Ten countries set or matched national monthly high temperature marks last
year.
A thermometer shows a temperature of 130° Fahrenheit (54° Celsius)
at the Furnace Creek Visitor's Center at Death Valley National Park
in California on June 17, 2021.
(Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
Last year saw record-breaking high temperatures recorded
at more than 400 weather stations around the world, with meteorologists voicing
alarm over what climate scientists say is the shape of things to come, according
to a report published Friday.
The Guardianreports
that 10 countries—Canada, Dominica, Italy, Morocco, Oman, Taiwan, Tunisia,
Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States—set or matched their
national monthly high temperature records last year.
"Climate change
is real and it's now,"
tweeted
Catherine McKenna, founder of Climate and Nature Solutions and a former Canadian
environment and climate change minister.
McKenna noted the numerous
Canadian temperature records that were shattered last year, including in Lytton,
British Columbia, where the mercury soared to 49.6°C, or 121.3°F, in late
June.
Ten national temperature records were broken or equalled in 2021, including
Lytton, BC where the temperature reached 49.6 degrees.
A few continental and planetary records fell too: Africa had its warmest
June and September ever. August brought 48.8°C (119.8°F) in Syracuse,
Italy, the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe. July had already
brought 54.4°C (130°F) in Furnace Creek in the U.S. Death Valley—the
highest reliably recorded temperature on Earth.
"You can certainly see the effect of climate change in our weather in Kenya, and
globally," Patricia Nying'uro of the Kenyan Meteorological Department and
co-founder of Climate Without Borders—an international group of broadcast
meteorologists and weather presenters—told
the paper.
"We're just putting together the data for 2021, but we
think we will have seen an annual temperature which is 2.1°C higher than normal
for some parts of the country," she added. "The shifts are very noticeable, from
one extreme to another in a very short space of time."
Ten national temperature records were broken or equalled in 2021, including
the highest ever reliably measured on Earth
Guardian graphic. Source: Maximiliano Herrero
Meteorologists around the world said the event that made the biggest
impression on them last year was the heatwave that hit western North America
in June and July,
killing
hundreds of people in Canada and the United States and setting records from
Alaska and the Yukon Territory to California.
"Of course 2021 was full of extreme events," Maximiliano Herrera, who
tracks extreme weather around the world, told The Guardian. "But if
I have to name one, I'll name what struck every single climatologist and
meteorologist in the world... the mother of all heatwaves."
"The magnitude of this event surpassed anything I have seen after a
life of researching extreme events in all modern world climatic history in
the past couple of centuries," he said.
Climate scientists say
such record-breaking heatwaves are likely to become increasingly frequent in
the coming decades.
"We must expect extreme event records to be broken - not just by small
margins, but quite often by very large ones" says climate scientist
Professor Rowan Sutton.
We face a huge challenge to improve
preparedness, build resilience and adapt society.https://t.co/hJCcqmSaVb
— National Centre for Atmospheric Science (@AtmosScience)
July 27, 2021
"We must expect extreme event records to be broken," Rowan Sutton of the
National Center for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading in
England
warned
last July, "not just by small margins but quite often by very large
ones."
Northern beaches residents have been worried about how their beloved beach
would fare when large swells and high tides hit the controversial Collaroy
seawall. They were concerned the sand directly in front of the seawall would
be washed away, eroding their beach, and, on Tuesday, that’s exactly what
happened.
The erosion event at Collaroy Beach is far from an isolated occurrence.
Other beaches along the eastern coastline have also experienced heavy
erosion and scientists fear climate change will only make these events
more frequent and more intense.
King tides and the after-effects of ex-tropical cyclone
Seth have caused erosion at Collaroy Beach. Credit: Brook
Mitchell
Patrick Allan has continued an almost 100-year-old family tradition of
living in Collaroy, spending years surfing the waves, but he’s planning
on leaving the small seaside suburb. The building of the seawall was the
final nail in the coffin.
“I’ve watched council do everything, dump truck loads of asbestos and
everything here over the years, but now they’ve let this private
development application come through which is going to kill this beach,”
he said. “The full effects of the seawall won’t be known until they
finish.”
“This is my home, but the beach and the whole area have changed.”
The coastal strip was pummelled
during a massive storm in 2016. Homes were damaged and a swimming pool was pulled into the ocean,
costing homeowners and local government almost $25 million to fix.
Another two big storms further eroded the sand dune in July 2020.
Collaroy resident Patrick Allan has lived in the suburb
his whole life but is moving away with the seawall the
final nail in the coffin. Credit: Brook
Mitchell
Since then, residents, council and the state government have been
working to protect the properties and beach from storm surges, with
current work including building a seven-metre-tall concrete wall.
Once completed, at least three-quarters of the wall will be covered by
sand. The project stretches 1.3 kilometres from Collaroy to South
Narrabeen, encompassing 49 private properties dotted with 11 public land
areas, which include a car park and a surf club.
But not everyone is happy with the project. Earlier this year, residents
lined the beach in a bid to encourage the council
to invest in alternative measures to protect the beach, including a
nourishment plan that would artificially replace the sand. The local
community group has been protesting against a seawall for almost 30
years.
Senior lecturer at the University of NSW Water Research Laboratory
Mitchell Harley said annual king tides had combined with ex-tropical
cyclone Seth to create north-easterly waves that had resulted in coastal
erosion along Collaroy and other beaches along the east coast.
The sand in front of the controversial Collaroy sea wall has washed
away. Vision: Brook Mitchell
“Collaroy normally gets waves from the south and has a big headland that
protects the beach from waves, but the combination of large tides and
unusually north-east waves make beaches that would normally be protected,
exposed,” he said.
He said more research would be needed to determine the extent the seawall
played in Tuesday’s erosion event, but that north-easterly waves were
certainly a key driver in drawing sand off the beach.
University of Sydney coastal geomorphologist Professor Andrew Short said
coastal erosion events were likely to become more frequent as climate change
increased the likelihood of tropical cyclones and east coast lows.
“They are predicted to be more likely and more intense. It’s a double
whammy,” he said.
“Most communities are built on the southern end of beaches but they will be
more exposed to the impacts of erosion because of easterly storms.
Governments and coastal managers need to be aware and plan for those coming
changes.”
President of the northern beaches branch of the Surfrider
Foundation, Brendan Donohue, surveys the damage on
Tuesday. Credit: Brook Mitchell
President of the northern beaches branch of the Surfrider Foundation,
Brendan Donohoe, said Tuesday’s conditions had been treacherous to
beachgoers, leaving Collaroy Beach a “hellscape”.
“It was a public beach, now it’s a public hazard,” he said.
“If we get
another big swell over the next few weeks, unless the council
mechanically moves sand in, this beach will be impassable.”
He added that, while Tuesday’s conditions had been moderate, there were real
concerns about how the coastline would fare during larger erosion events.
Mr Donohoe and other concerned residents will attend a council development
application meeting opposing plans to build the next section of the seawall
in the coming months.
A Northern Beaches Council spokesperson said the recent weather had caused
minor erosion at Collaroy and Narrabeen, along with other locations in the
area.
“This level of erosion is not uncommon during large swell and tide events of
this nature and is not a direct result of the seawall under construction.
The beach will recover once conditions ease,” the spokesperson said.
“The rocks exposed from the recent high tides and large swell are part of
the temporary rock bund that is protecting the seawall being built during
construction which will ultimately be removed once construction is complete.
The scene after the storm damaged properties at Collaroy in
2016. Credit: Peter Rae
“The bund extends approximately 10 metres seaward and has been inspected
and is intact. No other construction material has been observed washing
into the sea. The area will continue to be monitored for safety and
access.”
The beach was closed on Wednesday due to powerful surf conditions.
The response to climate change is increasingly gendered, with inaction tied
to a phenomenon called ‘petro-masculinity’.
Participants in a global day of action on climate change in
Melbourne last year. Credit: William West / AFP
Growing up in the central Queensland coalmining town of Clermont, Daniel
Bleakley never imagined he’d end up gluing himself to buildings and going on
hunger strikes to protest about climate change.
“It was a rugby league town with a hypermasculine culture,” he tells
The Saturday Paper. “A lot of my friends used to ride bulls in rodeos,
get into fights at the pub. It was a tough cowboy culture out there, which
impacts anyone who lives in those communities.”
Electric vehicles were not macho enough. Salad was dismissed as rabbit food –
real men ate meat. Environmentalists were tree huggers and hippies.
“I wonder now if that culture happened organically, or if it had been seeded,”
Bleakley reflects. “A lot of vested interests benefit from it.”
It was only when he got the chance to study in Germany at the age of 18 that
Bleakley got to view the culture in which he grew up from the outside. “I made
new friends in Germany who were talking a lot about climate change,” he says.
“Living in Queensland I was not exposed to those same conversations.”
That experience set Bleakley on a path that would see him move to Melbourne and
join Extinction Rebellion protests. In Clermont, though, his new life was not
well received. Bleakley lost a lot of his old hometown friends because of his
views.
Research shows that men on average buy more high-emissions products, eat more
emissions-intensive food such as meat, vote for parties with weaker climate
policies, and actively avoid green life choices, which they dismiss as
effeminate.
American academic Dr Cara Daggett coined the term “petro-masculinity” to
describe the confluence of climate denial and misogyny, in which fossil fuels
become an expression of identity. In a 2018 study, she wrote: “It is no
coincidence that white, conservative American men … appear to be among the most
vociferous climate deniers.”
This plays out in politics, too, from Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro boasting of the
destruction of the Amazon, to Vladimir Putin declaring activist Greta Thunberg
fails to understand the “modern world is complicated and complex” as he
accelerates Russian gas exports, to Scott Morrison holding up coal in
parliament.
“Political leaders who espouse hyper forms of masculinity fail to recognise our
human vulnerability to global warming,” Deakin University masculinity expert
Professor Bob Pease tells
The Saturday Paper.
Even when espousing solutions, male leaders are more likely to promote a
technological fix rather than fundamental reforms to reduce humanity’s impact,
he says.
“Masculinity is about a sense of invulnerability and a
capacity to control – until we recognise our embeddedness in nature and our
human vulnerability we will not act to address the climate crisis.”
One possible fix is simply to elect more women. In Australia, female independent
candidates are challenging Coalition seats with calls for climate action.
Climate 200 has raised millions to help support independents at the coming
election. Of the 16 campaigns the organisation is “talking to or watching
closely”, 14 are for female candidates.
Convener Simon Holmes à Court attributes this to a groundswell of discontent
from women about not only climate change but the handling of sexual assault
allegations and corruption. “They’re all passionate about climate, one of the
number one or two issues on their platform,” he says, “but it goes deeper than
just that, to a general frustration with the state of politics.”
Holmes à Court recalls that in seminars for independents run by former MP Cathy
McGowan, roughly four out of five people in attendance were women. “It’s in line
really with any community organising – go to any school fundraiser, sports club,
the real work is 80 per cent done by women.”
Zara Bending, an associate at Macquarie University’s Centre for Environmental
Law and a director of the Jane Goodall Institute Australia, sees a lot more
women involved in environmental action groups, particularly at the volunteer
level. In her experience men with political power dismiss women raising the
alarm about climate change as “hysterical”.
Bending believes more women in power will help, but that men still need to
contribute more on green issues to counter the development of another gendered
workload left principally to women to address.
She attributes the gender gap to sustainability generally being marketed to
women, as well as ingrained cultural perceptions. “It’s this idea of women as
mothers and caregivers in the home, and the parallels of this environmental
image of Gaia the earth goddess – the notion of caring for the planet is an
extended metaphor for our home.”
To encourage more male engagement with green issues, Bending backs the elevation
of positive male role models, such as the “infectious enthusiasm” of
Gardening Australia host Costa Georgiadis, and to influencing children
at a younger age in initiatives such as the Jane Goodall Institute’s rewilding
school workshops and the Youth Climate Council.
A 2016 University of Notre Dame study found that people generally view green
products as feminine but that men can have their minds changed by branding that
appeals to traditional masculine traits such as power and strength.
It won’t be a simple task to shift attitudes, however. A survey by non-profit No
Meat May indicated 73 per cent of Australian men would rather die a decade
younger than stop eating meat.
Co-founder Ryan Alexander launched a campaign to dispel masculine
stereotypes about diet after noticing that at least 80 per cent of people who
signed up to his program to abstain from meat for a month were female. In
contrast, the people who heckled his organisation online were almost all men.
“We’re highlighting vegan and vegetarian men who are quite masculine, like this
guy Forest Nash who has never eaten meat in his life, is built like a shithouse,
goes to the gym, all that,” he says. “The climate crisis is the biggest issue of
our time – if men are going to step up to the plate and do their bit, then we
just have to engage with this stuff.”
Not everyone is convinced. Bob Pease believes that efforts to appeal to
masculinity are ultimately counterproductive. “In response to the notion that
‘real men eat meat’, some vegans argue that ‘real men are vegans’,” he says.
“But in my view, this is a dead end. If traditional masculinity is
fuelling men’s environmental destructiveness … we have to encourage men to
loosen their connection to that form of masculinity and embrace empathy, caring,
compassion and concern for nature as part of what it means to be an ethical
human being.”
Alexander agrees that a more profound interrogation of masculinity is important
but feels environmental movements have to take both approaches at once given the
urgent time frame.
“I’m a big fan of digging to the roots of
the problem – rebuilding masculinity into something not fragile but based on
taking care of the planet and others around you,” he says. “But we have time
challenges with climate change. Sometimes, we just have to meet people where
they’re at, and talk to them in their language.”
It is an approach tried by Bleakley, now an electric vehicle researcher with The
Australia Institute in Canberra. In 2021, for the first time in years, he
returned to Clermont to catch up with his family – including his brother Tim, a
haul truck driver at a nearby coalmine.
Tim asked if he could drive his brother’s Tesla to work and show it off to the
guys at the mine. Bleakley agreed but decided he wouldn’t go along as he felt
that the other miners would be uncomfortable with his presence, so he asked Tim
to film the drive.
The resulting video of a bearded coalminer delightedly slung back by the
vehicle’s intense acceleration went viral online, prompting the brothers to
produce a series on coalminers trying out Teslas.
Bleakley suggests the drives resonated with his home town in a way his other
climate activism didn’t, as it was less about telling people what to do and more
about sharing an experience with them. It also served as a way to engage with
men who bond over car culture, and to dispel myths that electric vehicles lack
power.
“A few guys who’ve been in the series are real car nuts,” he says. “There’s a
guy called Gougie. In Claremont he always had the fastest car in town and was
always working on his big V8 … so to see him enjoy that Tesla, well – that was
really special.”
