure and leadership, they has struggled with divisions previously.
It’s hard to tell what the impact of this latest protest was here in London. Possibly it’s just Autumn ennui setting in, but although the scale of the protests was larger this time, there was a definite sense of ‘Oh really, not again’, from many. With the constant rollercoaster of Brexit also throwing confusion and frustration into many lives, it might just be too much to deal with right now.
It does feel a bit like climate protest is more normalised than earlier in the year. On the one hand that’s good - compared to a few years back, having thousands on the streets is a welcome change - but on the other, it means that climate protests will have to push harder to get attention. Either way, it’s a long fight ahead.
State of the Climate
CO2 levels this week: 408.62 ppm
This time last year: 405.99 ppm
New research out this week has tried to put a human cost on climate change and global warming, by looking at where changes to pollination, fresh water and coastal habitats overlap with human populations. It suggests up to 5 billion people could face hunger and a lack of fresh water by 2050. The researchers produced a nifty interactive viewer, which you can explore here.
New fossil evidence is suggesting that massive ocean acidification 66 million years ago could have wiped out up to three-quarters of all marine life. The meteor that killed the dinosaurs vapourised sulphate- and carbonate-containing rocks, causing massive acid rain that caused ocean pH to drop by 0.25 in the 100-1000 years after the strike. This is concerning as if current emissions don’t fall, our oceans are likely to drop in pH by 0.4 (0.15 if we keep under 2°C of global warming). The link between ocean extinction and acidification isn’t yet fully confirmed, but even a correlation is another cause for concern.
Visualisation of the Week
This week visualisation is hopefully pretty explanatory, and comes again from the excellent Our World in Data.
Exxon on Trial
There’s been significant coverage this week of Exxon Mobil, as the company faces numerous lawsuits across the US and around the world. They are but one of many fossil fuel companies facing down legal challenges against the environmental damage they have perpetrated for decades. The company is particularly in the headlines as the first big case has reached the court in New York, which alleges that the company essentially kept two estimates of climate costs - one for executives inside the firm, and one for investors. The latter was vastly lower, massively underestimating the potential climate costs and risk to the company from climate change, making investments seem far safer than they seemed. This allowed the company to hide tens of billions in potential costs, inflating the company’s value.
Exxon is one of the largest players in the Canadian oil sands, and invested more at times when even other fossil fuel companies considered it too expensive and risky (aside from the massive climate impact, oil sands are expensive to extract, and require shipping to refineries elsewhere, adding to the cost). Arguably, if it had used its internal (higher) climate costs, those investments would have never gone ahead. Still, Exxon has form with this stuff - their own scientists had clear evidence of climate change decades ago, but pushed ahead with a huge campaign of climate change denial and lobbying against climate science and laws that would rein in the unchecked expansion of fossil fuels.
Only this week it was reported that both BP and Exxon, despite claiming progress in curbing emissions, have increased venting and flaring at 3 of the largest shale-oil fields in the US. Shale oil wells don’t last as long as conventional wells, so capturing and piping away the natural gas byproducts of oil production is often seen as an unnecessary expense, despite the massive environmental impact.
Sadly, this pattern of deception and obfuscation is prevalent across other industries - Coca-Cola has fought against recycling efforts for years, despite seeming to support it. They and other soft drink companies have successfully killed off almost every attempt to pass ‘bottle bills’, where manufacturers add a fee onto drinks that’s refundable when the container is returned, as well as other types of similar legislation. These types of bill are extremely effective at improving recycling, but increase manufacturer costs, hence the moves by companies to nix them.
Another example would be SUVs - car manufacturers are throwing money into advertising the larger vehicles, which are more profitable, although less safe for those inside and out, and significantly more polluting. The massive growth in SUVs has more or less entirely wiped out gains from the growing shift to EVs, and was the second biggest contributor to CO2 emissions growth after electric power between 2010 and 2018.
What’s the common thread here? Large corporations have immense power these days, and are optimised to put profit above all else. When climate change is just another externality, and increased quarterly profits are the only measured outcome, the result is that environmental impacts get ignored. We need to consider new ways to run our corporations that don’t involve solely chasing after ever higher profits. It can be done - companies like Patagonia and others have shown that it’s possible to build a successful business whilst caring about people and the planet - but it’s not the norm. And until it is, these stories will keep happening.
News Highlights
US versus the Climate
The Trump Administration has awarded the next G7 summit to his own Florida golf course, but climate change definitely isn’t on the agenda. This despite Miami Beach declaring a climate emergency this week, joining over 1000 other jurisdictions in doing so. Even Florida Republicans are starting to talk about sea level rise, although ‘climate change’ is still verboten. The state will be using money from the VW emissions scandal to pay for electric school buses and EV charging stations, so maybe there’s hope for the Sunshine State yet.
Seedy dealings are coming up in Ohio, which passed a massive bailout bill in July to save failing nuclear and coal plants. Lobbying firms connected to the power companies behind the plants have been accused of harassment and intimidation, vast amounts of shady advertising is cropping up on Facebook, TV and elsewhere to convince voters not to overturn the controversial bill.
Top officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development admitted they knowingly missed deadlines for allocating disaster funding to Puerto Rico. The country has only received a third of the promised $43bn for rebuilding after Hurricane Maria, which hit two years ago.
The EPA has updated regulations on lead and copper in drinking water, but the new regulations, whilst increasing testing and oversight, lower requirements for actually replacing dangerous piping.
The 4th Democratic Primary debate came and went with nary a sign of a climate change question. Even the candidates were baffled.
The Trump Administration is pushing for overturning a ban on road building in national forests, in order to open up the Tongass Forest in Alaska to development (yep, probably oil and gas).
Other News
Globally, renewable energy could grow by 50% in the next 5 years, with an estimated 1200GW of new renewable capacity.
In related news, BNEF predicts peak road fuels in 2030, and peak coal in 2026, decades earlier than fossil firms predict.
The French government is asking EDF to work up plans for 3 new nuclear power plants, to potentially extend its current fleet and give it a leg up in efforts to go carbon-neutral by 2050.
Long Reads
The story of how the US came to drain the Colorado River before it reaches the Mexican border.
Wine growers are amongst many having to adapt to climate change.
Qatar is starting to air-condition the outdoors, in an effort to make the country livable as temperatures rise.
An exploration of the efforts to decarbonise the global shipping fleet.
End of the Line
That’s everything for this week - if you made it this far, thanks for reading! As always, please do share this if you enjoyed it, and let me know what you thought! And if you have any interesting stories or sources you’d like to send my way, please do. Have a great week,
Oli