Lisa Roberts spent 25 years building a native plant business that was
as sustainable as they come, with off-grid solar power and water
harvesting, only to see it go up in flames in the recent bushfires.
Her
home and nursery in Wandella in southern NSW reduced to rubble, Ms
Roberts fled to Canberra, powerless to act as fires threatened another
venture in nearby Pialligo. Living in the smoke-choked capital also
damaged her vocal cords, which have still not recovered.
Lisa Roberts and her partner lost their home and nursery in Wandella in summer's bushfires, prompting her to lead a novel legal case against the NSW Environment Protection Authority. Credit: Lisa Roberts
"A
part of me totally rages at the world for its totally inadequate
response to climate change," Ms Roberts said. "Everybody's safety is at
risk."
That anger is being now channelled into a legal challenge
against the NSW Environment Protection Authority. Bushfire Survivors for
Climate Action, of which Ms Roberts is a member, began the suit last
week with the NSW Environmental Defenders Office "to kick [the EPA] into
action", she said.
Today we're announcing a new case against the NSW EPA.
Our clients, the Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, seek to compel the EPA to fulfill their duty + protect NSW communities by regulating greenhouse gases that cause catastrophic climate change. https://t.co/EnQusvDm8xpic.twitter.com/3RoDQdIRbR
— Environmental Defenders Office (@EDOLawyers) April 19, 2020
EDO chief
executive David Morris said the case, in the Land and Environment Court,
would seek to force the EPA, which does not have a climate policy, to
use its powers to keep communities safe from the increasingly severe
impacts of a warming world.
Mr Morris said the EPA was chosen as a
test case among similar agencies nationally in part because of a
section of the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997.
That
section requires the agency to “develop environmental quality
objectives, guidelines and policies to ensure environment protection”.
"It's
an opportunity for the EPA to recognise they have a legal obligation to
take action," he said. "They should have a policy and a plan to address
the greatest threat to the environment."
'A part of me totally rages': Lisa Roberts, a horticulturist entrepreneur, is part of a legal challenge against the NSW Environment Protection Authority after bushfires hit her multi-million businesses hard.
An
EPA spokesman said the agency had received court documents from the EDO
"and is considering them". A spokesman for NSW Environment Minister
Matt Kean said it was "inappropriate to comment" on an ongoing legal
matter.
The Land and Environment Court has made significant climate-related decisions before, including in February last year
when it found the final, so-called scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions
produced by burning coal should be taken into account when considering
the environmental impacts of new mines.
Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action chairwoman Jo Dodds says she can't look at the environment without imagining how it will look when it is burnt.
Bushfire
Survivors chairwoman Jo Dodds, who is also a Bega Shire councillor,
said the group's 30-odd members had endured fires from the 2003 blazes
in Canberra, Black Saturday in Victoria in 2009 and the fires that
devastated parts of her town in Tathra two years ago.
Cr Dodds said the legal action was aimed at making the EPA "live up to its remit".
The
agency "needs to have adequate policies around climate change",
including setting limits on greenhouse emissions and enforcing them, she
said.
Cr Dodds said she had to evacuate to the Bega River in 2018
and watch on as aerial water bombers tried to save hers and other homes
from being engulfed in flames.
That experience, and the past season's endless fire threat, had left lingering emotional scars.
"I'm always looking at the environment and imagining what it will look like when it burns," she said.
At the time, the Tathra bushfires in March 2018 seemed unseasonal because they erupted in autumn. Last fire season, though, ran from July until February 2020. Credit: Suzie Duffy
Scientists recently confirmed the Great Barrier Reef suffered
another serious bleaching event last summer—the third in five years.
Dramatic intervention to save the natural wonder is clearly needed.
First and foremost, this requires global greenhouse gas emissions
to be slashed. But the right combination of technological and
biological interventions, deployed with care at the right time and
scale, are also critical to securing the reef's future.
This could include methods designed to shade and cool the reef,
techniques to help corals adapt to warmer temperatures, ways to help
damaged reefs recover, and smart systems that target interventions to
the most strategically beneficial locations.
Implementing such measures across the breadth of the reef—the world's
biggest reef ecosystem—will not be easy, or cheap. In fact, we believe
the scale of the task is greater than the Apollo 11 moon landing mission
in 1969—but not impossible.
That mission was a success, not because a few elements worked to
plan, but because of the integration, coordination and alignment of
every element of the mission's goal: be the first to land and walk on
the moon, and then fly home safely.
Half a century later, facing the ongoing decline of the Great Barrier
Reef, we can draw important lessons from that historic human
achievement.
Research into breeding coral hybrids for heat-stress resistance could help restore parts of the reef. Credit: Marie Roman/AIMS, Author provided
Intervening to save the reef
The recently released Reef Restoration and Adaptatio … pt feasibility study
shows Australia could feasibly, and with reasonable probability of
success, intervene to help the reef adapt to and recover from the
effects of climate change.
The study, of which we were a part, involved more than 100 leading
coral reef scientists, modellers, economists, engineers, business
strategists, social scientists, decision scientists and reef managers.
It shows how new and existing interventions, supported by the best
available research and development, could help secure a future for the
reef.
We must emphasise that interventions to help the reef adapt to and
recover from climate change will not, alone, save it. Success also
depends on reducing global greenhouse emissions as quickly as possible.
But the hands-on measures we're proposing could help buy time for the
reef.
More than 100 coral reef scientists took part in the feasibility study. Credit: Nick Thake/AIMS, Author provided
Cloud brightening to heat-tolerant corals
Our study identified 160 possible interventions that could help
revive the reef, and build on its natural resilience. We've whittled it
down to the 43 most effective and realistic.
Possible interventions for further research and development include brightening clouds with salt crystals to shade and cool corals; ways to increase the abundance of naturally heat-tolerant corals in local populations,
such as through aquarium-based selective breeding and release; and
methods to promote faster recovery on damaged reefs, such as deploying
structures designed to stabilise reef rubble.
But there will be no single silver bullet solution. The feasibility
study showed that methods working in combination, along with water
quality improvement and crown-of-thorns starfish control, will provide
the best results.
Harder than landing on the moon
There are four reasons why saving the Great Barrier Reef in coming decades could be more challenging than the 1969 moon mission.
Field testing the heat resistant coral hybrids in the Great Barrier Reef. Credit: Kate Green/AIMS, Author provided
First, warming events have already driven the reef into decline with
back-to-back bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, and now again in 2020.
The next major event is now only just around the corner.
Second, current emission reduction pledges would see the world warm by 2.3-3.5℃ relative to pre-industrial levels. This climate scenario, which is not the worst case, would be beyond the range that allows today's coral reef ecosystems to function.
Without swift action, the prospect for the world's coral reefs is bleak, with most expected to become seriously degraded before mid-century.
Third, we still have work to do to control local pressures, including water quality and marine pests crown-of-thorns starfish.
And fourth, the inherent complexity of natural systems, particularly ones as diverse as coral reefs, provides an additional challenge not faced by NASA engineers 50 years ago.
So keeping the Great Barrier Reef, let alone the rest of the world's
reefs, safe from climate change will dwarf the challenge of any space
mission. But there is hope.
The Great Barrier Reef has been hit by consecutive bleaching events – restoring it may be harder than landing on the moon. Credit: Shutterstock
We must start now
The federal government recently re-announced
A$100 million from the Reef Trust Partnership towards a major research
and development effort for this program. This will be augmented by
contributions of A$50m from research institutions, and additional
funding from international philanthropists.
Our study shows that under a wide range of future emission scenarios,
the program is very likely to be worth the effort, more so if the world
meets the Paris target and rapidly cuts greenhouse gas emissions.
What's more, economic analyses included in the feasibility study show
successful Great Barrier Reef intervention at scale could create
benefits to Australia of between A$11 billion and A$773 billion over a
60-year period, with much of it flowing to regional economies and
Traditional Owner communities.
And perhaps more importantly, if Australia is successful in this
effort, we can lead the world in a global effort to save these natural
wonders bequeathed to us across the ages. We must start the journey now.
If we wait, it may be too late.
This combination photo shows Murcia, Spain, days before the national coronavirus lockdown on Feb. 29, left, and again weeks into the lockdown on April 23. (Maarcial Guillen/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Amid its horrors and tragedies, the coronavirus pandemic has driven home a startling reality.
With humans in retreat, nature reclaimed what was once its own
in whimsical ways: Goats strutted through villages, antlered deer
grazed on manicured city lawns and mountain lions found perches by
suburban fences.
The pandemic is not just a reminder of the human impact on the environment, including the significance of man-made emissions
on global warming and air pollution. It’s also similar: an
imperceptible menace that knows no borders, overwhelms aging
infrastructure and bedevils policymakers and politicians who struggle to
grapple with the scale of the threat.
“A good way to think about the coronavirus
pandemic is that it is like climate change at warp speed. What takes
decades and centuries for the climate takes days or weeks for a
contagious disease,” New York University climate economist Gernot Wagner wrote last month. “That speed focuses the mind and offers lessons in how to think about risk in an interconnected world.”
The commemorations for the 50th annual Earth Day saw a litany of
prominent climate campaigners link action on that front to the
experience of the outbreak.
For years, climate scientists have been
calling on governments to “flatten the curve” — that is, reduce emissions to lessen the likely catastrophic toll global warming will exact on societies in decades to come.
“Just
as in today’s pandemic, progress has been halted by finger-pointing,
denial, replacing real science with junk science, misinformation, and
flat-out lies, elevating political hacks instead of scientists and
experts, refusal to work with allies and even adversaries, and leaving
states and cities to fend for themselves,” wrote Kerry.
“The
coronavirus pandemic has delivered sharp and painful reminders of our
collective vulnerability and the value of paying very close attention to
reality,” wrote physicist Mark Buchanan.
“If there’s any good to come out of the current tragedy, it may be in
helping to persuade a few people to help tip the scales and get our
leaders to take the next looming issue much more seriously.”
The Trump administration isn’t quite set on tipping the scales.
Stimulus money the White House has been empowered to spend in the pandemic’s aftermath may go to U.S. fossil fuel companies
that were already in financial trouble before the crisis.
On Earth Day,
Andrew Wheeler, Trump’s administrator for the Environmental Protection
Agency, sought to shift focus away from climate change to government
efforts to curb pollution.
But away from the White House, others are seeking to take the lead. Under the aegis of the World Economic Forum, major financial firms — including some that may help manage elements of the federal response to the pandemic
— have pledged to divest from fossil fuels. Campaigners are calling for
government stimulus to fund sustainable development projects that could build the green economy. The World Bank is proposing linking governments’ post-pandemic spending to greener infrastructure projects and future disaster-proofing.
In Washington, there’s a cautious hope
that the urgency presented both by climate change and the pandemic may
cool the geopolitical tensions between the United States and China and
force greater global collaboration.
“We
all breathe the same air and we’re all going to live with the same
rising seas,” Michael Chertoff, a former head of the Department of
Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration, told Today’s
WorldView during a webinar this week.
“And whatever we may disagree about some things, we’re going to need to
sit down with them and our like-minded allies and everybody else and
figure out what can we do collectively to protect the global commons
against either pandemic diseases or disastrous climate change.”
“It’s
not hard to imagine a future U.S. administration, rather than denying
the increasingly obvious reality of climate change, using it to argue
that the country needs tougher immigration controls and fewer refugees,”
wrote Keating.
“The alternative, they will argue, is to be overwhelmed by the human
invaders and see our own natural resources depleted in the way other
countries already have.”
Most Australians support a green economic recovery from COVID-19.
Citizens want economic recovery actions to prioritise climate change.
A new Ipsos poll conducted in 14 countries shows
widespread support for government actions to prioritise climate change
in the economic recovery after COVID-19 with 65% globally agreeing that
this is important.
For Australia, 57% agreed climate change should be
prioritised in the economic recovery actions.
Furthermore, the survey finds that 71% of adults globally agree that,
in the long term, climate change is as serious a crisis as COVID-19.
While the majority of Australians (59%) agree climate change is as
serious a crisis as COVID-19, this is well below the global average.
The survey was conducted online among more than 28,000 adults between April 16th and April 19th 2020.
A second Ipsos survey commissioned for Earth Day found that while
climate change remains the most important environmental issue for
citizens globally, they are no more likely to say they plan to make
changes to their own environmental behaviours than they were six years
ago.
The second survey was carried out online among more than 20,000
adults across 29 countries between Friday, February 21st and March 6th 2020.
Key Australian findings include:
Climate change remains the most important environmental issue to Australians.
Two-in-five (42%) cited it as one of the three most important
environmental issues facing the nation. This was consistent with the
global trend; climate change is the number one environmental issue
globally too (37% identified it as a top issue).
Also of concern to Australians are dealing with
the amount of waste we generate (37%); future energy sources and
supplies (29%); wildlife conservation (25%); and overpopulation (24%).
Globally, other environmental issues that are important to citizens
are air pollution (33%) and dealing with the amount of waste we
generate (32%), followed by deforestation (26%) and water pollution
(25%). Concern for the top four issues has increased since two years
ago.
A majority of the public globally (68%) agrees that if their
governments do not act now to combat climate change, they will be
failing their citizens. Australians feel similarly, 65% agreed Government inaction on climate change would be failing citizens.
More than half of Australians (55%) say they would be put off from voting for a political party whose policies do not take climate change seriously.
Comparison of this year’s findings highlight changing
environmental priorities for Australians. In 2018, future energy sources
and supplies was a top-three environmental concern for Australians (40%
identified it as a top environmental issue, compared with 29% this
year).
Climate change was the third most commonly mentioned issue for
Australians in 2018 at 35%; and is the number one environmental issue
this year, up by 7 points to 42%.
Of all the countries’ citizens surveyed in 2020, Australians placed
the greatest concern on wildlife conservation. A quarter (25%) of
Australians identify it as a top-three issue compared with an average of
15% globally.
It is likely this concern has been shaped by the loss of
Australian wildlife during the bushfire crisis over summer. However,
concern was also relatively high in 2018 compared with the rest of the
world. In 2018, 22% of Australians selected this issue (14% globally).
Across a range of environmental behaviours, as many as two fifths
globally feel they are already contributing as much as they possibly can
by undertaking specific behaviours.
Australians feel they are already
doing much to limit their impact on climate change including recycling
(54% report they are already doing as much as they possibly can); saving
energy at home (e.g. through insulation, 43% already doing as much as
they possibly can); and saving water at home (40% already doing as much
as they possibly can).
Australians are divided on whether the environment should have to
endure some setbacks in order to help the economy to recover from the
economic impacts of COVID-19.
Half (50%) agree that the Government
should focus on helping the economy to recover first and foremost, even
if that means taking some actions that are bad for the environment.
Two-in-five (41%) disagree.
Ipsos Australia Public Affairs Director, Jennifer Brook,
said: “It’s not surprising Australians feel conflicted about the
potential of environmental sacrifices for economic recovery.
"In another
of our monthly Ipsos Issues Monitor surveys, we have seen the
environment get pushed out as the number one issue facing the nation at
the start of 2020 to be replaced by healthcare, the economy and
unemployment.
“These three issues have all experienced a dramatic surge in concern
during the coronavirus pandemic. At the beginning of the year, it was
the bushfire crisis that put the environment at the top of the list, but
clearly COVID-19 is driving concern about these other issues at the
moment.
“Despite the environment taking a back seat compared with other
current issues, it’s still important to people. There is strong support
among the public for a green economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.
"The importance of staying at home as much as possible is having major
impacts on our consumption and travel patterns at present. What remains
to be seen is how sticky these behaviour changes are as the economy
opens up again in post-pandemic life.”
Technical notes
The findings come from two surveys conducted by Ipsos on the Global Advisor online platform.
One is a 14-country survey conducted April 16-19, 2020 among 28,029
adults aged 18-74 in Canada and the United States and 16-74 in
Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, India,
Japan, Mexico, Russia and Spain. The sample consisted of approximately
2,000+ individuals in each of the 14 countries.
The other is a 29-country survey conducted February 21 - March 6,
2020 among 20,590 adults aged 18-74 in the United States, Canada,
Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Turkey and aged 16-74 in 23
other markets. The sample for this survey included approximately 1000+
individuals in each of Australia, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland),
France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and
the U.S.; and approximately 500+ individuals in each of Argentina,
Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Hungary, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New
Zealand, Peru, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea,
and Turkey.
The precision of Ipsos online polls are calculated using a
credibility interval with a poll of 1,000 accurate to +/- 3.1 percentage
points and of 500 accurate to +/- 4.5 percentage points. For more
information on the Ipsos use of credibility intervals, please visit the
Ipsos website.
17 of the 29 countries surveyed online generate nationally
representative samples in their countries (Argentina, Australia,
Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan,
Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and United
States). Brazil, China, Chile, Colombia, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru,
Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey produce a national sample
that is more urban & educated, and with higher incomes than their
fellow citizens. We refer to these respondents as “Upper Deck Consumer
Citizens”. They are not nationally representative of their country.
Weighting was employed in both surveys to balance demographics and
ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult
population according to the most recent country Census data, and to
provide results intended to approximate the sample universe.
For millions of years, the Arctic has observed an unbroken ritual. In winter, Arctic sea ice
expands, as sub-zero polar temperatures freeze waters in their place.
In summer, the ice pack retreats, as warmer temperatures thaw the
winter-made gains, surrendering them back to the ocean.
In the era of
anthropogenic climate change, the ebb and flow of this timeless cycle
has become disturbed. For decades, the overall coverage of Arctic sea
ice has been in decline,
expanding less and retreating more with each year. Nonetheless, the
Arctic has, as always, remained frozen, covered in sea ice, even in the
summer. It may not for much longer.
A new analysis
of numerous climate models predicts the Arctic Ocean will become
ice-free in the summer in only decades, and even before the mid-point of
this century – a startling forecast that persists even in the best case
scenarios, in which we manage to significantly cut down atmospheric CO2
emissions.
"If we reduce global emissions rapidly and
substantially, and thus keep global warming below 2 °C relative to
pre-industrial levels, Arctic sea ice will nevertheless likely disappear
occasionally in summer even before 2050," says polar geophysicist Dirk Notz from the University of Hamburg in Germany.
"This really surprised us."
Sea ice area at the end of the Arctic summer in 1979, at left, versus 2019. Dirk Notz
In
the new study, Notz and his team examined dozens of different climate
models simulating the evolution of Arctic sea ice in the future.
The models – which come from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6
(CMIP6) – comprise some of the latest generation of global climate
models, and encompass a number different hypothetical scenarios,
including trajectories based on rapid reduction of future CO2 emissions,
as well as largely unchanged, 'business as usual' situations.
In
most of the CMIP6 simulations, the Arctic Ocean becomes practically
sea‐ice free (defined to mean sea‐ice area covering an area of less than
1 million square kilometres) in summers before we reach the year 2050,
and regardless of the hypothetical scenario employed.
"The CMIP6 models simulate a large spread for when Arctic sea-ice area is predicted to drop below 1 million km2, such that the Arctic Ocean becomes practically sea-ice free," the authors write in their paper.
"However,
the clear majority of all models, and of those models that best capture
the observed evolution, project that the Arctic will become practically
sea-ice free in September before the year 2050 at future anthropogenic
CO2 emissions of less than 1,000 [gigatonnes of] CO2 above that of 2019
in all scenarios."
It's also something that will amplify the global warming effects the world is currently experiencing, scientists say, as with less ice in the Arctic, less sunlight can be reflected in the region, meaning our hotter planet absorbs even more heat as the North Pole increasingly melts away.
"It's a two-way street," NASA climate scientist Claire Parkinson, who wasn't involved with the current study, explained in 2018.
"The
warming means less ice is going to form and more ice is going to melt,
but also, because there's less ice, less of the Sun's incident solar
radiation is reflected off, and this contributes to the warming."
If
there's any good news here, it's that we may still be able to lessen
the frequency of these ice-free Arctic summers, if we can manage to
steeply reduce our CO2 emissions.
Models and simulations can
predict many things, but the only trajectory that really matters is the
path we collectively decide to take.
Michael Moore produced "Planet of the Humans" about the eco-impacts of renewables. Getty Editorial and Jeff Gibbs, Planet of the Humans
Over the last 10 years,
everyone from celebrity influencers including Elon Musk, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, and Al Gore, to major technology brands including Apple,
have repeatedly claimed that renewables like solar panels and wind
farms are less polluting than fossil fuels.
But a new documentary, “Planet of the Humans,”
being released free to the public on YouTube today, the 50th
Anniversary of Earth Day, reveals that industrial wind farms, solar
farms, biomass, and biofuels are wrecking natural environments.
“Planet of the Humans was produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore. “I assumed solar panels would last forever,” Moore told Reuters. “I didn’t know what went into the making of them.”
The
film shows both abandoned industrial wind and solar farms and new ones
being built — but after cutting down forests. “It suddenly dawned on me
what we were looking at was a solar dead zone,” says filmmaker Jeff
Gibbs, staring at a former solar farm in California. “I learned that the
solar panels don’t last.”
Like many environmental
documentaries, “Planet of Humans” endorses debunked Malthusian ideas
that the world is running out of energy. “We have to have our ability to
consume reigned in,” says a well-coiffed environmental leader. “Without
some major die-off of the human population there is no turning back,”
says a scientist.
In
truth, humankind has never been at risk of running out of energy. There
has always been enough fossil fuels to power human civilization for
hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, and nuclear energy is
effectively infinite.
But the apocalyptic
rhetoric detracts little from the heart of the documentary, which
exposes the complicity of climate activists in promoting
pollution-intensive biomass and natural gas.
The film unearths a
great deal of information I had never seen before. It shows Apple’s head
of sustainability, former EPA head Lisa Jackson, claiming on-stage at
an Apple event, “We now run Apple on 100% renewable energy,” to loud
applause.
But Gibbs interviews a
scientist who researched corporate renewables programs who said, “I
haven’t found a single entity anywhere in the world running on 100%
solar and wind alone.” The film shows a forest being cut down to build
an Apple solar farm.
After Earth Day Founder
Denis Hayes claims at a 2015 Earth Day concert that the event was being
powered by solar, Gibbs goes behind the stage to find out the truth.
“The concert is run by a diesel generation system,” the solar vendor
said. “That right there could run a toaster,” said another vendor.
The film also debunks
the claim made by Elon Musk that his “Gigafactory” to make batteries is
powered by renewables. In fact, it is hooked up to the electric grid.
“Some solar panels are
built to only last 10 years,” said a man selling materials for solar
manufacturing at a corporate expo. “It’s not like you get this magic
free energy. I don’t know that it’s the solution and here I am selling
the materials that go in photovoltaics.”
“What powers a learning
community?” said MicKibben at the unveiling of a wood-burning power
plant at Middlebury College in Vermont. “As of this afternoon, the easy
answer to this is wood chips. It’s incredibly beautiful to look at the
bunker of wood chips. Anything that burns we can throw in there! This
shows that this could happen everywhere, should happen everywhere, and must happen everywhere!”
The film reveals that
McKibben and Sierra Club supported a Michigan ballot initiative that
would have required the state get 25% of its electricity from renewables
by 2025, and that the initiative was backed by biomass industrial
interests, and that efforts to build a biomass plant at Michigan State
University were hotly opposed by climate activists — including ones from
350.org.
In reality, scientists
have for over a decade raised the alarm about biomass and biofuels
causing rainforest destruction around the world including Brazil and
Malaysia, and have documented that, when one takes into account their
landscape impacts, the fuels produce significantly higher carbon
emissions than oil and gas and may produce more than coal.
In 2016, McKibben wrote an article for Grist.org where he argued against burning biomass to produce electricity.
The film shows Silicon
Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla telling Leslie Stahl of “60
Minutes” that his biofuels plant made “Clean green gasoline.” After
Stahl asked what the downside was, Khosla said, “There is no downside.”
One year later, Khosla’s
company filed for bankruptcy and defaulted on a $75 million loan it
received from the state of Mississippi. It produced biofuels for $5 to
$10 a gallon — “even without counting the cost of building the plant,” noted
Washington Post’s Steve Mufson in 2014. Two earlier Khosla biofuel
ventures had already gone bankrupt after receiving hundreds of millions
of federal government subsidies. Shareholders sued Khosla’s company for
fraud.
“Planet of the Humans”
notes that Al Gore personally accepted fossil fuel money in 2013 when he
and a co-owner sold Current TV to Al Jazeera, which is state-funded by
Qatar, the gas-exporting nation whose citizens have the largest per
capita carbon footprint in the world.
One year earlier, Gore
had said the goal of “reducing our dependence on expensive dirty oil”
was “to save the future of civilization.”
The film shows Jon
Stewart, the host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” asking Gore,
“You couldn’t find, for your business, a more sustainable choice?”
“What is not sustainable about it?” responded Gore.
“Because it is backed by fossil fuel money?” said Stewart.
As part of the
agreement, Gore reportedly received $100 million. Climate activists
weren’t bothered by it. “I don’t think the community is too upset,” a
politically active environmentalist told The Washington Post about
Gore’s deal with Qatar. “My personal sense is he got a good deal.”
Gore’s business partner, David Blood, “turns forests into profits,” notes Gibbs.
The main problem with
biofuels—the land required—stems from their low power density. If the
United States were to replace all of its gasoline with corn ethanol, it
would need an area 50 percent larger than all of the current U.S.
cropland.
Even the most efficient
biofuels, like those made from soybeans, require 450 to 750 times more
land than petroleum. The best performing biofuel, sugarcane ethanol,
widely used in Brazil, requires 400 times more land to produce the same
amount of energy as petroleum.
Publicly, Kennedy,
McKibben, and Brune promoted solar panels as an alternative to fossil
fuels. “There were days where Germany was generating 80 percent of its
power from solar,” said Mckibben. In reality, wind and solar provided
just 34 percent of German electricity in 2019, and Germany relies upon
burning natural gas, coal, and biogas from corn.
“In the Green Century
Fund, recommended by 350.org,” reports Gibbs, “I found less than one
percent solar and wind and 99% things like mining, oil and gas
infrastructure, a tar sands exploiter, McDonald’s, Archer Daniels...
Coca-Cola… and lots of banks, including Black Rock, the largest financer
of deforestation on earth.”
“The plants that we are
building, the wind plants and solar plants, are gas plants,” Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. told oil and gas investors. About another project, Ivanpah,
he said, “It’s a turbine that we just take from a gas plant and suspend
it from a big scaffolding, a tower and surround it with giant mirrors in
the desert.”
Building the Ivanpah
solar farm resulted in the deaths of hundreds of old desert tortoises.
“Deserts are not dead,” said the filmmaker. “They are in fact full of
ancient life.”
The film points to the massive materials requirements of renewables.
Solar panels require sixteen times more materials in the form of cement, glass, concrete, and steel than do nuclear plants, and create
three hundred times more waste. “You would have been better off just
burning fossil fuels in the first place,” said one expert, “instead of
just playing pretend. We’re basically just being fed a lie.”
The man noted that Koch
Industries provide many of the materials used to build solar panels and
industrial solar farms. “The funny part is that when you criticize solar
plants like this you are accused of working for the Koch brothers,” he
laughs. “That’s the idiocy. This relies on the most toxic industrial
processes we’ve ever created.”
What drives people who
believe they want to save the environment into destroying it? The
filmmaker hints that the desire for “sustainability” is really a desire
for a kind of immortality. “What differentiates people is that we know
we’ll die someday,” says a sociologist. “We enveloped ourselves in
belief systems and worldviews.”
“People on the left and
the right who think we’re going to be able to solar panel ourselves into
the future,” he says, “I think that’s delusional.”
The good news, the man says, is that “once you come to terms with death, anything is possible.”
Wolfgang Knorr Senior Research Scientist, Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University
Humanity has only recently become accustomed to a stable climate.
For most of its history, long ice ages punctuated with hot spells
alternated with short warm periods. Transitions from cold to warm
climates were especially chaotic.
Then, about 10,000 years ago, the Earth suddenly entered into a
period of climate stability modern humans had never seen before. But
thanks to ever accelerating emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, humanity is now bringing this period to an end.
This loss of stability could be disastrous. If the coronavirus
pandemic can teach us anything about the climate crisis it is this: our
modern interconnected global economy is much more vulnerable than we thought, and we must urgently become more resilient and better prepared for the unknown.
After all, a stable climate underpins much of modern civilisation. About half of humanity depends on stable monsoon rains for food production. Many agricultural plants
need certain temperature variations within a year to produce a stable
crop, and heat stress can damage them greatly. We rely on intact glaciers or healthy forest soils to store water for the dry season. Heavy rains and storms can wipe out the infrastructure of whole regions.
These are the sorts of climate impacts that we know about, and have
been extensively studied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC). But the biggest risk may yet come from climate-related
chaos that we did not expect.
Impossible heatwaves – in consecutive years
In 2018, a prolonged heat wave and drought hit much of western and northern Europe and decimated much of the potato harvest in the region. Temperatures in my native Germany reached record highs in a summer that was drier and hotter than in many parts of the Mediterranean. Climate models had predicted
Europe’s most extreme heat increases would occur in Greece, Turkey and
Ukraine, so the odds of such a heatwave seemed impossibly low.
The Rhine dries up: Germany, July 2019.Friedemann Vogel / EPA
Only one year on, in 2019, western Europe was struck by another “impossible” heat wave.
In Germany, with temperatures topping 40°C, the record of the previous
year was broken twice. Even in the Netherlands, known for its cool sea
breeze even at peak summer, peak temperatures exceeded a searing 39°C.
Huge wildfires arrived decades early
A large part of Australia’s forests are concentrated in the
south-east of the country. This valuable ecosystem evolved with fire and
thus is supposed to burn frequently. In these natural fires, typically
1-2% of the area is consumed by flames.
Massive bushfires arrived decades before the models predicted. Mick Tsikas / EPA
Wildfire and climate models – including one I worked on myself – did predict a large increase in bushfire activity in the forests of south-east Australia. But they predicted this would happen towards the end of this century. The models certainly did not foresee that megafires wiping out as much as 20% of these forests would strike as early as 2020.
Locusts are a climate crisis
In the long term, the IPCC predicts crop yields will decrease by around 10% or more, but to date it has ignored the possibility of large-scale pest outbreaks, which can wipe out entire harvests.
At the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, the Arabian peninsula experienced much wetter weather than normal, likely owed to ocean warming. This created conditions that enabled numbers of desert locusts to explode.
Fighting the locusts in Somaliland, March 2020.Daniel Irungu / EPA
This unusual event was followed by another, a storm that shifted most of this locust army, now several hundred billion strong, to East Africa. In Kenya, it became the worst such outbreak for more than 70 years. With the rainy season just arrived and seeds sown for the next cropping season, it is now feared that continued breeding of the locusts will create a second wave that will be far worse than the first one.
Climate scientists tend to focus on slow changes with their climate
predictions. But how much the weather becomes more chaotic is
notoriously difficult to predict with climate models. We also have only a
very superficial understanding of how vulnerable our modern society is
to climate chaos and unexpected climate-related events.
Instead of seeing the climate problem as one felt by the next
generations, we need to start focusing on what could happen tomorrow, or
next year. To do that, we must better understand, appreciate and
acknowledge the vulnerability of modern society – and address this
vulnerability at its core.
