Essential reading
If you read only one article on climate issues this week, make it Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality is Coming Into View, David Wallace-Wells’s magisterial essay for New York Times Magazine (paywalled).
The best-selling author of the urgent-but-unreliable The Uninhabitable Earth has found a balanced voice that retains all of its passion and urgency in this nuanced survey of the current state of climate change.
He focuses on the recent series of policy and technological miracles that have made it possible to lower our likely global temperature increase to 2-3° C from our previous track, which was tending significantly warmer. He then looks at the likely consequences of the now-predicted outcome, which of course exceeds the 2° redline the IPCC has declared as the maximum increase we can sustain without devastating disruptions to the biosphere. It’s a sober look that touches on all of the major areas of current discussion and concern.
News roundup
Climate
The Lancet issues a stark report on health and climate
The prestigious medical journal The Lancet has published a major study on the health impact of climate change: The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: health at the mercy of fossil fuels.
Some of its findings:
Heat-related deaths increased by 68% between 2000–04 and 2017–21.
Infectious diseases such as Dengue fever are becoming more widespread.
In 2021, heat exposure led to the loss of 470 billion work hours globally, with potential income losses equal to .72% of global economic output (and even higher - 5 to 6% of GDP - in developing countries where workers are most economically vulnerable).
Food security is imperiled by shorter growing seasons, crop damage from extreme weather, and various other effects.
Very few countries and medical systems are proactively adapting to changing climatic conditions.
The report lays these problems squarely at the feet of fossil fuel industry:
Fossil fuel dependence is not only undermining global health through increased climate change impacts, but also affects human health and well-being directly, through volatile and unpredictable fossil fuel markets, frail supply chains, and geopolitical conflicts. As a result, millions of people do not have access to the energy needed to keep their homes at healthy temperatures, preserve food and medication, and meet the seventh Sustainable Development Goal (to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all)....
Simultaneously, oil and gas companies are registering record profits, while their production strategies continue to undermine people's lives and wellbeing.
Greenpeace: “failed” US recycling recovers less than 5% of plastic
I’ve got mixed feelings about plastic recycling - it’s hard to know how seriously to take it. In Germany, you are very aware of recycling and it’s easy to feel as though the country is doing its part on plastic as you dutifully sort your rubbish, but that can mask the underlying reality that Germany is the largest plastics polluter in the EU by a wide margin. And one wonders how much plastic in those bins is actually recycled.
According to a new study by Greenpeace, the answer in the United States is “not very much.” CBS News reports that “the study found that of 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by U.S. households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons were recycled, or around five percent.”
You know the triangles that tell you what kind of plastic you’re recycling? Only 1 and 2 (PET and HDPE) are actually recycled enough to meet the FTC definition of “recyclable,” with 3 through 7 being recycled at rates of less than 5% each. They call plastics recycling a “failed concept” and don’t mince words in describing recycling largely as a greenwashing campaign by a plastics industry that is churning out its products more cheaply than ever.
Greenpeace: Circular Claims Fall Flat Again
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is in more trouble than we thought
A pair of expeditions to the Antarctic have shed new light on the surprising dynamics by which the Thwaites Ice Shelf is being melted by seawater below in a series of jagged crevices.
This is bad news, because the shelf breaking up would accelerate the demise of the Thwaites Glacier, which is the only thing protecting the ginormous West Antarctic Ice Sheet from direct contact with relatively warm ocean water. From the article:
Even the most optimistic greenhouse gas emissions scenarios indicate that by 2050 humanity will likely be locked in to at least two meters of sea-level rise in the coming centuries. That will put the homes of at least 10 million people in the U.S. below the high tide line. If the Thwaites Glacier collapses and destabilizes the heart of West Antarctica, then sea-level rise jumps to five meters, placing the homes of at least 20 million U.S. people and another 50 million to 100 million people worldwide below high tide. Although Sacramento, Calif., is not the first city that comes to mind when imagining sea-level rise, it would lose 50 percent of its homes as ocean water pushes 80 kilometers inland through low-lying river deltas.
I found this long article as engrossing as a John le Carré mystery. Really well written.
Scientific American: Antarctica’s Collapse Could Begin Even Sooner Than Anticipated
Bad times for Seattle
In October of this year, Seattle had the worst air quality in the world with an AQI of 240 - worse than Beijing or New Delhi. According to the Washington Post, “The cause was forest fires raging in the Cascade Mountains, combined with weeks of unusually dry and hot weather.”
Speaking of which, CNN reports that the famously-wet city has had scarcely any rain since June, and 56% of the state of Washington is experiencing drought conditions.
Renewable Energy and Technology
IEA: Fossil fuels set to plateau or decline
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released its annual World Energy Outlook, which is loaded with interesting information. One major result is that IEA models based on current policies showed global demand for all fossil fuels peaking or in a plateau for the first time.
Reuters: Energy crisis sparked by Ukraine war to speed up green transition -IEA
BBC: World facing 'first truly global energy crisis', report says
Politics and Policy
GOP prepares attack on renewables as midterm looms
If you live in the United States and need another push to vote, here it is: the GOP is preparing to take a hatchet to conservation efforts and the recent raft of renewable energy technology incentives at the behest of fossil fuel lobbying groups. So please vote.
Carbon offsets or direct donations to climate causes?
Time has a provocatively-titled piece called Donating to Climate Charities Might Be Better Than Buying Carbon Offsets. It’s largely a survey of the problems associated with carbon offsets, which form an important but almost totally-unregulated industry, and its effectiveness is open to substantial criticism. Bloomberg recently ran a piece, for example, looking at the UK utility Drax’s plans to sell carbon offsets now for a technology that doesn’t exist yet. (You may remember Drax from a few weeks ago - they’re also cutting down old growth forest in Canada to power their plants with wood).
Time stops short of recommending that you donate to charities instead, because there are so many variables it’s hard to generalize. But you should know that there are a lot of problems with carbon offset. Keep in mind that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and adding $7 to your plane ticket will probably not really make your flight “carbon neutral.”
Energy Charter Treaty is on the ropes, and its head is freaking out
Last week we talked about the Netherlands moving to exit the Energy Charter Treaty, a 1990s-era treaty that was intended to stabilize energy markets and support long-term investment, especially in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, one of the mechanisms the treaty provides is that it allows fossil fuel companies to sue countries which substantially lower their planned use of fossil fuels. Grid decarbonization wasn’t really on the radar when the treaty was concluded.
Germany’s largest utility, RWE, has in fact sued the Netherlands under the treaty for billions of euros over their plans to reduce carbon emissions, and the case is not handled by courts, but by a tribunal that is often described as “secretive.”
The Dutch have had enough, apparently, and are leaving the agreement, with many other countries poised to follow, including Germany. Unfortunately, abandoning the treaty may not be enough, because its sunset provisions mean former members are still liable for 20 years after exiting the agreement. To paraphrase Cormac McCarthy, if this isn’t a mess, it’ll do till the mess gets here.
Politico covers the unfolding drama in EU tries to stop energy treaty exit stampede. And in a separate article, they chronicle the highly-public Twitter meltdown of Guy Lentz, secretary-general of the Energy Charter Treaty, who is apparently cracking under the pressure. Before deleting his Twitter account, he Tweeted that a Columbia University researcher “totally stupid” and asked "Who is paying those clowns for this kind of shit? … Hey man, wake up, wonderland is for kids."
COP27 to be dominated by questions of fairness
Yale Environment360 gives a good rundown on the global justice questions posed by the fact that many of the countries most vulnerable to climate change have played almost no role in producing emissions. As Wallace-Wells points out in his above-cited piece, a third of Pakistan is underwater due to flooding, but in the country’s entire history, it has produced less CO2 than the United States will produce this year. So who pays for cleanup and reconstruction?
Yale Environment360: As UN Climate Talks Near, a Showdown on Reparations Looms
Join the conversation!
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