Saturday, June 13, 2020

The African Country That Inspired More And More Countries To Plant Billions Of Trees

World Economic Forum - Peter Beech

India once one of Asia's chief deforestation culprits, is leading the way in re-greening efforts, by planting 66m trees in 12 hours. Image: REUTERS/Danish Ismail

Key Points
  • In the past 50 years, Ethiopia has lost 98% of its forested areas.
  • To mediate this, it planted an estimated 350 million trees in just a single day in 2019.
  • Their success has inspired other countries, like Pakistan, India and China to do the same.
  • Annually, 18 million hectares of forest are lost around the world, but projects like these go a long way to change that.
When it comes to deforestation, human society is in clear need of root-and-branch reform.

Around 18 million hectares of forest are lost worldwide each year – an area roughly the size of Panama. Destruction of tropical rainforest, which stores 210 gigatons of carbon, is the second biggest global contributor to climate change.

Meanwhile at the current rate, up to 28,000 species will go extinct in the next 25 years thanks to deforestation.But developing countries from Ethiopia to Senegal to Pakistan are busy demonstrating how humanity can turn over a new leaf.

Ethiopia – which has lost 98% of its forested areas in the last 50 years – smashed records in July 2019 when it planted an estimated 350 million trees in a single day.

Pakistan’s Billion-Tree Tsunami project added 350,000 hectares of trees to the country’s landscape in just three years, while India and China – at one time Asia’s chief deforestation culprits – are leading the way in re-greening efforts, with the former planting 66m trees in 12 hours in 2017 and the latter deploying its army to plant an Ireland-sized area of forest in 2018.

Ethiopia planted approximately 350 million trees in one day in 2019. Image: Trees ForTheFuture/ Flickr

The benefits of tree planting

The eye-catching headlines and eye-popping figures are all well and good, but what roles do these acres upon acres of extra forest play in the fight against climate change? The answer is: many. Beside sequestering carbon, boosting biodiversity and pollinators, promoting rainfall and providing firewood, fodder, jobs and shelter, forests are increasingly being recognised for the crucial infrastructure tasks they perform.

Forests protect priceless arable land from extreme weather events, prevent soil erosion, bind soil together to prevent flash floods, provide natural water filtration systems and even, in snowy areas far from east Africa, shield human settlements from avalanches. Increasingly, this ‘green infrastructure’ is expected to play a vital role in climate change adaptation and as humanity works to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Senegal’s mangrove swamps are a case in point. The west African nation is home to some 185,000 hectares of mangrove swamps, but around 45,000 have been lost since the 1970s due to drought and deforestation. To combat this, a public- and private-funded effort run by the environment agency Océanium has seen 100,000 people from 350 villages perform a mass-planting scheme which has replaced a total of 79 million trees.

Fully functioning mangrove ecosystems are vital to Senegal’s health – both economic and otherwise. Not only will the extra tidal forest provide a habitat for a cornucopia of species, and sequester 500,000 tonnes of carbon over 20 years, it will maintain water quality, prevent soil erosion and protect crucial arable land from floods and high winds.

Ethiopia has ambitious plans to tackle the effects of deforestation and climate change. Image: GCA

Ecosystem-based adaptation

Natural infrastructure responses to climate change – known as ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) – are increasingly finding favour as an alternative to human-engineered ‘grey’ infrastructure, which relies on concrete and steel, two of the most environmentally destructive materials on the planet.

For example, reforestation programmes in Colombia’s 15 major water basins are helping improve filtration and water quality to guarantee clean water for 22 million people. Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam has also improved its natural flood defences through mangrove replantation, while constructed wetlands in Texas naturally filter 95 million gallons of wastewater per day.

In the Mexican city of Xalapa, rampant urban expansion has eaten away at the mountainous cloud forest that provides 30% of the city’s water supply, as well as vital support for the local economy, while the loss of trees has made the slopes more prone to landslides and flooding. In its bid to reverse the damage, Xalapa has become the first Latin-American city to make systematic use of EbA. The CityAdapt project is working to restore and protect large areas of the city’s cloud forest – opting for green protection in place of costly concrete flood defences.

Alpine forests in Switzerland and Austria perform similar roles in screening settlements. Known as ‘protection forests’, these areas of woodland shield human habitations from natural hazards such as rockfalls, avalanches, floods and debris – and are increasingly considered the equal of engineered architecture in efficacy.

Roughly half of Swiss forests currently protect towns, roads or railway lines from avalanches or rockslides. Fallen snow is more stable in forested areas because snow catches in treetops rather than accumulating on the ground, while tree cover stabilises wind conditions and temperatures, and trunks provide a bulwark against slippage.

At the opposite end of the temperature scale, meanwhile, a suburb of Sydney in Australia has demonstrated the value of trees in sheltering citizens from sweltering summer temperatures. Scientists discovered that two streets only a kilometre apart have measurably different microclimates, with ground-level temperatures that vary by as much as 10 degrees.

The key difference? Percentage of tree cover. Uncovered concrete surfaces absorb heat energy, even retaining it after the sun goes down in a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect. These night temperatures can lead to everything from elevated energy demands to spikes in heat-related casualties. In the US alone, heat-related deaths number 1,000 a year. The vast majority of them occur in urban areas.

Authorities in Sydney are using trees to cool the city. Image: GCA

Favouring green over grey infrastructure clearly makes ecological sense but it also make economic sense. In 2012, New York City compared two projects to manage stormwater flows – one a green infrastructure plan that involved green roofs and bioswales – the other an off-the-shelf grey infrastructure project deploying tunnels and storm drains. The green option offered cost savings of more than $1.5bn, without any reduction in efficacy.

These findings have been replicated numerous times, demonstrating that EbA has a vital role to play as we work to refine our responses to climate change and meet the SDGs. Insurance companies protecting coastal fishing communities or other vulnerable industries, it has been speculated, might even be tempted to foot the bill for green improvements themselves, to offset the future costs of extreme weather disruption.

Data can't measure everything

Not all of the benefits of restored ecosystems, however, can be measured in data terms. To stress the economic value of healthy forests is to compound the error that has enslaved the natural world to human productivity. Time in wild nature, according to the Wildlife Trust, is ‘fundamentally important for our health, wellbeing and happiness’.

 Research shows that regular contact with the natural world improves rates of happiness and self-esteem. Children felt that nature taught them how to take risks and made them more creative, while spending time in greenery is shown to have a positive impact on conditions from ADHD to depression.

Yet even this doesn’t tell the full story. Our appreciation of the value of green spaces won’t be complete until we recognise nature’s right to exist in and of itself, and cease to see the environment as a means to human ends.

Whatever our approach to ecosystem restoration in future, it is obvious we need to proceed at scale. Only through mass restoration and reforestation schemes – of the kind pioneered by Ethiopia, Pakistan, Senegal and the world’s less developed nations – can we hope to reverse the dismal depletion that for too long has characterised humanity’s relationship with the green world, to its detriment and our own.

Links
Posted by at No comments :
Labels: , , , , ,

Friday, June 12, 2020

The Economic Theory That Could Fuel A Climate Change Revolution

Gizmodo - Brian Kahn

 Addressing climate change will require massive investments in everything from shoring up dams that aren’t ready for future rainstorms to wind farms and workers. It’s a huge shift that will require reorienting the economy and the way the world works.

© Photo: AP Money printer go brrrr.

It’s a reflexive response to ask how the world could ever come up with the money to do all that and not go into major debt. But that reflex is wrong, according to proponents of modern monetary theory, an emerging field of economics that shows government deficits aren’t the problem for countries that issue their own currency. Instead, it’s political will and gauging the state of economic well-being beyond metrics like deficits and GDP.

The idea behind modern monetary theory (MMT) is basically that a government can never run out of money as long as it issues its own currency. The U.S. federal government can always make good on payments because it’s the only issuer of dollars. That doesn’t give it license to make the money printer go brrr with abandon since that could lead to inflation. And it’s not that we shouldn’t tax Jeff Bezos since we don’t need tax revenue to pay for things.

But the theory—which, of course, has its vocal detractors and supporters—leads to what Stephanie Kelton, a Stony Brook University and its leading proponent, calls a more holistic view of the economy that looks not just at government deficits but available resources like people, steel, ecosystems, and other serious deficits we’re starting to run up against.

Her newly released book, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy, lays out what the modern U.S. economy and lawmakers should be focusing on rather than deficits. The book calls for us to look for potential in “the untapped potential in our economy.”

And with respect to climate change, there is a lot of untapped potential. The longer the world burns fossil fuels, the greater the risk of climate change. Kelton, who advised Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential run and served as the chief economist for Senate Democrats from 2014 to 2016, calls for Congress to use its power to set federal spending as a means of eliminating that risk along with addressing other failures, including access to healthcare, education, and civic engagement. That’s what a true people’s economy (or really, a planet economy) would look like.

We’ve already seen lawmakers approve trillions of dollars in spending in response to the coronavirus, and Kelton told Earther she believes the economy has enough slack to handle quite a bit more spending without risking inflation. And with a crucial decade in front of us for climate action, that recovery money could be the seed that transforms the economy into one focused on clean energy, caring for each other, and centers justice. Earther spoke with Kelton about her book and what could come next. The interview below has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Earther: What do you think the most important thing is for a layperson to really understand about modern monetary theory and our current moment?
Stephanie Kelton: I think the most important thing is, it’s meant to be empowering. It’s meant to help people see through the myth. And it’s not just one myth, it’s a web of interconnected myths that feed on one another.
The most important thing it does is clear the fog so that we can all have a more fruitful debate. It can’t be a lack of financing. That cannot be the reason that we don’t act, whether it’s to build 21st-century education or to deal with climate change or make sure every American has health care. A lack of money cannot be an excuse anymore. It’s focused on the limits that matter. What can we do to make efficient and socially useful use of the resources that we have at our disposal and respect the planet in the process?

Earther: Do we really have to completely shift our way of thinking about finances and policy to address the climate crisis?
Kelton: The real issue is about shifting the focus away from the financing to the real resources. So what do we want to do at a climate program? Should it include a job guarantee? And if so, how does that work? Should we build 11 million new homes and make them sustainable and green? Where do we get the construction workers and the architects and the engineers and the machines and all the stuff that we’re going to need to do that?
If we don’t have those things or we can’t produce them to carry out this mission, then we can’t have these things. But if we have them and we have the capacity to build and produce them, then that’s the right way to approach this.

Earther: You mention a few things in the book like a Cash-for-Clunkers program for coal plants. What else would you do to kickstart this transition to a low-carbon economy?
Kelton: I think it’s really important to be clear that I try to stay in my lane. I’m not a climate scientist. I’m not an environmental economist. What I try to do is get together with people who are experts in that space for whom the big hurdle has always been, where are we going to get the money to do [these things]?
I accept the goal of flattening the curve and getting to net-zero carbon emissions. But I’m not the person to lay out that program.

Earther: What do you see as your lane?
Kelton: If money is one thing that stands in our way or the perception, a lack of financing is a primary barrier, then let’s at least remove one obstacle. And that’s where I think I can be useful. Obviously, there are other points of resistance like the fossil fuel industry and political and other considerations.
My concern is that I don’t see yet the kind of big, ambitious program here. The concern is that nations are going to let the window close, and it’s going to be harder and harder to address climate change, and it’s going to be more and more costly. And when I say costly, I don’t just mean GDP. I mean life. Human life. Not addressing climate change is going to lead to a lot of suffering that is avoidable.
“We would be foolish to let the opportunity slip through our fingers.”
Earther: In addition to talking about the people’s economy, you talk about the caring economy. What does that look like in the context of the climate crisis?
Kelton: For me, it starts with a recognition that we should be caring for people, caring for our communities, and caring for our planet. So if I look at a city like Flint, Michigan, I see not caring for people in that community and hundreds of communities like it across this country where you can’t turn on the faucet and safely drink what comes out of the tap.
I don’t know who doesn’t feel better about living in a world where people are treated in a way that makes us feel proud to call ourselves Americans, where communities are cleaned up and homes are habitable and people are cared for when they’re sick, and we’re not destroying our climate and filling our oceans with plastic and waste. I don’t wanna get goofy, but it’s about all of life’s creatures as well.

Earther: I don’t think that’s goofy. I would also like to see that. To change course just a bit, in the book you mention the Greek debt crisis a few times because it doesn’t issue its own currency. What about countries or states that don’t issue their own currency? Could that eventually impede their ability to financing the things they need to do on climate?
Kelton: Maybe. It depends what they want to do. Take California, which has led the nation for decades on climate. They have a vehicle emissions standard, which forces auto manufacturers—if they want access to the largest state in the country—to build cars that can be sold and driven in California.
Regulations can have a material impact on the extent to which we continue to pollute the planet. But when it comes to large-scale investment of the kind that are imagined in the Green New Deal, it can’t be 50 states trying to coordinate. For that, you need a currency-issuing power.
The European Central Bank is that power, it’s not that you don’t have one in the Euro Zone. It’s just that that power rests with the monetary authority, and the fiscal authorities don’t have the capacity to do what our Congress can do.

Earther: What else do we need to be thinking of aside from who can issue money or set policy?
Kelton: If you want to do some small-ball, half-a-trillion-dollars program, we could do that tomorrow and run it to Congress without a so-called pay for, and we wouldn’t get an inflation problem. We could do a couple trillion [in response to the coronavirus], I strongly suspect.
But at some point, the bigger you want to go, the more those inflation offsets like taxes become important. Let’s take the Sanders climate plan and say let’s do that, and let’s do it fast because time is of the essence. Let’s try to spend all 16 trillion-plus in the next couple of years.
The real contribution of MMT is first recognizing that a government can spend without taxing or borrowing. That the time for offsets is when that spending would otherwise carry the risk of accelerating inflation. You have to know your economic landscape. You have to know how much slack there is in the economy to safely absorb that spending before the offsets become necessary.

Earther: Given the risks of the climate crisis, it’s always a good idea to address it. It seems like you’re saying is that we will get the most bang for our buck by investing now.

Kelton: This is an enormous opportunity that has opened up around us right now where we can re-employ people. Industries are changing. There is an opportunity to have a burst of new, innovative investments and burgeoning of new industry around green everything. Not just electricity, but housing and transportation, a whole range of things. We would be foolish to let the opportunity slip through our fingers.

Links
Posted by at No comments :
Labels: , , ,

Threat From Climate Change To Financial Stability Bigger Than Covid-19

Financial Times - Matthew Vincent

Report urges capital requirement rules for banks lending to fossil fuel groups to be tightened
Protesters block the road in front of the Bank of England last year during a climate change protest. © PA

Climate change poses a bigger threat to financial stability than the coronavirus pandemic and the rules on bank lending to fossil fuel groups must be tightened to address it, a new report has warned.

In his latest research for the Finance Watch advocacy body, Thierry Philipponnat — a board member at the French financial regulator, and one of the EU’s technical experts on sustainable finance — has recommended increasing the risk weightings banks must apply to their oil, gas and coal exposures.

This would make them treat fossil fuel lending in the same way as other risky investments, increasing their capital requirements to insulate them against possible losses. Banks would therefore have more protection against the risk of carbon assets becoming “stranded” if demand falls — or the risk of costly climate disruption if it does not.

According to Mr Philipponnat, only this regulatory approach can end the “climate-finance doom loop”, in which fossil fuel finance enables climate change, and climate change threatens financial stability, through disruptive natural events.

Finance Watch estimates that climate-related risks to the financial system are greater than those posed by pandemics, such as coronavirus.

“The actions we are proposing today are far less radical or costly than those taken in response to the Covid-19 crisis but they target a far bigger threat,” said its secretary-general Benoît Lallemand. “They address a disruption risk of another order of magnitude.”

Under the report’s proposals, the risk weighting for bank exposures to existing fossil fuel reserves would be increased from 100 per cent to 150 per cent, making banks treat them the same as risky venture capital and private equity lending, for capital purposes. And the risk weighting for bank exposures to new fossil fuel reserves would be increased from 100 per cent to 1,250 per cent, making equity finance the only option, and one that better reflects the future threats.

In recent years, climate change campaigners have been calling on banks to reassess their financing of fossil fuels to help meet the goal of the intergovernmental Paris Agreement: limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5C over the pre-industrial average.

However, last year, an analysis by Rainforest Action Network found that 33 banks provided $654bn to 1,800 fossil fuel companies, equivalent to 70 per cent of the capital expenditure of the entire industry. It said JPMorgan Chase was the world’s biggest “fossil banker”, providing $195bn over three years, followed by Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of America.

In Europe, Barclays has been the biggest backer of oil, gas and coal companies, according to the responsible investment charity Share Action, providing more than $85bn of finance since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. HSBC and Standard Chartered have also been named by Dutch charity BankTrack as among the biggest lenders to coal projects.

Banks said they have been responding to the climate challenge, although tackling it through changes to global regulation may prove difficult.

Huw van Steenis, chair of UBS’s sustainable finance committee, noted the point he made in his “Future of Finance” review for the Bank of England: “Many banks highlight that they are primarily regulated through risk-weighted assets, which are based on historical information and expert analysis. They do not always take account of longer-horizon forward-looking information such as climate change. And while adjusting the risk weights . . . might merit discussion, it would not be easy to operationalise, given the globally agreed approach to setting capital requirements.”

Still some investors are pressing regulators to do more. In March this year, Christopher Hohn, founder of the $28bn hedge fund group TCI, called on regulators to increase the risk weighting on this lending.

“Regulators cannot allow banks to hide coal loans and the totally unrealistic risk weightings being used,” he said. “Using a 250 per cent risk weighting would make new and existing coal loans uneconomic.”

Finance Watch is calling on the European Commission to impose its higher risk weightings now, and hopes the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board will promote a similar approach globally.

“Given the short time available, there is a need for decisive and immediate regulatory action, using prudential tools already available,” Mr Philipponnat said.

Links
Posted by at No comments :
Labels: , , ,

Unequal Impact: The Deep Links Between Racism And Climate Change

Yale Environment 360 - Beth Gardiner

Activist Elizabeth Yeampierre has long focused on the connections between racial injustice and the environment and climate change. In the wake of George Floyd’s killing and the outsized impact of Covid-19 on communities of color, she hopes people may finally be listening. 

A residential street alongside a major oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, a city that is more than two-thirds African American and Latino. AP Photo/David Goldman

The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans have cast stark new light on the racism that remains deeply embedded in U.S. society.

It is as present in matters of the environment as in other aspects of life: Both historical and present-day injustices have left people of color exposed to far greater environmental health hazards than whites.

Elizabeth Yeampierre has been an important voice on these issues for more than two decades. As co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance, she leads a coalition of more than 70 organizations focused on addressing racial and economic inequities together with climate change.
 In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Yeampierre draws a direct line from slavery and the rapacious exploitation of natural resources to current issues of environmental justice. “I think about people who got the worst food, the worst health care, the worst treatment, and then when freed, were given lands that were eventually surrounded by things like petrochemical industries,” says Yeampierre.

Elizabeth Yeampierre
Yeampierre sees the fights against climate change and racial injustice as deeply intertwined, noting that the transition to a low-carbon future is connected to “workers’ rights, land use, [and] how people are treated,” and she criticizes the mainstream environmental movement, which she says was “built by people who cared about conservation, who cared about wildlife, who cared about trees and open space… but didn’t care about black people.”

Yale Environment 360: You’ve spoken about the big-picture idea that climate change and racial injustice share the same roots and have to be addressed together, and that there is no climate action that is not also about racial justice. Can you describe the links you see connecting these two issues?
Elizabeth Yeampierre: Climate change is the result of a legacy of extraction, of colonialism, of slavery. A lot of times when people talk about environmental justice they go back to the 1970s or ‘60s. But I think about the slave quarters. I think about people who got the worst food, the worst health care, the worst treatment, and then when freed, were given lands that were eventually surrounded by things like petrochemical industries. The idea of killing black people or indigenous people, all of that has a long, long history that is centered on capitalism and the extraction of our land and our labor in this country.
For us, as part of the climate justice movement, to separate those things is impossible. The truth is that the climate justice movement, people of color, indigenous people, have always worked multi-dimensionally because we have to be able to fight on so many different planes.
When I first came into this work, I was fighting police brutality at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund. We were fighting for racial justice. We were in our 20s and this is how we started. It was only a few years after that I realized that if we couldn’t breathe, we couldn’t fight for justice and that’s how I got into the environmental justice movement. For us, there is no distinction between one and the other.
In our communities, people are suffering from asthma and upper respiratory disease, and we’ve been fighting for the right to breathe for generations. It’s ironic that those are the signs you’re seeing in these protests — “I can’t breathe.” When the police are using chokeholds, literally people who suffer from a history of asthma and respiratory disease, their breath is taken away. When Eric Garner died [in 2014 from a New York City police officer’s chokehold], and we heard he had asthma, the first thing we said in my house was, “This is an environmental justice issue.”
The communities that are most impacted by Covid, or by pollution, it’s not surprising that they’re the ones that are going to be most impacted by extreme weather events. And it’s not surprising that they’re the ones that are targeted for racial violence. It’s all the same communities, all over the United States. And you can’t treat one part of the problem without the other, because it’s so systemic.
With Hurricanes Maria and Katrina, the loss of lives came “out of a legacy of neglect and racism.”
e360: Can you more explicitly draw the connection between climate change and the history of slavery and colonialism?
Yeampierre: With the arrival of slavery comes a repurposing of the land, chopping down of trees, disrupting water systems and other ecological systems that comes with supporting the effort to build a capitalist society and to provide resources for the privileged, using the bodies of black people to facilitate that.
The same thing in terms of the disruption and the stealing of indigenous land. There was a taking of land, not just for expansion, but to search for gold, to take down mountains and extract fossil fuels out of mountains. All of that is connected, and I don’t know how people don’t see the connection between the extraction and how black and indigenous people suffered as a result of that and continue to suffer, because all of those decisions were made along that historical continuum, all those decisions also came with Jim Crow. They came with literally doing everything necessary to control and squash black people from having any kind of power.
You need to understand the economics. If you understand that, then you know that climate change is the child of all that destruction, of all of that extraction, of all of those decisions that were made and how those ended up, not just in terms of our freedom and taking away freedom from black people, but hurting us along the way.
It’s all related. You can’t say that with Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans the loss of lives was simply because there was an extreme weather event. The loss of life comes out of a legacy of neglect and racism. And that’s evident even in the rebuilding. It’s really interesting to see what happens to the land after people have been displaced, how land speculation and land grabs and investments are made in communities that, when there were black people living there, had endured not having the things people need to have livable good lives.
These things, to me, are connected. It’s comfortable for people to separate them, because remember that the environmental movement, the conservation movement, a lot of those institutions were built by people who cared about conservation, who cared about wildlife, who cared about trees and open space and wanted those privileges while also living in the city, but didn’t care about black people. There is a long history of racism in those movements.

Demonstrators march in Sunset Park, Brooklyn last September in support of community-led climate justice initiatives. Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images

e360: So how do you have a fight for climate action that is intertwined with a fight for racial justice? What are the steps, the policies, that we should be thinking about looking forward?
Yeampierre: With the Green New Deal, for example, we said that it wasn’t a Green New Deal unless it was centered on frontline solutions and on ensuring that frontline leadership would be able to move resources to their communities to deal with things like infrastructure and food security. When that happens, we’ll be able to move the dial much more efficiently.
In New York, for example, we passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which is aggressive legislation that looks at how you move resources to frontline communities and how you invest in those communities.
Nationally, we need to be looking at stopping pipelines — reducing carbon but also reducing other pollutants. We need to start focusing on regenerative economies, creating community cooperatives and different kinds of economic systems that make it possible for people to thrive economically while at the same time taking us off the grid.
In every community there are different things people are doing, everything from putting solar in public housing to community-owned solar cooperatives. This is not the ‘60s or the ‘70s or the ‘80s where we follow one iconic leader. This is a time where we need to have numerous people really taking on the charge of directing something that’s big and complex.

e360: Can you talk a little bit about the idea of a just transition to a low-carbon future and how that dovetails with anti-racism efforts?
Yeampierre: A just transition is a process that moves us away from a fossil fuel economy to local livable economies, to regenerative economies. Those are different economies of scale that include not just renewable energy but healthy food and all of the things that people need in order to thrive. The word justice here is important because for a long time people would talk about sustainability, that you could have sustainability without justice, and the climate movement focused on reducing carbon but didn’t really care about other pollutants.
“Climate activists talk about moving at a big, grand scale, and we talk about moving at a local scale.”
A just transition looks at the process of how we get there, and so it looks at not just the outcomes, which is something that the environmentalists look at, but it looks at the process — workers’ rights, land use, how people are treated, whether the process of creating materials that take us to a carbon-neutral environment is toxic and whether it affects the host community where it’s being built. It looks at all those different kinds of things.
I can give you one example in New York City. We have been advocates of bringing in offshore wind. One of the things that we learned is that in order for that to happen, the pieces have to come from Europe and be assembled in New York and they would be coming in these huge container ships. Now these ships operate by diesel, and so what happens is they park themselves on the waterfront of an environmental justice community and the climate solution becomes an environmental justice problem.
The climate solution is we reduce carbon, but the environmental justice problem is we dump tons of nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides and PM2.5 [particles] into the lungs of the host community.
We need the climate solution, but then we need to talk about how we electrify the industrial waterfront and how these ships can plug in so they’re not burning diesel. While we’re doing that, we also need to look at how we create the market instead of following the market — wind turbines that are built in the United States so we don’t have to bring the parts in from Europe.
These are the kinds of things that we think about when we’re thinking about a just transition. A climate activist will be like, “Okay, we need offshore wind” — right, that’s it. But a climate justice activist will be like, “Okay, let’s look at it a little closer and let’s figure out what the process looks like and how we can engage in remediation to make sure we are not only reducing carbon but we’re also reducing co-pollutants, and let’s make sure that the people that are hired are hired locally.” So there are all of these other pieces that are involved in a just transition. Climate activists talk about moving at a big, grand scale, and we talk about moving at a local scale, and then replicating those efforts.

e360: Racial justice would presumably have to be at the heart of that.
Yeampierre: It has to be at the center. For example, in Sunset Park [Brooklyn, where Yeampierre runs the Latino community group UPROSE], we just launched the first community-owned solar cooperative in the state. Okay, we want renewable energy. We need to be able to prioritize the people that are going to be most impacted. Low-income communities. People of color. It has to matter to white folks because when our communities succeed and get what they need, everyone benefits from that.
“These [environmental groups] have to get out of their silos and out of their dated thinking.”
With the cooperative, the community actually owns the utility, owns the energy source. People will be able to access renewable energy, at a reduced cost, be hired locally to build it — and have ownership. So it’s really exciting. We’re hoping this model will birth more projects like this.
Now, we’re is reaching out to small businesses. They’re struggling because of how Covid-19 has affected the economy. When we started this project, we were thinking it would provide resilience to disruptions of the grid and other systems from extreme weather events. We hadn’t anticipated the disruption would be something like Covid. But these models become a real benefit in moments like this where you don’t know where your next paycheck is coming from. You have access to energy that is both renewable — which means it has a health benefit — and also benefits your pocketbook.

e360: With the pandemic and its racially disparate impact, and then the killing of George Floyd and the protests that have followed, we’re at this moment where these longstanding racial disparities and racism are on vivid display. What would you hope the climate movement and the environmental justice movement take away from this moment and apply going forward?
Yeampierre: I think that this is a moment for them to start thinking internally and thinking about some of the challenges that they’re having. I think it’s a moment for introspection and a moment to start thinking about how they contribute to a system that makes a police officer think it’s okay to put his knee on somebody’s neck and kill them, or a woman to call the police on an African-American man who was bird-watching in the park.
These institutions [environmental groups] have to get out of their silos and out of their dated thinking, and really need to look to organizations like the Climate Justice Alliance and Movement Generation and all of the organizations that we work with. There are so many people who have been working with each other now for years and have literally put out tons of information that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. It’s all there.
There has to be a fundamental change in the culture of these institutions. If they were thinking strategically, they would be saying, “Hey, let me see. I’m in New York. Who’s doing this and how can we support them?” We’ve had groups of white young people who have contacted us and have said to us, “How can we support you? How can we best use our resources and our skills to support the work that you’re doing?” And, we’ve been like, “You know what? That is the right question. Let’s do this together.”

Links
Posted by at No comments :
Labels: , ,

Thursday, June 11, 2020

BBC Climate Change Videos


CO2 - or carbon dioxide - is at the heart of the world's changing climate. Reality Check's Chris Morris explains why.
Motion graphics by Jacqueline Galvin.
------

The coronavirus crisis has seen many changes to life as we know it.
The number of cars on our roads has reduced dramatically, planes are grounded and many of us are working from home for the first time.
It has resulted in cleaner rivers and better air quality, and global CO2 emissions are predicted to be their lowest in a decade.
Could changes we have been forced to make during the pandemic become long-term environmental solutions?


The 10 years to the end of 2019 have been confirmed as the warmest decade on record by three global agencies.
This year, climate change has been linked to Australian bushfires, torrential rains in Indonesia and record-breaking temperatures in Europe - but just what is climate change?
The BBC's global science correspondent Rebecca Morelle explains.
Produced and edited by Larissa Kennelly Graphics by Terry Saunders

Forest area has been increasing in some parts of the world, but deforestation is continuing at speed in others.
Can the trees we are planting make up for those that are being cut down?
Reality Check's Jack Goodman takes a look.
Motion graphics by Jacqueline Galvin Produced by Sarah Glatte

Activists are warning that the world is now facing a "double crisis" because of the coronavirus pandemic and climate change.
Many campaigners have had to cancel or postpone their work because of lockdowns worldwide.
However, some say now is a big opportunity to spread their message in a different way.
Video journalist: Olivia Le Poidevin

Thousands of species could go extinct over the next decade according to a 2019 UN report.
Biodiversity is decreasing at a faster rate than ever, BBC Reality Check investigates why.
Posted by at No comments :
Labels:

Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss And Other Global Ills Share Root Causes

The Conversation -  | 

The Cendrawasih, commonly known as the Bird of Paradise, is facing extinction. Getty Images

Authors
The modern world seems to lurch from one crisis to another.

What if that is because the crises have shared underlying causes, and therefore tackling them as if they were independent events is doomed to fail?

The issues of climate change and biodiversity are deeply intertwined.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity, the international treaties charged with solving two of the biggest problems of the 21st century, were both due to hold make-or-break meetings in 2020.

COVID-19 – yet another crisis with strong connections to the other two – has forced the meetings to be postponed. The only positive result is that the delay provides an opportunity to better coordinate actions, in order to lead to better outcomes.

To mark World Environment Day on 5 June, the Commonwealth Academies released a statement on climate change, biodiversity and sustainable energy. The statement stressed the grave risks to people and nature of allowing the global climate to warm at its current rate and draws attention to the accelerating rate of biodiversity loss. It proposes that a rapid transition to predominantly renewable energy sources can help alleviate both issues. The statement calls for urgent leadership.

This article explains the logic behind that statement, linking three apparently different issues. By identifying the connections we reveal the opportunities for coordinated action and the pitfalls of continuing to pursue independent agendas.

Rapid species extinction

The world is in the throes of a “sixth extinction crisis” – an accelerating loss of species at a rate far more rapid than the evolution of new species. Such a loss was last seen sixty million years ago, when Earth collided with an asteroid. The result is the unravelling of the ecosystems which we depend on for our well-being.

For the past few centuries, the main cause of declining biological diversity has been habitat loss – the relentless replacement of natural ecosystems by croplands, cities and managed forest, to meet human demands for food, timber and raw materials. That process continues.

Apart from driving our co-inhabitants of the planet to extinction, land use change is the most important cause of climate change after the burning of fossil fuels. Human encroachment on nature is also the root cause of the emergence of novel zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19. So if we could stop deforestation, we would help solve three problems at the same time.

Climate change

But as we move into the middle part of the 21st century, the biggest future threat to plants and animals is climate change. Despite the undertaking by most of the countries of the world in Paris in 2015 to stabilise the global climate at safe levels by mid-century, the climate continues to warm at an accelerating rate.

As a result the climate comfort zones of millions of species are moving faster than they can keep up. Our main strategy thus far for conserving biodiversity – the creation of protected areas – is increasingly irrelevant.

The single most important thing we can do to save nature (and ourselves) in the 21st century is to cap global warming at no more than 1.5℃. In other words, the fate of nature is being decided by the outcome of climate negotiations, not biodiversity discussions.

There are also examples where an action taken to address one of the crises makes things worse for another. For instance, there is great enthusiasm for planting forests to soak up carbon dioxide. Many of the targeted areas – which need to be huge to make a useful difference – are not places that formerly supported forests.

As South Africa learned the hard way, when we afforest ancient, species-rich grasslands with monocultures of alien trees, the rivers dry up and biodiversity is lost. There are potentially similar problems with simply replacing fossil fuels with bio energy crops. The vast areas required will either displace food crops or further encroach on natural habitats.

Energy generation

Renewable energy – particularly solar and wind power – offer far more sustainable futures. They are not without impacts on biodiversity, but the magnitude of those impacts is much less than the effects of climate change, driven by fossil fuels and land use change.

The remarkable worldwide reduction in atmospheric pollutants and the resurgence of nature while travel and economic activity were suspended under COVID-19 restrictions give us a glimpse of what we have lost and what we stand to gain.

Those effects will be short-lived, but they do show that when the world perceives a problem to be urgent and critically important, it can very quickly take actions previously said to be completely impossible. That is the lesson we need to apply to the much more life-threatening, and just as urgent, challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Links
Posted by at No comments :
Labels: ,

Why Hydrogen, Why Now? Because Climate, Economy And Finance Say So.

Forbes - David Hart

Hydrogen energy is seeing unprecedented support, not only from long-time enthusiasts like Japan and Korea, but from upstarts like Australia and Chile. 

Germany has just announced a plan to spend €7bn on hydrogen as part of an economic stimulus package. 

The IEA–born in the oil crises–is publicly suggesting we need more hydrogen in the energy system, and the World Economic Forum helped seed the Hydrogen Council, now 81 hydrogen-supporting members including oil and gas companies and carmakers, trading companies and banks. 

European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans sees hydrogen as essential to Europe’s Green Deal.

European Commission vice-president in charge for European Green Deal, Frans Timmermans, speaks during a press conference on Green and Just recovery at the European Commission headquarters in Brussel on May 28, 2020. Photo by Aris Oikonomou / AFP via Getty Images

Why hydrogen? Simply, it can do things electrons cannot. As a molecule, it can be used as a convertible ‘currency’ between renewable energy, chemical feedstock, transport fuel, residential and industrial heat. It is an excellent clean energy store for long periods and large energy needs. It sits alongside and in partnership with electricity as a consummate carbon-free energy vector.

Hydrogen has enormous promise, but needs to be scaled up dramatically to have an impact. Its detractors dismiss it as inefficient and difficult to handle. Battery vehicles seem to be conquering transport, while wind and solar feed our grids. All of the signals scream ‘hype cycle’. Or do they? Three powerful drivers seem to be combining to push hydrogen forward.

Firstly, the concept of ‘net zero’ carbon emissions is gaining pace. National governments and energy companies alike are proclaiming it their goal. And models show that without hydrogen, net zero is almost impossible to achieve. Hydrogen is needed to help decarbonise heat, and shipping, and long-haul trucking, and fertiliser, and heavy industries like steel.

Secondly, our energy and transport systems are on the brink of upheaval, bringing dramatic economic pain. The growth of renewables is accelerating, cost is dropping, vehicles are becoming electric and maybe autonomous. Traditional industries are facing existential threats, and hundreds of thousands of discarded jobs. Hydrogen can help them reinvent themselves, create employment and drive economic growth, while still meeting the climate imperative.

Thirdly, COVID-19 has brutally exposed the inherent fragility and endemic risk in our economies. Supply chains are stationary, oil prices have gone negative, and fiscal rules have been rewritten. The risk from climate change is seen as many times worse. Major company shareholders, like pension funds, are scrutinising corporate ESG reports for their willingness to limit social upheaval and exposure to carbon emissions.

Thierry Philipponnat, an EU expert on sustainable finance at Finance Watch and board member of France’s financial regulator, suggests that bank risk ratings for fossil fuels should be increased by up to an order of magnitude, to fairly reflect future threats. Investors and analysts increasingly see hydrogen as an option for long-term sustainable investment, and will reward company boards for pursuing it, where in the past they penalised.

Hydrogen is rarely an easy solution to any single problem. A lot must be done before it makes a meaningful energy - or climate - or economic - contribution. But the current conditions suggest an opportunity to be seized.

Links
Posted by at No comments :
Labels: ,
Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )

Lethal Heating is a citizens' initiative