The Barriers to Change
Forge the Future #56 - The challenges of turning around the good ship Earth onto a greener course.
Welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly guide to all things climate.
This week sees a slew of news from tech companies, some good, some… not so good. On the positive end, Amazon have announced a $2bn fund to back climate technologies, and are moving forward the date for powering their operations with renewable energy by five years, to 2025. Amazon has lagged on the climate front for a while, so it’s good to see this effort. They still have a lot of work to do both on the environmental and worker treatment fronts, but this is a start.
On the less positive side, Facebook, after failing to act on Trump’s inflammatory messages about the Black Lives Matter protests, is now actively supporting climate deniers. They overruled content moderators and allowed misleading posts from leading climate denial groups to stay up, even creating an exception for climate denial, labelling it as ‘opinion’.
State of the Climate
CO2 levels this week: 416.26 ppm
This time last year: 414.06 ppm
Summer in the US of course means wildfires, with a massive wildfire sweeping Arizona - the 7th largest ever in the state, covering 90,000 acres. Fortunately, in Arizona, wildfires tend to stop once rains hit in early July, but there is no such luck for California, which is approaching fire season, and has had record droughts this year.
A new study suggests that half the world’s population is being exposed to increased levels of air pollution, with low- and middle-income nations bearing the brunt of the burden. Whilst much of the damage falls on urban areas, rural areas are also often seeing elevated air pollution. Air pollution also tends to disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities, again highlighting the importance of equality and environmental justice.
In more positive news, humanity has now mapped 19% of the sea floor, up from just 6% in 2017. The Nippon Foundation GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project (try saying that fast) was founded to map the entirety of the world’s seabed, and efforts have accelerated in the last year. Much of the new data was already in existence, but out of the public domain, but there is still a lot of new mapping to be done.
Visualisation of the Week
Temperatures in Arctic Siberia have soared to record levels, with an air temperature of 38°C and a land temperature of 45°C. This is our new normal...
Seeing all the talk of green stimulus gives me some hope we’re on the cusp of change. The IEA released a special report this week focusing on the potential of stimulus plans to push the global economy towards a green transition - they estimate $1tn per year for the next three years would push us over peak emissions and on a downward trend, cutting global emissions 14% by 2023. It’s a high cost for sure, but on a global scale, with collaboration, it’s surprisingly possible. A recent survey across 40 countries shows that, for the most part, people really do care about climate change more than before. However, there are some concerning trends. Western nations seemingly care less, and there’s a concerning split across the left/right political divide (leaving aside increasing political polarisation globally - that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms).
One major concern I have is that there’s a lot to build, and a lot of obstacles. It feels like there’s starting to be a shift in will, but there are so many barriers. Marc Andreessen exhorts us all to build, but as Ezra Klein pointed out, we exist in a system that has a huge number of veto points - see repeated struggles to build US power grid interconnectors, desperately needed for expansion of renewables. Whilst Klein’s article was US-centric, the same is true elsewhere - an article came up just this week on European’s NIMBY-ism about onshore wind power.
We have a system that discourages large scale changes and projects, and a public attitude in many cases of ‘sure, as long as it doesn’t inconvenience me’. Many of the checks and balances we have are established for good reason, but this feels like a problem we’re going to run into repeatedly - we need to make big changes, and fast, if we’re to have any hope of turning this ship around.
News Highlights
US vs the Climate
Joe Biden has publicly linked climate change and racial equality in a webcast this week, a big step forward for the environmental justice movement.
The US is putting together another coronavirus stimulus package, and this time it has $75bn earmarked for clean energy - the first dedicated green money yet for the US.
The Senate has passed a significant conservation package, securing $900m/year for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, as well as $9.5bn over five years to address deferred maintenance on public lands.
The governor of New Jersey has unveiled plans for the first US port dedicated to the offshore wind industry. The $300m project is designed to support a number of massive new offshore wind projects up and down the east coast.
A new report has shown that oil companies in the Permian Basin flared and vented $750m of natural gas in 2018, nearly double the previous year.
A report into the ‘sharpiegate’ incident, where NOAA leaders backed Trump’s modified path for Hurricane Dorian, found that leaders violated the agency’s scientific integrity policy.
Mississippi is to become the 13th state to enact stricter penalties on protests against fossil fuel infrastructure, and the fifth to pass such legislation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other News
A historic 3-way governmental coalition in Ireland has unveiled a bold climate position as part of its platform, including 7% annual emissions reductions through 2030, decarbonisation by 2050, and 20% of the transport budget going towards cycling and pedestrian infrastructure.
The Danish parliament has agreed a historic deal to cut emissions by 70% by 2030 from 1990 levels.
Seven major European investment firms have threatened to divest from Brazilian assets if the country doesn’t rein in its destruction of the Amazon.
A new report into the dairy industry places the emissions of the 13 largest dairy firms equal to those of the entire UK, and aggressive pricing is forcing farmers to increasingly rely on taxpayer subsidies to stay afloat.
The Vatican has urged Catholics worldwide to divest from armaments and fossil fuels, and to monitor investments for environmental damage.
Construction is beginning on the world’s largest liquid air battery in the UK. Once complete in 2022 it will be nearly twice the size of the current largest lithium ion battery.
Long Reads
A dive into the complexity of light pollution - modern lights offer a potential solution to this ever worsening problem, but if implemented poorly can make the problem worse.
The decline of vultures in Africa - after almost dying out in India, now African vultures are being killed at ever greater rates, and many species are on the verge of extinction.
Poor villagers in Lesotho are being forced off their land for a massive dam project to supply South Africa with much needed water. While the tiny country makes 2.6% of its GDP from selling water to SA, nearly 8000 villagers will lose their livelihoods for the project.
The End Times
That’s all I have for you this week. As always, thanks for reading, and if you’ve any feedback or suggestions for me, I’d love to hear them (you can reach me at oli@forgethefuture.com). If you feel like sharing this, I’d massively appreciate it!
Stay safe, and see you next week,
Oli