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

Climate Crisis May Have Pushed World's Tropical Coral Reefs To Tipping Point Of 'Near-Annual' Bleaching

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

Exclusive: Mass bleaching seen along Great Barrier Reef could mark start of global-scale event, expert warns

Coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Sea temperatures over the reef were the highest on record this February. There are fears the world’s tropical coral reefs may have reached a tipping point of bleaching nearly every year. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo

Rising ocean temperatures could have pushed the world’s tropical coral reefs over a tipping point where they are hit by bleaching on a “near-annual” basis, according to the head of a US government agency program that monitors the globe’s coral reefs.

Dr Mark Eakin, coordinator of Coral Reef Watch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Guardian Australia there was a risk that mass bleaching seen along the length of the Great Barrier Reef in 2020 could mark the start of another global-scale bleaching event.

Tropical coral reefs tend to be at a higher risk of bleaching during times when the Pacific Ocean is in a phase known as El Niño. The latest bleaching on the reef has hit during this cycle’s neutral phase.

“The real concern is with this much bleaching without tropical forcing,” Eakin said. “This may be a sign we’ve now tipped over to near-annual bleaching in many locations.”

“It’s quite concerning that we are getting this much heat stress across the Great Barrier Reef in an Enso [El Niño southern oscillation]-neutral year.

“What we are seeing on the Great Barrier Reef and potentially elsewhere is really being driven just by anthropogenic climate change.

“If we get another El Niño, the odds are almost 100% that we will see another global bleaching event.”

Aerial surveys of 1,020 individual reefs completed across the length of the 2,300km marine park confirmed last week a third mass bleaching event in only five years.

“That’s already pushing awfully close to near-annual bleaching,” added Eakin.

It’s been a shitty, exhausting day on the #GreatBarrierReef.

I feel like an art lover wandering through the Louvre....as it burns to the ground. pic.twitter.com/I0Mx7epLCe

— Terry Hughes (@ProfTerryHughes) March 26, 2020

Corals bleach when they sit in abnormally hot water for too long. Reefs and corals can recover from mild bleaching, but severe and prolonged heat stress can kill corals.

In back-to-back bleaching in 2016 and 2017, about half the reef’s corals died.

Eakin said that in January Coral Reef Watch’s models were warning that heat stress would build across the reef in February and March. Sea temperatures over the Great Barrier Reef were the highest on record this February.

Satellite data later confirmed the modelling results which, Eakin said, was received “with a sense of dread” among scientists.

“I was not ready to have another bleaching event this quickly,” he said.

Eakin said the agency’s modelling for the next four months was showing a “classic pattern of heat stress” that had preceded previous global bleaching events.

Heat was predicted to rise first in the southern Indian Ocean, then to south-east Asia and into the Coral Triangle.

He said it was “too early” to say if a global bleaching event was on the way, but “it would not really surprise me”.

Eakin said that when severe bleaching causes mass mortality of corals, “those events take a decade or more for recovery. We are seeing these events far too frequently”.

As the planet gains heat from increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, about 90% of that extra heat is taken up by oceans. In January, a study of heat down to 2km in depth concluded that 2019 was the warmest year on record.

Eakin said ocean heat content data showed the world’s oceans were gaining heat. “There’s so much heat that has been absorbed in the upper ocean that all the coral reefs are much closer now to their bleaching threshold. As result, it’s very easy to tip them over.”

Data from nine days of aerial surveys over the Great Barrier Reef, carried out in mid-March, are being analysed and compiled at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University.

Dr Neal Cantin, a senior coral biologist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, said because of the warming of the oceans caused by climate change, “we are already committed to more frequent and more severe bleaching in the next decade”.

Cantin said the Australian Institute of Marine Science would be carrying out monitoring of sites in the coming months to see which corals had survived this event and how 2020 had impacted recovery from previous bleaching.

“We need to understand the full extent of significant mortality,” he said.

Many areas of the Great Barrier Reef are known to have experienced severe bleaching this summer, likely killing many corals, but others, including tourist reefs near Cairns and the Whitsundays, only experienced mild bleaching. Most offshore reefs in the far north escaped bleaching entirely.

Scientists fear images of heat-stressed, bleached coral at Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef taken in February could be the start of another mass bleaching event. Photograph: Dr Lyle Vail, Director of the Australian Museum’s Lizard Island Research Station

“With mild bleaching, the animal survives but growth is slowed and they become more susceptible to disease,” said Associate Prof Tracy Ainsworth at the University of New South Wales.

She said mild bleaching can also impact the ability of the corals to spawn which can slow recovery from impacts.

“We have known for 20 years that probably by about 2020, we would start to see annual bleaching.”

Eakin added: “Even if the corals don’t die, bleached corals are injured and starving and they are more susceptible to disease. They will also reduce their reproductive output in a bleaching year and the year after.”

A 2019 study found bleaching in 2016 and 2017 had caused the numbers of new baby corals produced in 2018 to crash by 89%.

Cantin said that unlike in 2016 and 2017, the bleaching in 2020 appeared to have covered “the entire system” of the Great Barrier Reef.

Corals have a symbiotic relationship with algae that delivers nutrients and colour to the animal.

“Completely white coral means it has lost probably 95-100% of their symbiont algae and they will struggle to recover,” Cantin said.

“With moderate-level bleaching you will see the tips go white with some sections still having pigmentation left – they do have a good chance of surviving,” he said.

The Great Barrier Reef’s values as a world heritage-listed location are due for review at a meeting scheduled in China in June. Unesco has said that meeting is under review due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In December 2019, Australia submitted a report to the committee that conceded climate change had impacted the reef’s values as a world heritage site since it was first listed in 1981.

Links

• Great Barrier Reef’s latest bleaching confirmed by marine park authority
• 'Probably the worst year in a century': Australia's environmental toll of 2019
• Great Barrier Reef world heritage values damaged by climate change, government admits
• (AU) Great Barrier Reef’s Latest Bleaching Confirmed By Marine Park Authority
• (AU) Climate Change The Biggest Threat To Great Barrier Reef: Ley
• This Is No Time For Hunches – We Need Evidence And Expertise In Science
• AgForce Backs Calls For Review Of Consensus Science On Great Barrier Reef
• Great Barrier Reef Outlook Now 'Very Poor', Australian Government Review Says
• Great Barrier Reef Authority Urges 'Fastest Possible Action' On Emissions
• Morrison Government Experts Say Australia Must 'Do More' On Climate
• ‘Sadness, Disgust, Anger’: Fear For The Great Barrier Reef Made Climate Change Feel Urgent
• Radical Climate Action 'Critical' To Great Barrier Reef's Survival, Government Body Says
• Legal Protections Urged As Science Gears Up To Aid Great Barrier Reef

'Very Un-Antarctic': When The Icy Continent Was Not Very Cold At All

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

Temperatures soared over much of Antarctica this past summer, prompting researchers to declare the first heatwave ever recorded at Australia's Casey station.

While the Antarctic Peninsula is well known to be among the fastest warming regions of the planet because of climate change, the continent's east had been relatively sheltered from the global heating.

Antarctic heatwave. Antarctica’s plants and animals depend largely on melting snow and ice for their water supply. Picture: Sharon Robinson/UOW

In a paper published on Tuesday in Global Change Biology, scientists from the University of Wollongong (UOW), Australian Antarctic Division, University of Tasmania and University of Santiago, Chile, identified periods of very unusual warmth that affected Antarctica’s ecosystems.

While record Antarctic heat in February made headlines around the world, the first signs of the heatwave actually appeared in the east of the continent several weeks earlier.

Over the 23-26 January period, "Casey experienced minimum temperatures above zero and maximum temperatures above 7.5 degrees, with its highest maximum temperature ever, 9.2 degrees on 24 January, followed by its highest minimum of 2.5 degrees the following morning", Sharon Robinson, a UOW climate change biologist, said.

“In the 31-year record for Casey, this maximum is 6.9 degrees higher than the mean maximum temperature for the station, while the minimum is 0.2 degrees higher.”

Professor Robinson said Chilean counterparts studying the moss of King George Island also registered the spike in temperatures. While a typical December-February period, such as a year earlier, would see the mercury rising above 14 degrees for 3 per cent of the year, this past summer saw that proportion there jump to 14 per cent.

A tide gauge is deployed in an ice hole at Casey research station, the site of an Antarctic "heatwave" earlier this year. Credit:Imojen Pearce/AAD

Those readings were "not very Antarctic", she said, adding that for areas where the temperature usually remained below zero, "it's very worrying" since many plants such as mosses and animals have adapted to the normally frigid conditions.

The heatwave definition was based on a similar measure used in Australia of three days and nights of temperatures in the top 10 per cent of readings for that date.

The success of global efforts to reduced ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon chemicals (CFCs) was one of the reasons for this summer's exceptional warmth along with the background climate warming.

As the ozone hole over Antarctica has closed, the strong westerly winds have abated, allowing the rising temperatures to reach regions - such as Casey station - that had previously been shielded, Professor Robinson said.

The past summer's heatwave "is probably a harbinger of the future, as we have stopped production of CFCs", she said. "A lot people think of Antarctic as pristine and protected but climate change gets everywhere, so it's not protected."

Links

• 'Dangerously close': Tipping points may trigger climate cascade
• Visualizing The Quantities Of Climate Change
• Guest Post: How Close Is The West Antarctic Ice Sheet To A ‘Tipping Point’?
• Antarctica Logs Hottest Temperature On Record With A Reading Of 18.3C
• Past Antarctic Ice Melt Reveals Potential For 'Extreme Sea-Level Rise'
• If Warming Exceeds 2°C, Antarctica’s Melting Ice Sheets Could Raise Seas 20 Metres In Coming Centuries
• Iceberg The Size Of Sydney Breaks Off Amery Ice Shelf In Antarctica
• Rare Weather Event Over Antarctica Driving Australia's Hot, Dry Outlook
• West Antarctica Is Melting—And It’s Our Fault

(US) Trump To Roll Back Obama-Era Clean Car Rules In Huge Blow To Climate Fight

The Guardian - Emily Holden

▶Announcement will allow vehicles to emit 1bn more tons of CO2
▶Experts say move will lead to more life-threatening air pollution

Motor vehicles drive on the 101 freeway in Los Angeles, California. Critics say the move will lead to more life-threatening air pollution and force Americans to spend more on gasoline. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

The Trump administration is rolling back the US government’s strongest attempt to combat the climate crisis, weakening rules which compel auto companies to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. Critics say the move will lead to more life-threatening air pollution and force Americans to spend more on gasoline.

The changes to Obama-era regulations will allow vehicles to emit about a billion more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide – equivalent to roughly a fifth of annual US emissions.

The rollback is one of dozens Trump officials have ushered to completion, seeking to bolster the fossil fuel industry amid intense opposition from Democratic-led states and pushback from world leaders.

Experts say the world is far off track in dealing with the climate emergency, following a year of record-breaking heat, rising hunger, displacement and loss of life due to extreme temperatures and weather disasters.

Donald Trump is expected to laud the new rule as a boost to the US economy, which has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic. His administration says weakening the standards will make cars about $1,000 cheaper, leading Americans to buy new and safer models more frequently and resulting in fewer crash fatalities.

"Coronavirus preys on people with respiratory problems, and this dirty air rule will make more Americans vulnerable"
Miles Keogh, NACAA

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief, Andrew Wheeler, said in a statement: “Now, more than ever, this country needs a sensible national program that strikes the right regulatory balance for the environment, the auto industry, the economy, safety, and American families.

“[This rule] does all of those things by improving fuel economy, continuing to reduce air pollution, and making new vehicles more affordable for all Americans.”

Researchers dispute such logic.

Miles Keogh, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, an organization of state and local air regulators, called the timing of the rule change “appalling”.

He said: “We know coronavirus preys on people with respiratory problems, and this dirty air rule will make more Americans vulnerable.”

The Obama administration required auto companies to make vehicles 4.7% more efficient each year. The Trump administration initially wanted to freeze any progress on fuel efficiency past 2020. But its final rule, written by the EPA and the Department of Transportation, sets an improvement rate of 1.5% per year – or an industry average of 40.4 miles per gallon by 2026.

That’s far less than the 2.4% per year by which the industry has said it will increase standards without any regulation.

The rollback has drawn opposition from nearly half of states and a significant portion of the auto industry. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia, representing about half of US residents, sued over the changes. They said weakening the standards would kill about 2,000 more people and cause 50,000 more cases of respiratory illnesses, while making the climate crisis worse.

California has long instituted more stringent auto standards than the federal government, but the Trump administration has revoked the state’s authority to do so. The state last year struck a deal with four companies – Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW of North America – to exceed what Trump is asking for and require cars, trucks and SUVs to get nearly 50 miles per gallon on average by 2026.

Democratic-run states and environmental advocates are expected to challenge the new regulation. They are already fighting the Trump administration over its weakening of dozens of other environment and public health protections.

Ann Carlson, a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, said the legal fight will be “one of the hardest fought, in part because it’s the most significant”.

Carlson believes the rollback is meant to maintain demand for gasoline, which is expected to fall as vehicles become more efficient and transition to electricity.

“You can make cars with zero emissions now, zero greenhouse gases that don’t run on petroleum, any more,” Carlson said. “So I think the big beneficiaries are absolutely the oil companies.”

The rule change comes as many communities around the US are seeing a decline in air quality, a result of climate change, wildfires, higher temperatures, regulatory rollbacks and poor enforcement of regulations, said Paul Billings, senior vice-president of advocacy for the American Lung Association.

“This will mean there will be more pollution associated with oil extraction, transport, refining – sort of all the way from the well to the pump,” Billings said. “This will mean high levels of smog, more coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, asthma attacks, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) exacerbations and also more particulate pollution.”

The effects will be worse on communities near oil processing facilities and highways, often people of color and poorer Americans.

Links

• New US measures threaten civil rights amid coronavirus pandemic
• Trump administration to roll back Obama-era pollution regulations'
• The war on coal is over': EPA boss to roll back Obama's clean power rules
• Automakers snub Trump to side with climate crisis, says Obama-era official
• Trump rolls back climate change rule that restricted new coal plants
• Trump races against clock to roll back major Obama-era environment rules
• How the Trump administration is rolling back plans for clean power
• California vows to 'fight this stupidity' as EPA moves to scrap clean car rules
• Trump to sign executive order undoing Obama's clean power plan

With The Climate Crisis And Coronavirus Bearing Down On Us, The Age Of Disconnection Is Over

The Guardian - Tim Hollo

With the climate crisis and coronavirus bearing down on us, the age of disconnection is over 

‘What started to become clear thanks to the fires was rammed home by Covid-19. We are only as healthy as the least healthy among us’ Photograph: Blend Images/Dave and Les Jacobs/Getty Images

Tim Hollo is executive director of the Green Institute and visiting fellow at The Australian National University’s School of Regulation and Global Government (RegNet).

Everything is connected. It’s hard to imagine right now that, just weeks ago, the truism of ecological politics was treated as hippy nonsense by mainstream politics.

Announcing the statutory review of the commonwealth’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) last October, the Morrison government pitched it as an opportunity to weaken the Howard era laws even further and make it easier still for environmentally destructive projects to be approved. And, regardless of clear statements from scientists and strong advocacy by campaign groups, it looked like it would get away with it because, back then, we were still living in the age of disconnection when the environment and the economy could be seen as separate things, in competition with each other.

But then the summer arrived, delivering one after the other two massive wake-up calls. In the age of consequences, with the climate crisis and a deadly pandemic bearing down on us, it’s impossible to pretend that we are separate from each other and from the natural world.

A pandemic, more than almost any other phenomenon, shows that all our lives are inextricably intertwined, for now and forever, whether we like it or not. It brings into sharp focus the impossibility of trying to keep economics, health, environment, education and social justice treated as separate questions with separate answers. It heightens awareness of our vital need, as social beings, to stay connected to each other as well as we possibly can while keeping our physical distance.

It shows how the “efficient”, on-demand world that capitalism has constructed is so incredibly fragile that a series of shocks can bring it to the point of collapse. And with the rules of neoliberal economics being broken by governments the world over, it demonstrates that massive policy interventions, shifting the entire structure of the global economy, are possible.

With the complete focus right now on Covid-19, it takes an effort to cast our minds back to this summer’s bushfires. They were, of course, far larger and fiercer than ever before, over a season that started when we were barely out of winter. Where previously bushfires had affected a small number of people, this season the smoke blanketing Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne, and the repeated evacuation of summer holiday spots, meant that most Australians were affected.

Covid-19, among other things, shows us the consequences of deregulating markets in health services, food supply and more

This heralded a shift in thinking that went deeper than personal impact. Perhaps due to the remarkably low loss of human life compared with the scale of the disaster, there was a tremendous focus on the more than a billion mammals, birds and reptiles killed. We mourned the thousands of koalas and the numerous species being pushed towards extinction if their habitats aren’t restored.

The true legacy of this summer could be a vital turning point in recognising that “the environment” isn’t something “over there”. The environment is the air we breathe and the water we drink; it’s the soil in which we grow our food; it’s the animals we identify with and the landscapes imprinted on our souls; the environment is us, all of us, together, integrally connected with everyone and everything else on this beautiful blue marble floating in space.

Damage the environment and we damage ourselves. And not just some of us – all of us together. Continue to think in our compartmentalised, linear fashion, and we’ll keep missing what’s coming, be it weeks of smoke, runs on toilet paper, or deadly pandemics.

What started to become clear thanks to the fires was rammed home by Covid-19. We are only as healthy as the least healthy among us. Everything we do relies on extraordinary networks of activity by people we’ve never met, crisscrossing the globe. And responding to a health crisis that was likely triggered in part by environmental destruction has world-changing impacts on the economy, on education, on social justice, on geopolitics.

To bring us back to where we started, where does that leave the review of the EPBC Act?

We have an opportunity now to not just push for a new generation of environment laws, but to re-evaluate the whole deal, to cultivate a new political settlement based on ecological principles of living well together in harmony with the natural world, understanding our place as part of it as First Peoples did for millenniums, with an economy designed to serve people and planet.

As part of this, in the immediate term we need to advocate for vital improvements to the EPBC. It is extraordinary that the Howard legacy of deliberately excluding a project’s climate impacts from the triggers to require assessment still hasn’t been remedied. That must now be fixed, as must the fact that there is no mechanism for assessing the cumulative ecological impacts of various proposals. After this summer’s destruction of huge areas of remaining healthy ecosystems, we need to institute, in both legislation and the practice of assessment, a presumption of protection instead of a culture of managed destruction.

All this will, of course, be attacked as “green tape” and we have to be ready to actively defend it instead of changing the subject – and defend it on ecological grounds. Regulation is a vital part of the connective tissue which holds the body politic together. Removing it sees us fall apart. Covid-19 is, among other things, showing us the consequences of deregulating markets in health services, food supply and more.

Having that conversation in this way means we won’t just be advocating for marginal improvements, but will be working to change politics. We’ll be building into the political common sense the idea that corporations absolutely should be regulated to enforce environmental and social responsibilities, and that we can no longer consider shareholder profit to be their sole focus. That helps move our politics towards altering the DNA of corporations so they operate as part of the body politic rather than as cancer cells.

The flip side of this systemic shift is to institute legal rights for the natural world. If BHP has legal rights, why shouldn’t the Great Barrier Reef? Rights of nature is an increasingly mature legal field, instituted from New Zealand to Bolivia, India to parts of the US. We can and should at least insert them as a normative principle in the goals of the EPBC.

While we’re thinking at that level, a new ecological political settlement will need a rethink of federalism. Our system sees national and state governments cooperating to shut out community participation and scientific advice to facilitate destructive development. An effective regime based on a presumption of protection would see federal, state, territory and local governments enabling communities to collectively develop creative ideas at their local level, within the context of expert scientific advice, and coordinating those ideas at a regional and continental level.

If we shift environmental regulation from a process that is primarily responsive to demands of developers into a proactive, constructive, community-led system, we can see it morph from a defensive protection stance into one of active restoration, repair and regeneration. It can lead to the greening of cities and towns as we embrace the fact that habitats are not just “over there” but among us. It can create industrial jobs in coalmine rehabilitation. It can support regenerative agriculture, and cooperative sharing of scarce water. It can even open space for community-led conversations about relocation as the overheating world retreats from rising seas and inland desertification is inevitable.

Supporting and enabling communities to make decisions is also vital for rebuilding confidence in democracy, which has collapsed in recent years. The ongoing panic-buying response to Covid-19 suggests that the abject failure of government to provide leadership through the fires worsened this further. This is now an opportunity to rethink governance, reclaim agency for communities, build practices of trust and social cohesion, embedded in respect for expert advice.

Now it’s important to recognise that with this government we’re not going to get these kinds of changes. At best we might hold off the push to weaken the EPBC even further. But that shouldn’t stop us advocating for what we need. Quite the opposite.

Politics, like the natural world it operates within, is a system. It works in complex ways because all it is is the collected actions of humans, influenced by each other and by external impetuses such as the weather. Or viruses.

Donella Meadows, the modern mother of systems thinking, wrote that the most effective leverage point to change a system is “the mindset or paradigm out of which the system ... arises”. It’s critical, then, that we confront the paradigm which sees environmental protection as of marginal importance at best, and as a barrier at worst. It’s vital that we challenge the mindsets of human disconnection from and dominance over nature.

Over the past three months, a huge number of people made that conceptual leap. In recent weeks the crisis has become such that even mainstream politics finds it impossible to ignore.

At the same time, over this period numerous people decided to just get on with it, without waiting for government. In both bushfire response and the tremendous mutual aid response to Covid-19, millions of us are setting up local projects, or joining existing ones, that make life better, generate social cohesion, reduce our footprint, and cultivate an ethic of care – for ourselves, for each other, for the natural world we are part of.

If enough of us start doing this in our communities, and if enough submissions to the EPBC inquiry call for reforms that are embedded in ecological thinking, we will be putting a whole lot of small chocks under the lever. Each of those chocks is tiny. But together they can tip the balance.

All of a sudden, especially at a moment like this, change will come.

Links

• 'The forest is now terribly silent': land set aside for threatened species entirely burnt out
• Coronavirus: 'Nature is sending us a message’, says UN environment chief
• Professor Sees Climate Mayhem Lurking Behind Covid-19 Outbreak
• Here’s What The Coronavirus Pandemic Can Teach Us About Tackling Climate Change
• (US) The Analogy Between Covid-19 And Climate Change Is Eerily Precise
• $2tn US Coronavirus Relief Comes Without Climate Stipulations
• Coronavirus: 'Nature Is Sending Us A Message’, Says UN Environment Chief
• How Changes Brought On By Coronavirus Could Help Tackle Climate Change
• 5 Lessons From Coronavirus That Will Help Us Tackle Climate Change
• (US) Editorial: Climate Change Is Just As Real As Covid-19. Now’s The Last, Best Chance For Our Government To Treat It That Way