How We Will All Solve The Climate Crisis

WIRED - Nicholas Thompson*

We only have one Earth. And we have the technology to save it.

Illustration: Eiko Ojala

The Climate Issue Start The Only Option Is to Act Now How We Will All Solve the Climate Crisis The Battle Against Global Warming Is the New Cold War We Can't Tackle Climate Change Without You Capture How We'll Cut the Carbon Why Old-Growth Trees Are Crucial to Fighting Climate Change Concrete Is Awful for the Planet. Clever Chemistry Can Help The Political Promise of Carbon Taxes Nourish How We'll Feed—and Save—the Planet A One-Time Poultry Farmer Invents the Future of Refrigeration The Fishy Fix to a Methane-Spewing Crop Mmmm, Fungus. It’s the Next Big Thing in Fake Meat GMOs Could be a Key to Sustainable Farming What Plant-Based Burgers Can Teach Us About Saving the Planet Move How We'll Drive (and Fly and Ride) Better Build Cities for Bikes, Buses, and Feet—Not Cars The Cargo Industry’s Quest to Curb Carbon-Belching Ships Rivian Wants to Bring Electric Trucks to the Masses How Airlines Are Trying to Boost Efficiency and Cut Emissions To Cut Carbon, Ditch Air Travel—and Get on the Right Track Renew How We'll Push Fossil Fuels to Extinction Wyoming Confronts Its Wind-Powered Destiny A Truly Green Electric Grid Will Need Very Big Batteries Energy-Saving AI Is Coming for Your Office Thermostat Geoengineering Is an Option. Just Read the Fine Print Solar Power Is Sustainable for the Economy, Too Solar Panels Could Be the Best Fad Ever

Not long ago, in more innocent times, I was driving with my three sons back from trying to ski on a mountain that doesn't really have snow anymore, and we were talking about climate change. This was before the pandemic, and before our conversations shifted to discussions of what viruses are and why soap, miraculously, can kill them.

The kids are 11, 9, and 6, and they're worried about the present and upset about the future, as they should be. They know that their adult years will be spent in a world of raging fires, flash floods, and mass extinction. They love Greta and resent their elders. The future feels different and vaster when the actuarial tables give you 80 years to go, not 40.

We talked about turning our thermostats down, eating less meat, and putting the cable box on a smart plug. I promised to install solar panels. I tried futilely to explain what capitalism is and why it was still a reasonable way to organize human affairs, despite CO₂ levels now reaching 415 ppm. I told them there was still time. They found my explications unpersuasive and mostly shared each other's anger (except when the older boys reported that some environmentalists argue against having three children; that didn't go over well with their little brother). Gradually, though, their rage turned to pragmatism. That's when my oldest son asked: “If there's one thing that I could invent that would help, what would it be?”

It's an awesome question—maybe a quintessentially 11-year-old one. From our first moments of consciousness up through childhood, the things we think we might be able to do with our lives broaden and broaden. And then, at some point around adolescence, they start to narrow. Our imaginations shrink, our obligations grow, we charge ahead on certain roads and avoid the ones less traveled. Eleven is wonderful. You're aware of the world and its limitations, but if you're lucky your imagination hasn't been crimped yet. Really, maybe, you can do anything.

The question hung for a second, and then I just took my best guess. “Maybe build a better battery?” A breakthrough in energy storage could go a long way toward improving the prospects for electric cars, the wind industry, and the entire renewable economy, I said. Maybe there's a way to store much more electricity in a smaller space, without requiring cobalt from the exploitative deep mines of the Congo.

In retrospect, it's not a terrible answer. But I wasn't sure if it was the best one. I thought a lot about the question after we arrived back home. And then, at a meeting here at WIRED, I floated it by my colleagues. In due course, either because it's a great question or because parents overestimate their children—and journalists overestimate their bosses—it became the inspiration for this entire issue.

Yes, we did end up taking some liberties with the question, stretching it in some ways and constraining it in others. We primarily focused on technology that exists today, so there are probably fewer wizarding-world-type projects than my children would like. And we narrowed the scope of our assignments to what we consider the five most crucial areas: how we eat, how we move around, how we keep the lights on, how we capture carbon, and how we can set up institutions that can take the risks needed to solve this problem. Children who are now in booster seats, all around the world, are going to be inventing solutions to the crisis, and they'll need support, investment, and, yes, well-designed capitalism to get them off the ground.

Even we optimists at WIRED know this is a very, very bad situation—likely the most complex problem humans have ever faced. We know that a lot of what has been lost is never coming back, and to grieve is human. But WIRED's purview is the future, and really the only way to think creatively about the future is with something like optimism. Not the blind kind, but the informed kind. We can be hopeful without being obtuse. It’s an attitude that can help, too, as we think about trying to find treatments and vaccines to combat the coronavirus and reimagine the world when we, and it, emerge from the current state of lockdown.

We want our readers to feel empowered when they finish reading, because the solutions are gathering steam all around us. We can lay carbon-sucking concrete in cities that have largely exiled cars. We can reengineer rice paddies and then store our leftover rice in vastly more efficient refrigerators. We can even, yes, make better batteries. We are going to solve the coronavirus crisis through brilliant science and research, and through social cohesion as well. And we can solve the climate crisis too.

*Nicholas Thompson is the editor in chief of Wired

Links

• The WIRED Guide to Climate Change
• The Dirty Secret of the World’s Plan to Avert Climate Disaster
• Renewables Aren’t Enough. Clean Coal Is the Future
• Nations Be Damned, the World's Cities Can Take a Big Bite Out of Emissions
• The US Flirts With Geoengineering to Stymie Climate Change
• The World Needs Drastic Action to Meet Paris Climate Goals
• Climate Change Causes Extreme Weather—But Not All of It
• Take a Good Look, America. This Is What the Reckoning Looks Like

Cop26 Climate Talks In Glasgow Postponed Until 2021

The Guardian - Jillian Ambrose

Crucial UN conference will be delayed until next year as a result of the coronavirus crisis

The UN climate talks due to be held in Glasgow later this year have been postponed as governments around the world struggle to halt the spread of coronavirus.

The most important climate negotiations since the Paris agreement in 2015 were scheduled to take place this November to put countries back on track to avoid climate breakdown. They will now be pushed back to 2021.

A statement from the UN on Wednesday night confirmed that the meeting of over 26,000 attendees would be delayed until next year. It said new dates for the conference would be decided in due course.

The UK energy minister and president of the Cop26 conference, Alok Sharma, held crunch talks with the UN and several other countries on Wednesday evening to confirm the timing of the summit. “The world is currently facing an unprecedented global challenge and countries are rightly focusing their efforts on saving lives and fighting Covid-19. That is why we have decided to reschedule Cop26,” he said.

“We will continue working tirelessly with our partners to deliver the ambition needed to tackle the climate crisis and I look forward to agreeing a new date for the conference.”

The Cop26 meeting was scheduled to be held in Glasgow at the SEC arena, a venue that the Scottish government plans to turn into a field hospital to treat virus victims.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed to delay the vital talks because of the widespread disruption caused by coronavirus, and will also delay a key preliminary meeting scheduled for Bonn, Germany, which was also expected to be derailed by widespread lockdowns and travel restrictions.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said it was vital that the delay should not allow governments to back down on their commitments to tackle the climate crisis. “The decision to postpone the climate talks in Glasgow was inevitable given the health emergency the world is currently facing,” he told the Guardian. “But while the summit has been delayed, the climate emergency can’t be put on hold. Government stimulus packages will hold the key as to whether this emergency significantly delays or advances progress on tackling the climate emergency.”

Some campaigners believe there could be another advantage to delay, as the US presidential elections take place this November, just before Cop26 was scheduled to begin. With the summit delayed to next year, other governments will have time to adjust either to a second term of Donald Trump – who opposes the Paris agreement and is withdrawing the US from it – or a new president who is likely to support climate action.

But several prominent climate experts had feared that delaying the talks would mean governments eased off on pursuing stronger commitments to fulfil the Paris goals.

Christiana Figueres, the UN climate chief who oversaw the Paris summit in 2015, had argued for keeping Glasgow on track. On Wednesday night she accepted the delay but added: “Emissions must peak this year if we want to limit warming to 1.5C and the Paris agreement set the Cop26 summit as the moment when all countries would ramp up their targets in line with the steep emissions decline we need to see in this decisive next decade.”

The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) welcomed the delay as the best hope of rebuilding diplomatic momentum before the talks take place. Stephanie Pfeifer, the group’s CEO, said investors would support the decision because it “improves the likelihood of a strong outcome and ensuring that the world is put on a path to tackle the climate crisis”.

But the delay will come as a blow to some climate campaigners, who have urged the UK government to proceed with the conference despite the outbreak to avoid stalling progress on global climate action. They believe since the Paris agreement, countries have failed to develop climate commitments that go far enough to avoid a catastrophic environmental breakdown. The Glasgow talks aim to galvanise tougher plans to cap rising temperatures by limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

Links

• UN Climate Change: COP26 Postponed
• COP26 postponed: The reaction
• Coronavirus forces postponement of COP26 meeting in Glasgow
• 2020 United Nations Climate Change Conference
• 'Another year of failure’
• Government insists COP26 summit will be in Glasgow

India's Women Seaweed Divers Swim Against The Tide Of Climate Change

Reuters - Anuradha Nagaraj

Coastal women who have long dived for a harvest are now battling global-warming driven changes to keep their profession alive

A seaweed harvester off the coast of Ramanathapuram, India, March 8, 2020.
Thomson Reuters Foundation/Anuradha Nagaraj

RAMANATHAPURAM, India - In a blue plastic barrel, Meenakshi Mookupori packed her belongings for a five-day stay on an island in the Indian Ocean, off the Coromandal coast of south India.

Besides her clothes, toothbrush and soap, she included her diving gear - a worn-out pair of black socks, a locally made pair of goggles, cheap plastic slippers, cloth gloves, a round metallic plate with straps - and pain killers.

Mookupori, 56, is one of nearly 2,000 women in Tamil Nadu state who dive to collect seaweed used in making agar, a gelatinous substance that becomes a thickener in food and medicines.

"I started accompanying my mother and grandmother to sea when I was eight or 10," she said, as she helped load cans of drinking water onto the boat.

"Those days, the seaweed collection was huge. We would bring back bags full. Now the quantity has reduced. The number of days we harvest the seaweed has also reduced. The sea has changed and we also had to."

Rising sea levels, hotter temperatures and stronger currents along this coast - considered one of the best for commercial seaweed cultivation - are some of the changes Mookupori is seeing.

Scientists say they are caused by climate change.

"With the rise in sea temperature and salinity, seaweed growth has declined in the last decade," said K. Eswaran, a scientist who heads the field research unit of the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute in Ramanathapuram district.

"Women who harvest seaweed have definitely been impacted, with their incomes coming down by at least 20%," he said.

Seaweed harvester Raniamma heads out to sea off the coast of Ramanathapuram in Tamil Nadu, India, March 8, 2020.
Thomson Reuters Foundation/Anuradha Nagaraj

Down Under

Mookupori grew up watching her mother leave home before dawn, board a boat and go to work harvesting in the Gulf of Mannar.

The shallow bay with a 365-kilometre (225-miles) coastline is known for its coral reefs and is home to endangered species such as dugongs, a marine mammal related to the manatee.

In 1986, the region was declared a national biodiversity park under India's Wildlife Protection Act and collecting natural resource there was prohibited.

A Tamil Nadu government report noted at the time that the major environmental threat to the gulf region was quarrying of coral for production of calcium carbide and lime.

But creation of the marine park meant restrictions on accessing the bay's 21 uninhabited islands to fish - or to collect seaweed - for 125 local villages.

"It was like they were declared thieves in their own backyard," said Venugopal, the programme head for the non-profit International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) Trust.

"The national park excluded them from that space, making it challenging for the women to earn a livelihood, instead of giving them rights to the sea and including them in the conservation programme."

However, with few other options to earn a living, the gulf's seaweed collectors have continued to illegally ply their trade.

Raniamma, 50, one of the harvesters who works with Mookupori, said she always keeps an eye out for anti-poaching officials when she and other seaweed harvesters sail to the islands for a harvest. Being caught there can carry a fine.

"But if we don't camp on the island, we are unable to collect enough seaweed to sell," she said, rolling up her sari and slipping into leggings and socks held up by rubber bands.

For each five kilograms of wet seaweed she collects, Raniamma earns 75 Indian rupees (about $1). Once the seaweed is dried and cleaned, it is sold by traders for 400 rupees ($5) per five kilos to domestic industry buyers.

"We only take what we need from the sea, which is seaweed," Raniamma said.

"The anti-poaching officers don't understand. We live off the sea and we are also its guardians. What we see down there is precious and we know it," she said.

Seaweed harvesters heading out to sea in Bharathinagar in Tamil Nadu, India, March 7, 2020.
Thomson Reuters Foundation/Anuradha Nagaraj

Local Knowledge

The women of Bharathinagar in Ramanathapuram district, who have waded into the waters of India's southeast coast for decades, possess a wealth of knowledge about the gulf waters.

Now 60-year-old Mariamma Masanam, her fingers gnarled after years of harvests, can see conditions shifting.

"We feel the changes. The waters are rougher and we have to spend longer hours underwater to fill our bags. We are also travelling farther from the coast then we did earlier," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Ramanathapuram district wildlife warden A.S. Marimuthu has also seen the changes, and said he was looking for ways to collaborate with the women.

"They have never been a big problem for us but we hope they will play a bigger role in managing the marine reserve with us."

Under a United Nations Development Programme initiative, for instance, eco-development committees have been set-up in fishing villages, with women educated on conservation and given training for alternative careers to reduce their dependence on the sea.

For now, to deal with the changing conditions and protect their seaweed beds, the women have cut the numbers of days they harvest and discarded the metal scrapers they once used, now gathering the seaweed with their hands instead.

To counter charges of over-harvesting, they ply their trade only about 12 days a month and ensure they rotate between islands.

None of them harvest between April and June, the main breeding season for fish.

But their biggest push to protect the ecosystem and their livelihoods has been to begin cultivating - as well as harvesting - seaweed.

In additional to wild harvesting, the women now grow seaweed on bamboo rafts, as part of an effort promoted by the Tamil Nadu government. But set-up costs are significant and harvests unpredictable, the women say.

Still, "there are more than 600 women who have shifted to cultivating seaweed and that has helped the ecosystem tremendously," said Eswaran.

Growing seaweed also has helped the women get a harvest in summer months when wild harvesting is harder as higher temperatures and disease outbreaks cut seaweed growth, he said.

Raniamma gears up to go seaweed harvesting in Tamil Nadu, India, March 8, 2020.
Thomson Reuters Foundation/Anuradha Nagaraj

The Last Generation?

Mookupori and Raniamma, however, consider themselves likely to be the last generation of seaweed harvesters along this cost.

All of the six women on the boat with Mookupori are over 50, with deeply tanned skin, greying hair and wrinkled faces.

The women talk about the harsh conditions of the sea, the rising tides and the great physical strength required to hold one's breath and go down to the depths.

But with every passing year, yields are falling and fines for wild harvesting increasing, they said, making their work an unattractive job option for their children.

"Our children would never do this," Mookupori said.

"In fact, sometimes we take them to the islands just for a picnic and show them a little of what we do. But when we stop diving, there will be no one else."

Note: $A1 = 46.75 Indian rupees

Links

• For Mumbai's Slum-Dwellers, Climate Change Is Slicing Away The Haves From The Have-Nots
• Rising Sea Levels Put Myanmar's Villages On Frontline Of Climate Change
• China And India Demand Cash For Climate Action On Eve Of UN Summit
• No System Of Government Designed By Human Beings Can Survive What The Climate Crisis Will Bring
• Al Gore Slams Adani, Tells Queensland 'Good Luck' In Selling Coal To India
• Indian Summer Monsoon Amplified Global Warming 130,000 Years Ago, Helping End Ice Age
• Deadly Tensions Rise As India’s Water Supply Runs Dangerously Low
• India Taps Solar, Storage To Ensure All Homes Have Power In 2018