31/08/2020

Why We Believe Planting 1 Trillion Trees Can Save The Planet

TIME - Jane Goodall | Marc Benioff



Authors
For more than six months, a pathogen has swept through nearly every country in the world, unleashing an unprecedented global health and economic emergency.

At the same time, another potentially more lethal emergency continues to threaten us: the warming of the planet.

While the impacts of the climate crisis have been more gradual than the spread of COVID-19, there is no doubt that our world is changing.

Millions of people have suffered losses from catastrophic droughts, hurricanes and floods. It’s not just that our own health and economies are being threatened; it’s that climate change is reshaping a planet that will not support the lives of future generations.

The climate-science community has demonstrated that if we do not make significant progress in combatting this crisis, global temperatures could rise above the critical 1.5°C threshold, permanently damaging the natural systems that sustain us.

And, like the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change disproportionately affects our more disadvantaged and vulnerable populations, exacerbating existing economic and racial inequalities.

The truth is, we know how to fight the climate crisis: reduce emissions, become carbon neutral, clean up oceans and develop a sustainable relationship with the natural world to restore the biodiversity of key habitats. Climate scientists, environmental organizations and even governments have, each in their own way, worked out how to tackle every one of these steps. Their implementation requires a combination of technology, policy, funding and coordination.

By far the most cost-effective of all the big solutions is to protect and restore forests. Forests extract and store CO2 from the atmosphere and produce the oxygen we breathe. But these complex ecosystems have been systematically destroyed. We have already lost nearly half the world’s trees, most within the last 100 years. And most of the remaining trees—about 3 trillion—are still under threat, even though they are a critical tool in the fight against climate change.

At this moment in time, massive fires have yet again erupted around the world, from California to the Congo Basin to the Amazon. Far too many of these fires are intentionally set because agricultural profits have been prioritized over the health of our planet. A call to stop deforestation is more important than ever before.

That’s why forward-thinking corporate leaders who understand the urgent need to heal our planet are supporting environmentalists who have been in the fight for decades. We’ve joined forces—a businessperson and a conservationist—to support the Trillion Tree challenge (1T.org), an effort to bring together old and new partners to add momentum to the regreening of our planet and plant 1 trillion trees around the world by 2030. Companies joined by NGOs and youth movements as well as a number of governments, such as the U.S., have pledged their support for this solution. Those involved will be able to share best practices, with a major goal of maintaining biodiversity standards.

This effort could capture an estimated 200 gigatonnes of carbon over the coming decades, an amount equal to two-thirds of the pollution produced since the Industrial Revolution. But it will take time for young trees to capture the same amount of CO2 as mature forests. That is why we need many new partners to join the tens of thousands of efforts already under way.

Planting 1 trillion trees won’t be easy, but each one of us can make a difference in this fight. We can plant trees in backyards and neighborhoods, or donate to one of the many responsible programs that have long been restoring and protecting forests and woodlands in almost every country around the world.

Our challenge is clear. We can protect and restore our forests while also investing in jobs and global economies. But our success will depend on one another; together we can create the kind of change needed to heal our planet.

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Antarctica: 60% Of Ice Shelves At Risk Of Fracture, Research Suggests

The Guardian - 

Collapse of shelves would accelerate loss of Antarctic ice sheet and increase sea-level rise

Fracture at the front of Ross ice shelf, the largest in Antarctica. A platform of ice nearly four times the size of the UK is at risk of collapse. Photograph: Martin Wearing/PA 

Approximately 60% of Antarctica’s ice shelves could be vulnerable to fracture, accelerating the loss of the Antarctic ice sheet and increasing sea-level rise, according to a paper.

Antarctica’s ice shelves, floating extensions of the ice sheet, help slow the flow of ice into the ocean. But if these shelves fracture and then collapse, the flow of melting glaciers into the oceans accelerates.

A study published in the journal Nature has mapped areas where ice shelves hold back upstream ice and are susceptible to “hydrofracture”, where meltwater flows into crevasses and fissures in the ice and enlarges them, potentially triggering the collapse of the ice shelf.

This process could accelerate the loss of Antarctic ice more than some climatic models predict as atmospheric warming increases. The study follows scientists’ recent announcement that Earth has lost 28tn tonnes of ice from its surface since 1994.

Most climatic models do not include the impact of hydrofracturing in their calculations, although one 2016 paper did account for them in a simpler way than the new study.

Hydrofracturing can only occur if the surface of an ice shelf is inundated with meltwater. Large pools of meltwater have existed in many areas of Antarctica for decades without causing the collapse of an ice shelf because the flow of water into surface fissures is slow or refreezes.

A tributary ice stream flowing from the Transantarctic mountains into the Ross ice shelf. Photograph: Martin Wearing/PA

While some areas are not susceptible to fracture, Ching-Yao Lai of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and colleagues identified that 60% of the Antarctic ice shelf was both slowing the flow of ice into the ocean and also vulnerable to fracture.

While fractures in the ice are visible in satellite imagery, manual mapping is impractical because of the extent of the ice. So Lai and colleagues used machine learning to identify fracture-like features in satellite pictures of Antarctica, before modelling which fractures were vulnerable to hydrofracturing.

They developed a model to predict where fractures could form and found close agreement with the fractures mapped by their machine learning algorithm.

Lai said: “We predicted that the ice-shelves areas that can collapse due to hydrofracture are mostly the crucial part of ice shelves that hold back the upstream flow of ice sheets. Thus the loss of these ice-shelf areas due to hydrofracture can substantially affect the flow of ice sheets into the ocean.

“But predicting how much and how fast the loss of Antarctic ice and sea-level rise will occur due to the hydrofracturing process will require coupling our new fracture model with an ice-sheet and climate model, which is an important next step.”

The researchers hope their fracture model can help create more accurate models of the fate of the ice sheets, which together with climatic modelling will produce more accurate predictions of sea-level rise, which scientists believe could exceed one metre by the century’s end.

The researchers warned that while many areas of Antarctic meltwater were not currently likely to cause the hydrofracture of the ice beneath, with global heating these areas could become newly at risk in the future.

“Increased meltwater ponding in resilient locations will not lead to widespread hydrofracturing according to our analysis,” the authors wrote. “However, predictions of future melt suggest that melt rates seen in locations that experience meltwater ponding today could become widespread by 2100 under high-emissions scenarios.”

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(AU) Climate Crisis: Business, Farming And Environment Leaders Unite To Warn Australia 'Woefully Unprepared'

The Guardian - 

An extraordinary statement by 10 groups says the nation’s future prosperity is at risk without a coherent response

Leaders representing the breadth of Australian society are calling on Australian governments to act immediately to reduce and manage climate risks. File photo of the Port Kembla steelworks. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP

Business, industry, farming and environmental leaders have joined forces to warn Australia is “woefully unprepared” for the impact of climate change over the coming decades and to urge the Morrison government to do far more to cut emissions and improve the country’s resilience.

An extraordinary statement by 10 organisations, several with close ties to the Coalition, said climate change was already having a “real and significant” impact on the economy and community. The groups, representing the breadth of Australian society, called on the federal and state governments to act immediately to reduce and manage the risks.

Organisations including the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group, the National Farmers’ Federation, the Australian Aluminium Council and the ACTU said public debate about the cost of doing more to reduce emissions had too often not considered the cost of climate change to the economy, environment and society.

They cited evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that emissions would need to be net-zero by 2050 if the goals of the Paris agreement are to be achieved, and said Australia must adopt that target.

The statement, issued under the Australian Climate Roundtable banner, said Australia’s future prosperity would be at risk unless it had a coherent national response to the crisis.

“The scale of costs and breadth of the impact of climate change for people in Australia is deeply concerning and will escalate over time,” it said. “It is in Australia’s national interest that we do all we can to contribute to successful global action to minimise further temperature rises and take action to manage the changes we can’t avoid.”

The groups, some of which have been involved in past campaigns to slow action on climate change, agreed to the statement after holding five climate-themed expert workshops. They heard from climate scientists and organisations including the Reserve Bank, the Australian Energy Market Operator and Insurance Australia Group.

The statement said the expert advice made clear temperatures were increasing, extreme climate-related events such as heatwaves and bushfires were becoming more intense and frequent, and natural systems were suffering irreversible damage. Some communities were now in a constant state of recovery from successive natural disasters with growing economic ramifications.

It said inaction would lead to unprecedented economic damage to Australia and its regional trading partners, heightened risks to financial stability – particularly as the insurance industry became compromised – and significant threats to the agriculture, forestry, tourism and fishing industries.

There would be severe pressure on government budgets due to a dramatic fall in tax revenue and a rise in natural disasters that demanded emergency response and recovery spending and there would be major and long-lived social and health impacts, including loss of life.

The roundtable concluded Australia must play its fair part in international efforts to limit average global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, or at most to well below a 2C increase.

That meant setting a target of net-zero emissions by mid-century and introducing policies to meet it that aimed to lift social equity and the country’s global competitive advantage in a zero-emissions world.

The Morrison government has rejected calls that it back the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. The target has been adopted by more than 70 countries, all Australian states and a growing number of business and investors, including fossil fuel companies. National emissions have dipped 1.5% since the Coalition was elected in 2013 after falling about 14% in six years under Labor.

The roundtable said even with ambitious global action Australia faced escalating costs due to unavoidable climate change from historical emissions, and must act swiftly to improve resilience. It said the country was “woefully unprepared” for the scale of threats that would emerge as it lacked a systemic government response at any level.

The groups recommended climate change response become a standing item at national cabinet meetings and that the government order a biannual climate vulnerability assessment similar to that undertaken in the US and New Zealand. They said the climate crisis needed to be addressed as the country tackled the Covid-19 economic recovery.


The Green Recovery: how Australia can ditch coal (without ditching jobs)

Other members of the roundtable are the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Council of Social Service, the Australian Energy Council, the Investor Group on Climate Change and the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Innes Willox, the chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, said the evidence was deeply concerning. “The urgency of (the risk of huge costs) should drive all Australian governments to lift our game on adaptation and put net zero emissions by 2050 at the heart of their plans for prosperity,” he said.

The business council chief, Jennifer Westacott, said: “Putting Australia on the path to net zero emissions by 2050 can be an opportunity to drive billions of dollars of new investment, create new jobs, create new industries, boost our resilience and build the stronger regions we’ll need to supercharge our recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.”

The roundtable said it planned a second series of workshops on what a successful transition to net-zero emissions would look like. It said the country risked losing investment to countries with clearer targets and transition roadmaps if it did not act.

“We are prepared to work with all stakeholders to help Australia rise above decades of delay and come together to address one of the greatest challenges the nation has ever faced,” it said.

A spokesperson for the emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, said the government was committed to the Paris agreement and its policies, including a technology investment roadmap and recommendations by businessman Grant King, would help it beat its 2030 climate goal of a 26-28% cut below 2005 levels.

Scientists and analysts have found Australia would need to cut its emissions by at least 45% by 2030 to play its part under the Paris pact.

Labor’s climate spokesman, Mark Butler, said: “If Scott Morrison or the ‘moderate Liberals’ have any backbone they will listen to this statement and commit to net zero emissions by 2050.”

The Insurance Council of Australia said on Thursday the industry had received more than 297,780 claims relating to bushfire, flood and hailstorm catastrophes last summer, with losses totalling almost $5.4bn. The chief executive, Rob Whelan, said it was the worst natural disaster season he had experienced in 10.5 years in the role.

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