While the world has been focused on a global pandemic and widespread
protests, another crisis is gathering in the atmosphere.
And no, it
isn’t carbon dioxide: It’s that other planet-warmer, methane, a
colorless, odorless gas which traps 86 times as much heat as CO2.
According to two new studies out Tuesday, a combination of agriculture
and fossil fuel burning has boosted methane to a record-high 1,875 parts per billion in the atmosphere.
If unabated, the researchers warn, methane emissions could push the
planet toward a world heated up by 3 to 4 degrees Celsius, one of the worst-case scenarios for global warming.
In the race over how to lower global greenhouse gas emissions,
methane — a carbon atom joined to four hydrogen atoms — is often left
out of the conversation. It doesn’t hang around in the atmosphere as
long as carbon dioxide; when released into the air, it only takes about 9
years for half of it to dissipate and turn into other molecules.
(Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, takes around a century.)
But methane
is responsible for a quarter of the world’s global warming since 1750.
Tamping it down will be crucial for mitigating climate change.
“It’s
a mistake to ignore methane,” said Rob Jackson, professor of earth
system science at Stanford University and a co-author of both studies.
“If we can reduce methane emissions quickly, we could shave a
half-a-degree Celsius off peak temperatures.”
The problem is that methane keeps rising. And rising. Starting in 2007, methane emissions started climbing fast, after remaining fairly stable for the previous seven years. But scientists couldn’t figure out exactly why.
“It’s embarrassing, honestly,” said Jackson.
Some blamed fracking. When fossil fuel companies force water and
chemicals underground to extract natural gas, they run the risk of
methane leaking into the air. And studies have shown that, at least in
the United States, these leaks are far larger than the government has admitted.
Others pointed to the belching of methane from tropical wetlands, which depends on changes in temperature and precipitation, or to thawing Arctic permafrost releasing tons of fossilized methane into the air.
The new papers, however, tell a somewhat simpler story. Jackson and
his coauthors blame the sharp increase on increased fossil fuel use and
agriculture gobbling up land. Cows burp out huge quantities of methane
in the process of their digestion; bacteria living in flooded rice
paddies also spew out the gas.
Part of the problem is that the global population has surged to 7.7
billion over the past two decades — and many of those people are also
eating more meat. “There are a billion and a half more people on Earth
than there were in 2000,” Jackson said. “Emissions have gone up because
of extra mouths to feed.”
Fossil fuels also play a big role, not
just through fracking. Any time oil, gas, and coal are extracted from
the ground, there is a risk of methane spilling out of rock formations
into the air.
Methane emissions from coal mining, for example, increased
globally from 29 million metric tons between 2000 and 2006 to a
whopping 44 million metric tons in 2017.
And, while carbon dioxide emissions fell when much of the world was locked down earlier this year (only to bounce back
as shelter-in-place orders lifted), Jackson said that it’s unlikely
we’ll see anything similar from methane emissions.
Most of the decreases in CO2 emissions
came from the transportation sector, as people stopped driving their
cars and taking international flights. But as agriculture gobbles up
more land and people continue to heat their homes with natural gas,
methane emissions have continued climbing.
If there’s a source of optimism in the two studies, it’s Europe,
where changing diets and better agricultural practices have decreased
the amount of methane exhaled from the land.
And despite repeated
warnings that thawing Arctic soils could release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere, researchers say that hasn’t happened — yet.
Fossil fuel
developments are rapidly increasing emissions of methane, led by the
opening of coal mines and gas fields, some of which are in Australia.
An
international team of researchers say agriculture formerly provided
about two-thirds of non-natural methane emissions – with fossil fuels
making up the remainder – until the early 2000s. Since, the gap has
begun to close with the growth of emissions of the gas from fossil fuels
double those from farming.
A new study has found the contribution to rising atmospheric levels of methane from fossil fuels has caught up with farming over the past decade. Credit: AP
"Methane
emissions have continued to rise over the past decade and are tracking
concentrations most consistent with the warmest marker scenario of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," according to the paper,
published on Wednesday in the Environmental Research Letters journal.
As
a greenhouse gas, methane is second only to carbon dioxide in terms of
warming the planet, contributing to about 23 per cent of the heating
since 1750. The average methane concentration in the atmosphere has
risen about 2.5 times over the period.
While
it typically remains in the atmosphere for much less time than CO2,
methane is more potent – about 86 times more per unit of mass over 20
years, the paper noted.
"Particularly during the last few years,
we've seen quite dramatic growth rates of methane," said Pep Canadell,
head of CSIRO's Global Carbon Project and one of the paper's authors.
Emissions
of the gas from natural sources of methane, such as wetlands, termites
or volcanoes, barely budged from the average over 2000-2006 to 2017, at
about 367 million tonnes a year, the paper said.
By contrast,
fossil-fuel sources had risen about 27 per cent to 135 million tonnes
annually, with coal-linked methane emissions up 51.7 per cent and those
from oil and gas up 16.7 per cent.
Agriculture accounts for about half the annual increase in methane emissions, the study found. Credit: Louie Douvis
Methane from farming, such as rice cultivation and cattle, rose 12.7 per cent during the period to 213 million tonnes, annually, the paper found.
China was a big source of the extra methane as its coal industry expanded, Dr Canadell said. The Oceania region, which includes Australia, also featured as one region where both fossil fuel and agriculture-sourced methane has increased.In North America, fossil-fuel development contributed about 80 per cent of the extra methane from that region.
Stanford University's Rob Jackson, the paper's lead author, said gas use "is rising quickly here in the US and globally".
"It’s
offsetting coal in the electricity sector and reducing carbon dioxide
emissions, but increasing methane emissions in that sector," he said.
"The US and Canada are also producing more natural gas, and as a result,
we’re emitting more methane from oil and gas wells and leaky
pipelines.”
Proponents of the gas industry had long dubbed it a
"transition fuel" to wean economies off coal, citing its lower warming
impact when burnt. However, leakage of methane can nullify any
advantage, given the potency of the gas in the atmosphere.
"Moving
from one fossil fuel to another fossil fuel is not a pathway to
net-zero emissions that we have collectively agreed on," Dr Canadell
said, referring to the 2015 Paris climate accord that sets a path for
carbon neutrality by the second half of the century.
Methane was "not under any kind of policy" to be curbed, creating opportunities for governments to act, he said.
The Milky Way shines above a pine tree overlooking the coast of Crimea. (Photo: Vitalii Bashkatov/Shutterstock)
It's hard to overstate the importance of trees. Their debut more than 300 million years ago was a turning point for Earth, helping transform its surface into a bustling utopia for land animals. Trees have fed, housed and otherwise nurtured countless creatures over time — including our own arboreal ancestors.
Modern humans rarely live in trees, but that doesn't mean we can live without them. About 3 trillion trees currently exist, enriching habitats from old-growth forests to city streets. Yet despite our deep-rooted reliance on trees, we tend to take them for granted. People clear millions of forested acres every year, often for short-term rewards despite long-term risks like desertification, wildlife declines and climate change. Science is helping us learn to use trees' resources more sustainably, and to protect vulnerable forests more effectively, but we still have a long way to go.
Earth now has 46 percent fewer trees than it did 12,000 years ago, when agriculture was in its infancy. Yet despite all the deforestation since then, humans still can't shake an instinctive fondness for trees. Their mere presence has been shown to make us calmer, happier and more creative, and often boosts our appraisal of property value. Trees hold deep symbolism in many religions, and cultures around the planet have long appreciated what a walk in the woods can do.
We still periodically pause to honor trees, with ancient holidays like Tu Bishvat as well as newer tributes like Arbor Day, the International Day of Forests or World Environment Day. In hopes of helping that spirit linger longer throughout the year, here are a few lesser-known facts about these gentle, generous giants:
1. Earth has more than 60,000 known tree species.
Brazil's many native trees include jabuticaba, whose fruits grow directly on its trunk. (Photo: Adriano Makoto Suzuki [CC BY 2.0]/Flickr)
Until recently, there was no thorough global census of tree species. But in April 2017, the results of a "huge scientific effort" were published in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry, along with a searchable online archive called GlobalTreeSearch.
The scientists behind this effort compiled data from museums, botanical gardens, agricultural centers and other sources, and concluded there are 60,065 tree species currently known to science. These range from from Abarema abbottii, a vulnerable limestone-bound tree found only in the Dominican Republic, to Zygophyllum kaschgaricum, a rare and poorly understood tree native to China and Kyrgyzstan.
Next up for this area of research is the Global Tree Assessment, which aims to assess the conservation status of all of the world's tree species by 2020.
2. More than half of all tree species exist only in a single country.
The dragon's blood tree is a vulnerable species endemic to Yemen's Socotra archipelago. (Photo: sunsinger/Shutterstock)
Aside from quantifying the biodiversity of trees, the 2017 census also highlights the need for details about where and how those 60,065 different species live. Nearly 58 percent of all tree species are single-country endemics, the study found, meaning each one naturally occurs only within the borders of a single nation.
Brazil, Colombia and Indonesia have the highest totals for endemic tree species, which makes sense given the overall biodiversity found in their native forests. "The countries with the most country-endemic tree species reflect broader plant diversity trends (Brazil, Australia, China) or islands where isolation has resulted in speciation (Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia)," the study's authors write.
3. Trees didn't exist for the first 90 percent of Earth's history.
Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and plants may have colonized land as recently as 470 million years ago, most likely mosses and liverworts without deep roots. Vascular plants followed about 420 million years ago, but even for tens of millions of years after that, no plants grew more than about 3 feet (1 meter) off the ground.
4. Before trees, Earth was home to fungi that grew 26 feet tall.
From about 420 million to 370 million years ago, a mysterious genus of creatures named Prototaxites grew large trunks up to 3 feet (1 meter) wide and 26 feet (8 meters) in height. Scientists have long debated whether these were some kind of weird ancient trees, but a 2007 study concluded they were fungi, not plants.
"A 6-meter fungus would be odd enough in the modern world, but at least we are used to trees quite a bit bigger," study author and paleobotanist C. Kevin Boyce told New Scientist in 2007. "Plants at that time were a few feet tall, invertebrate animals were small, and there were no terrestrial vertebrates. This fossil would have been all the more striking in such a diminutive landscape."
5. The first known tree was a leafless, fern-like plant from New York.
Several kinds of plants have evolved a tree form, or "arborescence," in the past 300 million years or so. It's a tricky step in plant evolution, requiring innovations like sturdy trunks to stay upright and strong vascular systems to pump up water and nutrients from the soil. The extra sunlight is worth it, though, prompting trees to evolve multiple times in history, a phenomenon called convergent evolution.
An illustration of the ancient Wattieza tree, based on fossils found in what's now New York. (Photo: Falconaumanni/Wikimedia Commons)
The earliest known tree is Wattieza, identified from 385 million-year-old fossils found in what's now New York. Part of a prehistoric plant family thought to be ancestors of ferns, it stood 26 feet (8 meters) tall and formed the first known forests. It may have lacked leaves, instead growing frond-like branches with "branchlets" resembling a bottlebrush (see illustration). It wasn't closely related to tree ferns, but did share their method of reproducing by spores, not seeds.
6. Scientists thought this dinosaur-era tree went extinct 150 million years ago — but then it was found growing wild in Australia.
Wollemia nobilis still exists in a few rainforest hideouts, but it's critically endangered.(Photo: Akerbeltz [CC BY-SA 3.0]/Wikimedia Commons)
During the Jurassic Period, a genus of cone-bearing evergreen trees now named Wollemia lived on the supercontinent Gondwana. These ancient trees were long known only from the fossil record, and were thought to have been extinct for 150 million years — until 1994, when a few survivors of one species were found living in a temperate rainforest at Australia's Wollemia National Park.
That species, Wollemia nobilis, is often described as a living fossil. Only about 80 mature trees are left, plus some 300 seedlings and juveniles, and the species is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
While Wollemia nobilis is the last of its genus, there are also still other middle Mesozoic trees alive today. Ginkgo biloba, aka the ginkgo tree, dates back about 200 million years and has been called "the most ancient living tree."
7. Some trees emit chemicals that attract enemies of their enemies.
Songbirds provide valuable pest control for many trees.(Photo: Sander Meertins Photography/Shutterstock)
Trees may look passive and helpless, but they're savvier than they seem. Not only can they produce chemicals to combat leaf-eating insects, for instance, but some also send airborne chemical signals to each other, apparently warning nearby trees to prepare for an insect attack. Research has shown that a wide range of trees and other plants become more resistant to insects after receiving these signals.
Trees' airborne signals can even convey information outside the plant kingdom. Some have been shown to attract predators and parasites that kill the insects, essentially letting an embattled tree call for backup. Research has mainly focused on chemicals that attract other arthropods, but as a 2013 study found, apple trees under attack by caterpillars release chemicals that attract caterpillar-eating birds.
8. Trees in a forest can 'talk' and share nutrients through an underground internet built by soil fungi.
Redwood trees rise toward the night sky at Lake Tahoe, California.(Photo: Asif Islam/Shutterstock)
Like most plants, trees have symbiotic relationships with mycorrhizal fungi that live on their roots. The fungi help trees absorb more water and nutrients from the soil, and trees repay the favor by sharing sugars from photosynthesis. But as a growing field of research shows, this mycorrhizal network also works on a much larger scale — sort of like an underground internet that connects entire forests.
The fungi link each tree to others nearby, forming a huge, forest-scale platform for communication and resource sharing. As University of British Columbia ecologist Suzanne Simard has found, these networks include older, larger hub trees (or "mother trees") that may be connected to hundreds of younger trees around them. "We have found that mother trees will send their excess carbon through the mycorrhizal network to the understory seedlings," Simard explained in a 2016 TED Talk, "and we've associated this with increased seedling survival by four times."
And, as Simard recently told CNN, mother trees may even help forests adapt to human-induced climate change, thanks to their "memory" of slower natural changes in past decades or centuries. "They've lived for a long time and they've lived through many fluctuations in climate. They curate that memory in the DNA," she said. "The DNA is encoded and has adapted through mutations to this environment. So that genetic code carries the code for variable climates coming up."
9. Most tree roots stay in the top 18 inches of soil, but they can also grow above ground or dive a few hundred feet deep.
Many mangrove trees have stilt roots to help with breathing and stability.(Photo: Sayam Trirattanapaiboon/Shutterstock)
Holding up a tree is a tall order, but it's often achieved by surprisingly shallow roots. Most trees don't have a taproot, and most tree roots lie in the top 18 inches of soil, where growing conditions tend to be best. More than half of a tree's roots usually grow in the top 6 inches of soil, but that lack of depth is offset by lateral growth: The root system of a mature oak, for example, can be hundreds of miles in length.
Still, tree roots vary widely based on species, soil and climate. Bald cypress grows along rivers and swamps, and some of its roots form exposed "knees" that supply air to underwater roots like a snorkel. Similar breathing tubes, called pneumatophores, are also found in the stilt roots of some mangrove trees, along with other adaptations like the ability to filter up to 90 percent of salt out of seawater.
On the other hand, some trees do extend remarkably deep underground. Certain types are more prone to grow a taproot — including hickory, oak, pine and walnut — especially in sandy, well-drained soils. Trees have been known to go more than 20 feet (6 meters) below the surface under ideal conditions, and a wild fig at South Africa's Echo Caves has reportedly reached a record root depth of 400 feet.
10. A large oak tree can consume about 100 gallons of water per day, and a giant sequoia can drink up to 500 gallons daily.
The Angel Oak, a roughly 400-year-old southern live oak on Johns Island, South Carolina, produces an impressive 17,200 square feet of shade (1,600 square meters) under its iconic gnarled branches.(Photo: Mike Ver Sprill/Shutterstock)
Many mature trees require a huge amount of water, which may be bad for drought-stricken orchards but is often good for people in general. Thirsty trees can limit flooding from heavy rain, especially in low-lying areas like river plains. By helping the ground absorb more water, and by holding soil together with their roots, trees can reduce the risk of erosion and property damage from flash floods.
A single mature oak, for example, is able to transpire more than 40,000 gallons of water in a year — meaning that's how much flows from its roots to its leaves, which release water as vapor back into the air. The rate of transpiration varies during the year, but 40,000 gallons averages out to 109 gallons per day. Larger trees move even more water: A giant sequoia, whose trunk may be 300 tall, can transpire 500 gallons a day. And since trees emit water vapor, large forests also help make it rain.
As a bonus, trees have a knack for soaking up soil pollutants, too. One sugar maple can remove 60 milligrams of cadmium, 140 mg of chromium and 5,200 mg of lead from the soil per year, and studies have shown farm runoff contains up to 88 percent less nitrate and 76 percent less phosphorus after flowing through a forest.
11. Trees help us breathe — and not just by producing oxygen.
The Amazon rainforest spans about 40 percent of South America and holds 16,000 tree species.(Photo: Shutterstock)
About half of all oxygen in the air comes from phytoplankton, but trees are a major source, too. Still, their relevance for humans' oxygen intake is a bit hazy. Various sources suggest a mature, leafy tree produces enough oxygen for two to 10 people per year, but others have countered with significantly lower estimates.
Yet even without the oxygen, trees clearly offer plenty of other benefits, from food, medicine and raw materials to shade, windbreaks and flood control. And, as MNN's Matt Hickman reported in 2016, city trees are "one of the most cost-effective methods of curbing urban air pollution levels and combating the urban heat island effect." That's a big deal, since more than 3 million people die worldwide each year from illnesses linked to air pollution. In the U.S. alone, pollution removal by urban trees is estimated to save 850 lives per year and $6.8 billion in total health care costs.
There's also another notable way trees can indirectly save lives by breathing. They take in carbon dioxide, a natural part of the atmosphere that's now at dangerously high levels due to the burning of fossil fuels. Excess CO2 drives life-threatening climate change by trapping heat on Earth, but trees — especially old-growth forests — provide a valuable check on our CO2 emissions.
12. Adding one tree to an open pasture can increase its bird biodiversity from almost zero species to as high as 80.
Trees provide food, housing and other benefits for a wide range of songbirds, like this family of black-naped blue flycatchers nesting in a fork between two branches.(Photo: Super Prin/Shutterstock)
Native trees create vital habitat for a variety of wildlife, from ubiquitous urban squirrels and songbirds to less obvious animals like bats, bees, owls, woodpeckers, flying squirrels and fireflies. Some of these guests offer direct perks for people — such as by pollinating our plants, or eating pests like mosquitoes and mice — while others bring subtler benefits just by adding to local biodiversity.
To help quantify this effect, researchers from Stanford University recently developed a way to estimate biodiversity based on tree cover. They recorded 67,737 observations of 908 plant and animal species over a 10-year period, then plotted those data against Google Earth images of tree cover. As they reported in a 2016 study published in PNAS, four of the six species groups — understory plants, non-flying mammals, bats and birds — saw a significant biodiversity boost in areas with more tree cover.
They found that adding a single tree to a pasture, for example, could raise the number of bird species from near zero to 80. After this initial spike, adding trees continued to correlate with more species, but less quickly. As a stand of trees approached 100 percent coverage within a certain area, endangered and at-risk species like wildcats and deep-forest birds began to appear, the researchers report.
13. Trees can lower stress, raise property values and fight crime.
Urban trees, like these at Tokyo's Shinjuku Gyoen, offer more than just ambience.(Photo: Wayne0216/Shutterstock)
It's human nature to like trees. Just looking at them can make us feel happier, less stressed and more creative. This may be partly due to biophilia, or our innate affinity for nature, but there are also other forces at work. When humans are exposed to chemicals released by trees known as phytoncides, for example, research has shown results such as reduced blood pressure, reduced anxiety, increased pain threshold and even increased expression of anti-cancer proteins.
One of the most fascinating things about trees is how long some can live. Clonal colonies are known to endure for tens of thousands of years — Utah's Pando aspen grove dates back 80,000 years — but many individual trees also stand their ground for centuries or millennia at a time. North America's bristlecone pines are especially long-lived, and one in California that's 4,848 years old (pictured above) was considered the planet's oldest individual tree until 2013, when researchers announced they'd found a another bristlecone that sprouted 5,062 years ago. (The last woolly mammoths, for comparison, died about 4,000 years ago.)
To intelligent primates who are lucky to have 100 birthdays, the idea of a brainless plant living for 60 human lifetimes evokes a unique kind of respect. Yet even when a tree does finally die, it still plays a key role in its ecosystem. Dead wood has huge value for a forest, creating a slow, steady source of nitrogen as well as microhabitats for all kinds of animals. As much as 40 percent of woodland wildlife depends on dead trees, from fungi, lichens and mosses to insects, amphibians and birds.
15. A large oak tree can drop 10,000 acorns in one year.
The nuts of oak trees are hugely popular with wildlife. In the U.S., acorns represent a major food source for more than 100 vertebrate species, and all that attention means most acorns never get to germinate. But oak trees have boom and bust cycles, possibly as an adaptation to help them outfox the acorn-eating animals.
During an acorn boom, known as a mast year, a single large oak can drop as many as 10,000 nuts. And while most of those may end up as a meal for birds and mAammals, every so often a lucky acorn gets started on a journey that will carry it hundreds of feet into the sky and a century into the future. For a sense of what that's like, here's a time-lapse video of an acorn becoming a young tree:
By the end of the 21st century, waves will have gotten larger in some ocean basins, particularly the Southern Ocean, climate modeling reveals.
The Southern Ocean, which skirts Antarctica, may experience larger waves as the climate warms. Credit: Mike Hill/Stone/Getty Images
Life-sustaining.
Beautiful. Destructive.
Ocean waves are all of those—they transport
nutrients that nourish marine life, but they also damage ships and
batter coastlines, triggering erosion that can send homes and roads
tumbling.
Now, scientists have used climate models to show that some
parts of the globe, including the Southern Ocean, are likely to
experience larger waves by the end of the 21st century.
That’s
potentially bad news for coastal residents, the researchers suggest,
because large waves could generate increased flooding and erosion.
Generated by Wind
Ocean waves are kicked up by the wind, and warmer conditions promote stronger winds. Larger waves might therefore be a hallmark of our planet’s future, Alberto Meucci,
an oceanographer at the University of Melbourne in Australia, and his
colleagues hypothesized. They set out to test that idea using climate
models.
The researchers focused on a metric known as significant wave height.
Defined as the average of the highest one third of waves, it’s a
commonly used parameter in oceanography. (Waves more than twice the
significant wave height are called rogue waves. These watery monsters, which can top 25 meters, were dismissed as sailors’ tall tales for years before they were finally recorded using modern instruments.)
Many Climate Models
Meucci and his collaborators relied on two very different greenhouse
gas emission scenarios.
One, Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP)
8.5 (the “business-as-usual” scenario), which assumes that carbon
emissions will remain largely uncurbed, yields 8.5 watts per square
meter of additional warming by the end of the 21st century (about
4.3°C). The other, RCP 4.5, assumes that some emissions mitigation
policies are enacted and yields about 2.4°C of warming by 2100.
The researchers input both scenarios into seven different climate
models. Meucci and his colleagues used multiple climate models to beat
down statistical uncertainties. “The point of using seven global climate
models instead of a single model was to be able to reduce the
uncertainties connected with the representation of extremes,” said
Meucci.
The novelty of this study is its use of multiple climate models, said Laure Zanna,
a physical oceanographer at New York University not involved in the
study. “If you want to be able to predict changes in extremes, having
enough data to do so is important.”
Meucci and his collaborators fed the surface wind outputs of the
climate models into wave generation models.
The scientists determined
the 1-in-100-year significant wave height—corresponding to a wave that
has a 1% probability of occurring each year—for both the RCP 8.5 and RCP
4.5 scenarios for two time periods: 1979–2005 and 2081–2100.
The scientists found an increase in the 1-in-100-year significant wave
height at the end of the 21st century in the Southern Ocean for both
greenhouse gas emission scenarios.
The largest difference, roughly 15%,
was observed in the Southern Ocean for the RCP 8.5 scenario.
Larger waves might spell bad news for this region, which is already
routinely battered by waves topping 20 meters, the team concluded.
Large
swells could very well roll up on the coasts of South Africa, South
America, and Australia, said Meucci, where they might contribute to
flooding and coastal erosion. Their impact could also be more
far-reaching, he said. “Changes may be felt up to the North Pacific.”
But not all ocean basins will experience larger waves, the team
found. In portions of the North Atlantic, wave height might even
decrease by the end of the 21st century, Meucci and his collaborators
noted.
The researchers next investigated changes in the frequency of extreme
waves. Again, the Southern Ocean stood out. That basin was more likely
to experience large waves at the end of the 21st century compared with
1979–2005, the team found.
These findings are believable, but it’s important to pinpoint what’s
driving the changes in the Southern Ocean, said New York University’s
Zanna. “An understanding of the physical mechanisms would help
strengthen even further their results.”
Proposal outlines $2tn for clean energy infrastructure and climate solutions, to be spent as quickly as possible in next four years
Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event in Wilmington, Delaware, on 14 July.
Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP
Joe Biden
has unveiled a new, more aggressive climate and jobs plan which
advisers say he would take to Congress “immediately”, if elected
president.
The new proposal outlines $2tn for clean energy infrastructure and
other climate solutions, to be spent as quickly as possible in the next
four years, what would be the Democrat’s first term in office. Last
year, he proposed $1.7tn in spending over 10 years.
“Addressing the economic crisis is going to be priority one for a
President Biden,” a senior campaign official told reporters. “This will
be the legislation he goes up to [Capitol Hill] immediately to get done.
The reality is we will be facing a country that will be in dire need of
these types of investments that are going to be made here.”
Two crises are converging: a devastated economy and high unemployment
that could drag on for years as the nation struggles to gain control of
the coronavirus pandemic, and a rapidly closing window to significantly
cut heat-trapping emissions and lead on global climate action.
Biden unveiledthe climate plan, the second part of his “Build Back Better” proposal, in remarks from Delaware on Tuesday afternoon.
“When
Donald Trump thinks about climate change, the only word he can muster
is ‘hoax’,” Biden said, referring to Trump’s previous claims that the
crisis is fake. “When I think about climate change, the word I think of
is ‘jobs’.”
In a detailed climate policy speech, Biden said his proposal
would create a million jobs in electric vehicle manufacturing, a
million in upgrading buildings and a quarter-million cleaning up after
extractive industries.
Biden said he would give Americans money back for
switching to cleaner cars and making their homes more efficient.
He said he was focusing on his first four years as president because
“science tells us we have nine years before the damage is irreversible”.
The new goals align Biden more closely with
three primary opponents, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, the
Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and Jay Inslee. the Washington
governor.
They follow the recommendations of a unity taskforce of
Sanders and Biden supporters that was co-chaired by the New York
congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who co-sponsored the Green New
Deal.
Biden staffers painted a picture of a modernized America with
the “cleanest, safest, fastest rail system in the world”, the biggest
electric vehicle manufacturing sector, 4m upgraded buildings and 1.5m
new sustainable homes and public housing units. They pitched the
spending as a jobs plan as much as a climate program.
The blueprint aims for a clean electricity system including renewable
power and nuclear energy by 2035. Biden would not ban fracking for
natural gas, which would require an act of Congress. But he would
prohibit new fracking on public lands.
Gina McCarthy, the former Environmental Protection Agency
administrator who is now president of the Natural Resources Defense
Council Action Fund, said the plan was “by a long shot – the most
ambitious we have ever seen from any president in our nation’s history”.
Labor unions and environmental justice communities would be central to climate efforts, campaign staffers said. Climate change hits low-income and communities of color hardest, a background document noted.
Biden would create a national crisis strategy to ensure that
government responses to disasters are equitable, start a taskforce to
decrease climate risks for the most vulnerable, and establish an office
of climate change and health equity.
The faster timeline is meant to ensure that no future president can
reverse climate gains, in the way Donald Trump’s administration has
boosted fossil fuels.
Trump plans to exit the Paris climate agreement
but Biden has vowed to re-enter it and double down on US contributions.
Much of Biden’s plan would require agreement from Congress. Gaining control of the Senate is critical.
“He is confident he will be able to work with Congress to get
something constructive done,” the senior campaign official said. “He is
of course at the same time making sure that he is campaigning in every
state needed to make sure that we win every Senate seat we possibly can
to further that goal.”
Another Biden official said the program would be funded by tax
increases for corporations and “asking the wealthiest Americans to pay
their fair share”.
The updated climate plan follows Biden’s announcement last week of a $700bn “buy American” proposal to revive US manufacturing.
Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said
Biden’s revised plan responds to many of the group’s previous criticisms
by “dramatically increasing the scale and urgency of investments,
filling in details on how he’d achieve environmental justice and create
good union jobs, and promising immediate action — on day 1, in his first
100 days, in his first term, in the next decade — not just some far off
goals”.
Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley claimed Biden’s plan would kill
10m American energy industry jobs and called it a “socialist
manifesto”.
Warming oceans that feed cyclones have also
bred record-breaking swarms of desert locusts. Such plagues could grow
bigger and more widespread with climate change.
The locust attacks of 2019–2020 are the worst of the past 30 years. Credit: Sarwar Panhwar
In mid-June, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) issued a threat level warning to countries across East Africa and southwest Asia: Desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria)
are swarming.
A severe outbreak that started in 2019 has spread across
the Horn of Africa and the Middle East before moving on to western Asia.
Scientists say climate change has played a role in this invasion.
Usually solitary, locusts become gregarious, or swarm, when there are
heavy rains in an arid region. Desert locust swarms are highly
destructive, sparing no greenery in sight.
This year’s locust attacks, which spread from Kenya to Pakistan and India, are the worst in the past 30 years and may be the most economically destructive since the 1960s, said Chaudhry Inayatullah,
a former research scientist at the International Centre of Insect
Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, Kenya.
The swarms are expected to
peak this month, as a wetter-than-normal monsoon arrives, and to
flourish as the rains continue through October.
Inayatullah and other locust experts fear that these attacks will
only get worse. Climate change is altering the dynamics of pest control
and reproduction, said Keith Cressman,
the FAO’s senior locust forecaster. Changes in climate have led to
increases in cyclones, which feed locust swarms with water and warmth.
This mango tree in Hyderabad, Pakistan, is devoid of its leaves, which were consumed by a swarm of desert locusts. Credit: Sarwar Panhwar
Recent research
also shows that human-induced warming may be intensifying a regional
variability in an Indian Ocean pattern of warming and cooling called the
Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), sometimes nicknamed the “Indian Niño.”
A more intense IOD could cause more frequent tropical storms and heavy
rains. These rains create perfect conditions for locust breeding, with
more water and warmth ideal for increased plant biomass to feed the
locusts—which is what happened in 2019, when a record IOD led to
above-average rainfall in the coastal areas of Somalia, Yemen, and some
regions bordering the Red Sea.
During droughts, locust outbreaks do not occur in the region, mostly
because of a lack of plants for the insects to eat. But higher
temperatures associated with climate change coupled with increased
availability of plants for food could speed up the locusts’ maturation
and incubation during spring, Inayatullah said.
This year, warmer
temperatures have already allowed an extra generation of breeding to
occur in northwest Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and southwest Asia,
amplifying the overall risk of a locust plague, the most serious category of locust threat identified by the FAO.
Perfect Storms for Locusts “If
this trend of increased frequency of cyclones in [the] Indian Ocean
continues, then certainly, that’s going to translate to an increase in
locust swarms in the Horn of Africa,” said Cressman.
An increased number of cyclones
in the past 3 years in the Indian Ocean played a role in the current
upsurge. “In 2018, two cyclones dumped heavy rain on the uninhabited
portion of the Arabian Peninsula known as the Empty Quarter. There,
locusts can breed and reproduce freely.
Three generations of breeding
occurred in 9 months in the Empty Quarter, causing locust numbers to
increase by 8,000 times.” Cressman said that outbreak is the source of
the East Africa upsurge the FAO is warning about now.
The swarms can jump oceans, and they leapt over the Red Sea and Gulf
of Aden to the Horn of Africa late last year. “There, another cyclone in
December 2019 triggered yet another spasm of reproduction that could
give rise to two more generations of breeding—400 times the locusts,”
Cressman said.
Climate anomalies have allowed desert locust populations to have “reproductive spasms” several times this year. Credit: Sarwar Panhwar
Heavy rains in Yemen and Saudi Arabia prompted the spread of locusts
into Iran and Pakistan.
They have also managed to breed in Pakistan’s
Balochistan Province adjacent to Iran, are currently sweeping across the
country’s southern agricultural belt, and have entered India across the
Rajasthan desert.
Drifting with the wind, some individuals have even
been captured in Nepal.
The FAO says the spring-bred swarms along both
sides of the Indian-Pakistan border were poised to mature and lay eggs
in early July, and new swarms will arrive from the Horn of Africa in
mid-July.
Already, some farmers in Pakistan have reported up to 50% losses of
their cotton crops.
Ghulam Sarwar Panhwar, who owns two farms on around
120 hectares of land in the Hyderabad District of Sindh, said three
locust attacks hit his farm in the past 3 months.
“Each time it is like a black cloud descending from the sky. There
are millions of them, and they attack the cotton and other crops, eating
all the green leaves in just 3–4 hours’ time before moving on,” Panhwar
said. “Half of my cotton crop is gone. We chase them off by beating
drums and banging metal plates. What else can we do?”
Aside from eating cash crops, the locusts are also consuming fodder plants, which will affect livestock.
Climate Controls
Meanwhile, the FAO has asked Pakistan and India to remain on high
alert. India, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan are all part of FAO’s Commission for Controlling the Desert Locust in South-West Asia.
“Intercountry cooperation is needed to tackle the locust threat. Where
they fly next depends on wind direction, speed, and other weather
parameters,” Inayatullah said.
A farmer holds one locust out of the thousands that have ravaged crops in Pakistan. Credit: Sarwar Panhwar
Accurate wind forecasts could be helpful to understand possible new
landing sites, where aerial and ground spraying operations for pesticide
applications could be readied in advance.
Spraying in desert breeding
areas in Pakistan has been underway since February, the region’s early
spring, and could have its own set of ecological impacts.
The locust swarms eventually will dwindle in the cooler and drier
winter months.
No longer gregarious, “they will change back to their
solitary phase,” Inayatullah said, “but by then they would have spread
over vast areas and would have enough fat in them to stay alive even
without food—until warmer weather arrives. This would be the ideal time
to monitor and control them.”
Business leaders can mitigate the adverse impacts of
climate change by generating thousands of jobs in renewable energy,
which can, in turn, help build more sustainable communities across the
country
Professor Peter Sheldon is Director of the Industrial Relations Research Centre, University of New South Wales
With Australia's coal-fired power stations set to close in the next two to three decades, Australia has the potential and opportunity to become a renewable energy superpower. But this depends in no small degree on the financial support and backing of business.
So how can business contribute to sustainable communities? This
question was posed to a panel of experts as part of the Future-Proofing
Business Series recently hosted by UNSW Business School's Responsible
Business Program. Panelists discussed how businesses could take the lead
in managing climate risk in the short and long term, what a sustainable
community looks like, and the role of business in achieving this.
The speakers included Ursula Hogben, Co-Founder and Company Secretary
at Zero Emissions Sydney North, Dr Jennifer Kent, from City of Sydney
Council, Dr Paul Twomey, Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets UNSW Sydney, and Peter Sheldon, Professor in the School of Management and Director of the Industrial Relations Research Centre at UNSW Business School.
All speakers agreed climate leadership is shifting from government to
business in Australia. New opportunities exist for both companies and
communities in localised collaboration to create employment
opportunities, modernise infrastructure and reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. The panel discussed three ways businesses might help support
local communities to create a better future for all:
1. Support community-led initiatives
Kicking off the panel discussion, Dr Kent said businesses need to be
looking at how we can flatten the 'unsustainability curve' – the
acceleration of unsustainable practices around the world, and the
existential challenges that we're facing as a result.
She also said COVID-19 offered some examples of what is possible.
"People went to some interesting partices such as bread making and
[planting] vegetable gardens," Dr Kent explained. "These localised
practices are characteristic of sustainability movements around the
world.”
Planting vegetable gardens are examples of localised practices that are characteristic of sustainability movements around the world. Image: Shutterstock
So what is a sustainable community? Dr Kent explained that this
involves: ecological integrity, ecological security, social wellbeing,
civic engagement and the democratisation of decision-making. But it
would also require "moving away from business as usual" and thinking
about sustainability as much more than a simple tick-box experience, and
"actually embedding sustainability within the corporate culture," Dr
Kent said.
Businesses collaborating with communities would be essential because
communities across Australia are in the best position to know precisely
what those communities need, Ursula Hogben explained. "So, with
community-led initiatives, we've got, ideally, local skills and local
jobs meeting local needs now and in the future," she said.
Examples of successful localised cooperation in Australia were seen
earlier in the year when devastating fires destroyed lives, communities,
wildlife and infrastructure. With flooding and storms then adding to
the damage, hundreds of properties were running diesel generators and
faced lengthy delays before regular services resumed.
During this time, the Resilient Energy Collective – a collaborative
effort funded by the family office of Mike and Annie Cannon-Brookes –
installed solar systems provided by 5B and batteries solutions provided
by Tesla in communities unable to access energy via the grid, Ms Hogben
recounted.
"Very swiftly, there was a significant issue with rural and remote
communities having access to power. So in Tobago, they [the Resilient
Energy Collective] helped with 24-hour electricity to man the emergency
power of the emergency community towers – and that was for the police,
fire services and emergency crews communication," Ms Hogben explained.
"There is a huge ecosystem business desperate to get a level of support and consistent messaging because they are completely committed to becoming a part of the new wave" Professor Peter Sheldon, Director of the Industrial Relations Research Centre, UNSW Business School
Another example was the transformation of the Newcastle and Hunter
Valley region from a coal energy hub to a renewable energy hub, Ms
Hogben explained. Molycop – the world's largest mining and rail
consumables manufacturer – signed a long-term Power Purchase Agreement
(PPA) with energy retailer Flow Power, and under the agreement,
Molycop's expected offtake of renewable energy is 100,000 MWh per year.
This covers more than half of its electricity consumption in NSW and
makes Molycop one of the largest purchasers of renewable energy in
Australia.
"That's a considerable supplier of jobs in the area which is now
looking at being part of the green steel revolution, which is important
from a business perspective, low emissions perspective, and a community
perspective in terms of the environment and also the economy," said Ms
Hogben.
Finally, she cited South Australia's Port Augusta hybrid wind and
solar project, which established a significant increase in the share of
wind and solar in the state's grid. The repowering of Port Augusta aims
to replace the Northern and Playford brown coal power plants with
renewable energy: six solar thermal power towers and 90 wind turbines to
provide secure, affordable electricity to South Australia and the
Eastern Australian grid.
This will lead to the creation of hundreds of jobs, a major reduction
in pollution and a significant move forward in terms of what's possible
for powering manufacturing, added Ms Hogben.
2. Create employment by modernising infrastructure
So, job creation plays a vital role in sustainable communities, but
to what extent should businesses take part? There is an opportunity for
businesses to advance the discussion, creating sustainable communities
and sustainable job creation, according to Prof. Peter Sheldon.
Creating renewable energy infrastructure will lead to the creation of jobs, a reduction in pollution and a move forward in powering manufacturing. Image: Shutterstock
While job quality – which encompasses wages, excellent conditions and
job security – is incredibly important in setting up sustainable
communities, so is access to decent work. "Decent work is work that
provides meaning and complexity to make it interesting and engaging,
access to training and development for workers, as well as access to
trade union rights and collective bargaining rights," he explained.
So how can businesses support future decent work and good jobs to
make communities more sustainable? For Sheldon, it's a matter of acting
quickly and supporting job growth in areas where they are desperately
needed – for example, in the process of closing down the 23 coal-fired
power plants in Australia that are nearing the end of their lives.
The shutting down of these power plants could be utilised as an
opportunity for job creation and reskilling the current workforce.
"Every time you decommission a coal-fired power station or a coal mine
there is work for 10-15 years just in the remediation and potential
rehabilitation of the site," explained Prof. Sheldon.
"These are similar jobs in terms of skills in the coal mines, or in
the petrol stations that are operating heavy machinery. There's no
reason why they shouldn't pay the same amount or any reason why they
shouldn't provide the same job security or access to training and
development," he said.
"I think it's more important to start with what we can easily do and where we can get consensus relatively quickly," he added.
Building 90 gigawatts of solar and wind energy over the next five years would create thousands of jobs each year. Source: Beyond Zero Emissions
3. Business must back a reduction in carbon emissions In Australia, the major obstacles to building more sustainable
communities are the policies of the Federal Government, Sheldon
explained. However, to some extent, business is also responsible.
"There are some business associations like the Business Council who
have been lukewarm in pushing the government for a consistent approach
to bring in climate-friendly energy policies," he said.
But at the same time, he said there is also "a huge ecosystem of
businesses looking for government support" that want to contribute to
sustainable communities, and that is working to overcome "federal
government paralysis" on climate change.
"There is a huge ecosystem of businesses desperate to get a level of
support and consistent messaging because they are completely committed
to becoming a part of the new wave," he said.
And at this extraordinary time, with massive stimulus spending,
there's a real opportunity to create resilience and sustainability
within communities, by supporting renewable energy businesses in
manufacturing, regenerative farming, regenerating mining land, planting
trees and land restoration, added Ms Hogben.
"Businesses can help by offering finance… by making an ideological
shift to more financing of renewable and sustainable projects," she
said.
Ending the session, Dr Paul Twomey reminded the audience that while
there are several encouraging stories of industries moving towards
sustainability, an important question to ask is: are we achieving
success at the speed and scale we need to?
"It's not clear to me that it is," said Dr Twomey, who said the
change would require more in-depth thinking about capitalism, democracy
and sustainability. "It's not entirely clear to me that it can happen in
the scale that it needs to be," he added.
