Tag: climate change

The Arctic Is Burning Like Never Before & That’s Bad News For Climate Change

Wildfires blazed along the Arctic Circle this summer, incinerating tundra, blanketing Siberian cities in smoke and capping the second extraordinary fire season in a row. By the time the fire season waned at the end of last month, the blazes had emitted a record 244 megatonnes of carbon dioxide — that’s 35% more than last year, which also set records. One culprit, scientists say, could be peatlands that are burning as the top of the world melts.

Peatlands are carbon-rich soils that accumulate as waterlogged plants slowly decay, sometimes over thousands of years. They are the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth; a typical northern peatland packs in roughly ten times as much carbon as a boreal forest. When peat burns, it releases its ancient carbon to the atmosphere, adding to the heat-trapping gases that cause climate change.Dramatic sea-ice melt caps tough Arctic summer

Nearly half the world’s peatland-stored carbon lies between 60 and 70 degrees north, along the Arctic Circle. The problem with this is that historically frozen carbon-rich soils are expected to thaw as the planet warms, making them even more vulnerable to wildfires and more likely to release large amounts of carbon. It’s a feedback loop: as peatlands release more carbon, global warming increases, which thaws more peat and causes more wildfires (see ‘Peatlands burning’). A study published last month1 shows that northern peatlands could eventually shift from being a net sink for carbon to a net source of carbon, further accelerating climate change.

The unprecedented Arctic wildfires of 2019 and 2020 show that transformational shifts are already under way, says Thomas Smith, an environmental geographer at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “Alarming is the right term.”

Zombie fires

The fire season in the Arctic kicked off unusually early this year: as early as May, there were fires blazing north of the tree line in Siberia, which normally wouldn’t happen until around July. One reason is that temperatures in winter and spring were warmer than usual, priming the landscape to burn. It’s also possible that peat fires had been smouldering beneath the ice and snow all winter and then emerged, zombie-like, in the spring as the snow melted. Scientists have shown that this kind of low-temperature, flameless combustion can burn in peat and other organic matter, such as coal, for months or even years.

Because of the early start, individual Arctic wildfires have been burning for longer than usual, and “they’re starting much farther north than they used to — in landscapes that we thought were fire-resistant rather than fire-prone”, says Jessica McCarty, a geographer at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Sources: Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service/European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts; Hugelius, G. et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 117, 20438–20446 (2020)

Researchers are now assessing just how bad this Arctic fire season was. The Russian Wildfires Remote Monitoring System catalogued 18,591 separate fires in Russia’s two easternmost districts, with a total of nearly 14 million hectares burnt, says Evgeny Shvetsov, a fire specialist at the Sukachev Institute of Forest, which is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Krasnoyarsk. Most of the burning happened in permafrost zones, where the ground is normally frozen year-round.

To estimate the record carbon dioxide emissions, scientists with the European Commission’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service used satellites to study the wildfires’ locations and intensity, and then calculated how much fuel each had probably burnt. Yet even that is likely to be an underestimate, says Mark Parrington, an atmospheric scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK, who was involved in the analysis. Fires that burn in peatland can be too low-intensity for satellite sensors to capture.

The problem with peat

How much this year’s Arctic fires will affect global climate over the long term depends on what they burnt. That’s because peatlands, unlike boreal forest, do not regrow quickly after a fire, so the carbon released is permanently lost to the atmosphere.

Smith has calculated that about half of the Arctic wildfires in May and June were on peatlands — and that in many cases, the fires went on for days, suggesting that they were fuelled by thick layers of peat or other soil rich in organic matter.How peat could protect the planet

And the August study1 found that there are nearly four million square kilometres of peatlands in northern latitudes. More of that than previously thought is frozen and shallow — and therefore vulnerable to thawing and drying out, says Gustaf Hugelius, a permafrost scientist at Stockholm University who led the investigation. He and his colleagues also found that although peatlands have been helping to cool the climate for thousands of years, by storing carbon as they accumulate, they will probably become a net source of carbon being released into the atmosphere — which could happen by the end of the century.

Fire risk in Siberia is predicted to increase as the climate warms2, but by many measures, the shift has already arrived, says Amber Soja, an environmental scientist who studies Arctic fires at the US National Institute of Aerospace in Hampton, Virginia. “What you would expect is already happening,” she says. “And in some cases faster than we would have expected.”

By: Alexandra Witze

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National Geographic

Here at the bottom of the world, a place all but free of human settlement, humanity is scrambling one of the ocean’s richest wildernesses. Fossil-fuel burning thousands of miles away is heating up the western peninsula faster than almost anywhere else. (Only the Arctic compares.) Hear National Geographic photographer Cristina Mittermeier share her love and fears for this beautiful place. ➡

Subscribe: http://bit.ly/NatGeoSubscribe​ #NationalGeographic​ #Antarctica​ #ClimateChange​ About National Geographic: National Geographic is the world’s premium destination for science, exploration, and adventure. Through their world-class scientists, photographers, journalists, and filmmakers, Nat Geo gets you closer to the stories that matter and past the edge of what’s possible.

Get More National Geographic: Official Site: http://bit.ly/NatGeoOfficialSite​ Facebook: http://bit.ly/FBNatGeo​ Twitter: http://bit.ly/NatGeoTwitter​ Instagram: http://bit.ly/NatGeoInsta​ Read the full article “The Big Meltdown” featured in National Geographic magazine’s November issue. https://on.natgeo.com/2J7VGvS​ See Antarctica Like Never Before | National Geographic https://youtu.be/Q_mCHs79B6c​ National Geographic https://www.youtube.com/natgeo

Deloitte BrandVoice: Reducing Environmental Impact Is Now A Business Imperative

Nearly every day, another research finding, news story or environmental-related disaster piles more evidence on the reality that our planet is in crisis. Climate-driven drought is making dangerous wildfires more common, wreaking havoc on farmers around the world, and threatening hundreds of species with extinction.

Experts have warned that lack of action could result in alarming hunger levels around the world, mass migration challenges, the collapse of global financial markets and other social and economic disasters. Against this backdrop, business leaders are reexamining their organizations’ purposes and priorities.

In August 2019, the Business Roundtable, a group that includes CEOs from leading U.S. companies, committed to modernizing the purpose of a corporation. Challenging the age-old rule that a business exists to maximize profits for owners or shareholders, the executives agreed that companies must also protect the environment “by embracing sustainable practices” and consider stakeholders like customers, suppliers and broader society. That sentiment was echoed in “The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” published by the World Economic Forum in December 2019.

Deloitte Global’s third-annual Readiness Report, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution: At the Intersection of Readiness and Responsibility,” shows that not only is the environment on executives’ minds, but also that climate change and environmental sustainability have become integral to how they’re managing their businesses. Surveying more than 2,000 global executives, Deloitte Global found that almost 90 percent agreed to some degree that the impacts of climate change will negatively affect their organizations. Nearly six in 10 claimed to have internal sustainability initiatives in place, from reducing travel to eliminating plastics, and more.

“With an increasing number of catastrophic, climate-related events affecting populations and geographies, we’re seeing business leaders increasing their focus and attention on climate and environmental sustainability,” said Deloitte Global board chair Sharon Thorne. “Executives are beginning to acknowledge the business imperative of climate change. And they are beginning to act as they feel mounting pressure from stakeholders and threats to their own businesses.”

Millennials Demand Action

Executives also understand that today’s consumers—especially millennials and Gen Zs—are looking for more than transactional relationships with companies. Whether they’re buying candy bars or jeans, consumers increasingly demand that businesses do their part to reduce their environmental impact. According to the 2019 Deloitte Global Millennial Survey, more than one in four millennials and Gen Zs believe businesses should try to help mitigate the effects of human-caused climate change and protect and improve the environment. Yet only 12 percent believe corporations are working to address things like climate change.

Students have taken to the streets and staged strikes for climate action, and pressure groups and scientists are advocating for mass civil disobedience to force politicians to prioritize climate change. But other actions are more widespread and far less overt. For instance, the survey showed large numbers of young consumers have started or stopped relationships with businesses based on their perceptions of companies’ commitments to society and the planet. Almost 40 percent of those asked said they would stop buying from a company whose products or services negatively impact the environment. Companies that fail to respond to these feelings and motivations will eventually feel the impact on their bottom lines.

“Young people care intensely about the world they’re inheriting and are motivated to stand up for the causes in which they believe,” wrote Deloitte Global chief people and purpose officer Michele Parmelee. “Their passion is obvious and their resolve is strong. But they’d be the first to tell you that they need help to create change. That’s where business can make a difference.”

Business Is Starting To Respond

Research indicates that consumer demand is, indeed, pushing businesses to alter their operations. In another Deloitte Insights survey, for instance, nearly two-thirds of companies said their customers have been demanding they switch to renewable sources of electricity. Nearly half said they’re working on doing just that.

Executives interviewed for Deloitte Global’s Readiness Report shared some of the actions their organizations are taking. Adobe, for example, has set a goal to run on 100 percent renewable energy by 2035. It is expanding its global headquarters in San Jose, and the new building will be all-electric, meaning it can be powered by clean, renewable energy. Likewise, at the Kawasaki Smart Community Center, Toshiba Group’s business base, Toshiba has installed 35,000 sensors to control lighting, air conditioning and elevator operations based on the movement of people, helping Toshiba reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent.

More and more, the pursuit of similar actions to reduce environmental impact and benefit society will be necessary for businesses to survive, let alone thrive. Consumers are demanding that the companies they patronize do more to be good corporate citizens. They’re speaking with their voices and their wallets, and they’re not inclined to take “no” for an answer.

Fortunately, profit incentives—as well as executives’ increasing fears about climate change’s potential negative effect on business operations—are giving companies plenty of reasons to join with citizens and act on climate change.

Deloitte

Deloitte

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee (“DTTL”), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as “Deloitte Global”) does not provide services to clients. Deloitte provides audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax and related services to public and private clients spanning multiple industries. Deloitte serves four out of five Fortune Global 500® companies through a globally connected network of member firms in more than 150 countries bringing world-class capabilities, insights, and high-quality service to address clients’ most complex business challenges.

Source: Deloitte BrandVoice: Reducing Environmental Impact Is Now A Business Imperative

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What Coronavirus Means for the Possibility of a Carbon-Free Economy

In the days following Barack Obama’s election as president, incoming chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel made a bold declaration about how the administration would respond to the urgent financial crisis. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” he said, citing a range of challenges, from climate to health care, that might be addressed as part of a response to the Great Recession.

Politicians and policymakers are just beginning to understand how much pain the coronavirus pandemic will inflict, and it goes without saying that policy experts of all stripes universally agree that protecting human life should be the first priority. Even still, leaders are already jockeying about how to keep the crisis from “going to waste.” One area that many are targeting is climate change.

The key climate question raised by this response to coronavirus is whether the trillions of dollars countries will spend to stimulate their economies will help reduce emissions or drive them up. Policy experts say governments may prefer to invest in fossil-fuel-intensive industries because it feels like a safe option in the middle of a pandemic, but doubling down on fossil fuels risks worsening one crisis to deal with another.

“Everybody’s going to be putting safety first right now,” says Matthew McKinnon, an advisor to a group of countries especially vulnerable to climate change. “And whether or not safety first aligns with climate first is going to vary from place to place.”

“Historic opportunity”

The transition away from fossil fuels is happening, with or without coronavirus, but there are a lot of reasons why governments might want to use this moment to double down on measures to address climate change.

Analysis from the International Energy Agency (IEA) describes the moment as a “historic opportunity” for officials to advance clean energy. As governments flood the economy with cash, deep investment in renewable projects would put people to work in the short term and, in the longer term, create decarbonized energy systems better able to compete in the 21st century. “We should not allow today’s crisis to compromise our efforts to tackle the world’s inescapable challenge,” wrote IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in a web post.

Still, getting government officials to prioritize climate may prove difficult in the face of several headwinds. For one, oil prices have declined precipitously in recent weeks as coronavirus has driven demand for crude lower and Saudi Arabia and Russia ramped up production as part of a fierce price war. Cheap fossil fuels leave governments less likely to look to renewables.

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On the other hand, low oil prices offer a great opportunity to eliminate the billions of dollars in government subsidies that support oil and gas, the IEA says, as consumers are less likely to feel the effects.

The big players

The economic response to the coronavirus will play out over months and perhaps years, but we nonetheless see the topic of a “green stimulus” already popping up in capitals across the globe.

Officials in China have promised a massive stimulus to restart the country’s economy, and observers expect that they will largely focus on infrastructure. Some of those projects may be carbon-intensive, but others could ultimately reduce emissions. Expanding electric vehicle infrastructure and transitioning from coal-powered heating to gas-powered heating are among the areas where the country could spend billions, says David Sandalow, an expert on China’s energy and climate policy who serves as a fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

Top officials at the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, have remained steadfast about the European Green Deal, the program intended to eliminate the bloc’s carbon footprint by 2050, even as some member states have complained about its cost in the face of coronavirus. But that program, which has a price tag that tops $1 trillion, actually creates a “green stimulus” of its own, providing billions to places in Europe that are struggling economically. Many key climate advocates have argued that a Green Deal will serve as the framework for an economic recovery.

Across the Atlantic, Washington D.C. may seem like the least likely place to look for stimulus measures focused on addressing climate change, but the conversation is simmering beneath the headlines. Renewable energy groups with support on both sides of the aisle are asking for relief, given the hit they’ve taken from falling power demand. A group of Senators is pushing to pair any bailout of the airline industry with policies to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint. And progressive lawmakers are pointing to the economic downturn, which has far-reaching implications across society, as an ideal opportunity to implement a Green New Deal.

Of course, any legislation called a Green New Deal will be difficult to pass in this Congress, or realistically any future Congress. But many of the components could easily fit as part of a bigger stimulus package. “If you agree on the size and Democrats and Republicans give each other something,” says Reed Hundt, president of the Coalition for Green Capital, who served on the Obama transition team, “you’ll get it done.”

That’s a lesson from the 2009 stimulus bill that passed under Obama. That measure contained some $90 billion to fund clean energy, supporting some 100,000 projects, while catalyzing the private sector, to spend over $100 billion in addition, according to the Obama White House.

Those figures fall short of what the U.S. will likely need to spend to transition its economy away from fossil fuels, and indeed both Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have called called for trillions in their climate plans. Still, the framework of using economic stimulus to address climate change may be even more relevant now that it was ten years ago.

By Justin Worland March 24, 2020

Source: What Coronavirus Means for the Possibility of a Carbon-Free Economy

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Jeff Bezos Commits to Spending $10 Billion to Fight Climate Change

(NEW YORK) — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said Monday that he plans to spend $10 billion of his own fortune to help fight climate change.

Bezos, the world’s richest man, said in an Instagram post that he’ll start giving grants this summer to scientists, activists and nonprofits working to protect the earth. “I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change,” Bezos said in the post.

Amazon, the company Bezos runs, has an enormous carbon footprint. Last year, Amazon officials said the company would work to have 100% of its energy use come from solar panels and other renewable energy by 2030.

The online retailer relies on fossil fuels to power planes, trucks and vans in order to ship billions of items all around the world. Amazon workers in its Seattle headquarters have been vocal in criticizing some of the company’s practices, pushing it to do more to combat climate change.

Bezos said in the post Monday that he will call his new initiative the Bezos Earth Fund. An Amazon spokesman confirmed that Bezos will be using his own money for the fund.

Despite being among the richest people in the world, Bezos only recently became active in donating money to causes as other billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have done. In 2018, Bezos started another fund, committing $2 billion of his own money to open preschools in low-income neighborhoods and give money to nonprofits that help homeless families.

Bezos, who founded Amazon 25 years ago, has a stake in the company that is worth more than $100 billion.

By JOSEPH PISANI / AP February 17, 2020

Source: Jeff Bezos Commits to Spending $10 Billion to Fight Climate Change

The Amazon founder and CEO has been in the news for his recent divorce settlement, his latest real estate purchase, and the carbon emissions impact his company has on the environment.

A Group of Big Businesses is Backing a Carbon Tax. Could It Be a Solution to Climate Change?

The long list of big companies backing a carbon tax as a solution to climate change grew this week with financial giant J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. endorsing a legislative plan billed as a centrist approach to reducing emissions.

The announcement comes as the Climate Leadership Council (CLC), the organization behind the proposal, which was first released in 2017, redoubles efforts to promote the plan before an expected introduction in Congress as the conversation around various climate solutions heats up in Washington.

The CLC announced new backers—including former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres—and released internal poll numbers showing bipartisan voter support for the plan. Supporters now include a broad coalition of companies, from oil giants like ExxonMobil to tech behemoths like Microsoft, major environmental groups like Conservation International, and a range of economists and political leaders.

“The markets can and will do much to address climate change,” David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, a founding member of the CLC, told TIME in an emailed statement. “But given the magnitude and urgency of this challenge, governments must put a price on the cost of carbon.”

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The thinking behind the plan is straight forward. Economists have long argued that a carbon tax, which makes companies pay for what they pollute and gives them an incentive to stem carbon emissions, is the most efficient way to reduce such emissions. But carbon tax proposals have been met with opposition in the past from across the political spectrum, including from some Democrats, in large part because they increase energy costs. The CLC proposal would give the money collected by the tax back to taxpayers in the form of a quarterly dividend, an effort to make it more politically palatable.

On Feb. 13, the CLC provided additional details about the plan, including introducing a new mechanism that would rapidly increase the price on carbon if targets are not met. Backers say the plan will cut U.S. emissions in half by 2035. “We think it has a compelling economic logic,” says Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve and a backer of the plan, in an interview.

But despite the growing coalition, actually passing the plan remains a challenging uphill battle. While more and more Republicans have stopped denying the science of climate change, many continue to insist that they would never support anything resembling a carbon tax. Meanwhile, many leading Democrats, including presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have downplayed the role a carbon tax might play in future climate legislation. Many Democrats argue that the time has passed for such a market-driven approach to climate change, arguing that they are too little, too late and that a corporate-backed plan shouldn’t be trusted.

Still, big corporations increasingly see a carbon tax—especially a proposal like the CLC plan—as the simplest solution to a thorny problem. With clear science, activists in the streets and voters experiencing extreme weather events in their own backyards, business leaders see new climate rules as all but an inevitability, if not at the U.S. federal level then in states or other countries where they have operations.

The CLC proposal offers a business-friendly approach: nixing many existing climate regulations, a “border carbon adjustment” that would create a fee on imports from countries without a carbon price, and a dividend system that pays out the revenue collected by the carbon tax back to taxpayers. “If we do one without the other,” says Shailesh Jejurikar, CEO of Procter & Gamble’s Fabric & Home Care division, “it doesn’t work.”

Still, even as more than a dozen Fortune 500 firms support the legislation, many other businesses and influential business groups continue to either oppose a carbon tax or haven’t taken a position at all. That’s particularly true of the fossil fuel industry’s trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute, which officially has no position. Even though major oil companies like ExxonMobil and Shell have joined the CLC initiative, independent oil companies, oil refiners and other related companies remain largely opposed.

One of the biggest challenges to this measure—or any carbon tax for that matter—is the growing interest in other approaches to climate legislation. Republicans this week pushed legislation to plant trees and expand tax incentives for capturing carbon, measures that wouldn’t match the scale of the challenge but allow Republicans to offer a different message on the issue.

Earlier this month, Representative David McKinley, a Republican from West Virginia, and Kurt Schrader, an Oregon Democrat, called for legislation that would lead to an 80% reduction in emissions from the power sector by 2050 using a combination of regulation and funding for innovation and infrastructure. And more than 30 Democratic senators introduced a bill to require the Environmental Protection Agency to come up with a plan for the U.S. to eliminate its carbon footprint by 2050. “This is the quickest way we can jumpstart government-wide climate action,” Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, who introduced the legislation, said on the Senate floor.

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None of these measures are likely to become law anytime soon, and any legislative approach to addressing climate change will involve intense debate on Capitol Hill.

Even some backers of the carefully crafted CLC plan acknowledge it’s not likely to pass in its current form. “Inevitably, Congress will have some of its own ideas in terms of the implementation,” Moniz, who endorsed the CLC proposal this week, tells TIME.“ “I would welcome seeing that negotiation start in earnest.” Indeed, even having a discussion in Congress indicates a new climate for climate in Washington.

By Justin Worland February 13, 2020

Source: A Group of Big Businesses is Backing a Carbon Tax. Could It Be a Solution to Climate Change?

A revenue neutral carbon tax would automatically encourage consumers and producers to shift toward energy sources that emit less carbon. Carbon taxes are economically efficient because they make people pay for the costs they create. And a revenue neutral carbon tax would keep the government from using new revenue to subsidize other programs. For more information, visit the PolicyEd page here: https://www.policyed.org/intellection…. Additional resources: Read “Why We Support a Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax” by George P. Shultz, Gary S. Becker, available here: https://hvr.co/2uMzTTl Read why enacting a carbon tax would free up private firms to find the most efficient ways to cut emissions in “A Conservative Answer to Climate Change” by George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III, available here: https://on.wsj.com/2loUAhM Read “There Is One Climate Solution That’s Best For The Environment – And For Business” by George P. Shultz and Lawrence H. Summers, available here: https://wapo.st/2JRoLJv Watch as George P. Shultz, James A. Baker III, and Henry Paulson discuss “Is There Deal Space for Carbon Pricing In 2017?” Available here: https://hvr.co/2NHPF90 Listen as George Shultz joins The World Today to explain why he supports a carbon tax, available here: https://ab.co/2ObRBYN John Cochrane discusses George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III oped “A Conservative Answer to Climate Change.” Availabler here: https://bit.ly/2LMPdpF Read “Let the Carbon-Dividends Debate Begin” by George P. Shultz and Ted Halstead, available here: https://bit.ly/2O95UNH Visit https://www.policyed.org/ to learn more. – Subscribe to PolicyEd’s YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/PolicyEdSub – Follow PolicyEd on Twitter: http://bit.ly/PolicyEdTwit – Follow PolicyEd on Instagram: http://bit.ly/PolicyEdInsta
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