Episode 10 Text and Sources

Hear the episode here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/14101666/episode-10

Much of the content for this episodes headlines was adopted from or quoted in full from other sources.  Where this was done is shown clearly below.

Broken Planet Headlines 10

1.  Beginning with recent science, a new study finds that, over 1981-2010, urban regions in eastern North America experienced “aggravated heat-stress conditions due to relatively higher temperatures,” but saw a decrease in humidity. The authors ran two regional climate simulations over eastern North America between 1981 and 2010 – one with and one without urban regions. They find that average temperatures rose and average rainfall levels dropped, due to lower albedo (or reflectiveness) and soil moisture in urban regions. The authors add that the number of extreme heat spells lasting six days or more doubled over coastal urban areas in the region. The study “demonstrates the need for better representation of urban regions in climate models to generate realistic climate information."

Meanwhile an unprecedented heat wave in the Northwest U.S. and Western Canada is being driven by climate change, according to the magazine Scientific American.  The heatwave has so far killed hundreds of people.  In Salem, Oregon's state capitol, temperatures reached 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47.2 degrees Celsius), the hottest since record-keeping began in the 1890s.  The Oregon city of Portland had to suspend streetcar services because the 115 degree heat was melting the power cables on the cars.  As the heatwave took hold the Oregon legislature passed a bill requiring utilities to eliminate greenhouse gases in the state by 2040.  President Joe Biden has stated that he wishes to reach such a goal nationally by 2035.

A media analysis in Colorado by one environmental reporter found that out of 149 stories on the heatwave in the state, only 6 of them, or 4%, mentioned climate breakdown. -- Adapted in part from Carbon Brief and Reuters.

2.  A new study from the UN Food and Agriculturual Organization (FAO), the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture says that traditional indigenous food practices are at risk due to climate change.  Food systems used by different indigenous peoples were found to be among the world’s most sustainable in terms of efficiency, avoiding waste and adapting to the seasons.  Because diets rely mainly on renewable resources found close to home, indigenous communities adjust land use according to seasonality.  Until recently, “waste” was an unknown concept, the report states.  These food systems are being hit by drought, loss of wildlife and the disappearance of wild plants, changes in rainfall and seasons, erratic weather patterns and migration shifts.

In some cases, an increased monetization of the local economy has led indigenous communities to move away from barter, food sharing and communal systems.  Losing the ancestral expertise of indigenous communities would deprive the rest of the world of valuable knowledge as more sustainable food production is sought globally, the FAO said.  Nearly half a billion people are members of Indigenous groups, living across 90 countries and occupying more than a third of Earth’s protected land.  Their residence across these territories preserves some 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity. -- Adapted in part from Reuters and Inside Climate News.

3.  The Australian government has rejected plans for a $36 billion wind, solar and hydrogen project in a remote area of Western Australia, leaving what would have been one of the world's largest green energy projects in limbo.  Environment Minister Sussan Ley ruled that the project, the Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH), "will have clearly unacceptable impacts" on internationally recognised wetlands and migratory bird species.  The AREH project, located in the state's Pilbara region, was designed to initially build 15GW of renewable energy capacity, eventually to be expanded to 26GW and to produce green hydrogen and ammonia for export.

Meanwhile, UN body Unesco has recommended that the Great Barrier Reef be placed on the world heritage “in danger” list.  Officials have urged Australia to “take ‘accelerated action at all possible levels’ on climate change,” but the Australian government is stunned by what it calls a "politically motivated" recommendation and will strongly oppose it.   Sussan Ley said there was a lack of consultation and transparency.  On June 21st climate denier Barnaby Joyce was re-elected as leader of Australia's Nationals Party, making him Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government for the second time. -- Adapted in part from Reuters and Carbon Brief.

4.  Limetree Bay, a massive oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands, has announced that it is ceasing operations following a number of catastrophic errors that rained oil droplets on St. Croix, sent residents to emergency rooms after noxious gas releases and raised fears among homeowners that their drinking water was laced with toxic chemicals.  In May the EPA ordered the refinery to suspend operations for 60 days as it weighed whether it had become “an imminent threat” to people’s health, and two weeks ago gave Limetree 15 days to come up with a plan to establish a more elaborate air monitoring system for pollutants.  BP is the main customer for the fuel from the refinery.  The company faces tens of millions of dollars in unpaid bills and at least three class-action lawsuits from residents suffering from adverse health effects.

 

In other U.S. oil news Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has said she does not believe that the Biden administration currently plans a “permanent ban” on new oil and gas leases on public lands, which would undermine one of the president’s campaign pledges.  In June a federal judge blocked the administration’s suspension of new oil and gas leases in federal lands and waters, issuing an injunction against the Department of Interior from “implementing the pause” while the case from Louisiana’s Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry and 12 other state attorney generals plays out in court.

The administration is performing a review of the state of oil and gas drilling in the US, which Secretary Haaland said will be due in “early summer.”  The Interior Department will then “outline next steps and recommendations” for Congress.  Haaland told the House Natural Resources Committee on June 23rd that “Gas and oil production will continue well into the future – we believe that is the reality of our economy and the world we are living in.”   During the election campaign Biden vowed to ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters” as part of his energy and environmental justice platform.  In late June the Justice Department backed a Trump administration permit for the Line 3 tar sands pipeline despite extensive protests. -- Adapted in part from the Washington Post and the Independent.

5.  The European Court of Auditors has found that the European Union is “failing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions from farming” – despite the 100bn euros of subsidies paid via the Common Agricultural Policy, or CAP, towards climate change since 2014.  The report says that the current CAP “does not seek to limit livestock numbers; nor does it provide incentives to reduce them”.   The auditors say that the new CAP should incentivise emissions reductions from livestock and fertilisers, and pay farmers to restore drained land so it can absorb and store CO2.  

The report also reserves criticism for the fact that the CAP pays farmers who cultivate drained peatlands. Although these make up less than 2% of EU farmland, they are responsible for 20% of the bloc’s agriculture emissions.  Highlighting that, on balance, the benefits of rewetting peatland outweigh the cons, one auditor called the CAP’s approach to peatlands “perverse” given that, as it stands, farmers stand to lose money by reverting peatlands back.  However, there is currently staunch opposition to the inclusion of stronger measures on peatlands and wetlands in the CAP reform from countries like Ireland, where an estimated 300,000 acres of permanent grassland is on drained, carbon-rich soils.  In recent months youth climate activists in Europe including Greta Thunberg have been calling on the EU to scrap the Common Agricultural Policy in its entirety, but in late June EU proposals for the next CAP period from 2023 - 2027 were blasted by environmental groups such as the European Environmental Bureau for not representing any significant improvement.  -- Adapted in part from Carbon Brief and Euractiv.

6.  In other EU news an EU law intended to drive the uptake of clean fuels by ships will actually lock in the use of fossil fuels for decades, making the European Green Deal goal of decarbonisation by 2050 impossible, according to a leaked proposal.  NGO Transport & Environment, which obtained the documents, said the European Commission could still fix the law by excluding liquified natural gas (LNG) and crop-based biofuels and providing incentives for green e-fuels like renewable hydrogen and ammonia.

The proposal suggests that over half of the energy used by ships servicing EU ports by 2035 could be LNG and biofuels by 2035.  This is despite LNG offering minimal emissions reductions and releasing methane - a global warming gas up to 36 times more potent than CO2.  Most biofuels are worse for the climate than the fuels they replace, and those that do offer emissions savings are not available at scale.  Another recent press release from Transport & Environment cites a study claiming that 10 years of the EU’s failed biofuels policy has wiped out forests the size of the Netherlands. -- Adapted from Transport & Environment.

7.  The UK government has once again failed to come forward with sufficient policies to meet the ambition of its climate goals, according to the government's independent adviser the Climate Change Committee (CCC).  Across nearly 500 pages examining the government’s net-zero and adaptation targets, the CCC spell out the gap between aspirations and reality in a pair of new reports.

Only four of 21 key decarbonisation areas outlined in the report have seen sufficient ambition and only two have adequate policies in place for cutting emissions . None of the 34 adaptation priority areas it identifies have seen strong progress.  The CCC notes that the majority of emissions cuts so far have come from a rapidly decarbonising power sector, which saw emissions fall 65% from 2009 to 2019.  It further states that “If progress does not extend outside the power sector, the sixth carbon budget will be missed by a huge margin.” 

In other news on the UK emissions gap, individuals and companies linked to the oil and gas industries have donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative party in the past year, while the government mulled controversial new licences to explore the North Sea for fossil fuel production sites.   New licenses to operate were announced in March.

Meanwhile, the website Climate Action Tracker has revealed a new evaluation methodology for national net zero targets.  The scientific collaboration project states that "At their worst, net zero targets are unclear or not backed up by real-world action. Net zero targets can distract from the urgent need for deep emissions reductions if 2030 targets and short-term action are inconsistent with their achievement, allowing governments to “hide” behind aspirational net zero targets. Unless governments start acting now, their chances of achieving net zero will be slim." -- Adapted from Carbon Brief and The Guardian.

8.  The Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles has resigned.  Salles is facing a criminal investigation of whether he obstructed a police probe of illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest.  A Supreme Court justice authorized the investigation of Salles this month after federal police raids targeted the minister and other officials alleged to have allowed illegal wood exports.  To replace the minister President Bolsonaro nominated a former board member of the Brazilian Rural Society, a century-old lobby group for farming interests, who had been serving as the ministry's secretary for the Amazon and environmental services.

New research published in the journal Environmental Research Letters shows that some datasets, including those used by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, may be underestimating the scale of deforestation-related emissions in Brazil.  Researchers analysed several different datasets of land use in Brazil and calculated that the upper bound of emissions increased by nearly 70%.  Finally Brazil's Agriculture Ministry is reported to be considering a new law to track cattle suppliers that sell to major meat producers, in an effort to reduce deforestation.  Brazil currently has over 200 million cattle. -- Adapted in part from Reuters and Carbon Brief.

9.  And finally, new research published in the journal Environmental Research Letters suggests that emissions should fall ‘twice as fast’ during this decade in case negative emissions efforts fail.  Many model pathways designed to meet the climate goals of the Paris Agreement rely heavily on large-scale carbon dioxide removal (or CDR), also known as “negative emissions”.  This has prompted concerns that the promise of being able to use CDR in the future might dilute incentives to cut fossil fuel use today, a phenomenon known as “mitigation deterrence”. 

Heavy reliance on negative emissions is problematic because the feasibility of large-scale CDR is highly uncertain. The promise of carbon removal could be used to delay or deter action in the present, but it could then fail to show up at scale when needed.  The analysis finds emissions should be cut twice as fast during the 2020s to keep warming “well-below” 2C while insuring against CDR failure, even if the chances of non-delivery are small.  It suggests that it is only possible to limit warming to “well-below” 2C without CDR with urgent action now.  CO2 emissions would need to fall to around 12bn tonnes per year by 2030, a 70% decline from today’s levels.  For a scenario that makes use of CDR, the decline in fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions is much smaller, requiring only a cut of 30% across the decade to keep warming “well below” 2C by 2100. -- Adapted from Carbon Brief.