Are We Witnessing The Death Of The Car?

BBC Future Planet - Francesca Perry

Cities around the world are seeing dwindling numbers of fossil-fuel powered cars on their streets, and many are planning to keep it that way after lockdowns ease.



As global lockdowns keep most people at home, congestion-riddled, pollution-choked streets around the world have transformed into empty, eerily silent spaces. The most conspicuous absentee is the car, as personal vehicles remain parked in driveways and side streets.

This lack of cars has contributed to a sudden drop in emissions of carbon dioxide, pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter. Its effect on oil prices has been not so much a drop as an implosion. Some cities have temporarily turned emptier streets into walking and cycling-only zones to enable socially distanced exercise.

Meanwhile, Milan – the epicentre of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak – announced it would transform 35km (21.7 miles) of its streets for cycling post-lockdown. Could this pandemic, a global emergency, actually catalyse an ongoing movement towards cleaner air – and might Milan’s scheme form a blueprint for cities that have repeatedly tried to tackle the domination of the car?

The pandemic’s impact on the environment has been staggering. Carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are heading for a record 5.5-5.7% annual drop. From mid-January to mid-February, China’s carbon emissions fell by around 25%.

In Delhi, a city with often the worst air quality in the world, pollution caused by PM2.5s reduced by roughly 75% as traffic congestion dropped by 59%. A 70% reduction in toxic nitrogen oxides was reported in Paris, while satellite imagery showed nitrogen dioxide levels in Milan fell by about 40%. In the UK, road travel has decreased by as much as 73% and in London, toxic emissions at major roads and junctions fell by almost 50%.

Although car use has decreased, so has public transport use. Services have been reduced, the need for travel has declined, and a public fear of using it has grown, now that proximity to strangers has become synonymous with infection risk.

Some Chinese cities, including Wuhan – where the coronavirus outbreak began – shut down public transport entirely to reduce risk of contagion.

The urban mobility app Moovit reported that public transport ridership has dropped on average by 78% worldwide, with Milan and Rome, for example, seeing a decrease of 89%.

Images from the European Space Agency show NO2 emissions in Paris in March 2020 were down significantly compared with the same period in 2019. (Credit: Reuters)

Where car, bus and train journeys have been dwindling, bicycles have been picking up the slack. As a form of isolated transport that doubles as exercise – that is much easier given the wealth of empty streets – cycling has become more appealing in a number of cities.

In March, use of bike-share systems increased by roughly 150% in Beijing and 67% in New York, where cycling on main thoroughfares increased by 52%. Meanwhile, cycling traffic increased by 151% on trails in Philadelphia and in April Dundee saw cycling traffic increase by 94%.

Cities that seize this moment to make it easier for people to walk, bike and take public transport will prosper after this pandemic and not simply recover from it
Janette Sadik-Khan

To accommodate streets now busier with bikes, as well as facilitate social distancing, some places have installed temporary cycle lanes or closed streets to cars. Pop-up bike lanes have appeared in cities including Berlin, Budapest, Mexico City, New York, Dublin and Bogotá.

Governments from New Zealand to Scotland have made funding available for temporary cycle lanes and walkways amid the pandemic. In Brussels, the entire city core will become a priority zone for cyclists and pedestrians from early May for the forseeable future.

 Meanwhile, temporary street closures to cars have taken place in Brighton, Bogotá, Cologne, Vancouver and Sydney as well as multiple US cities including Boston, Denver and Oakland. In England, restrictions have been lifted to enable and encourage councils to more quickly close streets to cars.

But these, of course, are temporary measures. What will happen as lockdowns are lifted?

There are widespread concerns that as travel resumes, people will avoid public transport amid continuing fears of the virus and instead turn to private cars, clogging roads and causing pollution, perhaps even more so than before. Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, are already seeing this happen.

The easing of lockdowns has not meant a flood of people returning to public transport in China, where many stations remain quiet. (Credit: Getty Images)

It is with this in mind that Milan announced its plan to make changes in the wake of the pandemic that support alternatives to driving. “In order to prevent an excessive use of private cars, with the consequent increase in air pollution, the city of Milan will encourage the use of bicycles,” its announcement states. As travel restrictions are lifted, the government will begin construction on the cycle lanes – all of which take space away from cars – alongside implementing reduced speed limits and widened pavements.

This is far from a ban on cars, but it does suggest a shift towards more sustainable forms of transport in the long term, catalysed by the pandemic. So could other cities follow suit?

Janette Sadik-Khan, a former transportation commissioner for New York City and principal with Bloomberg Associates, is working with Milan and other cities on their “transport recovery” programmes. “The pandemic challenges us, but it also offers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to change course and repair the damage from a century of car-focused streets,” she says. “Cities that seize this moment to reallocate space on their streets to make it easier for people to walk, bike and take public transport will prosper after this pandemic and not simply recover from it.”

In the Colombian city of Bogotá, mayor Claudia López closed 117km (72.7 miles) of streets to cars in order to make cycling and walking easier during the coronavirus lockdown. Though these streets are typically closed every Sunday – in the long-running, pro-cycling initiative Ciclovía – Lopez has extended the closure throughout weekdays too, as well as added 80km (49.7 miles) of cycle lanes to the city’s existing network of 550km (341.7 miles).

The mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, has extended closures of streets to cars and opened additional cycle routes during lockdown. (Credit: Getty Images)

“Covid-19 safety now piles up with all the other advantages to cycling in Bogotá, and we are exploring other measures, in addition to new cycle lanes, that should increase not only infrastructure but also access to bicycles and other safe and clean transportation alternatives,” explains Bogotá’s environment secretary Carolina Urrutia Vásquez. “Hopefully these will remain primary transportation choices, as well as ‘last mile’ alternatives, past the current crisis.”

We have the opportunity to see what would our cities look like when we are designing for people, not cars
Samu Balogh

In Paris, where mayor Anne Hidalgo’s Plan Vélo had already promised to make every street cycle-friendly by 2024 and remove 72% of Paris’s on-street car parking spaces, a post-lockdown plan was announced that includes creating temporary cycle lanes following metro line routes, for those hesitant to return to public transport. The planned construction of permanent cycle highways has also been accelerated in response to the crisis.

At the national level, Pierre Serne – president of cycling association Club des Villes et Territoires Cyclables – was asked by French minister Élisabeth Borne to coordinate a sustainable post-lockdown mobility plan. “We anticipate a lot of people will chose cycling instead of public transportation,” says Serne. “It could potentially mean millions of new bikes in streets and therefore we have to be able to provide adequate facilities. If we failed, the only alternative might be millions more cars and that would be a nightmare in terms of pollution and congestion. I am willing (and rather confident) to see these temporary measures become permanent because, pandemic or not, cycling is one of the cleanest and healthiest ways to move, especially in urban areas.”

In Budapest, new temporary cycle lanes are due to last until September – but maybe further. “We are constantly monitoring the use of the temporary bike lanes, and we are hoping that a good many of them could remain in place,” says Samu Balogh, the mayor’s chief of staff. “The pandemic has changed transport globally… We have the opportunity to see what would our cities look like when we are designing for people, not cars.” Such thinking builds upon existing efforts from the city to eliminate road deaths, which includes decreasing car numbers and lowering speed limits.

“In the long term we are working towards implementing traffic-calming measures and new bike lanes so we can create a more inviting environment for cycling and walking,” says Balogh.

Rare sights like blue skies in Delhi have shown that "dramatic change is indeed possible," says the World Institute's Claudia Adriazola-Steil. (Credit: Getty Images)

In the UK, London mayor Sadiq Khan has made clear that the capital’s cleaner air should not be temporary and that the ongoing challenge is to “eradicate air pollution permanently”. Xavier Brice, chief executive of the walking and cycling charity Sustrans, believes the country’s recovery “can be a catalyst for positive, long-lasting change in the way we live and move around” and hopes that temporary cycling and walking measures – which Sustrans lobbied for – “inform future road space planning, after lockdown is lifted”.

The future will be very different, and I’m convinced it will be much more local
Shannon Lawrence

It seems this may take effect in Manchester. “When restrictions are lifted, rather than returning to business as usual, we need to take the opportunity to see how we can support more people to choose to walk or cycle, instead of travel by car,” says city councillor Angeliki Stogia, who leads Manchester’s environment, planning and transport strategy.

There are also developments at the national level, as the government’s recently published De-Carbonising Transport report outlines a strategy for reducing car use in order to tackle climate change, in line with the country’s commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It has also committed to ban the sale of new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars in the UK from 2035 to help achieve this.

Which brings up an important point: it is petrol and diesel cars, rather than electric vehicles (EVs) that contribute to carbon emissions and toxic air in cities. Electric vehicles have steadily increased in popularity over the last decade: BloombergNEF reported in 2019 that more than two million EVs were sold in 2018, up from just a few thousand in 2010. It predicts sales will rise to 56 million by 2040.

But EVs are not problem-free: they are expensive, require sufficient and widespread charging facilities, and still contribute to congestion on city streets. In a low-carbon future, however, electric cars – especially those that are shared – could form one part of a multi-modal transport infrastructure.

So in these cities’ efforts to ensure healthier air, outright bans on cars don’t feature as a core approach. But, if their plans are successful, combustion-engine cars may well become a rarer sight.

The approach in many cities has not been to ban the conventional combustion-engine car, but to make healthier and more sustainable options more convenient. (Credit: Getty Images)

It’s hard to say what will happen next, especially as we don’t know when “next” will be. But the sudden drop in pollution and improvement of air quality around the world has been a wake-up call, not least in light of studies showing that pollution makes Covid-19 more deadly and could even contribute to the spread of the virus.

 The coronavirus pandemic struck at a time of climate emergency, an emergency caused in part by the huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere – much of which comes from cars. This pandemic may have inadvertently triggered an environmental reprieve, but it has not stopped climate change.

On 22 April, Earth Day catalysed calls for the current crisis to be a turning point in our relationship with nature. “We must act decisively to protect our planet from both the coronavirus and the existential threat of climate disruption," says UN Secretary General António Guterres. "We need to turn the recovery into a real opportunity to do things right for the future.” Just like viruses, he noted, greenhouse gases do not respect national boundaries either.

Tackling air pollution and climate degradation is high on the list for the new Global Mayors Covid-19 Recovery Task Force, coordinated by C40 Cities, which sees mayors worldwide collaborate to achieve a climate-friendly economic recovery from the pandemic.

“The future will be very different, and I’m convinced it will be much more local – more cycle deliveries, more working from home and more school runs made by bike or walking,” says Shannon Lawrence, C40’s director of global initiatives. “All of which means fewer cars on the road, which in turn means improved air quality, better public health and a major contribution to tackling the climate crisis.”

This Covid-19 crisis is allowing us a glimpse of what a changed world looks like with far fewer cars and much cleaner air
Claudia Adriazola-Steil

Implementing restrictions on cars has different practical and political limitations around the world, however. In places like Milan, Bogotá and Paris, there have long been bottom-up and top-down efforts towards more sustainable mobility – from car-free days to successful bike-share systems. Change is perhaps easier in these places, although not simple.

“Space is of course political, and so supporting and ensuring sufficient space for non-motorised transport and the spectrum of users who have livelihoods dependent on space(s) is crucial,” says Rashiq Fataar, chief executive of Cape Town-based NGO Our Future Cities, which works with cities across the African continent. “Transport options which are safe, clean, less crowded and more efficient should be the benchmark, but transport planning must begin to see itself as part of a system providing economic and social ‘access’ in our cities.”

Indeed, a decline in car use cannot be expected unless people have efficient, accessible and affordable alternative options. But as Fataar points out, mobility is linked to every aspect of life in cities, and a change in car use may only be possible if issues around housing, public services and work culture are addressed too. Such huge volumes of commuting, for instance, may not be necessary if working from home is made easier, services are more equally distributed geographically or people can afford to live within walking distance of their work.

Policy and behaviour change may take a long time, but there exists a building momentum across the world that recognises car-free streets as a critical way of tackling the urgent climate crisis, as well as a strategy to improve health and wellbeing. This pandemic has resulted in countless forced changes to our lifestyles, economies and environments. Seeing what’s possible can lead to change – the question is how to ensure the change resulting from this global emergency improves health for people and planet.

We are a long way off from the demise of the car, but as the world seeks to recover from the collective trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic, perhaps the willingness to tackle another deadly emergency – outdoor air pollution causes 4.2 million deaths per year – will get stronger.
“This Covid-19 crisis is allowing us a glimpse of what a changed world looks like with far fewer cars and much cleaner air,” says Claudia Adriazola-Steil, deputy director of the Urban Mobility Program at the World Resources Institute. “Dramatic change is indeed possible.”

Links

• One In Six New Cars In The World Will Be Electric By 2025
• More Than Half Of New Norway Car Sales Now Electric Or Hybrid
• Paris Plans To Banish All But Electric Cars By 2030
• China, Moving To Cut Emissions, Halts Production Of 500 Car Models
• Australia Needs Electric Vehicles More Than Any Other Nation
• 'Woefully Dirty': Government Accused Over Australia's Failure To Cut Vehicle Emissions
• Transport Emissions Continue To Rise As Australia Lags Behind Other Nations
• Trump’s Clean Car Rollback Will Cost The U.S. $457 Billion

(AU) Scientists Fear Surge In Supersized Bushfires That Create Their Own Violent Thunderstorm

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn | Calla Wahlquist

Exclusive: group of former fire and emergency services leaders tell bushfire royal commission rapid detection technologies are vital

Using a ‘fast-track strategy’, fire crews could be airlifted to new fires before they became too big, a group of former fire and emergency services leaders have told the bushfire royal commission. Photograph: Sean Davey/EPA

Australia should deploy new “fast-attack strategies” to combat bushfires and stop small remote blazes turning into unstoppable mega fires, a group of 33 former fire and emergency services leaders have said.

In a submission to the bushfires royal commission, the group said climate change was increasing the risk of extreme bushfire seasons.

New “rapid fire-detection” technologies should be trialled, with faster mid-sized and purpose-built water bombers made available to put out fires within 24 hours of them being detected.

The submission from emergency leaders for climate action, seen by Guardian Australia, includes 33 recommendations to the royal commission.

Fire crews could be airlifted to areas where new fires risked becoming too big, with faster long-range amphibious water bombers deployed in a military-style operation.

More than 20% of Australia’s forests burned during the recent fires, which destroyed thousands of homes and properties and killed at least 33 people. Smoke caused more than 400 estimated excess deaths.

The economic costs have been estimated at more than $4bn. Hundreds of endangered animals, plant and invertebrate species were affected, and some may have been driven to extinction.

Australia’s unprecedented bushfire season of 2019-20 coincided with the country’s hottest and driest year on record.

“It is not possible to ‘adapt’ to such catastrophic and escalating conditions, and they can only be partially mitigated,” said the submission, compiled by former commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW, Greg Mullins.

“The failure of successive governments at all levels to show leadership and take credible, urgent action on the basic causal factor – greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas – will lead to further escalation in natural disaster risks.”

The submission recommended Australia develop a network of sensing technologies to detect fires in remote areas earlier, and then employ a “fast attack” approach to put them out.

Australia should trial a purpose-built water bombing aircraft long-used in other countries that can scoop up water and “achieve rapid turnaround and constant direct attack on fire fronts”.

Mullins told Guardian Australia a range of early detection technologies could be used to detect new fires, including remote cameras, satellite images and spotter flights.

“Every big fire was once a small fire,” he said. “It’s very much like a military operation with eyes in the sky, with your ground troops that are backed up with some artillery.”

The purpose-built water bombers were able to refuel quickly – either by skimming over large water storages or landing in paddocks – and that meant they were ideally suited to a rapid response strategy.

Firefighting experts have warned that while larger water-bombing aircraft could help control fires, they should not be seen as a “panacea” and that a suite of responses were needed.

The former emergency leaders said these aircraft had failed to make “appreciable difference to extreme fires on the worst fire weather days”.

Other recommendations included increasing funding for climate change research, putting more electricity cables underground, reviewing building standards, and building bushfire-safe shelters in fire-prone communities.

The submission also highlighted the increasing number of large fires that couple with the atmosphere to form their own storms, creating deadly conditions on the ground for firefighters.

There had been an “astounding and deeply concerning shift in the frequency of these events”.

Hearings for the royal commission will begin on 25 May and run for two weeks. It has held 17 community forums and received more than 400 public submissions.

The final report and recommendations are due on 31 August and Dominique Hogan-Doran SC, the senior counsel assisting, said in the inquiry’s first hearing in April that it would be narrowly focused on national coordination and the “challenges associated with walking across lines drawn on a map” so as to avoid duplication with current and previous state inquiries.

“We detect a worrying consistency in the themes explored and repetitiveness in the recommendations made,” Hogan-Doran said. “This is no time to reinvent the wheel.”

The royal commission is considering recommending Australia be granted the ability to declare a national state of emergency, and released an issues paper this month calling for advice from constitutional law experts.

National state of emergency powers may also be able to be invoked during a pandemic, although the royal commission has explicitly ruled out considering matters relating to the coronavirus.

Victoria’s response to the coronavirus crisis is anchored in its state of emergency powers, which were created after the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires.

The issues paper said if the commonwealth had powers to declare a state of emergency it would be able to deploy national resources, such as the army, without waiting for a request from the states.

But it also said there were constitutional limitations in granting such a power which may mean a national state of emergency declaration would have either a limited or a very specific practical effect.

Links

• Government commits $150m to bushfire-affected wildlife but more action needed, conservationists say
• Scientists fear surge in supersized bushfires that create their own violent thunderstorms
• (AU) 'Kick Them Into Action': Fire Group Takes EPA To Court Over Climate
• (AU) What Role Did Climate Change Play In The Australian Megafires?
• (AU) Summer Of Crisis
• (AU) Australia Headed For A Bushfire Scenario ‘We Cannot Even Fathom’ As Climate Change Ramps Up
• (AU) Climate Change Made Australia's Devastating Bushfires More Likely, Scientists Confirm
• (AU) Climate Change Affected Australia’s Wildfires, Scientists Confirm
• (AU) Climate Change Made Australia’s Devastating Fire Season 30% More Likely
• (AU) Climate Change Made 'Really Scary' Fire Extremes A Third More Likely
• (AU) 'Extraordinary' Fires Burnt At Historical Size, Beyond Climate Projections
• (AU) Climate Change Could Lead To Increase In Dangerous Firestorms That Were Once 'Rare'

Climate Explained: What Caused Major Climate Change In The Past?

The Conversation - James Renwick

Earth had several periods of high carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and high temperatures over the last several million years. What caused these periods, given that there was no burning of fossil fuels or other sources of human created carbon dioxide release during those times?

Shutterstock

James Renwick is Professor, Physical Geography (climate science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington.

Burning fossil fuels or vegetation is one way to put carbon dioxide  into the air – and it is something we have become very good at.

Humans are generating nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year, mostly by burning fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide stays in the air for centuries to millennia and it builds up over time. Since we began the systematic use of coal and oil for fuel, around 300 years ago, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has gone up by almost half.

NOAA

Apart from the emissions we add, carbon dioxide concentrations in the air go up and down as part of the natural carbon cycle, driven by exchanges between the air, the oceans and the biosphere (life on earth), and ultimately by geological processes.

Natural changes in carbon dioxide

Every year, carbon dioxide concentrations rise and fall a little as plants grow in spring and summer and die off in the autumn and winter. The timing of this seasonal rise and fall is tied to northern hemisphere seasons, as most of the land surface on Earth is there.

The oceans also play an active role in the carbon cycle, contributing to variations over a few months to slow shifts over centuries. Ocean water takes up carbon dioxide directly in an exchange between the air and seawater. Tiny marine plants use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and many microscopic marine organisms use carbon compounds to make shells. When these marine micro-organisms die and sink to the seafloor, they take the carbon with them.

Collectively, the biosphere (ecosystems on land and in soils) and the oceans are absorbing about half of all human-emitted carbon dioxide, and this slows the rate of climate change. But as the climate continues to change and the oceans warm up further, it is not clear whether the biosphere and oceans will continue absorbing such a large fraction of our emissions. As water warms, it is less able to absorb carbon dioxide, and as the climate changes, many ecosystems become stressed and are less able to photosynthesise carbon dioxide.

Earth’s deep climate history

On time scales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, carbon dioxide concentrations in the air have varied hugely, and so has global climate.

This long-term carbon cycle involves the formation and decay of the Earth’s surface itself: tectonic plate activity, the build-up and weathering of mountain chains, prolonged volcanic activity, and the emergence of new seafloor at active mid-ocean faults.

Most of the carbon stored in the Earth’s crust is in the form of limestone, created from the carbon-based shells of marine organisms that sank to the ocean floor millions of year ago.

Carbon dioxide is added to the air when volcanoes erupt, and it is taken out of the air as rocks and mountain ranges weather and wear down. These processes typically take millions of years to add or subtract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

In the present day, volcanoes add only a little carbon dioxide to the air, around 1% of what human activity is currently contributing. But there have been times in the past where volcanic activity has been vastly greater and has spewed large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.

An example is around 250 million years ago, when prolonged volcanic activity raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels dramatically. These were volcanic eruptions on a vast scale - lasting for around two million years and causing a mass extinction.

In the more recent geological past, the past 50 million years, carbon dioxide levels have been gradually dropping overall and the climate has been cooling, with some ups and downs. Once carbon dioxide concentrations became low enough (around 300 parts per million) between two and three million years ago, the current ice age cycle began, but the warming our emissions are causing is larger than the natural cooling trend.

While Earth’s climate has changed significantly in the past, it happened on geological time scales. The carbon in the oil and coal we burn represents carbon dioxide taken up by vegetation hundreds of millions of years ago and then deposited through geological processes over millennia. We have burned a significant proportion within a few centuries.

If human emissions of carbon dioxide continue to increase through this century, we could reach levels not seen for tens of millions of years, when Earth had a much warmer climate with much higher sea levels and no ice sheets.

Links

• Climate explained: how the climate impact of beef compares with plant-based alternatives
• Climate explained: why higher carbon dioxide levels aren’t good news, even if some plants grow faster
• Climate explained: why switching to electric transport makes sense even if electricity is not fully renewable
• Climate explained: how white roofs help to reflect the sun’s heat
• Climate explained: which countries are likely to meet their Paris Agreement targets
• Climate explained: seven reasons to be wary of waste-to-energy proposals
• Climate explained: how climate change will affect food production and security
• Climate explained: how much does flying contribute to climate change?
• Climate explained: why coastal floods are becoming more frequent as seas rise
• Climate explained: how growth in population and consumption drives planetary change
• Climate explained: why Mars is cold despite an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide
• Climate explained: how volcanoes influence climate and how their emissions compare to what we produce
• Climate explained: the environmental footprint of electric versus fossil cars
• Climate explained: why some people still think climate change isn’t real
• Climate explained: what each of us can do to reduce our carbon footprint
• Climate explained: why don’t we have electric aircraft?
• Climate explained: Why are climate change skeptics often right-wing conservatives?
• Climate explained: how much of climate change is natural? How much is man-made?
• Climate explained: why we won’t be heading into an ice age any time soon
• Climate explained: how different crops or trees help strip carbon dioxide from the air
• Climate explained: why carbon dioxide has such outsized influence on Earth’s climate
• Climate explained: regenerative farming can help grow food with less impact
• Climate explained: why your backyard lawn doesn’t help reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
• Climate explained: how emissions trading schemes work and they can help us shift to a zero carbon future
• Climate explained: why we need to cut emissions as well as prepare for impacts
• Climate explained: why plants don’t simply grow faster with more carbon dioxide in air
• Climate explained: will we be less healthy because of climate change?

Pakistan Combats Massive Unemployment By Hiring People To Plant 10 Billion Trees

My Modern Met - Megan Cooper

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Though this period of uncertainty and loss has been challenging for people around the world, we’ve been able to focus on moments of compassion, renewal, and persistence to help us through the coronavirus pandemic.

Every story of an animal species returning to its habitat (which is now devoid of industrial traffic) can uplift us even in our most isolated moments.

One of these optimistically faith-restoring projects comes out of Pakistan. Prime Minister Imran Khan, who launched the 10 Billion Trees Tsunami initiative in 2018 to help the country counter the mounting effects of global climate change, has made this initiative instrumental once again; this time, it is also helping to battle the social and economic effects of the virus on Pakistan’s population.

According to the Global Climate Risk Index of 2020, Pakistan ranks fifth in a list of countries that were affected the most by planetary heating over the past twenty years.

From 1999-2018, the country reported over 150 extreme weather events (heat waves, droughts, floods, etc.), which are only projected to increase as global climate change worsens.

The 10 Billion Trees Tsunami project seeks to plant the eponymous ten billion trees across the desert landscape over a five-year period.

Bare rooted nursery at Upper Kohistan Forest division raised under #10BillionTreeTsunami #10BTTP @aminattock @IshtiaqUrmarPTI @anikasleem @ClimateChangePK pic.twitter.com/wOwaqCZI6u

— Ten Billion Tree Tsunami (@btap2015) May 8, 2020

Although Pakistan has been on lockdown since March 23 to help mitigate the spread of the virus, the Prime Minister has issued exceptions to day laborers associated with this project. In addition, he has hired 63,000 laborers facing unemployment from these municipal lockdowns to continue afforesting.

Workers are compensated between 500-8,000 rupees (about $7 to $106) a day, which amounts to about half of their usual wages, but helps alleviate a fraction of the unemployment population in Pakistan.

To keep their workers further protected, the government has mandated that planters must wear masks and stay 6 feet apart from one another while in the field. The positive effects of these efforts are being felt, though, and about 30 million indigenous saplings have been planted in the Punjab area alone since the start of this campaign. This year, the afforestation plan hopes to have 50 million trees planted.

News of these increased efforts rides on the coat-tails of discussions about reinstating programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps in the United States—a program which was born out of FDR’s New Deal and aimed to help unemployment in the 1930s by hiring people for public works projects.

For Malik Amin Aslam, the Climate Change Advisor to the Prime Minister, this situation “has taught us the valuable lesson that when you invest in nature it not only pays you back, but also rescues you in a stressed economic situation.”

When you protect #Nature it always pays you back - #AssistedNaturalRegeneration of indigenous #Deodar covers the floor in #Chitral - under #10BillionTreeTsunami community based closures pic.twitter.com/ubnXzTWJ0Q

— Malik Amin Aslam (@aminattock) May 8, 2020

Links

• 20 Things You Didn't Know About ... Trees
• Australian Forest Study May Challenge Climate Change Optimism
• (UK) Climate Change: Will Planting Millions Of Trees Really Save The Planet?
• Greta Thunberg Tells Davos Leaders That Planting Trees Isn't Enough As Donald Trump Talks Up Economy
• Opinion: Current Proposals To Plant Trees To Fight Climate Change Are Badly Misguided
• Research Shows the Incredible Way Trees Help Each Other Survive in the Forest
• Italy Becomes First Country to Make Climate Change Education Mandatory
• New Smart City in Cancun Will Include Over 7 Million Plants
• People Are Knitting the Weather to Track Climate Changes Throughout the Year

Australians Want Industry, And They’d Like It Green. Steel Is The Place To Start

The Conversation - Tony Wood | Guy Dundas | James Ha

Shutterstock

Australia has an historic opportunity to build a new, export-focused manufacturing sector based on renewable energy.

As a bonus, it could enable a less politically fraught conversation about climate change. Global action on climate change is in Australia’s national interest.

The changing climate is already reducing profits for Australian farmers. Tens of thousands of jobs depend on the again-bleached Great Barrier Reef.

But for too long, political leaders have struggled to balance the national interest with the legitimate concerns of Australians who live and work in regions that host coal mining and other carbon-intensive industries – most notably central Queensland and the Hunter Valley in NSW.

Source: Grattan Institute (2020)'Start with steel: A practical plan to support carbon workers and Out emissions.

LARGE IMAGE

This climate conundrum has greatly complicated the national debate about climate change: neither commitments to a “just transition” to a low-emissions future, nor promises of coal exports in perpetuity, have proven convincing, leaving regional jobs in the lurch.

Australians want industry

In the 2019 federal election, voters in these carbon regions, perhaps fearing for their livelihoods, seemingly rejected Labor’s more ambitious climate policies.

But with 85% of our black coal exported each year, decisions made in Beijing and New Delhi matter more to these communities than decisions made in Canberra.

Australia needs a credible plan to replace carbon jobs as the world decarbonises, and ideally the new jobs will offer similar salaries, need similar skills, and be located in similar places.

This is the key to cracking the climate conundrum: a plan based on sound economics that can offer hope to communities that currently depend on carbon-intensive activities.

A new Grattan Institute report, Start with steel, finds that manufacturing green steel for export is the largest job opportunity for these regions of Australia.

We can start with steel

Green steel can be made by using renewable energy to produce hydrogen, and then using that hydrogen in place of metallurgical coal in the steelmaking process.

The byproduct is water, rather than carbon dioxide.

Winding back the 7% of global emissions that come from steel production will require creating demand for low-emissions steel.

Australia has far better renewable resources than many of our major Asian trading partners, allowing us to make low-emissions hydrogen more cheaply, and therefore to make cheaper green steel.

And because hydrogen is expensive to transport, it makes sense to use it to make green steel here rather than exporting it to make green steel somewhere else.

Notes: Land higher than 3,000 metres is excluded because renewable energy resources are harder to use when they are in mountainous terrain. High-quality resources are defined to be areas with average wind power-density of at least 450 W/m2 and average daily solar photovoltaic potential of at least 4.5 kWh/kWp. North Africa includes the Horn of Africa. Sources: Grattan analysis of Global Wind Atlas (2020), Global Solar Atlas (2020) and U.S. Geological Survey and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (2010)

LARGE IMAGE

The Pilbara in Western Australia is the world’s largest iron ore province, which makes it look like the natural place to make green steel.

But it is difficult to attract workers to remote Western Australia. Making green steel for export would require large industrial workforces like those in central Queensland and the Hunter Valley.

Our calculations suggest that the availability of reasonably-priced labour on the east coast of Australia more than outweighs the cost of shipping iron ore from Western Australia to turn it into green steel there.

If Australia captured just 7% of the global steel market, it could create 25,000 ongoing manufacturing jobs.

Seven per cent is much higher than the 0.3% of globally-traded steel that Australia produces today – but it is much less than our share of iron ore production, which is 38%.

Crucially, the opportunity does not rely on leaps of faith or endless subsidies – it is one of the few economically-credible ways to make the low-emissions steel the world will need if it gets serious about tackling climate change.

We should act quickly

There are also opportunities for Australia’s regions to manufacture biofuels for aviation and use renewable hydrogen to make ammonia.

The markets for these products are less certain, but if the world moves decisively to limit emissions, the projects that respond will deliver thousands of jobs.

Governments cannot single-handedly create these industries, and nor should they.

Instead, they should focus on bringing down the cost of the key intermediate product – hydrogen – by funding pre-commercial studies of geological structures suitable for storing hydrogen cheaply.

And they should invest in Australia’s low-emissions steel making capabilities by partly funding a flagship project that uses the direct reduction technology needed to use hydrogen to make steel.

The politics of climate change skewered a decade’s worth of prime ministers. And an inability to communicate the costs of action – and why they’re justified – contributed to a would-be prime minister losing an unlosable election.

Green steel offers Australia a reset button: a chance to get bipartisan cooperation to tackle a wicked problem that threatens our national interest.

We’ve heard plenty about the climate crisis. It’s time to talk about the opportunities.

Links

• How to transition from coal: 4 lessons for Australia from around the world
• Enough ambition (and hydrogen) could get Australia to 200% renewable energy
• For hydrogen to be truly 'clean' it must be made with renewables, not coal
• COVID-19 shutdowns are clearing the air, but pollution will return as economies reopen
• Environmental activism goes digital in lockdown – but could it change the movement for good?
• Why it doesn’t make economic sense to ignore climate change in our recovery from the pandemic
• Will three billion people really live in temperatures as hot as the Sahara by 2070?

A Silver Lining In The Global Pandemic: The Beginning Of The End For Oil?

Salon - Michael T. Klare

Energy in a post-pandemic world

 Pump jacks are seen on the Bakken Shale Formation, near Williston, North Dakota, September 6, 2016. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images) 

Energy analysts have long assumed that, given time, growing international concern over climate change would result in a vast restructuring of the global energy enterprise. The result: a greener, less climate-degrading system. In this future, fossil fuels would be overtaken by renewables, while oil, gas, and coal would be relegated to an increasingly marginal role in the global energy equation.

In its World Energy Outlook 2019, for example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that, by 2040, renewables would finally supersede petroleum as the planet's number one source of energy and coal would largely disappear from the fuel mix. As a result of Covid-19, however, we may no longer have to wait another 20 years for such a cosmic transition to occur — it's happening right now.

So take a breath and, amid all the bad news pouring in about a deadly global pandemic, consider this: when it comes to energy, what was expected to take at least two decades in the IEA's most optimistic scenario may now occur in just a few years. It turns out that the impact of Covid-19 is reshaping the world energy equation, along with so much else, in unexpected ways.

That energy would be strongly affected by the pandemic should come as no surprise. After all, fuel use is closely aligned with economic activity and Covid-19 has shut down much of the world economy. With factories, offices, and other businesses closed or barely functioning, there's naturally less demand for energy of all types. But the impacts of the pandemic go far beyond that, as our principal coping mechanisms — social distancing and stay-at-home requirements — have particular implications for energy consumption.

Among the first and most dramatic of these has been a shockingly deep decline in flying, automobile commuting, and leisure travel ' activities that account for a large share of daily petroleum use. Airline travel in the United States, for example, is down by 95% from a year ago. At the same time, the personal consumption of electricity for telework, distance learning, group conversations, and entertainment has soared. In hard-hit Italy, for instance, Microsoft reports that the use of its cloud services for team meetings — a voracious consumer of electricity — has increased by 775%.

These are all meant to be temporary responses to the pandemic. As government officials and their scientific advisers begin to talk about returning to some semblance of "normalcy," however, it's becoming increasingly clear that many such pandemic-related practices will persist in some fashion for a long time to come and, in some cases, may prove permanent.

Social distancing is likely to remain the norm in public spaces for many months, if not years, curtailing attendance at theme parks and major sports events that also typically involve lots of driving. Many of us are also becoming more accustomed to working from home and may be in no rush to resume a harried 30-, 60-, or 90-minute commute to work each day. Some colleges and universities, already under financial pressure of various sorts, may abandon in-person classes for many subjects and rely far more on distance learning.

No matter how this pandemic finally plays out, the post-Covid-19 world is bound to have a very different look from the pre-pandemic one and energy use is likely to be among the areas most affected by the transformations underway. It would be distinctly premature to make sweeping predictions about the energy profile of a post-coronavirus planet, but one thing certainly seems possible: the grand transition, crucial for averting the worst outcomes of climate change and originally projected to occur decades from now, could end up happening significantly more swiftly, even if at the price of widespread bankruptcies and prolonged unemployment for millions.

Oil's dominance in jeopardy

As 2019 drew to a close, most energy analysts assumed that petroleum would continue to dominate the global landscape through the 2020s, as it had in recent decades, resulting in ever greater amounts of carbon emissions being sent into the atmosphere. For example, in its International Energy Outlook 2019, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy projected that global petroleum use in 2020 would amount to 102.2 million barrels per day.

That would be up 1.1 million barrels from 2019 and represent the second year in a row in which global consumption would have exceeded the notable threshold of 100 million barrels per day. Grimly enough, the EIA further projected that world demand would continue to climb, reaching 104 million barrels per day by 2025 and 106 million barrels in 2030.

In arriving at such projections, energy analysts assumed that the factors responsible for driving petroleum use upward in recent years would persist well into the future: growing automobile ownership in China, India, and other developing nations; ever-increasing commutes as soaring real-estate prices forced people to live ever farther from city centers; and an exponential increase in airline travel, especially in Asia.

Such factors, it was widely assumed, would more than compensate for any drop in demand caused by a greater preference for electric cars in Europe and a few other places. As suggested by oil giant BP in its Energy Outlook for 2019, "All of the demand growth comes from developing economies, driven by the burgeoning middle class in developing Asian economies."

Even in January, as the coronavirus began to spread from China to other countries, energy analysts imagined little change in such predictions. Reporting "continued strong momentum" in oil use among the major developing economies, the IEA typically reaffirmed its belief that global consumption would grow by more than one million barrels daily in 2020.

Only now has that agency begun to change its tune. In its most recent Oil Market Report, it projected that global petroleum consumption in April would fall by an astonishing 29 million barrels per day compared to the same month the previous year. That drop, by the way, is the equivalent of total 2019 oil usage by the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Still, the IEA analysts assumed that all of this would just be a passing phenomenon. In that same report, it also predicted that global economic activity would rebound in the second half of this year and, by December, oil usage would already be within a few million barrels of pre-coronavirus consumption levels.

Other indicators, however, suggest that such rosy predictions will prove highly fanciful. The likelihood that oil consumption will approach 2018 or 2019 levels by year's end or even in early 2021 now appears remarkably unrealistic. It is, in fact, doubtful that those earlier projections about sustained future growth in the demand for oil will ever materialize.

A shattered world economy

As a start, a return to pre-Covid-19 consumption levels assumes a reasonably rapid restoration of the world economy as it was, with Asia taking the lead. At this moment, however, there's no evidence that such an outcome is likely.

In its April World Economic Outlook report, the International Monetary Fund predicted that global economic output would fall by 3% in 2020 (which may prove a distinct underestimate) and that the pandemic's harsh impacts, including widespread unemployment and business failures, will persist well into 2021 or beyond.

All told, it suggested, the cumulative loss to global gross domestic product in 2020 and 2021, thanks to the pandemic, will amount to some $9 trillion, a sum greater than the economies of Japan and Germany combined (and that assumes the coronavirus will not come back yet more fiercely in late 2020 or 2021, as the "Spanish Flu" did in 1918).

This and other recent data suggest that any notion China, India, and other developing nations will soon resume their upward oil-consumption trajectory and save the global petroleum industry appears wildly far-fetched. Indeed, on April 17th, China's National Bureau of Statistics reported that the country's GDP shrank by 6.8% in the first three months of 2020, the first such decline in 40 years and a staggering blow to that country's growth model.

Even though government officials are slowly opening factories and other key businesses again, most observers believe that spurring significant growth will prove exceedingly difficult given that Chinese consumers, traumatized by the pandemic and accompanying lockdown measures, seem loath to make new purchases or engage in travel, tourism, and the like.

And keep in mind that a slowdown in China will have staggering consequences for the economies of numerous other developing nations that rely on that country's tourism or its imports of their oil, copper, iron ore, and other raw materials. China, after all, is the leading destination for the exports of many Asian, African, and Latin American countries. With Chinese factories closed or operating at a reduced tempo, the demand for their products has already plummeted, causing widespread economic hardship for their populations.

Add all this up, along with a rising tide of unemployment in the United States and elsewhere, and it would appear that the possibility of global oil consumption returning to pre-pandemic levels any time soon — or even at all — is modest at best. Indeed, the major oil-exporting nations have evidently reached this conclusion on their own, as demonstrated by the extraordinary April 12th agreement that the Saudis, the Russians, and other major exporting countries reached to cut global production by nearly 10 million barrels per day.

It was a desperate bid to bolster oil prices, which had fallen by more than 50% since the beginning of the year. And keep in mind that even this reduction — unprecedented in scale — is unlikely to prevent a further decline in those prices, as oil purchases continue to fall and fall again.

Doing things differently

Energy analysts are likely to argue that, while the downturn will undoubtedly last longer than the IEA's optimistic forecast, sooner or later petroleum use will return to its earlier patterns, once again cresting at the 100-million-barrels-per-day level. But this appears highly unlikely, given the way the pandemic is reshaping the global economy and everyday human behavior.

After all, IEA and oil-industry forecasts assume a fully interconnected world in which the sort of dynamic growth we've come to expect from Asia in the twenty-first century will sooner or later fuel economic vigor globally. Extended supply lines will once again carry raw materials and other inputs to China's factories, while Chinese parts and finished products will be transported to markets on every continent.

 But whether or not that country's economy starts to grow again, such a globalized economic model is unlikely to remain the prevailing one in the post-pandemic era. Many countries and companies are, in fact, beginning to restructure their supply lines to avoid a full-scale reliance on foreign suppliers by seeking alternatives closer to home — a trend likely to persist after pandemic-related restrictions are lifted (especially in a world in which Trumpian-style "nationalism" still seems to be on the rise).

"There will be a rethink of how much any country wants to be reliant on any other country," suggests the aptly named Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "I don't think fundamentally this is the end of globalization. But this does accelerate the type of thinking that has been going on in the Trump administration, that there are critical technologies, critical resources, reserve manufacturing capacity that we want here in the U.S. in case of crisis."

Other countries are bound to begin planning along similar lines, leading to a significant decline in transcontinental commerce. Local and regional trade will, of course, have to increase to make up for this decline, but the net impact on petroleum demand is likely to be negative as long-distance trade and travel diminishes. For China and other rising Asian powers, this could also mean a slower growth rate, squeezing those "burgeoning middle classes" that were, in turn, expected to be the major local drivers (quite literally, in the case of the car cultures in those countries) of petroleum consumption.

A shift toward electricity — and a greater reliance on renewables

Another trend the coronavirus is likely to accelerate: greater reliance on telework by corporations, governments, universities, and other institutions. Even before the pandemic broke out, many companies and organizations were beginning to rely more on teleconferencing and work-from-home operations to reduce travel costs, commuting headaches, and even, in some cases, greenhouse gas emissions. In our new world, the use of these techniques is likely to become far more common.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is, among other things, a massive experiment in telecommuting," observed Katherine Guyot and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution in a recent report. "Up to half of American workers are currently working from home, more than double the fraction who worked from home (at least occasionally) in 2017-2018."

Many such workers, they also noted, had been largely unfamiliar with telecommuting technology when this grand experiment began, but have quickly mastered the necessary skills. Given little choice in the matter, high school and college students are also becoming more adept at telework as their schools shift to remote learning. Meanwhile, companies and colleges are investing massively in the necessary hardware and software for such communications and teaching. As a result, Guyot and Sawhill suggest, "The outbreak is accelerating the trend toward telecommuting, possibly for the long term."

Any large increase in teleworking is bound to have a dramatic dual impact on energy use: people will drive less, reducing their oil consumption, while relying more on teleconferencing and cloud computing, and so increasing their use of electricity. "The coronavirus reminds us that electricity is more indispensable than ever," says Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA. "Millions of people are now confined to their homes, resorting to teleworking to do their jobs."

Increased reliance on electricity, in turn, will have a significant impact on the very nature of primary fuel consumption, as coal begins to lose its dominant role in the generation of electrical power and is replaced at an ever-accellerating pace by renewables. In 2018, according to the IEA's World Energy Outlook 2019, a distressing 38% of world electricity generation was still provided by coal, another 26% by oil and natural gas, and only 26% by renewables; the remaining 10% came from nuclear and other sources of energy.

This was expected to change dramatically over time as climate-conscious policies began to have a significant impact — but, even in the IEA's most hopeful scenarios, it was only after 2030 that renewables would reach the 50% level in electricity generation. With Covid-19, however, that process is now likely to speed up, as power utilities adjust to the global economic slowdown and seek to minimize their costs.

With many businesses shut down, net electricity use in the United States has actually declined somewhat in these months — although not nearly as much as the drop in petroleum use, given the way home electricity consumption has compensated for a plunge in business demand. As utilities adapt to this challenging environment, they are finding that wind and solar power are often the least costly sources of primary energy, with natural gas just behind them and coal the most expensive of all.

Insofar as they are investing in the future, then, they appear to be favoring large solar and wind projects, which can, in fact, be brought online relatively quickly, assuring needed revenue. New natural gas plants take longer to install and coal offers no advantages whatsoever.

In the depths of global disaster, it's way too early to make detailed predictions about the energy landscape of future decades. Nonetheless, it does appear that the present still-raging pandemic is forcing dramatic shifts in the way we consume energy and that many of these changes are likely to persist in some fashion long after the virus has been tamed.

Given the already extreme nature of the heating of this planet, such shifts are likely to prove catastrophic for the oil and coal industries but beneficial for the environment — and so for the rest of us. Deadly, disruptive, and economically devastating as Covid-19 has proved to be, in retrospect it may turn out to have had at least this one silver lining.

Links

• Oil prices slump as market faces lowest demand in 25 years
• Air travel drops nearly 95% from 1 year ago amid pandemic
• OPEC, oil nations agree to an unprecedented production cut
• Annual Energy Outlook 2020
• Oil Market Report - January 2020
• Oil Market Report - April 2020
• The Great Lockdown: Worst Economic Downturn Since the Great Depression
• Microsoft Cloud Use Soars Amid COVID-19 Social Distancing

Stop! French Philosopher Latour Urges No Return To Pre-Lockdown Normal

Reuters - Benoit Van Overstraeten

PARIS - What if rather than hurrying back to a pre-lockdown “business as usual” to revive economies hammered by the coronavirus pandemic, countries built a new normal where the fight against climate change was paramount?

French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist Bruno Latour poses at his home during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Paris, France, May 7, 2020. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

French philosopher Bruno Latour, a life-long environmental activist, is advocating just this, inviting people to resist a return to the old ways as governments ease restrictions.

Latour, 72, says the pandemic has unexpectedly showed it is possible to shut down global economic activity, despite leaders saying for decades that the train of progress could not be stopped.

The lockdowns have showed “we could actually take immensely drastic measures in a matter of days to counter a threat. So in that sense, when people say we cannot do anything, it’s clearly wrong,” Latour told Reuters in an interview.

However, he noted that the scale of changes and decisions to be made to stem climate change are “many times more complicated and more drastic than the ones we have (with the coronavirus)”.

France has been one of countries worst hit by COVID-19, with nearly 26,000 deaths to date. With new infections slowing, the government announced this week that a gradual easing of its nearly two-month lockdown would start from Monday - signalling a slow return to business as usual.

“We should not miss the chance of doing something else”, said Latour, who has built himself an international reputation with his case studies of scientists, notably French biologist Louis Pasteur, and his philosophical work to show nature and society are not opposites but closely intertwined.

Latour’s call echoes a study published on Tuesday in which a group of top U.S. and British economists said massive programmes of public investment targeting green issues would be the most cost-effective way to both revive economies and strike a decisive blow against climate change.

New ‘Protective Measures’

Just as people around the world have been asked to adopt new behaviours to stop the spread of the virus - social distancing, wearing masks, coughing in your sleeve - Latour says all individuals should think of “protective measures” against a return to the pre-crisis production model.

“Let’s try to see if we can imagine in advance what we want to keep (...) and what we want to stop”, Latour said.

He has issued a questionnaire on his website, translated into at least a dozen languages, asking people to describe how they would like the world to evolve, what they want to be definitely dropped or what should be developed.

He said he had received hundreds of responses and was organising workshops.

“Maybe, if it works, we’ll link them to groups of people who can actually (...) stop something”, he said, adding, “Can we do it politically? One way is to stop buying the things we don’t want. The power of the consumer is immense”.

That said, Latour does not overstate the importance of his initiative.

He said he is concerned that the scale of the crisis, which has put millions of people out of work around the world, will in fact send environmental concerns onto the back-burner.

Links

• Can Covid-19 Response Be A Model For Climate Action?
• Robert De Niro, Madonna Lead Call For Politicians To Avoid Post-Lockdown “Return To Normal”
• Media Data Shows Covid-19 Has Stolen Climate Change's Thunder
• Mark Carney: 'We Can't Self-Isolate From Climate Change'
• Why It Doesn’t Make Economic Sense To Ignore Climate Change In Our Recovery From The Pandemic
• Pandemic Also A Reckoning For Climate Change, Turnbull Tells British Audience
• Climate Change And Coronavirus: Five Charts About The Biggest Carbon Crash
• COVID-19 Is A Dress Rehearsal For Entrepreneurial Approaches To Climate Change
• (AU) Australian Businesses Call For Climate Crisis And Virus Economic Recovery To Be Tackled Together
• Questionnaire: What protective measures can you think of so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model? (pdf)