Hello again, and welcome to Forge the Future #7. Another week, and more climate-related news than ever! Thank you to the readers that sent in articles over the past week - I really appreciate it! Let’s dive in...
State of the Climate
This week CO2 levels are at 410.76ppm. Kees van der Leun, director at Navigant, noted this week that the average CO2 across June was 3.1ppm up from the same month last year! Currently the rate at which we are increasing CO2 levels is still going up, despite our efforts to combat emissions.
Visualisation of the week
This week’s visualisation comes from the ‘dataisbeautiful’ subreddit, and shows just how sharp a change we need to make to stop the planet from catastrophically warming. A Climate Crisis indeed.
The Weather Forecast
I’ll open this week’s look at the climate with a UN warning that one climate-related disaster is happening every week. The catalogue of events below are just a sign of things to come.
Arctic/Antarctic
Huge wildfires are burning in the Arctic, with the largest spreading over 100,000 hectares - the largest fires on the planet. Whilst summer wildfires are normal, the scale is unprecedented, likely caused by more plant growth and higher temperatures.
A new study has shown that Antarctic sea ice, which previously has shown growth despite climate change, has been shrinking since 2014 at an alarming rate, losing the same amount of ice in 4 years as the Arctic has lost in 34. A NASA-funded study suggests that it will reach a tipping point where the melting is irreversible even if global heating stops.
EU
The massive heatwave that hit the EU in June made the month the hottest ever globally, with the heatwave itself thought to be made five times more likely by climate change. For reference, a similar heatwave 100 years ago would have been around 4°C cooler.
India
Mumbai has been hit by record rains as the monsoon season starts 10 days late. The rains are the heaviest in a decade, and have caused floods and collapsed a wall, killing a number of people.
USA
Anchorage has hit 90°F for the first time, over 5°F over the previous temperature record.
Svalbard
Longyearbyen, the most northerly town in the world, is now the fastest warming town in the world, having warmed 4°C since 1971 (a difference which rises to 7°C in winter).
Politics
USA
The US Senate has advanced a bill to support R&D for Direct Air Capture (pulling CO2 directly from air) as well as carbon utilisation.
Donald Trump has decided to put tariffs of up to 30% on foreign solar equipment, in a massive blow to the solar industry, which relies on import for up to 80% of its supply.
The Oregon saga detailed last week continues, with the governor saying that she is prepared to use her executive powers to pass the climate bill regardless of opposition.
Hawaii is to use carbon-injected concrete for all road construction going forward, to reduce the impact of concrete infrastructure.
Mississippi is trying to prevent stores from calling veggie burgers ‘veggie burgers’, claiming that it is confusing those trying to purchase meat products. A similar law was passed in Missouri last year and is being challenged in court, with other states also considering similar legislation to protect the meat and dairy industry.
Spain
The battle over the Madrid Central emissions scheme continues, with a judge ruling that the zone must be maintained after the new mayor started to roll back the scheme amid large scale protests.
India
India plans to increase renewables to 40% of its total energy capacity by 2030, at a cost of around $300 billion, taking renewables in the country to 500GW. However, coal will continue to be a mainstay (India has the 5th largest reserves globally), with coal use growing around 9% in the last year alone.
India is making policy changes to help electric vehicle sales and production, reducing sales taxes and increasing tax rebates, as well as removing import duty on li-ion battery imports (India lacks the natural resources to have a home-grown battery industry).
Brazil
The latest figures show that deforestation in June in the Brazilian Amazon rose 88.4% compared to the same month last year. The figures come as Brazil comes under pressure to improve environmental protection under the EU-Mercosur free trade deal that was signed last week. French president Emmanuel Macron had said he wouldn’t sign the deal if Brazil left the Paris Agreement.
China
China’s car market is in disarray after the 6th stage of car emissions standards have been rolled out early in many cities. Some dealerships can’t even sell existing car stock, with one offering a ‘buy 1 get 1 free’ to shift the non-compliant cars.
Business
The FTSE is reclassifying oil and gas companies as ‘non-renewables’ in an attempt to give renewable companies more visibility.
The fossil fuel industry more generally is suffering, with more and more companies going into debt. 175 oil and gas companies have filed for bankruptcy protection (with debts of around $100 billion). Coal is no better, with 51 coal plants closing and 8 coal companies filing for bankruptcy since Trump took to power in the US, vowing to protect the coal industry. Chubb, the USA’s largest commercial insurance company, has stopped insuring or investing in coal or coal-based projects entirely.
Air New Zealand is cutting down on the amount of single-use plastics utilised on their flights, to cut down on non-recyclable waste. However, the airline is still one of the country’s biggest emitters, thanks to it… being an airline.
Greenland is looking at selling sand uncovered by melting glaciers to the concrete industry. The country primarily relies on fishing for income, and is one of the hardest hit by climate change. The dredging for sand will hopefully cause relatively little damage, but could provide a valuable income stream at a time when the country sorely needs it.
Power
The current fossil-fuel infrastructure in place is already enough to take us past 1.5°C of global warming, and if all currently planned systems are built, and operated for their historical lifetimes, we’ll use up ⅔ of the carbon budget to take us to 2°C. This once again highlights how gradual step-changes are not enough - we need to be actively shutting down existing infrastructure ahead of schedule to have any hope of avoiding catastrophic warming.
On a similar note, Michael Liebreich of BNEF wrote an excellent summary of the current state of nuclear power. He pulls no punches on either side - we shouldn’t build new plants, as they’re overpriced and inefficient to construct, but existing plants provide safe, zero-carbon energy at a time we sorely need it, so we should keep them running as long as possible.
Switzerland is having to adapt to its glaciers melting at an ever-increasing rate. The country gains around 60% of its power from hydroelectricity, often from meltwater, but that is likely to decrease as the glaciers recede. In addition, they are shutting down their 5 nuclear power plants, so will need to massively scale up existing facilities to accommodate current and future demand.
Transport
45% of all cars sold in the first half of 2019 in Norway were electric, with sales of petrol-fueled cars declining about 29% versus the same period last year.
The CEO of BMW is stepping down, as the carmaker struggles with electrification - it has lost its position as the lead in the luxury vehicle market.
VW have announced that they will be sharing their new modular MEB electric vehicle platform with Ford in a huge partnership covering vans and pickup trucks initially. VW plans to start mass producing vehicles on the platform in the next 18 months. VW really seem to be taking electric vehicles seriously after their massive dieselgate fiasco, and this partnership will produce a lot more EV options, which can only be a good thing.
UK electric vehicle sales have fallen for the first time in two years. The drop has been blamed on a cut in subsidies, which were cut entirely for plug-in hybrids, and reduced for all-electric cars. Large car manufacturers need to drop emissions to under 95g/km across their fleets, and only two (Tesla and Smart) achieved that last year.
The Dutch national airline KLM is urging passengers not to fly unless they need to, as well as to offset their flights wherever possible. Whilst this is potentially greenwashing, it’s still a good gesture to make as flying is increasing around 7% year on year in the EU.
In an ironic touch, Heathrow airport is worried that climate change will impact its plans to add a third runway.
British Gas and SSE have commited to make their vehicle fleets entirely electric by 2030 - a total of around 16,000 new electric vehicles in place of fossil-fuel powered ones on UK roads.
Research
The story that everyone’s talking about is a study that shows that planting trillions of trees in non-crop land could massively assist in tackling climate change. However, some are claiming it as a magic fix-all solution, when in reality tackling climate change will take many approaches in all industries.
Elsevier, the oft-hated scientific publisher, are making over 5000 climate science papers free to download until the end of the year.
A long running German study of insect populations shows an enormous decline in numbers and variety of insect life in Europe in recent years, with the decline hailed as ‘the most massive extinction episode’ since the demise of the dinosaurs.
A new study on the health effects of high CO2 levels shows that negative impacts occur at a level of 1000ppm, which whilst much higher than average atmospheric levels, is often exceeded indoors, especially in cities. The study comes as air quality in the US shows a recent decline after years of improvement.
Australian fossil fuel exports make it responsible for 5% of global emissions, and if it goes ahead with all planned fossil fuel developments would be responsible for 17% by 2030.
Take Action
An official EU petition to set an official minimum carbon price
Another official EU petition to end the aviation fuel tax exemption in Europe
Endgame
That’s all for this week. If you've been sent this by a friend and would like to subscribe, please click the big purple button below (if you’re browsing the archive, you’ll find it in the top bar). And if you liked this, please share it with others - the more people we can reach, the better - thanks!
Until next week,
Oli
Notes from the community
As always, do let me know if there's anything going on that you'd like to tell the community about. This could be a new project, a blog post, an event - anything goes!