Lethal Heating: 10/12/20

12/10/2020

Campaign Seeks 1bn People To Save Climate – One Small Step At A Time

The Guardian - Fiona Harvey

Count Us In urges actions such as eating local, making clothes last or buying an electric car

Some of the actions are as simple as opting for a portobello mushroom vegan burger instead of beef. Photograph: count_kert/Getty Images/iStockphoto

If a billion people around the world were to take a few small steps and make them into permanent lifestyle changes, global greenhouse gas emissions could be significantly reduced, a new campaign argues.

These actions can be as simple as eating local food, forgoing meat at some meals, and wearing clothes to last instead of throwing them away after a few outings.

The campaign, which is backed by businesses including Ikea, HSBC, BT and Reckitt Benckiser (owner of brands such as Cillit Bang, Gaviscon and Durex), is urging people to sign up to take at least one simple step that would reduce emissions.

Count Us In invites people to sign up online for the steps they want to take and a level of commitment, such as moving permanently to a different diet or promising not to fly over a specified period.

There are 16 steps on offer, of varying levels of difficulty. These range from having your house insulated, buying an electric car or solar panels and opting to fly less, to writing to political representatives and reusing and repairing belongings rather than buying new ones.

Some of the measures – such as turning down the thermostat and buying fewer new clothes – are ones that many people do routinely out of necessity rather than choice. However, the campaign aims to raise awareness among consumers that patterns of high consumption are unsustainable.

People signing up for the service will receive email reminders of further steps they could take: for instance, someone signing up to drive an electric vehicle would receive information about solar panels. A spokeswoman said people would not receive marketing material from specific companies.
Count Us In calculates that 20% of global emissions could be reduced if 1 billion individuals take the steps it advocates.

“Imagine what the world would look like if a billion people took action to fight climate change,” said Chris Anderson, the head of TED, the online talks platform that is one of the backers. “We can all make a difference by taking simple practical steps.”

Pia Heidenmark Cook, the chief sustainability officer at Ingka Group, the largest Ikea franchisee, said: “We believe that urgency and optimism create action, and we need to act now. Many solutions already exist and if we all do our part, we can solve the climate crisis.”

Emissions dropped by about 17% on average globally in April, as many countries imposed coronavirus lockdowns that left roads deserted, grounded flights and stopped much industrial activity. Experts said at the time that the fact the majority of emissions remained intact showed the need for systemic change to counter the climate crisis.

Some climate activists not involved with the campaign privately expressed reservations to the Guardian, saying that large companies and governments must shoulder more responsibility.

Joel Lev-Tov, a youth climate activist, said: “[I find it] absolutely disgusting. It’s blaming the consumers for their choices instead of the fossil fuel companies and big business who are emitting more CO2 than I could ever emit in my lifetime in a few hours. While I appreciate the intention behind their campaign … individual change won’t help us solve the climate crisis.”

Eric Levine, a partner at the social enterprise Leaders’ Quest, one of the campaign’s backers, said: “We are trying to get to citizens who don’t think of themselves as climate change activists. If we don’t get that mass audience we won’t get the change we need [from governments]. These are steps that matter and we need everybody to be involved.”

Levine said Leaders’ Quest and Do Nation, which runs the project, would have access to the data of people who sign up, but that consumers could choose whether to give access to their details to the businesses participating. The pledges taken by participants will be made public but the user can choose whether to reveal their name.

The 68 business and cultural organisations backing the initiative include the football clubs Tottenham Hotspur and Forest Green Rovers, which will publicise the campaign to their supporters, and the Earthshot prize launched by Prince William this week.

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What’s Green, Soggy And Fights Climate Change?

New York Times - Henry Fountain

You might be surprised: Protecting peat bogs could help the world avert the worst effects of global warming, a new study has found.

Forest and peatland that burned in a wildfire in the Netherlands in April. Credit...Sem Van Der Wal/EPA, via Shutterstock

Protecting intact peatlands and restoring degraded ones are crucial steps if the world is to counter climate change, European researchers said Friday.

In a study, they said peat bogs, wetlands that contain large amounts of carbon in the form of decaying vegetation that has built up over centuries, could help the world achieve climate goals like the limit of 2 degrees Celsius of postindustrial warming that is part of the 2015 Paris agreement.

But without protection and restoration efforts, some targets for greenhouse gas emissions “would be very difficult or nearly impossible to achieve,” said Alexander Popp, an author of the study, which was published in Environmental Research Letters. Dr. Popp is a senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, where he leads a group studying land-use issues.

Peatlands exist around the world, in tropical as well as colder regions. They make up only about 3 percent of global land area, but their deep layers of peat are practically treasure chests of carbon, overall containing roughly twice as much as the world’s forests.

In pristine bogs, that carbon remains soggy and intact. But when a bog is dried out, for agriculture or other reasons, the carbon starts to oxidize and is released to the atmosphere as planet-warming carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

That process potentially can continue for centuries. Current estimates are that drained peatlands worldwide emit as much carbon dioxide annually as global air travel.

But dry peat is also a fire risk, and peat fires have the potential to release a lot of carbon very quickly. In September and October 2015, peat fires in Indonesia, where bogs have long been drained for palm oil plantations and other purposes, released more carbon dioxide per day than all the fossil fuels burned in the European Union.

Dried peatlands could be restored by allowing them to become wet again, which would saturate the decaying vegetation and prevent further release of carbon dioxide, and also eliminate the fire hazard.

“Rewetting them is really the core for reaching mitigation targets,” Dr. Popp said.

Most pathways for countering climate change predict that by the end of this century, land use, which includes forests and agriculture, would be a net carbon sink, meaning it would store more carbon than the amount being released to the atmosphere. That would slow the process of global warming.

But most of those pathways do not take emissions from degraded peatland into account, the researchers said. When they plugged peatland data into their own land-use model, they found that land use would be a net carbon source, releasing more carbon dioxide than was stored.

The researchers then calculated that protecting pristine wetlands and rewetting about 60 percent of the degraded ones would reverse that, making land use a net sink again.

Scientists collected peat samples in Red Earth Creek, Alberta, after a fire in 2016. Credit...Ed Ou for The New York Times

Mike Waddington, a peat researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who was not involved in the work, said the study “makes a very compelling case” in favor of restoring peatlands.

“Despite covering a small area, they really pack a carbon punch when it comes to carbon storage in ecosystems,” Dr. Waddington said. “They are really important in global climate regulation.”

He said the study made an important point: In current pathways for changing land use to aid the climate, through planting more trees or other measures, peatlands are often considered expendable.

"When we think about storing carbon in ecosystems, it’s almost always about planting trees,” Dr. Waddington said. There’s often tremendous pressure to plant trees in drained peatlands, he said, but that’s the wrong choice given the carbon-storing ability of an intact bog.

Peat bogs are usually dried by digging ditches through them, which allows the water to drain away. In addition to conversion to croplands, tree plantations or forests, some peatlands are drained so the peat can be extracted for use in horticulture or even, in some parts of the world, for fuel.

“You only have to drain 10 to 15 percent of a peatland and start extracting peat to turn that entire system into a source,” Dr. Waddington said.

Restoring them could be accomplished by blocking the ditches or building berms to keep the peat saturated, he said.

In the study, the researchers found that there was considerable uncertainty in estimates of the costs of protecting and restoring peatlands. But even if the costs were at the high end, the basic finding of the research was unchanged, they said.

“In a way it’s the low-hanging fruit,” Dr. Waddington said.

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Pope In TED talk: Earth Cannot Be Squeezed ‘Like An Orange’

FILE -- In this Sept. 20, 2020 file photo, Pope Francis delivers his blessing as he recites the Angelus noon prayer from the window of his studio overlooking St.Peter's Square, at the Vatican. The pontiff on Saturday, Oct. 10 recorded a video message to a TED conference on climate change, that will be released later Saturday night. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

TED

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short talks (18 minutes or less).
TED began in 1984 as a conference where technology, entertainment and design converged.
Today it covers topics ranging from science to business and global issues in more than 100 languages.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Saturday issued an urgent call to action to defend the planet and help the poor in his second TED talk.

The pontiff, known for his affinity for social media and technology, said in a videotaped message to a TED conference on climate change that the coronavirus pandemic had put a focus on the social-environmental challenge facing the globe.

“Science tells us, every day with more precision, that it is necessary to act with urgency — I am not exaggerating, science tell us this — if we want to have the hope of avoiding radical changes in the climate and catastrophes,” Francis said, looking directly in the camera as he looked up from his prepared remarks.

He set as a goal for the next decade constructing a world capable of responding to current generations, “without compromising the possibilities of the future generations.” He framed his call with references to his 2015 encyclical on climate change, “Laudato Si,” (Be Praised) and the more recent “Fratelli tutti” (Brothers All) on the failure of market capitalism.

Francis laid out three paths of action: promoting education about the environment “based on scientific data and an ethical approach,” assuring drinking water and an adequate food supply through sustainable agriculture and promoting the transformation from fossil fuels to clean energy sources.

“We have just a few years — scientists calculate roughly fewer than 30 — to drastically reduce the emissions of gas and the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere,” the pope said, adding that the transition needs to take into account the impact on the poor, local populations and those who work in the energy sector.

He called on investors to exclude companies that do not taking into account the environment, as have many faith-based organizations already have.

“In fact, the earth must be taken care of, cultivated and protected; we cannot continue to squeeze it like an orange. And we can say this, taking care of the Earth is a human right,” Francis said.

The six-hour Countdown Global Launch is TED’s first-ever free conference, featuring as hosts such figures as Jane Fonda, Don Cheadle and Al Gore, with speakers including Prince William of Britain and Ursula von der Leyen, a leading European Union official.

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